Hope Makes Love, page 5
My mother’s sigh chased after me across the carpet she’d chosen when she and Bill had married. It had been a kind of wedding present, from him to her, which he announced at the reception with a wink and a grin. “Mildred,” he said into the microphone, “you floor me.”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t be like this. You know that I’m so extremely proud of you for how you’ve turned your life around. And so is Bill, darling. So is Bill.”
At the door, I stepped into my shoes.
“Why else would he have paid for all that schooling? He said, ‘Mildred, that’s quite a daughter you’ve got.’ And he was right.” Though I wasn’t looking at her, focused as I was on the edge of my left shoe, which kept bending under my heel, I sensed her coming toward me. “I’m just confused. That’s all it is. Because you’re so highly accomplished in one part of your life and I wonder how you can still be … hampered in others.”
The decision I made then is one I think I’ll always regret. Because it will mark me as someone unable to resist the pettiest of urges. Someone given to the ugliest, most malign impulses. Willing to behave no better than a capricious third-world dictator. The Idi Amin of daughters, c’est moi.
My left shoe finally accepted the foot it was intended for and I opened the front door. Halfway across the transom, I turned and lifted my face to my mother.
“By the way, I think I’m pregnant.”
I was two-thirds of the way down the driveway when she recovered enough to shout after me. The usual thing. Hope. How dare you. Don’t leave. Hope. Hope. Hope.
ZB Transcript 6
I HATE MY ROOM, MARCIE. Fucking hate this room. It’s not your fault. Not blaming you, but this is a shit room.
First of all, king bed. I know most people like a king bed, but I don’t. I said gimme two queens. King bed’s too big for just me. Reminds me of the whole fucking … look, one person in a king bed, that bed is empty, you know what I’m saying? Feels like I’m sleeping in Wyoming, for Christ’s sake.
I told them. Gimme two queens. And the guy at the desk, I kid you not, fucking smirks at me.
“You want two queens?” he says. And then he looks at the girl beside him at the desk. And she smirks. Like I’m the goddamn joke of the week.
I said, “Hey, Derrick” — name on his badge was “Derrick” — I said, “Hey, Derrick, I hit forty-seven home runs in a season and a half with the Bisons. And I know that matters in this town because you got nothing else here.” Not in the summer, anyway. I know they got the Sabres and the Bills, but in the summer they got shit. I mean, I didn’t get into any of that with him, I just left it at “nothing else.” And I said, “I would like a room with two queen beds, please.”
I’m telling you, Marcie, if Hope hadn’t been standing beside me I might have popped the guy or … I dunno. Although now I’m thinking the whole reason they made the joke was because we were getting separate rooms. Like, no way we’re a couple, right? And she’s hot, so what’s wrong with me?
Anyway, he said they didn’t have any more queen bed rooms available. It was kings or those little doubles. Fucking Hyatt.
HEY MARCIE, LOOK, UH, sorry about that last recording. I wasn’t … you don’t have to type any of that if you don’t … I guess maybe it’s too late now.
I think it’s just … it’s just being back in this city, that’s all. I mean, it’s … I guess it’s seventeen years since I was here, so it’s weird. It’s like being in a time warp, like I’m in a Star Trek movie or something, you know? I’m afraid of bumping into my old self or something. I’m just … I’m on edge. I dunno, that’s the only way I can put it.
Coming here, what can I tell you … it was a good drive. Hope didn’t say much the whole way but the traffic was okay. I like the Enclave, by the way, thanks for that. Family man car, huh? Yeah. No, it’s good, it’ll work.
We got over the Peace Bridge around four o’clock. That didn’t take too long. Customs guy recognized me when he saw the name. He was young, so … stats geek or something, I guess. Didn’t ask for my autograph.
So anyway, we were coming in. And I was driving past La Salle Park and then, Marcie, it was like for a second it was 1998 and I was twenty-six years old. So weird. And, and I looked over at Hope and I was surprised, like I was expecting Emily to be there. Seriously, for a second it was like, Who the hell is this? Where’s my wife?
Didn’t say anything. Hope looked over at me and went, “What?”
And I was like, “Welcome to Buffalo.”
We checked in, and the room … whatever. And Hope doesn’t want to eat dinner with me, by the way. Like I mean, never. That’s a policy. She said, “Working hours. We’re going to keep working hours while we’re here. No meetings before nine and nothing past five.” Starting tomorrow she’s gonna meet me in the lobby every morning and we’ll go to work.
I think it’s gonna be okay. It’s good to actually be doing something, you know? It’s sitting around wishing that gets to you. This is better. This is like, take charge, bam, make something happen! Right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s good.
Can’t wait to get started!
OKAY.
[Unintelligible]
Jesus Christ, I should probably …
[Unintelligible]
It’s uh, it’s eight something. Eight thirty-three, says here. And the light’s coming in all over me, and I feel like shit. Feels like my head is inside a glove or something. Like squeezed inside a glove, that’s what it’s … fuck, I’m an asshole.
Stay positive though … right, Marcie?
Yeah.
I had this coach once. I had this coach … he used to say, “Learn from your mistakes or don’t, I don’t give a fuck. They just pay me to throw you the ball.”
Total prick, that guy. Total prick. Never got out of A-ball though, so … fuck him.
I dunno. All last night, Marcie, all last night all I could think about was that she’s here. Emily’s here in this city. And I had this … I had this big urge — I mean, I know where she lives. Right? I could drive right over. Knock on her door.
But I can’t do that ’cause I’d blow it. Blow this whole fucking thing.
So I just walked around downtown for a while. Went down, uh, Pearl and then over to Niagara Square. I love that old city hall building there. It’s like, I dunno, a piece of Chicago or something. Like a great old man you can look up to.
But walking around, I got … I couldn’t relax. The more I walked the more I … every time I turned a corner I thought, maybe she’ll be there. You know? Maybe I’ll have to talk to her before I’m ready, before Hope’s told me the plan.
Or worse, or worse … maybe I’ll see her with some guy. I mean, I’m always asking Pebbles if Mom’s seeing anybody and she never says yes but who knows? Maybe she goes out at night. Gets a sitter and hits the town. Tries to wash her shithead ex-husband out of her mind. Maybe she lives here now ’cause she thinks she’s safe from me. ’Cause it’s the last place I’d ever want to be. This is her home, she’s got family. All I’ve got here are memories of her.
Well, that and hitting the shit outta the ball. Heh … yeah.
But, you know, what I’m saying is … now she’s here to be with her folks and put a thousand miles between us, right? Like I’m the last person she wants to see. That’s why she left. And now here I show up. And all night I was walking around thinking, What the hell? What the hell am I doing here? I must be the world’s biggest meatball.
And then I went to the Steakhouse downstairs and closed it.
I dunno, Marcie. Do you think this is gonna work out all right or do you think this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done? I mean, I could just turn around. Send Hope home on a bus tomorrow and drive south down the 219 and take it from there. I could do that. I fucking should do that.
But fuck, Marcie. I love her. I just … miss her. And I …
… Shit, it’s twenty-to-nine. I gotta have a shower.
Uh, listen, get on Lino, would you? I keep calling him and I only ever get his message box like I’m some loser. I wanna know what’s going on with the investor dude. Feels like I should be seeing some sort of legal paper or something. Okay, that’s it.
OH MAN, MARCIE. Oh man.
Fuck, I’m just out of my meeting with Hope. It’s ah, it’s like around noon. We’re taking a break for lunch. I’m just down here in the ah … I gotta go outside, they’re looking at me. I’m just pacing around the lobby like a nut job.
Holy shit!
No, after you, sir. After you. Yeah, whatever [unintelligible].
OKAY, I’M IN THE parking lot. Holy shit, Marcie!
[Unintelligible. Wind noise.]
It’s a bit breezy out here, I’m not ah … [Wind noise] and Hope’s got it all planned out! Oh my God, it’s amazing. My head’s spinning right now. She … she booked us one of those small conference rooms, and … and she had this whiteboard set up, right? And so she walked me through everything, the whole plan. How everything works. The brain and the chemicals and how [Wind noise] she used a lot of big fucking words and I can’t remember a goddamn one of them right now, but holy shit! I think this might work!
She ah … she says we have to take it slow. We can’t rush anything. It might take a week, or it might take a month, but [Wind noise] take that long because she has to get back to work at some point so I might be on my own for part of it. Which might be okay, but we have to see. We have to see how it goes.
Okay, I’m in sort of a sheltered area now, Marcie. Sorry about that. I used to take videos of Pebbles on the beach and with the wind you can’t listen to them, it’s like sandpaper on the ears. So …
But it’s exciting. It’s … I mean, the way Hope explains it, we’re gonna try and rebuild or, no, she said … resuscitate, that’s it. We’re gonna resuscitate Emily’s feelings for me. Right from scratch. Almost as if we’re just meeting now. But that’s hard because we have history. And there’s a lot of bad feelings that, I mean, not on my part, but she has bad feelings, anger and that, so we have to get over that. She says it’s like rebuilding a baseball swing. Which I totally get! You gotta get down to fundamentals. Basic stuff like balance. Except with Emily it’s trust.
We have to — well, me. I have to re-establish trust. Get Emily to trust me. Hope says she’s got some ideas. But she says first one of the things we have to do is I have to walk her through all the reasons why Emily might not trust me. Which, yeah. I guess maybe I have to, I dunno.
And Hope says I should lay off the booze, it’s messing me up. She was kinda pissy about it, but I can’t blame her. She’s doing all this for … well, for nothing. I dunno why.
But so, there you go — we’re starting!
Okay, I’m gonna [wind noise]
Monday, April 20
MY MOTHER HAS LEFT four messages on my phone. In the longest of them, she recalled for my benefit the day she learned she was pregnant with me, and how joyful the experience of sharing the news with her own mother had been.
“It was the middle of February, Hope. The sky was a brilliant, clear blue, like a sapphire, and the sun was so bright on the snow it brought tears to your eyes. And your grandfather hadn’t salted the front path, so when I ran out of the car to the front door I nearly fell for a loop. And for a second when I thought I was falling, I thought, ‘Oh, no! I’m going to lose the baby before I get a chance to tell Mom!’ But it didn’t happen, and I got to the front door and I yelled for her, and she came thinking something terrible had happened. But then as she ran from the kitchen she saw the look on my face and she knew, and she let out a big Whoop! You know how Grandma can be. Just a big Whoop! And she had some letters or receipts in her hand, papers of some kind, that she threw up in the air. And they came down like big confetti and it was the most wonderful thing, Hope! It was the most wonderful day! And I wish you’d given us that, Hope. I wish you had. Oh, it would have been so good and so right for us to have had that, after all the difficulties. I’m so sorry we didn’t have that. But Hope, we can still talk about it. And we can still celebrate. It can still be a joyful thing, Hope. So call me back, sweetheart. Please call me back. Please, sweetheart.”
In the last and shortest of the messages, my mother left a simple, bleak, “Oh, Hope.”
Lesley left a message too. She called while I was with Zep or I would have talked with her. I could hear the salve of care in her captured voice, the will to be helpful through distance. Apparently my mother had phoned Lesley to plead with her to convince me to return Mother’s calls. “She has a point, Hope,” Lesley said. “This is not really something you should be dealing with on your own.” It means, of course, that Lesley learned about my pregnancy from my mother and not from me, but she didn’t try to make me feel worse about that than I already did.
She did ask, however, whether the cataclysmic news had anything to do with my sudden escape to Buffalo. She doesn’t know about Zep, only that I’ve gone to do “field research,” which is a thing I have never done before in the nine years we’ve roomed together. The coincidence of these two events is, in Lesley’s word, “intriguing.”
I can’t tell her what I’m doing here; she doesn’t think like a scientist and so she would be appalled. But I will call her and apologize, and let her convince me to call my mother. And in this way I will give them both something.
Neither of them, in their messages, nudged the subject of the father. Undoubtedly Lesley has already made the short, logical leap. She knows about my hours with Adnan — none of their content, but the fact of them. My mother, however, has nothing, no daughterly confidences, to go on, so her bewilderment must be profound. She must now, among other things, imagine me having sex, which will require a significant realignment of what she holds to be true about her daughter. That is, unless she skips all that and assumes the employment of some university lab version of a turkey baster. That would be easier for her.
Nor did they raise the question of what decision I will be making regarding this pregnancy. There are certain things that can’t be left dangling on a voice message, and it seems the fate of an embryo is one of them.
And perhaps they accept that the question is mine, not theirs. Mine not only to answer but to ask, which I haven’t yet. I can’t ask that question until I have answered others. And that will be a process. Scientific investigation must be built on formal, testable hypotheses with manipulated and dependent variables. If / then / because. One doesn’t just decide.
The manipulated variable is Zep’s ex-wife, or more precisely her brain. If Emily Good’s brain can be directed or tricked into believing she is falling in love again with Zep Baker, then I have nothing to worry about, because it will prove love is merely chemical, a simple, amino acidic call-and-response. Therefore meaningless. And I can base other hypotheses, other questions, on that knowledge.
I won’t have to consider factors like fate, or hope, or desire. I won’t have to imagine the possibility that certain kinds of lives can change for the better after all, or that happiness might hinge on the infinitesimal chance of two particular people finding and believing in each other. I won’t have to consider the potential for happiness at all. If love can be made, if it can be imposed on someone, then love doesn’t matter.
If yes, then no.
Zep has no questions, except “When do we begin?” He has put himself in my hands. I’m his coach and he has faith in my game plan. I’ve neglected to mention that in this particular field of play, I’ve never been anything but a spectator.
With Zep, I have the challenge of managing his expectations and ensuring that he doesn’t try to move too quickly. Testing the hypothesis properly depends on methodical progress. We will create Emily’s love bit by bit, through careful, incremental provocations of neurochemicals in specific regions — nucleus accumbens, caudate nucleus, ventral tegmental area and others.
I’m certainly not the first to explore the subliminal induction of emotion. But I think it is safe to assume that I’m the first to attempt it outside a lab, without the awareness of the subject, assisted only by an excitable former third baseman who has everything to lose, or gain. I will have to give Zep explicit instructions at each stage, and I will need to observe him. He can’t just be Zep in all his Zepness.
ZB Transcript 7
FUCK, MARCIE. You know what I’m doing right now? I’m sitting here watching a total asshole screw up his life.
He’s sitting right across from me with his wife. I guess it’s his wife. I’m in the Steakhouse here, having dinner. I can’t talk too loud or they might hear me.
[Woman’s voice. Unintelligible.]
No, just water’s good. Thanks, sweetheart.
So … anyway, uh, Hope and I worked on planning all day. It’s all set up. Like as much as it can be. I know Emily’s working at this tent rental company, The Tent Event or something. They do company spreads and weddings and shit. I found her bio thing online — you know, “Meet Our Team” or whatever. She’s an event consultant, which is good I guess, for her. I mean, like I always said, she’s got a killer smile. She knows how to talk to people. And Pebbles says she’s still working out, so she’s got that tight bod. Put one of those sharp suits for women on her? Sure, I can see that. Just fucking rips me up she’s working for some two-bit company in Buffalo when she could be on the beach in Florida with me. Like that’s the life she wants? Tromping around parking lots with a fucking clipboard? But, whatever. That’ll change.
No, I’m fine sweetheart. Thanks.
[Woman’s voice. Unintelligible.]
I’m just dictating here … Dictating, see? [Unintelligible] Right, sorry. Yeah. I’ll keep it down.
Sorry, Marcie. They don’t like me swearing in here.
So, point is, I know where she lives and where she works, and I pretty much know her hours, when she comes and goes. Don’t know about lunch, but we’ll figure that out.
Hope’s all over me about taking it slow and I keep telling her, Don’t worry. You’re the boss. You tell me what to do, I’ll do it. I mean, it’s not like I don’t know I fucked it … effed it up the first time on my own.
