I was feeding them and bathing them and putting them in their cribs. When Parker came up behind me, put his arms around me and kissed me as we watched them sleep, I sat straight up in bed. This wasn’t a part of the plan. Not at all.
And I realized that, while my mind was visualizing what Parker and I had agreed on, my subconscious might be thinking of something else entirely.
ParkerONE MINUTE
I HADN’T STEPPED FOOT INa doctor’s office since Greer’s death, and now, in the midst of IVF, it seemed like all I was doing. I tried to bury it. But every time I walked through the doors of a doctor’s office—even this small, hometown one that couldn’t have been more different from the upscale Palm Beach ones—I couldn’t help but think of her. My heart sank, but I smiled at Amelia as she climbed up on the brown table with the white paper sheet on top.
The only thing that Greer made me promise, when she agreed to keep living, was that I wouldn’t let her get translucent and veiny and bald and allow people in to see her. When we had gone back to the doctor together after she found out the cancer wasn’t responding, she had offered more treatments. Greer had said, “What are the chances that these treatments, which I assume will make me sick and bald, will work?”
The doctor had looked at her, resigned, and said, “Less than ten percent.”
I was a mess, but Greer didn’t skip a beat. She stood up, held out her hand, and said, “Dr. Taschel, I am most appreciative of your help. But I’m going to go home to enjoy the time I have left.”
The doctor protested. “Even if you don’t accept further treatment, we need to monitor the progression of the disease.”
I agreed for some reason, like I needed to know, via a scan, when she was dying.
“I’ll come back when I need hospice,” Greer said.
Vomit rose up the back of my throat, and I ran out of the room to be sick in the hall trash can. Hospice. I still hadn’t accepted that my bright, beautiful light could ever go out.
We made a pact on the way home to quit everything. And we did. We went to North Carolina. We went to Amsterdam. We went to Utah and Bali, LA and Bora Bora, Hawaii and Hong Kong. For almost an entire year, we traveled and sunned ourselves and made love and acted like we were on an extended vacation. I could pretend she was okay. But there were subtle changes—circles under her eyes, a change in her breath, the naps that she had to take in the afternoon.
The morning she woke up and said quietly, “Parker, take me back to Palm Beach,” I wanted to jump out the window and end it. I couldn’t bear the thought of living even a moment without her. I didn’t want this part. I couldn’t handle this part.
As Greer got sicker over those last few weeks, I kept my promise. Her beautiful hair had grown back and was almost to her chin. Her nurse—the same nurse they had hired for her mother only a few years earlier—did her hair and makeup every day so visitors could see the old Greer, not the dying one. That was maybe the worst part for me, because, even though she was leaving me, when she was made-up, she barely looked sick. I could sit across from her on the couch and pretend things were fine, that this was just a bump in the road.
To watch the person you love more than yourself suffer is hell on earth. But even then, I couldn’t be wholly sorry. Because we had one full, memorable year.
A year had never felt faster.
And now two weeks had never felt longer.
Every day I wavered between piercing fear that the embryos hadn’t taken, overwhelming joy that they had, and crippling panic over either.
Amelia swore she didn’t need an appointment to tell her what she already knew. She was nauseous and bloated and moody. She was positive she was pregnant. She had been cooking up a storm for the past couple of weeks. I tried to take her out, but she insisted that the babies needed an organic diet. She had a little calendar on the fridge where she was keeping tally of the fruits and vegetables she ate daily to make sure she got at least ten servings. That seemed like a lot to me, but I was unendingly grateful for the time and attention she was paying to my future child or, if things hadgone really well, children. And we had gotten into quite a rhythm with our cooking. I’d play one of her Spotify playlists over the house’s sound system and pour a glass of flavored sparkling water in a wine glass for her, an Old Fashioned for me, on which Amelia insisted upon burning an orange rind. I knew already that I would never be able to drink it any other way now.
She would hand me vegetables and instruct me to dice or chop or whatever, and she’d get going on the fish or chicken. Sometimes she’d send me out to the grill. Amelia was a great cook, but that wasn’t what I loved about those nights. It was the talking, the sharing of secrets and laughter, the way we’d dance around the kitchen when a favorite song came on.
Living in fifteen hundred square feet with someone bonds you fairly quickly. I loved the smell of her shampoo wafting through the house after she showered, the taste of the decaf coffee she’d added a pinch of cinnamon to, which we’d share on the porch at sunrise, the sound of her humming while she wrote, lost in one of several freelance pieces she had landed. The feelings I was developing toward her should have set off alarm bells. But they didn’t. They felt simple. They felt right.
We read books together and discussed them, a hobby I had never shared with anyone else. Greer loved to read, but we had different tastes. Amelia tore articles out ofThe New York Timesand left them for me and turned down corners of stories inThe New Yorkershe thought I’d like.
One night, I said, “It seems like you’re really into the NewYork–based publications these days. Any reason?” I was teasing, but the thought of her in New York made my heart race uneasily.
She smiled noncommittally. “I guess I’m just thinking that I love Palm Beach, but I don’t have my own home and I don’t have a job, and while I’ll miss my friends, they’ve all moved on, too, you know? After being a managing editor atClematis, I feel like I can certainly get a writing position at a New York publication. I used to be a little scared of New York.” She laughed ironically. “But certain events of the past year have made me braver.”
My mind was racing with ways to keep her in Palm Beach, with me, even as I said, “Lia, I told you already that you can have any job you want at McCann Media.” I paused. “You’re having my baby, for God’s sake. You’re carrying the heir to the McCann Media empire. I’d say it’s the least I can do.”
I knew what she would say before she even said it: “I appreciate that, and I will certainly come to you if I need help, but I feel like I have to do this on my own.”
On my own… on my own…The words rolled around in my head as I paced nervously around the tiny doctor’s office. We were waiting for the results of Amelia’s blood test, and she was lying back on the table, doing some sort of intense deep-breathing exercise. I assumed she was visualizing, but it seemed a little late for that. Finally, I sat down on the swivel stool beside her and took her hand. She looked at me with one eye. “I’m breathing here,” she said.
“Yes. And you’re doing it very, very well.”
She smiled at me.
“I just need you to know,” I said, “that this has been the most amazing thing that anyone has ever done for me. I am so honored.”
