Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

“All grown now, same age as Casey. Luke lives in Detroit, where he is attempting to resurrect the downtown — a hopeless mission if there ever was one.” And then Orson adds, proud despite himself, “But that’s my son.”

“What was he like as a child?”

“Luke?”

“No, Casey.”

“Pretty much the way he is now, only smaller.”

And Isabelle laughs. “I can see that. I can definitely see a tinier Casey”—and she takes both hands and holds them about two feet apart—“behaving exactly as he behaves now.”

“Lots of energy,” Orson says, nodding.

“Happy if the sun was shining.”

“Yes. Whatever was in front of him was pretty much it.”

And Isabelle is silent. Then: “Not much good at long-term planning.”

“No. Not his strong suit.”

“Well,” she says as she stands and he does, as well, “that’s what I can help him with.” And she finds that she’s light-headed, dizzy, and she sits back down again.

“I’m sorry.” God, she must have said that ten times already to this nice man. “I’m a little light-headed. In fact, I haven’t felt well since Casey…” And then she stops herself, because she knows instantly what’s wrong. How could she have been so clueless? Of course it’s been crazy since Casey left, and she’s been worried about him and worried about where she was going to live and how she was going to pay for it all, but to completely skip over the missed period, even though she’s never been exactly regular so it wasn’t such a big deal, but still, the queasiness alone should have told her. Oh my God.

“I’m pregnant,” simply springs from her mouth before she can censor herself. Then, more slowly, with real wonder: “I just realized I must be pregnant.”

Orson sits back down for a second time. Obviously this girl isn’t leaving anytime soon.

“What a mess,” she says, and he would concur if it weren’t cruel to do so.

They look at each other, neither knowing exactly what to say now, Isabelle gradually coming into complete embarrassment. And with her face flushing red, she stands up again, car keys in hand, and makes for the door.

“Thank you,” she says as she crosses the living room. “I can’t thank you enough,” is lobbed over her shoulder as she reaches the front door, opens it, and is gone.

—

ISABELLE SITS ON HER TINY front porch and stares out at the stillness of Marston Street. Up and down the block are small two- and three-bedroom wooden houses similar to her own. The old maple trees planted at the curbs, probably when the houses were built seventy years ago, are huge and leafless in the December air. Christmas is less than two weeks away.

It’s the middle of the day. The kids who live on the street are in school, and it’s so quiet Isabelle can hear the occasional squeal of car brakes on College Avenue several blocks to the east and the faint music of a guitar trio that often positions itself outside the Rockridge Café, playing for change.

Stupid. Could you have done anything more stupid? The words run through her head in an endless loop. She knows it’s her mother’s voice accusing her — she hears the harsh tone and staccato cadence, exactly as if her mother were sitting beside her — but she has no defense. She agrees. She can’t think of anything more stupid.

And then comes her father’s sorrowful voice from one of their morning discussions on the Long Island Railroad, when he fervently admonished her not to “live a life of regret.” “How do you avoid that?” she remembers asking him, and he responded, “Be careful.”

Well, she wasn’t. And now what? You can have this baby, she tells herself, or not. That’s the first choice she has to address, and she prepares herself for endless agonizing bouts of indecision which will tie her up in knots. But to her amazement, the “or not” of her choice seems like an impossibility. It is crystal clear to Isabelle that she will have this baby. No, she tells herself, she and Casey will have this baby.

That rock-solid belief is a revelation to her. Where did that certainty come from? She has no idea. Maybe pregnancy carries with it this gift of clarity. Maybe she’s gone slightly crazy. All she knows for sure is that it feels amazing to be so unequivocal.

“Well!” And she says this out loud to the quiet street, frankly astonished at herself.

Mrs. Hershfeld, dragging a wire shopping cart loaded with groceries behind her and smoking, as she always seems to be, hears the loud and self-satisfied “Well!” as she nears the bungalow and takes it as a greeting.

“Fanny Hershfeld,” she says from the bottom of the steps. She could climb them to be more neighborly, but it would kill her knees.

“Isabelle Rothman,” Isabelle says as she gets up and walks down the steps to shake Mrs. Hershfeld’s hand.

“Rothman,” the older woman says with a knowing nod. “Good. Things will be fine between us.”

Isabelle has no idea what she means and it shows on her face.

“The Jews — we know.” And with that Fanny turns, grabs her shopping cart, and slowly begins to maneuver the four stone steps to her front door.

“Here, let me help you.” And Isabelle easily carries the cart onto the porch. And then, she can’t resist: “What do we know, Mrs. Hershfeld?”

“More than most,” she says with a sage nod of her head. She bumps the cart into her open doorway, then turns to give Isabelle the rest of her wisdom. “The Safeway — may they rot in hell for the produce they put out.” And with that, Mrs. Hershfeld maneuvers herself and her groceries through the front door and closes it with a slam of her foot.

—

CASEY CALLS ISABELLE THE FRIDAY BEFORE Christmas from Subic Bay International Airport in the Philippines. She’s had well over a week to make some kind of sense of her new state. The first thing she did was call Deepti and make a doctor’s appointment and take Deepti with her to ask the questions she wouldn’t think to ask. And the doctor confirmed the pregnancy, even though Isabelle didn’t need any medical test to verify what she knew, absolutely, in her bones.

What she wasn’t sure of was how Casey would take the news. She realized that no matter how many hours they had spent together, no matter the whispered conversations that often took place as they lay naked in each other’s arms, no matter the complete and easy intimacy she felt between them, she had no idea what he was going to say. How could that be? She felt she knew with more certainty what Daniel would say if she told him than what Casey’s reaction would be.

When she thinks of Daniel now, she always pictures him in the messy kitchen of his rented house in Los Angeles, sitting at the large wooden table pushed against a wall, the way he was the day she took him the Philip Levine poems. Something changed that day for both of them, she believes, and it is that morning that she goes back to in her mind.

If she went to him there and told him she was pregnant, he would lean back in his chair, cross his arms against his broad chest, narrow his light-blue eyes, and appraise her, trying to discern how she felt about it. Then he would ask her, and she would tell him that she was terrified and excited and committed in a way she had never been before in her life to anything, except maybe her writing.

“What about your writing?” he would say. And she would reassure him that she wouldn’t give it up. That she would manage to do both — raise this child and continue to write. Lots of women did it. She could, as well.

“Hmmm,” he would say, coming forward and leaning his forearms on the table in front of him. “Hard to do.”

“Yes,” she would admit, “but I think I can.”