Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

And then Daniel would smile and say, “Keep me posted,” and she would know that he was on her side, as she had felt from that day in the kitchen with the book of poems and his explanation that “what’s inside you is worthy enough to write about.” Such a powerful statement. Contained within it was the assurance that he had seen her essence and judged it worthy. What greater gift is there, except maybe his declaration that he would help her find a way to get the words on paper?

Why was she able to imagine Daniel’s reaction to the news so clearly, but not Casey’s? Was Casey the sort of person whose presence made all the difference and Daniel was not? How did that work? Why was her connection to Daniel still strong despite the months and months of absence and her connection to Casey, gone simply a matter of weeks, already feeling threadbare and thin?

Despite the questions Isabelle spends most of her days mulling over, when she hears Casey’s voice on the phone, her legs give out and she has to sit down. Simply the sound of his voice overwhelms her.

“Casey, oh, Casey, where are you?”

“In the airport, near Mindoro.”

“You’re coming home! Oh my God!”

“Well…not quite yet.”

And Isabelle is silent, flooded with disappointment. She has no idea what to say next.

“Isabelle, there’s a famine in South Sudan. Eight hundred thousand people are in danger of starvation. Can you imagine? In Bor, where I’m headed, a hundred people a day are dying — children first, of course, always, but the whole population, they’re walking skeletons.”

“That’s awful,” Isabelle manages to say, just barely.

“So you can understand why I’m not coming home just yet.” His voice is strong, urgent. She thinks she might detect some glee in it.

“Yes, but…Casey, there’s something else.”

“The World Food Program, that’s part of the United Nations, said that nowhere else in the world are people in such dire straits. The situation’s beyond a crisis. Global Hope’s got two planes loaded with food, basic stuff like powdered milk for the kids, beans and rice, essentials, and they’re on their way even as we speak, and I’m going to meet them on this dirt landing strip outside of—”

“Casey!” And Isabelle feels like a horrible person. Selfish. Superficial. Why is she making such a personal fuss when scores of people are dying? But she has to tell him. “Listen, there’s something we have to talk about.”

“Okay, shoot.”

And then Isabelle finds she can’t get the words out. She’s practiced this moment many times in her head over the past ten days, but now that she has to speak the words, she finds she can’t.

“Isabelle, what is it? They’re calling my flight.”

“When will you be back?” is what she is able to manage.

“Jeez, I don’t know. It depends on what we find when we get to the Sudan. And how much relief work they’ll let us do there. There’s a civil war going on, that’s a huge part of the trouble, and the government—”

“Casey, I’m pregnant.”

There’s an immediate black hole of silence, sucking out all of Isabelle’s hope, and then a very soft “Wow” from Casey.

“Is that a good wow or a bad one?”

“I’m just sort of shocked.”

“Me, too.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“I’m having this baby.” Isabelle says this quietly, resolutely.

Casey says nothing. Isabelle can hear in the background, behind his silence, a muffled voice calling for passengers to board a plane, probably Casey’s.

“Shit, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again. As soon as I can. All right?”

“Yes, but—”

“I love you.” And then there’s a dial tone.

By the time Isabelle gives birth to her son in late July 1995, just days after her twenty-third birthday, Daniel is in Iowa. He doesn’t tell Isabelle about this move, and she doesn’t tell him about the baby. Since the summer of her graduation and his exile from Los Angeles, they have e-mailed each other only sporadically — their exchange of Christmas messages, an e-mail from Isabelle when she found Daniel’s third novel, long out of print, in a used-book store and he made her promise not to read it. But primarily Isabelle has been consumed with the life taking shape within her and Daniel has become more and more disgusted with himself and his vagabond existence, this begging for academic scraps and babysitting a son who refuses to grow up.

Isabelle names her son Avi, which means “my father” in Hebrew, a name carefully chosen. It is a talisman, one more way of tying Casey to a child he professes to love.

After their initial stunted conversation from Subic Bay Airport, Casey called a second time, when his plane landed in Khartoum. He had minutes before he had to board a much smaller plane, which would land on the dirt airstrip outside the town of Bor.

In this phone call, Casey sounds excited about the baby — that’s Isabelle’s sense of it, and her heart soars. He’s had time to think about her news on the plane ride, she decides, and he’s gotten over his shock and has come down on the side of excitement. She tells him her due date, July 21, and he promises to be home for the birth.

“But Casey, that’s seven months away. You’ll be back before that, right?”

There is a microsecond of hesitation and then Casey answers, “Sure. Probably. I should be. Once we finish giving out the foodstuffs here and see what else we can do, then I should be coming home.”

And Isabelle’s whole body relaxes into relief. She hears what she wants to hear: Casey is coming home. She can hold it together until that day.

“I wish it were tomorrow,” she tells him.

“Me, too,” he says before he gets off. And she believes him — he wants to come home.

But in January there is a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Kobe, Japan, that kills 6,425 people, injures 25,000, and renders 300,000 people homeless. It is the worst Japanese disaster since World War II, and Global Hope sends Casey immediately.

“I don’t have control over all this,” Casey informs Isabelle in an early-morning phone call that wakes her up. “They need every able body they can get to Japan, fast. It’s better that I go there than come home. You can see the sense of it.”

Isabelle is silent. She doesn’t see the sense of it, not at all, but she also doesn’t feel awake enough to present a cogent argument. It’s dark outside her uncurtained window, just a few minutes past four o’clock, and her mind won’t work. Only her emotions are awake, and they are screaming, No! No! I want you with me! But she knows she can’t say that. Even to her ears it sounds too selfish to voice.

“I’ll be home as soon as I can.” His tone isn’t placating or the least bit guilty. It’s matter-of-fact and firm.

But what Isabelle hears is home . He considers her home.

Five months later, it’s spring when Casey returns to Oakland and moves into Isabelle’s half of the Craftsman duplex. With Casey’s unerring instincts, he arrives in time for her birthing classes, to pick out a crib, and to marvel at the physical changes in her body. How beautiful she is. How beautiful their baby will be. He can’t get enough of placing his large, warm hand on the tight basketball she carries proudly in front of her. He wants to feel the baby stretch and kick. “I need to,” he tells Isabelle, as if his desire to connect with their child were a physical ache. All of it delights him, and his happiness lulls Isabelle into thinking that somehow everything will be all right. Casey loves her. He’s excited about the baby. He’s here now. The possibility of his going away again she banishes from her mind. No, the three of them will be fine, she tells herself every day.