March - Like Lions 3 страница

Eventually, we were done. We lay down on the bed and he spooned me like I had spooned Jasmine the night before. It hurt, but I took his hands and put them on my stomach. My empty, dead stomach. I tried to remember the fact that failure was the same as success. There was nothing, and yet, everything, inside of us both. All of us.

This child was going to have three parents. I had lost the life I could live with Gerard with our own babies in our bodies, but I had gained - we had both gained - so much more. I thought of Frida as I drifted off to sleep, and I wondered how much pain and loss in life we could really endure.

Chapter Two

Perhaps it was pressure from Vivian, but Jasmine and I began house hunting. Gerard was busy researching his next projects, and working on and off with Vivian. She had gotten him a guest lecture, and while I divided my time between midnight shifts and house hunting, Gerard read about the history of the nude body in art and worked out what on earth he would tell students about the art world. Vivian had playfully warned him not to mix his two projects; he was not to recruit any students for modelling purposes. I was pretty sure she teased him about that so that she could be the one to cross that barrier, instead. I didn't know if they were back at their relationship, or if I had walked in on last month had been a fluke, but it didn't really matter either way. I had not seen anything more between the two of them since and I was happy about that. I wondered vaguely how we would work out bedroom situations and boundaries with Jasmine and Gerard in the new house. It would have to come later, though, because there were so many other practicalities to imagine.

Did we want a large apartment or a town house? A house we owned or a house we rented? How much could we afford? It was clear that Gerard and I couldn't stay in Vivian's house, even before this nine month deadline was hung over us. Jasmine's apartment, although it was close to work, was too small. At one point Jasmine suggested us all just staying where we were and swapping the kid every once in awhile.

"Like divorced parents? Every other weekends and holidays?" I asked, appalled by the suggestion.

She rolled her eyes. "You can't compare what I'm proposing with anything that already exists. We're not divorced parents. I don't know what we are, but we're not that. Our housing situation does not need to define us, or our relationship to one another."

I nodded, conceding a small defeat. But as we both looked over the many listings and came to no definitive answer, it was clear that we were looking for something that defined us. Houses did that - I thought of Gerard and our old place, and I vaguely wondered if our new life could fit inside of there. It didn't, anymore. That was why we had needed to move. Vivian's house was perfect, but it was perfect and definitive for her. As much as I was thankful for her basement, that was not us. We were still using the shelf as a closet and everything was still labeled because Gerard had no idea where things were anymore. Structures had meaning contained inside of them and houses were the first and foremost example of that.

"How are we supposed to find a house, then, especially if still don't know what to call one another? Does our house even exist?"

"I don't know," Jasmine replied as we flipped through the newspapers and realtor listings that Vivian had brought over to us.

We had gone through them for days. Jasmine would finish work and I would head over to her place, or she'd come to ours for dinner and then we would comb through them to see if we could find something that managed to intrigue us, before I would go out to work. Then the next day we would start it again. I was getting a lot of shifts that week and was not complaining. I needed the money; it was going to go towards this house/building/structure we were trying to find. After a diligent week of searching, however, it seemed like we were almost better off building what we needed from scratch. At least, that way, it would remain wholly ours and we would be able to set our own boundaries. The other option was, like Jasmine said, to just stay where we were.

I didn't like the idea, because aside from that basement not being able to contain us, I really didn't see this arrangement with Vivian lasting too much longer. She liked having us around, but it was wearing on her. She did her best to hide it, but now that she was overseeing so much of Gerard's business, there was no separation between home and work. That type of convergence gnaws at anyone after a while. I also missed being independent. I missed having a key to lock the door with; I missed not having to wait for a shower in the morning and then discovering that there was no hot water. If I had a baby here, as much as it would be convenient and cheap, I couldn't see them growing up here. When I imagined that future, it didn't work. But the reasons that I stated for not having they here were the exact reasons why Jasmine was wary about leaving her apartment. It was her own space; it was her own neat little life and the source of her independence. If she was already renting out her body, then she wanted to be able to keep the one thing that was solely hers for as long as possible. I understood that completely, but I wanted my own space as well. I didn't want to live with Vivian anymore. Most days it felt like I was living with a parent with the ways that she made her "helpful" suggestions. I loved her dearly, but familiarity was breeding contempt.

For some time we considered Gerard and I moving out and us getting a place while Jasmine kept hers. That became the working plan for a while, and Gerard was on board with it. He had pretty much given us complete creative license on the living situation. He said he had grown calmer in his old age and was able to relinquish control over most situations. It was the little things that mattered to him now; so long as the place had a room for him and his art - this time a room with a door and a lock - then he was fine. We began to look for an apartment in the newspapers and classifieds, and even went to see a few places. Gerard had been busy with Vivian for the evenings, so it was good that he didn't mind not being able to come along, but it was strange without him. Jasmine and I were looking for the place together, and yet, she wasn't going to live in it. I appreciated her help with all of this, but I realized that as we went from building to building together and spoke to landlords on the phone that my perspective on this situation had changed. I didn't mind the search because it felt like I would be living with her - and that was what I really wanted. Her and Gerard, that was what made it seem like home to me.

"What about your old place? The one you had to move out of to begin with?" she suggested when the last place we had seen was a dump. We weren't finding many good places at all, especially not at the prices they were asking. Even though the old place was still in the relatively high new price range (since the sudden new management change), I had already excluded it long ago.

Eventually, after only looking at three places, we eliminated the apartment hunt for Gerard and I altogether. We called a few more and spoke to people on the phone, but it was useless. For how much maintaining two separate apartments would all cost, it would be just as much as a mortgage, probably. There would be too much shuffling around with people here and there and it would be another added burden. We were trying to eliminate stress, not produce it.

"I see what you were saying before, Frank, about being divorced parents. Though I know that we are different in every way, the constant movement is what's hard. No child should feel as if they are constantly being shifted around. Especially if we have to move more than fifteen minutes away," she conceded. She was driving back from the last place and it was getting close to ten at night. She would need to go to bed soon, and I would have to head home to Vivian's to eat something before work. She idled the car in Vivian's driveway so we could keep the interior light going, and looked over some of the papers. We had highlighted a few large apartments that could possible work for raising a kid in, but they suddenly didn't seem appealing. All I kept seeing were houses and townhouses, bungalows and condos. I saw places where we took up the other floors, and not random strangers.

"Are apartments good to raise kids in?" she asked suddenly. "I can only see my childhood and that was a house. That was a cottage. That was a trampoline!" she suddenly remembered and her hand went to her face. "Do you remember the trampoline?"

"Of course! That was how I first met you, Jasmine. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that," I said. "We should get a trampoline."

"And put it where, on the apartment roof? Ugh," she sighed, flipping through papers in a fury. "I hate how my thinking is going. I want to get something new and not revert back to my old childhood ideas."

I nodded, but the listings for houses stared back up at me. It wasn't going back into old childish ways of thinking, I tried to convince myself. It was the simple fact that I didn't want to be apart from Jasmine or Gerard and therefore we needed a house. Just because that structure was similar to our parents didn't necessarily mean we would fill it up and define ourselves the old ways. Vivian had a house and I was sure she wasn't just repeating herself. This urge wasn't me playing around or Jasmine thinking that she had to follow in her mothers' footsteps just because she was pregnant.

"We need to figure out what we really want," I said, taking a breath. "And I want to live with you. I want to see you when you wake up in the morning. I want Gerard to have an art room. With a lock."

"And I want to have a writing room; a reading room. It'll be a study, really," she chimed in. I smiled, right alongside her. She blushed a bit, realizing she had given away how much she had thought about this too.

"Okay," I agreed. "You can have that. I promise you that you will have whatever you want in our house."

"Don't make promises, Frank, they're the first things that break. I don't need promises. I just need a study."

I nodded. "Okay. A study it is."

We turned our attention back towards the paper. I could feel the energy inside of me. I was bouncing around. It was getting late, but we called a few people anyway and left messages. By the morning, we had our first appointment to look at a house.

Jasmine had to get off work early for the showing. I hadn't been able to sleep very well in the morning after my shift, knowing that as soon as I woke up we were going off to go look at a potential house. I guzzled coffee and waited by the window in Vivian's chair for Jasmine pull up. It took me a while to realize that I was actually bouncing in the chair as I waited, and I began to feel self-conscious as Vivian walked by and smirked. I expected her to give me a lecture about the real estate market or something, but she didn't say a word. She went on and did what she needed to do in the kitchen, but would occasionally look in on me and wink or tilt her head. She left me alone, though. I was surprised, so I continued to feel elated.

I didn't know why I wasn't more scared than I was. I should have been. Part of me needed Vivian to come in and give me a lecture about what we were about to do. The will to move out, and to move in with Jasmine, seemed to be blinding me and overwhelming all other feelings. I have never lived with her. We spent a lot of time at our separate places in our undergrad, but the idea of moving in together ever came up. I knew that she liked her independence too much to give it up, and it was the same for me. Would it be possible to have that independence next to one another? With Gerard there too, as a third party complicating the romantic intentions? Would a study for her and an art room for him be enough?

I realized I didn't even have any parameters on what I wanted in a house. I would have to have a dark room, I supposed. With that thought, I suddenly remembered the photos that I had taken at the jazz club and how I still hadn't gotten them developed yet for the magazine. I was about to turn around and ask Viv if she had a space I could use at her campus when I heard the car horn. I was on my way.

We drove to the house in a somewhat awkward silence. I was still trying to figure out what exactly I needed for myself for my own independence to remain intact. It took me catching Jasmine's expression off the mirror as she drove to make me realize that what I needed for autonomy was easy; I could shove a dark room in any old closest there and figure it out. Even if I wasn't able to do it there, I could use someplace on Vivian's campus. I had lots of mobility, so long as I had my camera. But what I needed going into this new house was them - both of them. I needed to have them around, so they could be a part of my art. I needed subjects for my photos, and they were the perfect people. They were the ones I always wanted to see and capture for later on. I thought about the photography books that I had looked over before we moved. The famous ones were always the images that caught something political: it captured public feeling, strife, and struggle, then memorialized it for later. That was the Fred photo I could have taken, I realized. I could have talked about poverty, but I didn't. I could be taking photographs of people at work, but I didn't want to. Instead I had the jazz club the night Jasmine told me she was pregnant, and the roll of film dedicated to nudes of Gerard and myself, imitating Robert Mapplethorpe. He didn't capture anything political, in spite of the resonance that his photos created over censorship and sexuality. I wanted to be like him, and like Stieglitz when he wasn't taking photos of winter. Stieglitz also had a million photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe's hands. I wanted to make more photos like that; I could develop them anywhere, but there were only a few places where I could captured them to begin with. Privates spaces, like a home or a bedroom. This was where my art lived: under the covers of the bed, under the bodies of those I loved. I caught Jasmine's gaze in the driving mirror again, and we lingered there for a moment.

"Will you let me take pictures of you?" I asked in the car.

Jasmine smirked. "Like before and after photos, watching the belly grow?"

I was about to answer yes, of course, I wanted to remember everything about her body as it changed, but her tone of voice made me reconsider the method. The timeline of nine month photos would be like every single other couple out there. It was an old idea, not creative, and definitely not something Jasmine wanted to pursue. I tried to revise my plan. "We'll make it...different somehow. Artistic and intimate. Any family portraits we take won't even be able to fit into one frame."

She laughed, and gave me a simple "We'll see."

I told her that I was thinking about a dark room for the place, but that I was flexible about where it was. Jasmine nodded again, but didn't say too much else. She seemed rather tense. I asked her how she was feeling and if anything had happened at work, but she brushed me off and said she was fine. I rested my hand on her knee instead, hoping it was enough support. We pulled into the lot and met the realtor at the front of the house. The lawn was mowed and precisely divided into separate flower beds and bushes, but as soon as we parked we could see some disarray. There were toys and yard tools still in the lawn itself, and as we got to the house, we noticed a few other minor disrepairs or dirt on the front porch. It wasn't bad, but it gave me a distinct feeling that these people did not care about their house whatsoever. If they didn't, I felt, why was I paying attention? Jasmine perked up again as we got closer to the doorway and the woman, but I knew that look. It was the job interview smile; not quite her at all.

I introduced myself to the realtor, and she smiled as she shook my hand. "It is very nice to meet you both. The place is for the two of you, I imagine? Wonderful. Are you married? Engaged?"

Jasmine and I looked at one another. We had hit our first hurdle when buying the house, other than money or the layout. We both shook our heads and I kicked a stone in the driveway. The realtor, named Miranda, muttered an apology for her assumption, and in an extremely professional tone, took us briskly on the tour of the house. I was sure when I took Jasmine's hand and sometimes touched the small of her back that we confused Miranda even more, but her countenance never faltered. She was professional, even Jasmine could admire that. Vivian had told me that sometimes realtors kept point systems when they were thinking of selling a house to someone, and I hoped that even though we were screwing with her preconceived notions of couples, that we weren't dooming ourselves in the market.

The place was nice, but nothing special. It was a one floor bungalow with an unfinished basement. There was a lot of room down there, but it was a bit drafty and got cold very quickly. Maybe Gerard or myself could handle that, but I knew Jasmine wouldn't. She was always in a sweater even in the summer. The kitchen was small, but the living room was a good size. There was furniture already set up and it was clear that the people who lived there currently had kids. It was weird, seeing all the Playskool logos and the bright colors scattered all over one corner of the room. I had forgotten how outlandish and neon all things associated with children were. The way that the toys were scattered, some broken and crushed under the couch, made the whole process seem very disorganized and fake. Not that I thought having children was easy - I wasn't that stupid - I just didn't think it would be so messy and contradictory to the ways we were living now. Even Vivian's house wasn't this bad; but then again, we didn't see her place when Cassandra was young. Was there this much chaos, brightly colored and tacky chaos when she was young? These colors were so different than the art that Gerard produced in neon: this was a train-wreck. The only play-thing that was organized was a farm play station. Both Jasmine and I exchanged glances when we noticed it. It took me a while to figure out her revulsion, but then it hit me: farms like that didn't exist anymore. It was all factory farming. Forgetting that, considering the purpose of a farm with animals was to slaughter them, why were these creatures smiling? It was perverse. As we left the room, I found myself scanning back through my own childhood to see if my own play-things were as bizarre as this was.

There were only two bathrooms in this house, and the second contained a shower/tub combination. I anticipated problems with this set up, but then again, we weren't sharing the shower with Cassandra anymore. There would be no teenage morning routines of using all the hot water. So this could be okay. Gerard often forgot to bathe because he was so into his work and when he did remember, he would drag me along as well because he didn't like to be alone. Bathing was boring to him, one of those incessant and repetitious tasks we had to do to stay presentable (not even alive). If he was showering and I didn't want to get inside too, I was still in the bathroom with him, usually shaving and keeping up a conversation with him. It was one of those strange forms of intimacies that we had developed the past little while and had only developed because we lived together. I didn't have anything like that with Jasmine. Not yet, at least, and I wondered what ones would develop when the three of us lived together. Would she want to be in the same bathroom with us? With me? Was it weird to talk with the door open while peeing? Did all of us take off our pants as soon as we got home? I didn't know yet.

We turned the corner and then came the bedrooms. There was one for the kids, and another one for the parents that was set up. They also had an office, and I felt a huge burden lifted. We didn't have to keep the rooms the exact same, but it was good to know that there was leeway. There was a baby's place and then... our room? I realized I didn't really know who I would be sleeping with each night. Would Jasmine put a bed in the study for herself and Gerard put a couch in the art room to sleep on, and then I could literally walk down the hall in either direction whenever I felt like it and be with whoever I wanted? That sounded so ideal. I looked over to Jasmine to see how she was reacting to all of this. Her face was stoic, unmoving. I took this as not a good sign. She was in work mode, not in actual feeling mode. I touched the small of her back, but we all turned around again, the tour over.

"That's the house. Should I give you my card and give you a call later?" Miranda asked. Jasmine didn't even vocalize anything; she just nodded, took the card, and then walked towards the car. I was left staring at Miranda, and she looked at me with some concern.

"She's had a rough day," I replied pathetically and then I ran away as well.

In the car, Jasmine was sitting in the driver's seat, twirling the card between her fingers. She was staring at the sign that the realtor had put on the house's garage. Orange and red distinct colors looked back at us, along with some other real estate jargon that I didn't understand. It looked good, however, because why would anyone advertise something bad? But Jasmine's attention did not give the sign a second glance. That was not what was real to her. Her eyes were on the doorway of the house, the roof that would probably need repairing, and the immensity of the property. We had only been used to apartments that contained no land and were suspended in the air, it seemed. Location, location, location - the rhetoric of the realtor and now Vivian - passed through my mind. It was place, location, and owning land that we were completely unfamiliar with. Jasmine tried to express this unfamiliarity of property, yet the doom of the home and mimicking our parents in her own practical way.

"We can't afford that," she told me, eyes locked ahead. The realtor got in her car and gave us a little wave as she drove on. I still stared at the sign and was sure this was a wrong assessment, but I trusted Jasmine. I waved back as Miranda drove away and then put the hand on Jasmine's knee tentatively.

"I know, but it's nice to keep looking, right?" I asked, now not even sure myself.

"Where would I sleep?" she asked.

"Wherever you want," I told her.

She nodded. "It just feels weird, Frank. I can't live in a house. I'll either feel like we're doing everything right and we're practically normal, and then I'll freak out, or I'll feel as if we've fucked up entirely and we're messing up our futures. It's a no-win situation. I'm so used to understanding and explaining things, too. Now I don't even know how to say if we're married or not in front of a stranger. Why would I even care what Miranda thinks? What anyone thinks but me?"

She was breathing really hard and I moved my hand from her knee to her back. I kept rubbing my hand back and forth, and kissed her on the forehead. She had panic attacks sometimes, though it had been a while since I saw one. Probably back in undergrad, during the first exam period.

"I'm sorry," she apologized when she got her footing back. "I think it's the hormones. I've been throwing up all afternoon, too. That could definitely be it."

I kept rubbing her back. Eventually, I convinced her to let me drive her car and take her home again. "Your home. Your apartment with your own bed and all the things you love in the right place."

She smiled at that thought as I began to drive, and it seemed to sufficiently calm her down. I noticed, as she looked out the window, she had a hand on her stomach. I didn't even think she was aware of it herself, but it made my heart flutter. I would often forget she was pregnant, just like that. I wouldn't remember until that heart-jumpy feeling came back to me and proved that there had once been an absence in my mind. She wasn't showing at all, still, and there was no reason to read her as pregnant. Even the hand on the stomach wasn't necessarily an indication. But I knew, and that knowledge was powerful within me.

I drove her home and was planning on parking her car, making sure she got up the stairs okay, and then walking home, but she asked me to stay. I didn't have work for another few days, so I agreed. We got up to her apartment and as soon as we were inside, she flopped down on the couch in her living room. She told me there were leftovers in the fridge we could heat up, and I did so, working quietly.

I liked her apartment. Its tiny size was growing on me, and now that she had finally unpacked all her boxes, it looked lived-in and not like a storage closet. There were little indicators of Jasmine's personality everywhere and it made me feel at ease. The leftovers in her fridge even made me feel at home; I could tell Jasmine had made these. It was curried chickpeas with black rice - the same thing she had brought for the dinner when I had come back from Paris. I recognized the smell, and I began to feel like Proust as I remembered the entire night in a small waft. I looked at Jasmine from where I was in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave to finish out its time. Her hand was back on her stomach and she looked serene. In spite of her minor freak out, she was at home here. I could see that.

I brought her the food and I sat in the chair across from the couch. We used the coffee table as our eating spot and sat in silence for a bit.

"I don't think I'm ready for a house. Any house. I like it here. I like the fact that I'm above ground and I can look out my bedroom and I feel like I'm up high and away from everything. I like that I have my own space," she told me, going slow.

"It is a nice apartment," I told her.

"That house was nice too, though, and I know you liked it."

I wasn't going to lie to her: I did like the place. What had been done inside of it seemed completely wrong, but after seeing the bedrooms, the living room and the tacky mess that scattered the floor began to become a challenge to me, rather than a deterrent. We could get that place and do so much better than that. I knew we could. Three creative minds like ours could transform any house into a work of art, and I tried to explain it all to Jasmine, including the ideal bedroom set ups I had been envisioning.

"See, when you put it that way, it makes sense. I want to do that, especially with you and Gerard. I trust you two, I really do, and I can't wait to see what we create. It's just... I can't. Not now. I don't know when, if ever. You can't make me promise," she started to get emotional again, her voice starting out strong and then falling away into small quakes. I put down my container and went over to her.

"You don't have to promise me anything. You've never had to," I assured her. She nodded into my side and her breathing evened out a bit.

"We can put a baby here," I started again. I pointed to where the chair was. "I think that's a good crib, right? Yeah, they can sleep on the chair. We could make a bassinet up on the kitchen counter, too? Or, if you really want to be fancy, I guess we could actually get a crib and put it right here. I could sleep on the couch and then help you in the mornings when I heard them cry. What do you think?"

Jasmine sighed, but it was playful. She knew I was out on a limb right now. I always felt so powerless in situations like this and I was desperate to make it all better. "Maybe Vivian pushed us into this too soon," I said, seriously now. "I mean, we just found out this kid exists. Why upset our lives right away? We have nine months. More than that if we want."

Jasmine nodded. "We need to leave eventually, I know. There won't be space and babies grow. But there are some things I want to do in this apartment before I go. There are some things in life I want to do before all of this. Now that I know this is my last chance, I will appreciate it more. At least I think I will."

"Don't think of the baby as cutting off your freedom," I told her. "You can still do all you want with your life."

She nodded, "I know I can. I know I'm not giving up freedom or I would have never even considered this a little bit. But... there are certain things that I am letting go of. There are certain things that just won't happen again, or at least, not in the same context. Like eating pizza by myself in the middle of the night in my underwear cranking music. Like doing nothing all day but watch TV series ' that were cancelled before I was born and then quoting the lines back and forth. Stupid stuff like that. I need to appreciate living alone one last time, completely and utterly alone, like a spinster or cat lady, which is what I thought I would do, and which is what I'm not anymore." She paused for a moment, took a bite of her food, and then continued. "It's not that I want that life so much more than this one. I know I don't and I know that I'm so excited for the next nine months. It's that what I thought I had is gone now. It's died."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14