Part Nine I come home from work and find the apartment eerily silent. My first thought is that Maria has slept all day, which is a concern. But she is not in the bedroom. I walk from room to room, peering through doorways to see if she is inside. I finally find her on the balcony, sitting in my chair. Her feet are propped up on the chair across from her. She’s smoking the remains of a cigarette. I eye the smoke curiously, but don’t say anything. She looks up at me and reaches over to snuff out the butt of the cigarette. It’s not a defensive move – she was down to the filter. Then she looks back at me and wiggles her toes. “You’ve been busy,” she says. I laugh nervously and sit down when she removes her feet from the chair. She inspects the bottom of her foot. “You do good work,” she notes. I shrug self-consciously. Then an uneasy silence falls over us. “Are you okay?” I finally ask. She meets my gaze, nods. “I think so.” She scratches her face. “We should probably talk.” I fold my hands between my knees, nod. “Do you still love me, Max?” Her gaze is unwavering and I can’t tell if she is afraid of the answer I give or not. I nod and her reaction isn’t obvious. “You said you can’t stand to be with me,” she reminds. Ugh – that ugly fight from yesterday. “I said that because I was angry,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” “You never try to touch me, Max. You’ve pushed me away.” I blink. Is that true? Have I been fooling myself into believing Maria was the one who was distancing herself? Have I been living under a self-deception? I stare at the floor and think about that. I know in the beginning I tried to break through her shell…but at what point did I give up? When did I decide it was hopeless? “Maria, I…” my voice trails off as I realize I have no explanation for my actions. “It’s okay,” she says, looking across the skyline, squinting against the sinking sun. “I’m sure I played a part in that.” She looks down to her hands, picks at one of her fingernails. “Are we over?” I feel a little spark of panic in my stomach. “I don’t want us to be,” I tell her honestly. She looks at me and gives a half smile. “Me neither. I really do love you, Max.” “I know.” She raises her eyebrows. “Do you really?” She sighs. “This has been very hard for me. There are so many things that I wanted for us – a family, a home, happiness. And when…and when that baby died, it all just went away. God, I felt so lost, Max, and I know you tried to help me, but you were lost yourself. You can’t seek guidance from someone who doesn’t know where they are.” She speaks the truth. I need to broach this next subject cautiously, but for some reason I feel that right now she is more willing to listen than she will ever be. “You know,” I start hesitantly. “This woman in my office adopted a baby from China.” Her head snaps in my direction and for a moment I think she is going to reprimand me for the suggestion. But her shocked expression fades quickly and she is looking at me curiously. She picks up another cigarette and starts to light it, but I take it from her and put it in the ashtray. She doesn’t protest. “A girl,” I continue. “It only took about a year.” I smile hopefully. “It could be an option some day,” I tell her. She looks back to the sunset. “Could be,” she responds. There is a tinge of hope in her voice, and I decide to let the subject rest. I’ll just let it brew there for awhile, let her think about it. “So,” I say, “what do we do now?” She looks at me again. “I want to go home.” That night, I climb into bed and lay in my usual position – my back to her. But shortly I feel her behind me, pressing against my back. I look over my shoulder and see that she also has her back to me. “Please,” she says, her voice sounding uncertain. So I roll over and tentatively put my arm around her waist. I feel her body relax – was she afraid I would reject her? – and she pushes herself back against me. It has been an eternity since I held her and the sensation brings tears to my eyes. I snuggle in with her, using my free hand to smooth her hair. I awake in the middle of the night to light kisses on my neck, small hands under my T-shirt. It takes a few moments for me to clear the cobwebs from my mind and determine what is happening. Then my eyes are wide open and I just watch her undress me. She has already stripped and I stare at her in awe. Once I am naked, she leans down and kisses me, fully, on the mouth, like she used to. I groan at the sudden sensation coursing through my body. Then she straddles me and for the first time in a very, very long time, we’re together again. We sell most of our furniture – we know it will take some time to find a new place to live in Roswell and storing it is just not worth it. The remainder of our stuff fits in a U-Haul – we’re leaving California the same way we came into it. Before we leave, she has the implants removed and once again she is my beautiful, petite Maria. She returns from the hospital swollen, sore, but I smile at her and take care of the pain, the swelling and the scars. And she smiles about that. I think she likes that I am dabbling with my powers again – believe it or not, to us that is a ‘normal’ activity. The drive to New Mexico doesn’t seem as long as the trip away from it did. We take the time out to sight-see, even stopping in a hotel or two along the way. It almost feels like we are newly weds, like this is the honeymoon we never got, nine years after the fact. At home, we stay in the loft above my parents’ garage until I can work something else out. We have enough money saved from my job and Maria’s last gig to buy a small house. First we need to decide what we want to do so we can determine how much of a payment we can afford. I know I don’t want to be in the accounting business even though it has brought me financial success. I can’t stay in a job I hate. I have no idea what Maria has in mind. One night, I sit at our small kitchen table and crunch numbers – our savings accounts, checking accounts, retirement accounts, stocks and bonds. I marvel at the amount of money we have stashed in a multitude of places – while I was stoned, I must’ve found it amusing to squirrel money away. I snicker to myself – even wasted, I have a fatal sense of responsibility. I see a shadow cross the table and I look up to see Maria standing before me, looking uncertain. I’m about to ask her what’s up when I notice a folder in her hand. She swallows and holds the folder out to me. “Do we have enough money?” she asks cautiously. I silently take the folder from her and open it. It’s a business plan – to open her own aromatherapy shop. There are many pages of documents, all neatly printed from Microsoft something-or-the-other, detailing start up costs, rent, licenses, other expenses. She’s even managed to include bar graphs and pie charts, which I find humorous but don’t smile at. She’s worked really hard at this – it had to take her weeks – and she’s been very diligent. I look up at her and she is staring expectantly at me. She looks like a nervous teenager who has just asked if she can go to the prom. I have no idea why she thinks I’m the only one who has a say in this because our lives are together now. “Do you have a site?” I ask her. She breathes a sigh of relief and slides into the chair across from me. “There’s an open retail space not far from the Crashdown,” she announces and I can tell she’s trying to conceal her excitement. “Oh,” I reply, leading her. “And there’s more, Max.” She looks like she’s about to climb out of her skin. “Oh?” “Yeah. There’s a living space above the store. The building is for sale.” She smiles wider. “If we have the money, we could just buy the building and it would kill two birds with one stone.” “Oh.” She’s staring to talk rapidly now. “And, if you wanted, you could do the books and stuff so we wouldn’t have to hire an accountant. I mean, I know you don’t want to do the accounting stuff any more, but I don’t think this would take more than a few hours of your time a week.” She gives a nervous giggle. “It would keep you from getting rusty.” “Uh huh.” She gasps out a sigh. “Max.” I look at her. “Is that all you have to say?” I decide to play with her, let her sweat a bit. I flip back through the papers, bite my lip like I am thinking hard about something. What I’m thinking about is that I really don’t want to burst out laughing and reveal my hand. Finally, I shake my head and sigh and I can see her deflate in front of me. “I knew it,” she says dejectedly. “We don’t have enough money.” I’m still shaking my head. “That’s not it,” I say. She looks at me. “What is it then?” “I’m just wondering who’s going to take care of setting up our new home while I’m helping you in your new store.” She screams – literally screams – and throws herself in my lap. I’m laughing even as I feel my chair tip backward and we spill onto the floor. Then she’s kissing me, hugging me, telling me she loves me. See? All these years and all I needed to do was buy her a store. Isabel gives birth to a perfect, healthy baby boy. Twelve hours of labor and all seven and a half pounds of Alexander Charles Whitman II enters the world. We visit the next day. Isabel looks tired but absolutely radiant. In her arms, a bundle of joy, three-quarters human, one-quarter alien. I kiss her on the cheek and shake Alex’s hand. It’s a strange gesture, really – “Congratulations on knocking up my sister.” We have odd customs. “How are you?” I ask Isabel. She smiles tiredly. “I’m great, Uncle Max. Just perfect.” Alex snorts a laugh at the Uncle Max part. I can tell that he is walking on a cloud right now – I definitely would be, too. I reach down and touch Alex II’s little head. He is so warm, so soft, so small. He smells like baby powder. “Hey, there, little fella,” I say to him. He wiggles. Maybe he knows I’m an alien, too. Isabel laughs. “He’s already attached to you,” she says. “Do you want to hold him?” I straighten. Um, hold him? But he’s so little and I’m big and what if I drop him? She laughs again – Isabel always could read my mind. “You won’t hurt him, Max.” And then she’s lifting him towards me and I can’t resist the temptation, so I take him into my arms. He weighs nothing. But what he does weigh is dead weight – it feels like holding a warm water balloon wrapped in a towel. But this balloon wiggles every now and then and makes little noises. I push back the blanket and look at his tiny little fingers, smaller than seems possible. It’s the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Which piques my curiosity and I dig in the blanket until I find one of his feet. His toes are even smaller than his fingers! His big toe is no bigger than my pinky fingernail. Isabel is laughing again and I look at her, caught in the act. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s just the look on your face.” I smile back at her. “He’s just...tiny,” I say in awe. She shifts her position and winces a bit. “Thank God he wasn’t any bigger.” And I have to laugh a bit. Isabel’s gaze drifts over to my shoulder and I know she is checking to see if Maria is okay. “How about Aunt Maria?” she asks. “Would she like to hold the baby?” I turn to look at Maria, who has been uncharacteristically silent. Her eyes are fixed on me, on Alex II and I know what she is thinking – she’s thinking that it could have been me, years ago, holding our daughter and it could have been her in the bed proudly displaying her new child to her visitors. So I smile at her as gently as I can. She doesn’t look like she is going to freak, but she looks so fragile right now. “Here,” I say softly, offering the baby. “Meet your nephew.” Her eyes meet mine and I think I see fear there. But she swallows and slowly takes the baby from my arms. I watch silently as she bundles him into the crook of her arm and pushes the blanket away from his face. I chance a sideways glance at Alex – he looks worried. Isabel looks hopeful. And then Maria begins to slowly rock the baby and a small smile curves her lips. She talks softly to him and I see a tear slip from her eye. When she looks up at Isabel, her eyes are flooded. “He’s beautiful,” she says between her tears. “Thank you,” Isabel says graciously and I think maybe she wants to cry as well. Maria turns to Alex as she wipes her eyes with her free hand. “Alex, congratulations,” she manages. He smiles back at her and in a gesture that is so typically Alex, he puts an arm around her shoulders and kisses the top of her head while she dries her tears. Isabel looks at Alex and for some reason he nods. She smiles and looks back to Maria. “I’m glad he likes the two of you.” I eye her curiously. “Because Alex and I have a favor to ask,” she continues. Okay, got my interest, Sis. What is it? Maria sniffles, lets out a little sigh. “What kind of favor?” she asks. “Well, Alex and I wanted to ask you if you would be Xander’s godparents,” Isabel announces. We’re both speechless. “We wanted to make sure that if anything ever happened to us, that he’d be taken care of,” Alex explains. Isabel smiles again. “And we both know that you’d make good parents.” We would? I look at Maria, who is looking at me in total shock. I don’t want to be the one to accept – I want her to make the effort to say that it is okay, that we would take on that responsibility. The likelihood that anything would happen to both Iz and Alex is slim, but I can’t get passed the fact that at one point we were all orphans – me, Michael and Isabel. Iz and I lucked out. Michael didn’t. I don’t want to see something like that happen to my nephew. To my surprise, Maria nods slowly, looks down at the baby in her arms. “Of course,” she says as a new wave of tears floods her eyes. “We’d love to take care of him.” My own eyes sting and I reach for her as Alex takes the baby from her arms. Quietly, so no one else can hear, I thank her. That night, in bed, she slips under my arm and lays her head against my chest, like she always used to. We’re fitting together better these days, living like real husband and wife. We lay silently for awhile, then she gives a little sigh and speaks. “Today at the hospital...” I nod in the darkness. “Yeah?” “Holding that little baby…” I have no idea what’s coming next. I glance down at the top of her head. “I thought about what you said,” she continues. “What did I say?” “About China. About it being a possibility some day.” Wow. She has been thinking about it. I mentioned that many months ago and she has never brought it up again. I swallow. “Yeah?” I’ve become Mono-Syllable Man. She pauses, shifts her weight a bit. “I think maybe I’d like to try that.” Because she can’t see my face, I allow myself to smile victoriously. I manage to keep the excitement out of my voice. “You would?” “Yeah.” She sighs again. “But there’s so much to think about, Max. So much uncertainty.” She sounds confused. So I flip her onto her back and lay my head against her chest. She laughs. “What are you doing?” Her tone is one of amused disbelief. “Listening to your heart,” I reply, echoing her words from the first night we made love. I raise my head enough so that I can see her face. She looks very serious. “What is it telling you?” she asks quietly, echoing my words. “It’s telling me to ask you to follow it. Because in your heart you already know what you want to do.” Her eyes mist up and she pushes my head back down to her chest. “I will,” she says. “I promise. I will.” I wrap my arms tightly around her and hold her until I start to feel sleepy. I feel more at home, more at ease than I ever thought I could again. She has been busy putting her store together. I’ve been helping her paint, hang shelving, and it has been one of the most wonderful times of our lives together. And every day it gets a little easier, we slip a little closer to what we once considered normal. I don’t know if we will ever be back to that innocence we once had because too much has happened to sap us of that innocence. But together, we’re slowly healing, slowly recovering. And together we can do anything. THE END |
| PART 9 |