In Pieces(59)

When we finally pulled into the hospital’s emergency loading and unloading zone, I could feel the baby’s head crowning. Lost in frantic confusion, not knowing whether to stay with me or get some help, Steve ran to my side of the car and opened the door. I sat there, finding it difficult to peel my feet off the windshield, feeling certain that standing up would mean giving birth in the parking lot, so I awkwardly rolled out of my seat, onto my hands and knees, then crawled, crablike, onto the hospital’s clean linoleum hallway—clean compared to the asphalt driveway, at least. A wheelchair was rolled to my side by a bewildered nurse’s aide trying hard to act as if this were standard behavior, and even though Steve explained our predicament, the young man—with a “take charge” attitude—asked if I would please sit in the chair, stating patiently, “It’s regulation.” All I could do was blow air out of my mouth, which by then sounded like I was giving him the raspberries—which I was. We rode up the elevator with Steve standing next to the young man, whose hands were on the wheelchair, while I stayed on the floor.

In the maternity ward, people took me a little more seriously. I was lifted onto a gurney—still on my hands and knees—while Steve was whisked off to fill out the frigging paperwork. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep from having the baby, I shook my head no, refusing to lie down, while spitting out, “I’m Lamaze, I’m Lamaze.”

The nurse at my side put her hand on my back, speaking to me slowly as if I didn’t understand the English language. “You have to lie down so I can get your clothes off and put you in a gown.”

“Cut them off,” I shot back.

“Oh no, we can’t cut your clothes off.”

I wanted to say, For fuck’s sake, cut the piece-of-shit clothes off of me, but by then I could only blow and words were not an option. So, without lying down, I let her slip my clothes off, helping as much as I could, which meant not at all. She then placed a gown on one arm, but couldn’t get my other arm to cooperate, so the garment was never fully on my body and slid around willy-nilly.

I finally agreed to lie down when a young intern came into the room saying he needed to examine me to determine if I was truly in labor—I swear to you. His name was Dr. Paul Crane and he would eventually become a prominent OB-GYN in Los Angeles, and I will never forget him. He leaned down to talk to me as I lay on my side. “You’re about to have this baby, Sally, and your doctor’s not here yet. Do you want to try to wait or would you trust me to deliver it?” He said this while they rolled me into the delivery room, then stood at the head of the table looking into my eyes, waiting for my answer.

I barely got out, “You do it. I trust you,” before the nurse snapped an oxygen mask over my face, which I found impossible to tolerate, immediately pushing it off to the side (but at least this time I wasn’t tied down). Dr. Crane—who years later admitted to me how brand-new he was—gave me a casual smile, then moved toward the end of the table with a forced sense of ease, tripping over the oxygen cord connected to the unused mask around my neck, which jerked my head up fast, then plopped it down with a thud, like a puppet on a string.

Miraculously, Steve dashed through the door, tying a mask on his distraught face, looking as undone as I did, and from this young doctor came the most beautiful words I’d ever heard anyone say: “With the next contraction, you go ahead, Sally. Hold your breath and push. Okay? And here we go.” With one glorious, heavenly, orgasmic push, my beautiful, impatient, and joyfully alive son was born. Elijah.





Steve, Peter, Eli, and me. 1973.





14


Culpable


I DIDN’T LOVE riding on Steve’s motorcycle, but he wanted to show me something. So, one afternoon when little Eli was down for a nap and Baa was reading Peter a book, I wrapped my arms around Steve’s T-shirted torso and off we zoomed through the emerald community, turning onto Chantilly Road, then up a steep driveway. At the top, branching off to the right, was the private entrance to a barely visible house. To the left was a large lot with only the remnants of a brick fireplace standing in the shadowy outline of a house that had probably burned down during the disastrous 1961 Bel Air fire. The site was spectacularly beautiful, lined with tall eucalyptus trees, which had either escaped the blaze or grown in the nearly twelve years since the house last stood.

I can’t say I didn’t know what Steve had on his mind. And even though it made absolutely no sense financially, the thought of having a home in this dream of a spot was jump-up-and-down exciting. Truth was, we had two children and lived in a rather small house, so having a larger place was not a bad idea. But I wasn’t working regularly, and Steve had no career at all, so building a fantasy home at that particular moment couldn’t have been a completely good idea either. Yet that’s what Steve wanted to do: build a house. He was like a kid in a toy store, determined to get what he wanted. And no matter how many reasons I gave as to why we couldn’t and shouldn’t, he’d come back with reasons why we absolutely could and should: He would build half of it himself, be part of the construction crew, devote his life to it, stressing the point that he knew all about our finances and was positive it was a good investment. I wouldn’t have known a good investment from a hole in the ground, plus I remained frightened of anything financial and therefore had no idea how much money we actually had. Part of me wanted to feel as if Steve knew what he was doing, that he could handle this part of our lives while I concerned myself with taking care of the kids and making a living. Which meant building a career, not a house.