Darling Rose Gold(10)

January 2013

The reporter tapped away on his phone while waiting in line for our coffees. Vinny King had slicked-back hair, wore a small silver cross on a chain around his neck, and looked like he’d slept in his baggy clothes. I wondered if he’d woken up late.

It had taken us two months to find a date to meet in Chicago. On the drive up, I was sure Vinny would cancel on me last minute. When I got to the café, I was still convinced the interview wouldn’t happen. Yet here we were, on a freezing but sunny January afternoon.

Vinny had suggested a coffee shop in Bucktown. I had to google where Bucktown was, but I found my way. I watched stressed customers order their drinks to go. Others sat at old wooden tables and pecked away at their keyboards. I’d drunk coffee once and hated it, but Vinny didn’t need to know that. Coffee was a rite of adulthood—only a kid wouldn’t drink it. So when Vinny offered, I asked for a Nutella latte. Maybe the chocolate would disguise the coffee flavor.

I had decided this interview would go well because of two good omens on my way into the shop: a baby with its hand in its mouth, then three blue cars parked in a row.

I had started paying attention to good and bad signs when I was seven—first because Mom did, and later because I wanted a way to predict what was going to happen to me. While waiting in a doctor’s office lobby, I’d get that familiar nervous thumping in my chest. But instead of sitting there thinking how scared I was, I’d record everything I observed in a small pink notebook.

Man with eye patch, I wrote, watching an old guy make his way across the lobby. Thirty minutes later, my doctor announced I didn’t need the MRI after all. An eye patch became a good omen.

Two gray hats, I noted in a hospital parking lot. That afternoon, the doctor took my vitals and said I’d lost six pounds. A gray hat meant something bad was coming.

Seeing the world this way gave me certainty at a time when I had zero control over my body and health. I knew now that these signs didn’t actually predict anything, but they were like a childhood blankie—I just felt better holding on to them.

Vinny walked two big mugs over and set them on the table. Coffee spilled over the side of one cup and onto Vinny’s hand.

“Shit,” he grunted.

I stared at him.

“Can you grab me some napkins?” Vinny said, jabbing a finger at the dispenser. I rushed to pull two from the metal box. Vinny rubbed his wet hand on his jeans, where a dark coffee stain was forming. He took the napkins from me and rubbed at it.

Dab. Don’t rub, she chided. See what happens when you don’t carry a Tide to Go pen?

Vinny glanced up and saw me watching him. I looked down and studied my drink. Someone had drawn a heart in the steamed milk. I wanted to take a photo, but when I scanned the café, no one else was photographing their coffee. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to care. “Thanks for the drink,” I said.

Vinny stopped rubbing his jeans and tossed the crumpled napkins on the table. He let out a disgusted sigh and sat across from me, defeated. “I got you some muffins too,” he said. He looked me up and down. “First time in Chicago?”

I nodded.

“You in town long?”

“Just the weekend,” I said, making sure I blocked my mouth with my hand. “I’m visiting a friend.”

Alex had been at the gym when I’d arrived this morning, so I went straight to the café. I’d texted her a couple times but hadn’t heard back.

“She was my neighbor in Deadwick,” I explained.

The barista set a basket of muffins in the middle of our table. I counted five. Vinny blew on the coffee he had left. He didn’t take a muffin, so I didn’t either. I wondered how old he was—early forties, maybe?

“She was the first person I told about my mom,” I mumbled. I’d tried making muffins last weekend, but they weren’t very good. I wondered if these would be better. Under the table, my leg pogo-sticked.

Vinny shook his hair out of his bloodshot eyes and sat up a little straighter. “Why don’t we start with your illnesses?” he said. “What have you been diagnosed with? And can you speak up a little?”

My eyes widened at the thought of listing them all. “I was a preemie, born ten weeks early. That’s how it started,” I said, rubbing my hands on the thighs of my jeans, not making eye contact. “At the hospital, I had jaundice and then pneumonia. I think those were real—the nurses wrote it down in my medical records.”

Vinny still hadn’t touched the muffins. Starving, I grabbed a blueberry one and popped a piece in my mouth. I nearly moaned in appreciation. The base was moist and fluffy, the top buttery, the blueberries fresh—these were a million times better than the batch I’d made at home. I took bite after delighted bite before remembering I was in the middle of a story.

Once Mom was allowed to bring me home, I told Vinny, I had issues with sleep apnea. Mom got me a CPAP machine and medicine. She said I also had constant fevers and sore throats, and these awful ear infections. A pediatrician put tubes in my ears.

Mom was most worried about my digestive issues. I couldn’t keep anything down—formula, real food, none of it. I was shrinking when I should have been growing. When I got down to the tenth percentile in weight, the doctor agreed with Mom that I should get a feeding tube. All of this before I turned two.

I don’t remember when Mom came up with her “chromosomal defect” theory, but she clung to it for the rest of my childhood. How else to explain all the bizarre symptoms—the headaches and stomachaches, the dizziness, the near-constant fatigue—that weren’t connected to any single disease? A chromosomal defect sounded serious enough to be devastating, but vague enough that any illness might stem from it.