The Blueberry

Several months ago I woke from a dream where Nick (I didn’t know his name yet) was standing at the front of a large room. He looked towards where his dad was standing at the side of a large room and was stunned to see his father looking thunderstruck.

That’s where this story started.

…

Nick stood at the podium, adjusted his sports jacket, straightened his tie, and introduced the event. “Hi, I’m Nick Lastovicka, one of your statewide organizers, and we’re here this evening to meet a great candidate. Let me introduce to you to your next Congressional Representative from this district ….”

The crowd applauded as the energetic woman glad-handed her way to the podium at the front of the high school gym. While leaning in for a quick hug, Nick glanced over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed as he saw his dad leaning against the gym wall, looking thunderstruck. Laddie Lastovicka was a calm and competent man yet right now he looked as if he might faint.

His dad had been so withdrawn since Nick’s mom died last year. She’d fought her cancer for five years and in that time, newly retired, his dad had given her all the attention and care he could after a life mostly wedded to his business. After she died, he was lost. Just lost.

It was it a campaign year and Nick needed to travel nearly every day. Sometimes on weekends his husband Daniel would drive so Nick could work his phone and laptop, but there were more and more events and Daniel had his own job. It became a godsend when Nick’s dad offered to drive him, leaving Nick free to work.

Nick moved quickly towards his dad who was, he realized, staring at the back of a woman close to the front of the room. In that exact moment, as if responding to the intensity of attention directed towards her, the woman swiveled her head. When she saw Nick’s dad her hand flew to her mouth with a gasp. She stood to push past people seated in her row, stretched out her hand, and walked towards him. Nick was astounded when his father took her hand into his and didn’t let go.

His voice cracked. “Sylvie. My god. Here you are.”

She was tall with silver hair pushed behind her ears, green glasses, and a long navy coat. “Oh, Laddie.”

Nick looked from one to the other. “You obviously know each other though you both look as if you are seeing ghosts. Are you okay?”

The woman turned to Nick. “When I read that a Lastovicka was coordinating this event I decided to come to see if you looked like my high school boyfriend Laddie. That’s what’s going on here.”

His dad’s face gentled into a quiet smile. “You always said it was a shame my name wasn’t ‘Firstovicka” instead of Lastovicka. But you remembered it.”

She spoke softly. “Laddie, I’ve never forgotten you. Including every time the weather changes and my ankle aches.”

He didn’t laugh. “Same. About remembering you. Though when I ache I think about Vietnam.”

She shook her head just a little. “You didn’t have to go.”

He still wasn’t smiling. “Yeah I did.”

Nick understood there was a time for an adult son to walk away so his dad can talk to the lovely woman. Nick left them, though he watched them very curiously throughout the evening.

…

In 1969 Sylvia Emmelin was champing at the bit to move out. She’d worked hard for the grades she needed to get into UW-Madison. He deli job gave her money and a reason to be out of the house. Her pious family went to church four times a week but she could put up with that now that she started claiming work shifts that conflicted with church services. When she was out of the house no one could harass her for not being sweet enough, spiritual enough, or not being home. Outside of the house she could breathe.

She had also discovered that she could walk the three miles home at the end of the school day. It was a long hike but it kept her off the stupid bus and gave her precious empty time to herself.

That mild February day she was exploring a new route through a seedy subdivision. She liked the house with Snow White and all seven dwarves in the slush in the front yard. There were a lot of houses with yards that were just patches of dirt, mud, and extra cars up on blocks. Crumbling macadam curved around a corner with pines too close to the road; Sylvie wasn’t paying attention until suddenly there was a car right behind her. When she jumped sideways off the road her foot fell awkwardly into a rut; she flailed as she twisted and fell backwards.

The car slammed to a stop and a boy jumped out. “I’m so sorry. Here. Let me help you. My name’s Laddie.”

She sat up while trying to insist that she felt fine. He reached his hand to pull her up anyway. She took his hand, startled at the sudden warmth of another person’s skin, but as he put his hands under her arms to help her, her ankle hurt so sharply she began to cry.

The rangy teenage boy apologized again and just picked her up as if she was some long skinny dog and slid her into the back seat of his car. He asked where the hospital was. She said she just needed to go home. He said his dad was a doctor and he’d overheard enough stories to know a twisted ankle needed to be seen or she might limp the rest of her life.

So he drove her to the emergency entrance of the hospital, helped her hobble in, then listened carefully as she told the receptionist her information. Sylvia Emmelin. A street address and phone number he would never forget. After the tech brought a wheelchair and took her to a cubicle Laddie called Sylvia’s mother who, amazingly, didn’t seem to care. “We have church this evening and her dad’s going to lead devotions. Can you just drive her home when she’d done?”

“Um, sure. But you have church on Thursday night?”

“Oh yes, it’s prayer meeting.” The woman’s laugh tinkled like a little girl’s. “Pray without ceasing!”

He called his own folks and then sat with Sylvie, as she told him to call her. Her ankle was x-rayed and then they waited a long time for results. Someone asked how they were related; she said he was her cousin and he looked at her and they both smiled as he grabbed her hand and held it from then on.

The next day he brought her roses which stunned her mother who had prayed so hard that Sylvia would become demure and submissive so she could get a good Christian boyfriend. She never dreamed that her bold, sulky, ornery daughter could catch a boy’s attention on her own.

“Do you know the Lord, young man?”

“Well my father’s a doctor and my mom’s teaches Sunday school. Is that close enough?”

Sylvie giggled as she watched her mother’s standards for being ‘saved’ lower when she understood Laddie was from a physician’s family. The next day Laddie arrived with a Chinese checkerboard which they played with her little brothers.

The day after that he took her on a slow hike in a very small park where he kissed her and after that they simply belonged to each other. They went to different high schools so they could only meet when he could drive over but since he was motivated that became almost every day. He drove her to and from her job. He picked her up from church on Sundays and they’d go to the movies or for a walk. They studied at his town library or hers, their feet intertwined.

Within a month they were making love as if they were the first people on earth to discover such wild pleasure and intimacy. The green Firebird his parents gave him for his 16^th birthday became their salon for talking, their library for catching up on homework, their dining room to consume the take-out burgers he’d buy for them. And it became their bedroom for the sex that only limber young people can manage in a car that small. They were a young couple head over heels in stars, roses, wise cracks, long conversations about things they were learning, heated conversations about Vietnam, love, respect, and the kind of exulting joy that doesn’t come around often in anyone’s life.

Until she became pregnant.

…

“Hey Dad? I’m about ready to go. How about you?”

By now his dad and the woman were facing each other on folding chairs at the back of the gym.

The woman tilted her head to look at his dad. “Laddie, I have a two-bedroom condo not far from here. We have a lot of catching up to do and it’s not even nine o’clock yet. If you would like to spend the night at my place, I promise to not compromise your virtue.”

Nick’s dad grinned as he shook his head, “I’ve never known a woman as bold as you. Yes, I’d love to come back to your place.” He looked up at his son, “Think you can find your own way home?”

Nick laughed, “Yeah, I’m good if you’re good. But who is this lovely Sylvie?”

She reached up her hand to shake Nick’s. “I’m Dr. Sylvia Emmelin. I taught Women’s Studies at Madison.”

Nick took a step backward. “No way! I worked for Open Doors Law Firm when I first graduated law school and I worked on that tenure case you were part of. I remember your name. You taught women’s studies at Mary Carol College. They said they were having financial struggles even though they have those huge endowments. What they wanted was a multi-million dollar building from a donor who wanted the college to stop offering what they called ‘alternative studies’ so Mary Carol laid off two whole departments.”

She looked at him in amazement. “Goodness, you helped save my career! I left there but because of the legal protections you guys got for us, I was able to move on to Madison without going back to beginning pay.”

She turned to Laddie, amazed. “Your son saved my career!”

Nick shook his head. “It wasn’t just me; we were a team. But yeah, I learned a lot through that case. It helped me realized I wanted to get as close as possible to finding good candidates and then supporting the hell out of them. And here we are.”

She stood to hug Nick. “Thank you for your work then and now. And I promise to not compromise your dad’s virtue. Too much.”

“Compromise away, Ma’am. My dad’s a good man.”

She smiled. He liked her confidence. “He always was.”

Laddie Lastovicka chuckled. “Get out of here, Son.”

…

The Firebird was parked in the tiny parking lot used in the summer by canoers. That night the world was silent and the river was silver in the moonlight. Laddie’s seat was pushed as far back as it would go and Sylvie was curled in his lap. The windows were open; chilly spring breezes ruffled their hair.

“Sylvie, we used condoms all except that first time.”

She leaned her head against his chest listening to his heart thump under his shirt.

“I know. But I went to a clinic in Milwaukee. It was scary lying to my mom that I was going to work, lying to work that I didn’t feel well. But yeah, they did the test and I’m close to two months pregnant.”

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “We can get married; I can make this work. I love you.”

She curved her hand around his cheek. “No. Not that. I’ve waited all my life to get out of this town and I’m not giving that up even though I’m really scared. I called my aunt in Chicago. My mom and dad don’t like her, they say she’s wicked and worldly, but she’s sort of my role model for how I want to be because she’s confident plus she has a job she likes. Anyways, I called her collect from a phone booth and she said if I come there she can arrange for me to have an abortion. She knows some women who do it secretly and safely and they have a good reputation. So that’s what I’m going to do and I need you to drive me to her apartment in Chicago.”

Laddie pulled back from her. “No, Sylvie. No. We didn’t plan this but we love each other and we have a baby on the way and I can find a job and we can do this.”

It was their first argument and it went on and on. That long first night. Each time they were together that week. Over and over.

She felt like throwing up most of the time. She was tired. She was worried and angry and sad and scared. She didn’t tell anyone except Laddie and he didn’t talk to anyone but her but he was adamant they should get married.

“No, Laddie. I am not going to get married and stay here. Someday I want to have kids but I’m not ready and even more than that, I don’t want to become ready. I want to go to college and live in the world and learn how to be someone. I looked in the biology books in the school library. Right now the thing in me is not even as big as a blueberry. I am not losing my whole life for a blueberry.”

“I can’t stand the thought of killing our child, Sylvie.”

She sighed. “Then you should take me home.”

Neither of them understood that was their last time together in their little world inside his Firebird.

Her aunt picked her up at the train station in Chiago. Sylvia stayed a few days and that fall she went to Madison.

…

They were on her sofa; each had claimed an end. Her legs were stretched along the seat cushions with her feet crossed at the ankle. His arm was across the sofa’s back as he held the glass of wine she’d poured for him. Light from the kitchen illuminated her from behind and to Laddie, she looked ethereal. Her hair caught light beautifully, her pale eyes were still so direct and sure.

He pushed his glasses up, rubbed his eyes, pulled them back down and looked at her. “We haven’t talked in fifty years yet I’m as comfortable right now as if we were jammed in the bucket seats of that damn car arguing whether mustard tastes good on French fries. I said I liked it and you said that was impossible. I argued that it was what potato salad was and you said potato salad with mustard tasted like bad toothpaste. You had an opinion on everything.” He chuckled, then caught his breath. “I missed you so much, Sylvie.”

She took a deep breath, leaned over for her wine on the coffee table, changed her mind, leaned back and wrapped her arms around herself. “We were something but then it couldn’t be anymore. I walked out of that apartment where I’d had the abortion absolutely sure of two things. I’d made the right decision. I no longer had to carry inside me that mountain I did not want to climb. It was over. It was done. I didn’t have to decide anymore and I was free to only be myself.”

Laddie simply listened to her. “At the same time I knew to my bones I had to build a life that could stand up to the loss of that potential child and the loss of you and me. I had to be brave enough to create a worthy life, whatever that would mean. I never forgot that feeling.”

Laddie leaned back a moment, stretched his back, then turned to face her again. “I was looking at the morning newspaper somewhere in the late 70’s or early 80’s and came across an announcement about an upcoming conference on Women’ Roles in the Modern World. I saw your name on the panel. Dr. Sylvia Emmerlin. I remember putting the newspaper down, looking at my wife who was clearing our breakfast dishes, looking at Nick in his high chair. There was nothing to feel or say. I felt so empty. I just got up and went to work. But that’s when I understood you had gone on to achieve a great deal. I was both proud and sad.”

He reached out to wrap his hand around her ankle. Something to hang onto.

She picked up her wine and this time took a sip. “Spring of my freshman year I took a women’s issues class and that was all they wrote for me. I discovered there was a language in which I could understand my own story. It sounds so simple now. Knowing myself. Helping others hear and say their own stories. Connecting ourselves to women who made hard decisions and did hard things before us. Understanding it was never just my own single story.”

They were quiet. She spoke. “Your turn. Why did you join the army? I never understood that. You weren’t a gung-ho soldier type guy. It didn’t make sense to me.”

He took a moment to collect himself. “My parents were still harassing me to go to an Ivy League school even though I’d argued for Madison all along because I didn’t want to be like them. But now you were going to be there and I couldn’t imagine being where you were while not being with you. So one afternoon when everything hurt so much, I just said fuck it and went to the recruiting office. Boom, two weeks after high school graduation I was in the army. I did enjoy how furious it made my family, I guess that was part of it.”

“What was it like? I know you got hurt there.”

“It was completely antithetical to everything I thought I knew about life. I was with all these men who had girls and wives at home, yet who were going to prostitutes, who seemed to think about nothing but drinking, smoking pot, and sex. Some had kids, too, yet there was so little conversation about loving or being loved. Most were probably just protecting themselves because it was such an intense time and place. But I was so messed up and I couldn’t stand how it felt as if no one cared about anything. I left the US in crisis and ended up in an absurd, farcical carnival ride that could kill you.”

He wasn’t looking directly at her anymore, he was staring over her shoulder, back in time. She said nothing, knowing he wasn’t done.

“I’d been there a couple months and we were going out on patrol again. The guy driving our jeep was high, drunk, and crazy. He drove too fast, the jeep bounced off the side of the dirt path, rolled sideways down a hill and just kept rolling. He was killed; I broke everything in the right side of my body from my shoulder to my hip, knee, and ankle. I was medevacked out of there and don’t remember much but pain until months later when I finally sort of sat up, looked around, and I was in a VA hospital. My mom was sitting next to me, knitting something for someone else’s baby and my first thought was that she was making something for our baby.

“Oh Jesus, Laddie. I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head a little.

“I’d paid very little attention to my mom since I’d become a teenager. That day I looked at her and decided, really intentionally, that she was my lifeline. I sort of smiled at her and said hello. She smiled back. That’s when I became friends with my mom. I asked her over the next months what I should do. She said I should live at home because my body was a mess, but I should go to college in Milwaukee and get a degree in something ordinary. So I took business classes.

He chuckled again. “My mom was wise. She told me really specifically to make friends with people who laughed easily and who seemed to have friends. I noticed Amanda the next day and a year later we married. She was not like you.”

She lifted her eyebrows. He was chuckling now.

“She went along with almost anything I suggested as long as it was “right”. She wouldn’t have sex before we got married, which as you can imagine, was fine with me. She was kind and she laughed easily though she didn’t really make jokes, she just laughed at other people’s. She was a wonderful mom which was great because I worked pretty much all the time.” Sylvia listened as he talked about Amanda.

When Nick stopped describing Amanda, Sylvia sat a moment before she tentatively started to speak. “I think we both found partners who didn’t remind us of each other. You married a cheerful person who was content to support you. When I finally married, in my middle thirties, I found a charming, chatty, articulate artist who never could commit to one woman. He’s in his third marriage now and I assume he is still sleeping with extra women most of the time. He made me laugh, he was smart and interesting and for a while, that was enough. But when things got tough, such as when our complicated daughters were teenagers, he was out of there. That’s when it dawned on me that I was still running away from your steadfastness.”

They both had tears in their eyes. “Oh Sylvie. Did we fuck up or what?”

Sylvie sighed and got off the sofa, padded to her kitchen, and made them a pot of tea. She carried it back to the living room but before she sat back down, she turned to look down at him. “My take tonight is that your son Nick is gay. Am I wrong?”

Laddie looked up at her. “Nope.”

“Was that hard for you and Amanda?”

“Not for me. By Kindergarten you could see he was an extra careful boy who mostly liked to play with girls. Amanda worried even then that something might be “wrong” but I said hanging out with girls just showed he was smart.

“By the time he was in middle school it was clear he was going to be, well, himself and yeah, I worried his life would be extra tough. At some point when it was just him and me in the car, he referred to himself as gay. I looked at him and smiled and said I’d do whatever I could to make sure his life was as good as it could be. He grinned and said he’d do the same for me. We both laughed. These days I think of that. It’s been so hard since Amanda died. He’s been doing a lot of taking care of me.

“Was Amanda okay with Nick?”

Laddie fiddled with his tea mug. “I’m not sure if she ever understood that his life is his to live, not ours to have opinions about. After he started using words for being gay, she started fighting it. She’d say to me at night in bed that it was my “fault” because I hadn’t been around enough. Or she’d ask “what did we do wrong” or other nonsense that irritated me. We finally had a big fight when I said she was not worried about Nick, she was just pursuing some so-called guilt-free life status and life doesn’t come at us like that. We had to let the kids be who they were. Our role was to love him and after that to stop claiming his choices as our business.”

She raised her eyebrows. He looked back and smiled quietly. “Yes, it took me years but I finally learned that. Being moral is not the same as not making mistakes. And it sure isn’t about obeying rules a person didn’t have any part of making up. It’s about paying attention and listening and trying really hard to not invent the world for others. Not easy to live this way but I try.

“It got easier as Nick became an adult and eventually married Daniel. They’ve been together since before Amanda became ill. Daniel actually works in hospital administration; he’s the one who looked at cancer treatment trials and got Amanda into a Madison program that prolonged her life by several years. Very good years. I’m grateful we had them.”

“My God, Laddie. Do you remember what it was called?”

“It was a specific test where they frequently checked for specific hormone receptiveness and adjusted chemotherapy to that.”

“Oh Laddie. My daughter Allison is one of the co-directors of that study.”

They were both stunned.

Laddie stood, moved to her end of the sofa, pulled her up, sat down, pulled her into his lap.

“Now we are in the Firebird again and you are in my arms. I think Sylvie, when we were that young, we thought we were making choices about our lives. Now that we are this old, it seems to me that our choices made us.”

She leaned her head against his shirt to hear his heart thump. “It wasn’t even as big as a blueberry.”

He smoothed his hand over her soft hair. “I don’t have regrets.”

She tucked her hands around his. “No regrets but so much wondering.”