Until Death

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ten years agoThe private room at the traditional Romanian restaurant in Queens was warm and cozy—and more crowded than Maria liked. The dark wood panels of the walls contrasted with the bright white ceiling that made her eyes ache in the glare of a crystal-clear May afternoon.

At least thirty middle-aged women and their adult children, most of the older generation from other parts of the world like Maria's mother and Leo's great-grandmother, crowded into the space that could comfortably seat about twenty. The remains of a rich, delectable feast—complete with lamb, pork, and chicken—had yet to be cleared to make room for what would surely be a dizzying array of pastries to go with the American-style frosted Mother's Day cake.

This had always been a difficult day for Maria, ever since she understood motherhood wouldn't be easy for her, and maybe not possible. The rough scars across her abdomen had always been a fact, part of her like her green eyes or thick brown hair. A terrible bout of appendicitis and emergency surgery had left extensive damage, including throughout her reproductive organs. The twisting white marks, and what they meant, had always been part of Maria’s life. A part she never thought much about until she married Leo.

Everything else seemed normal for both of them, yet two years of trying and three rounds of IVF had failed. Something else had to be going on, and her parents had never been much for discussing the past. Especially not the past before they'd fled Romania when she'd barely started school.

Maria tapped her pale pink manicured fingernails against her water glass before she could stop herself. If she'd learned one thing growing up with her mother, and even more from visiting after she'd moved out, it was that such an obvious sign of nervousness would never be overlooked.

True to form, Elena Inesceu glanced over her rimless glasses at her daughter. Not a glare for being interrupted, nor a demand for answers right this minute. Maria knew the look from four decades of experience.

Her mother was saying yes, I see you're nervous about something. I'm going to give you time to think about it. As soon as the party's over and we get back home, though, you will tell me. Don't worry. I'll remember.

Maria smiled at her mother, more reassured by that easy read than she'd been as a teenager, and excused herself from the table. She'd been taking long drinks of mineral water as everyone else shared many toasts with pălincă, the brandy she remembered drinking from a very young age in Romania and frequently in the US.

Even a decade into hard-won sobriety, she still knew exactly how it would burn in her nose and on her tongue. How its heat would spread throughout her body before making it to her belly. The only thing she missed more was gin and tonic. Drinking enough water to need the restroom frequently was as good a distraction as any.

By the time she came back out, the three-tiered multi-colored cake was indeed front and center, but hardly anyone had touched it. Maria took half a puff pastry filled with apples and walnuts and sat down to wait out the party.

Even the cake was missing a respectable portion over two hours later when Maria took her accustomed role as designated driver in her parents' minivan full of giggling mothers and children her own age. Once everyone else was dropped off and they were nearly back to the expressway headed to Brooklyn, she decided to ask her difficult questions before her own mother had a chance to bring it up. And before they got back to her childhood home, where Elena had Maria's father to distract both of them.

"Mama, I need to ask you about some things."

Maria stopped to take a deep breath when she saw red lights in front of them. Traffic was backed up getting onto the bigger road and beyond, so she might have a lot more time than she wanted.

"You're nervous over something," her mother said. "What's wrong?" She turned her body to face Maria. Too late to put it off now.

"Nothing's wrong, don't worry," Maria said. "I have a doctor's appointment when I get back to Los Angeles, and she needs to know some of our family history."

"What business is that of a doctor? What kind of doctor?"

Maria glanced at her mother, surprised at the sharp tone in her voice. The older woman's pale, round cheeks were flushed, her forehead drawn down in what Leo called thunderbrow.

"It's nothing bad, nothing to be upset about. It's just...Leo and I have been trying..." Maria shook her head, wondering at how hard she had to work to get the words out. She must be the only daughter on the planet who had trouble saying she wanted to turn her mother into a grandmother. "We're trying to have a baby. I knew it would be hard, but even with help from a fertility doctor, it's not working. We need to know what to try next."

When the tall delivery truck ahead of them stopped long enough to shift into park, the backup lights flashing briefly before the brake lights went dim, Maria looked at her mother again. Elena stared at her for several seconds, lips pursed, then turned to look out the opposite window. The heat needle on the van was already edging up toward the red, but the shimmering waves of exhaust kept Maria from turning the air off and rolling down the windows.

When the silence stretched on long enough to feel like a solid thing, Maria turned away and rolled her eyes. She hoped she didn't have a thunderbrow of her own. Neither of her parents had ever talked about s*x or health problems in their family, leaving her to learn on her own.

She'd guessed it was being shy or conservative Eastern Orthodox believers, and she'd gladly taken advantage of every educational opportunity she got in school and in a big American city. Right now her mother was acting more angry than hesitant.

"Fertility doctor," her mother said in a low voice. "Why didn't you talk to me about this before?"

"Talk to you about it?" Maria said. "You haven't been the most open about things like this. I'm not asking you to explain where babies come from. I just need to know if anyone else in the family has had trouble getting pregnant. What we're trying isn't working, even going around my problems. The doctor needs to know if something else might be wrong."

"Such things are private, Maria. Between a husband and wife. I never knew you wanted children."

"They're private, sure," Maria said. She gripped the wheel to keep from gritting her teeth. "I just need your help. I know you don't like to talk about stuff like that. I learned what I do know on my own. That's why you didn't know we wanted kids. We need your help, Mama."

"Your cousins, the ones on my side," her mother said. "They adopted babies. So many babies need families, all over the world. You and Leo, you could give such a good home."

"Well, sure, maybe we'll do that someday. But all I want is to find out why I'm not getting pregnant even with help. Maybe I want to have a baby of my own."

"You don't even have to tell anyone, Maria. Now you can find parents who look like you, and no one will ever know."

Maria stared into Elena's blue eyes, her head as overheated as the van, edging into the red. Her mother's voice wasn't so much angry now as it was desperate. Pleading.

"Is there some reason you don't want us to have a baby?" she said, dismayed at how shaky her own voice was.

"I had no warning, you never mentioned it before. Not even when you were a girl. Not after you knew about that awful infection you had and the surgery. You never even wanted to play with dolls. I thought that meant—"

"Why does it matter whether I played with dolls or not, Mama?" Maria said. "What the hell are you trying to say to me?"

"Just don't go to that doctor, please," her mother whispered, more tears spilling over, cutting through the fresh powder on her cheeks. "Some things are better left alone."