“Oh.” Her brows dent a little again. “So you don’t need a referral, then. But perhaps our social worker can offer a new perspective or . . .” She trails off, unable to effectively suggest anything that might explain away Bella’s whacked stories.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why she’d say such a thing.”
An uncomfortable silence fills the space between us, tripped up only with the sound of music down the hall. The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round.
“If you think a meeting with the social worker will help . . . ,” I begin.
“A different point of view can’t hurt.”
My phone chimes the special alert set for the embryologist—a rendition of “Rock-a-bye Baby.” My stomach hollows out. It’s either good news or bad news. I have to take the call.
“Listen,” Miss Wendy says. “Who knows why she said it? Often, we never know. Let’s see how today goes.”
I clench my phone. “Call if there’s trouble?”
“Of course.”
With that, I’m out the door, the phone at my ear.
And I know I have to listen carefully to everything the embryologist says, but Elizabella’s words are on repeat in my head:
Daddy went to God Land.
Daddy went to God Land.
Daddy went to God Land.
Chapter 2
My husband, alive and nowhere near God Land, despite our daughter’s insistence, wraps an arm around my waist and spins me across the kitchen floor in his own version of a ballroom dance, which is hopelessly without rhythm. “Stay with me . . . Stay some more . . .” He sings—incorrectly and a bit off key—the classic ballroom ballad.
“Sway with me,” I join in.
Funny that he can maneuver a jet through cloudy skies and touch down anywhere on this vast planet, but he can’t make his way across a dance floor.
“Stay with me,” he sings. “Stay, stay, stay . . .”
“Sway!”
“Let me lead.”
We’re both laughing now.
“Micah, stop. About what Bella said. She’s insisting Nini told her—”
“Obviously, it’s her imagination.” Micah gives me one last twirl.
“That you died.”
“Do I look dead? There are days she insists she’s a mermaid. Why are you letting this bother you?” He kisses my lips and dips me in a dramatic end to our dance.
He guides me to a seat at the kitchen table, where I laid out the picture Bella drew at preschool this morning.
She’s watching a movie on demand in the great room. Even as we’re discussing Nini, Bella carries on a conversation with her.
Micah is standing behind me now, his strong hands working their magic on my shoulders. “And about this picture”—when he leans in closer, I catch the scent of Dolce & Gabbana The One Sport—“you’re seeing things.”
He sees scribbles.
I see death.
“So she drew something that looks like the flames of hell.” My husband takes the chair next to mine but maintains contact, his thumb lightly caressing the back of my neck.
“Correction.” I can’t stop looking at the stick figure in the midst of jagged red-and-orange lines. “Nini drew it.”
“Last time she drew something that looked like the devil incarnate, it turned out to be a picture of her teacher.”
“Same difference, if you ask me.”
“Nicki-girl.” He’s the only one who shortens my name this way, and his Nicki-girl gives me a rush every time he says it. He brushes a kiss over my lips. “You’re overreacting.”
“What if Nini’s more than an imaginary friend?”
“Okay.” His thumb still feathers over my skin. “Indulge me. What do you think Nini is?”
At first, I thought maybe Nini was an alternate personality or a voice in Bella’s head, but Dr. Russo is right. I looked it up. Even the most severe cases of schizophrenia don’t usually rear up until adulthood. A rare case was reported in a nine-year-old girl who couldn’t control the expanding number of her imaginary friends, but never has a three-year-old been thusly diagnosed.
Now, considering my daughter’s insistence this morning that Daddy went to God Land, I wonder if Nini isn’t something else. Something not even doctors can explain. “What if she’s a ghost? Or a demon?”
Micah grins. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” I stiffen and pull a few inches away. “Look, I know it’s farfetched, but—”
“Are you telling me you think our three-year-old is clairvoyant? That she opened a door to the great beyond and plays with Satan’s minions?” He pretends to reach for my cell phone. “Let’s call Oprah. She’ll know what to do.”
“You don’t think I know how crazy it sounds?” I attempt to rub away my headache. “Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the crazy one, if everyone else thinks this is normal.”
He grips the back of my neck. “It’s crazy, all right. As crazy as I am about you.”
I try not to laugh, but while he’s working my neck with one hand, he tickles my ribs with the other and gives my earlobe a nibble. “Stop!” I say on a breathy giggle. “This is serious.”
“Listen.” He scoots his chair closer. “I don’t want you worrying about anything.” His hand settles on my abdomen. “Think about two little embryos. Still kicking in their test tubes.”
“Not great odds.” The lab’s call this morning informed us that of six, only two eggs fertilized. I’m thirty-one years old. Too young to be going through this.
“If these two fresh ones don’t make it, we still have one more shot to batch,” he reminds me. “And if we don’t have anything to show for that attempt, we still have two frozen at the lab. All it takes is one, babycakes. All it takes is one, and we already have two. One is silver, the other’s gold, all right?”
I rest my head on his shoulder. I don’t tell him so, but I can’t handle the prospect of having to endure this again—the shots, the medications, the side effects—perpetually hungover and queasy, without the benefit of the drink, for months on end. Especially because I’m becoming less and less confident in the process. Sure, IVF worked when we conceived Bella, but I’m four years older now, and things are different. On our second try, I miscarried twins at thirteen weeks. Brutal. Painful. Not fair. To go through it all for nothing but heartache.
“Do you think it’s going to happen for us?” I ask. “Do you think we’ll have another baby?”
“No two people on this planet deserve it more.”
I don’t disagree with him, but that’s not what I asked. “I know you want a big family—”
“If this is it, if all we have is Bella, I’d die a happy man. Having the two of you is more important than anything in this world.” He tickles my ribs. “Or even in God Land.”
I roll my eyes at his bad joke. “It’s just that I don’t feel good. And even a simple trip to the park turns into a stressful situation.”
“Maybe go with someone, give yourself an opportunity to socialize, have adult conversations. Set something up with Claudette.”
Claudette is the closest thing I have to a friend, but she’s one of those supermoms, always toting organic snacks, always with firm control of her children . . . I can’t measure up. Sometimes being with her feels a little less like socialization and a lot more like judgment day. But I know Micah’s trying to help, and it’s good advice. “Maybe I’ll do that.”
But my husband must sense my hesitation because he tickles the back of my neck. “Whatcha thinking?”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m up to the task, all right? I’m not as good at this as Claudette is. I just want to push my daughter on a swing. I want to enjoy her, let her have fun. But being with Claudette sometimes reminds me of all the reasons I’m not quite the mother she is.”
“Then I’ll put a swing in Bella’s room. You won’t have to leave the house.”
I shake my head and smile ruefully. Micah’s mind is methodical. Even when our pregnancy tests kept turning up negative, he researched infertility tirelessly and found a solution, and in time, it worked. But I wish he’d see that not everything is fixable. Sometimes life just sucks, and there’s nothing to do but cope—and coping is hard work.
“I wonder sometimes . . .” I hesitate. “Natasha and I were good friends.”