Heaven Should Fall

Chapter 17

Jill




My due date was three weeks away. I could hardly eat a thing anymore, with my stomach crowded out by the baby; also, I got winded easily, and my bladder had been shoved aside to make room for somebody’s head. I got up two or three times every night to pee, and that might not have been so bad except that the August heat—tolerable during the day, this being New Hampshire—seemed to settle over our bedroom at night. This made falling back to sleep an arduous task. We slept with our door closed, for privacy, and our windows open, for circulation, but it did little good.

And so, after using the bathroom one night, I trekked down the stairs to sleep on the sofa, where the air was cooler and Cade’s warm body would not be beside me. As I arranged the pillows I noticed an unusual sight over in the addition: Elias was awake, sitting in his old chair just the way he used to. I walked over to where he sat and said, “Hey. You all right?”

He grunted a yes and didn’t look away from the television.

“Haven’t seen you up at night in a long time.”

“No.” He exhaled a cloud of smoke and glanced at me. “I didn’t take my meds today.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” He seemed to toy with leaving that as his only answer, then spoke again. “I’ve been taking more than I’m supposed to.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m an idiot. When my leg starts to hurt I always pile on the Tylenol, you know—like, ‘kill it with fire,’ and it takes the edge off in no time. That doesn’t work so great with Xanax. And then you run low, and guess what? You got two weeks before you’re allowed to refill.” He sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I ought to know better.”

My heart ached for him, but I knew he would be ashamed for me to make a show of it. I nodded. “I’ll make you another appointment, okay? I’ll see what I can do to get a sooner one this time. They must have some way to fast-track them.”

A dullness descended over his gaze. “No. I don’t need people making special exceptions for me like I’m a friggin’ invalid. I’ll work it out. I’ll probably take one in an hour or two so I can get some sleep. Right now I’m just trying to remind my body who’s boss.”

I hesitated, but then reached out and stroked his forehead. It was beaded with sweat. “I’m sorry, Elias,” I said.

“F*ck, don’t be sorry for me. Jesus, Jill. You know that’s the last thing I want to hear anybody say.” He laid his head back against the chair and allowed me to stroke the sweat back from his forehead, massage his scalp with my fingertips. “This sucks,” he said. “I wish I’d stayed on the other stuff.”

“I’ll take you back to the doctor. They’ll straighten it out.”

“No. I’m starting to feel like a goddamn science fair project. Forget that. I’m just gonna get myself off this stuff and go back to what I know. It’s not worth it.”

“There’s got to be something that’ll work better than what you had before.”

“I don’t even care. I can live with that. I just don’t want to be like this.”

I rubbed his shoulders reassuringly, but when he didn’t lean forward as he normally did, I ran my hands down to his arms and kneaded the muscles there. “I love it when you do that,” he said. Then he laughed a little and said, “I totally f*cking hate it.”

My hands froze in place, then retreated. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t stop. God.”

I began again, but hesitantly, feeling the sudden rangy energy his body was putting forth. He tolerated it for a few moments, then threw my hands off with a flail of his arms that was almost violent.

I took two steps back. He rose from the chair and walked around it to the refrigerator, retrieving a beer from the produce drawer. As he cracked it open and drank, I watched him from a distance. He wore a T-shirt that was large even for him, shorts that hit below his knees and, despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, a pair of battered running shoes. Elias was never without shoes. He slept in his sneakers. Now, for the first time since I had moved in, he looked as though he might need them to escape the house.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, my timing awkward, my voice small. “You can be hard to read, Eli.”

“I know it.” He sounded calm and ordinary. The refrigerator door closed, and the kitchen went dark again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just bugged out about the medicine.”

“We’ll take care of that next week, okay? Or as soon as we can get you in to the doctor, anyway.”

He leaned back against the kitchen island. “I’ll figure it out. Are you headed back to bed?”

“Sort of. I came down to sleep on the sofa. It’s too hot up there. Right now I’m so tired I’m dizzy.”

He set down his beer and held out his arms. It was the first time he had ever done that. I walked into the hug, and despite the complication of my giant belly, he found a way to pull me close with his arms around my shoulders. The bulk of him was too much for my arms to encircle, but I did the best I could. When he buried his face in my hair, his bristly crew cut scratched my cheek.

“It’s good you’re here, Jill,” he said.

I nodded, but I felt so exhausted and light-headed I couldn’t really reply. Unsteadily in the dark, I made my way over to the sofa and curled up on my side beneath the lightest afghan. In the cool and the white noise I fell asleep quickly. And then—I don’t know quite how much later—I was vaguely aware of Elias’s shadow passing over me, leaning in. Somewhere in the core of my mind I recognized the weight of his steps against the floor, the scent of his body. But that was all, until I vaguely heard the vibrato of someone yelling in the distance, over and over, and I could not tell whether it was Cade or Elias because the voice carried the pure raspy note of the Olmstead men, the common song of all of them, the one my son would sing someday.