Someone is standing by the old clothes.
It’s Don.
Malorie feels a contraction.
Tom returns with a glass of water and the little radio they play cassettes on.
“Here, Malorie,” he says. “I found it.”
The sound of crackling violins escapes the small speakers. Malorie thinks it’s perfect.
“Thank you,” she says.
Tom’s face looks very tired. His eyes are only half open and puffy. Like he slept for an hour or less.
Malorie feels a cramping so incredible that at first she thinks it isn’t real. It feels like a bear trap has clamped down on her waist.
Voices come from behind her. Down the attic stairs. It’s Cheryl. Jules. She’s hardly aware of who’s up here and who isn’t.
“Oh God!” Olympia calls out.
Tom is with her. Felix is by Malorie’s side again.
“You’re going to make it,” Malorie calls to Olympia.
As she does, thunder booms outside. Rain falls hard against the roof. Somehow the rain is the exact sound she was looking for. The world outside sounds like how she feels inside. Stormy. Menacing. Foul. The housemates emerge from the shadows, then vanish. Tom looks worried. Olympia is breathing hard, panting. The stairs creak. Someone new is here. It’s Jules, again. Tom is telling him Olympia is farther along than Malorie is. Thunder cracks outside. As lightning strikes, she sees Don in relief, his features sullen, his eyes set deep above dark circles.
There is an unbearable pressing tightness at Malorie’s waist. Her body, it seems, is acting on its own, refuting her mind’s desire for peace. She screams and Cheryl leaves Olympia’s side and comes to her. Malorie didn’t even know Cheryl was still up here.
“This is awful,” Olympia hisses.
Malorie thinks of women sharing cycles, women in tune with one another’s bodies. For all their talk about who would go first, neither she nor Olympia ever even joked that both of them might be in labor at the same time.
Oh, how Malorie longed for a traditional birth!
More thunder.
It is darker up here now. Tom brings a second candle, lights it, and sets it on the floor to Malorie’s left. In the flickering flame she sees Felix and Cheryl but Olympia is difficult to make out. Her torso and face are obscured by flickering shadows.
Someone descends the stairs behind her. Is it Don? She doesn’t want to crane her neck. Tom steps through the candlelight and then out of its range. Then Felix, she thinks, then Cheryl. Silhouettes are moving from her to Olympia like phantoms.
The rain comes down harder against the roof.
There is a loud, abrupt commotion downstairs. Malorie can’t be sure but she thinks someone is yelling. Is her tired mind mistaking sounds? Who’s arguing?
It does sound like an argument below.
She can’t think about this right now. She won’t.
“Malorie?” Malorie screams as Cheryl’s face suddenly appears beside her. “Squeeze my hand. Break it if you need to.”
Malorie wants to say, Get some light in here. Get me a doctor. Deliver this thing for me.
Instead she responds with a grunt.
She is having her baby. There is no longer when.
Will I see things differently now? I’ve seen everything through the prism of this baby. It’s how I saw the house. The housemates. The world. It’s how I saw the news when it first started and how I saw the news when it ended. I’ve been horrified, paranoid, angry, more. When my body returns to the shape it was when I walked the streets freely, will I see things differently again?
What will Tom look like? How will his ideas sound?
“Malorie!” Olympia calls in the darkness. “I don’t think I can do it!”
Cheryl is telling Olympia she can, she’s almost there.
“What’s going on downstairs?” Malorie suddenly asks.
Don is below. She can hear him arguing. Jules, too. Yes, Don and Jules are arguing in the hall beneath the attic. Is Tom with them? Is Felix? No. Felix emerges from the dark and takes her hand.
“Are you okay, Malorie?”
“No,” she says. “What’s going on downstairs?”
He pauses, then says, “I’m not sure. But you have bigger things to worry about than people getting in each other’s faces.”
“Is it Don?” she asks.
“Don’t worry about it, Malorie.”
It rains harder. It’s as if each drop has its own audible weight.
Malorie lifts her head to see Olympia’s eyes in the shadows, staring at her.
Beyond the rain, the arguing, the commotion downstairs, Malorie hears something. Sweeter than violins.
What is it?
“Oh fuck!” Olympia screams. “Make it stop!”
It’s becoming harder for Malorie to breathe. It feels like the baby is cutting off her air supply. Like it’s crawling up her throat instead.
Tom is here. He is at her side.
“I’m sorry, Malorie.”
She turns to him. The face she sees, the look on his face, is something she will remember years after this morning.