“Sorry for what, Tom? Sorry this is how it’s happened?”
Tom’s eyes look sad. He nods yes. They both know he has no reason to apologize but they both know no woman should have to endure her delivery in the stuffy attic of a house she calls home only because she cannot leave.
“You know what I think?” he says softly, reaching down to grab her hand. “I think you’re going to be a wonderful mother. I think you’re going to raise this child so well it won’t matter if the world continues this way or not.”
To Malorie, it feels like a rusty steel clamp is trying to pull the baby from her now. A tow truck chain from the shadows ahead.
“Tom,” she manages to say. “What’s wrong down there?”
“Don’s upset. That’s all.”
She wants to talk more about it. She’s not angry at Don anymore. She’s worried about him. Of all the housemates, he’s stricken worst by the new world. He’s lost in it. There is something emptier than hopelessness in his eyes. Malorie wants to tell Tom that she loves Don, that they all do, that he just needs help. But the pain is absolutely all she can process. And words are momentarily impossible. The argument below now sounds like a joke. Like someone’s kidding her. Like the house is telling her, You see? Have a sense of humor despite the unholy pain going on in my attic.
Malorie has known exhaustion and hunger. Physical pain and severe mental fatigue. But she has never known the state she is in now. She not only has the right to be unbothered by a squabble among housemates, but she also very nearly deserves that they all leave the house entirely and stand out in the yard with their eyes closed for as long as it takes her and Olympia to do what their bodies need to do.
Tom stands up.
“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Do you need some more water?”
Malorie shakes her head no and returns her eyes to the shadows and sheet that is Olympia’s struggle before her.
“We’re doing it!” Olympia says, suddenly, maniacally. “It’s happening!”
So many sounds. The voices below, the voices in the attic (coming from the shadows and coming from faces emerging from those shadows), the ladder stairs, creaking every time a housemate ascends or descends, assessing the situation up here and then the one (she knows there is a problem downstairs, she just can’t care right now) going on a floor below. The rain falls but there is something else. Another sound. An instrument maybe. The highest keys of the dining room’s piano.
Suddenly, strangely, Malorie feels another wave of peace. Despite the thousand blades that pierce her lungs, neck, and chest, she understands that no matter what she does, no matter what happens, the baby is coming out. What does it matter what kind of world she is bringing this baby into now? Olympia is right. It’s happening. The child is coming, the child is almost out. And he has always been a part of the new world.
He knows anxiety, fear, paranoia. He was worried when Tom and Jules went to find dogs. He was painfully relieved when they returned. He was frightened of the change in Don. The change in the house. As it went from a hopeful haven to a bitter, anxious place. His heart was heavy when I read the ad that led me here, just like it was when I read the notebook in the cellar.
At the word “cellar” Malorie actually hears Don’s voice from below.
He’s yelling.
Yet, something beyond his voice worries her more.
“Do you hear that sound, Olympia?”
“What?” Olympia grumbles. It sounds like she has staples in her throat.
“That sound. It sounds like . . .”
“It’s the rain,” Olympia says.
“No, not that. There’s something else. It sounds like we’ve already had our babies.”
“What?”
To Malorie it does sound like a baby. Something like it, past the housemates at the foot of the ladder stairs. Maybe even on the first floor, the living room, maybe even— Maybe even outside.
But what does that mean? What is happening? Is someone crying on the front porch?
Impossible. It’s something else.
But it’s alive.
Lightning explodes. The attic is fully visible, nightmarishly, for a flash. The blanket covering the window remains fixed in Malorie’s mind long after the light passes and the thunder rolls. Olympia screams when it happens and Malorie, her eyes closed, sees her friend’s expression of fear frozen in her mind.
But her attention is drawn back to the impossible pressure at her waist. It seems Olympia could be howling for her. Every time Malorie feels the awful knife stabbing in her side, Olympia laments.
Do I howl for her, too?
The cassette tape comes to a stop. Then so does the commotion from below.
Even the rain abates.
The smaller sounds in the attic are more audible now. Malorie listens to herself breathing. The footsteps of the housemates who help them are defined.
Figures emerge. Then vanish.
There’s Tom (she’s sure).
There’s Felix (she thinks).
There’s Jules now at Olympia’s side.