But Heidi doesn’t answer the question.
The baby struggles in her arms. I grab a blanket from the arm of a chair and try to hand it to Heidi, to get her to cover up. “Give me the baby,” I say to my wife, and then, when she shakes her head and backs farther and farther away—toward the bay window, stepping on a cat’s tail in the middle of retreat—a compromise: “Just let me hold Ruby so you can fix your dress,” I suggest, unprepared for the impetuousness that takes over Heidi’s obliging brown eyes. Her eyes look demented, her skin flaming red.
And then she begins to scream.
Her words come out deranged, like some head case you’d see on TV. Illogical terms that oddly make sense to me. There are words: baby and Juliet. Juliet. She must say that word a dozen times or more: Juliet.
She’s pissed that I called that baby Ruby. The baby is not Ruby, Heidi reminds me: she’s Juliet. But no, I think recalling the article Martin Miller sent to me; this baby is not Ruby nor Juliet.
This baby is Calla.
“Heidi,” I say. “This baby is...”
“Juliet,” she snaps again and again and again. “Juliet!” she screams, frightening the baby all the more.
I can hardly place the name, it’s so far flung from memory. And yet it’s there, in bits and pieces. Heidi—years ago—lying on a hospital bed, cloaked in a hospital gown and tears; Heidi flushing her contraceptives, pill by pill down the john, pretending not to cry.
But now she’s calling me names: liar and murderer and thief. She doesn’t mean to, I know she doesn’t, and yet she’s squeezing that baby unintentionally, and the baby is crying—howling like a wolf at the goddamn moon—and Heidi is crying, too, tears that flow down her cheeks like water down a drain.
“You’re mistaken,” I say, as gently as I can. Heidi has convinced herself that the baby, that this baby, is the one she lost eleven years ago to cancer. And I could explain the idiocy of this—the fact that that baby is dead, the fact that if that baby were still alive, he or she would be eleven years old—but I realize all too clearly that the woman standing before me is not my wife.
I step forward and reach my hands out to the baby, but Heidi snatches her away. “This baby, Heidi. This baby is not...” and I could go on, but I don’t. I’m terrified by the unstable look in her eyes, of what she might do to that baby. Not intentionally. Heidi would never hurt a baby, not intentionally anyway.
And yet I don’t know.
“Just let me hold the baby,” I say, and then to appease her, “just let me hold Juliet.” And I’m thinking of all the things I should have done when we lost that baby. I should have consoled her more, I think; that’s what I should have done. I should have taken her to a shrink as her ob-gyn said to do. Among other things.
But Heidi said she was okay. She said she was fine, after we’d made the decision to abort that child so the doctor could treat Heidi’s cancer. And yet I ignored the sadness I saw in her, the craving, the need. I figured if we ignored it, it would go away, like a stray cat, a pesky sibling.
She’s quiet for a moment, watching me. I’m certain she’ll give in, if only I can convince her that it’s for the baby’s good. “Let me make her a bottle,” I say, my voice as soft as silk. “She’s hungry, Heidi. Just let me make her a bottle.”
The words come out pleading, desperate. But Heidi doesn’t give in. She can read right through me, Heidi who knows me so well.
She brushes past me and into the kitchen, where she rummages through drawers. I grab her by an elbow as she passes by, but she shoves me in a way I never thought my wife capable of, enough that I lose my balance and almost fall. By the time I get my bearings, I find her in the middle of the kitchen, holding a Swiss Army knife in the palm of a hand, the sharp blade aimed at me.
I should have seen this coming; I should have known. I go through the past few days in my head, trying to figure out what I overlooked, some desperate cry of Heidi’s for help.
A breakdown, that’s what was happening. A mental breakdown. A psychotic break.
But how did I not see it coming? Did I ignore the warning signs?
“Go away, Chris,” she says.
She doesn’t have it in her to use that knife—or so I tell myself—but even I’m not sure.
“Heidi,” I whisper, but she thrusts that knife into the air, stabbing the oxygen in the room. I glance at a clock on the wall and know that Zoe will be home soon.