That, and she didn’t want to regret not having a child. The decision had been simple when she thought of it in those terms. And Jacob, of course, had wanted what she wanted.
She ambled out of bed and pulled her phone from the hospital overnight bag. The battery was drained. She found the charger and winced as she squatted down to plug it in near the bed, feeling another clump of blood slide out into the swath of rough cotton between her legs. She couldn’t bear to think of what had happened to her body. She hadn’t wanted to know, to touch, to feel any of it. The nurse had asked her to reach down, to feel the baby’s head crowning, and the thought of it had made her feel faint. Just get him out of me. Just close my legs.
She stared at the black screen waiting for the battery sign to disappear and the home screen to load. Come on. The familiar pang of anxiety, of needing to know who was trying to get in touch with her and why. The screen lit up and there it was, the calmness of holding the phone in her hand. The lifeline. The messages filled the home screen, the number climbed on the in-box icon. The news alerts, one after another. The satisfaction of all of it being there, unread, unchecked, the consumption of information she had ahead of her.
And then she remembered, suddenly, about the baby.
The baby. She had one. He was here, outside of her now. She felt even better about this fact than she had hoped she would. Everything felt as it should.
She put one hand on her ballooning breasts, growing hard as rocks, and then looked back at the screen. She rolled away from him and faced the warm breeze of the window. She answered her boss’s email. She answered another. She scrolled through the barrage of texts. She sent a message to her assistant checking in. She scanned the news and then texted her large group of friends a picture from the hospital, one where you couldn’t see her bloodshot eyes and puffy face straight on.
He’s here! Xavier Wesley James Loverly. 7lbs on the dot. Baby and mom back home in bed, doing great, awaiting first glass of champagne.
The replies came in rapid fire, ding, ding, ding. More email. More responses. More questions after her responses. Did this budget range work for her? Was it okay if they sent the latest version of a proposal? Could she look quickly at an email they’d drafted for a client? She was sure not to answer with more brevity than usual. She was needed. She had authority. Nothing had changed. She checked her stocks. Twitter. She scrolled more headlines and raced through an article about toxic masculinity. She replied to a few more texts. She checked her email again.
“I’m back. How is he?”
Jacob’s voice from the bottom of the stairs surprised her. She fixed her eyes on the ceiling before she turned herself around to face the baby again. She put her hand around his entire tummy. He was warm and pulsing. Jacob poked his head in the room. He looked as though he’d been holding his breath since he left.
“Have you been staring at him this whole time?”
“I have.”
She lied without even thinking about it. She shouldn’t have been distracted from him, not for work, not for anything. He’s been here for mere hours, he is a miracle, look at him! How could she have taken her eyes off him? She smiled and said it aloud. “I can’t take my eyes off him.”
Jacob sat at the side of the bed. He pulled his glasses from his face and touched the thick black frame to his lip. He wore the same kind of shirt every day, he had ten of them, and she reached to touch the black cotton sleeve, to pull him closer to her. He made her feel safe. From herself. And the potential she had to fail them.
“I kept thinking to myself at the store that we’ll never get this day back. His second day of life. Look at his skin, how thin and pink it is.” He lifted the baby’s hand and touched his papery nails. She couldn’t recall ever seeing this level of pure elation in another human being, and it made her hurt; she wanted to feel the way Jacob felt too. She was already missing so much with that screen in her face.
Jacob left the room and she held her phone out beside the bed and dropped it on the floor. She then reached down and shoved it under the bed frame, out of reach. She rolled back to the baby, to the second day of his life. His eyes opened a sliver. She read somewhere that a mother should look at her baby with genuine delight, a nourishment as valuable as milk. She tried her best. He stared at her stretched-open face. He was hers, they belonged to each other. She had never understood that sense of ownership over a child before, that egoism that parents have. But yes, now there lived a piece of herself, right there.
* * *
? ? ?
Someone speaks from the open door behind her now at the children’s hospital, and it’s like the overhead music in a department store. A familiar tune, some version of a song she might know. She ignores what they’re saying, pretends those concerns, those tests, those medical acronyms, are for another mother to hear. She nods, she answers their questions with few words, the words that will make things easy for her. That will make them all go away. Instead, she wants to feel all the parts of his body again.
She uses her finger like a pencil and traces the shape of his eyebrows, his nose, his gagged open jaw, down his swollen neck, along his collarbones. She can’t feel the tape, the tubes, the brace, the plastic. She circles his small shoulders, his thin upper arm, circles again around his elbows. She stops on his forearm and squeezes.
The squeeze feels so familiar to her, the feel of his skinny bone like a branch she could snap. Did she often grab him like this? Did she squeeze him hard, tug him toward her when he wasn’t listening, when they were meant to be out the door five minutes ago? Did she tighten her grip around that arm when he wouldn’t look her in the eye as she spoke to him, sticking his tongue out at his little brother instead? Would the rage wallop her so quickly that she’d twist his arm just enough that he would protest, but not a split second longer?
And now, she’s done something much worse to him.
She steadies herself on the railing of his bed. She pulls down the sheet covering his chest and kisses him lightly all around, in between the stickers and wires, down his stomach, up his sides where he once liked to be tickled. She imagines each imprint of her lips making him better. Taking away the fear and everything that hurts. And then she pulls his freckled forearm to her cheek, and she smells his skin again.
11
Blair
Aiden’s keychain. She stares at it in her hand, willing the growing panic to slow. It was a gift from his parents, with a matching wallet. He’d used it for years, for the key to his office. But she doesn’t know if this is that same key on the ring she holds now. Or why Whitney would have it. Hidden, at the back of her drawer. In a pink satin pouch.
She can’t think of an explanation with the urgency she needs. She sits on the floor with her back against the bed. The weight of what the key could mean creeps through her, uninvited. It’s impossible. Unfathomable.
She thinks of the foil wrapper. Of Whitney and her endless freedoms. Of her avoidance lately. Of the way Whitney sometimes looks at her like she’s studying her. Or trying on the betrayal. Trying on the guilt.
She’ll never find out. She has no idea. She can hear exactly what those words could sound like in her husband’s voice.
She grows hot, nauseated with humiliation. She thinks of Chloe.
She rubs her tightening chest. She lies on her side.
She wants to see nothing behind her closed eyes, she wants to fade to black, but now the wide-open thighs held open with her husband’s hands are Whitney’s. She imagines another kind of woman driving through red lights, interrupting her husband’s sales meeting. Demanding answers. Phoning her friend over and over and over until she finally picks up. Throwing clothing. Packing suitcases.
But she feels shrunken. And scared.
There’s one thought she hangs on to: would Whitney do this to Jacob?
She knows it’s pathetic that she can’t say the same thing of her own husband.
She could have lived with denial, before. With the quiet knowing in the back of her mind, something nobody had to know. If it was anyone else but Whitney.
The queasiness is back, she needs to get out of Whitney’s house quickly. Her footing slips twice coming down the staircase.
She can put an end to this tonight, invite herself over when Whitney gets home from work. She’ll suggest they open a bottle of white like they usually do, casually ask as she pours if she’s seen a key Aiden lost, that he thinks he dropped it last time they were over. She’ll get the logical explanation she needs, and they’ll move on.
She’ll throw out the foil wrapper when she gets home.
This anxious spiraling isn’t good for her.