Before she leaves, she digs out one of the pocket diaries from her bedside drawer. It’s thin and worn, almost as old as she is, a freebie from the bank where her mother opened her first savings account. In tight, cursive handwriting, in the calendar squares, her mother had written the things they did together every single day. Explored the free section of the museum. Worked on sounds “A” to “M.” Practiced addition on our new abacus ($2 at the Goodwill!). Preschool tour. As the years went on, the squares in each additional diary began to look like a storyboard for another family—not the poor, single mother and her scrappy daughter. Third piano exam, passed! National debate championships. College loan application submitted. Freshman move-in day at Columbia. SHE DID IT!
Thousands of squares in eighteen little diaries, the compulsion to keep a record of everything Rebecca ever did. Her mother gave them to her in a banker’s box when she graduated from med school, and she keeps a few in her nightstand. Rebecca treasured them for what they were: acts of love, markers of her mother’s pursuit to achieve for Rebecca a life she never had. But the squares were also a quantification—of everything she’d ever been given in her life.
And now she might finally give her mother a grandchild.
She’d had the idea in the shower. She’ll hand her the last of the diaries and point to the new square she’s drawn—her due date.
Her mother will make everything better for the hours she sits in her kitchen.
She stops for peonies at the market and then drives through the city to the highway. Her phone is on the passenger seat beside the diary, and she checks it every few minutes to see if Ben has texted her. She imagines him home when she returns this afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table, ready to talk. Ready to forgive her. He’ll find hope again as the baby grows bigger inside her. This will become a slice of time they hardly remember. Everything will have changed.
She turns on the radio and finally feels herself relax.
Forty minutes later she pulls off the exit to where her mother lives. She shifts in the seat as she slows for the first lights. She feels hot in her jeans, and thinks she should have worn a dress, she is sweating even with the air-conditioning on. She puts down the car window and leans into the fresh spring air. She thinks about stopping to get them coffees. She shifts in her seat again at the next light, and feels it more distinctly this time, a warm dampness in her underwear. She reaches to pull the tight jeans away from her crotch. The obvious thought makes her anxious. But she is always on the brink of panic, always waiting to be flattened again. She pulls her mind back to the road, to the green light. She touches the smooth petals of the peonies in the seat beside her.
She parks at Starbucks and finds her wallet in her bag. The simmer of panic comes again and makes her angry with herself. She lifts her bottom from the seat, puts her fingers into her underwear, and then looks for the clear discharge that will settle her.
Her head becomes light.
Her fingers are crimson and sticky.
41
Whitney
The Hospital
Wednesday night replays in her mind on a loop. Over and over. Shame slithers like a worm up her throat and makes her want to gag. The very thought of what she’s done.
After Louisa had left for the night, Whitney made a coffee to keep herself awake. She planned to send a text to cancel her plans. She would prepare for the next day’s meeting instead. But then she’d gone into Xavier’s bedroom to check on him.
She saw him twitch, and then his eyelids fluttered too much for him to be asleep. So she’d said his name. She’d said it again in a firmer tone. She’d wanted him to apologize for getting so angry in the kitchen. She’d wanted to end things on a better note. She wanted to give him a hug.
He’d turned onto his back, propped himself on his elbows, and adjusted his eyes to the light from the hallway. And then he looked toward the wall at the end of his bed, under the posters of the vintage racing cars. He looked like he was tracing something with his eyes.
She’d turned to see what he was looking at.
His printing on the wall was large, careful, and neat, the ink thick like tar.
The black marker was on the floor.
* * *
? ? ?
Now, she lifts herself from his chest to look at him in the glow from the monitors, his open mouth, his gray and lifeless skin. Not a twitch. Not a flutter. What would it be like if I wasn’t here? he’d asked her a few months ago in the car.
And now, he isn’t here. Her own chest is tightening again, she must press her hands into herself to alleviate the tension. She is so empty. Every thought feels stuck in mud.
She wonders what his first thought will be if he opens his eyes and she is there, standing over him, moving her lips. What he will remember. I’m here, she’ll be saying, I’ve been here the whole time, I never, ever left you.
She imagines him turning his face away from her. Wanting his father instead, his eyes searching for him.
There is not enough air. She is heaving for it. Jacob will be back with the sandwich any moment. Jacob, who she has lied to, who will leave her. Who might never let her see her children again. She will lose them all. She imagines what Xavier will say to him, if he lives, if he can talk, if he can get the words out that he is thinking. If he even has the capacity to think at all.
They have all been talking about this around her—his function, his mental capacity if he wakes up—they have been saying things she refuses to acknowledge about the pressure that is pulverizing his brain. He might not be the same Xavier anymore, he might not have an easy life, and it’s because of her. She has never been a good enough mother to him, and she won’t be good enough now, not when he’ll need her the most. She is not capable. She will fail him again.
She puts her hand on his mouth, over the cross section of tubes. Her fingers shake running down the main line, to the soft accordion piece that attaches to the ventilator that keeps him alive. She glances at the door. Nobody is there.
Something takes over, a thought that finally promises her relief, and she wants to chase that feeling, she cannot let it get away from her, she is desperate. She coaches herself. Do it. Nobody will know. It’s for the best. She has ruined him. She’d ruined him long before Wednesday night.
She closes her eyes and she pinches the tube.
She cuts off his air.
42
Rebecca
She is desperate enough that she lets her mind do what it needs to do. The blood could be from something else. Her placenta. A tear in her lining. It could be just this one bit of spotting, and then the bleeding will stop. She holds her hand out while she drives, she doesn’t want to touch anything. She keeps looking from the road to her fingers.
She’d already searched this over and over in the pregnancy forums. Other women have bled and been fine. She clings to this as she speeds on the highway back home. If the cops pull her over, she’ll tell them to fuck off. Show them her bloody fingers. She has never felt this reckless. She drives faster.
She doesn’t feel the panic until she peels onto Harlow Street, and the delusion wears off. She throws the car into park and bangs the steering wheel. She puts her fingers back into her underwear and feels more fresh blood.
The contractions haven’t started yet, but she knows soon she’ll feel the first slow pull.
She can think only of the purply, translucent baby that must come out of her. The head and body will be in proportion now. There will be a cord. The beginnings of eyebrows and eyelashes. She doesn’t want to hold it in her hand again, to be on her bathroom floor.
But the choices are bathroom floor or emergency room. Where they don’t make situations like hers a priority. They will let her shift and ache and bleed in a waiting room chair until a space becomes available, and then a resident with no experience in the loss of a pregnancy will ask her questions too slowly about her history of family illness and if she’s had this shot or that. And then after, if she’s lucky, if there’s room, she’ll be shuffled to the labor and delivery unit, where she will see the massive bellies draped in gowns the color of robins’ eggs, pacing the halls, steadying themselves with long, loud breathing. There, she might be given a bed, and next door she’ll hear a woman laugh with wild awe as she meets her new screaming baby, as Rebecca lies in her empty room and listens.
“Are you okay?”
Mara’s voice is distant through the car window. Rebecca tries to get out of the driver’s seat but she can’t stand. Mara puts her hand on her back, guides her head between her legs.
“Take deep breaths. It’s all right.”
Rebecca can smell herself, the mix of sweat and blood. There is a patch of darkness now coming through her denim.
“Your baby?” Mara asks. She pinches her lips, waiting for Rebecca to confirm. It is the way Mara says it—your baby. The validation of what is inside her.
Rebecca squeezes her eyes closed as she nods. Mara helps her to stand, walks her up the steps to her front door. She realizes that the woman is in her nightgown still.
“Your husband isn’t home,” Mara says. The word “husband” sounds bitter in her mouth. She looks past Rebecca through the entryway to the kitchen at the back of her home. There’s an apprehension about Mara that makes Rebecca uneasy.
“I’ll be okay, Mara, you can go. I’ve been through this before.”