Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  “My what?” Her throat closed up before she could say any more.

  “You’d better get yourself to a hospital. This is no place to have a baby.”

  “I don’t have a car,” Annie whispered. She’d planned to take the bus when the time came, but they hardly ran at all in the middle of the day.

  Helen calculated something silently before fixing her hand to the crook of Annie’s elbow. “Come on,” she said and steered Annie toward the door. “We’re gonna make like a leaf and blow this joint.” They dropped their mops and let them fall, clattering, to the floor. Helen found Sophia giggling into the pay phone in the lobby and told her to tell the manager they were going to the hospital and that there was a mess in the bathroom she might want to clean up. Sophia looked stricken, and Helen laughed after they walked out the front door. “Don’t worry.” She squeezed Annie’s arm. “None of your water made it to the floor. I just wanted to see the look on her face.”

  Helen drove a tiny old sedan. The back seat was cluttered with hulking plastic car seats and primary-colored balls. In that moment, when the pain took her body in a wave, Annie wanted nothing more than to lie back and stretch out. She folded herself into the front passenger’s seat.

  “Let’s go to St. Augustine’s,” Lacey said when they were both buckled in. She’d looked it up on Eve’s computer. St. Aug’s was forty-five minutes to the west. Devil’s Purse Hospital was thirty to the east. They were the only two hospitals around unless you wanted to drive into Boston.

  Helen snorted and wiggled her gearshift into place. “Like hell. You’re not giving birth in this car, either. Can’t you see I just got it detailed?”

  Annie laughed weakly. She clutched at her stomach as Helen took the first ramp onto the highway, revving the engine so high, it threw them back into their seats a little.

  It took an eternity for them to get to the hospital. In the maternity ward waiting room, she collapsed into a chair while Helen collected forms from reception. Annie glanced around the room, but she didn’t recognize anyone. Which made sense, she guessed. Everyone in her grade was now starting their senior year or maybe getting jobs. And their moms were long past done with having babies. What would any of them be doing in this wing of the hospital?

  “How can I help?” Helen said, handing her a clipboard.

  Her mother would’ve wanted her to say, “I’m fine, thanks.” Helen had done more than enough already, and Annie should send her on her way. Annie took the clipboard and said, “Call the agency?” She handed Helen the card she kept in her wallet.

  Helen nodded once and was gone.

  Annie had only managed to fill out two questions on the form by the time Helen came back. She couldn’t figure out if it was better to bend over during a contraction and curl into it or to sit up straight and grip the armrests as tightly as she could, so she’d been alternating between the two.

  “The adoptive mom will be here to fill out the agency’s paperwork as soon as the baby’s born,” Helen said, settling into the chair next to hers. “Apparently, she’s been shacking up in a hotel in Boston for two weeks in case you went into early labor.” She paused and squeezed Annie’s shoulder. “You’re making someone very happy today, Annie-Girl.”

  Annie nodded through another contraction, her eyes screwed shut.

  Helen took the clipboard off her lap. “Well, I see you know your name and date of birth, so that’s good,” she said. “I think they’re gonna need more than that to go off, though. Mailing address?”

  And so they filled the endless forms out together, with Helen reading out the questions and writing down whatever answers Annie could manage. A couple of times, she didn’t bother reading them out loud, just grunted her disapproval at the question and checked the box herself. They handed the forms back with the insurance card Annie had swiped from her mom’s wallet before she left. Annie told herself she’d pay her parents back for the copay, but then a contraction wiped away all her thoughts.

  Nearly an hour later, a rigid-faced nurse showed them into a room with a bed. Annie had to stop in the hallway once, one hand on the wall and the other braced in Helen’s, and she could’ve sworn she saw the nurse tapping her foot. As soon as she’d eased Annie into bed, the woman was gone, and it was just Annie and Helen again. Helen busied herself with collecting ice chips to slip into Annie’s mouth and smoothing the bangs off Annie’s sweaty forehead. As the pain jammed itself further and further into her and she began to feel like every organ in her body was going to get wrenched out her bottom, Annie found herself wishing for her mother. Or at least some imagined version of her mother who would’ve marched straight into her apartment and made her come home, who would’ve told her what to expect every month and taken her to the doctor’s and dug up all the little sweaters she’d knit for Annie when she was small. The type of mother she hoped this baby would grow up with.

  “I’m gonna go check on those damn nurses. You’ve gotta be getting close to active labor by now. They should be giving you an epidural,” Helen said, pushing her chair back from the bedside.

  “You mean all this shit hasn’t even been active?” Annie said through clenched teeth.

  Helen laughed on her way out the door. “That’s my girl,” she said, but Annie, twisting back and forth on the bed, wasn’t sure she got the joke.

  From there, things were mostly a blur. They put the medicine in through her back, and suddenly everything went blessedly, terrifyingly numb. At some point, Helen explained the situation to the staff and told them about the adoptive mother waiting nearby. Annie thought they were rougher with her after that, more severe, wrenching her legs open to check her progress.

  And then it was time to push. She made sure to do exactly as the doctor ordered. She pushed only when he poked his head up from between her legs and told her to. For a second, she thought absurdly of The Exorcist, which she’d watched with Eve a few weeks before. “Get out, get out, get the fuck out,” she muttered, or maybe it was a scream.

  Finally, finally, it was out. “A girl,” the doctor announced briskly before the nurses whisked the baby away.

  Annie felt triumphant and tragic. She’d been right. She’d known her daughter, if only for those few months when they shared a body. And now it was over. There were tears in Helen’s eyes as she watched the baby get passed from hand to rubber-gloved hand.

  One of the nurses reached over the side of the bed and started kneading Annie’s still-sore belly. It was an odd way to comfort someone. Annie shied away. “It’s for the afterbirth,” the nurse said as if that explained anything and forcibly rolled Annie back over and continued to work. Somewhere, a baby wailed. Annie’s chest ached.

  A tiny girl appeared at her shoulder, maybe a couple of years younger than Annie, carrying a pink plastic jug with a thick straw sticking out the top. She held the jug up, and Annie peeled her cracked lips apart and sipped. “Don’t you want to see your baby?” the girl asked while the ice water slipped down Annie’s throat.

  Annie swallowed, closed her eyes, and shook her head. A nurse whispered in the girl’s ear, explaining.

  At some point later, Helen leaned over into Annie’s face and said, “All right, kiddo, I’ve gotta head home. Don’t trust my husband to manage to get the kids in bed before midnight. You’ll be fine, okay? You did awesome.” Helen’s breath smelled like old coffee, but Annie needed her to stay there, inches away, give her something to focus on. She was gone before Annie could so much as nod. Based on the blackness outside her window, Annie guessed it was late.

  She was alone. She lay on her side with her knees tucked up to her chest and her hands stuffed up under her pillow, the way she used to when she was little. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t stop crying. She didn’t feel whole anymore.

  The girl was back. “Hey,” she said, sitting down in the chair next to the bed. “Your—the baby’s sleeping with her new mom. They both look re
ally happy together. Really peaceful.”

  Annie kept staring at the wall. So much of her was tied up with making that other woman happy.

  “Well.” The girl put her hands on her knees and stood. “I just thought you might like to know.”

  Annie nodded and glanced at the plastic ID badge dangling around her neck.

  Rebecca.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday, November 10, 2017

  Rebecca lost her breath when Addie told her the whole story that morning. “Did you hear about what happened to John Staybrook?” she’d said in a fake whisper. “Have you heard anything from Diane?” When Rebecca stared blankly at her, a light went up behind Addie’s eyes. If there was one thing she loved more than hearing gossip, it was telling it.

  It didn’t seem real. She’d just seen John the week before. He’d slipped her an extra twenty on her way out his front door after watching Ella, which she didn’t find until she’d gotten home and counted the small folded pile of bills. She had the twenty in her wallet, ready to give back to him the next time she saw him.

  She had to sit down. She landed in one of the cheap wooden chairs they kept behind the circulation desk. To her credit, Addie murmured in sympathy and ran across the street to the Dunkin’ Donuts, returning with a coffee that she left on the desk for Rebecca. Rebecca stared at the Styrofoam cup. The coffee grew lukewarm while Addie chatted with patrons in hushed tones, her voice occasionally rising for an “I know!” or “Can you believe it?” followed immediately by a worried glance in Rebecca’s direction. At the end of the day, Rebecca dumped the coffee in the trash.

  On the drive home, all she could think of was Ella, inhaling that book on the floor the day before and asking unanswerable questions about Lacey. How had Diane told her about her dad? Had she cried? Rebecca imagined she must have and was glad she hadn’t had to see it.

  At home, she walked slowly up the steps to the bedroom. The room was dark; they kept the curtains drawn so Mack could fall into bed, no matter what time of day he got home. The covers were still taut across the mattress where she’d tucked them that morning. He wasn’t back yet.

  The closet door, swollen since the house was built, had to be jiggled just so before it would moan open. She pushed aside the dresses and skirts hanging there. Behind them was a space barely large enough for her to curl up in. She climbed back and let her clothes fall together behind her, closing her in.

  She sat on the dusty floor and squeezed her eyes shut. It was childish, she knew, but she’d always liked small spaces, nooks and crannies that held her in and couldn’t surprise her. She brushed one hand out across the floor. And there were the boots. She pulled one into her lap. It was impossibly small—the sole fit into one hand. They were brown, the brand name long ago worn away.

  They’d been hers when she was a kid. She’d toddled after her father and older brothers in them almost every afternoon when her mother would drop her off at the boat and cheerfully proclaim that she needed a break. Rebecca had taken them home in a burst of optimism over two years ago when she and Mack had first decided they were ready to try. They’d gone to her parents’ for the weekend, and her mother had smiled knowingly when Rebecca came downstairs with the boots in her hand. Rebecca had blushed, but then she’d smiled, too.

  She’d kept them in the front hallway at first, lined up with Mack’s Xtratufs. Then up in the bedroom, then here, in the back of the closet. Where she didn’t have to see them. It was like that with the second bedroom downstairs. When they’d moved in, she knew instantly that it would be the nursery, but of course, she couldn’t decorate it as such. Over the months, the years, it accumulated boxes of old dishes and Mack’s hunting rifles. Now, it was little more than a room-sized closet.

  She shimmied her fingers inside one of the boots until she found the roll of money. Squinting in the dim light, she counted it once more. She almost had enough to cover their annual deductible, which they would surely need if she were going to start seeing specialists. She was almost ready to show Mack.

  A door closed downstairs. Rebecca stood up, slamming her head against the ceiling. She tumbled out of the closet, hand clamped to the spot that already rang with pain, as footsteps creaked up toward the room. And then there he was, finally Mack, standing in the doorway, the light from the hallway spilling around him.

  “You’re home,” Rebecca cried as he wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her nose while she kissed his chin, then they swapped positions before their lips met. Their ritual. She burrowed her face into his neck and breathed him in, the fishy, gas-fumed air of him. In the coming days, he would shower over and over again until the scent finally left him. And then he’d leave again.

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” he said. She felt his voice rumble up through his chest. “Heard about what happened to Johnny on the radio on the way in, so I stopped at the Break to pay my respects.”

  Rebecca almost burst out with everything she’d been thinking that day before she remembered that Mack didn’t know how well she knew John because of the babysitting. She shouldn’t be any more affected than she was by the other losses Devil’s Purse had endured over the years. She pushed back from Mack and ran her fingers through the snags in her ponytail. “I heard that, too,” she said. “How awful.”

  “I can’t believe it.” He shook his head and scratched at his stubble. “One of the best around, and he leaves behind a wife and child. You gonna bring them anything?”

  “Oh,” she stammered, “sure.” She tried to come up with a suitably detached sympathy dish that wouldn’t make Mack suspicious. Ella loved her chicken tetrazzini, but was that too intimate?

  Before she could say anything more, Mack’s face lit up. “I was wondering where you’d put these,” he said.

  Rebecca turned to watch him bend to pick something up behind her. It was one of the boots. The blood froze in her veins. She must’ve dropped it in her rush to get out of the closet.

  “Can’t believe these fit you once,” he said, smiling as he held it up to his face. He shook it slightly, and his eyebrow raised. Rebecca’s toes curled under. “There’s something in here,” he said. “Hope it’s not a mouse living in your closet. Danny was telling me they got a real infestation over at their place this year.” He peered into the boot, and she held her breath tight in her chest.

  He pulled out the cylinder of rolled cash and looked at it quizzically. “Is this your money, babe?” he said, as if he almost hoped it wasn’t.

  “Sure is,” Rebecca said, stepping closer. No sense covering it up now. “I wanted to surprise you with it. I’ve been babysitting for Ella Staybrook off and on while you were away. I think I’ve got enough now for us to see a fertility specialist. Theoretically.” She waited for him to tease her like he always did for using a ten-dollar word when “supposedly” would do just fine.

  He said nothing. He flipped the money over and back between his fingers, staring at it. “You got a second job without telling me?” he finally said.

  A spot of anger flared in her throat. Who was he to tell her what she could and couldn’t do while he was away? For God’s sake, it was babysitting, not anything illegal. She folded her hands together. “I didn’t want you to have to worry about it,” she said. “I know those things can get expensive, and our budget is…what it is.”

  Mack nodded, but he still wouldn’t meet her eye. “We can’t keep it.”

  Of all the things she expected him to say, this was the very last on her list. “Of course we can,” she said.

  “Diane’s husband just died,” he said. He tossed the cash onto the end of the bed where it rolled to the floor with a sad little thump. “We can’t keep her money.”

  She blinked. Diane had one of the best jobs in town. They bought a new station wagon and a new pickup truck every five years.

  Rebecca opened her mouth, but Mack put his hand up, palm out. “Can we talk a
bout this later? I’m beat. I need to get some sleep before I say anything stupid.”

  “Arguably, you already have,” was what she wanted to say. She turned on her heel and left the room in peevish silence, swinging the door shut without caring if it slammed.

  She fixed herself a frozen dinner, spiraling the gummy fettucine alfredo around her fork. Mack could fix his own dinner if he saw fit to come downstairs. She ate in front of the TV and hastily clicked past the local news channel—they would be talking about John, she was sure of it—before deciding on a marathon of police procedurals. For three hours, she watched, focusing on solving the mysteries before the detectives so she wouldn’t have to think about whether she should’ve told Mack from the start.

  Her eyes began to close as a millionaire got dragged, weeping, off to jail while the detectives shook their heads. She curled up on the couch and fell asleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As it did every time a man went missing, the Breakwater was closed to the public that night to allow John’s buddies some time alone to talk about him. When Jimmy went to check on the yellow paper sign he’d taped to the window, no tourists were waiting. It seemed even they’d heard what happened and knew to stay away. He shouldered back through the crowd and took up his spot behind the bar.

  The night had started out pretty quietly. The news from the Coast Guard was always the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, turning rumor into a funeral. Things picked up soon enough, though.

  “Still can’t believe he’d’ve done something so stupid.”

  “Remember that hurricane a few years back? Irma or whatever? Winds blowing at forty, fifty, and he keeps driving down to the docks to check on his boat. He called me to tell me my mooring’s loose. I said, ‘Johnny, you really think I’m leaving the house right now? Are you crazy?’ He kept threatening to fix it himself till I finally told him I’d be right there.”