So far, the basinet had been the only thing removed. By her ; Danny, if he was in the house, refused to leave the guest bedroom and the ultrasound recording.
Burning in her chest and she grimaced. “Goddammit. I carried her. I felt her going. That was my blood.”
Heat gathered in her face again and she pressed her fists into her eyes. She counted Mississippis, ragged breath after ragged breath, until she cooled.
“Okay.” She moved her hands to the line no longer on her stomach and looked at the spot where the basinet had been. “Okay.”
***
Carrie collapsed onto the single mattress in the guest bedroom and laid there until her heart stopping whamming her breastbone quite so hard. Her head throbbed, a cloud of heat surrounding the crown. She hadn’t moved this much since before the pregnancy.
The crib was gone, shoved into the back of her Subaru along with all the boxes and containers. She’d hauled the pieces to the single bed up from the basement and now they leaned where the crib had. Danny still had baby things in the back of his Jeep, she presumed, but she could get those out when he came home tonight.
She shoved herself off the mattress, tottered, and went to the little desk, where a glass of water sweated into the scattered paper crap and fiberboard. She drank half the glass at a glut, and when she said “Ahhhh”, it wasn’t an affectation.
She set the glass down, then froze, her hand still holding the glass.
“What ?”
She moved her hand, knocking the glass over onto the carpet and not even noticing, and brushed aside random papers. A thin, clear CD case lay beneath.
“What ?”
She fell into the chair ; if it hadn’t been there, she would’ve fallen onto the ground. Her legs were a million miles away.
She picked up the case with shaking hands. MY BABY’S DVD, the green DVD label read. Beneath, in smaller print, “This DVD is provided to you and your family as a personal record of an important family experience.”
Her other hand covered her mouth, although there were no words, no sounds. Her chest was a solid thing, incapable of beating blood or taking air.
“I threw this away,” she said through her fingers.
It’d been in her purse for weeks ; she’d actually forgotten about it. Another attack of pregnancy-brain. The sonogram appointment had been at eight in the morning and as the ultrasound tech had handed her the DVD, Carrie, as she came down from the rush of watching the fetus
(evelyn)
move and its
(her)
heart beat and counting its
(her)
toes and organs, had been craving more coffee and-or a nap. After seeing the picture in real time, the DVD had been an afterthought.
During the fourteenth week, very fine hair called lanugo covers the baby’s head. The baby’s bones begin to firm. The liver and pancreas begin secreting.
When Carrie had found the DVD at the bottom of her purse during what would’ve been the eighteenth week, she’d thrown it away, buried it in the kitchen garbage before she could stop and think. She hadn’t even told Danny.
Danny.
He must’ve seen it in the trash.
She gripped the case until a silver crack shot across the front. “Danny.” It came out as a hiss.
She dropped the case back onto the desk and, when the inevitable urge to put the DVD into the computer surfaced, she swept the entire desktop off to the side and into the garbage can.
(I carried her. I felt her going. That was my blood.)
Her eyes burned, her face crumpling like tissue paper, and she turned her gaze to the computer and its geometric screen-saver.
She swatted the mouse and, of course, the download folder was open with only one file in it.
“Ultrasound—Week 8.”
The file was exactly forty-five seconds long.
Eyes wet, she right-clicked on the icon and selected DELETE. Are you sure, the computer asked.
She clicked Yes only because she couldn’t punch a hole through the screen itself.
Her husband was a bastard, but now the download folder was empty.
She hugged her stomach, which was also and of course empty, as she had when the first whamming cramps had come during the seventeenth week. No cramps now, though. Nothing.
She rested her head against the edge of the desk and squeezed her wet and burning eyes closed.
***
“What ?” Danny said, louder than she’d heard him speak in weeks.
She roused herself, rolling over on her bed. She had no memory of coming in here. The windows were dark. Danny’s nightstand clock read seven-thirty.
“What ?” Danny said again. He was in the other room. The hardwood creaked heavily under his feet.
She sat up, shook the cotton from her brain, and stood. The room swayed around her and she had to throw a hand to the wall to steady herself. She made her way to the guest bedroom, fingers trailing the wall, her movements stiff, her muscles.
She found Danny sprawled in the little chair, almost falling off it, and staring at the empty download folder on the computer. His shoulders shook. Behind him, the single bed was reassembled and remade, complete with the pillow and comforter she’d pulled from the closet.
He turned to her and his eyes were red and wet and irritated, his face slack.
The fetus doesn’t begin to open and close its eyes until the thirty-second week.
They stared at each other, and the memories rebuilt themselves in Carrie’s head.
Danny’s mouth worked. “You deleted it.”
There were many words that could be said, but what came out was, “And I threw away the DVD of the sonogram. Again.”
He blinked at her. “What ?”
Her muscles tightened. It wasn’t due to overwork. “I can’t do this alone, Dan.”
He gaped at her and her fist wanted to go through that expression the way it had wanted to go through the computer screen. “What ?”
“You’re not the only one who lost !” she yelled and the wet, shrill sound of her voice just made her stiffer. “You’re not the only one who can’t sleep ! Can’t eat ! Can’t fucking focus ! I carried her ! Do you get that ? Do you ?”
He flinched at the last word and it took all her will to tamp down the scream that wanted to explode.
“I felt her, Dan. I felt her go, and I felt the pain of her going. Me. Not you. You’ve done nothing but listen to that . . . that . . . that fucking track for weeks on end !” She squeezed her eyes closed, willing the tears back. “We both lost something and I’m the only one paying for it !”
She opened her eyes again and Danny’s face had lost its slackness, was tightening and darkening. A brief, bitter surge of animal triumph swept her like heat rush. Now he felt something other than his dopey fucking stupid sadness. Good.
She lowered her voice. “Where were you ? Where were you ? In here, wishing things hadn’t turned out the way they had ? Well, so do I ! But I don’t have the luxury of pining the fuck away like you do ! I’ve had to carry this whole goddamn thing ! You listen to that track, you kept that fucking DVD when you knew it was in the garbage for a reason, and have you once—have you once—come to me ? Talked to me ? Been with me ? You skulk around here in your own bullshit, completely forgetting I’m the one who felt our fucking child die !”
His face was completely dark, his eyes hard. “Wait a fucking minute—”
“No.” She sliced the air in front of her with the side of her hand. “No, I’ve been waiting long enough, thanks.” She’d started hunching over and she made herself straighten. “You wanna be alone, then be alone. What’s the difference now, right ?”
She turned away, but not before she saw the hardness wink out of Danny’s eyes, and there was a true moment of emotional divide in her head. She felt that heat-rush of going-for-the-kill triumph, bitter and green and ripe . . . but she felt her heart open at the same t
ime.
“We are alone,” she said and went back to the bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the nightstand lamps.
She jumped onto the bed and screamed into her pillow until her throat, red and raw and shredded, gave out on her.
Later, on the line between awake and dreaming, she heard Danny, still in the guest bedroom, say in a thick voice, “I have been wishing. Wishing we were whole and fine and a family. Wishing that we weren’t alone. That’s all I ever wanted.”
She crossed the line into sleep and didn’t know if she’d imagined the episode or not.
Week 32, Third Trimester
An extra picture-frame sat on her desk.
She stopped in her office doorway, holding a box of red pens. She had Pandora up on her computer—“These Days” by Foo Fighters played—and it was the only sound in the long, low building. Her office was the only source of light besides the red EXIT signs at either end of the main hall. The next day’s issue of the Register-Mail had been put to bed, sent to the printers. Not even cleaning people remained.
And there was an extra picture-frame on her desk—turned away from her, of course, so that the photo would be visible when she sat down. She’d worked for the newspaper for six years, had been in this office for four, and there had always been two photos on her desk—one of her and Danny on their honeymoon, in New York ; the other showing Danny teaching at Knox College. She’d looked at those photos so often she no longer saw them ; they’d assimilated into the general look of her desk.
And now there was a third frame. An extra frame. A wasn’t-there-when-she-got-up-to-go-to-the-supply-closet frame.
“Hello ?” she called, her eyes locked on the frame, and then winced. What a dumb fucking horror movie move.
But she heard a creak, weight on the floor, and adrenaline dumped into her system by the gallons, and the spit in her mouth turned acidic, and she stiffened, and the creak came again, and she realized—Jesus fucking Christ—it was herself making the floor creak. She couldn’t stand still.
Carrie took a breath, whistled it out, took another. But she didn’t move from the doorway. The sweat of her palms softened the cardboard box.
She should be home right now. Danny would be home. She should be home and Danny should be home and they should be talking. She shouldn’t be here, copy-editing every article the copy-editors had left behind because she couldn’t bear to go home, couldn’t bear to be in the quiet house, couldn’t bear to be surrounded by the ghost heartbeats of what wasn’t to come.
She shouldn’t be standing in the doorway, staring at the back of the picture-frame that shouldn’t be on her desk.
“Oh, fuck this,” she said and walked in. The air seemed thicker, less yielding, as if trying to push her out.
She walked around the desk, slamming the red pens down, and looked at the picture in the suddenly-new frame.
And froze again.
“Oh, fuck this,” she repeated, and her voice was a sigh.
It was a sonogram photo, showing the fetus in a sliver-moon pose.
During the thirty-second week, the fetus loses the lanugo and begins to develop real hair. It blinks, practices breathing. With the right assistance, the fetus would survive premature birth.
The thump-thump of a heartbeat came to her ; not hers, but the memory of that damned forty-five-second recording.
She reached for the photo, then pulled her hand back, fingers curling in, as if it might burn her. She tried again, and this time touched it. It did not disappear in smoke, or crumble, or become intangible. She felt glass. Plastic.
She picked it up, ran her fingertips over it. The way the picture was set, the border cut off the date at the top of the photo. This could be some anonymous photo, something printed from a Google Image Search put here to fuck with her,
(by who ? when ?)
but it wasn’t. This was hers.
This was what she carried. Evelyn.
The thump-thump increased in sound, until it twinned with her own pulse.
Carrie’s vision blurred and she blinked. “Oh, fuck,” she breathed and her voice was wet.
Her stomach clenched suddenly, viciously. She dropped the frame onto the desk and dashed back into the hall, hand covering her mouth as her throat filled, barely making it to the restroom in time before her lunch jumped up and out. Her throat worked, her stomach pushed, and her face burned.
(like morning sickness all over again)
That earned another clench and she vomited again. Finally, she flushed, then laid her head on the seat, eyes closed against the restroom fluorescents, breathing heavily through her mouth.
(who would do this ? when ?)
Her mind instantly said, Danny, but it wouldn’t hold. They hadn’t spoken more than one or two words since the fight, passing each other like wary tomcats. But did it really seem like Danny ? Danny, moping around ? Danny, lost in his own pain ? Danny, who had absolutely collapsed when she’d laid into him ?
(you wanna be alone then be alone)
“Shit,” she whispered.
(we are alone)
She tightened her closed eyes, but tears escaped, anyway. “Shit, shit, shit.”
She grabbed a wad of toilet paper, wiped her mouth, then flushed again. She staggered to her feet, using the sides of the stall for support, and walked out, pausing briefly to check the mirror. She used minimal makeup, but she looked like a raccoon, anyway.
After the brightness of the restroom, the hallway was pitch-black. She shuffled back to her office doorway.
And, upon returning, the picture frame was gone.
“The fuck ?” she said and rushed to the desk, looked under it, moved around papers. She looked at where the frame had been sitting and only now noticed that, when the picture had appeared, the other two photos, as well as her little paperclip cup, had been arranged to accommodate it. Picking up the frame had left a hole in the arrangement.
Now the set-up was as it had been before.
The third picture had never been there.
She sat down and looked at her hands. She remembered the feel of the glass, of the plastic backing.
It took a moment to notice that the thump-thump of the heartbeat was gone, as well.
“The fuck ? The fuck is this ?”
Hallucination popped immediately into her head, as well as nervous breakdown. That got her moving, switching her to automatic before any thoughts could really unspool, turning off her computer without shutting it down—killing the Rolling Stones in the middle of “19th Nervous Breakdown”, oh how apropos—grabbing her bag, and getting the hell out of there.
Week 35, Third Trimester—Day 1
She came home to an empty house and Dutch Master daffodils on the kitchen table.
She stopped in the kitchen archway, the day’s mail still in her hand. The flowers had been set in the center, arranged in a clear vase, tied with a fat pink ribbon. A folded cardboard note hung from the ribbon.
She and Danny still weren’t speaking. Moreover, the things that they should be saying were piling up, filling the house more quickly than baby detritus had. Soon it would push one of them out, although Carrie hadn’t gotten that far in her thinking, mainly because she couldn’t bear to.
(you wanna be alone then be alone)
She touched one of the daffodils. It was cool against her fingertips, slightly moist.
When would Danny have done this ? He left before she did. He wouldn’t have allowed some random florist into their house.
She pulled a flower out, smelled it. Outside, winter was only grudgingly giving way to spring, but the wet-earth smell of the daffodil made it like spring had already arrived.
“Danny,” she said and it didn’t come out as a hiss.
She set the flower back in the vase, then opened the note.
Only a month away !,
it read in Danny’s scratchy handwriting.
And everything in Carrie turned down. The memory of the
recording—thump-thump-shush-thump-thump—filled her head, pushed other thoughts out. Her eyes traced the words again and
(only)
couldn’t quite
(a month)
believe what they amounted to.
(away !)
“What in the holy fuck ?” she said, loud in the empty kitchen, trying to overpower the sound of the ghost heartbeat, and dropped the note, jarring the vase with the back of her hand so that some water sloshed out the side. She backed away, the muscles of her face flexing between confusion and rage.
She didn’t need to put together what was a month away.
“What,” she said and couldn’t immediately find more air. “What the fuck. . . ?”
She fumbled for her smartphone, then went into the hall. She pulled Danny’s cell from her Recent Calls list—the back of her mind noting how far down the list it was—and hit SEND.
It rang into his voicemail : “Hi, this is Dan Finney. Sorry I missed you ; leave a message and I’ll try to correct that.”
She stabbed the END button, then thumbed through contacts for his office line. The air in the house grew moist, as if the daffodils had brought the greenhouse with it. She slammed open the front door and onto the front porch.
Danny picked up on the third ring. “Professor Fin—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you ?”
“Carrie ? Carrie ? What—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you ? You think this is funny ? That I would laugh ? Are you out of your fucking mind ?”
Danny didn’t answer for a long time. Carrie breathed through her clenched teeth.
“I . . . ” The resignation in his voice was the cold clear admission of guilt she needed. She opened her mouth, and then Danny said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Carrie.”
She straightened. “What ?”
“I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Carrie.”
She screwed the phone hard into her ear, tried to pick up the telltale clues in his voice. She’d known Danny for almost two decades, and he lied very rarely, but she was a good journalist.
“You didn’t leave flowers on our kitchen table.” It should’ve been a question, but her voice refused to leave a low rumble. “And you didn’t leave a note telling me we were only a month away.”
Lost Signals Page 37
