Babyland

by Holly Chamberlin

“But I’ll be nice, for your sake.” Jack hefted his bag and stood.

  “What you really mean is that you’re late for an appointment.”

  “Yeah. Come on.”

  And then Jack did something he’d never done in our entire professional relationship. Ever so lightly he took my elbow and steered us through the crush of hungry mid-afternoon folk. And something very strange happened to me. For the first time in my life I was suddenly, unexpectedly flooded with desire. It hit me hard. I felt sick. I felt euphoric. I felt dizzily alive.

  Outside the shop Jack let go of me.

  “I’ll see you,” I said, just a bit shakily. “Thanks for the brownie.” I wanted to add, And thanks for asking for my opinion. And for listening to it. And thank you for touching me.

  Jack nodded. “Right.”

  Reluctantly—what did I want to happen?—I turned toward Shawmut Avenue. Jack’s voice called me back.

  “Anna?”

  He stood there on the corner, only fifteen or so feet from me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You know about the miscarriage.” I was pummeled by a riot of emotions—relief, fresh sadness, desire. Who, I wondered, had told him? Did it matter?

  “I wanted to say something earlier. I should have.”

  A small, absurd laugh escaped my lips. “It’s okay,” I said. What did Jack have to apologize for? “Really.”

  And suddenly that riot of emotions was just too much, and I began to cry. I wanted to rush at him, fling my arms around him, beg him to hold me. But neither of us moved.

  Jack’s eyes held mine. “Things will be better, Anna.”

  I could only nod. And then I turned again toward home. I thought of the roses and knew in my heart that Jack stood and watched me go.

  69

  Mourning Becomes No One

  Ross called later that afternoon to say he was stopping by on his way home from the office. Stopping by, not staying for dinner or spending the night. And while I waited for Ross, a strange little memory came to me.

  When I was a child I thought that mourning doves were morning doves. Although I’m not sure I ever actually saw a mourning dove before noon, I thought, What a nice name for those beautiful gray-brown birds.

  When I finally learned my mistake I felt so foolish. Of course “mourning” made sense. It perfectly describes the bird’s plaintive call, what’s often been described as its mournful murmur.

  Mourning doves are monogamous maters. It’s not unusual for the male to stay with the female through the winter. Oddly, especially given this fact, mourning doves are notoriously poor nest builders.

  Mourning is the act of sorrowing.

  I stood before the bookcase in the living room and scanned titles. I suppose, I thought, without much enthusiasm, I should buy a book on grief. I suppose I should read something by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and maybe that book about bad things happening to good people. Then maybe I’ll better understand what’s happening with me. And what’s happening with Ross.

  I’d done all that research on celebrating new life; why shouldn’t I do some research on letting life go? On letting lots of things go.

  I turned away from the bookcase and sat tiredly on the couch. Since the miscarriage, Ross and I had hardly spoken to each other; the conversations we’d had were stiff and cool. Suddenly, we were so very distant from each other. I knew that the days and weeks following a miscarriage were trying for any couple. I imagined that such a misfortune might bring a couple closer.

  But I was mourning alone. Ross, I assumed, was, too, because we certainly weren’t mourning together. We weren’t even sympathetic to each other’s grief. I had no comfort to offer him, and he had none to offer me. Whatever it was we had had together seemed suddenly gone. Just—gone. Just like the baby.

  I heard the sound of familiar footsteps below and peered out the living room window. I saw Ross take a set of keys from the pocket of his suit pants just as he reached the foot of the stairs leading up to the building. A few minutes later there were three knocks on my door. Ross had chosen not to use his key to my apartment.

  Suddenly nervous, I opened the door. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.” Ross stepped inside and immediately opened his briefcase. “Here,” he said, handing me a catalogue. “This came for you.”

  “Thanks.” I took it; it was from L.L. Bean. I wondered why Ross hadn’t just left it at the loft where I would find it soon enough, but I didn’t ask.

  “How’s work?” I said.

  “Fine. Busy.” Ross didn’t touch me at all, no gentle kiss, no soft squeeze—no comforting hold on my elbow.

  “Me too,” I said. Only a few days earlier I’d been dying to ask if he’d confirmed the band’s playlist for the reception. It occurred to me then that I didn’t really care what the answer would be. So I didn’t ask the question.

  “Would you like to sit down?” I asked, as if Ross were a guest and not the man I was soon to marry.

  “No,” he said, “I can’t stay long. Anna, I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay,” I said. Hornets sprung to life in my stomach.

  “Did the doctor say when it would be okay to try again? To get pregnant?”

  “We never tried in the first place,” I replied. Why did I find it necessary to remind us?

  Ross rolled his eyes. I remembered reading a study about lasting relationships. Supposedly people who roll their eyes at each other are headed for divorce.

  “You know what I mean, Anna.”

  “We can have sex now, if you want,” I said, surprising myself.

  Ross laughed bitterly. I’d never heard bitterness from him. “You don’t sound very interested.”

  I wasn’t at all interested.

  “What about the pill?” he asked then. “You didn’t go back on it already, did you?”

  So he didn’t want me to be on the pill?

  “No.”

  “Well, are you going to?”

  So he did want me to be on the pill?

  “Not without discussing it with you, first,” I said. “We’re getting married, Ross. We’re supposed to discuss things.”

  Ross threw his hands in the air. Huh, I thought, watching Ross as if from a great distance. I’ve never seen him so animated.

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” he said. “Come on, Anna, give me a break.”

  “We already decided we didn’t want children.”

  I hadn’t planned to say that. I hadn’t planned to say anything.

  “Yes, but everything’s changed now,” he said testily. “When you got pregnant—”

  “When you got me pregnant,” I snapped.

  “I seem to remember you being there, Anna. It took the two of us. I never forced you to be with me.”

  No, I thought. You never forced me. I said yes to you. But why? When I still didn’t reply, Ross demanded, “Are you mad at me?”

  What did Ross want to hear? Was he spoiling for a fight?

  I looked away. “Yes,” I said. “No. I don’t know.”

  Suddenly, Ross reached for the briefcase he’d set on the hall table. “Look, maybe we should talk about this some other time. I’m going home.”

  “Don’t go, Ross,” I said. “Stay with me. You haven’t stayed with me since it happened.”

  “You didn’t seem to want me to,” he said.

  So, he’d noticed. “Are you mad at me, Ross?” I asked, wondering if I was spoiling for a fight. Knowing I was desperate to feel—something, anything—with Ross. “Be honest.”

  “Not tonight, Anna. Not while you’re in this mood.”

  I moved to block his way to the door.

  “It’s not a mood, Ross. It’s me. It’s better we talk about this now.”

  I don’t, I thought, have any more time to waste being in the wrong life.

  Ross looked at me closely and said nothing for a long moment. Finally, he took a deep breath.

  “All right, you want to talk. We’ll talk. I am mad, Ann
a. Maybe I shouldn’t be but I am.”

  “At me?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer I knew was coming.

  Ross’s eyes shifted away from mine. “Yes.”

  There it is, I thought. At last.

  “Do you blame me for the miscarriage?” I asked in a perfectly modulated voice.

  Ross looked back to me. His eyes were blazing. “You never wanted a baby in the first place,” he spat.

  I recoiled. “Neither did you!”

  “But I was excited when you got pregnant,” Ross said, poking at his chest with his finger like some parody of a cave man. “When we got pregnant. You were never excited. You were never happy.”

  How little he knew me, the man I was supposed to marry!

  “That’s a lie!” I cried. “How can you say that, Ross! My God, I so wanted the baby. My baby.”

  I wondered, Our baby? I put my hands over my face. I felt so awfully alone.

  “I’m sorry, Anna.” Ross’s tone was properly repentant. I didn’t believe him for a minute. “I shouldn’t have—”

  I lowered my hands but kept my eyes focused on the floor. “You should go now,” I whispered.

  “I thought you wanted me to stay.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t speak the words that were crowding at my lips.

  Ross left.

  70

  Glimpse

  The confrontation with Ross left me too disturbed to sleep, which, in the end, was probably a blessing. I wasn’t sure I’d survive the dreams that night.

  How, I wondered, could things have gotten so bad so quickly? Could Ross and I ever get back to where we’d been before I got pregnant? That place seemed so very far away. I almost couldn’t remember what it was like.

  My mind was a dark whirl of fear and sorrow until morning.

  Throw yourself into work, people advise. If you’re busy you can’t sit around worrying or being depressed. Take refuge in work, volunteer at a retirement home, keep moving to avoid anxiety.

  Keep moving. Not bad advice.

  Although I could have faxed Jack the revised layout for the Gott event, I told him I would drop it off. Keep moving. Walk the walk, climb the stairs.

  A note was taped to the door of the loft. It read, “A. Had to run an errand. Leave plan on desk. J.”

  I found the key where it always was, atop the doorsill, and let myself into Jack’s loft. Of course, I thought Jack was crazy to leave a key where anyone could find it. Of course, I’d told him that. There were thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment in his loft. But Jack does things his own way.

  I’m not a snoop. I’d never set out to paw through someone’s private space, to rifle through their mail, to examine their medicine cabinet. Really. But there it was, a yellowing piece of paper lying right there on Jack’s desk, typewritten except for a signature in blue ink. How could I resist glancing at it?

  The date on the top right corner indicated that Jack was eight or nine when this teacher’s evaluation was written. It amused me that Jack had kept this artifact of his early childhood. I wondered if he’d had it for years or if someone had recently come across it in the old family home. Who was that someone? Did Jack have a brother or sister? Were his parents alive? It occurred to me then that Jack had never mentioned a family.

  And I’d never asked.

  The document began:

  As a participant in the activities described on the previous page, John appeared to show the following characteristics.

  I wondered, briefly, when John had begun to be called Jack. Maybe at home he’d been Jack from the start. Maybe he’d adopted the nickname in high school.

  I scanned the list of categories and stopped on Cooperation. John, the teacher had typed, was “cooperative with adults though less so with children. At times,” Ms. Sidler went on, “his intellectual interests override his thoughtfulness.”

  “They still do!” I said aloud, amused.

  The sound of a door slamming somewhere in the building made me jump. Hastily, I put the paper back on the table and waited. But there was no other sound; no footsteps in the hall; no breathing just outside the door to the studio. With a final glance over my shoulder I picked up the report again.

  Creativity? No surprises there, either. “John is a creative thinker and shows great creative ability in the arts.”

  I read on to the next category. Ability to Express Ideas.

  “John,” Ms. Sidler wrote, “has an excellent vocabulary and expresses ideas in an organized manner. However—”

  “Ah!” I said to the studio. “Here it is.”

  “However,” Ms. Sidler wrote, “he tends to hold forth as if in a courtroom and often cannot be silenced. On one occasion my teaching assistant clocked John as pontificating on the rising and falling of the tides for a full seven minutes.”

  Only seven minutes? When Jack got started on a topic he could easily go on for twenty or thirty minutes without a break. And then I remembered that the pontificator Ms. Sidler described had been only a child at the time, a child gearing up for a life of pontification.

  Finally, I reached Participation in Planning and Discussions. Poor Ms. Sidler, I thought. How did she survive an entire summer with little Jackie? “John,” she wrote, “is an active participant in group discussions and offers excellent contributions. However—”

  And there it was again, the ubiquitous qualifier.

  “However, he demands more than his fair share of turns and tends to interrupt others while they are speaking. John also has a tendency to criticize his classmates in an unproductive manner. For example, instead of pointing out a potential weakness in a classmate’s argument, he makes strong statements such as, ‘You’re wrong’ or ‘That’s stupid.’ I would strongly suggest that John work on his people skills.”

  I burst out laughing. It sounded strange in the otherwise unoccupied studio space, a bit maniacal, like something you’d hear in a movie about an evil circus clown.

  Jack was Jack and always had been. He was a brilliant, pain-in-the-butt, dyed-in-the-wool individual. I had to hand it to Jack Coltrane. He’d remained true to himself all his life. Sure, maybe there’d been blips of compromise along the way, but at the age of forty-five, he was still—or once again—who he’d always been.

  I laughed harder than I’d laughed in a long time. And I wished Jack were there to hear my laughter because I wasn’t laughing at him, exactly. Okay, I was, but the laughter wasn’t born of meanness. It was born of fondness. It was coming from a place of affection.

  From a place of love?

  Maybe, I thought, it’s better that Jack isn’t here. I grabbed my purse and made a dash for the door.

  71

  Nasty Truths

  Alexandra came over bearing the latest issue of Italian Vogue and a large piece of German chocolate cake. I’d told her about my fight with Ross; this was her way of alleviating my posttraumatic stress.

  For a while we sat quietly. Alexandra flipped through the Vogue; I poked at the cake with a fork and thought about losing the baby. I had suffered a miscarriage. That was what Alma had said the other day. That I had suffered a loss. I thought about the word suffer and about the act or the state of suffering. I thought about enduring. About bearing the burden, about tolerating the pain, about learning to reconcile myself to this new, stark reality.

  The new and stark reality of being alone.

  The fight had only confirmed what I’d sensed was happening between Ross and me. We were so alienated from each other. I felt as if he’d shoveled the tragedy onto my head, thrown it at me, and walked away. I felt as if I’d done something wrong and shameful and that that something now stood between Ross and me. The miscarriage hadn’t bound us more closely. It had driven a wedge between us.

  I wondered, Had the pregnancy started the process of tearing? Or had it simply accelerated a process already begun?

  And if the pregnancy hadn’t ended like it had, if the baby had been born at full term, healthy and strong, would
the truth about Ross and me never have come to light? Would we just have gone on side by side, never really touching, until death did us part?

  I’d never know, not for sure. And the fact was, I’d never really been able to imagine a family of three—Ross, a baby, me. I’d come to see me and the baby, the two of us, alone together and happy. But I’d failed to see Ross as part of the picture.

  A failure of imagination. Just another one of my many failures.

  “I’m the first bad thing to happen to Ross,” I said abruptly.

  “What a horrible thing to say!” Alexandra cried, tossing the big glossy magazine aside.

  “No, it’s true,” I assured her. “Ross has never failed at anything.”

  “Maybe he never tried hard enough to fail.”

  I didn’t bother to comment on Alexandra’s observation. We both knew it was true.

  “No one close to him has died,” I went on. “His parents adore him. He’s never been cut from a sports team or rejected from a club. Do you know he turned down the presidency of his fraternity’s local chapter because he was too busy being president of some young businessmen’s club?”

  “And delegating his workload to his staff.” Alexandra’s tone was acidic.

  “Does it matter? Ross never asked anyone to marry him before me. And I said yes, immediately, no hesitation. Even then he’d won. And now ... I just know he sees my miscarriage as my failure. I’m tainted, and because I belong to him, he’s tainted now in some way, too. And it’s really upsetting him.”

  “And you still want to marry someone who finds you unacceptable because you’re human?”

  “Less than human. Damaged goods. A tarnished good luck charm.”

  “Answer the question.” Alexandra’s voice was tight.

  I looked at my friend. I could be wrong, I thought. I could be loading my own confused feelings of shame and failure onto Ross. I could be inventing the awkwardness between us since the miscarriage.

  But I knew I wasn’t.

  “I can’t,” I said, and my voice was weak.

  Alexandra’s eyes held mine. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. “You can’t answer the question,” she said, “or you can’t marry him?”