Bones are Made to be Broken

by Anderson, Paul Michael

  And then he stopped, froze, in the doorway of the guest bedroom. It had become Evelyn’s room. The computer was gone. It was seeing it missing to realize that, although Carrie had never hit stop on the recording, Evelyn’s heartbeat had stopped playing.

  Danny’s mouth worked. The muscles of his face were on the move again.

  “Is that the help I need, Dan?” she said, softly. “Do you need some, too?”

  Danny’s mouth snapped shut with a click of his teeth. “You weren’t the only one who lost the child, Carrie.”

  And he turned, walked down the stairs, and out the door. She heard it click shut behind him.

  “THEN WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE SUFFERING FROM IT, YOU FUCKING BASTARD!” she shrieked, and slumped against the wall beside the doorway of Evelyn’s room, the heels of her fists to her eyes, not knowing if she wanted to scream, or cry some more, or what.

  When the immediate storm began to pass, she looked through the doorway. It was their guest bedroom again, though the computer was shut down. Not that it mattered, she thought.

  Day 1, Post-Birth

  Drowsing in the murky line between wakefulness and sleep, the hospital bed is comfier than she had ever thought possible. Her lower body is numb—the epidural—but she sense the throb within her lower belly and vagina, biding its time, like a banked fire that just needs a little fuel. Her legs feel odd.

  (like how stretch armstrong would feel if toys could feel)

  But what she really feels is an emptiness. Not a hollowness, like something was taken, but like something has separated.

  (evelyn evie she’s here)

  She hears her child cry to her right, lusty bursts from new lungs. She tries turning, but the sheet over her is too heavy and she is so, so tired. The dim throb in her lower belly stirs.

  Shhh, she hears Danny say. I got it, hon. Rest. Lemme check the little princess.

  Hungry, she wants to tell Danny, but her jaw is too heavy. Better to lay on the bed, better to feel the sheet. Everything is good. Everything is right. They’d had a scare, early in the pregnancy, but that was a nightmare, brief and as easily dispersed upon waking.

  Carrie moves her arm, feels the cool sheet—

  —and realized she was feeling Danny’s cold side of the bed.

  Carrie opened her eyes and the gray light of dawn was beginning to seep into the bedroom. She sat up, feeling the throb fade as the sound of Evelyn’s cries dwindled from her head. Her hand went to her stomach, felt the flatness there, felt the firmness that had returned as her body had purged the unnecessary weight.

  (in the other world my stomach’s flat, but not firm. i am not stretch armstrong.)

  She fell back onto the bed. She couldn’t hear Evelyn’s heartbeat, anymore. Of course she couldn’t. Evelyn, somewhere else, was born. Carrie rubbed her flat stomach.

  The alarm on her smartphone went off an hour later, but she was already awake.

  Evelyn’s room was set up when she passed it three hours later.

  Carrie stood in the doorway, hand on the frame. She didn’t walk in. Looking at the room, deep in shadow because the sun was on the other side of the house, was like looking at a museum display. What would this one be titled? Baby Culture of the Early 21st?

  (life for the new parent)

  (i’m not a part of this world)

  The air shimmered, slowly, and the guest room slowly resolved before her.

  Danny called, but she missed it; she was at a staff meeting and had left her smartphone in the bag. He didn’t leave a message.

  She called back without thinking, but when the line clicked over to voicemail, she hung up.

  She didn’t try again until after lunch, and the same thing occurred. As if knowing what would happen, she went to the rest room and when she returned saw a missed call—Danny.

  I can’t talk to you, these calls said. But I want to.

  I just can’t yet.

  (somewhere, danny and i are getting used to the idea of being parents and, somewhere, evelyn is getting used to being alive.)

  Carrie opened the door and Danny was screaming, bellowing, upstairs, while the house itself shook with the amplified cries of an infant.

  “My CHILD!” Danny shrieked and Carrie jumped. “THIS IS MY CHILD, GODDAMMIT! She’s here, she’s BORN, and you either make time or you DON’T! This isn’t something to be DEBATED!”

  “Danny?” Carrie yelled, but she couldn’t even hear herself. She glanced back at the driveway—only her Subaru. “DANNY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  “YOU THINK THIS IS A FUCKING OVERREACTION?” Danny screamed. Meanwhile the recording of the crying infant—Evelyn, she’d know that girl anywhere—kept going on and on. “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?”

  “DANNY!” Carrie dropped her bag and vaulted up the stairs two at a time.

  And the sound of Evelyn and Danny faded. As she ran up the stairs, it was as if she was running away from it. She reached the top, used the newel post to swing her around, and vaulted for her bedroom, passing the Evelyn’s room without a glance.

  But Danny and the recording were gone.

  She stopped in the doorway, panting, her nerves singing with adrenaline. The bedroom had been rearranged. The computer desk sat where here the low bookcase next to her bed had been.

  She walked around the bed and saw that a fifth file had been added to the open Download file: “Evelyn’s hunger cry.”

  Carrie swallowed hard.

  The computer desk began to fade, becoming translucent, as the bookcase returned. She blinked and was back in her own world.

  She sat down on the bed, and stared at the bookcase.

  Tomorrow, she thought, without even wondering what she meant. Tomorrow we come home.

  She shook her head and pulled her smartphone out of her jacket pocket. Danny had called again, but she didn’t have the energy to play the game.

  Tomorrow, she thought again, and stared at where, in the other world, the home computer sat, complete with its recordings of her daughter.

  Day 2, Post-Birth

  Thursdays were reserved for meetings, first amongst general staff, then amongst the various sections, then one-on-one with the editors and photographers, if needed. Contacts were exchanged. Background info was dug through. It was a day where lunches were ordered in and Carrie watched the steady rain through her office window, periodically checking her phone.

  Danny called her three times, no messages.

  She called the same amount, with the same result.

  Today, she would think, out-of-context with whatever else might be going on.

  When she left that evening, her car was gone.

  She stood on the curb of the parking lot and looked where it should’ve been—as if, by staring, the car would fade back into the world.

  It didn’t.

  The sound of traffic on S. Prairie Street, heavy with the weight of rush hour faded as she stepped off the sidewalk and crossed to her spot.

  No cubes of broken window glass on the asphalt.

  No tire tracks.

  “Shit,” she said, and reached into her jacket for her phone.

  Which wasn’t there.

  She held her hand in her pocket a moment longer, as if the phone would materialize.

  The rain, which had become a light drizzle, gained force. Slowly, like a hunter stalking skittish prey, her other hand wandered to her other pocket, where she kept her keys.

  That pocket was also empty.

  (of course it is)

  She straightened, and looked back at the Register-Mail ’s building. Most of the windows were dark. A few copyeditors and layout people were still present, but far in the back. Her passkey was on her missing ring. She’d have to scale a fence to get to their windows.

  (i’m unmoored and i can’t even call anyone)

  “We are alone,” she said and thought of Danny saying he had just been wishing to be whole again, to be a family like they were meant to be, and how, holy shit, that so hadn’t happened.


  If Danny tried calling, would she pick up? And would he realize it’s not the Carrie he’d walked out on, the Carrie who didn’t share this history with him?

  She started for the street. Her first step didn’t immediately put her in another part of town.

  She took a second step, and the same non-thing happened.

  Third step and still present and accounted for.

  She picked up her pace, even as the rain came down harder.

  Galesburg wasn’t that large, and home wasn’t that far away.

  Even if it wasn’t her home, anymore.

  Danny waited in the mouth of the driveway, as soaked as she was, staring bemusedly at their Jeep and Subaru. With the rain had come an early evening, and the streetlights at the far corner were already powering on.

  “Hey,” he said. He continued to stare at their vehicles.

  “Hey.”

  He took a deep breath. “I would’ve called—again—but my phone was gone.”

  “Mine, too.”

  He looked at her with one eye, head slightly canted, like he was examining her. Fat droplets fell from his hair. “It’s where I think it is, isn’t it?”

  She crossed her arms, cupped her elbows. “Where do you think it is?”

  He nodded, as if expecting that answer. “I’m sorry, Carrie.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He turned back to the cars. “None of this makes sense.”

  “We’re not in our world, anymore,” she said.

  He glanced at her.

  “I mean,” she said, looking down the street, at the streetlamp growing brighter, “it’s our world, but where I didn’t miscarry. We’re just in the world next door.”

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “Fuck, I’m not good at this. I teach post-modern lit, for Chrissakes.” He dropped his hands. “Why? Do you know that?”

  She shook her head. “Not a clue. Maybe you wished it. Maybe we both did.”

  A light came on in their house, the downstairs living room, its soft yellow glow falling across the darkening lawn and highlighting half of Danny’s face, showing how tired and worn he was. He’d aged ten years in the past ten weeks.

  They moved across the lawn without speaking, not going to the door, but to the window itself. Carrie saw herself, slumped on the couch, in a baggy shirt she’d never owned. She was dozing, but trying not to, her head cocked as if she were listening to someone talking.

  “Jesus Christ,” Danny whispered.

  Carrie had read about doubles and doppelgangers in fiction, but she felt no strange vertigo; it was like looking into a warped mirror, where what you saw wasn’t how you perceived yourself. This was a version of Carrie that had given birth, that had gone on maternity leave.

  (that isn’t standing outside the window with her shoes slowly sinking into the soft cold mud)

  Carrie took in her other’s skin, the way the hair needed washing, the soft brown bags under her eyes, the way how, in spite of all that, she exuded that aura others called a glow.

  She’s content, Carrie thought.

  “Holy shit, hon,” Danny whispered, taking her hand. “Look.”

  He pointed and his double came into the room, holding Evelyn, wrapped in the receiving blanket from the hospital.

  “Oh, holy shit,” Danny repeated, his voice thick. “Holy shit, holy shit.” He squeezed, and she squeezed back, hard.

  The other Danny sat down next to Carrie, still talking, and Carrie turned so she could view the child. From the window, Evelyn was mostly turned away, but Carrie saw a plump cheek, the infant version of Danny’s nose.

  Carrie’s eyes burned, and tears mixed with the rainfall.

  They watched their doubles talk to the child and each other, both exhausted, both glowing, both ignorant of their childless, other versions watching.

  Danny raised a hand to touch the glass and she said, “Don’t.”

  He stopped and looked at her.

  She tried to smile. “That’s not us, hon.”

  He stared. His eyes were wide and glassy and wet. His Adam’s apple bobbed frantically.

  “This isn’t ours. It’s theirs. Okay? It’s theirs.”

  His face crumpled. “Why not us? Why couldn’t we have had that?”

  She sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, began to cry even harder. “I don’t know, Danny. But we couldn’t.”

  He pulled her in and she cried into his shoulder and he cried into hers as, through the window, the other Danny and other Carrie cooed to their daughter.

  “I’m sorry, Carrie,” he said into her neck. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  She hugged him tight.

  Slowly, the fierceness of their grips lessened and they looked first at each other, then through the window.

  The family was gone, but Carrie caught flickers of movement through the archway leading to the kitchen. She bit her lip. Did she breastfeed? Formula?

  Holding his hand, she turned away and led the way back down the lawn. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s let them live their lives. We have ours to fix.”

  “How?” Danny asked as they reached the street.

  She shrugged. “I haven’t a goddamn clue. We have our own version to live.” A glance at the house, with its warm lights and center. “It just isn’t that.”

  Danny followed her gaze and his face rippled. “At least we got to see how it would’ve turned out.”

  “Did turn out,” she said. “For them. Not us. Those are ghosts, Danny. Ghosts of What Might’ve Been.”

  “We’re the ghosts.”

  She looked down at the streetlamp on the corner, its bright cone of white light on the wet pavement. “They got their happy ending.”

  “What about us?” he asked.

  “Let’s start with a walk, figure it out from there. Shit, it’s not like we can go into the house, anyway.”

  He surprised her by laughing and squeezed her hand.

  They started walking, heading for the corner. To anyone who looked, they would’ve appeared glowing. Then the watcher would blink, realize he or she could see through Carrie and Danny, see the bright flare of the corner streetlight.

  They faded, faded, and, by the time they reached the corner, they were gone.

  Acknowledgements

  This is the award-acceptance speech part of our program, but don’t leave just yet.

  Thanks to Michael Bailey for being the capable steward of this ship. Dude does so much shit, and so well, that we all kinda hate him a little bit, even as we cheer him on. Still, he has placed himself beside me and that’s the place I want him most.

  Thanks to Chris Morey and everyone at Dark Regions Press.

  Thanks to Pat R. Steiner, for fucking around with public domain photos one day.

  Thanks to the various editors who liked these stories, showed them to their readers. Big ups to Max Booth III and Lori Michelle at Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, as well as Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson at Grey Matter Press. Often vilified, small press is made better by having these guys around.

  Thanks to Damien Angelica Walters, writer and friend, for going to bat and writing a foreword to this book, even if she told me she’d never written one before. I wasn’t worried. A stellar storyteller in her own right—seriously, go pick up Paper Tigers and Sing Me Your Scars; you won’t regret it and this isn’t bullshit—she’s also a trusted beta-reader who knows when to call it, and how. I don’t always listen to her advice, but when I don’t, I usually rue the day.

  Thanks to two other beta-readers, Kristi DeMeester and Erinn Kemper. They consistently challenge me to do better, both through their comments on my stories and their own writing. I have more beta-readers, a whole battalion of them it sometimes seems, and these stories wouldn’t be any good without them.

  Huge thanks to Justin Pierre for the permission to use a part of his song “Everything That Hurts” as the epigraph to “Bones”. I began the second draft of that story with the chorus at the t
op of the page, as a guide, even as I told myself I’d have to take it out as the book marched towards publication. To not have to, to be able to both share a good song and a bit of inspiration for the story, was more than I could ask for. Thanks, Justin. If the epigraph or me talking about the song piqued your interest, go to justincourtnerpierre.bandcamp.com.

  Thanks to Joe Hill, for 20th Century Ghosts and “Pop Art,” and to Harlan Ellison for Shatterday and “All the Lies That Are My Life.”

  Thanks to my wife, to whom this book is dedicated. She hitched her wagon to my train sixteen years ago and, nine years ago, soldered the two ends on, making them inseparable. She has been more than patient over the years, when I’ve had my head glued to a computer screen and earbuds jammed into my skull … but she’s never hesitated to tell me to get back in the game when I’m away for too long, that I’m missing that thing I’m supposed to be writing about: life.

  And, finally, it’s cliché as fuck to thank the reader, but, really, thanks. Now, before you go—Neil Gaiman tends to place stories in his introduction, and Joe Hill placed one in the afterword of his collection, but I haven’t come across a poem in an afterword.

  I don’t tend to write poetry—my verse never went much beyond aping Charles Bukowski—but I wrote the following one night, while stuck on a story, and I liked it. I wrote it for myself, which is who writers have to write for first, anyway, before audience and editors. I never showed it to anyone, for years, until I sent Michael Bailey the pieces I was thinking of including for publication. If the rest of this book is about alienation and being an outsider—two things I’ve struggled with for decades—then the following is the response. So, one final special message, from me to you.

  It’s been fun. Let’s do it again sometime.

  And You are

  Losing