by Joe Meno
“How long will that take?” Sophie asks.
“I don’t know,” he says, and I begin to follow them both down the hallway again. He pushes Sophie’s hospital bed into the elevator and back into the emergency room. I say thanks and after he leaves, I kiss Sophie’s hand.
The ER doctor knocks on the door of the room. For some reason I find this funny, the fact that he knocks like we now own the place. He enters and says he’s still waiting on the ultrasound results. He says he thinks he should do a pelvic exam in the meantime. Sophie and I roll our eyes at each other again.
I get out of the way. I don’t want to see what’s going to happen. I do and I don’t. I think about maybe stepping out into the hall, but instead I stand beside Sophie, holding her hand tightly. The young doctor asks Sophie to slide down toward the end of the table. He is wearing rubber gloves which make his hands seem enormous.
He says, “If the cervix is open, then we know it’s a missed abortion.”
“A what?” Sophie asks.
“A missed abortion.”
“Is that the same as a miscarriage?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Can we please call it a miscarriage then?”
“Okay,” he says.
His face suddenly becomes serious. He continues searching around and then stops.
“The cervix is closed.”
I almost start crying. Then I do. I cry and cry, hopelessly weeping because I don’t know what the doctor means.
“Is that good or bad?” I ask.
He nods but does not say yes.
“There’s a lot of blood. We’ll have to see what the ultrasound says,” he finally mutters.
We begin to hope that this is all going to be one of those kinds of stories, something you tell to prove how much you love someone. “Once we were on a camping trip and Sophie got lost and I remembered that she always confused north with south and so I began hiking south and of course …” a story just like that.
As we wait, I hold Sophie’s hand. It seems like the only thing I can do now. We are both speechless. Words have become small and see-through and frightening. We listen to the sounds of the ER, to the prisoner outside the door singing in Spanish. Sophie holds her face against my chest and we wait and we wait and we wait.
The results from the ultrasound finally arrive an hour later. The young doctor enters the room, pushes his long hair behind his ear, and says, “I have some bad news …” but I do not hear the rest of the sentence because everything starts to ring. I do not ever remember crying like this in front of a stranger before. In the blue-gray hospital gown, her face screwed up in grief, Sophie looks like she is dying. I try to hug her, to hold her, but she is lying down and it is hard to get my arms around her. She presses herself against my chest and I begin to feel her tears on my shirt and neck. The young doctor is still talking. He is saying something about how one-quarter to one-third of all pregnancies end this way: that it is no one’s fault, that we did not do anything wrong. We don’t believe him. We search and search for the one awful thought we momentarily had and secretly blame ourselves and each other for everything. What hurts is to find out we are not as special as we had always believed.
We are just past twelve weeks and so we have already told everybody that Sophie is pregnant; people at our jobs we don’t really know, people we think we despise. In the emergency room, while we wait for Sophie to be discharged, we imagine having The Most Awkward Conversation of All Time with all the different strangers in our lives.
“It won’t be so bad,” I say. “We got pregnant once. We just have to try again.”
I sound stupid and I know it but I can’t stop myself from talking, from wanting to explain everything away. Sophie gives me a dirty look and we fall away into silence.
We go home. On the way, we stop for maxi-pads. In the aisle of the pharmacy, Sophie announces that she has to leave. She is bleeding on herself. She asks me to pick something out. I get one of each kind of maxi-pad, from light to super-absorbent, and then we hurry back home. I know I have gotten the wrong kind of maxi-pad but it doesn’t matter. Everything is wrong today.
We lie in bed all day crying. We call our parents and cry to them. We try to talk to each other about it but the bad feeling is here to stay for a while at least. When Sophie is speaking to her mother on the telephone, I go around the house looking for anything that might remind us of what we have lost. I put the children’s books we have bought, toys, clothes, in a closet. I stare at the pile of stuffed animals and feel like I need to apologize to them, too, for some reason.
I notice Sophie sitting over her cardboard box of tragedies. Without a word, she yanks off her plastic emergency room bracelet and places it inside, then puts the top back on and shoves it into the corner.
When we finally go to sleep, we are too tired to say goodnight. I lie there feeling as if I have lost both arms and legs. Like something more important than my heart has been stolen from me. What can be more important than your heart? I don’t know. Whatever it is, it is now missing.
When I get to work the next morning, I stare at the angry Post-it note the boss has left on my computer, then I crumple it up. I think about storming into his office and laying into him, telling him all the awful details, but I don’t. I sit at my desk and stare up at the fluorescent lights. I see the pink notebook, the one from the trash, lying in my open briefcase. It looks like something from a hundred years ago. I flip through its pages, drawings done in pen and pencil, fiery forests, tigers eating children with wings. It all seems small and sad and insignificant. I don’t know how to deal with how much has changed, I don’t know how to make sense of what has happened in only one day.
By the time Sophie’s birthday comes around a week later, neither one of us feels like celebrating. We decide to postpone it. Then it’s October, then it’s November, and we are still sad and undecided about everything. We agree that it would be better to celebrate Sophie’s birthday now, though, before January comes around, before the year has officially ended, which is why we go to the movies.
At the movies, I get the tickets, I ask Sophie if she wants popcorn, she says no, I give her a dirty look, I ask her if she wants popcorn again, she says no again, then we go inside the theater. A couple of Puerto Rican kids—teenagers—whistle at Sophie when she stumbles into the darkness. I eyeball them hard but all I get is a bunch of Mickey Mouse giggles. I wonder if there’s a problem with the clothes I’m wearing, my jacket, my shoes. Do I come across as a chump? As a target? Maybe. Ten years ago it would have been me laughing in the back row. Now I ignore it and chalk it up to a lame haircut I got two weeks ago.
Before us, the previews flicker along the rectangular screen, the announcer overly excited. We look for seats and find the only open ones, somewhere near the middle of the theater, along the right side, two rows in front of where some other kids, all high school age, have their feet up on the seats. They start laughing when we make the stupid decision to sit near them. We do our best to ignore what they say. In the dark, their voices are like the sound of a radio playing in a car as it passes by you, only a word or two makes it to our ears. One of them says something about Sophie’s coat, which is blue with gray fur, a ratty thrift store number. It’s a coat from when she was an art history major. It does look a little stupid, but so what?
In front of us, the previews have finished and the opening credits for the movie have begun to play. We hold hands and hope the kids will shut up and watch the film, but now I’m not even watching it. I am sitting there like an idiot, just waiting for something bad to happen.
We don’t usually go to this particular movie theater because it’s always pretty sad. The floor is sticky with spilled pop and the seats are almost always broken. I look up and notice that the movie has started. In it, a man and woman are arguing. The movie is black-and-white, subtitled. Now they are kissing, and the kids behind us are hooting and whistling, and as the couple onscreen begins to undress, Sophie leans over and says s
he wants to leave.
We make it to the parking lot without saying another word. “Why did you want to leave?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to see that movie anyway.”
“Okay.”
“We shouldn’t have even bothered,” she mumbles, pulling on her seat belt.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything for a while. All I come up with is, “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I didn’t do anything.”
“I don’t know why I’m mad at you either, but I am,” she says.
We drive home defeated, momentarily, by just about everything. The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are. When we get back to the apartment, we don’t know whose neighborhood it is anymore: Everything looks suspicious and bombed-out. Everything looks like a movie set of an ugly block. There is graffiti all over the place, tags upon tags. We don’t care really. We’re only staying here another year. We still feel angry at each other about something, though. When we unlock the front door that night, it doesn’t sound like the end of an argument. It doesn’t sound like an apology.
Sophie decides she has had enough and goes to take a bath. From the bedroom, I listen to the faucet running, the sound of her stepping into the tub, the soft splash of her moving beneath the water. I knock on the door. She doesn’t answer. I knock once more, still no answer. I touch the doorknob and find it is unlocked. I step inside, close the door behind me, and without thinking, I start to undress, before Sophie can begin to argue. Our tub is small—it barely fits one person—so I sit behind her and put my arms around her neck. I realize we have not been naked together for what feels like a long time, a couple of months now maybe. It feels weird and sad and exciting. Sophie turns around and puts some shampoo in my hair. She starts working it in using her fingertips, smiling at me. Silently, I begin to wonder if we will ever find anything funny again. I think about the pink notebook from the girl at the bus stop, which has been sitting in my briefcase for almost two months now. I think about how much time will have to pass before I can show it to her, how much longer it will be before we will be able to laugh about all kinds of stupid things. After she washes the soap out of my hair, Sophie turns and looks at me. I cannot tell if she is actually smiling but it seems pretty convincing, the single dimple appearing on her left cheek.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” is what she says back to me.
By Monday the moon has stopped glowing. One moment it is the singularly most important shape in the nighttime sky, and then it is gone, a blurry afterimage burning beneath everyone’s eyelids, and then it is only a question, only a flash, and then nothing, only a memory. Once the moon is no longer shining in its place, the rest of the stars quickly fade. And then, without the moon and stars, each and every kind of lightbulb loses its inspiration and soon begins to fail. Finally, there is only darkness, a complete and total absence of light as soon as the sun disappears every night. Tragically, the public finds itself getting lost each evening. Those who are lost must sleep in their cars, in doorways, or on strangers’ lawns. In the darkness, they wander around until they are tired, then lie down wherever they are, like brave little orphans. At night, it seems the buildings themselves have begun to move around. Street signs exchange positions. At night, avenues and boulevards become cul-de-sacs. Without the moon or the stars or streetlamps to keep things in place, people realize the speed at which the world is moving. The effect, as you can imagine, is rather dizzying.
Every evening, Thomas stares through his telescope at the absolutely black sky, squinting at the phantomless night, waiting for his father’s telephone call. The remainder of a few candles light his room. It seems the glow of the flame is the only light that still works properly. It is true that Thomas does not have a job anymore; once he was an illustrator for a magazine about nightlife in the city, but then people began to get lost in the dark and so, of course, the magazine quickly folded. Thomas has noticed that since the moon has gone dark, his hair has begun to grow rapidly. In dark waves, it hangs messily above his ears. Thomas spends his time drawing pictures of what the moon used to look like. He attempts sketch after sketch while he waits for his father’s call each evening. Thomas’s father works nights; he is an accountant at a large insurance company. The insurance companies have been doing quite well—because of the general chaos and calamity—and so they have found it necessary to extend their business hours. Every evening after work, Thomas’s father will spend much time hopelessly wandering around the vacant city, his long white face wrinkled in a frown, searching aimlessly for where he has parked his car, then, after hours of that, he will drive in widening loops, looking for the hidden location of his house. Often times, he will give up and wait until morning, sleeping in his car alone. Or he may pick up someone else who is lost and offer them a ride, but after many tense hours, this other person will often be unable to locate their home as well, and so Thomas’s father and this stranger will pull over and try to rest; an awkward unfamiliarity will make it quite difficult to sleep. Out of this unnamed nervousness, and to avoid hearing the other person breathing, Thomas’s father will often leave the car’s engine running. But as it turns out, there are thousands of people who find themselves stranded like this each and every night.
Usually around midnight, Thomas’s telephone will begin to ring. Tonight, Thomas adjusts his telescope, searching through the impossibly unclear shapes orbiting the darkness downtown for the tall, slanted figure of his father, dragging a brown, sturdy-looking briefcase at his side, but there is nothing. In the viewfinder of the telescope, there are many different kinds of blackness—some resembling the kind of darkness that occurs when you place your hands over your eyes, a certain kind of darkness that is partly cloudy, and some that are all pins and needles—but there is nothing resembling a man.
“Hello?” Thomas answers.
“Thomas?” His father’s voice is higher and sounds more confused than normal.
“How are you tonight, Dad?”
“I’m well, son. I’m in a parking garage right now, I think. I don’t know where I am exactly. I keep driving around and around but I can’t find the exit. Is it possible they forgot to build an exit?”
“I don’t think so, Dad.”
“It has to be somewhere. I’ve been at it for about three hours now. I just keep driving in circles.”
“Is anyone with you?”
“No. There are a number of other cars driving around too, doing the same thing. None of us can find the exit to this thing.”
“Do you want me to try and find you with the telescope?”
“No, I’m okay. I guess I was just getting very lonely. The radio keeps playing the same songs over again. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t dreaming.”
“Well, Dad, I’ll talk with you as long as you like.”
“Thank you, Thomas.”
“So tell me about your day, Dad. Did anything good happen?”
“I had a large bowl of soup for dinner. It was delicious.”
“That sounds good.”
“And how was your day, Thomas?”
Thomas looks around at the wrecked nest of his apartment. There are reams of crushed paper strewn everywhere. There are illustrations of what the artist imagines the moon used to look like when it was full, hanging above a delicate mountain. There is a drawing of a couple, a man and woman, kissing, their hair lit by magical moonlight. There is a picture of the citizens of some imaginary city pointing up at the wondrous beauty of a half-moon, their eyes dancing with pleasure.
“I spent the day drawing mostly.”
“And the evening?” his father asks.
“I spent most of the night looking through the telescope.”
“And what did you see?”
“I saw a lady with a dog walking along the street. She must live in the apartment building across from mine. I thought it was too late to be walking her dog, because it was ju
st around twilight, and the woman began to shout as the sun went down and she made it back to her apartment building just in time. But her dog wasn’t with her. It had gotten lost, I guess. She cried from her window for a few hours but the dog hasn’t come back yet.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I know. Even the animals have been getting confused. The pigeons outside my window don’t leave the telephone wires anymore. They’re getting awfully skinny.”
“It is all a mess,” Thomas’s father says.
“Are you having any luck finding the exit, Dad?”
“I’m following a station wagon now. It seems to know where it’s going.”
“Okay, we can keep talking until you find your way out.”
“I appreciate it. There’s about ten cars behind me now. We’re all lost, I guess.”
“Can you see a sign anywhere?”
“Wait a moment, yes, there, there it is. It was there the whole time, Thomas. I got lucky following this gentleman with the station wagon. If your mother calls, tell her I’ll be home very soon.”
“Okay, if you get lost again, don’t be afraid to phone me.”
“I will, Thomas. Thank you.”
Thomas looks out the telescope once more. What appears to be a large silver skyscraper suddenly becomes an abandoned factory. In the autumnal darkness, twin smokestacks begin to bellow out gray smoke. Thomas places the telephone beside his bed waiting for it to ring again. When it does begin to chime a half hour later, twice, then stops, Thomas knows his father has made it home okay. From the corner of his eye, he glances up at the sky again, sure he will catch the moon sneaking guiltily across the firmament, but no, like always, there is nothing.
Thomas makes drawings of the moon and sells them to people who are nostalgic for how the sky used to be. His specialty is drawings of the moon rising in the nighttime air above an imaginary city. Already Thomas has forgotten certain critical details of his subject. He remembers the moon having a number of windows, like portholes, directly along its center. In other drawings, the moon is shaped more like an egg; it balances obliquely between a number of silvery clouds, a thin crack running along its middle. In others, the moon has grown some visible rivers and lakes.
