by Rick Hautala
“I don’t want to get too nosy,” Julia said, “but my math’s good enough to tell me that your oldest is only twelve; that’s not old enough to be —”
She cut herself off as the realization hit her.
Jesus!… Me and my big mouth …She lost the baby …
“Life’s full of ironic little twists, isn’t it?” Ellie said. She was still smiling, but Julia wondered if she had hit a long-dead but still raw nerve. “I miscarried a week after we got married. Maybe it was God’s way of punishing me.”
“Don’t even think that,” Julia said. Ellie had let her guard down, and Julia could see the lingering pain in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to —”
“Forget about it. It was years ago.” Ellie forced a smile. “I was only a couple’a months along. It wasn’t like I lost a child. Most people around town never even suspected it was a shotgun wedding, ‘cept for gossip, and once I got birth control pills, I didn’t get pregnant ‘till eight years later. It’s the trying that’s fun, right?”
“Absolutely,” Julia said, but she frowned and stared down at her coffee cup.
Even trying isn’t fun for us anymore.
That’s when it hit her that she couldn’t deny it. Things weren’t just rotten between John and his father. Things were rotten between her and John. They were drifting apart. Considering the strains they’d been under lately, that was understandable, but a sudden urge to be alone swept over Julia. She wished Ellie would hurry up and leave.
“That’s what I’d do if I was you,” Ellie said. “Men!” She made a sniffing sound and shook her head. “They don’t know what they want, anyway. I mean, Randy is so predictable.”
She looked at Julia and, pointing her finger at her, said, “You want a baby? Have one. John’s got nine months to adjust.”
Julia smiled weakly. She was wondering if she really did want a baby, or was she latching on to this idea because she knew, deep down, things weren’t going well between her and John, and having a baby might pull them together.
Was this need — yes, it was a need — to get pregnant a refuge from a marriage she saw heading toward the rocks but was too afraid to admit?
Their conversation turned to other things, thankfully, and they made plans to go to a local crafts fair on the weekend. Ellie told her about a place up in Windham where they could select and cut their own Christmas tree and suggested that a week before Christmas, both of their families could go out together and maybe have supper together afterward.
Julia thought that sounded like a good idea, but she was still stewing about this “baby business,” as John called it. There was nothing wrong with wanting to do something that would bring them closer together as a family, she decided, and maybe Ellie was right — John would have nine months to get used to the idea. She hardly paid attention as Ellie went on and on, chattering about this family or that situation. Finally, shortly before lunch, she left, saying she wanted to get home in time for Donahue. Julia was glad to see her go, but as she fixed lunch for herself and Frank and throughout the afternoon, she was lost in thought, trying to sort things out.
II
On Thursday, with Christmas nine days away, John took the afternoon off from work and went shopping on Exchange Street. When he had been rushing out to work that morning, Julia had given him a slip of folded-over paper, saying it was her Wish List. He didn’t take the time to look at it until he had left the office, deposited his briefcase in the car, and was striding down Exchange Street. When he opened the sheet of paper and saw what she had written, he didn’t know whether to get angry or laugh with relief.
Printed in small, neat letters in the middle of the page were the words:
A BABY
That was it.
The instant before he opened, he had the panicked thought that he would see, in heavy-handed pencil lines, something like —
I WON’T FORGET WHAT YOU DID ...
The relief had been so great he didn’t get as upset with Julia as he otherwise might have.
“Some help you are,” he said, resisting the temptation to crumple up the paper and toss it. If this was her idea of a joke, it was passable, at best. He remembered her best joke of all time — when she had sent him grocery shopping. She wanted chicken breast meat for an Italian dish she was making, so on the list, she had written, “chicken tits.” That had made him laugh so hard several customers turned and left the aisle in order to avoid him.
But this wasn’t simply a joke, and he knew they couldn’t talk rationally about it. He had tried his best to make her see how foolish it was to start all over again with babies. Besides, this didn’t give him any clue what to get her for Christmas. Looking at the overpriced goods in the Exchange Street shop windows, he had no idea where to start.
The wind blowing off Casco Bay was knife-edge cold, and the sky was a rich gunmetal gray. It looked like it might start spitting snow — again. As John walked up and down Exchange Street, he found himself feeling a touch of the Christmas spirit. The decorations on the quaint, little shops and the gentle strains of Christmas carols from outdoor speakers all combined to make him feel as though he had taken a step back in time and was wandering the streets of Dickens’ London. People walked by, bundled against the cold. More than a few smiled at him and nodded, uttering friendly holiday greetings. It was enough — almost enough, he thought — to make him forget about the problems hanging over his head at home.
After a couple of hours, in spite of Julia’s lack of help, he had an armload of presents — some nice soaps and perfume, a silver pendant sea gull, a new pair of Laurel Burch earrings to replace the ones which Julia had lost ... or which the rats in the wall had “borrowed,” and a package of writing paper and envelopes for Julia. For Bri, he bought a large stuffed alligator, a designer T-shirt emblazoned with the Portland skyline (the logo read: LONDON-PARIS-ROME-PORTLAND), and — against his better judgment — the new album by Bon Jovi. His father was the only problem, but he was content with the shopping he had done so far and took his loot back to the car. He considered leaving everything in the trunk and trying to find something for his father, but in the past two hours he had come up dry. Figuring he was burned out, he paid his parking fee and drove home.
His good mood evaporated as soon as he entered the kitchen.
“What the hell is this?” Julia said.
She had obviously been waiting for him at the door. In her hand was a sheet of notebook paper, which she flapped rapidly in front of him. He couldn’t see anything was written on it, but the cold clutching around his heart told him he had a pretty damned good idea.
“What’s what?” He was painfully aware of the tremor in his voice.
“This! What the hell does this note mean?”
She stopped shaking the paper long enough for him to see, scrawled in heavy pencil across the middle of the paper —
I WON’T FORGET WHAT YOU DID TO …
“Any ideas?” Julia said after giving him the note.
He had left the bags of presents in the car, intending to get them later so he could hide them until he got them wrapped. A cold tingle traveled up his spine as he clutched the paper. He shivered as he shrugged off his coat and, still holding the paper, went into the hallway to hang it up. He had noted the addition of the word “to,” and the gnawing in the pit of his stomach told him, now more than ever, that there was more to come.
“I ... I haven’t got a clue,” he said when he rejoined Julia in the kitchen. He turned the sheet of paper over in his hand, as though looking for more. After handing it back to her, he went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer, snapped it open, and took a huge swallow. His mind was raging, but all he could think was, he didn’t have anything more to say to her. He was as confused as she was.
“Where’d you find it?” he asked, trying to control the shaking in his voice.
“It was on the kitchen table when I got back this afternoon. I was visiting Ellie.”
John willed his hand not to tremble as h
e reached out and took the sheet of paper again. As he studied it, it struck him as remarkable how every sheet looked identical except for the addition of a new word each time. He knew — he was positive — he had thrown away the other notes, but this sheet looked exactly the same, even down to the torn ring holes on the side. The heavily scrawled letters, each of which had been gone over several times, still looked like a child had been practicing lettering, but he knew it was much more serious than that.
“Seriously. I haven’t got the foggiest,” he said with a dismissive snort as he handed the note back to Julia. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow, and his stomach was cold.
“What about the other ones, then?” Julia asked, nailing him with a hard look.
“What — what do you mean, ‘other ones?’” John mouth felt like it was full of sawdust, so he tipped his head back and took another healthy swig of beer, letting the bubbles cascade down his throat.
“I mean the other note — or possibly other notes — you might have found around the house.”
Her grip wrinkled the paper, and John wished she would throw the damned thing away and forget about it.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, squinting and shaking his head with confusion. He lowered his voice so, if his lie was too obvious, she might not notice it.
“I think you do,” she said, “and it bothers me that you would keep anything from me. The day we went out lobstering with Randy? Remember?”
“What about it?”
“I came down around three in the morning and found you sitting on the couch, staring out the living room window. Remember?”
John gave her a slight nod of the head.
“You had a note almost identical to this one,” Julia said, her voice taking on a steely edge. “And when I came into the living room, you stuffed it under the couch cushion so I wouldn’t see it.”
Again, John nodded, unable to maintain eye contact with her for long. To keep busy, he took another sip of beer.
“That one said, I WON’T FORGET WHAT YOU ... Now this one has two more words. ‘DID TO’ ... So what does it mean?”
“I told you. I have no idea.” John shrugged. “Maybe it’s Bri’s.”
He wanted to go to her and hug her … tell her to forget about it, that everything was all right, but a black chill was creeping through his gut, and it told him otherwise. Each additional word pushed his mind further down a certain path that he didn’t want to — he didn’t dare to follow.
“Bri’s not going to write something like this,” Julia snapped.
“Besides, this one wasn’t here when I left for Ellie’s, and Bri went to Kristin’s straight from school. She didn’t write it, and your father didn’t write it.” Julia’s voice broke with the strain. “I think it’s yours.”
“I’ve been in Portland all day. How could I have put it there?”
Julia relaxed and said, “All right. Maybe.” She heaved a sigh. “So you don’t know what it means — but do you want to know what bothers me the most?”
Unable to swallow much less form a word, John nodded.
“It bothers me that you would hide anything from me. I thought —”
Her voice choked off, and tears welled in her eyes.
Icy hands squeezed John’s heart until it felt like it was going to collapse inward. If he looked deep inside himself, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see noting more than dark, dry powder where his heart should be because he had an idea what those notes meant … what they were leading to. He might not know who was writing them — not yet, anyway — but he was positive what they meant. And he knew, as deeply as he knew the darkest secrets of his own heart, he could never tell her.
“I thought we were honest — totally honest with each other,” Julia said as tears gushed from her eyes. “But you found that note that morning and you hid it from me.”
“No, I —”
“Yes you did! You hid it under the couch cushion,” Julia shouted. “You didn’t know I saw you do it, but when you went upstairs to get dressed, I read it. Then later, I put it back, and you took it and threw it away because once we were back from our lobstering expedition, I checked under the cushion, and it was gone. Can you deny that you threw it away?”
Biting his lower lip, John nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice registering hollowly in his ears, “I did. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Why did you try to hide it from me in the first place? You didn’t tell me.” Julia’s voice broke as more tears coursed down her cheeks. “You didn’t tell me about it. You hid it from me and didn’t tell me, as if it was some ... some kind of secret.”
“It wasn’t that at all,” John said. “I’m as confused about this as you are. Yeah — sure I found the other note that morning —”
“Only one other?” Julia nailed him with a cold stare.
“Yes. Just that one. I swear to God! And I don’t know what this one or the other one means. I have no idea, so I threw it away.”
“I want to believe you,” Julia said. “I really do.”
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, but all that did was make them red and puffy. Her breath came in sharp hitches that shook her shoulders. She was still holding the notebook paper, now balled up in her hand, and she stared at it as if she expected it to give her an answer.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I mean, how can we have a … a marriage that works if I can’t trust you?”
“You can trust me,” John said, his voice low and — he hoped — convincing.
“But you kept this from me,” Julia said.
“It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Don’t you get it? If there are any secrets between us, what I thought was ... was love isn’t going to last.”
John was fighting back a flood of panic because he knew, as surely as he knew there would be a sunrise tomorrow, there would have to be another note to finish the sentence. If there was a chill in his soul now, he could only imagine how he would feel when the message was completed.
I WON’T FORGET WHAT YOU DID TO ...
Did what? ... to whom?
One more word … maybe two — a name — would complete the message.
John dreaded when the next note would come and what it would say, but more than that, one thing was certain: when it came, Julia would not find out about it.
“Can we forget about it?” he said.
He put his nearly empty beer can down on the countertop and came over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. She collapsed into his embrace, burying her face against his chest. Deep sobs wrenched her body as he ran his hands up her back and, lacing his fingers in her hair, gently rubbed the back of her head.
He was going to say more, about how she could trust him and believe him as she always had … that there were no secrets between them — ever — and never would be — but even as the words formed in his mind, they wouldn’t leave his mouth.
He couldn’t lie to her.
“I love you,” he said, pulling back and looking at her upturned face.
She gazed at him, her eyes glimmering with tears. She sniffed and wiped her nose with her palm.
“I love you, too,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper.
John didn’t like the way she looked at him, though. Her eyes were still narrowed with suspicion as though, if she squinted while she looked at him or caught a glance of him out of the corner of her eye, she would see someone different from the person right in front of her. He was afraid she would see who he really was. He could sense that, even if it was only the tiniest chink in the wall, he had lost a measure of her trust, and he was going to have to work hard to regain it.
They kissed, but even after they broke the kiss off and he took the crumpled note from her and tossed it into the trash can, he caught her, from time to time throughout the evening, looking at him in a strange way … as though she was no lon
ger quite sure who he was.
EIGHTEEN
Christmas Eve
I
It had always been a tradition in Julia’s family to wait until Christmas Eve to decorate the tree, and John had readily adopted that tradition because, for one thing, it went against what he saw as the over-commercialization of the holiday. Another more practical reason had always been that, until recently, he had usually been so damned busy up until Christmas Eve that he rarely had time to get to it before then.
School was getting out for the week at noon, and Julia suspected that John’s office — since they weren’t having their holiday party until New Year’s Eve — would also let out early for the day. While Frank watched, adding his own small talk, she decorated the house, taping the cards they had received around the living room doorway and nailing the family stockings to the mantel. The day was overcast, so long before sunset, she turned on the electric candles in the windows. Their orange glow flooded the living room look with warm light.
The night before, John had cut their tree to size and set it in the tree stand in the living room so the branches would drop. Julia was on her knees, testing and replacing the burned-out bulbs in several strings of lights.
“One favor I gotta ask yah,” Frank said.
“What’s that?” Julia asked. They still had an old fashioned string of lights where, if one bulb went out, the whole string stayed off. After trying for fifteen minutes to locate the offending bulb, she was close to throwing the string away.
