Here to Stay

by Suanne Laqueur

  A small pause on the other side of the line. “I’ll have it,” John said. “Thank you. It means a lot. Honestly, Fish, I only did what any man would’ve done.”

  “But you did it when it mattered. I left and you stayed. You were more of a man than I was and I won’t ever forget it.”

  Erik’s ex-wife called. “Miles and Janey told me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry.”

  Her ubiquitous use of baby used to grate on his nerves. Now it settled like cool water on a burn.

  “And I’m sorry,” he said, setting his forehead against the cold refrigerator door. “I understand so much now, Mel, and it’s making me think of when… I mean, I…”

  “I know,” Melanie said. “I know, baby. You don’t have to explain. I put you and Daisy on the prayer board of my church. We’re holding you tight. Now you rest and take care of yourself.”

  Daisy’s ex-boyfriend, Ray Bonloup, who had lost a child of his own, sent a book of Mother Goose rhymes with breathtaking watercolor illustrations. It was going to be a birth gift, he wrote. And I’ve been agonizing what to do. I send it with my love and my compassion. I know you think nobody understands. Please know I do. And know I will tell you the truth. One day it will hurt just a little less. One day, you will smile again. Beauty still exists. Joy still exists. I promise, you will find them again.

  Kees Justi sent flowers with a note. He couldn’t call yet, it said, because he couldn’t stop crying.

  They stuck the cards and letters on the refrigerator door, making a colorful, layered collage. Unlike the urn, all the beautiful words and sentiments belonged in the kitchen. They ate them for breakfast and nibbled them as a last, late-night snack.

  One day, in the mailbox, an envelope postmarked from Virginia Beach arrived. Addressed to Erik this time. Inside was a single sheet of paper, a clipped verse from the Bible taped to its center. Psalm 41—his and David’s old battle cry in the wake of the shooting.

  All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me, saying, ‘He will never get up from the place where he lies.’

  David’s handwriting beneath in blue ink.

  Opie called to tell me what happened. God, I’m sorry, Fish. I can’t imagine the place you’re in. Can’t wrap my mind around this kind of loss. It’s beyond words. Beyond everything. My heart hurts for you and Dais. It’s not fair.

  I wish I could do something to help you get up.

  I’m thinking about you guys all the time.

  I’m so sorry. For everything. It never stopped mattering to me. I never stopped missing you.

  Dave

  Erik made to fold the letter back up but then smoothed it out instead. He took it inside, to the kitchen, and stuck it on the fridge.

  “Thanks, man,” he said, touching the bible verse with his fingertips.

  Daisy’s milk came in. She arm-swept the vanity in the bathroom and fell on her knees on the rug, her face in her hands. Rivulets of pale gold spilling from her breasts and making tracks along the loose skin of her stomach.

  “It’s just coming,” she said, weeping. “I’m not doing anything. It’s just wanting to come out for him.”

  It was her ugly cry. Brayed, choking sobs and her skin filling with heat. Her fingers hooked in her hair. Erik held a towel to her chest, held her head against him and rocked her until her body trembled into stillness.

  She went tight and quiet after that episode. He found her at the end of the dock the next evening, smoking cigarettes, nearly five years after kicking the habit.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “I’m going on a bender. You can join me or you can clean up afterward.”

  He went back to the house for a bottle of wine and joined her in the Adirondack chairs. They smoked clear through the pack, butts piling up around their shoes. They chugged straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth, and when it was killed, they opened another one. Then another. They got disgustingly, sloppily shitfaced and woke up the next morning feeling like a collective ash pit. A pair of festering dumpsters.

  Because why be miserable when you could be wretched?

  “Are you all right?” he asked every day.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  Indeed her entire presence seemed confused. She walked into rooms and stopped cold, looking around like she didn’t recognize her own house. She paused in the middle of a sentence, searching for a word, perplexed it wasn’t there. Her eyes looked either stunned or exhausted. She held a book in her lap but turned no pages. She said she wanted to go to bed. Then she tossed and turned.

  “I keep thinking it was something I did,” she said in the dark one night.

  Startled, Erik picked his head up off the pillow. “Something you did?”

  “He was kicking me all day. He was trying to tell me something.”

  “No, honey,” he said, an entirely different narrative in his mind. He’d been kicking himself for days, full of recriminations for trusting the nurse and not taking Daisy to the ER as soon as she’d spiked that fever. For not being that husband—the one who didn’t take chances with his pregnant wife’s health. Medical attention a couple of hours sooner and they wouldn’t be in this fucked-up mess. This was a test to see what kind of father material he was and he had scored an effortless F-minus.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his stomach cowering in a corner, positive she was going to figure out it was his fault, pack up and leave him.

  “Yes, it was,” Daisy said. “I should have paid more attention. I should have known.” Her voice cracked open and she dissolved into weeping.

  “No,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “You couldn’t have known, Dais.”

  “He died in me,” she said, her voice elbowing its way through the harsh sobs. “He was kicking me all day because he was dying. I just went around like nothing was wrong and all the while he… What was happening to him in there? I can’t stop thinking about it. Was he drowning, was he choking? Was he being strangled or smothered, thrashing around in there trying to breathe while I—”

  “Dais, don’t do this to yourself,” he said, tightening the circle of his arms.

  “I couldn’t help him,” she said, nearly incoherent now. “I feel like my own body killed him. He was supposed to be safe inside me and he died in there. I was his mother and I couldn’t…” She broke out of Erik’s embrace, grabbed one of the throw pillows and hurled it at the far wall. “Why,” she screamed into her hands. “I want to know why.”

  She fell down in the mattress again, curling into a ball. Erik pulled her in. Her back seized and shook against his chest. He held her tight and let her cry the poisoned thoughts out.

  I can’t take this, he thought. It’s going to kill me this time.

  Yet he lay there and took it, alive and wretched. A mirror of all the impotent helplessness Daisy felt for Kees. His wife was strangling and smothering in front of him and he had nothing to offer, no way of helping her, powerless to explain. He could only hold onto her, make his arms into a womb where she would be safe. All the while his heart flailed against his ribs, griefstricken, worthless and ashamed.

  Daisy shivered, finally going soft in his grasp. He got out of bed and went to run cold water on a washcloth.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, wiping her puffed face. “I will never blame you for this.”

  She sniffed hard behind the cloth, nodding.

  “I’m getting you a Klonopin,” he said. “No more tonight. I want to shut your head off so you can sleep.”

  She took the pill, tossed the wet washcloth on the floor and lay back down. He gathered her against him and the minutes ticked by in brooding silence.

  “And who are we kidding anyway,” he said. “If anything’s to blame, it’s my stupid sperm. They probably showed up with only half the blueprints. Jesus Christ, I can’t do anything right.”

  He crafted the words as a joke, but they go
t tangled up in the tight passage of his throat, splintering his voice in half. Daisy turned to him, grabbed at him with frantic hands. “No, Erik.”

  “I’m the why. Blame me. I’m useless.”

  “Useless?” Her arms went around his neck. “You think this is being useless? You’re letting me throw every ugly thing inside me onto you. You’re letting me scream, letting me cry, letting me be weak and broken and defeated. This is everything I couldn’t do after the shooting. This is the side of me I was terrified to show you. But I’m showing it now and you…”

  “And I’m not leaving,” he said. It was the most vulnerable and skinless he had ever seen her and he took the time to chisel it into his experience. “Whatever you have, you give it to me. Whatever you put in my way, I will move it. I’m not afraid of anything you show me. I’ll never leave you.”

  She took his head and pressed her brow tight to his. “You’re my husband.”

  At the simple declaration, his eyes blurred hot and he hugged her hard.

  “You’re the father of my child,” she said. “You’re my life, you’re helping me breathe, you’re keeping me alive. And I swear you are the only thing I love in this fucking world right now.”

  His body shuddered in her arms. He dug his fingers in the stale tangle of her unwashed hair and tasted the misery on her skin.

  “God, I hate everything,” he said. “I love you and hate every fucking thing else.”

  The fertility clinic put them in touch with a support group for parents of stillborn babies. Daisy found some comfort in the meetings, but Erik was strangely untouched by them. The horror stories shared around the circle beaded up on his skin. Nothing stirred his empathy or validated his feelings. He sat through the sessions with an attentive expression, surrounded by people in the best position to understand him. Yet he felt utterly misunderstood.

  Worse was having to see marriages straining and crumbling before their eyes. People attending solo because their spouse wouldn’t come. On more than one occasion, Erik was the only male present in the circle of chairs, listening to women grieve not only for the loss of their child, but the loss of communication, of support and intimacy. He felt the eyes on him as if he were the representative of the absent men. Tearful glances asking, what’s wrong with him? What am I doing wrong? Tell me.

  He had neither answers nor understanding. Overnight it seemed he and Daisy had crept into a new phase of mourning and they couldn’t bear being apart. They followed each other everywhere. One’s five-minute errand was cause for the other to get in the car.

  “I’d like to be alone.”

  “Fine, I’ll come with you.”

  It got slightly ridiculous. He sat on the bathmat waiting for her to finish showering. She waited for him outside the men’s room at restaurants. They stopped what they were doing eight times a day to put arms around each other, helping each other limp and hobble toward an unreachable finish line.

  Barbegazi had never been such a mess. They let the food spoil, the dishes pile up and the laundry go undone. The garden beds fell to weeds and the clutter accumulated. It could all be cleaned up later. Right now, they put their feeble energy into each other. All the little triumphs of their love story had been banked away over the years, accumulating interest. Now they made lavish withdrawals, cashed in every bond, every insurance policy.

  By day, they spent their emotional capital hand over fist, each splurging on silly necessities the other needed.

  “You’re the strongest wreck I’ve ever known,” he said when she succumbed to tears.

  “You’re the most useful person in my life,” she said when he gnawed mercilessly on his heart.

  At night, they lay down together, pulling marriage over their tired, aching bodies like an extra quilt.

  “Fuck everything else,” they whispered. “I just need you.”

  Erik woke up to find the other side of the bed empty and piano music tinkling from the room that was once the office and meant to be the nursery. Peeking in, he found Daisy doing a barre, holding onto the side of the crib. Stretching and limbering. Doing her core exercises.

  “Does it make you feel better?” he asked, sitting on the floor to watch.

  “First position is always first position,” she said, smiling. Then slowly her outstretched leg touched the floor again. The smiled dissolved and her gaze went far away. “No, it doesn’t make me feel better,” she said. “I’m so confused. I can’t find my center. I can’t balance. Everything hurts. And I don’t know if I should get back in shape or just screw it because I’m going to try to get pregnant again anyway. I don’t know what to do with myself. So I’m going through the motions of what used to make me feel better.”

  She returned to her routine but stopped after a minute.

  “Do you want to try again?” she asked.

  “Not now.”

  “I meant one day.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But not now. Right now I’m taking care of you.”

  Elbows on knees, he sat and watched, letting the strains of Chopin fill his chest with a dull melancholy. Letting Daisy fill his eyes with her beauty and her pain.

  You are my wife.

  He turned his wedding band around and around his finger as his sole purpose rolled cool and solid in his mouth like a piece of ice.

  I will stay here. I will watch over you.

  I will protect you.

  THEY CLEANED UP THE house and sank a little more conviction into the future. Yes, they would try again.

  “But take the time to mourn,” the doctors said. And the counselors. And the people they met at support group. They were doing it right this time. Perhaps over-doing it, but both had learned the hard way it was no good toughing it out alone. They went for counseling separately, and together. They read books. They threw information at it.

  Grieve and celebrate, the popular opinion seemed to be. Celebrate and grieve. Feel all of it.

  The handful of pictures Lucky took in the hospital were beautiful, but one was especially so. Erik lying in the hospital bed with Daisy’s head on his shoulder and Kees on his chest, both their hands cradling him. The gold chain around Kees’s neck and the charms resting on his back. The light was soft. The composition was peaceful and dreamy. The baby looked almost ethereal. Framed in silver, it was lovely. They put it on top of the piano, keeping a lit candle on one side and Vivian’s hummingbird on the other.

  They got a special box and put away the lock of hair, the hand and footprints, the hospital bracelet, the baby cap and the swaddling blanket. Daisy added the lab photos of the fertilized eggs and the sonogram pictures. Will came one day to disassemble the crib and put it in the attic. They kept the door to the empty nursery open and wandered in and out as it moved them.

  They tried to build it into the matrix. To let it hurt. To lean into it and feel it so they could make it part of them.

  It sucked.

  The rush of confused, post-partum hormones gave Daisy horrible night sweats. She woke up soaked and shivering, the sheets and the comforter cover sopping wet. Erik laid down beach towels and flipped the duvet over while she changed into dry clothes.

  He felt helpless as the loss manifested itself in other cruel ways. The bloodied pads in the bathroom wastepaper basket made him angry. Daisy’s breasts were rock hard and burning. The pain of her milk drying up made her face twist. It shot up into her armpits, throbbing and pulsing. She bound herself into tight sports bras, but sometimes the milk came down anyway, soaking through to her shirt. Or spilling through Erik’s fingers as he cupped those heavy, grieving spheres in his hands.

  Leave her alone, he thought, furious his wife had to bleed and sweat and leak this way, as if she needed a constant reminder of the loss.

  Let me take some of this away from her. Give me some of it.

  Make it fair.

  “It’s so unfair,” Lucky said. She had brought over a pot of chicken soup, pantry provisions and Jack.

  Jack put his arms up and Erik hugged him.


  “No, pick me up,” Jack said. Erik counted off and swung him onto his chest. Jack wrapped arms and legs around and squeezed. “You need an extra hard hug.”

  “And you’re so good at them,” Erik said from under young boy bones and muscle. He stretched out his arms, leaving Jack clinging like a monkey. “Look,” he said to Lucky. “No hands.”

  “He’s a clutcher,” Lucky said, smiling. “From day one. Just wanted to be held.”

  Erik set Jack down. The boy went upstairs to the bedroom where Daisy was reading. Erik peeked under the pot lid at the soup. It looked delicious but he wasn’t hungry.

  “I hate this,” Lucky said, stacking rolls of paper towel under the sink. “I mean honestly. Fucking enough.”

  “Is this where I say something about everything happening for a reason?”

  She shut the cabinet and got up, the tendons in her knees popping. She crossed her arms and looked at Erik. “We never talked about it, did we? You and I.”

  He shook his head. He hardly ever thought back to the night Lucky miscarried at Jay Street. When he walked through the drips of blood on the bathroom floor. Crouched down shivering to gather Lucky up in his arms, pull her into the safety of his embrace and get her to let go of what was already lost.

  Lucky reached to fiddle with the collar of Erik’s shirt. “Will always said, ‘If you can’t find me, get Fish.’ And that night… If he couldn’t be there immediately, I can’t imagine anyone else but you coming to the rescue.”

  “I didn’t do…” He let the words go. They weren’t true. And this wasn’t about him. He opened his arms and she hugged him tight.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. As if it had happened yesterday. “And if you ever can’t find Dais, you get me.”

  He let his forehead sink onto her shoulder. His body trembled with a weary sadness.

  The four of us need each other.

  We’re not weird. We’re nothing but typical.

  “You’re tired,” Lucky said. “Go rest. Send Jack down.”

  Erik went up and peeked politely through his own bedroom door. Daisy was asleep. Jack sat up against a wall of pillows, looking at the pictures in Erik’s book of Swedish folk tales. Feet making twin hills in the quilt. His expression serious as he turned the pages.