by Amy McNamara
I swallow, and for a second I can’t talk—a great swooping silence alighting on me like an owl on the hunt.
There it is, in my bag, as clear as if I had shot a picture of it, the little white test kit I had tucked away.
Cal opens his mouth, but I shake my head. I have to say this.
“It ended up being crowded anyway. Rowdy. End-of-the-school-year stuff. Some other kids we knew were at a house down the beach, and we made a giant bonfire. This guy Meredith kind of liked brought a guitar. We were all drinking.”
I can’t look at Cal. I know what I’ll see. The same look my mother wore when I woke up in the hospital.
“I know I didn’t . . .” I’m choking on it.
There I am, wearing new shorts, the cool ledge of Meredith’s parents’ huge bathtub pressing against the back of my thighs while I sit, gripping the little white stick.
I force myself back here, try to stop crying. I’m wrecking this whole night, but I think I have to say it out loud.
“I know I didn’t—I mean, the rational part of me knows it—”
But there it is again, the thing I keep running from. The way the second pink line appeared, slowly at first, then swift, solid. Complex mathematics, an addition, a division. One, then two. Doubling me. Splitting me away from my life.
“I killed us—” I choke on the words.
He tries to interrupt, stop me, shush me, but I shake my head, shake him away. “Cal, I was pregnant.”
Now I have to look at him. Watch his eyes widen with surprise. Take me in, see who I really am.
“It was so unreal, I didn’t tell anyone, Meredith—it was such a stupid mistake,” I say. “I knew better. I was late. I’m never late.”
I am crying too hard to say more. Great way to spoil a beautiful night. At least I’m reliable. Cal holds me close. Until I can breathe normally again.
“I panicked. I blamed it on Patrick. Because I wanted us to be done, I’d gone off the pill, but then he—we—” I wipe my face on my sleeve. “When I saw that second line, it was like everything I wanted was falling apart. Amherst, starting somewhere new, I was so close, so nearly out of there.” My teeth are chattering like I’m cold or something. “Away from my mother, from Patrick and the way everyone saw us, even Meredith, all our habits. Suddenly breaking up seemed like the most important thing I could do. I had to do it.”
Cal props himself up on one elbow. I cover my face.
“Cal, I wished it all away—” My nose is running now, tears down my neck, in my ears. “And it happened! I lost everything.”
He pulls my hands from my eyes and kisses my palms. Holds me, says nothing. Lets me cry. But the words sink me. I imagine I’m shrinking to nothing. It gets easier to talk.
“I didn’t tell Patrick about the test,” I say. “Just that I was done. It turned into a huge fight. I was messing up the plan, his plan. We were supposed to travel together over the summer, then leave for school. No good-byes, whatever happened, happened. We agreed. He kept saying that over and over, but you agreed. He couldn’t believe it. I started saying the meanest things I could think of, tried to make myself into someone else, someone he’d want to let go.”
I close my eyes, remember realizing how drunk Patrick was, worse than me, how long I’d been in the bathroom staring at that test, while he’d been on the beach, partying. Someone put wet wood on the bonfire, and the smoke swirled around us, the smell still in my hair the next morning in the hospital.
“We were loud. Totally out of control. It wasn’t a private fight. I remember spotting his little sister, Emma, and a few of her friends, wondering how they got out there. Patrick shoved me, hard, and stormed off the beach. For some reason we didn’t collect keys that night. A bunch of us ran after him. He was so messed up. I got in the car just before he ripped out of there. I thought I could get the keys, or get him to calm down, make him pull over. But there was no time. We were going so fast. The front right tire caught the edge of the road and we flipped. Rolled down a little hill. We didn’t hit anything. Just rolled until we stopped. And then it was quiet.”
Cal keeps holding me. His breath is so steady it reminds me of waves rolling in.
“Patrick died right away. He wasn’t wearing his belt. I couldn’t get out of the car. Then I was in the hospital. My mom told me I miscarried. So my parents know. No one else.”
Deep, ragged breath.
“She kept saying how lucky I was. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand anything anyone said. But they wouldn’t shut up, so I did. Kind of a long time. Three months.”
I let out the breath I’m holding. Look at the empty white ceiling.
“I just walked away from it—God—I wanted out of my safe little life so badly, to feel like I was living in the real world.” A bitter laugh rises like bile in my throat. “I got my wish. The real world feels like hell.”
Cal’s eyes are on me. Steady. Witnessing my shame. I shut mine again.
“Everyone thinks I didn’t get hurt in that crash. But I did. I deserve it, I know—”
“No.” He holds my face in his hands. Stops me there. Firm. Eyes dark. “Look at me.”
I shake my head, try to look away. “You have no idea,” I say. “You never—”
“Neither did you,” he cuts me off. “Wren, you can’t do that to yourself. You made a mistake and got pregnant. Patrick made a mistake and got in his car drunk and angry. What happened is bad enough. The worst. But it’s not anyone’s fault or any kind of punishment. You can’t think that or you’ll take yourself down for good.”
Take myself down for good. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing. Trying to do.
“It’s never going to get better,” I say.
“The facts won’t change,” he says quietly, “but you will.”
“You don’t know that.”
Out the window, the golden lights twinkle like they’re hopeful for us.
“It’s already happening,” he says sounding sure.
I wish I believed him. He’s looking at me like he can see where I begin.
I close my eyes.
Patrick. We’re in his car, flying down the Old Montauk Highway, my words pecking at him like little black birds, begging him to slow down, pull over, stop the car. Then I’m screaming. He’s scaring me. The tire catches; the steering wheel jerks and spins. I can’t take my eyes off it, how loose it looks, like it’s unwinding itself, then those never-ending seconds we’re in the air, and everything stops.
“Wren, come back,” Cal whispers from somewhere faraway. “Please come back.” His soft lips on my ear, my neck, my eyelids, my chin. “Don’t disappear again. I want you here. Stay here.”
I try to remember the Ferris wheel I imagined on my run. How things fall away, and you fall too, but if you stay with it, the ground reappears. I open my eyes and look at Cal. His beautiful face. How did I find him? How did we end up here? Lost and found in the dark and terrible winter woods?
look,
look
WE’RE EXPECTED at Mercy House. Christmas dinner. Everyone’s invited. Even Mom. She declines, making me wonder if she is seeing someone, keeping busy while I’m gone.
Dad and I pick up Cal and head over early to help in the kitchen. Over thirty people are coming. Zara greets us at the door, bearing a tray filled with cups of mulled wine. Her hair is loose around her face, wild, golden, spilling down the back of her red velvet dress. She’s voluptuous, seems conjured almost, nothing like the steady woman in the braid and work boots I see around the studio.
Cups in hand, we follow her to the kitchen where Lucy welcomes us, pink-faced over a saucepan of cooking cranberries and floury from what looks like the setup for three pies. Mary hoots a loud hello overhead and clatters down the back stairs in a pair of silver clogs, her hair twisted in little knots all over her head and tied with tinsel.
We’re all given jobs. Dad’s assigned to monitor the birds, a turkey and a goose Zara ordered for him because it’s something my granddad
made every Christmas, apparently, and it’s not Christmas dinner without it. News to me. Cal’s put to work on brussels sprouts with chestnuts. Lucy slides a stool over to him, which he takes without a word. Mary informs me that first I’ll set the table, then I’m going to make dinner rolls from a huge bowl of dough she has rising on a long board by the ovens.
I slip out to set the table, grateful for this part of my assignment. The linens are bright, pressed, perfect. Mary guides me to the side pantry where all the dishes are kept. It’s a mixed bunch of plates and bowls, a collection made from what appears to be countless other families’ abandoned china. I count out all the pieces, lift them carefully to the table in stacks, even find the most delicate etched-crystal stemware for water at each place. Mary squeals when she slides open a particularly heavy drawer and discovers a trove of silver salt cellars. She disappears in search of polish.
I set the places carefully. Sip a little mulled wine. Wonder about all those nuns living here over the years. What were they dreaming of? I look up, in case there’s a ghost of one of them, hovering, inspecting us as we fill their house, but the only apparition I see is my reflection in a mirror behind the table. My hair looks nice today—I dried it for a change—but my face is stern. I stick my tongue out at the grim girl’s reflection.
I woke up this morning and realized I had nothing for anyone, no gifts, like one of those dreams where you sleep through a test or show up somewhere naked. It’s like I thought I was going to pass through the holiday but not live it or something.
Dad rescued me when he heard my wail of awareness, blessedly did not say parental things like gifts don’t matter and he was just glad I was here. Came into my room instead and after planting a firm kiss on the top of my head, dug in the closet until he found a box of photos I’d sent him over the years. Dropped it next to me on the bed. Walked out. I lifted the lid. Dangerous territory, the first image is Patrick, back just before we started going out, doing a handstand on the top of our stoop. Show-off. But then, like a gift, another photograph slipped out of the pile.
A little boy, flying down Twentieth Street after school one day, kicking along a box about his same size. I caught him, both legs in the air, face wide open in a lost-tooth grin, the box flying too, an urban kite, a few paces ahead of him. You have to look. I remember thinking that when the image emerged in the darkroom. Feeling my luck for having looked. This minute of something, of life, of the best part of it, revealed because I was ready, I was looking.
It’s a good gift for Cal, something I love. I ran out to the studio where Dad and Mary were both working, early, and hard, and Dad broke away from what he was doing to help me frame it.
The table’s set. Ready for a celebration, guests. I just wish I weren’t one of them. Through the swinging door, I hear feet stomping off snow in the back, then the sounds of everyone welcoming whoever has come. It’s quiet a minute, then they laugh hard about something. The newcomer’s voice is especially high, sharp. Her laugh hits a certain pitch that startles me. I lean against the sideboard, try to relax, and fantasize about Mary’s quiet room. The door to the kitchen swings open. Zara, humming O Holy Night, bearing a spoonful of pear-cranberry pie filling, strides toward me, lifts it to my mouth.
“You need this,” she says, smiling. “I felt it. Nice job on the table.”
I wander into the front parlor, savoring the sweet fruit. She follows, adjusting holly garlands draped along the mantels, straightening a candle in a silvery tree-branch menorah on the sideboard.
“Mary cast this,” she says, running her finger along its delicate bends. “Gave it to us for the house. Have you seen her candlesticks?”
I shake my head. I haven’t seen anything. Or if I have, I’ve missed it.
“They’re another thing she does on the side. That girl. She’s never done making.” Zara laughs. “She worked so long on those popcorn strings.” I look where she’s pointing. An endless train of crisp white popcorn twirls around the green tinsel tree sagging in the corner of the front parlor. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her they brought our mouse back.”
She pulls me down on a settee. Sits next to me. “I had to take the bell off the Pope’s collar to give him a fighting chance.”
“The Pope?”
She laughs again. “Him.” Points to the corner of the room near the tree, where a corpulent orange cat lies lazy before the fireplace. He focuses on us a second, then goes back to sleep.
“The Pope.” I nod, handing her the empty spoon. “Of course. Hey, nice tree. Where’d you get it? 1950?”
Zara makes a small fist and socks me lightly on the arm. “Even up here,” she says, laughing at her tree with a dismissive wave, “I can’t bring myself to cut one down.”
She stands.
“I have to get back to the pies. If you’d like, I can finish those rolls for you. I could do them in my sleep.”
I nod, grateful. The rolls felt like some kind of test.
“I’ll send Cal out.” She waves her hand toward the two fireplaces, one in each room. “Do you suppose he knows how to build a perfect fire?”
I smile at Zara, banish the grim girl.
the
stars
are
brightly
shining
IT’S MIDNIGHT before we roll out of there, goose-stuffed. Cal, Dad, me. I drive. Cal’s tired, and Dad’s had way too much champagne, sancerre, vouvray, cognac. I’ve shifted into some other mode, new for me, quiet but present.
Silent night. It’s been snowing while we were inside facing the fire, and the roads are softened by it. We make tracks between Mercy House and home like we’re tracing a line on a map, one that points from one good place to another.
“Cal will come home with us,” my dad announces. I glance at him in the rearview. He’s stretched out like a sated bear in the back.
I blush twenty shades of red. Bless the dark truck.
“There are gifts to exchange,” Dad qualifies his remark.
I sneak a peek at Cal. He’s got his eyes on the road, face straight.
“Sorry!” I say, mortified. “I’ll swing by your house,” I whisper, “so you can get your car?”
He looks at me then, and I can see he’s trying not to laugh. My shoulders drop with relief.
“Only if you want to get rid of me,” he says, reaching across the vast front seat to slip his hand under my thigh.
Our house looks cozy when we pull up. Softened by great dollops of snow.
“Be with you in a minute!” my father says, crossing to the studio.
Cal and I lose our coats by the door and sink into the couch. I hop up again, move around, turning off most of the lamps and flipping the switch on the outside lights.
I rejoin him. Grab a natty quilt off the back of the couch and pull it over us.
“Lotta people,” he says, reaching for my hand under the quilt.
“Mmhmm.”
Before we can relax too much, Dad comes back into the house, pushing a green bicycle, its snow-covered tires marking a wet path to me.
“That’s a serious frame,” Cal says, pulling the quilt off and sitting up more attentively.
The bike is vintage, heavy, and sports a pair of rugged-looking new tires. A metal basket and a bell decorate the front handlebar.
“In case you need to make yourself known in traffic,” my dad says, with a wink to Cal.
“Thanks Dad,” I say, standing to hug him.
“Not so fast.” He puts a hand up between us. “The real gift’s in the basket.”
He flips on a small reading lamp near the armchair. In the basket is a narrow gray box wrapped with an extravagant silk bow.
I slip off the ribbon and open the box. Inside, on a bed of moss-green velvet, is a necklace he made for me. A long filament of dark, bent-metal wire. He lifts it out, stands behind the couch, and lowers it over my head. Cal lifts my hair so he can clasp it in back. The wire runs around my neck and down my sternum like a rivulet of rain on
a windshield, or a vein of something more precious. It ends in a rough-cut droplet ruby, wire-wrapped, suspended.
“I love it, Dad,” I say, hopping up again to hug him.
Also in the bike basket is my gift for Cal. Dad’s wrapped it in brown paper.
Cal lifts the wrap away from it carefully and looks at the image, silent.
“It’s hers,” my dad says, unable to help himself.
“Is this in Chelsea?” Cal asks, inspecting the image, looking up at me.
I nod.
His eyes go back to the photograph.
“Did you ask him to do that for you?” He looks up at me like I might actually have that kind of power over someone.
“It was total chance, dumb luck,” I confess. “I was waiting for Meredith to pick out a cheap lipstick in Duane Reade.”
“I love it,” Cal says, glancing quickly at my dad and then leaning toward me anyway for a kiss. He runs his hand along the frame a minute, considering the wood.
“And one from your mother,” my father announces, handing me a small box. A discreet pair of diamond studs from Tiffany. Very her. Elegant, simple. I love them, too. It’s strange to celebrate Christmas without her. I put them on, the first pair of earrings I’ve worn in months. They hurt a little going in.
Cal pulls himself up and goes over to his coat. Retrieves a slender package from the inside pocket. Joins me on the couch again, slipping it onto my lap.
I pull away the paper. It’s a first British edition of Philip Larkin’s High Windows. Somehow he knows I love Larkin.
My dad makes some noise about getting us all a little nightcap and moves away from the couch. I have a hard time looking at Cal. I’m so overwhelmed and glad to have him here, I think it might break me.
He knows this too and leans to slip a small kiss under my ear.
“Merry Christmas, Wren,” he says.
My dad returns with three cordials of Chambord, raises his and says, “You kids are the holy night, raise your cups to all things that impart delight.”
We clink the delicate rims like bells.
