Losing Charlotte

by Heather Clay

  Charlotte had leafed with him through the pages of photographs from their wedding. They had been sitting at the table in the back garden; the sky above them was overcast. An event photographer recommended by Charlotte’s boss at the time had taken the pictures, had arranged them into a leather album with a silver-embossed image of a tree on its cover. The photographer, the hiring of her, had been one of their primary expenses, along with the fee to rent out the restaurant for an afternoon, the small price exacted by the justice of the peace. Charlotte herself had bought carrot sticks, potato chips, pretzels, cheese, and shaken them onto glass dishes that were arranged around the restaurant’s one small room, with its wall of windows that overlooked the same stretch of river Bruce could see from their front steps, its yellow walls, its scattering of distressed folk art. Her parents had paid for the liquor. The restaurant was just down the block from their apartment; Charlotte had used their street as an aisle, negotiating the cobblestones in her heels and borrowed dress. Her sister preceded her down the street; her parents came after. Charlotte had looked so serious, serious in a way that made Bruce momentarily want to go to her, or to yell out something funny, something that he might expect her to yell herself if her face weren’t so drawn, so still. Something like: Hurry up! Bike messenger behind you, watch your back! The dress emphasized the fact that Charlotte’s body had grown fuller, more lush, since he had met her. She moved toward him. There was no music, only the hush at their end of the street, the collective hush of the waiters, who stood in their white shirts near the restaurant entrance, watching, and a knot of friends and family, the few of Charlotte’s parents’ crowd who had made the trip up to New York and stood, dressed impeccably in silks and gabardines, with broad smiles on their faces. Across the street, a couple with a stroller stopped to look. They shaded their eyes from the sun, joggled their baby back and forth to keep her quiet. Bruce could hear a bird, distant passing cars. His father stood beside him; Charlotte’s brother stood just beyond. Afternoon light flashed in the windows of the brownstones, flashed in a quick pattern that Bruce couldn’t connect with any object or movement in the weather. The play of light showed up in some of the photographs; in this one, here, Bruce could see it, a nova sparking just behind the head of Knox, whose bare, freckled shoulders were thrust back, as if she’d been conscious her picture was being taken and assumed her most elegant pose. For an instant that day Bruce had thought of the flashes as music. His head had been all over the place; he had felt guilty at moments for missing his new wife, for wanting to be alone with her, away from these people for whom she obviously felt she had to perform. He had felt guilty for thinking that dignity didn’t become her—and another thing he had seen was that Charlotte’s sister had felt the same way. She had stared at Charlotte at the reception, as if trying to locate the sister she recognized under that bridal patina.

  Look at this one, Charlotte said. Look at us.

  It was a picture of the two of them, kissing by the restaurant bar. There was a grainy quality to it; the photographer had obviously swept a bit out of focus in order to turn quickly and capture the moment before it ended. What Bruce noticed about the picture was his hand, the way it sat on the back of Charlotte’s neck, gathering her head to his, tangling in the gloss of her hair. It looked to him like a brute hand, too strong and clumsy in its gesture, too insistent. His eyes were open, too, as if he’d surprised even himself with the pressure of his ardor. Charlotte’s eyes were closed. She looked pliable, acquiescent. Like a movie bride, disappearing into her joy.

  It’s nice, Charlotte said.

  It was a nice picture. Bruce agreed. But there was something about it that shamed him, too, that left him exposed. He wanted her to turn the page. When she didn’t, and kept looking, he glanced around and commented on the new bricks they would need to order for the patio, come next summer.

  THEY LANDED at Teterboro. Just Knox, her mother, her father; they had left Robbie at the back door, waving, the magazine still in his hand. Knox had a moment of regret walking away from him, away from the house; how appealing it would be to sink into the couch in the den beside Robbie, to watch, as he cruised the movie channels with the remote control whose intricacies only he fully understood, opening windows on the television screen that revealed other shows in progress, small worlds enclosed in boxes over the actors’ shoulders that reminded Knox of the thought bubbles in cartoons. There would be salty chips, and beer, and warm lamplight, and no need for talk, where Robbie was. But Knox had chosen. Of course she had chosen the flight, which had been smooth until right at the descent, during which Knox allowed herself to feel heroic for an indulgent moment—to imagine, as the interior of the small plane rattled and the digital altimeter over her mother’s head subtracted from itself, that she was rushing to Charlotte’s side in her time of need. That she was that kind of sister: the Jane Austen kind.

  Now that they were inside the small terminal, waiting for the car her father had ordered to take them into the city, Knox’s mother looked at her and said, “Do you think we should call the hospital?”

  “How soon will we be there?”

  Her mother smiled and rolled her eyes. “I know,” she said. It was the face she made when she reached for a second helping of pie, or took one of the cigarettes that Robbie had offered her on his first weekend home, having invited her onto the back porch and baited her with a declared desire for “Mom time.” “But could you call again? Here’s Bruce’s cell number.” She handed Knox a piece of cream-colored paper that Knox recognized as having come from a pad she kept on her desk in the library.

  Knox took the cell phone her mother handed her and dialed the number on the piece of paper. After nine rings, she was prompted by a mechanical voice to leave a message.

  “He’s not answering,” Knox called across the terminal lobby. “Should I leave a message?”

  Knox’s mother blinked. “I guess so. Go ahead.”

  Knox kept her eyes on her mother as she spoke into the phone: “Bruce. Hi. We just landed. We’ll call you again in a few minutes. Or we’ll see you first. Hope everything is going well.” She licked her lips, which felt dry. Her mother looked girlish, sitting prim on a huge piece of modular furniture by the window. Knox sometimes thought that, as her mother aged, she could see her returning to who she had been physically as a child—to the soft smoothness, the eager glow, that children worked so hard to shed. She sat down beside her mother.

  “You’re going to be good,” Knox said. “A grand grandmother.” She sounded effortful, saccharine, to herself, and wondered if she should pretend to be teasing. She turned her mouth up at the corners.

  But her mother didn’t look up and began rummaging for something at the bottom of her purse.

  “Thanks, darling,” she said. She put her free hand on Knox’s leg. “I’m really glad you came.”

  Knox’s father strode in through a pair of automatic doors, which chirred closed behind him.

  “Car’s out front,” he said. Warm air from outside seemed to swirl invisibly in. Knox thought that her father looked imposing, sure. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders pushed a bit forward, the way her own tended to be. “There’s a phone in it. I just called the hospital and they told me that Charlotte’s still in the operating room.”

  Her mother stood up. “Okay.” There was a lack of breath in her voice, as if she’d failed to inhale before speaking.

  Knox rose; she picked up the backpack she had stuffed with a few things from the cabin, lifted it onto her shoulder. The three of them walked together toward the glass doors. Knox noticed how shiny the floor was underneath their feet, under the finely made leather shoes that her father wore. The doors parted for them, and they were out in the hot, close night. Bugs jumped under the lights of the canopy above them. A black car sat idling in the drive, its rear doors open.

  “It’s all happening as we speak,” her father said. He squeezed Knox’s shoulder as he guided her into the backseat of the car. “So we’l
l just get there as fast as we can.”

  Knox’s mother went around the other side of the car and scooted into the middle of the seat. She clutched her purse against her lap. Knox’s father got in next to her mother and closed the door.

  “Okay,” he said to the driver. Knox saw him take her mother’s hand as they pulled away from the canopy. Inside the car it was plush and cozy. Knox thought quickly, guiltily, of Marlene. She would gripe at Knox for leaving her on no notice, but Knox thought she would understand. A couple of days. This is where she needed to be. A cesarean, a new reality that was hitting her in increments, shaping itself around her. She would make something up if Marlene asked her about the expense of flying to New York, something about getting a good fare on Delta at the last minute. There was no need for Marlene to know that Knox’s life at the reading center was different from the one she had grown up with, the one she could return to now, made a child again on nights like this. Marlene had never, not once, been on a plane.

  “Remind me to call Marlene,” Knox said. A light drizzle started up outside. They moved onto the highway. The brake lights from other cars fuzzed in the sudden wet on Knox’s pane, flaring like bright thistles. Somewhere, just ahead of them, were the lights of New York.

  “Okay,” her father said.

  The hospital abutted the East River; there was a long porte cochere, a circular drive leading up to it. It was raining hard by the time they got there. Knox opened her door and knew to push out of the car as quickly as she could, so that her mother wouldn’t suffer any brief frustration at being hemmed in. But when she stood, she realized that her mother had climbed out after her father, and that the two of them were jogging toward the entrance. One of her father’s arms was raised against the weather, as if he could elbow it out of their way. Knox hiked her backpack over her head and walked after them. Here was another set of glass doors, a reception station that her parents seemed to know to bypass. A hall, a huge elevator, onto which an expressionless person, in plain clothes, rolled a waist-high machine of some kind. One floor up, and the person rolled out, getting hitched in the gap for a moment before Knox helped him by forcing the machine a bit from behind. On four, Knox’s father touched the small of her back, and they emerged into a hallway. At the far side of it, chairs of differing sizes were grouped among what looked to Knox like tall cages, built of cheap, untreated wood. As she passed them, Knox saw that the cages housed a number of stuffed animals: a straggly lion, a hanging macaw, a kind of ape holding a synthetic yellow banana. There were children’s drawings on the wall, drawings that, compared with the ones at the center, struck Knox as being so studiously naïve that they might have actually been made by adults.

  At the end of the hallway, her parents approached a white desk. This area seemed to Knox to emit the color white; the only variations being the pink overshirt worn by the short-haired woman who was busying herself above an open file cabinet. The woman did not look up at her parents’ approach, but smiled at them when her mother said, “Excuse me?” Knox never thought of her mother’s voice—or her own, for that matter, not since boarding school—as being accented, but in the odd quiet of the hallway, she could hear a distinct lilt that she wondered if the woman noticed.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  “We’re here to see Charlotte Bolling. Charlotte Tavert,” her father said.

  “Oh hi,” the woman said, extending her hand toward her father to shake, then shaking her mother’s hand in turn. She shook with energy; Knox could see the tendons and muscles shift in her slim arm as she moved it. This is a woman with a regular squash game, Knox thought. She allowed herself to imagine the woman’s life, her virginal stint at Yale Med School, cradling heavy books in her arms as she walked across a quad, her Dorothy Hamill hair gleaming in the sun. She remembered, as if remembering a taste, how to make Charlotte laugh. It rushed back to her. She would say something about the nurse. Charlotte would snicker and say something like Yes, she’s a walking seventies hair commercial. The kind of joke they used to have together, when Knox was a kid.

  The woman nodded at Knox, who brushed a drop of rain from the side of her face.

  “You’re Charlotte’s family,” she said, stating the fact with self-satisfaction, as if she had invented Knox and her parents herself.

  “Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go check. If she’s in the recovery room, you might be able to go down and sneak a peek at her.”

  “That would be great. Thanks,” Knox said. She felt a need to reassert her presence, her age. To hear her own voice.

  “Can you tell us anything? Is everyone all right?” her mother said.

  “Are you the doctor,” her father said.

  The woman smiled again. “Intern,” she said. “As far as I know, everything’s gone smoothly. You know things started to move quickly once your daughter got here. We thought at first that she’d be in triage for much longer. I’ll go check. I’ll send Dr. Boyd up if I can.”

  “Thank you,” her father said. “Thanks very much.”

  The woman pushed the file drawer closed and moved down the hall, away from the direction Knox and her parents had come in. The shoes she was wearing made loud squishing sounds on the linoleum that Knox could still hear once she’d turned the corner.

  “Would you guys like something? I could go see if there’s a vending machine,” Knox said.

  “No, but get yourself something to drink,” her mother said. “Absolutely. We’ll be here.”

  “All right,” Knox said.

  She left her pack on the floor by her father’s feet and walked back toward the wooden cages. There was a public phone hanging on the wall there. It was mounted low over the chairs, so low that Knox had to kneel on one of the smallest chairs—a red one obviously meant for a preschooler—in order to dial comfortably. Marlene picked up on the first ring.

  “You expecting a call?” Knox said.

  “Well, hello,” Marlene said. Her voice was so full of warmth that Knox felt first surprised, then shamed. She wished for a moment that she could just be calling to say hi, that she phoned Marlene at home more often, for reasons that weren’t related to students or scheduling.

  “What’re you doing,” she said.

  “Oh, Jimmy’s got the football on. I’m sitting here bored out of my mind. I feel like the season’s closing in on me. Seems like it starts in June now and just never ends.”

  “Guess where I am,” Knox said.

  “Where.”

  “New York. My sister’s having the babies.” Knox swallowed. She felt suddenly, terribly, far away from her life.

  “Oh! Oh hon, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful! But—it’s a little early, isn’t it? I guess twins usually are. Is everything okay?”

  “Yep, looks like it. But Mar, I’m sorry, I won’t be back for a couple of days,” Knox said. “I just wasn’t thinking and I got on a plane to come up here. So I wanted to ask you to cover for me if it’s all right. The reports I’ve been working on, I got through T so there’re only a couple left, I’ve been doing them alphabetically—”

  “What is wrong with you?” Marlene said. “Just enjoy yourself, I know what to do. What kind of person apologizes for being with family at a time like this?”

  “A responsible educator like me, I guess,” Knox said.

  “Oh, is that what you are.”

  “It takes one to know one, so maybe you wouldn’t understand.”

  “What I understand is that being around babies is a good thing for you right now. I’m ready to become a godmother. Lord, I thought you were calling to tell me you’d run off with Ned. Maybe I’m disappointed.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll call you, Mar. Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t thank me. God. Be with your family. I’m going to combine the classes until you get back.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay, hon.”

  Knox hung up the phone. She bent at the waist and reached toward her feet in an attempt to stretch her legs.
Her nose grazed her skirt just above her knees; she inhaled the familiar smell of her detergent and briefly missed the swan, reminded of its body at rest, piled onto itself. She felt suddenly irritated with Ned. Why did he have to put her in a position to disappoint him, when things between them worked well as they were? She exhaled and reached a bit farther, extending the tips of her fingers as far as they would go. She would call him later, and hopefully the sameness she depended on would be restored. She kept longing out of her mind and thought of diving, of falling off the tip of a board in a tight pike, unfurling the length of her body to straight, slipping into water that way.

  BRUCE HAD STOOD outside the window of the thrift shop at St. Luke’s Church. He had pretended to eye the plaid windbreakers, battered lamp shades, beaded and misshapen evening bags (why did a church thrift shop, geared to the poor, look so crowded with sequined purses, he wondered) that hung on the other side of the glass.

  Behind him, Hudson Street pumped with traffic. To his left stood the iron gate that marked the entrance to the church garden. If he moved through the gate and took the path that wound around behind the church and into the small garden, where a few benches were arranged under the trees, he would find his wife. She was back there. He had watched her disappear down the path. If he let himself go to her, he might find her sitting on the one swath of grass that was unspoiled by trash or the scrubby groundcover that squirrels and rats scratched in, making the leaves above them shake as they moved. He knew the place; they had sat together with the newspaper and sandwiches there, before. She might be sitting on the grass, or lying down on it, her dress drawn up to the tops of her thighs. The backs of her legs would be crosshatched in red when she stood, and she would shake out her dress and put her hands at the center of her back, look around. He could picture this easily, the bits of grass that would go flying when she shook out her dress, the way the cotton of it would have gone thinner in the heat, would cling to her differently. He stood where he was. He walked through the gate.