Susan Meissner - Why the Sky Is Blue

by Unknown

  I had always loved Stu’s study. It was more like a museum to me than anything else. It looked slightly disorganized but Stu remarkably always knew where everything was. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were not only lined with books but also with old spoons, vases, and necklaces from his many digs. Rocks, stones, and fragments of pottery were scattered everywhere.

  Even though it has never been my home, I felt comfortable in my mom and stepdad’s house. And I’m glad that my mom met Stu and that he fell in love with her. They met at a lecture he was giving on ancient Mediterranean cultures at the University of Minnesota during my freshman year there. She had gone because she had read his book on the topic, and after the lecture, she had approached Stu to have him sign it. Ten minutes after they met, he asked her out for coffee. They dated for six months—mostly by phone and mail since Stuart lived in Michigan—before he asked her to marry him. Actually Stu approached Matt first, who was fifteen and still living at home, and asked for our mother’s hand in marriage. Matt, who gave his approval in a matter of seconds, was the best man at their wedding. I was the maid of honor. I didn’t know Stu as well as Matt did when they married, but I could tell Stuart was a gentleman. And that he loved my mother very much. I loved seeing her so happy, even though I was sad to see her and Matt leave Minnesota to join Stu in Ann Arbor.

  It really didn’t surprise me that after fourteen years of being a widow, my mother would suddenly fall for another man. Stu was her soul mate. His love for history and the past resonated with my mom. Her penchant for books never included works of science fiction or speculation about the future. She always read books about people—fictional and otherwise—and where they had been and what they saw and did while they were there. That’s why Stu always brought my mother on his field trips all over the Middle East and the Mediterranean. First, because he loved her, and second, because she loved what he loved: the past.

  After lunch, I asked to see Stu’s photos of their recent trip to Egypt, and at some point while he was showing me pictures of the burial ground he had been excavating, my mom and Katie left the room. I found out later my mom had brought something back from Egypt for Katie and was giving it to her.

  When we had finished looking at the last set of photos, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I felt awkward being alone in the room with Stu. And I felt awkward about feeling awkward. Why would I be anxious about being alone with Stu in his study? That question led to the next, which was, why had I completely fallen apart at the airport when I hugged him? It finally dawned on me that Stu had always been more a father to me than my biological father. I could barely remember my real dad. I had less than five years with him, none of which I could recall. Stu had been my mother’s husband and my stepfather for nearly two decades. He was wise and good and was the perfect person to “father” me through my crisis.

  And I was both afraid he would and afraid he wouldn’t.

  I had already lost one father and was realizing that I was purposely keeping Stu at a distance. If anything ever happened to him, it would not feel like the death of a parent, but rather the loss of a good friend. I could almost hear Patty’s pajama-soft voice telling me this, revealing to me the inner workings of my troubled subconscious.

  I felt sad as this understanding crept over me. And I must have looked like I felt.

  “What is it, Claire?” Stu said, so gently.

  Who knows what part of my brain was in control, because I looked straight at him and said it.

  “Stu, I’m pregnant.”

  My mom and Katie came back into the room the next moment as Stuart digested my news. He said nothing.

  Katie was jabbering about the necklace my mother had given her, and my mother was completely engrossed in her granddaughter’s joy. I knew neither one had heard what I had said to Stu.

  He looked at me and suggested we all visit the University’s Nichols Arboretum for the afternoon. I nodded, looking straight back at him.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” I said, though my mom had to ask if Katie and I felt like an outing after getting up so early that morning. I knew Stu was expertly filling the time until Katie went to bed that night and I could talk to my mom—privately— for as long as I wanted and in whatever emotional shape that fell over me.

  The afternoon passed pleasantly as did the early evening hours. After supper Matt and Stu told story after story of my mother’s latest matchmaking efforts on Matt’s behalf. Katie and I hadn’t laughed that hard in weeks.

  Matt left when Katie started yawning. I sent her up to the guest bedroom that she and I were sharing.

  After I had settled her in, I made my way slowly down the stairs, feeling reluctant to disturb the lighthearted atmosphere that still permeated the downstairs rooms.

  “Why don’t you two go on into the study, and I’ll bring in some decaf,” my mom said as she switched on the dishwasher and a low hum filled the kitchen.

  I followed Stu into the study and eased into one of the over-stuffed couches. He sat at his desk and absently picked up a fragment of a Roman water jug.

  “I will be happy to leave the room, if you want,” he said softly. “I can say I’m tired and that I want to go to bed early. I have class tomorrow, Claire. It would seem natural.”

  I was beginning to understand and feel comfortable with my deepening appreciation for Stu and learning to fear it less, so I think I surprised him when I asked him to stay; when I told him it would be easier for me if he was there.

  He looked away as my mother came into the room bearing a tray, and I saw him reach up to his face and flick away a tear.

  My mom didn’t know it at the time, but she made it easy for me to tell her. She handed me a mug and asked me pointedly but tenderly what was bothering me. She knew there was something more than just the attack itself weighing on my mind.

  For some reason, telling her about the pregnancy with Stu already knowing about it was soothing to me, though I didn’t want her to know that Stuart knew before she did, and he never let on that he did.

  Mom began to cry softly when I was finished, and I had to look away from her for a few moments.

  “I just don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. Then she said it again.

  She didn’t say it to me or to Stu. She just spoke the words into the quiet room, addressing no one. It was the closest she dared go toward demanding a good explanation from a God who could have intervened. It was the closest any of us dared to go. Then, in spite of the heaviness of such incomprehensible matters, my mother came to me, wrapped me in her arms, and held me close. This much she did understand: I needed her.

  It was after midnight before we all headed upstairs to bed, exhausted and deep in thought.

  The next three days were incredibly special to me, and I look back on them now as days that significantly prepared me for the difficult journey that lay ahead, even though the pregnancy was never mentioned again until my mom was kissing me goodbye at the airport. And even then, she just whispered in my ear as we hugged goodbye, “I am here for you. And I can be there for you. In a heartbeat, I can be there.”

  10

  When Katie and I returned from Michigan, I was strangely at peace. Dan seemed alternately glad and worried that I was so calm and collected. He didn’t think it was normal. He urged me to call Patty and tell her the latest news, meaning the pregnancy and Philip Wells’s arrest. He had decided it wasn’t wise to keep her uninformed of such significant developments. I didn’t say this, but I wanted to tell him to call Patty. He was apparently the one struggling to deal with emotional overload.

  But I called her and told her everything. She wanted to see me. I thanked her but told her I was feeling fine, that I was working through my feelings of disappointment and relief in “positive and affirming ways.” Those were her exact words to me several weeks before. I don’t think she liked being quoted.

  “Well, we can talk about other things, then,” she had offered.

  For what possible pu
rpose, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “I’ll think about it, Patty,” I said. “Right now coming in to see you seems rather pointless. I’m sure you’re a great therapist, but I don’t need any therapy at the moment.”

  There was silence on the other end. I hadn’t remembered ever being so blatantly honest before. I wondered if my head injuries had flipped a switch in my brain that had never been “on” until then. We hung up shortly after that.

  That night after supper, Dan asked me if I had called Patty.

  “What did she say?” he asked when I told him I had.

  I told him instead what I had said.

  “Claire, why don’t you just go see her? It can’t hurt just to talk with her,” he said.

  “I am not going to see her just so you can feel better,” I replied. “That’s like my putting on a sweater because you’re cold.”

  And then I added what I hadn’t earlier and shouldn’t have then. I guess the switch was still flipped inside my brain: “If you’re having trouble dealing with what has happened, by all means, call her up.”

  I regretted saying it the moment the words left my mouth. I apologized, but as is always the case, spoken words cannot be unheard, even though they can be forgiven.

  I promised Dan that I would go to Nick the moment I felt emotionally unstable or unsure. I reminded him that that was what he was doing. And he seemed to relax after that. But we were so obviously at different poles in our still-black abyss. He struggled to see my perspective on so many things just as I struggled to see his. We struggled in every area of communication, including our most intimate moments in our bedroom. It was nearly the end of November before Dan felt brave enough to approach the topic of lovemaking. We stumbled through our first night of intimacy after the attack like newlyweds in an arranged marriage.

  “When this is all over, it will be different,” Dan said afterward, in the darkness of our bedroom. “It will be the way it was.”

  I convinced myself that he had to be right. My attacker would steal—at the very most—nine months from me. But only nine months. The rest of my life belonged to me. And the rest of our marriage belonged to Dan and me.

  By Thanksgiving, the morning sickness had ceased, and I felt particularly well. Hormones, surely. My parents and Matt flew out for the long Thanksgiving weekend, and we had a wonderful time. I only had a few moments alone with my mom, just long enough to confirm to her that I was still pregnant. She asked if I had been back to a doctor, and I guiltily told her I hadn’t. Becky had been bugging me for several weeks to set up an appointment with her doctor, but I hadn’t felt shamed about not doing it until my mother asked me why I hadn’t.

  “Claire, you must know that you may not have a miscarriage,” she told me gently.

  She was right. I did know it. But I didn’t want to think about giving birth to this child. And I figured if I held off going to a doctor, I wouldn’t have to. I was pretty sure I would know one way or the other by the fourth or fifth month of the pregnancy. All a doctor would do between now and then is feed me vitamins, measure my abdomen, and listen to the staccato sounds of an infant heart beating. I had no interest in those things.

  We celebrated my birthday before my family left, though I wouldn’t officially be thirty-seven until December first, and then the wonderful weekend ended. The day after my mom, Stu, and Matt returned to Michigan, the first winter storm rolled in, instantly transforming the barren Minnesota landscape into a stunning and elegant scene.

  I spent the rest of December preparing the house for Christmas and putting off making a doctor’s appointment. Both were easy to do.

  We had a slumber party on the night of December twenty-first for Katie’s twelfth birthday and it was two in the morning before the house was finally quiet and Dan and I fell exhausted into bed.

  Outside, a gentle snow was falling, and the house was peculiarly silent after having been so noisy. I was lying on my side, near enough to Dan to feel his chest rising and falling against my back. The house was warm and cozy and the scent of evergreen from the freshly cut Douglas fir standing in the living room wafted up the stairs.

  In the serene quietness of that moment, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I became aware of the slightest flutter inside me, like the airy movement of butterfly wings. My eyes snapped open. I felt it again. The child was moving inside me.

  It was as if a fairy princess was making those tender, flawless movements within me. I think I knew at that moment that the baby growing inside me was a girl. Those perfect movements just inches below my heart were remarkably feminine.

  The next half minute was equally split into fifteen seconds of wonder and fifteen seconds of despair. I had nearly shaken Dan awake to tell him when I suddenly realized I could share this incredible moment with no one. Especially not him.

  So despite the coziness of the house, the gently falling snow, and my husband’s warm nearness, once again I felt alone in the dark place I had been in for weeks.

  I couldn’t stop the tears from slipping out of my eyes and onto my pillow, so I tried very hard to lie still and just let them come. But every now and then a stifled sob would ripple through my ribcage and cause me to move with its rhythm. And each time, my movement was answered by the matched shifting of the tiny one inside me, like echoes across a moonlit valley.

  It wasn’t until mid-January that I finally called Becky’s doctor and made an appointment. By then I was wearing the baggiest sweaters I could find in my closet and pants with an elastic waistband. I had only gained five pounds but my waist had disappeared, and a thick, elongated lump had replaced it. I was nearly halfway through the pregnancy. It would soon be difficult to hide.

  Dan offered to go with me to that first appointment, but I really didn’t want him to go, and I could tell he really didn’t want to go, either. Becky offered to come too, but I really didn’t need anyone to hold my hand.

  Dr. Whitestone was indeed as personable as Becky had promised. He had every right to scold me for waiting until I was four months pregnant to see a doctor, but he said nothing about it. Becky had made it easy for me by telling him my circumstances, for which I was very grateful. It was a sad story I didn’t care to share with anybody. But I was glad he knew.

  He wanted to do an ultrasound, which I figured would be the case. As I lay there with my stomach bare in the dimly lit room, he quietly asked me if I wanted him to turn the screen away from me and turn the volume off. I was touched by his consideration. I thought about it for a moment and decided I wanted to see for myself the child I was carrying. We both watched as he moved the sensor across my middle. The heartbeat was clear, steady, and unmistakable. And it wasn’t as painful to hear as I thought it was going to be. It actually calmed me to hear it, though I don’t think I could ever explain why. There were shapes on the screen that I couldn’t quite make out, but Dr. Whitestone pointed to them and said, “Here’s the skull,” and “Here’s the spinal cord.”

  I then saw a tiny rod with a bloom on the end of it, like Tinkerbell’s wand, propel itself away from the center of the screen. It was a tiny arm, graced with tiny fingers. I was in awe.

  “The placenta’s in a pretty good place, a little low,” he was saying, and I was instantly struggling to reconcile the awe I felt with the news that my placenta wasn’t causing any trouble.

  “How low?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s not in the ideal place, but it’s not in the danger zone, either,” Dr. Whitestone said. “We’ll have to watch it. As the baby grows, the placenta might move upward or it might slip down farther than is safe.”

  “I know all about that,” I said with a sigh.

  “It’s a little early to think the worst, Mrs. Holland.”

  I just sighed and asked him to please call me Claire.

  *

  That evening, I told Dan that maybe we should tell Katie about the baby. Maybe Spencer too. He didn’t agree at all.

  I began to think I should have brought him to the docto
r’s office after all so he could have seen what I saw, heard what I heard. He was still pretending none of this was real, that I would miscarry before he had to deal with any visual evidence that I was pregnant. He didn’t want to deal with it verbally, either.

  “Dan, I’m starting to show,” I said as softly as I could, because I knew he would wince at hearing it. And he did. “The doctor said the placenta’s not in the danger zone. It’s just a little low. It could be many more weeks before anything happens. I could be six or seven months pregnant by then, Dan. Katie will know. She will be able to see it. Everybody will.”

  He almost put his hands over his ears—that’s how frustrated he was. But there was no easy way to make him understand.

  I said nothing for a few minutes as he wrestled with the reality of that which he wanted to believe was only a nightmare; just a bad dream he would soon awaken from.

  “I’ve dealt with not having protected you from this happening, but, by God, I was going to protect them from knowing,” he finally said, hoarse with anger. “They shouldn’t have to deal with this. They’re just children.”

  “I know, Dan. But I don’t think we can wait much longer,” I whispered.

  He didn’t want me to be right about this, but he knew I was. He just nodded and then started to walk away.

  “I want to make sure we do it right,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said in response, hardly knowing how we would do it at all.

  We told them that night after supper. Dan got a fire going in the family room, and I made hot chocolate. We gathered on the couch, the four of us in a row. It was a blistering cold evening, and a frigid wind was howling around the eaves of the house. It felt snug and warm in the house.

  It was difficult to tell them both at the same time because Katie, at nearly twelve, knew a great deal more about life than Spencer at nearly seven. While she understood all too well how this baby had started growing in me, Spencer was full of questions that we hadn’t planned on getting into for a couple more years. We tried to keep it simple, but it kept getting more complex.