by CD Reiss
“Monica,” he said through the door, “I’m calling for pain killers.”
“I’m fine!” Why did I say that? I wasn’t fine.
“You were with me in the hospital,” he said. “You have a distorted view of pain.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, barely able to breathe. “You are the love of my life, but get the fuck away from the door.”
“No, I will not leave you.” He used his dominant voice, and I didn’t give a single shit. “Open it.”
“Go jogging!” I screamed it not because I wanted to scare him, but because the pain intensified by an order of magnitude. I put my head in my hands, and the blood started.
chapter 35.
JONATHAN
The door was locked. Not that I gave a shit on a practical level. A bobby pin could fix that. I could knock the door down or unscrew the knob. I was sure the staff kept a chainsaw somewhere in the garage. Or hedge clippers. I could have broken that lock with my spit, to be honest. That was how wound up I was. I put my fist on the door for one last threat, but before I pounded it, I heard her hiccup then sniff. As badly as that made me want to get into that bathroom, I imagined a sudden bang on the door would only startle her. What would be the point of that?
“I’ll tell you what,” I said.
No answer. Just breathing.
“I won’t break this door down. But I’m staying right here.” I sat with my back against the door, my forearms on my knees.
She groaned, and I heard her pregnancy ending in a rush. She made an N sound that stretched out like a rubber band.
“Monica?”
“Women have gone through this for centuries, okay? Generations. Just… if you’re going to sit at the door like an eavesdropper…” She stopped, and I could only imagine why. “I’ll let you know when I’m through.”
The last word ended in a squeak. If I broke down the door, I could hold her hand. Or bring her a painkiller. I could be doing something instead of sitting against the door and imagining what she was going through. I felt trapped and incompetent. I wanted to grab my fitness as a husband back.
That was it. I wasn’t leaving her alone.
Bobby pins. I needed just one to open that door. I went to her dresser. The surface was cluttered with a picture of her parents, a crochet runner, a calendar. I opened her nightstand drawer. Old pictures. Sunglasses. Pens. Little notebooks. What the fuck? Where were her bobby pins?
It hit me hard, deflating me. The bobby pins were where they belonged. In the goddamned bathroom.
I stood by the door, ready to break it down, and I heard her on the other side. She was humming the “Star-Spangled Banner” of all things. I put my hands on the door. She groaned the lyrics, and I heard a sickening splash.
I couldn’t take the door down. I couldn’t do that to her, but I couldn’t leave her either.
She was the heart patient, and I was the lonely young woman trying to grasp onto anything I could to make something happen. Would I have gone into Paulie Patalano’s room to pull the plug? Maybe. Maybe I would have. Because if this kept up for weeks and was a matter of life and death, yeah, I’d take that door down with a chainsaw even if it scared the shit out of her. I’d take the door down and shove it up someone’s ass.
But it only felt like life and death. It wasn’t.
I put my forehead to the door just as she sang “…and the home of the brave.”
“Brava,” I said.
“Go away,” she replied so softly I could barely hear her.
“Is ‘America the Beautiful’ next?”
“Not until the seventh inning.”
“I’ll wait out here all day.”
“I wanted this baby, Jonathan. Once I found out, I did. But before that… do you think not wanting it… it’s so stupid.”
“You didn’t miscarry because you didn’t want it. You didn’t scare it away.”
“We’ll try again. Right?”
She needed that hope. Hope was her power, her way of coping. She’d do reckless things to keep it alive. She’d murder and betray. She’d be brave and strong, all in the name of hope. If I could take her hope and let it feed me, I might have a nourished life, no matter its length.
“Yes, Monica. We can try again. Right away. Once you’re better.”
Another groan, and she started the “Star-Spangled Banner” again.
I put my hands on the door as if that was at all soothing to the woman on the other side. The song passed, and silence followed, interrupted by a few sniffs, a few breaths, a few hummed bars of something I couldn’t identify. I sat at the door and listened. I didn’t know how else to care for her but to make that door into my love, touching the wood as if it was skin, comforting her through it, making her safe with space and matter between us. I didn’t know how much time passed before she spoke.
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t flush. I just… I can’t.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
A long pause followed.
chapter 36.
MONICA
This was ridiculous. Everything about it. Me on the toilet for over an hour, cramping as though it was my job. The crime-scene-worthy mess. My compassionate and gorgeous husband standing outside, asking me if I’d like him to flush the baby.
I should just do it. Then I could run into the shower, do a quick clean up of the floor and outside of the bowl, and exit looking fresh. I knew this would continue for a few days, but not like this. Not to the point of non-functionality. I felt finished. I felt as if the worst was over. I felt empty.
“Monica?”
I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a baby. It was tissue that had formed because my body had fooled itself into thinking there was a baby, but it was a terminated mission. My uterus just hadn’t gotten the memo. So I should just flush instead of being a cliché of a woman who’d just had a miscarriage.
“I’m unlocking the door,” I said. “Just wait until I call you to come in okay?”
“All right.”
“And I’m warning you, ahead of time, it’s not pretty.”
“Consider me warned.”
The bathroom was huge, and it had a separate bath and shower. Blood dripped on the edges of the toilet from when I’d cramped so badly I’d moved away from the seat. Otherwise, the room was as pristine as Jonathan’s staff could make it.
I unlocked the door and turned on the shower. It was hot in half a second. I didn’t know how he did that, but money got rid of even the smallest inconveniences of thermodynamics. I stripped, stepped in, and clicked the door shut.
The water flowed over my face, scalding hot. I wanted it hotter. Second-degree burn hot. I wanted to sterilize myself from the baby that wasn’t a baby. I wanted to forget the feeling of something real and human dropping from me to its death.
When the water flowed over me fully, a stream of red-stain went down the drain. It was too much. I didn’t think I could stand it. I was broken and useless. What had felt real, wasn’t. And now I was expected to—
The door clicked open, and Jonathan stood in the shower entrance, fully dressed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot to call you.”
He stepped into the shower, water slapping onto his shirt, sticking it to his skin. Darkening and flattening his hair. He put his arms around me and pressed me to him. His lips brushed my shoulder, and his hands pressed against me as if he wanted as much of himself touching as much of me as possible.
“I love you,” he said.
“I—” I choked up the rest of the sentence, because I felt lost and empty, and he was still there. He was my sky. Through blood and breath, sin and sorrow, I was his sea, and wherever the horizon was and the world ended, we were there, together.
What had I done to deserve this? Repeatedly and often, I’d failed to deserve him. I’d resisted him, tried to deny him a family, then I’d failed to carry his child. I wasn’t worth him getting his clothes wet
, but I needed him. I needed him so badly. To fail for him and to try again, because having been pregnant for those hours, I couldn’t see any future past giving him children.
I clawed at his back and pressed my face to his shoulder. He rocked me under the hot water, sodden and strong, even after my legs couldn’t hold me.
“Come on,” he said, shutting off the shower, “before I flood the floor.”
He carried me for the third time, his feet squishing on the marble tiles. The bath was running, and the lights were dimmed. He laid me in the tub.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” He leaned over the tub, his clothes still soaked, and submerged a sponge. He didn’t even roll up his sleeves; he just got them wetter.
“For letting the baby go.”
“You know I’m not going to accept that apology.”
“I feel like I failed you. And hours after getting you all excited. God, I’m such a fuckup.”
He put his fingertips to my lips. “Stop.”
But it was too late. My eyes filled up, and the skin behind my face tingled. “I can’t. I can’t stop thinking that—” I heaved a breath. “That it’s my fault. That I killed it.”
He soaped the sponge. “If that were possible, there wouldn’t be any unwanted pregnancies.”
I was Teflon, immune to logic, sense, and evidence-based reality. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was somehow at fault for this disaster. I couldn’t answer him with the straight fact that despite the pure reason of his assertion, I was poisoned. Blighted. My body wasn’t fit for a child.
He put the sponge between my thighs and cleaned off the last of the blood. His name was still there, and he rubbed until it was gone while I laid my head on the side of the tub and cried.
What shame. Lying in a tub with my legs spread, weeping while my husband scrubbed our baby from between my legs. But despite what the scene may have looked like, I wasn’t ashamed. I was open, raw, and comforted.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re good to me.”
He put his hand flat on my abdomen. “You wrote something here too. It’s darker.” He ran his wet hand over my cheeks, wiping away old tears to make room for the new ones.
“There was a shower in between.”
“I’m going to have to work to get it off.”
“I don’t want to look.”
“Don’t.” He picked up a scrubby thing, tossed it, chose something softer, and put soap on it. He was all business. I looked at the ceiling as he scrubbed.
“Do you want to hear the last stupid thing that went through my head?” I said.
“If you’re willing to hear my stupid thing after.”
“I thought, ‘This happened because I wrote it backward.’”
“That is stupid.”
“What was your stupid thing?” I asked.
“That next time we should tattoo Jonathan’s baby, and it’ll stick.”
I laughed through my tears. That was Jonathan, a poet in love and a realist in life, thinking superstitious nonsense, just like me.
“Are you cold?” I asked when he put the scrubber down. “Your clothes are soaked.”
“I feel trapped in a bag.”
“You do look a little vacuum-packed.”
He laughed, and I laughed with him. He stood and peeled off his clothes, getting down to the pure magnificence of him. I didn’t know if I could ever be away from him again. I needed him.
“They’re going to restart the track in a week,” I said, holding out my arms.
“I think you’ll be okay by then.”
“Come with me.”
He stepped into the tub without answering.
“Jonathan,” I said as he leaned his back on me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist.
“I heard you.”
“Please. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t make me choose. I can’t do it anymore.”
He leaned his head back and kissed my cheek. “I own you, and I take care of my property. Every minute of the day.”
“Say that means you’ll travel with me.”
“It means wherever you go, I’ll be by your side. I’m going to take such good care of you, you’re going to get sick of me. You’re going to tell me to stay home, and I won’t.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, laying my cheek on his shoulder. We stayed there until the water got cold.
chapter 37.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
MONICA
“Today?” Laurelin cried as she zipped my dress. “You agreed to do a show today?”
“Tonight, actually.” I held up the strapless top with my forearm.
“You’re supposed to get swept off your feet to a foreign land.” He face was red with irritation, and her fists were tense. She was quite the romantic, our nurse.
“I am. After the show. Two songs in my wedding gown. Darren and I will blow the roof off the place, then I’ll go on my honeymoon.” I kissed her cheek, and when she tried to push me away, I kissed her harder.
“Come on,” she said. “Let me get this on you.”
Laurelin struggled to get the zipper up, cursing. Her pale blue gown hung on her like a sack, as if its lack of efficiency made her body repel it. She, Yvonne, and three of Jonathan’s sisters were my bridesmaids, and they tittered around the waiting room, drinking tea and fussing with their makeup.
My hair was braided, of course, and twisted into a bun. Leanne had fashioned a veil of twisted tulle and beadwork, knotted it into the plait, and let it fall to the floor. I wasn’t into finery, but the dress was gorgeous. Rock star gorgeous. Underneath it, I had a custom-made lace garter set with enough hardware and straps to suspend me from the Eiffel tower. I couldn’t wait for Jonathan to see it.
I hadn’t let him have me in two weeks, which hadn’t been easy for either of us. But I wanted to be wild with desire on our wedding night, and I wanted to torture him as much as he tortured me.
During the weeks after my miscarriage, I couldn’t. I had been bleeding drop by drop, and I felt so raw and hurt, I couldn’t let him near me. I hated my own skin. Then, one day, as we were getting on the Gulfstream to New York, the rawness left, and I wanted nothing more than his body inside me. He was gentle at first, but once he realized I was all right, he went back to the rough bastard I always knew.
He’d barely left my side since. Where I went, he went, and if he had to travel, I followed him. We brought Laurelin if we had to, and she brought the baby and her husband and kid sometimes.
Jonathan with a baby was magic. He opened up. His sense of humor turned to silly faces and funny noises. And yet, I couldn’t give him one. There was nothing. Not even a threat or a tickle. Just us. We started talking about adoption, because he only had so long and I wanted joy for him before his heart gave out.
“Any word from Mr. Gevers?” Laurelin asked, as if reading my mind.
André Gevers was a Dutch man, and the first recipient of an artificial heart made by what we privately called the Swiss Project. Jonathan had funded the research, and though he still promised nothing as far as allowing an artificial heart to be used on him, if it worked, I knew he wouldn’t say no to a life.
“Stable. The fake heart seems really happy in there.” I held my hand up with my fingers crossed so tight, I nearly pulled a tendon.
“Two weeks doesn’t mean it won’t be rejected,” Laurelin said. “I’m not trying to be negative, but medical research… there are a lot of failures before something sticks.”
“It’s going to work. He’s going to be an old man.”
“Gevers or Jonathan?”
“Yes.”
“My brother was born an old man,” Margie said, appearing next to me in the mirror, wearing a feminine-cut tuxedo. She was the best woman. We’d been at a loss for men, so she, Sheila, and Fiona were groomsfolk, along with Eddie and Darren. “Your dress isn’t as puff pastry as I feared.”
“You look perfectly marriageable yourself.” I said.
“That’s what I’m told.” She handed me the loose bouquet of flowers. “You ready?”
“Thank you, Margie. For everything. I’ve always felt taken care of with you around.”
“My pleasure. Now go.”
All my sky-blue girls waited at the exit, and I followed them through the stone hallway and into the courtyard. The security detail followed us, as visually conspicuous as they were silent. I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to being famous. It had been a year since my EP hit, and seven months since the full album. I was already having daily wrestling matches with my belief that I was a freak and a fraud, and Darren and Jonathan had to pull me away from them.
In the middle of the chaos and changing expectations, there was Jonathan, always at my side in public and always my master and king in private. We’d planned a wedding between plane rides, concerts, family functions, the management of a handful of hotels, and enough lovemaking to make my whole life a honeymoon.
Jonathan’s divorce made him ineligible for a wedding in a Catholic church. Fortunately, Episcopalians were less strident, and St. Timothy’s was more than happy to do the honors. The church was a huge stone edifice crusted with stained glass and surrounded by old trees in the center of Los Angeles. I got to the narthex, where my mother waited in a dress she tried to look modest in. It didn’t work. She was too beautiful, and she carried it like a cross. She kissed me on the cheek and held me. I was overcome by the seriousness of it all. Yes, I’d been married for two years, and yes, this was all a big redo for the sake of his family and tradition, but those stones and brass fixtures had seen generations of brides. And the pews, from what I could see, were full of people.
“So much for an intimate event,” I mumbled.
“Oh, please, Monya,” my mother said, “you had no chance of that.”
She took my hand, and we were hustled to the back of the line.
St. Timothy’s had a huge organ, and at the first note, a hush fell over the congregation. I waited at the end of the line with my mother as the bridesmaids and groomsfolk walked down the aisle. David and Bonnie were right in front of me with the rings and a basket of rose petals.
