The Forever Marriage

by Ann Bauer

  It said to wait until morning, indicating that only the “first day’s catch” of urine contained enough hormone to trigger a result. Carmen paid no attention. She went into the bathroom immediately and sat on the toilet, catching some pee in a cup, splashing her fingers in the process, dipping the little paper strip in before even washing her hands. It was positive: rudely, brightly so with its two parallel blue stripes.

  Carmen threw the strip, box, and urine cup into the trash can out back, so Jobe wouldn’t run across them before she was ready to talk to him. But she ended up blurting out the news anyway, the moment he came home. He was barely in the door, bike-messenger-style briefcase still slung over his shoulder, and he looked bug-eyed and terrified for a moment. They stood on opposite ends of their rented living room, staring at each other in horror. But somewhere inside Carmen there was a tiny, interested voice. Jobe was frightened, too—he wasn’t ready for this. For all she knew, he was off at work every day looking for opportunities to teach in far-off universities and one day he’d simply disappear on a South American flight of his own. It made her braver, this thought.

  “Are you upset?” she asked. “Do you want me to look into … ending it?” It struck her then that despite her own horror at discovering she was pregnant, this was the first time the possibility had ever even entered her mind. “If you do, I should probably see someone fast. I’m pretty sure this happened in Italy.”

  “Jesus, no!” Jobe came forward three full strides, then stopped. He had cut the distance between them in half and there it stayed. “I don’t want that at all! I’m just …” He stopped midway.

  What are you? Carmen wanted to ask. Surprised? Scared? Completely fucking blindsided? But standing in this unfamiliar place that was supposed to be their home, she felt as if she couldn’t. She missed the buffer of Olive and Nate. Or even George, whose absentminded bumbling through a room could somehow bridge the murky pool of space between her and Jobe.

  The topic of abortion never came up again. In fact, Carmen made sure. Every time she’d tried to leave Jobe over the past year and a half something had happened to prevent her, each event more dramatic than the last. She didn’t want to know what would come after this: a crippling accident, maybe. Carmen had never been superstitious before but she remembered her mother’s avoidance of the color yellow, aversion to crows, and perpetual four-touch signing of the cross.

  Besides, it was easy enough to carry this baby; pregnancy turned out to be like a playground slide—once you started down it, there was only one natural way off. Carmen ran and biked well into her seventh month. Because she was not quite twenty-two and very healthy, Carmen’s doctor had been completely neutral on the topic of prenatal screening. “Chances of anything going wrong for you are incalculably small,” he’d said. “There’s no need for an amniocentesis unless you want to be 100 percent sure.”

  Carmen shivered and signed the waiver saying she declined. She didn’t want anyone sticking a long needle into her bulging middle! It might pop like a balloon.

  Privately, she marveled at this baby’s very existence, stemming from one of only two times she and Jobe had made love on their three-week honeymoon. She hadn’t even thought it was the right point in her cycle. And it seemed significant that she should have blossomed into pregnancy immediately after marriage when they were even less sexually active than before. Sometimes she wondered if Olive really did have some kind of witchy power: She could stand in front of the fireplace inside her big house on the hill, tap her feet and wave her arms, recite incantations, and—poof!—there would be the grandchild she wanted tucked inside Carmen’s womb.

  There were a number of more logical explanations, of course: the best being that Carmen had gone off the pill after Rory. She didn’t want to be tempted to stray by the ease of built-in birth control. But she hadn’t mentioned the change to Jobe. Instead, she’d been fitted for a diaphragm, and if he thought it was strange that she excused herself and went to the bathroom for a long time whenever he got amorous, he never said. Likely, it never occurred to him. He would lie back on his pillow and dream about equations, perhaps even forgetting what he was waiting for. But when she returned, full of sticky, clear spermicidal gel, they would resume awkwardly. Sometimes he would go soft and roll away from her but at least half the times they were able to finish, in some manner of speaking. Then Jobe would fall asleep and Carmen would lie staring at the ceiling and feeling the loss of something she couldn’t name.

  Now that she was pregnant, however, she was turned on all the time; even the seat of her bike sometimes rubbed her effectively enough that she rode crazily, weaving in and around traffic while the waves coming from her clitoris built in a series of expanding arcs. It was a comical problem she would have liked to share with someone. But for some reason, she couldn’t even admit to Jobe that she wanted sex. Instead she complained of being hot at night and took off her T-shirt, turning toward him, bumping him with the little rounded belly. He complied more often than before, growing hard silently and turning her—especially once she got into the third trimester—so he could slip into her from behind. Facing away, Carmen was braver. She would pick up one of Jobe’s long hands and place it between her legs, sometimes moving his fingers to the spot he never seemed to find on his own.

  During the day, they never mentioned these things. Jobe worked and Carmen filled her days shopping for the baby. She had failed when they first moved in to put together a grown-up home, but things were changing now that she was going to be a mother. There was money in the bank—she thought of it as her Buenos Aires fund, though that seemed a ridiculous fantasy now—so she used it to buy a three-wheeled stroller with shock absorbers, a matching changing table and crib in regal cherry wood, and a glider-rocker for night feedings. Still, the supply of baby-related items was endless. Tiny T-shirts and diaper covers, receiving blankets, socks with built-in rattles, stimulating mobiles, nursing bras.

  She bought several sets of stencils as well and began on the nursery wall, outlining Humpty Dumpty, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, various elves. Stepping back one pale late afternoon in April, she saw that she had accomplished the job perfectly. There were even a few artistic flourishes: on the wolf that peered from around a tree, for instance—she had given him sly, lit-up eyes and erect ears, making him far more menacing than he appeared on the package. Was this good for a baby? She wasn’t certain. But it was, at least, a place where she could see her mark.

  If Carmen were in a movie about her own life—she paced now, blowing on a milky cup of coffee—she would drop the grade school arts supplies and bravely begin sketching out something of her own. She could picture herself doing this. But the truth was she’d never been quite good enough. Carmen knew that if she were to put aside the stencils and start on the wall freehand, with a tracing pencil and paints, she would create an embarrassing mess.

  It was late. She gathered up her supplies and stacked them on the second level of the changing table. It was time to make dinner, something else she wasn’t terribly good at. Though Jobe did like her mother’s goulash and it was a cool, rainy evening. If she got started immediately, she could be pulling the casserole out of the oven right around the time he got home. She had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, where—while she had her legs spread and he had his large warm hands stuck inside her—the avuncular man would ask what she’d been eating. Better to tell him about this homemade meal than the cheese popcorn and Diet Coke she’d had for lunch.

  More important, warm, spicy food would fill the evening and soften the gap between them. The smell of her mother’s cooking made Carmen feel a little less lonely. She hurried downstairs through a clash of gloom and bright silver rain to begin thawing the meat.

  Over goulash and salad and dark beer (his alone—Carmen drank milk) Jobe asked, abruptly, how the baby was doing.

  “You make it sound like I can just check in with it and say, ‘What’s up, baby?’” Carmen lifted a forkful of noodles to her mouth and c
losed her eyes as she popped it in. Food had never tasted so good in her life. “I don’t have some secret pipeline, you know. It’s not like I hear things you don’t.”

  This was almost, but not quite, a bald lie. Tomorrow, it would be. On her last visit, the week before, Carmen’s doctor had recommended an ultrasound.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he’d said, patting her bare foot in the stirrup. “But you’re eight months along and you’ve only gained fourteen pounds. I think it might be time to check in on your bambino and measure.”

  “Could I find out the sex?” Carmen asked. She’d gotten used to talking to this man with her legs spread out, up in the air.

  “Depends on the way the baby’s turned.” He rose to wash his hands and she watched. He had wonderful hands, wide and strong, not at all like Jobe’s. “But chances are good.”

  She hadn’t told anyone about the ultrasound. Jobe already knew so much compared to her. This was something she planned to keep, this tiny bit of knowledge. From now until the delivery, only Carmen would be able to picture this baby and understand him. Or her. She would be able to think more carefully about names. She could finish the wall painting in the nursery, looking at that wolf from her baby’s point of view.

  The next morning, she drank her milk and coffee then three full glasses of water. With her bladder pinching and rippling, she drove to the doctor’s office and waited twenty frustrating minutes to be called.

  “You better hurry,” she said when he came in. “Or I’m going to pee all over your examining table.”

  “Patience, patience.” He glopped some clear gel onto her hard stomach and smeared it with a blunt instrument that resembled a dildo with a flattened head. “I guess that’s easy for me to say, right?”

  There was the sound of a heartbeat, but she’d heard this before during every exam since her fourth month. The machine’s little screen was turned away from Carmen and she craned her head. “Can you tell?” she asked. “What is it, a boy or a girl?”

  The doctor was squinting, moving the wand by millimeters, back and forth. “Uh, I can’t see yet.” His face was slightly red and he looked embarrassed, this man who had stared directly into the space between her open legs. “I need a better view. Could you turn just a little to your left?”

  Carmen shifted and a couple teaspoons of urine leaked out, wetting her thighs. “I’m serious, I really need a bathroom,” she said. But when she looked over her right shoulder, the doctor’s face was like thunder.

  “What’s wrong?” Her pulsing bladder faded into the background, a faint but persistent ache. Now the thing Carmen felt most vividly was the icy fist inside her chest. The certainty that something terrible had happened without her knowing. A wild loneliness for her mother, or Olive, or even Jobe.

  “Don’t move,” he said sharply. Then, more kindly: “Relax. I’m just having trouble getting the picture I need.”

  But Carmen knew this wasn’t true. After she had been allowed to rise, clenching her bladder as if she were carrying it, to use the toilet and dress, Carmen sat alone in the doctor’s office, waiting. She had never been in here before. It was a stately room containing a heavy oak desk, two easy chairs, and bookcases lined with fat textbooks. She wondered if they were real or only for show.

  As if to answer her question, the doctor came in at precisely that moment, white coat flapping, and pulled a book from the shelf. He stood flipping through the pages. Again, he was squinting. Then he replaced the book and walked around the desk to sit behind it, facing her. Don’t talk to me, she almost said. I don’t want to know.

  What he’d seen on the screen—which he had never turned toward her, she realized now; nor had he given her a little black-and-white picture of her baby, the way obstetricians did on TV—was a small pool of fluid on her baby’s neck. There was, in addition, a strange brightness to the bowel. And he had measured the baby’s nose; it was unusually small.

  The doctor paused and Carmen’s brain worked frantically, trying to add up these things. Surely someone smarter than her could see the sum of them. But nothing appeared to her. And then there was something: a wide, gold, fat zero in her mind, like an angel’s halo that had grown.

  “Our next logical step …” he had grown so formal, this doctor who once told jokes while sliding his lubed fingers in and out of her, “is an amniocentesis. There’s a four percent chance it will cause preterm labor, which probably would result in bed rest for the remainder of your pregnancy. Our other option is simply to … wait.”

  “For?”

  “Do you think you should call your husband, Mrs. Garrett?” he asked.

  Coward! He couldn’t bear to answer her question. He wanted another man in the room, someone to calm her. “No,” she said. “He’s working. I don’t want to bother him.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

  “No.” Carmen straightened. She was glad now that she hadn’t wiped herself off carefully with water. It was good that she was leaving urine streaks on this man’s expensive upholstered chair. “What are we waiting for?”

  The man sighed and looked at the ceiling. He felt caught; Carmen had seen this expression before. “Your baby has several of the markers for Down’s syndrome.” It was as if he was reciting some sentence out of his book. “I can’t be certain, not from looking. A very small percentage of normal fetuses also have these features.”

  Carmen folded her hands over her midriff and squeezed in. She didn’t want to hurt the baby, just mold it into normal shape.

  “We elected not to do fetal testing because of your age.” The doctor had opened a drawer and was riffling through some files. “I have the document right here.”

  “I know I signed it.” Her voice was flat, suddenly old; she could hear it. “You don’t have to show me. I’m not going to sue you.”

  He cleared his throat and reluctantly shut the drawer. “It’s too late to terminate your pregnancy here, in the state of Maryland,” he said. “By law, there would have to be some risk to your life. And you’re one of the youngest, healthiest patients I have.” He raised his hands in the air as if, once again, his point had been made. “However.” He cleared his throat. “There are a few places where you could …”

  Carmen let this hang in the air. She envisioned the procedure, like the gutting of the wolf at the end of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Her belly would be slit open with a knife and a whole human pulled out. But then what?

  They sat without speaking for a time. Then the doctor shifted in his big chair. “I’m sorry, I have other appointments,” he said softly. He did sound genuinely sorry.

  Carmen stood easily. She’d never gotten awkward, the way a pregnant woman was supposed to. Obviously she had been doing something wrong. “Go ahead,” she said, then lied: “I’m fine.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s, ah, a boy. Did I tell you that?”

  He hadn’t, but Carmen nodded anyway.

  Later, she would not remember driving home, parking, going inside, or making lunch. But she found herself there, in the empty brownstone, staring at half a sandwich (had there been another half originally? had she eaten it?) and leafing through her folder of brochures. Africa, Japan, Antarctica. She’d done this so often they were soft with wear, the paper like cotton.

  There are a few places where you could … The doctor’s voice escaped the privacy of Carmen’s head and echoed in the air around her.

  It was possible, still, to take that flight to Buenos Aires. For all she knew, it was one of those places where a baby could be erased. And if she were lucky, no one would be able to track her; they would never have to know what she’d done. Over time, Jobe and Olive—even the baby himself—would grow faint.

  Carmen rose and went to the entryway where a small black-framed mirror hung. This was one of Olive’s only contributions to the décor: She’d said it would open up the small foyer. Carmen stood in front of it and stared directly into her own eyes. They were not the same as the ones she’d seen
on her wedding day, less than a year before. Her face was leaner even despite the pregnancy, with large eyes and hard planes. It was—the thought popped up, like the ghost that burst out of a Halloween pumpkin toy when she pressed a button, which she’d had long ago—more like her husband’s. She was carrying his child, a deformed boy who would probably never look like either of them, and somehow absorbing Jobe through the baby’s genes.

  The front door opened, catching her at the elbow. She moved to the side and Jobe suddenly appeared next to her. This was not like the pumpkin at all. In childhood, the surprise had been the same each time.

  Carmen backed up, her tailbone touching the wall. She remained held in the mirror and watched as her face receded; she saw his both real and reflected, furrowing and dark.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. Anyone watching would have thought she was frightened of him, that he was an intruder in her home.

  “There’s something wrong,” he said.

  “Yes.” She continued to watch herself. There were tears running down her cheeks that she could see but not feel.

  He turned and took a step, and she was dizzy for a moment as the actual Jobe moved toward her but the flat image of his back in the mirror moved away. It was as if he were separating, becoming two people. Then he was inches from her, smelling of fear and opening his arms. She bumbled in, placing her cheek against the soft fleece of his JHU sweatshirt, and gratefully closed her eyes.

  “Maybe the doctor was wrong,” she said.

  Time had contracted and it was evening, a fresh, rose-and-lavender spring dusk that could not help but fill her with hope. That, and the full glass of white wine she’d drunk after a completely alcohol-free seven months.

  “He said he saw a…” She strained to remember, her head blissfully light and fuzzy. “I don’t know. A short nose. A bright bowel?” She nearly laughed. Could he really have said that? “And fluid on the”—she touched her own, without thinking—“neck.” She looked longingly at the open bottle but one glass was already too much, especially given what she was proposing. “He never said he was sure. We’d need an amniocentesis for that. I could do it tomorrow.” Her voice spiked, too shrill.