57. Out of the Pit
Summer
I’d faced so much these past few days, even as I’d thought I hadn’t. Once I’d begun talking to Roman, it had all come out, facts and feelings and all, so I’d obviously been putting it together in the back of my mind. Facing this, though, was different, because I did have that pit inside me.
Pits don’t go away by ignoring them, though. Pits only go away when you drop down into them and start carving the steps that will let you climb out. So I took a leap of faith, let go of the edge at last, and fell in.
It was terrifying.
“We were married for almost eight years,” I said, forcing the words out. “Eight years of him getting richer and more famous and honestly working really hard, and of me working and learning and achieving something that mattered to me, even if it didn’t seem like much compared to what Felipe was achieving. It was all right, whatever the outside world thought about how much I was supporting him. It was important to me to have something of myself, and I thought he got that. There was something I didn’t have, though. That we didn’t have.”
“A child,” Roman said.
The shiver went all the way through my body as I remembered how empty I’d felt. Month after month. Year after year. How empty I still felt sometimes. “Yes. His mum had been talking about children ever since we’d married. Specifically, a son. At first, I wasn’t ready, but a few years in, when the honeymoon was definitely over and I was trying to figure out how to make a good life for myself, for us? It felt like the missing piece. And it was more than that, too. There was no reason I needed a baby, but I wanted one, and I couldn’t rationalize it away. Whatever I got or didn’t from Felipe—I don’t think I expected more, not anymore. I didn’t exactly have much of a model, did I? No dad. Not even that many other boyfriends, and I didn’t always choose well then, either. So it wasn’t about Felipe. It was about—” I had to stop, then.
“A baby,” Roman said. His face had softened, but that was because he cared about me. What was I doing, finally coming back to him and immediately confessing this? Something that would make me seem needier than ever? Something he probably didn’t want at all?
I didn’t know what to say about that, so I just plowed on. “Felipe had married me. He spent money on me. He loved me, I think, as much as he could love a woman, and he wanted a baby. OK, I probably thought it would help us, dumb as that sounds. Once I let myself, though, I wanted it more than anything, but it just … never happened. I went for testing and the doctor told me there was nothing wrong, and finally, Felipe went, too. He didn’t want to, but we knew it wasn’t me. But his sperm count was fine.”
“Odd, then,” Roman said.
“Well, not really. The doctor asked me, ‘Are you having intercourse during your most fertile periods?’ and I didn’t want to answer.” I rubbed my hands over my inner thighs. “Because sometimes we did, but usually we … didn’t. Felipe didn’t seem to need me that way anymore, not the way he had earlier. I thought maybe every man lost interest when his partner wasn’t shiny and new. When I said something, he …” Oh, boy. Could I say this?
“He was a fool,” Roman said. “And you’re not. There’s nothing you can say that will make me think less of you, because I know you.” His voice sure as ever, his eyes green as pounamu. New Zealand jade, shining and strong.
“OK,” I said, and braced myself to let the truth out. “He said that if I’d quit my stupid job and travel to the matches, if I’d love him the way a woman should, it would happen. That it was because I wasn’t committed enough to him. To our marriage. To his success. That I was holding back, and my body knew it. He was doing everything to secure our future, and I wasn’t. And it felt a little bit … true. I wasn’t sure he was cheating, not back then. He didn’t flaunt it the way some of them did. The major part of me probably knew it, but I was still trying to hide that from myself. I’d made this choice. I needed to make it work. And he swore he wasn’t. He looked into my eyes and promised me. But it was a lie. Every time.”
“Right.” A muscle twitched in Roman’s set jaw, and he wasn’t looking understanding anymore. “So what happened?”
“I’m sure you can guess. I finally got pregnant. I didn’t want to believe it at first. I’d tested so many times over the past five years, and I couldn’t stand to be disappointed again. When you’re staring at the stick, hoping so hard, holding your breath, looking and looking for that second line, telling yourself you see it. And then it just … isn’t there, so you wrap the stick in toilet paper and bury it in the rubbish bin so you don’t have to see it anymore. So you can forget how much you hoped. I waited for two weeks like that, trying to push the idea away, bracing myself against … against losing that hope again. But finally, one night, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I did the test. I stood in the bathroom, looked at those two lines, and cried. And right away, along with the joy, I was terrified.”
“Cease to hope,” Roman said, “and you will cease to fear.”
“Seneca,” I said. “But I can’t do that. I can’t stop hoping. I’ve never been able to.”
“For what it’s worth,” Roman said, “neither can I.”
“Anyway.” I had to go on. I had to say this. “I waited weeks to tell Felipe. Up to twenty percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. If that happened, I wanted to be the only one who knew. It would be everything I could do to manage my own pain. I couldn’t manage his, too, or his blame. Maybe that was selfish.”
“No,” Roman said. “Sounds like it was realistic.”
“But I missed a second period,” I said. “At that point, it’s more like a five percent chance of miscarriage, and anyway—I felt pregnant. I could tell it was real. I was tired and sick, but I was so excited. It was like this secret that I was growing, literally growing inside me, and I wanted him to know. Felipe was … he was still the best player on the team, but he wasn’t as much the best, and he’d grown more reckless with that. Driving faster, buying more new cars. Gambling on the races. Coming home late at night. I tried to tell myself that this might make a difference. That when he had this responsibility, it would matter. So I came home early from work the next Friday, cooked a special meal—spag bol, his favorite—lit the candles, put on a pretty dress, and waited for him.”
“But,” Roman said.
“But. He didn’t come home at all that night. At nine o’clock, I blew out the candles, tried to eat the spaghetti, and ended up running for the toilet. I thought, I’ll try again next week, and tried not to think about the question. That if this didn’t work, if things didn’t change … could I stay? That would be the moment of truth. The moment of dread.”
“What happened?” Roman asked.
“The next week, we got arrested, and the question didn’t even matter anymore. I was sick all the time then, and I couldn’t have said whether it was morning sickness or fear. Felipe was barely home at all now, shaking me off when I tried to talk to him, telling me, ‘It will be OK. I didn’t do anything wrong. The solicitor will take care of it.’ He was playing better than he had been before, weirdly, with a sort of fierce intensity. The one commitment he’d never broken, and that had to mean something. I thought, Wait until things settle down, but really, I was in a world of my own. I was still going to work, still trying to seem normal, to seem calm. I felt like I had a goldfish bowl around my head, holding in my thoughts and my fears. I was afraid of what would happen if I took the bowl off. If I faced everything. So I closed down instead. I was numb to everything except my body. Except my baby. That was the one spot. That was my hope.”
“The golden bird in the painting,” Roman said. “In the box still, despite all the black-winged things flying around.”
“Yes,” I said. “So I took the vitamins. I found a doctor and made an appointment. I told myself that there was plenty of time to tell Felipe. And, finally, I did. One day, I looked at my belly in the mirror, and I swear, it was rounder. Actually rounder. I’d lost weight, stress and sickness and everything, and the rest of me was thin, but when I stood sideways—I saw something.” I had to stop and catch my breath. “I can’t tell you what that moment was like. The bad stuff all fell away somehow, because this was really happening, and it was stronger than anything. I finally told Felipe that night, and he was thrilled. Laughing. Opening champagne. Telling me it was a sign. That this would be over soon, even though the trial had been set by then.”
“But it wasn’t over,” Roman said.
“The trial wasn’t,” I said. “But when we went for the ultrasound—the first time we’d see our baby …” I swallowed. “We found out that she was a little girl. And we found out that …” One more breath. “That she couldn’t live.”
The leapingjoy like streaks of silver inside me when I’d seen the little shape on the screen. Felipe saying, delight in his voice, “There it is. I see it. Is it a boy?”
The legs with their little feet. They were moving, because the baby was kicking. I strained to see more, but I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
“No,” the technician said. “Looks like you have a little girl.”
“Oh,” Felipe said. “Are you sure? It looks like?—”
“Ninety percent sure,” the technician said.
“Ninety percent,” Felipe said. “Not so sure.”
I barely heard him. I was thinking, A girl. I have a little girl, and the warmth that washed over me was like nothing I’d ever known. My baby girl, here for me to love. I’d be so stable for her. I’d be her rock. When she hurt, I’d be down on my knees, holding her. Loving her. Believing in her. And when she was happy, I’d share that, too. We’d plant flowers. We’d blow bubbles. We’d read books. We’d …
The paddle started moving again then, the technician pointing out what she was seeing. Felipe wasn’t saying anything, but I barely noticed, because there were her arms, and her hands like starfish. Her beating heart. Her head.
Her head.
The technician’s hand slowed on the paddle, then stopped. She’d been clicking and typing, clicking and typing, but now, she just sat there. Not for long. A few seconds, but in those seconds, my world stopped, too.
She said, “I’ll be back in a moment.” Then it was just Felipe and me. He was holding my hand, and I thought, He knows, because his hand is shaking. Then I realized it was my hand that was shaking. That he still didn’t understand.
I said, “Something’s wrong.”
“No,” Felipe said. “A girl is OK. A girl is good. We’ll have a son next time.”
“No,” I said. “Something’s wrong with her head.”
“What? No, it isn’t. I could see her face.” He laughed. “A baby.”
No time for anything else, because the technician and another woman were entering the exam room. Why hadn’t I realized before how cold it was in here? I was shivering with it. Why didn’t anybody notice? Felipe seemed oblivious, and so did the new woman. Who was wearing a white lab coat.
“I’m Dr. Marchand,” she said. “The radiologist. Let’s have a look.” She didn’t meet my eyes.
I wanted to say hi, but I couldn’t talk. I was still shaking, and I was so cold.
More seconds ticked away as the technician maneuvered the paddle. The crackle of the paper under me, and the tickling slipperiness of the paddle on my barely convex belly.
When the radiologist opened her mouth, I knew what she was going to say. “I’m very sorry,” she began.
And I fell into the pit.
Roman
I’d known what was coming. It couldn’t have been anything else, because Summer had been made to love, and to be loved. The knowledge still hit me like a shot to the gut.
“What was wrong?” I asked.
No tears now, just Summer’s clear gray eyes looking into mine. “Anencephaly. One of the most common serious birth defects. When the fetus has no brain.”
Now I really felt sick. “You mean …”
“I mean,” she said, “no brain. Nothing. Most babies with anencephaly are stillborn, if they make it that long. If not, they die within hours, because there’s nothing to keep them alive. They’re blind. Deaf. They can’t think, and they can’t feel pain. There’s no … person there.” She breathed in, breathed out. “I wanted to mourn a person, and she wasn’t. She was just … the idea of a person. She’d been my dream, but it was a mirage. I saw her, and then I lost her.”
“Summer,” Roman said.
If she heard me, she didn’t give any indication of it, because she was going on. Nearly robotically, laying the words down like tiles. “I didn’t even go home. We went straight to hospital, and they took her. It was early enough that I didn’t even have to heal much. My body barely looked different, and I wasn’t sick anymore. I had some cramping and some bleeding, and that was all. I shouldn’t even have been tired, except that I was. I was so tired, I felt … dead inside. Felipe got over it, and I couldn’t, and when I tried to tell him that, he … he didn’t understand. So I stopped trying. The trial started, and I sat through it like it was happening to somebody else. I knew it wasn’t going well for Felipe, and maybe it wouldn’t go well for me, either, but it was all at a distance. It was just … landscape. And then it was over, and I was out. I was free. Felipe went to prison, and I handled the bankruptcy. I moved out of the house with one suitcase in the back of my little car, because they’d seized everything else. I thought, now it was over, that I could go home and tell my mom. I could let it out. But when I went home …” She swallowed. “My mom was gone. It was one more thing, but it should have been so much more than that. It should have shattered me, but all it did was make me more frozen. More numb. It was like I was watching myself through soundproofed glass. I could see, but I couldn’t hear, and I couldn’t feel. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel again. I kept going because I didn’t know what else to do. And then I came here and started waking up. Delilah is …”
“Delilah,” I said, “is hard to ignore.”
Summer smiled. Her eyes had tears in them, but still, she smiled. “And you,” I said, “are a warrior. You’re a champion. And I love you.”