Iggy
Brock hovers, fussing with the blanket, pulling the shade. Noah is napping; I can hear his soft breathing over the monitor,
deep and even. It’s maybe the most soothing sound on the planet. Your baby, content and cozy, safe.
My nerve endings are frayed; I’m buzzing with anxiety. Have been since I thought I was being followed on my way to brunch.
False alarm but still, it rattled me. The events of the brunch have further unsettled me, and truthfully it wasn’t much fun
to begin with. Ana was being Ana. And I felt out of place as soon as I arrived, was counting the minutes until I could go
home to Brock and Noah. Then the police. The shock of it all just took my breath away. A murder.
Now nausea and an unpleasant reflux have me wondering if I’ll be racing for the bathroom. Ana is the worst cook. Why did I eat so much of that cassoulet? Just to please her, I think. Because she noticed that no one else had touched
it, felt hurt. The brunch was supposed to make her feel better, after all.
“I’m okay,” I assure Brock now. But he doesn’t seem convinced.
“You’re really pale, Ig. Like, gray.” He sits behind me, puts his hand on my forehead. “You feel warm.”
“It was the shock,” says Esme, bringing me a glass of water.
She’s been attending to me since I fainted.
Drove me home. Her presence is soothing.
She’s one of those people, confident, knowledgeable, in control.
Always kind, even when she’s not at her best. “Maybe the champagne. And the food. I’m a little queasy myself.
I should have stayed with my planned meal. There’s something. A weird aftertaste.”
“I can’t believe Paul is—dead,” she says, sinking into the chair across from our bed. She shakes her head, looks out the window.
A large diver’s watch glints on her wrist, catching the light from the window; her earrings are huge diamond studs. She likes
the bling, which I always find a funny contrast to her down-to-earth sweetness.
“How?” asks Brock, brow furrowed. “How did he die?”
He looks tired, faint circles under his eyes. He hasn’t shaved today. Brock’s been taking the 3:00 a.m. feeding with the pumped
milk, even though he has to go work in the morning. He likes it, that time alone with the baby. But we’re both a little out
of it, and I know he hasn’t been sleeping well. The other night Noah woke me, and Brock wasn’t there. He came in from outside
while I was nursing.
“Where were you?” I asked in the dim of the nursery.
He knelt beside us. “I took a walk. I couldn’t sleep.”
The night, its solitude and quiet, soothed him, he told me. I’m the opposite. I seek light and warmth, company.
Now Brock sinks onto the foot of the bed, puts a comforting hand on my leg. He rubs a hand up and down my shin. His touch
always relaxes me.
Esme glances at her phone. “There’s nothing about cause of death in the news. Just that he was found at Black River Park.”
“I hike there all the time,” says Brock, running a hand over the crown of his head. There’s something odd to his tone, but
when I look at him I don’t see anything but fatigue. He rubs his eyes, something Noah does too when he’s tired. What night
was that? That he was out walking? I can’t remember, these new-parent days and nights just run together.
“So do we,” says Esme, shuddering a little.
We. I notice things like that. How Brock said “I,” even though I often join him on those hikes or did before the baby came
and we had to decide to take turns exercising unless his mom can sit. How Esme said “we.” They’re very coupled, Esme and her wife—both of them always say “we.” There’s just an energy to their relationship, a bond that seems very solid,
unbreachable.
Unlike, say, Vera and Brad. Their relationship has the vibe of a very successful business partnership. You might catch Esme
and Claudia whispering to each other, sharing a private touch or eye roll. At a party Vera and Brad orbit each other, never
connecting it seems, not even looking at each other, working the room. That’s the only time I’ve seen them together though,
at parties to which Ana has invited me. So maybe I’m only seeing the public-facing version of Vera and Brad. Maybe there’s
something deeper between them that they only show in private. Probably there is. There’s always something we only show in
private.
Ana and Paul. Once I caught them coming out of the men’s bathroom together at a restaurant where we were all having dinner
to celebrate Payton making partner. Ana gave me that bad-girl smirk I know too well, and Paul flushed when our eyes met, his
hair tousled.
“You might want to pull up your fly,” Ana whispered to him as they passed me, loud enough for me to hear.
“Oh, shit,” he said, then laughed. I hated the sound of his voice.
But no, I wouldn’t call them coupled. Nothing with Ana ever seems permanent. Paul was her longest relationship, though. Which
shocked me. Because how could she not see what he was? Or maybe that’s why she liked him. She’s always had dark appetites.
Usually, she grew bored quickly, or got angry about something, turned off. She’s the dumper usually, not the dumpee.
I have wondered if Ana hadn’t gotten tired of Brock and dumped him if he and I would have ever found our way to each other. I try
not to think about that too much; certainly, Brock and I don’t talk about it. I think maybe he loved her, or thought he did
for a while. I’m sure he doesn’t know the kinds of things she used to say about him. He’s like one of those modern “un-men.” All feelings and no backbone. For fuck’s sake if he asks for consent one more time
I’m going to punch him in the face.
There’s tension between Brock and Ana. They don’t like each other much anymore. Not one of those former couples who can still
be friends. It’s another reason things have been difficult between Ana and me.
Truthfully, after the places I’ve been and the men I’ve known, the things that annoyed Ana are the traits I love most about
my husband. He’s gentle and good. Anyway, Brock and I both have complicated histories with the opposite sex; we don’t judge
each other. And so what if we fell in love when I was comforting him after his breakup with Ana? Relationships have started under worse circumstances,
right? Meanwhile, kind doesn’t equal weak. Something people like Ana never understand until it’s too late.
My vision is a little blurry, my stomach roiling like a vat of acid. God, what did I eat?
“Who do you think killed him?” asks Brock.
“My money’s on Ana,” says Esme flatly. There’s a beat of silence, then they both start laughing. I, however, don’t find it
funny. They don’t know her like I do.
“There’s no shortage of people who hated Paul,” I say. Though I’m not sure why I’m always rushing to her defense.
“He really was a dick.” Esme steeples her heavily ringed fingers. “Not to speak ill of the dead.”
“What was so bad about him?” asks Brock, who maybe met him once.
“We can start with misogynist,” says Esme.
“A woman in his office filed a harassment complaint, after which a number of others came out to say they had been mistreated. Psychological stuff—social media stalking, spreading rumors, sabotaging work. Some women claimed he drugged and raped them. Though there was no physical evidence to support that.”
“Oh my god,” says Brock, frowning deeply. “Wait. Didn’t you work there, Iggy?”
“I did but not in the same department,” I say. “I heard all the rumors, but it was kept very quiet.”
God. My stomach.
“So, what happened to him?”
“No charges were filed. The women took a payout in exchange for signing NDAs. Paul was fired from that advertising agency,
then started his own firm, taking a good deal of his high-profile clients with him. His new firm, Hayes he squalls when Ana approaches. I know she resents him and doesn’t approve of the life I’ve chosen—one she might have had for herself but discarded.
Then Noah’s in my arms.
The room disappears even as Esme and Brock keep chatting. Esme’s talking about a young woman who came to work for her, someone
who had an ugly encounter with Paul. But I’m not listening. I lose myself in the bright blue sea of Noah’s gaze, that flood
of oxytocin through my veins—the love hormone.
And I forget about Ana, the strange, stricken look on her face at Vera’s after the cops came. I forget all about Paul in his
too-shallow grave.
After a while, Esme comes to kiss Noah and me both on the head, and she heads home.
When Noah’s done, Brock lies on the bed next to me and we talk about the brunch, his week ahead, the baby’s checkup this week.
It’s nearly dark outside, the wind howling. And I’m washed over with a sense of peace, of gratitude for our little family
and how much I love them both.
“You okay? You still look a little off,” Brock says.
I’m aware of a growing pain in my stomach.
I hand the baby to Brock and try to rise to go to the bathroom. But then I’m doubling over, the pain in my abdomen like a
hundred knives. I struggle to the bathroom and vomit in the toilet. Brock puts the baby, who is crying now, into the bassinet
and comes to help. He hovers over me, but the world is strange and distant; I vomit again and again.
Oh, god, is that blood?
“Iggy? Ig, what is it, sweetie? Are you okay?”
I try to answer, but only vomit again. Then I can’t hold myself up, fall to the cold tile floor.
Noah’s wailing now. And I try to struggle up, to get to him. Please, I beg whoever happens to be in charge, let me get to my baby.
Then everything goes black.