Chapter Two – Lila.10
Chapter Two – Lila
The gray came in before the light did. I had learned these last months, that there was a difference: gray being the tears of darkness, the light being another day without Ethan.
Most mornings the sun raised its head quite late, but by seven I was usually showered and changed, crossing the cold floors in wool socks, one hand pressed flat to the small of my back, where the ache had taken up permanent residence sometime around the sixth month and shown no interest in leaving.
Eight months pregnant and my belly preceded me through every doorway, through every narrow passage of the house I had stopped noticing as narrow until I had to negotiate them differently.
I had begun to move the way the house required: sideways past the bathroom door that didn’t open all the way, careful on the step that had always sunk a quarter-inch more than the others, slow on the stairs with one hand on the banister because the banister was something I was no longer willing to test my principles on.
I came down the hallway in the gray and stopped at the entryway.
His boots were where he had left them. I had not moved them.
I told myself it was because I had not thought to, and that was almost true in the way most things I told myself were almost true.
Brown leather, work-worn, the toes pointing slightly outward the way his always had when he took them off, like they were still expecting to be stepped into again.
The dried mud along the soles had cracked over the months into a kind of fine, pale map, the edges curling where it had split.
I knew if I touched it, some of it would crumble. I didn’t touch it.
The canvas coat hung on the hook above. The sleeve on the right side was slightly twisted, the kind of thing that happened when you shrugged into a coat fast, impatient with the morning.
The collar was turned up, the way he had always worn it, because he said the cold always went for the back of the neck first, and he wasn’t interested in giving it the opportunity.
I had teased him about that once. He had pulled the collar up on my coat too, without asking, and tucked it against my jaw, and I had swatted his hands away and then missed the warmth of them immediately.
The coat smelled of cold now. Not of him anymore, or not much. I had braced for that smell for months and now that it had nearly gone I didn’t know what to do.
My free hand came up before I had decided anything about it. My fingertips found the fabric of the sleeve, the rough weave of the canvas, the small raised texture of it under my skin. I stood there a moment with my fingers resting against the cloth. Then I let my hand drop.
I didn’t straighten the collar. I didn’t untwist the sleeve. The boots stayed as they were, and I moved on.
The living room held the same gray light as the hallway, the windows paler now as the sky outside considered its options.
The shapes of furniture sat in their familiar positions: the low table in front of the sofa with its permanent ring from a mug I had never gotten to with the coaster in time, the armchair that sat in the corner and was only ever sat in by people who didn’t know any better, because the springs had gone on the left side, and it listed toward the floor in a way that was only amusing until it happened to you.
The side table by the door still had last week’s post on it, sorted into the two piles I had developed over the months: things I had to deal with and things I was not yet ready to deal with, the second pile being significantly taller than the first.
The baby monitor box sat between the two piles.
I hadn’t opened it. I had stood in the shop and looked at all the different ones and chosen the one Ethan had written down and bought it and brought it home and put it on the table and not opened it, because opening it was a step toward something I couldn’t finish thinking about without running into the wall where he was supposed to be standing.
I picked it up. The box was light, lighter than it ought to be for something with this much weight attached to it.
There was a piece of paper trapped under the box, and when I turned it over I saw his writing on the back.
He’d written a list in the particular way he always wrote lists: items without numbers, each one starting a little lower on the page as though he’d been walking while he wrote.
Nappy pail. Sheets for the crib (x2). Muslin cloths. And then, lower, check what else, ask L.
Ask L. I had not been asked.
I read it twice. Then I turned the paper face-down and set it back under the box and set the box back on the table between the two piles of post.
“That was his handwriting,” I said. The room didn’t react. The gray light sat in the windows. “He made lists for everything.”
My voice came out even. I had gotten good at even.
I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, feeling the firm, impossible weight of Peanut, the heat of her through the fabric of my shirt, and I stood there in the living room.
She pressed back against my hand, a slow, sleepy pressure. “Right,” I said. “Come on then.”
I left the box where it was and went to put the kettle on.
The nursery was the second door on the left, and I had been walking past it most mornings without stopping. Today I stopped.
The door was slightly ajar from the last time I had opened it, which was weeks ago, which was not something I was going to examine too closely. I pushed it open with my fingertips and stood in the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, and looked at the room.
The crib stood against the far wall. Ethan had spent the better part of a Sunday assembling it, the instructions spread across the floor, a cup of tea going cold beside him, and by the time he had finished he had been pleased with himself.
The crib was solid. It was also missing its mattress, which sat in a bag in the top of the wardrobe in our room because I hadn’t gotten to it, hadn’t been able to make myself get to it, and the empty slats gave the crib a look of mild reproach.
The hardware bag still hung off one of the side rails, the zip-tie uncut, a few spare bolts rattling inside it when the draft from the hallway moved through the room.
The floorboards were dusty and there was sawdust still in the corners from the cutting Ethan had done on the crib base, fine and pale, settled there in the weeks since.
The tin of paint sat on the floor beside the far wall, lid sealed, the little painted swatch on the front showing the color: a soft, clear yellow, like the inside of a new lemon.
He had chosen it in the shop while I’d been reading labels on a different brand, and he’d appeared at my elbow and held it up and said it was the one, with the absolute certainty of a man who had given the matter perhaps forty-five seconds of thought.
I’d smiled and humored him, because secretly I loved it too.
The rocking chair in the corner still needed building, as did the chest of draws, changing table, and wardrobe.
But flat pack furniture required time patience I didn’t have.
The curtain rod above the window was installed, with one bracket slightly higher than the other, which he’d noticed and said he’d fix.
But there were no curtains on it yet, just the bare aluminum rod and the window behind it showing the shimmering dawn light bleeding through the greyness.
I stood in the doorway and let the room be what it was. I didn’t have the energy to give it any more time.
The memory came the way they always came, both urgent and unannounced, the way a smell will carry you back before you have a chance to brace yourself.
Our bathroom. Small and cold in February, the tiles white and the grout darkening at the edges, the single window above the mirror that never let in enough light.
I had been standing at the sink with the test in my hand, not looking at it yet, or looking at it but not reading it, the way you sometimes stall before a verdict you already half know.
The room smelled of the soap he always left uncapped and the slightly damp flannel on the rail. The floor was cold through my socks.
I heard him come in behind me. He didn’t say anything, just appeared in the mirror over my left shoulder, and I held up the test so we were both looking at it in the reflection.
I felt him go still, and my stomach had dropped because I’d thought, for a single lurching second, that he was about to tell me something was wrong, that his face was doing something I didn’t want to see.
So I turned.
He was looking at the test. His jaw was doing something complicated.
His eyes, when they came up to mine, had gone bright in a way I had never seen before in the years of knowing his face.
Then he made a sound that was not quite a laugh, but a shriek, the sound a person makes when something arrives that they have been hoping for long enough that the arrival feels implausible.
He pulled me in with both arms, and I said, laughing and pulling back, that I hadn’t put the test down yet, and he needed to watch himself, and he laughed again, properly, and took the test carefully from my hand and set it on the edge of the sink and then pulled me back in.
The flannel of his shirt was soft against my cheek.
His chin came down on the top of my head and he kissed me.
It was the perfect moment, one etched into my memory for all eternity, just like he will be.
I sighed and closed the door to the nursery. I shouldn't have to do this without him. I shouldn’t be alone like this. I lent against the hallway wall. My hand resting on my stomach as the first of the tears caressed my cheeks, tingling my lips and coating them with their salty soft exterior.