Chapter Thirty
Something was different.
The techno music was gone. The chatter of voices had completely departed.
Evelyn blinked her eyelids open, trying to make sense of what had happened.
One moment, she was in a nightclub with David and Jared Sparks.
The next moment—her eyes flitted upward, toward pink subway tiles lining the walls—she was in her apartment.
Or more specifically, her bathroom. Weirder still .
. . she was lying in her bathtub. But when she shifted, looked at the lineup of men’s shampoos and conditioners, shaving creams and razor blades, she knew she was in the past. David had always used Head & Shoulders.
A voice sounded from behind the shower curtain.
“Well now, of all the times to be lying about . . .”
Evelyn shrieked, surprised. “Excuse me?”
A woman with a round face and a short brown bob peeked her head round the shower curtain. “Lying about,” she repeated. “You think we’ve got all night here, do you?”
Evelyn filled in the blanks. “Six.”
Six pulled back the curtain all the way. “Right you are!”
Evelyn was caught off guard. Six was wearing jeggings and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the pastel image of a stork delivering a baby in a blue blanket.
Around her neck and wrists, she wore charm jewelry full of tiny pink and blue baby bottles and pacifiers.
Evelyn had had enough. She grabbed the curtain, pulling it all the way shut, before resolutely lying back down in the shower.
“No,” Evelyn said, feeling the panic rising in her chest. “Absolutely not. I’m not doing this.”
“Whyever not?” Six asked.
“You know why,” Evelyn grumbled to herself.
Damn these delusions. Damn these visions. She had already lived through this experience once. She wouldn’t do it again. Arms crossed against her chest, she pouted openly. No, she was not going anywhere. She was not going any further on this trip down memory lane.
“I know it’s challenging,” Six said sympathetically. “But I only want to help you.”
“You’re not real,” Evelyn called out. “You’re a figment of my imagination.”
Six stuck her head back inside. “If I’m a figment of your imagination, could I do this?
” She turned on the shower. Cold water came running down.
Evelyn shrieked and quickly scrambled to get the hell out of the shower.
Stepping over the lip of the tub, she found Six waiting with a towel. Evelyn grabbed it from her.
“You know what,” Evelyn said, drying herself off. “Why don’t you, and all your Hanukkah-ruining friends, go back to whatever shi—”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Six warned Evelyn away from using the curse word, wagging one finger directly in her face. “We don’t use curse words while we’re together. There are children present.”
“What children?” Evelyn squinted, annoyed. “We’re alone.”
Six lifted up her T-shirt. She was expecting to see a normal human belly—round and plump, covered in skin—but instead, her eyes grew wide with disbelief. Where there should have been a belly button was a hole.
“Well, go on, then,” Six said, wiggling her belly. “Take a look! They’re all there.”
Curiosity got the best of her. Evelyn bent down and peered into the opening.
Through the hole, she saw outer space. There were twinkling stars and spinning galaxies, like all of the universe had been splayed out before her, but also, and perhaps more surprising, laughter.
The sound of children playing, as if they were all existing happily on some intergalactic space playground, echoed through her entire belly.
Evelyn stepped back. “My delusions are really getting out of control.”
Six laughed and pulled down her shirt. “I carry them all, you know?”
Evelyn squinted. “All?”
“All,” Six repeated, and patted her belly. “The ones who were wanted, the ones who weren’t. I even carry the ones who never made it past a hope or a dream . . . I keep them safe until it’s time for their parents to come and get them.”
“You must deal with a lot of back pain.”
Six angled her head and laughed.
“No pain at all,” she clarified. “Just love, and peace . . . and most of all, understanding.”
Evelyn scoffed. “Understanding.”
Six took Evelyn’s hand and placed it upon her belly.
Evelyn could feel life. Movement. Tiny flutters of heartbeats, little feet kicking, and the joy—these sparks of life, safe and happy.
She didn’t want to think of her own child lingering somewhere in that void, loved beyond measure.
She couldn’t allow herself to feel the magnitude of the loss, or she would disappear into that abyss, too.
Evelyn pulled her hand away. The sound of jangling keys and the front door opening jarred her back into herself. She could hear David, and what she assumed was another younger version of herself, entering the premises, talking loudly.
“Looks like we’re up.” Six smiled gently. “You ready?”
Evelyn swallowed and followed the ghost into the living room.
She knew almost as soon as she saw the young couple come in, loaded with winter coats and bags of Chinese food, what past memory the sixth heartbreak of Hanukkah had brought her. The couple headed to the kitchen, and Evelyn waited—bracing herself with arms crossed.
It wasn’t the worst moment of her life.
Just one she would never forgive herself for.
“I can’t believe how big Jesse is getting,” David said, putting the bags of Chinese food on the counter in the kitchen. Her younger self was distracted. David set the plates aside and left the egg rolls unattended. “Everything okay?”
“Hm?”
“You seemed a little distant at the party. I know that you’ve been running yourself ragged at work, but I just want to make sure there’s nothing else going on.”
A week before, Evelyn had gasped at the sight of that positive pregnancy test, a wave of disbelief washing over her, coupled with excitement.
She was pregnant. Actually pregnant. Granted, both she and David wanted children, but all of that was supposed to come .
. . eventually. Six pregnancy tests later, and Evelyn was forced to face the truth that eventually had fully arrived.
She waited all week for the right time to tell David, but she was hesitating.
And the more she hesitated, the more her own anxiety grew.
Her career had just started taking off. She was just about to be pulled off Live with Angelika in order to take a position working alongside the one and only Marla Feinberg. She had no idea how to balance both.
All of her initial excitement began to morph.
She wasn’t ready to be a mom. She wasn’t ready to give up her own dreams to change diapers and wipe snotty noses.
She was going to screw up her kids . . .
just like her parents screwed her up. It was all on her, and she would undoubtedly fail.
She would fail, and fail, and this child would hate her for it. David would hate her for it.
Until finally, one day at work, just out of curiosity, she found herself Googling abortion clinics.
The law was on her side. She didn’t have to tell David. She was still early enough in . . . a simple pill and the problem would be taken care of. The child would go away, until a better option—a better point in her life—arrived. David would never have to know.
Judaism allowed for abortion. In her tradition, life began and ended with the breath. And yet, even knowing she had a pass from God, there was still some part of the decision that felt wrong. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t betray David. Even though she fully believed that it was her choice.
And so, on that snowy winter day—after spending the morning watching Jesse, David’s niece, celebrate her birthday surrounded by balloons and ice cream cake at a trampoline park in northern New Jersey—Evelyn finally found the courage to speak the words aloud.
She made that beating heart growing inside her belly a reality for them both.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
David blinked. Surprise, shock . . . and then, joy.
He rushed over to her, kissing her cheeks, touching her belly.
But her younger self wasn’t having it. “Stop,” Evelyn said, pushing him back.
“Just . . . stop.” She could see it even now.
His joy dimmed. A look of confusion spread across his face.
And then, Evelyn told him the truth. “I don’t want it. ”
From there, every worry and fear she had held in secret for a week poured out of her.
She word-vomited all over him, blubbering hysterically while the Chinese food got cold on the kitchen counter.
She wasn’t ready. Her career was just getting started.
She wasn’t equipped to be somebody’s mother. Look what happened with her parents.
The only thing she didn’t tell him was that she had considered having an abortion.
David scoffed. Laughed. He wasn’t taking her seriously. “You’re just nervous.”
“I’m not!”
“Evelyn,” he said, and moved to comfort her again.
“Come on. You do this every time something good happens. You freak out. You’re certain something horrible is going to happen.
Think about our wedding. Remember how you almost ran away, left me at the altar?
And look at us now! Happily married, about to have a baby . . . our own little Davilyn.”
His makeshift name caught her off guard. “Davilyn?”
“Unless you prefer Evelid?”
His terrible soon-to-be-dad joke did the trick.
Evelyn stopped arguing long enough to laugh.
David used the pause in her tirade to pull her into his arms. This time, she allowed it.
The feeling of his broad arms enveloping her, her cheek pressed up to his heart—she could hear it beating through his shirt.
And she felt safe. David was her partner.
It made her present self feel even worse about what had happened later.
“Why are you showing me this?” Evelyn spun around in the direction of Six. “To torture me? To punish me? Don’t you think I know my own heartbreaks?”
Six frowned, sympathetically. “I do.”
“So what?” she shouted back at the spirit.
“What’s the point of all this? You want me to understand that I’m a terrible person?
Fine, got it! My baby died because I hesitated for one second about getting pregnant?
Because God wanted to punish me, teach me a lesson, for doing a stupid Google search in a moment of fear and anxiety? ”
“Is that what you believe?”
“What I believe.” Evelyn scoffed. “What I believe is that there is no God. There are no heartbreaks of Hanukkah. Because there are no miracles. The entire universe is unfair, and filled with chaos and suffering, and guess what? I deserve to suffer, too. So you know what? You don’t have to keep punishing me.
You don’t have to keep sending spirits, and heartbreaks, and delusions, to teach me some pointless moral lesson! I already hate myself enough.”
Evelyn didn’t wait for a response from Six.
She didn’t want to take any more trips down memory lane, either.
She bolted from the living room, leaving the sixth heartbreak of Hanukkah behind, before storming through the threshold and back to the bathroom.
She was halfway beneath the lintel when a whoosh of swirling air and the feeling of cold water jolted her awake.
Evelyn awoke to someone shaking her shoulders and calling her name. “Evelyn?” David asked repeatedly. “Are you okay? Can you say something for me?”
She blinked her eyes open and took in the scene like Dorothy awakening back in Kansas.
There was David. And Jared Sparks. And all those models, eccentric-looking artists, and tech bros from his entourage.
Though the music had quieted in the wake of her run-in with a club hostess, and the house lights had been turned on, she was still lying on the floor.
“I’m okay,” she said, sitting up. “How long was I out for?”
“Out?” David blinked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I thought I was . . . dreaming.”
She stopped herself from revealing anything else. She could already tell by that pulsing vein in his neck that David was worried. A shiver ran through her, and her eyes flitted down to the blouse she was wearing. She was drenched.
“Why am I all wet?” she asked.
“See, what happened here,” Jared said, moving to explain, “is we were having a conversation about taking off to go to David’s farm tomorrow, right?
And then you freaked out and ran away . .
. into this extremely lovely waitress here, holding our even more expensive drinks.
At which point, we all came over to check on you.
But you were being all weird and mumbly-like .
. . so I grabbed a bottle of water and dumped it on your head. ”
“Great,” Evelyn deadpanned. “I appreciate that.”
“The water is very expensive, Evelyn.”
“Noted.”
“You know,” Jared mused thoughtfully. “Sometimes, when I’m upset . . . I like to suck on a nipple. It helps reorient me, connects me to childhood and the sacred mother which nursed us all. Would you like to suck on my nipple, Evelyn?”
Evelyn didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“I think,” David said, interjecting, extending one hand to help Evelyn up from the floor, “that we’re both just ready to call it a night.”
Jared considered the statement. “So, I’ll pick you both up tomorrow, then?”
Evelyn sighed and found her gaze catching on David. Guess she was going to see his life in Pennsylvania, after all.