Forty-one seconds.
Maybe I could’ve told David about the test this morning before he left. I was awake, facing the wall and lying still, waiting for him to lace up his work boots, close the door, and stride down the hall with his heavy, steel-toed steps. I can imagine him wild, causing a scene in the living room, pacing a loop from the fridge to the TV, or throwing down a freshly stretched canvas and prying open big cans of paint, turning his nervous energy into giant smears of color. But really, that is the old David, the one who used to beg me to let him paint me, to cover me over in paint in layers and swirls until my skin and hair would be caked in the thick mask of his version of me. He has stopped asking for this, and his manic energy, the rhythms of his lean legs and arms, are unleashed only over the canvas. For me he is quiet, in profile mostly, as we watch TV or read side by side in bed. I probably could have told him and been met with calm, all the silence and breathing room I thought I wanted. Now I’m not so sure: the hush has a weight of its own.
Thirty-six seconds.
Thirty-six Mississippi.
Thirty-five Mississippi.
Thirty-four Mississippi.
I lean my back against the door, and it thuds shut: ker-thunk, between me and the mess David has left behind. There are no windows in here, but the sun is probably working its way up, shedding a gray half-light over all of our mixed-up things: computer and canvas, brushes and books. This is no place for a baby, our cheap little studio apartment that never really got the homey touches we promised ourselves when we found it together. Two summers ago it seemed exciting to arrange all our things, to pull them out of boxes labeled “Nicole” and “David” and see how they looked in new groupings, but now it’s messy, packed too-tight. Where would we deal in a whole extra person, something that wouldn’t be mine or his, but some uncategorizable combination of us?
Thirty-two Mississippi.
Thirty-one Mississippi.
Thirty Mississippi.
This is a milestone—only a half-moon left to go. I’m sure I could probably just look at it now, but I’ve come this far following the directions just right, so I might as well see it through. And I want to give it as much time as I have to show up, just in case it’s positive. Sometimes there’s not enough of the hormone to show up right away in the urine, and you could be pregnant and not know because the test would be a false negative. They say that it’s much more likely to get a false negative than a false positive.
If it is negative, a real one, I could just sink back into the way things are. But if it’s positive, even after all my planning? Then it’s another list of pros and cons, weights and measurements and calculations. More rearranging of things, to see if there is a combination that fits a baby into grad school and building savings and finding a new place, a career, working my way up until I’ve done all things I promised myself I would do. This is not how I had pictured it. I can’t even visualize where we would put a crib that it could stay clean and safe. Then there are the hazier, more distant parts of the list: a wedding, maybe, and a house, and traveling. If it’s positive, then I cut and paste these things to see if they all fit on the same page, working in David’s things the best I can. Or figuring out where to make cuts, which things get deleted: mine or his? Time or money? Quality of life or an actual life? David would say to relax, to paint it in: he never removes anything he doesn’t like from his work, but just keeps adding color in layers until he’s satisfied. He says that the paint hidden underneath isn’t gone, but adds to the final version. I pretend I can see it, the blue splash under all those reds and browns, but I can’t, not once it’s buried.
Twenty-two seconds.
Maybe I could run and get my robe. It’s freezing in the bathroom, and that might take up just the right amount of time here at the end so I can look right at it when I get back. I could get my slippers too, and be comfortable for this. If I run, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds, and I wouldn’t miss anything except having to listen to the light buzz, which hasn’t stopped, and probably means the bulb is going. This weekend is going to be all about fixing up the bathroom.
Eighteen seconds.
Do I still have time to run to my room? I don’t think being a little late would matter, because the directions say you can let it go for as long as ten minutes. Does it self-destruct after that? Does anything self-destruct, just implode and disappear, or do you have to do something to it to make it go away?
Fifteen seconds.
I open the door and feel the warmer air on my face. I close the door again, and it makes a breeze that chills me. I don’t think there’s enough time. Come on, come on already.
I’m shifting my weight again, one hip jutting out and then the other.
Ten seconds.
Nine seconds.
I reach over to the toilet lid and drop it shut. I sit, and the plastic lid is not quite as cold as the enameled seat was two minutes and fifty-one seconds ago. Legs crossed, hands tucked flat against each other between my thighs, the foot in the air taps uncontrollably at nothing.
Seven seconds.
Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.
Six seconds.
They say the foot-shaking thing is a sign of the little bit of autism that we all have. Autistic people just have more symptoms.
Four seconds.
Come on, Mickey.
Three seconds.
I wrap the autistic foot tight around my other leg so my legs are crossed at the knees and clamped at the ankles.
Two seconds.
It feels weird to stop the tapping.
One second.
I exhale in a lippy fffffffff sound, unwrap my legs, and stand up. I wipe my hands on my pajama pants. I reach toward the cool, dry place on the sink. After all this, I’m not sure I want to look. Something is coming, will wedge its way into my life and change my plans, no matter what the results are. I want to close my eyes for just one more second of the way things were, when the apartment was clean and new and we couldn’t wait to fill it with the chaos of our things and our bodies jostling into each other, combining. But it’s already gone.
Exhale and examine.
There, in the plastic window the size of my pinkie nail, is one magenta line, wettish-looking, like it could bleed out fatter across its white background. One line.
A negative.
I squint and look closer, checking for even the faintest tinge of pink, a hair’s width of a line in the space where it’s supposed to be. One line, alone on its side of the window. I could check again before the ten minute deadline to be sure, but I’ve done everything right, and this is my answer. I shroud the test stick in a length of white toilet paper, carefully. The wand freefalls into the trash and lands in a hush among crumpled tissues and dental floss.
Out of the bathroom the rest of the apartment is light, and I am untethered, surrounded by airy space. I don’t know what time it is, and the day could be getting away from me or slowing down. The floatiness is too much, so I crawl back into bed. In the rush before the test, I had thrown the blankets back wildly, and now the sheets are cold, all the body heat from David and from me has dissipated into the room. I pull them back up to my chin and stare at the ceiling over my side of the bed, waiting to be warm again.
The light, the space: Everything in here feels too far apart, the way a fever feels when you’re a little kid. I want to go back to sleep, but it’s too bright, and something is missing. I should be relieved, dancing around the place or humming while I clean up and get ready for class, but my stomach is fluttery under my ribs. A phantom, left-over feeling of something that was never there to begin with.
How many Mississippis until it goes away?
I am glad that the test is hidden, that David won’t see it if he takes out the trash. I don’t want him to find it, because anything I say after that he wouldn’t hear, would blame on the baby. Or the not-baby. And anyway, this is something that was mine, was kept clean for a while out of the paint and the jumble of all our stuff. It f
illed me up, and I hadn’t realized there was room for it until it was gone. Now I am doubly empty.
My throat tightens. I miss this thing that was never inside me, that kept me company while I thought about my pros-and-cons list, and how things might be different if I could arrange them just right. But the tiny, fleshy streak of color I could see for a moment has been painted over, flushed out by reds, and then covered over again by the grays and glarey whites of the daylight streaming through the apartment.
September Air
My eyes are shut to the white light of day in the windows. I press my face a little farther into the cushion. It is not my pillow, but instead the tweedy arm of the sofa. I shift slightly, and there is suddenly a cool spot on my breast, a dampness exposed.
Riley.
When I look, I am relieved to see that he is asleep, face tilted up to the light in that raised-eyebrow way that his sister also had, looking more alert and intelligent asleep than awake. He gives two little close-mouthed sucks, and sighs jaggedly. Still asleep, even without his human pacifier now. My shirt is still hiked up, and I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping or when he stopped nursing, but he seems comfortable. I would love to turn over, to adjust, but I pull my arm in a little tighter around him to make another inch of space between him and the sofa’s edge.
I close my eyes again.
In college I had bouts of insomnia, tossing and turning all the things on my to-do list around in my head and watching the red digital numbers on the alarm clock silently count through the hours. I don’t remember what this felt like; I have become a master at falling asleep, hard, in just a minute or two, and snapping out of it just as quickly. I am right on the edge of falling off into that place where you know for just a flash that you are asleep, and there it is: Thu-thud. Thu-thud. Sam is pushing on her bedroom door, leaning into it with her bottom and then releasing it. I hold my breath and try to relax against it, hoping it will subside, but it gets gradually louder until it is full-out banging. My body is awake, tensed, even though I am trying not to be behind my eyes.
I slide my hand under Riley’s fuzzy, dark head and hold him steady while I place him in his vibrating seat. I hold my breath as I slide my arms out from under him and switch it on. He doesn’t move, and I sprint upstairs to stop the noise.
“Samantha Janine!” I push the door open quickly. “Stop banging right now.”
She has run over to her big girl bed and whirls around. “I mall done!” She smiles, big and dimply, and I relax in spite of myself. Her dark hair is wild, all tangled and teased from her nap. She walks to me leading with her belly, chin tucked in to her chest and eyes looking up coyly through dark lashes. When she bumps me, she throws her arms around my legs and crushes her head into my pelvis, where it can fit again. She leans back to look up at me, using my thighs for balance. “I want O’s.”
I tilt my head and raise an eyebrow.
“Please mayhaveO’s?” she corrects herself. “And when Daddy comes home, we will have a cookie. I will have choc’late, and Daddy will have plain.”
“And what kind of cookie will Mommy eat?” I’m not sure we even have any cookies; Jake probably took the last ones for breakfast in the car.
“No, you don’t have a cookie, Mommy. Jus’ Daddy.”
After a too-late trip to the potty and a new pull-up she is buckled into her booster seat and is chattering away at the kitchen table with a red plastic bowl full of dry Cheerios. I am about to make myself a sandwich, but she is banging on the table. “I mall done!”
The Cheerios have not been touched, except for the handful that have been pushed out of the bowl onto the table. “Sam, you are not all done. You need to eat your O’s.”
“But I don wan’um.” She slides the bowl away and looks up to me with wrinkled brow and pursed lips. “I wan’ed sauce.”
“You would like to have some applesauce instead? First eat your O’s and then you can have some applesauce.” I force this to come out nicely; it sounds high pitched and false in my ears. I feel the prick of adrenaline tickling under the tip of my sternum, starting to tingle down my arms. I take a deep breath and force it back down. I huff out that air and drop my shoulders, flex my hands open hard. I turn back to the counter and finish putting my sandwich together. I haven’t eaten since Riley’s pre-dawn feeding, and I notice all at once how hungry I am.
I sit down at the table with Sam, who is picking Cheerios out of the bowl one by one. “Mommy, this is a O.” She pops it into her mouth and smiles, chewing. “And this is a O. And this is a other O.” She talks and talks and talks; I nod and smile and chew. When Riley wakes up crying I bring him to the table and balance him on my arm; he sucks down his lunch while I finish mine with my free hand. When my arm gets tired I cross my leg underneath it and use my knee for leverage, so a different part of me is uncomfortable for a while.
After the first five minutes of Riley nursing, I have a little bit of a sinking feeling, like nestling backwards into a pile of propped up pillows, the way I used to settle in on a drizzly day with a new book. I feel that way even in the awkward positions we sometimes find ourselves in, like alcohol without the buzz, with just the disconnect from what I’m seeing. From this watery distance it is easy for me to leave the edge out of my voice and automatically inject the bright “Ohs” and the “Wows” and the “Great jobs!” into Sam’s babble.
I am used to eating with my lunch balanced on my knees, in slightly tensed and strange poses. Those lunches were take-out salads on benches by fountains or under skylights in mid-Atlantic malls, surrounded by people strolling from place to place, or walking fast and talking faster on cell phones, all making a murmur hovering around me at a distance. I used to be a merchandise rep for a designer clothing line, work that had me traveling to regional retailers and tweaking their displays, discussing their needs and how the lines were working for them. I dressed tall, silent, motionless mannequins in new arrivals. I got to wear a lot of those clothes and meet a lot of people. Shallow retail people, I thought at the time, people who didn’t read good books. Breathing in the chlorine air around those fountains, I would count the glints of copper and silver on the pale blue tiles and wonder what wishes were attached to them.
“Mommy, I mall done.” I look over to Sam’s bowl, which is empty, but there is a small mound of cereal on the table next to the bowl.
“You still have the ones on the table to finish before you get your applesauce.” I point to them.
“Mommy! Those are Kelsey’s O’s.” Kelsey is Sam’s new imaginary friend, and she has been visiting us over the last two weeks, mostly at meals and bedtimes. Kelsey is two, almost three, and likes to do everything that Sam likes to do. “Please mayhavesauce now?”
Riley is beginning to doze again, so I don’t want to argue. “Applesauce in a bowl or on a plate?”
“Mmm…maybe I want crackers.”
“Sam.” I’m trying to have just the right tone here, gentle but not too lenient, firm but not too mean. The way that young, blonde elementary school teachers talk to their charges in romantic comedies before being whisked off the playground by the leading man.
The phone rings and I put down the last corner of my sandwich, clamp Riley closer to my breast, and pick it up in the next room. “Abby, we did it!” Jake’s voice is full of energy, slightly breathless. Stretched into a smile you can hear.
“That’s great. So it all went off?” Riley is arching his back and twisting in my arm. He needs my two hands to prop him up straighter; I need one for myself to hold the phone. One of us will have to be uncomfortable. I wedge the phone between my ear and shoulder and sit him up straight while I twist to hold everything in balance.
“…loved it, and we got a three-region deal instead of just the trial. Can you believe it?” I missed some of the details about the suits and the projections and the contracts. Riley’s eyes are wide and dark as he scans the room. A thin tether of drool connects his milky lip to my shoulder.
“Wow. Great j
ob, Jake.”
“Mommy, Kelsey’s all done too!”
“So hey, listen, we were probably gonna go out and celebrate after we wrap a few things up here. Is that okay?” I can hear that Jake has pushed a little closer to the phone, turned away from the bustle in the background. I can picture the high fives and the email clicking out of wires and walls like lightning, flashes zipping along thin, electric lines and connecting to other flashes, on and on across offices across the city, filaments holding them together. “I mean, how was your day so far?”
I tell him how many times Riley ate, and for how long; which cartoon Sam watched and how she had a time-out for throwing a matchbox car; how Kelsey is still here and that now she shares Sam’s food. At least I think these things happened today, and not yesterday or the day before.
His “Ohs” and “Wows” come into the mouthpiece at an angle, and I hear the hiss of space. “Um, okay, so it’s good? It’s okay if I come home late?”
I know he doesn’t know how long he will stay out, so I don’t ask. He shouldn’t have to ask permission, but he should ask how I feel; I’m not his mother but I am a mother now: this is the DMZ of our relationship, where we tiptoe cautiously and are careful not to catch ourselves on barbed fences. “It’s fine. They’ve been pretty good today.” This has no meaning, really, neither the truth nor a lie. We say goodbye and hang up; the filament snaps out of tension and Jake is floating away, receding back into handshakes and the smell of coffee and Xerox toner. Riley puts a fist in his mouth, breaking the shiny line of drool.
After hand wipes and mouth wipes and a diaper for Riley, we finally stumble out of the front door and into the sunshine. It is clear, and the afternoon light makes everything as sharp and primary as one of Sam’s picture books that teach words for everyday things: blue sky, green grass, red flowers, yellow house. The air has finally caught up to the calendar, and all at once I realize that it is September for real, not just in name. The sun is still warm, but the air is cool and dry. I close my eyes and feel the breeze in my nose and across my face, filling both sides of my skin. There is a ripply wave in my chest, fluttering behind my ribcage, and I have an urge to buy colored folders and loose leaf paper, ball point pens and highlighters, and a backpack with lots of zippers and pouches, all ready to be filled with just the right thing. Days broken down by subject and sorted into specialized compartments, clean and neat, and still new. This is what the rest of the world has been doing while I have been inside.
Both Sides of My Skin Page 5