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by Bryan Hurt

  As I approached my house, she turned around and the sight of her high forehead, a great expanse of white papery skin, startled me. She fixed her eyes on my face and dropped her rake. The clang of it against the cement sent my heart into a frantic throb, as if someone could see it beating under my shirt. I hurried inside, closing the front gate behind me, relieved to find myself safe in our sequestered front yard, enclosed by thick ficus trees. But I was sweating, and in an instant, I remembered a dream from last night. I looked into the old woman’s attic, as if the roof of her house had been lifted off. An empty baby crib stood in the middle of the room with faded newspapers scattered on the floor. The crib was old and made of dark wood, cushioned with a few dirty blankets, and bats flew in and out of a broken window. A mobile hung lopsided from the ceiling, circling over the crib. The dreamscape was bathed in monochromatic light; all muted sepia hues as if I were examining an ancient photograph. I wondered where the baby was, and even now, the dream hung in the air as I tried to calm down and reassure myself that this was real life, here in the garden with our nice garden furniture made of weathered teak. The lone table and two chairs planted on the far side of the yard was where my husband and I sometimes drank coffee. Yesterday, sitting there, we’d shared raspberries straight from the carton. This was real. The dream wasn’t.

  A WEEK LATER we found an enormous spider hanging from the carport, dangling from its web as nimble as an acrobat. The spider was light brown and furry and as large as my outstretched hand. Standing in front of it with our arms crossed over our chests, we debated what to do. I worried that the spider would make its way into the house and hide in some dark corner, and when the baby was born, the spider might creep into his crib, and kill him.

  “What do you think?” my husband asked.

  “Kill it.”

  But I knew he felt bad about killing insects. He always let spiders and bees go free, ferrying them carefully out of the house in a wad of toilet paper, depositing them into the potted aloe plants.

  He looked at the spider wistfully, his hands deep into his pockets. The spider slowly began to lower itself down and then stopped at eye level.

  “If it’s poisonous then it’ll be loose, running around,” I said, convincing him to get a can of Raid. He sprayed the spider until it became weak and fell from its web. Then he smashed the spider with a large rock from our garden, to make sure it was dead.

  That day, while I was explaining the Russian scorched earth policy to my class, I stopped feeling him move. It must be the heat, I thought, and he’s probably just resting. I pictured him with his little baby legs crossed, hands behind his head, as if he were at the beach taking a break. After dinner I thought I felt him moving again while we watched TV in bed, a stupid romantic comedy about a house sitter and her search for the owner’s standard poodle. Of course the woman finds the poodle and in the process, falls in love with a landscape architect.

  Early the next morning, I went to the doctor. “Just to make sure everything’s fine,” my husband said, kissing me lightly on the mouth. “Because I’m sure it is,” he added.

  “Yes,” I said, buoyed by his optimism, “of course.”

  I lay on the examining table. The nurse had already tried to find a heartbeat, but she seemed unfamiliar with the Doppler machine and I internally criticized her lack of skill, for the way she nervously fumbled around my abdomen, moving the Doppler from one side of the stomach, and then to the other. She just doesn’t know what she’s doing, I thought. Then my doctor walked in and she looked concerned, impatiently taking the Doppler from the nurse. She said, “You should have come earlier.” Earlier than what? I wanted to say, but didn’t, cowed by her voice. I remember staring at her silk wrap dress, a paisley print against navy blue. I almost said I liked her dress but for some reason decided against it because by that time she too was fumbling with the Doppler and it didn’t seem appropriate to compliment her dress. I remember thinking that she wasn’t wearing her white coat because she had just come into the office, and her hair, freshly washed, was slightly wet. I remember the ghostly sound of the swish of my blood coming through the Doppler and nothing else. It sounded as if someone were whistling through the skeletal shells of bombed-out buildings. And then she quickly said she would do a sonogram. I nodded, feeling reassured by the word sonogram, as if this would all be cleared up in a minute. I remember wondering why she wasn’t saying anything, and why her unwavering eyes, a light blue, kept staring at the screen in front of her where she had the image of the baby up. The screen was behind my right shoulder. I remember thinking that I didn’t even have to ask her what was wrong. I already knew from her face, a face stripped down to its bare elements as if blinded by the sun, rendering her mute. After a pause, she looked away and said, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I cannot imagine, I’m sorry.” I heard myself say, “Is he gone?” She nodded. Then she left the room, saying she’d be right back, and before the door closed I heard her curse, “Jesus fucking Christ.” I sat there, my legs dangling off the examining table, the white thin paper crinkled under my thighs, and I couldn’t believe this was really real but I knew it was real and I knew that I would have to call my husband very soon, the cell phone was in my hand, and I would tell him what happened and then it would be real for him too and the more people who knew the more real this would be and the less real everything that came before this would become.

  Afterward, I avoided going to Nadia’s store because she would be another person I’d have to explain it to. Some people cried when they saw me. Some people acted as if nothing had changed. My close friend Laura brought me muffins and peaches and jam all in carefully wrapped parcels and listened to me tell the story of how I’d lost him, of how kind the nurses had been on the labor delivery floor, of how we were planning to scatter his ashes off Point Dume in Malibu but we couldn’t bring ourselves to let him go yet, as if keeping him in a little box in the bedroom bookcase that also housed The Trial and Civilization and Its Discontents was a comfort. When I was strong enough to return to ballet class, one woman congratulated me on having my baby, unaware that I’d lost him. Another woman commented that at least I’d lost the weight quickly. I wanted to punch her in the face.

  When I finally walked into Nadia’s store, she immediately knew what had happened, and so she wasn’t shocked, and I was grateful for this. The last time Nadia had seen me I was twenty-seven weeks, just a few days before. I thought about her two sons, and how they displeased her but at least she knew them as living breathing creatures, as entities outside of herself. Before she said anything, I blurted out, “The doctors don’t know what happened. They’re doing tests.” I didn’t feel like telling her the details: that the autopsy results came back inconclusive and all the usual reasons, such as a cord accident, chromosomal or genetic abnormalities, an undetected infection or a lack of amniotic fluid, did not happen. The doctors kept saying that finding nothing was better than something, because if they found something then there would be an issue to treat, a complication next time around. And I kept correcting them, saying if there’s a next time because we don’t know if there will be. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows anything.

  Nadia pursed her lips, nodding sadly. And then she rang me up for toothpaste and stamps, stamps I needed for all the thank you cards, thanking people for the white lilies and orchids and roses they had sent in elaborate displays, which had filled our living room. Giving me change, she carefully asked, “Are you okay?” Through her fingers, pennies and dimes slid into my hand.

  I don’t know why I told her this next thing, which I’d been turning over in my mind for weeks. I’d been thinking about that dream, my neighbor’s attic with the empty crib. “I think my neighbor gave me the evil eye. She stared at me right before this happened and maybe she willed it.”

  Nadia smiled wanly. “You are an educated woman. You shouldn’t think such things. It is not your kind of thinking. In my country, we believe this, but not here.” She shook her head, somewha
t amazed. “In my country, if something goes wrong with the pregnancy it is always the woman’s fault. They blame her for going out too late, for not wearing warm enough clothes, for sleeping too little, for not taking all the precautions. Even for attracting the evil eye, they say she should have stayed inside more, at home.”

  She paused, considering what to say next. Her face looked as pale and full as the moon. “You think the way they do in India. Backwards.”

  I considered this. Recently, I’d hung a ceramic turquoise eye from Turkey on our front door to ward off evil spirits, and I tried to purify the house with white sage, the thin blue smoke filling every room until the smoke detector went off. And now I wanted to move to a different house, to get away from the old neighbors because sometimes I really believed they took him from me, like in a fairy tale. My husband keeps repeating that the neighbors have nothing to do with it, and that I shouldn’t nurture such unhealthy thoughts. He speaks to me as if I am a small child, or someone who is quietly losing her mind.

  “Meet me for tea?” Nadia called out as I was leaving the store.

  I only ever saw her here, the cash register a familiar and comforting fixture, which seemed to facilitate our conversations. I couldn’t imagine her anywhere else. “Okay,” I managed.

  She smiled. “Tomorrow, one o’clock. Come to my house. It’s just around the corner. With the green gate on Marine.”

  A BLACK-AND-WHITE CAT treaded silently through her front yard, jumping gracefully onto the green gate and then off again, disappearing into the birds of paradise, the flame-like beaks beckoning. As I opened the gate, I wondered if he was Nadia’s cat, but the cat was collarless and Nadia seemed too conscientious to let a pet roam free. The gray BMW wasn’t in the driveway and the house seemed quiet. Standing in front of the door, I felt strangely nervous, and I wondered if she could already see me, through the peephole. Before I knocked, the door opened and Nadia stepped out of the darkened entryway wearing something around her head, almost like a bandage. As the door opened wider I realized it was a belt usually attached to a terry cloth robe. It was tied around her head, resting there like a laurel wreath. “So glad you came,” she said, and I followed her into the hallway. I expected to smell cumin or coriander or some other spice but instead the house carried a musty scent. She had all the windows open to generate a cross breeze, but it was still stifling and leading me into the living room, she complained about the heat and pointed to her head, explaining that was why she was wearing the terry cloth sash, because it was cooling, which seemed entirely implausible but I didn’t have the energy to ask more about this.

  We sat down on the leather couch and she closed her eyes for a minute, pressing her knuckles into her temples. “Pressure points,” she said with her eyes still closed. I nodded, taking in the blue-skinned Vishnu caught in a graceful pose, his four arms fanning out from his body. She had placed him next to a potted plant, an angel ivy ring topiary, its foliage trimmed into a tidy green orb. A tepid breeze blew in and she opened her eyes, gazing at me intently for a second before pouring us some iced green tea that had been placed on the coffee table. Fresh mint leaves floated among the ice chunks. When the tea was poured she settled back into the couch and I fingered the tassel of an oversized pillow.

  “I know these are very personal things to speak of.” She paused. “But it is much worse to be alone in these matters.”

  Her house was so quiet and still, I thought I heard the red numerals of the digital clock change from 1:07 to 1:08. I swallowed, feeling a tough lump gathering in my throat, and to stop my eyes from watering, I focused on the long beaded earring dangling from her ear. The beads were dark red, maybe coral.

  “I lost my first son too. I was nine months pregnant—it happened on my due date—when they took my vitals at the hospital, and checked for the baby’s heartbeat, there was nothing.” She glanced at me and then quickly looked down into her tea, studying a floating mint leaf.

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m so sorry.” I stared at my nails, which were torn and bitten down, and realized why I’d been invited to tea, because now I was part of this universal worldwide group, the childless mothers’ group.

  She touched the terry cloth band around her head and feeling that it was in place, she continued, “And like you, they never found out what happened. I remember his lips—so red—but otherwise he looked perfect.”

  “Do you ever feel him—around?” I asked this because I’ve heard of people feeling the presence of loved ones after they’ve died. I have not felt my son around at all and it makes me think that he is too far away, or that I was a poor mother to him, even in death. Possibly if I had been a better mother, with a keener sense of intuition, I would know it if he came to visit. The other thought is that nothing follows after death but a great yawning darkness.

  Nadia’s eyes lit up and she leaned forward, pressing the tips of her fingers together. “Oh, yes. He gives me little signs. Yesterday I started a novel.” She told me the title and asked if I knew it.

  I shook my head.

  “Guess what the main character’s name is? Aanand. Same name as my son. A sign, you see. And in the book he was just as playful and mischievous as my son, because my son was always moving around like a fish, poking my ribs with his toes, making me laugh in the middle of serious conversations.”

  “Aanand,” I said, and this made Nadia smile. My husband and I cannot say the name of our son. It is too painful even to say “him” or “he” let alone the name we’d picked. Instead we say, “When the accident happened” or “When September came.”

  “So.” Nadia’s voice dropped. “Tell me. What was he like?”

  I couldn’t speak because there was so much pressure in my mouth, in the place where words form; a blankness funneled down my throat like sand. I turned up my palms, as if to say: I only knew what I thought he might be like, a blurry forecast of a boy. I swallowed hard, the sand thickening, and looked up at her. Her eyes were liquid and malleable, as if she yearned to enter into the fantasy realm where dead sons were suddenly alive enough to speak of in material terms.

  “Well,” I said, trying to catch my breath but feeling as if someone had shoveled even more sand down my throat, burying me. I thought about telling her how I had played Brahms for him and how I had always stood close to the piano in ballet class so he could hear the Russian pianist play Chopin nocturnes as I demi-pliéd and élevéd, and how I had often imagined him as fluid and strong as Nureyev but I had hoped he would play basketball.

  “I,” I caught myself. She wanted to know about him, not me.

  “He,” I tried again. I didn’t know how I could ever explain him to me.

  The Entire Predicament

  by Lucy Corin

  My head hovers over the floor, and my hair dangles, and my foot teeters near my ear, and my backside is exposed. I’m separated. I’m gagged and behind my gag I can’t feel my voice. Homebound, on my very own threshold, I am of two minds or more about most things. I am of no mind about the rest, suspended, here in the doorway, within a network of ropes. I’m dangling upside down, one foot bound to the doorframe, an arm bending somewhere behind my back, another hip rotated, thigh stretching toward my ear, knee bent, a foot hovering somewhere above it. I have never felt so asymmetrical.

  A bird yaks from a tree in the yard behind me. Bright air moves like a thousand singing bees as I breathe. I can release my head and look at the floor or I can raise it and gaze across my house. I can see beyond the living room, past the breakfast bar, into the shining kitchen, and beyond that, through the glass doors to my pool fuming with chemicals. Expensive house, cheaply made. Inside, the doors are hollow, the knobs brass-plated. Nick a wall and it crumbles.

  I’ve lost the education I worked so hard for, or at least, it turns out I know nothing. My money is down the drain; I can see my last dollar from here, where I swing in the doorway, shifting my weight enough to revolve; I can see it blooming in the kitchen sink. My dog caught two
rabbits in the backyard, finally, after years of failure. He slung them in a bundle over his shoulder and went packing.

  My country’s at war, and I don’t mean venereal disease.

  I swing here, hung, dumb, limb after limb, by hook and crook, bound, naked, open. I’m also turning. I moon every direction I don’t face as I turn. I moon the blank world out my front door, and then I moon the desirable open floor plan inside. I moon my living room and its seven broad windows, and I moon the kitchen beyond it, mirrored deep in the appliances. I moon the patio set beyond the sliding glass doors. Sunshine hums in the windows and gushes along the walls, bounces and lolls on the flanks of my overturned furniture, the coffee table warming its belly, the sofa slashed, stuffing bulging, books like fallen moths, bits of china and glass from the buffet doors fairy-dusting my Pergo floors and tasseled throw pillows. How many hours has it been since my sunny eggs winked from their squares of toast? Since the tongue of my dog splashed in his water dish, since I sprinkled confetti for the fish, since my daughter donned her red boots and tromped to the school bus with bows in her hair and my husband, the dumb lug, backed over the roses on his way into town for the bacon? Enough hours for my hands to grow rubbery in their rope cuffs, for blood to fill my ears to bursting, my eyes rolling in their humble sockets, my brain rocking in its everlasting bath. How many hours since my dear withdrew himself from my cozy body and flopped onto his back in the moonlight, his grin sliding about his face, the silhouetted dots on the dotted bedroom curtains swaying in the breeze as I am swaying now, the motion moving them like a galaxy in a planetarium, night insects cruising and making their soft landings on the sill and on the branches of the tree that drags its nails across our shingles—

  And before that the sleeping in feathers—

  And before that the dog curled with the daughter in the wooden bed—