And Again

by Jessica Chiarella

  “What in the heck,” she says, and her voice is the same, that’s how I know it’s her. “Connie?”

  “I couldn’t explain over the phone,” I say, all of the words I’d practiced during the drive up seeming to slip away from my grasp, like shimmering minnows in shallow water. “I wanted to come here. To show you that I’m better now.” That things can go back to the way they were, I think, looking at the cross again.

  “Better?” she says, and then she must realize she’s still holding the door open, as if I’m a salesman who must be kept at bay, because she steps back and ushers me inside. The inside of the trailer hasn’t fared much better than my mother has. It’s dingy, with a strong smell of must or wet animal or both. The cloudy sunlight doesn’t seem to make it through the windows with any force, and the effect is like walking into the dim dampness of a cave. “You want some lemonade?” my mother asks, and I nod without thinking. I sit down at the card table in our little kitchen, which is covered by a cheap-looking white tablecloth with embroidered edges. My mother sets a glass in front of me, and when I take a sip the lemonade is cloyingly sweet, with a tinge of the foul sulfur taste of well-water. I try not to grimace as my mother sits across from me with her own glass. I decide maybe talking will keep me from having to drink more.

  “There’s this new treatment,” I say. “It’s experimental. They’re only testing it on a few people. But it works.”

  “What sort of treatment?” my mother asks, her face awash with something that looks like horror. “Stem cells?”

  “Does it matter?” I reply. “I’m better, Maureen. Does it really matter to you what saved my life?”

  “Of course it matters,” she says in a hiss. I lean back in my seat and take a long breath.

  “Do you have anything else to drink around here?” I ask. There were always bottles of vodka in our freezer while I was growing up.

  “Drink your lemonade,” she says, motioning toward my glass. There’s no air conditioning in the trailer, and the glasses are sweating rings into the tablecloth.

  “I was thinking of something a little stronger,” I say, but she ignores me.

  “You can’t buy your health through sin, Connie,” she says, fishing into the pocket of her sweater and pulling out something. She sets it in front of me, and I realize it’s a small prayer book with a gold-embossed cross stamped into the leather of its cover. “You can’t buy salvation through unnatural means.”

  “So, you’d have me what, pray the AIDS away?” She winces when I mention the name of my disease, and it reminds me of the way my grandmother would whisper the word cancer, as if saying it out loud would tempt an angry twist of fate. I think of all the words that will lose their power, now that SUBlife has begun.

  “Maybe if you’d been right with the Lord you’d never have had that pestilence to begin with,” she says. I bang my way up from the table.

  “Maybe if you’d been worth a damn as a mother, I wouldn’t have been shooting up in a bathroom somewhere to begin with,” I say, yelling now. She looks at me, a hard look, and I can almost glimpse the diamond-brightness of the woman who raised me within this simpering exterior. “Maybe if I had valued anything but being beautiful, and what that could buy me, maybe I could have avoided a lot of the shit that’s happened to me.”

  She moves then, toward me, pulling me to her. I’m so surprised by it that I wrap my arms around her on reflex alone. I can probably count on one hand the number of times my mother embraced me when I was a child. It happened so infrequently that I stopped wanting it after a while. So this sudden motherly affection leaves me a little stunned.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers into the hair above my ear. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls back, cupping my face in her hands, and suddenly I want to cry, to sob into her shirt like a child. But her next words stop me, freezing everything in me that is still soft and tender and in need of a mother. “I’m so sorry I didn’t raise you with the Lord.”

  The rain has stopped, but the temperature outside is dropping when I leave the trailer, or perhaps it just feels that way after the stifling heat of my mother’s kitchen. Instead of heading back to the car, I turn and walk to the chain link fence that separates the trailer park from the apartment building next to it. I jump the fence, which is a bit more intimidating a maneuver than I remember, despite the fact that my body is as youthful and supple as it was then. It’s my mind that has aged, grown more afraid. But I do it, scraping the heel of my hand on the top of the fence as I drop down, and I wonder absently if a tetanus shot was included with all of those vaccinations I had after the transfer.

  But then I’m at the edge of the pool, and my mind clears of everything else. It’s full of water, rippling a bit as droplets fall from the surrounding trees. I’ve never seen this pool full, not in all the years I lived here. The apartment building has a fresh coat of paint on it. The windows look new. Progress, I think. They probably charge extortionist rates to live here now. I imagine the children who probably swim here, the mothers in their bulging one-pieces, the lenses of their sunglasses flecked with droplets. Teenage babysitters. Little boys doing cannon balls. None of them could probably guess what happened there. It’s been too long since the pool was neglected; no one who lives here could probably imagine the sorts of things that went on inside of it, when it was all moldering leaves and empty bottles. None of them could guess what might have happened to a girl who went there alone one night to escape the sound of her mother and her mother’s plumber friend fucking through the thin walls of their trailer. Or what happened when a man followed her in.

  It was the dog smell that made me realize it was Larry. And by the time he was close enough for me to smell him, any chance I’d had of escape was already gone. Maybe that was the night I had in mind so many years later, when I sat down among those pale beauties in that bathroom, their works spread out before them on the tile floor, the low light making them look skeletal and fierce when the flame of the lighter clicked on and the liquid within the spoon began to bubble. Maybe it was thinking of that night in the pool that made me ignore what I’d heard, the rumors that there was something going around, a bad strain that had shut down the Valley’s porn production for the summer when two of their actors tested positive. Perhaps I was remembering in that moment, as my career was about to take off, how precarious a position it was to be on the verge of being seen and wanted by so many people. Maybe I already knew too well the danger there.

  He’d wiped himself off in my hair when he’d finished. And I’d stumbled home and found my mother’s kitchen shears, taking them to the bathroom and lopping off chunks of my hair until it hung like strips of soft straw from my scalp. I’d been modeling pretty regularly for a year or so at that point, mostly magazine work, but the money went a long way in our little trailer. The booking agents loved blondes. Mother smacked me in the face when she saw it the next morning, when she first glimpsed the ragged short ends of my hair. It took three months and three expensive trimmings at a salon in the next town over to get me back to the point where I could start booking jobs again, and my mother barely spoke to me in all of that time.

  I stand in front of the pool and think of it, the fact that I’ve finally gotten what I’d wanted so desperately then, a new body. But I am not rid of that night, despite the fact that every bit of me has been made new. It was a difficult lesson to learn at sixteen, that all the power bestowed to me by luck and youth and beauty was not enough to keep me safe. That maybe the power inherent in beauty is false, and to be desired is to receive a dark, illusory exchange where a man pretends to relinquish his power and never really does.

  I think of my mother, and the horror with which her old self would look upon the age of her current face. How jealous and proud she’d be, looking at my new face compared to hers. And it occurs to me that maybe things are better now, since I got sick and Betts found God. Maybe it was too painful for her to worship beauty as she did, when hers steadily faded with each year. Maybe she’s happier
now, despite her fleeting thoughts of her dying daughter. And even though I’ve lost the mother I remember, the one whose standards I’ve finally lived up to, maybe her approval will always be out of my reach no matter the circumstances. Maybe it will be easier to think of my mother as content in her new life, when I think of her at all.

  Hannah

  Lucy goes into labor on a Thursday morning. At 2:53 a.m., to be exact, because I’m the first person Roger calls when her water breaks all over their bedroom floor. I can hear her in the background of the call, saying something laced with profanity and a couple of angry-sounding grunts. I pull on my jeans, and assure Roger that, yes, Penny and I will meet them at the hospital to wrangle the kids during the delivery.

  “We betting on the sex?” Penny asks as we get into the car and pull out onto the empty roads. The orange hue of the streetlights gives the night a strange, otherworldly feeling, as if everyone has disappeared but the two of us. We drive north, past my usual route to Northwestern, heading instead to the Illinois Masonic Birthing Center, where Lucy’s midwife works.

  “What are the stakes?”

  “Dinner at the Pick Me Up.”

  “I bet it’ll be a girl.”

  “Dammit, I wanted to bet on a girl,” Penny says, and for a moment it’s as if nothing has transpired between us but the easy progress of friendship. There is no Sam or David, or cancer, no subtext in our words, no strain of jealousy or regret. She grins at me, and I grin back.

  When we arrive at the birthing center, Roger looks like he’s just been asked to eat something disgusting for money. There’s a kind of grim determination in his sweaty pallor, in the inherent uneasiness of his demeanor. It’s a look that knows what’s coming, and I’m thoroughly relieved that Penny and I have been relegated to babysitting for the duration of the delivery. I’m not good with things like this. Things that involve tubes and pain and fluids. With bodies—my own or anyone else’s. And then there’s the familiar feeling, the dark creep of something sour in my stomach and the muscles of my arms when I think of Lucy giving birth to another baby. Something very much like jealousy, or regret.

  I stop in to see Lucy as Penny begins to wrangle the boys, who are sword-fighting with discarded paper-towel tubes when we arrive. Lucy looks puffy and puce-tinged.

  “Hey,” I say, approaching her bed and taking her hand. There’s an odd sense of déjà vu in it, when I consider that not too long ago, I was the person in the hospital bed. The room is actually lovely, decorated more in the vein of a high-end spa than a hospital. “Nice digs.”

  “I know. Just a step down from getting a hotel for this right?”

  I perch on the edge of the bed. Lucy and I haven’t spoken since Sam left, and now I have no idea what to say. I motion to her stomach. “How is it so far?”

  “Like the others. I keep forgetting how awful it really is, for some reason the memories never really measure up. I swear, this is it. After this, Roger is getting snipped.”

  “I don’t think you should tell him that just now,” I say, taking the cup of ice chips by the bed and feeding Lucy some. “I don’t think you want Penny to have to scrape him off the floor. Or me in here during the delivery.”

  “You’d be able to step up,” Lucy replies. “I think we’ve proven your toughness by now.”

  “Right.” I help myself to a few ice chips from her cup and crunch them with my molars, hoping it will keep me from having to talk about anything that matters. Lucy, however, is not so easily dissuaded.

  “I’m so sorry about everything that happened, Hannah.”

  I nod, though I don’t look at her. I showed up because that’s what I do when Lucy needs me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still stinging from her secrets.

  “Want me to stay for a while? Give Roger a break?” I ask, praying she says no.

  “Go on and help Penny. I’m sure she’ll need it,” she says, and then her face crumples into a red, wet agony, and her hand squeezes my fingers with enough force that I’m afraid of the damage she might do. Even now my fingers are slender and delicate, their muscles under-developed. I worry she’ll pull them from their sockets, like a parent who grabs his child’s arm too quickly and dislocates it. My fingertips are colorless by the time she lets go. I move them gingerly, testing all the connections.

  “You okay?” she asks me, and it’s a silly question, considering she’s the one in labor. I wonder if I look a little pale, a little panicky, maybe a little like her shell-shocked husband.

  “Yeah,” I reply, getting up from the bed. “Aren’t I always?”

  The baby is born at 2:15 p.m. I’d spent the morning silently hoping that she’d be born quickly, like her older brother, out in three hours or so from the time we all arrived. But no, not the third child. The girl, who comes into the world dark-haired, like a wet, worn beanbag. Emma Christine. We all huddle around Lucy, a chorus of cooing faces, and I try not to watch as Roger kisses Lucy’s hair, the way he looks at his daughter. Lucy is drained and wrung out, but still glorious with the triumph of motherhood, and the envy I hold for her is finally whole, complete; a perfect sphere I can barely choke back as it rises inside me.

  I stick around when Penny heads home, and Roger takes the boys to the cafeteria for snacks. I know it is the wrong time for this, for any of it. I’m exhausted, so Lucy must be half-dead. But I’m worried, in a way that I’ve never been before, that this might be the last chance for honesty between my sister and me. She must know it too, because all I have to do is sit on her bed before she starts to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers, wiping at her eyes, making them even puffier. “I didn’t want to lie to you.”

  “I know,” I reply. “Sam was always the one person you never could say no to.”

  “It wasn’t that,” she replies. “I was there, Hannah. Both times. I watched him lose his dad, and then nearly lose you. And I kept his secret, I lied to you, because he deserves to be forgiven after everything he’s been through. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to.” We’re both silent for a moment. Is this what they think of me, the people who love me? Am I this vicious? I must be, because while it hurts to think of Sam, sometimes I relish in the pain because it allows me to hate him. It lets me ignore the damage I’ve done.

  “I wish I could,” I reply. I think of our parents, half a world away from both of us, saving other people when their daughters need so badly to be saved. “Anyway, he’s probably better off.” The knowledge lingers, how David and I never even considered using condoms in all of our time together. How I will never be a perfect wife, a wife like Lucy. Maybe that is why I let Sam go, in the end.

  Lucy brushes a hand down the side of my face. “What is it, Hannah?” she asks.

  “I don’t think any of us can have children,” I reply.

  “What?” She sits up a little straighter in bed, propping herself up with her arms. “What are you talking about?”

  “The SUBs, all of us in the pilot program. And I think we all know it, too.”

  “What makes you say that? Have the doctors said something?”

  “No,” I reply. “I don’t think they know. It’s this feeling . . .” I trail off, try to find a way to explain. “You know I got pregnant once, right?”

  Lucy nods. “Freshman year.”

  “Yeah. It was like walking into a house and forgetting to lock the front door. You know? You’re walking around, hours later, doing something else and you just realize. The front door is unlocked. That’s how being pregnant was for me. All of a sudden, I knew, it was a fact. I didn’t even take a test before I made the appointment.” I glance over at the little bassinet next to the bed, at the gurgling, soft little girl inside. “That’s sort of how this feels. I know it, without having to be told.”

  “Jesus,” Lucy says. “That’s awful.” I laugh a little.

  “It’s karma,” I reply, reveling in the dark irony of it. “I think it’s Mother Nature being a rotten, vindictive bitch because we finally beat her at her own game
.”

  Linda

  There’s a puddle of hot blood in my underwear. I can feel that something is wrong right away, there’s a tight burn right between my hips, and the rest of me feels sweaty and tense. I find the blood in the bathroom, with my jeans bunched around my knees. I blink. No. One blink. Again and again, because I can’t even form the word, can’t even whisper it. No, no, no.

  It happens fast, all in a gush of pain, a river of it, doubling me over. I grip the edge of the sink, my hand clammy and sliding against the smooth marble. I can hear the small sound of something falling into the water beneath me. At first I think it can be saved, like a bird’s egg fallen from a nest, that if it is kept warm and safe it might still become the thing that it’s meant to be. I rummage around under the sink and there’s nothing to catch it with, nothing I can use to rescue it. Instead I peer into the rusty water in the toilet bowl and it’s there, that little clot of tissue. It’s a mass of pulp, an alien thing produced from an alien body, a body that was never meant to create anything because it itself was not created by any natural means. It’s a feeling like falling down; everything in me has fallen, every bit of me.

  Tom knocks on the door. I’ve been in here for a while. I wonder what someone does with a thing like this, a thing that is something and nothing at once. All potential, unrealized. I could tell Tom. I could go to the hospital. I could lie on the floor and pretend to be paralyzed. All of it seems futile. There’s nothing left to do but to get rid of it, like a dead goldfish, to staunch the bleeding with a maxi pad and open the door to face Tom. I tell him it’s the flu. A stomach bug. Something vague that will keep him at a distance, lest he catch it from me.