"I'm looking up at the moon," Terence said. "I'm thinking—just like a little kid, ya know—thinking it's following us, and there's this Theta with pigtails holding my head in her lap. She's looking down at me and almost crying, her eyes all wet and blue and she's saying to hold on. That's all I remember, her saying 'hold on' and my hands almost numb, not like a regular burn, where you touch a hot plate or something? More like my bones were baking under the skin."
Sitting on the foot of the bed, Raymond remembered the creaking of the rocking chair in the church nursery where he'd worked, the angry cries of a colicky infant he'd rocked for hours, her stomach tight against his chest. Even when she slept, Raymond thought, she seemed restless, squirming in his arms or under the cotton blankets in the crib. She'd looked healthy, her arms and legs fat and pink, but she couldn't lie still. She was always moving, her little stomach knotted inside her, cinched with spasms, refusing even in sleep to turn her loose.
"I tried to stay awake," Terence was saying. "I wanted to keep looking at her, but I kept passing out. Whenever the truck would hit a bump or brake real hard, I'd jolt awake, and I'd try to keep my eyes open. Tried hard so I could keep looking up at her, like if I closed them she'd disappear."
"Sounds like the perfect date for your next house party," Raymond said. "You'd be surprised. Sympathy dates." Even while speaking, smiling down at Terence, Raymond was imagining the girl in the pickup, her pigtails streaming behind her on some country road outside of town, the look on her face fading, growing lighter, translucent, then gone. Fading until the only thing looking down on him was the moon.
"She hasn't called," the boy said. "Don't even know her name."
"You will," Raymond said, but his mouth had grown dry, his tongue heavy and thick. He pictured the look on Tammy's face in those few minutes before they took the child away, when the nurse had held the blanket at her side before handing it, hesitantly, to Raymond. He'd been watching his wife. She was flushed, her face beaded with sweat, and though she knew the child was dead—had been told hours before—Raymond recognized her expressions: the raised brows, the muscles twitching in her long neck, the sad hint of hope in her parted lips. He remembered thinking the whole ugly world had gone silent, feeling a thankful leap in his stomach when Tammy screamed. "Aren't you even going to wash her! Clean her off, goddammit! Why don't you wash her off?" It was then, through the furious white echo of Tammy's voice, that he first knew that their nameless baby, colored with only the slightest cold tint of blue, had been a girl.
Before Raymond rolled his cart from the room, Terence asked him if he wouldn't mind coming back after lunch. "My mom's coming for a while, but she won't stay that long. So would you come by? I need kind of a favor."
Raymond gripped the cart's handle. "Sure thing," he said.
After lunch, Raymond waited for the nurses' lounge to clear out, and then he called. He propped his elbows on the cool Formica tabletop, held the phone tight against his ear.
When Tammy answered, her voice pulled low with the weight of drugs, he said, "Are you okay, honey?" There was breathing, the static whish of amplified air.
"Sleepy," she said. "My knees ache."
"That's the sedatives. Maybe we should try a day without it."
"Maybe, if you think. Would you stay home, then?"
Raymond thought of the apartment, of the way he'd paced the rooms and sat for helpless hours watching Tammy sleep. "Honey," he said. "You know I have to work."
"I know," she said. "But it's too quiet. You're the only good thing I've heard all day—you and the yard men doing the grass. You can tell the mowers from the weedeater, even from inside. And the blower, I think it was a blower."
"I'll be home in a few hours. You have the number, right? By the phone?" Papers or sheets, something crisp, rustled on the other end.
"I've got it," Tammy said. Raymond could hear her voice rising up to its normal pitch. He wanted to know she was all right, still his. He wanted to hear her say it, to hear I'm keeping you, to know she was awake and curled under the pile of blankets she insisted upon even in summer. He'd shudder, he thought. His scalp would tingle at the way her voice dipped low on keeping. On the back of his neck, little hairs would rise, and everything would be like always.
"Is she still there?" she asked. "Have you seen her?"
"Honey," he said, gripping the phone and sitting back so he could breathe.
"The baby? Have you seen my baby?"
"You know I haven't. She's at the funeral home. Remember?"
Something was moving inside him, pushing itself forward, and he felt it all coming up, bitter and liquid in the back of his throat: the warmth and tightness of her pregnant stomach pressed under his rib cage in bed; later, in the hospital, her lips twisted with induced contractions, the blue web of stilled veins under his daughter's eyes. He swallowed, but his saliva had grown old and thick. He stood up, picturing rippled water, oil beaded on skin, until he knew he could keep it all down. "We can get her when you're ready," he said. "Her ashes."
"I know, Ray. I just thought—I mean, I keep dreaming and there she is, you know? I just thought we could hold her, honey. One more time, maybe. I don't know, Ray. I just wanted to—"
And now Raymond knew she was crying, knew by the sudden dip in her voice and the short breaths between words.
"It's okay," he said, sitting back at the table. He felt suddenly calm, and he realized he'd been waiting to hear her cry, to have her sit up in bed, finally lucid, and get some more of it out. He remembered the way she kept turning her head toward the fetal monitor that Saturday, holding his hand and giving it a little squeeze whenever she imagined something had moved. But Dr. Rusk had known, almost instantly, from the moment he applied the sensors to her swollen stomach. And Raymond knew too, from the doctor's look of failure, the drop of his eyes to the floor when the monitor, instead of pulsing to life, had remained motionless, a narrow blue line cutting straight across the black screen. Still, Tammy hadn't cried—not when Dr. Rusk explained how rare these things were, a cord winding so tight around an unborn throat so late in the term; not when he gave them the option of c-section; not during his careful suggestion, his warning that a cesarean could complicate natural births in the future. No, the tears had come later, with Tammy's uncontrollable shivering and the fierce grip of her hands and the decision cried out in the rising voice of a frightened child. Her head shook in short jerky swipes back and forth, and her eyes looked strangely intense—sharp, with too much white around the edges.
Now, on the phone, her voice was hushed and broken, and Raymond leaned hard into the receiver, wanting to be there, to feel her breath swirling inside his ear. "You're okay," he said, and he knew, for the first time in days, that if she wasn't, she would be.
"And you, honey," she said. "How are you?"
After Mrs. Lane's debridement, Raymond went to the restroom and washed his face. The woman had done better this time, no screaming. "Can you believe it?" she'd said. "Kings of England? That puzzle on Wheel of Fortune— what kind of silliness is that?" And when Dr. Dutch asked Raymond how he was holding up, Nurse Taylor tilted her head and said, "Raymond, we just feel terrible," and Mrs. Lane had put both hands on the arms Raymond held around her waist. Now, Raymond dried his face with paper towels and hit the oversized button on the electric dryer, standing in front of it, listening gratefully to the motor whine, letting the hot air blow under the collar of his scrubs.
In the little girl's room, Melody's mother was helping her daughter with a cardboard puzzle. Raymond stopped in the doorway. The girl's legs were bandaged completely, wrapped in stiff white up to the waist. Her dark hair was a mop of tangled curls. Before she saw him, she snapped a puzzle piece into place and applauded herself. She looked up at her mother, followed her eyes to the doorway, and reached forward with both arms, screaming. "Mommy! No, Mommy!" Raymond caught the woman's eyes, pointed at his watch and mouthed, "Sorry ... Thirty minutes."
Terence was upright in bed, watching TV.
His baseball cap sat on the tray table and his short hair was molded into a rumpled crown. "You ready for me?" Raymond asked.
Terence extended his arms, palms up, and pressed his lips together, exhaling audibly through his nose. "I don't know. You ready for me?"
"We could play this game all day, I guess," Raymond said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "And really, it'd suit me fine, but why don't you cut to the chase and try me."
"Well, how's this? I haven't taken a crap in two days."
"That's direct enough, I guess. Did you tell the nurse? I'm sure they could give you something to—"
"It's not that. I mean, I need to go." He raised his arms and the curved splints shaped his hands into claws. Talons. "I just can't ask my mom, you know? Or one of the nurses? I'm twenty years old, for chrissakes. It wouldn't be right." He dropped his hands to the sheets. "Look, I'm not having some woman wipe my ass, okay?"
Raymond smiled as he stood, holding an arm toward the adjoining bathroom. "Okay by me," he said. "But make it a good one, my friend. I know those nurses. We make this a habit and rumors will fly around this place."
Laughing, Terence swung his legs out of bed and walked stiffly into the bathroom. It was surprising, but the kid didn't seem embarrassed when Raymond lifted his gown and pulled his boxer shorts down. Once, when he'd worked evenings, Raymond had helped a nurse insert a catheter in an elderly man the night before his bypass. Raymond held the man's withered penis while the nurse inserted the tube, and the old guy wouldn't stop talking. He kept apologizing, going on and on about how it used to be bigger. But Terence didn't flinch. He waited until Raymond was done with the boxers and he lowered himself slowly.
"I can handle this next part," he said, and Raymond smiled, closing the door behind him.
While he waited, Raymond smoothed the sheets on the bed, tucked them in on the edges. He paced the room and pulled open the drapes, watched the traffic on Lamar and the steam rising from the asphalt parking lot below. He turned the TV off, then on again—Jerry Springer was shaking his head, the audience jeering at a teenage girl with pink hair and black lipstick. When Terence called from the bathroom, swinging the door open, Raymond closed the drapes.
"Sorry about this," Terence said, leaning forward.
"Oh, well," Raymond said. "No reason to be sorry. It could be worse."
"Yeah? Not much."
Raymond gripped the boy's left shoulder and moved the wadded paper down between his buttocks. As he continued, pulling paper from the roll on the wall and feeling Terence's muscles tense when a thumb grazed his skin, Raymond felt something jump in his stomach, a flutter so warm and abrupt that he almost laughed. Or cried—he couldn't tell which, but his eyes itched with the rise of tears and his toes curled in his shoes, and when he was finished, after he'd helped Terence up with his boxers and flushed the toilet and gave him a hand getting back into bed, Raymond stood still near the door, looking around the room.
"Those drapes okay?" he said.
Terence turned his head, then looked back at the door.
"They're fine," he said.
"Okay then, mission accomplished, I guess."
A short woman with blue eyeshadow and black pinned-up curls stood with a tray of food behind Raymond in the doorway. "Me-meep," she said, and Raymond stepped out of her way. "That roadrunner, he kills me." She smiled and strolled to the far side of the bed. "Here you go, partner. And from what this card says, I get to feed you, too." She set the food on the table tray and smoothed her blue smock.
Terence winked at Raymond. "Out with the old and in with the new, I guess."
"Looks that way," Raymond said, but he thought of his child—in with the new—and he couldn't bring himself to smile.
Melody was screaming, throwing her head back and forth and clinging to her mother's neck as Nurse Taylor and Raymond lifted her onto the padded stretcher. They wheeled her slowly to the door, and in the hallway the screams bounced fierce and high off the antiseptic walls. Mrs. Lane stood outside her door with her arms folded tightly across her chest, her jaw set tight with resentment. From their station, the nurses filed charts and shuffled papers, trying not to look as Melody kicked the stretcher with her bandaged legs, clawing wildly at Raymond's arms and pulling her mother's hair. Dr. Dutch turned from the doorway and walked slowly into the debridement room as they approached, and when they wheeled her in, the girl grabbed the doorjamb, and for a few seconds everything stopped.
She looked at Raymond, her face wet, flushed with panic, her mouth open, waiting. Raymond reached toward the door and met her mother's hand on the child's arms. The back of her hand was moist and he held it, covering it softly with his palm. He wanted the woman to let him do it, to let him be the bad guy, the monster who pried the girl's hands from the wall, but the woman wouldn't let go. Melody watched them, her arms outstretched, fingernails digging into white paint, and Raymond stood looking at the woman, his pulse wild in his wrists, everything else as quiet and still as the ICU waiting room at midnight. It was a silence he recognized. White lights, the steps of the nurses' padded soles on the delivery room floor, something metal shining in the doctor's wet hands. Their daughter smeared in the white film of birth, the cord cut, now limp and harmless on her wrinkled stomach. And not a fucking sound. Just the nurse with the blanket and uncertain eyes. And then he's holding her, touching the cool, slick skin of her cheek, tracing the web of blue veins under her eyes, and Tammy is reaching out, looking up, her hands meeting his on the tiny, sunken chest of their child. The nurses just stand there, staring, another sad day's work. Then Tammy is screaming: Aren't you even going to wash her!
Raymond imagined tiny blue fingers reaching up in the liquid swirl of the womb, grasping overhead in the dark, unable to take hold of the cord, and now he pulled hard, prying Melody's fingers from the door and holding her wrists together in one hand. Her mother stepped back, arms at her sides. The girl was screaming again, rearing back, unable to free herself, and Raymond's ears were ablaze, thumping inside with the noise and the rage of it all. Dr. Dutch cut the bandages from her legs, his thick fingers pinched in the rings of the scissors. "I hate you," she shouted, her voice raw, but strong. Nurse Taylor was flinching, moving back from the stretcher while Raymond, a strange calm settling in his stomach, held Melody under the arms, lifting.
His hands cupping her ribs, Raymond felt the swell of her lungs, the contraction of her chest pushing the words into the room—"I hate you!"—and he thought he could hold her like this forever. He loved her. When he lowered her into the water, Raymond knew that he loved her, hoped she would scream until plaster fell from the walls, until silence no longer seemed possible. Go on, he thought. Let it out, goddammit. Scream.
An Instance of Fidelity
YOU'RE HOT, YOU say, from the drive, so you fill a glass with ice from the cooler and pull a bottle of Zinfandel from the paper sack by the bed. You do that Houdini trick with your bra—a few sighing, beneath-the-blouse contortions and you're free, pulling the thing from your sleeve. You down your drink, clink the ice around in the glass, and then you're in the shower.
When the cell phone rings, I know it's my wife. Before I pick it up. I can hear you talking to yourself in there above the noise of you coming clean—motel water slapping motel tile, words awash in the steam—so I close the bathroom door before I pick up.
Of course, she's crying. "You've been gone so long," she says.
"Honey," I say, "get hold of yourself. I only left at four."
I imagine that, back in Houston, she's sitting just where I left her, the oversized recliner in the den, her bathrobe bunched up high around her next-to-nothing hips.
"But where is everybody?" she says. "Where's Samantha?"
"I left her with Grandma," I say. "She's fine, honey. Did you take your pill?"
Then all I hear is the TV, the one she hasn't turned off in months. I go, "Honey?" but there's nothing but canned laughter from some sitcom. She's taken her meds, I think, and I'm wondering if maybe I should
have hidden the bottle. The stuff makes her worse sometimes. She's like that—forgets she's had one and pops another. Sad, but I've seen her cry after downing enough Paxil to cheer up the whole of death row in Huntsville.
"You there?" I say, but it seems she's through with talking. I pull the phone away and look at the receiver. I think, Roaming charges, fifty cents a minute, and when I hang up there's that undertow of guilt I get in my guts, an ugly pull of regret at work beneath breaking waves of relief.
The water's off now, but you're still talking in there, asking questions, and in your voice is the kind of muffled uncertainty that always reminds me of hospital waiting rooms. Nights spent in lumpy vinyl chairs. A loved one gone from bad to worse. I lie back on the bed and stare at the cheap painting on the wall above the TV. There's this cowboy camped out somewhere on the prairie. The sun's going down, the horizon an eruption of western red, and he's stirring a pot over the campfire. Beans, I'm thinking. They always ate beans. What's strange, though: there's not even a horse. He's just sitting out there by his lonesome. Cooking. Waiting for nightfall. Not so much as an animal to keep him company.
"Baby?" you call from the bathroom. "Would you go for more ice? The cooler's about dry."
Outside, headlights flash and westbound rigs blast the motel with gusts of hot, diesel-laced air. A highway breeze. A woman laughs in the room next door. Through thin drapes, television blue washes onto the window and a man makes jokes in a pack-a-day voice, bringing up phlegm between one-liners. I stop to listen, but the window unit kicks on and drowns him out. I walk barefoot to the ice machine and press the bucket against the lever. The parking lot is almost empty. No one stops out here, halfway between Houston and Austin. I'm watching high clouds race each other east when ice starts falling over the rim of the bucket to my feet. I'm wondering why we drive seventy miles to spend the night together, why, when we're in the car, this little dive with its hand-painted Truckers Welcome sign and gravel drive is the earliest stop I can persuade myself to make.
Men in the Making Page 9