by Dan Noble
And I wake to the morning light in my window. I know something’s different.
13
MILLIE
“Where are we—going?” I ask, adding the last word because something tells me not to show my disorientation. My hands, arms, all the way up to my elbows are trembling. The old anxiety settles in like it never left. Guilt. What have I done? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I struggle to recall what we’d been doing before my blackout.
We were in…in…the kitchen! Yes. I remember. Relief floods, but it’s quickly chased away. The Kancer. We were talking about the fucking hard C. I suddenly don’t like that phrase.
“Patience, my darling.” Kennedy has settled me on the cozy chair in the study. He’s at the shelf, flicking his finger along the spines of our photo albums. I suddenly have loads of energy, like I’ve woken after a long sleep. He seems to, also. I’m not sure how much time I’ve lost, but Kennedy looks different—brighter. He doesn’t say anything about my absence.
“What are you looking for?” Punch-drunk, there’s a hysterical lilt to my voice.
He clears his throat and holds up his forefinger.
My knee bobs.
“Aha!” he exclaims, a character in a harebrained mystery film. I’m struck by how much I love him. There is the image of us making love in the grass. But it’s more than an image. It’s here with us. Lending a sensuality to the moment. Are we somewhere, still lying there together in the grass?
I feel my chin quiver. Keep it together, Millie. He’s beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than ever—his determination, strength, the silhouette of his body against the bookshelves as he flips through a few more pages I can’t see from here. He’s mine, but he’s out of reach, too. I feel glued to my chair with all the shaking.
“Look,” he sits on the chair arm, hooks one arm around my back. With the other, he shifts the album over to rest on my knees. These are photos from when he first began to spend time with me. I barely remember posing for these.
No. It’s more than that. I don’t recognize the restaurant in the photo we’re in. The way I’m wearing my hair. When did I have bangs? I reach up instinctively. Did Rose get crazy with the scissors again and cut my hair while I was asleep? Because sure enough, my hair on my forehead comes to thick points over my eyebrows. I make my way to the mirror.
“Do you like my hair this way?”
“What way? It’s the same as always. And yes, I love it. Don’t ever change it.”
“Where’s this picture taken?”
“This picture? You’re kidding, right?”
I shrug.
“Look at that dress you kept complaining about. Ring any bells?”
The fussy floral pattern is certainly not something I would pick out myself. But why would I buy a dress I didn’t like? “Nope, nothing.”
“Your best friend’s wedding? Are you okay?”
“Angie’s wedding? Are you okay? Angie is just getting married to Pete—maybe! If she doesn’t back out.”
“Millie, either those IVF hormones are making you loopy, or you’re playing an incredible trick on me.”
“IVF? What are you talking about?” This isn’t right. Am I just exhausted? Or is it happening again? The lost time from the blackout is terrifying. Clearly time has passed here while I was in that other world with Kennedy/Gatsby having a grand old time. But things are different here than when I left.
“Millie, I think you need to rest. You aren’t yourself with all the hormones. I told you, I don’t think they’re the best idea for someone with your history.”
He looks earnest, honestly worried. But how can that be? Just the other night we were talking about that Culture of Motherhood book as my palm circled my swollen stomach. He made the inappropriate comment about Charlene, Jemima’s mother at preschool. I followed him into the city, saw him at the doctor’s office. And what did he mean by your history? Have I told him everything?
I don’t want to look down at my stomach, in case it’s true that I’m no longer pregnant. But I force myself. It’s the only way to know the facts.
I take a deep breath and drag my hand down the front of my shirt. My belly is perfectly flat.
“Were we talking about cancer just now?” I ask, terrified of the answer.
He looks up, as if shocked at my knowledge, which previous to the blackout, we’d been discussing for over eighteen hours.
“What do you know?” he asks.
I don’t know. Nothing is as I remember.
14
KENNEDY
Millie’s pretending she isn’t scared to death and I’m pretending I’m not pretending that I’m not scared to death. It’s the day after that terrible appointment going over the details and prognosis of the original test results, sitting through them all again, only to follow that up by betraying my wife by meeting with her father, and then breaking everyone’s hearts further by Millie telling me she knows about the cancer. Seb is manning the front while I shut myself in the back office.
That was my moment with Millie to get everything out in the open, but I didn’t. I didn’t, and still don’t see the point of hurting her even more deeply. She’s been so happy until now. What does it matter if she believes some things that aren’t exactly true? Isn’t it better than the alternative?
Piled on top of all that deception, I’m still pretending nothing strange is going on with her. That her hand isn’t twitching. That she isn’t blacking out, speaking jibberish to no one, and losing hours. We’re both pretending the security of our daughter isn’t threatened because of all that has remained unspoken.
And so it’s my fault she lost the baby. Of course. What did I expect of such a shock? I didn’t mean for the lie about the IVF to come out, but how would she cope with the loss of a baby amidst all this? If she doesn’t know about the baby, then things will be that much easier on her. And she needs a break if she’s going to get through this. I owe her that much.
I keep waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t. I’m not sure whether we have reached an agreement to keep the rest of our secrets to ourselves, or a clinical state of denial. Part of me hopes the cancer tests will turn out to be negative this second time around and that dealing with this domestic fall out will be the largest of our problems. In that context, a few omissions and lies don’t seem so bad. The bangs and the touched-up photo were tricky, but have definitely helped to convince her she’s disoriented enough to be wrong about being pregnant. And the lie about angie? I’m not sure how I’ll handle that. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
I pull the plane tickets out of the drawer and think about when I’ll hand them over, about the three of us in the executive airport lounge, Rose drinking too many sugary apple juices because they’re free. She doesn’t even know what that means; she just says “they’re free,” like that’s a flavor, or a brand. I bought them before this round of testing and something about them seems like a charm, a talisman, that says, you’ll be fine, and you will go on this trip as planned.
I will make up to my beautiful daughter for having her lie to her mother. I appealed to her constant need to be a big girl. I told rose that the book was upsetting Mommy, so we needed to pretend she didn’t have it. No matter what Mommy said, she was to say she didn’t have it. “I will help Mommy, like a big girl,” she said. I was very proud of her. And I was. She helped me to maintain control of the situation, and that was best for all of us.
Before I leave the store for the weekend, I need to update the calendar so Seb will see when he has to man the store next week. Thursday Test Results. How can three innocent looking words mean what they do? I hate the guy who wrote that.
After a few too many scotches last night, I woke early this morning, forgetting long enough to enjoy one unencumbered moment of viewing my naked wife in our bed, the beautiful upturn of her breast. I tried to ignore the slight remaining swell of her stomach. But I couldn’t. So, I placed her hand on my own swell and watched, enchanted as her no
strils flared, her eyelids squeezed and shuttered, and finally, an undainty yawn snuck from her closed mouth, her hand caressing me.
“Fuck me,” I said, feeling powerful. I had already begun to believe this version of events I’d created for Millie, Rose and myself.
Her eyes came to life. It was like she was someone else, so passionate and sensitive to my touch; there’s no underestimating the effect this had on me, and it seemed to reinforce that I’d done the right thing.
“Jay,” I thought she called out to me, but in the intensity of the moment, I couldn’t be sure. The Great Gatsby lay open on her bedside table, and if she did enjoy an overlay of fantasy to the moment, well, who could blame her? We all need to write our own narratives. I certainly understand that. Besides, her other-worldliness has always appealed to me anyway; I could not divest her of it now.
My wife is extraordinary. And I am going to die, and leave her alone; fantasy is all she will have. Why would I take that from her?
I lifted her into a straddle over me, and turned her slightly, to face the mirror.
“Watch,” I said.
As she lost herself in me, let her guard down like no woman I’ve ever known, I watched her in the mirror, her bangs parted almost sculpturally over her left eyebrow. The style suited her. I could almost believe she’d always worn it that way. She came in a stutter and that’s what sent me off. I clutched her hair, kissed her breast. I ignored that shoulder pain that may be the end of our plans, the secrets that could end it along the wrong path. I did what I had to, I told myself. I have always done what I had to do. For her. Everything I’ve done has been for Millie.
I kissed her beneath her ear and got up quickly like a man with better things to do. If I laid there, we’d start talking. And that meant more lies that I didn’t want to tell.
“Stay,” she said, clutching my wrist, trembling. It’s all I wanted.
“I can’t.”
15
MILLIE
Why would Kennedy be playing a trick on me? And how could he possibly play anything that would involve removing my baby from my stomach with absolutely no residual pain or symptoms? If this were a horror film and Kennedy was a bad guy, perhaps he’d have put me into an induced coma until I recovered from all the aftereffects of the pregnancy.
But a quick look at the calendar on my computer confirms I haven’t lost much time. Which is a relief. It means this is real. I’m paging-in, crossing over into the book world. It’s the only answer. Otherwise how could everything have changed so incomprehensibly in such a short time?
Then I realize what an incredible line of thinking I had been following before the blackout. Kennedy is a good guy. The good guy. I know that. I’m just so confused. Because he had been keeping a great big lie—the fact that he has cancer—during our entire marriage.
After Kennedy left, I lay in bed, remembering our lovemaking in the grass. Wait, no. That was Daisy in the other world. But we made love just now, and I’d called him Jay. Was he Jay? I’d forgotten this—how difficult it was to keep the worlds apart. When I used to have trouble, I’d come back to that term of Dr. P’s: Gestalt. Working it into the techniques Dr. Samuels had taught me, I had boiled it down to this mantra—decide which is the significant reality. Trust your instincts. I’d force myself into a knee-jerk reaction: which bits were real? In that moment, I went through the drill: I could cross over into another world that is made of the books I have read, processed in a specialized way that Mother turned me onto. After a long time of not doing this, I am once again doing it. Whether it is a question of capability or will, I am unsure.
“Mum!”
Rose! Yes! She will surely know if I’ve been pregnant. I scoop her up in my arms and squeeze tightly around her “silky” Peppa Pig nightgown. She squeezes back. Rose is a world-class hugger. I’ve seen people reduced to tears from her embrace. I fight them from falling for her sake. I need to keep it together. I know the dangers of mothers who can’t.
“What do you need, darling? You had a nice, long sleep.”
“I was thinking about how we saw that Magic Charm Book at the shop. I should have chosen it instead of the blocks. I keep thinking of it. I can’t sleep thinking about it so much.”
“But honey, you have that book.” As soon as the words are out, she throws a fit.
“I do not have that book. And I must. I must have that book. It’s calling to me.”
“Calm down. Next time we go to the toy shop, you can pick out that book. Okay? How about that?”
“No. No, I can’t wait. I need it now.”
“The stores aren’t open now. Shhhh.” I try to hold her to my chest but she’s not having it. Her feet start stamping. My mind is spinning, looking for an explanation. What is happening? And then I get it. My foray into the book world has changed this bit of the real world, too. It’s just like Dr. P was saying that day—gestalt, everything connected, change one thing and it’s all changed. Even something as seemingly insignificant as Rose’s book choice; it’s different now. My power frightens me. How can I control it? If I’ve lost my unborn child, what’s to say I can’t lose Rose, too?
“I’m supposed to have it. And now I’ve ruined everything.”
I sit on the floor and pull her onto my lap. “Listen. I know what’s happening here.”
“You do?”
“Yes, you’ve had a bad dream.” Simple answers are best for kids; not the kind of open-ended bullshit Mother always fed me—if she bothered to answer at all.
“No!”
“Yes, and do you know what we can do about that?”
“What?”
“We can get you a dream catcher. It catches all the bad dreams so you only have good ones.” If only I had something like that. Right now everything seems like a nightmare. It’s so difficult to know what’s real. Just like Mother was always getting at.
She seems to like the idea, though she still looks unsure. “A dream catcher?”
“Yes. How about we go and pick one out tomorrow? In the meantime, you can come and sleep with me and Dad.”
She nods. I scoop her up in my arms and start walking the hallway. Then I stop. “Rose, does Mummy’s belly look smaller than yesterday?”
She pulls her head back, tightens her brow. “Let me see.” She climbs down, lifts my shirt, rubs her palm up and down. “Bigger, Mum. You probably shouldn’t have eaten that bagel, like you said.”
“Right.”
Sleeping in our room does the trick for Rose. I watch her and Kennedy the whole night, wondering what’s happening to my relationship with reality. Perhaps I need a dream catcher. Could it be that Rose never had the Magic Charm book? That I’ve, I don’t know, hallucinated this scenario about her misplacing it, gone back to my old dissociative thinking? Could it be that my belly just doesn’t look that different because I’ve only just lost the baby? But wouldn’t I remember some of that? Listen to your instinct. I shut my eyes and force an answer: Magic. You’re going into the book world. It’s the only answer that makes sense.
I think of the sex in the grass. Yes. I’ve done it. I’m a Reader. “I want you to be a Reader with a capital ‘R,’” Mother used to say. I’ve worked out what all your blackboards and your notes and piles of books meant. But would that mean that what I “dreamed” I did to Mother was real, too? No. No, I’ve put that all to bed long ago. I feel the need to confess about my fears of what I may have done to mother, and as uncomfortable as that is it’s reassuring. I know what to do with that. Laugh at it, as Dr. Samuels taught me. I have that written down to prove it to myself. But even this leads me into unanswerable, circular thinking. If Dr. Samuels was right about that, then wouldn’t he have been right that going into the book world was just a delusional manifestation of my anxiety, too? And if that’s true, then how did I lose the baby without knowing? How did Rose never have that necklace? And what about my hair? Angie’s marriage? How else could reality have changed so much without my knowledge?
How can I get a
handle on all of this? It comes over me in a shiver. I should come clean about everything, and make Kennedy understand it isn’t just IVF hormones weirding me out. Fill in the blanks of my story—past and present. Explain that in fact, I don’t even remember starting IVF, or most anything that’s apparently going on, that I may have killed my own mother. Kennedy will help me, won’t he? Right now, the lies and secrets are working against us. We need to get back to being a team. That will help us to fix whatever it is that’s happening. So why can’t I just say it?
I think again of my conversation with Pinocchio. My Gatsby experience, my Jane experience. That must be it. I’m changing the world. The Butterfly Effect. How exactly I did it, I don’t know. Preconscious. Suprarational. I have to speak to Pinocchio. Dr. Pee? Yes. If that’s what’s happening to me, he’s the only one who can explain it. I know he can.
16
MILLIE
I wake the next morning and my belly looks slightly more swollen to me. Or maybe it doesn’t. Fifteen minutes of staring at it and forcing my instinct to come up with an answer has produced unclear results. Kennedy is ill from the Kancer pills, which is about the only thing that’s out in the open with us, and I’m setting up an experiment. I’m crazy, or there’s suprarational stuff, inexplicable stuff, at play here.
I believe Rose has crossed over, too. That has to be the explanation for the discrepancy: her losing the necklace, and then claiming she never had it in the first place. Likely she thinks it’s a dream. The magical is part of the everyday life of a child. I’m going to make it very easy for her to do it again. I’ve given her one of the spare magic charm books, and propped her on the same couch where she always reads the book. I’ve put on Sesame Street for background noise. Ground your book in reality, Mother always said. And now I know why.