Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Liam

  I strode up the steps to Charlotte’s dorm in full view of every single person like I was a real human being entitled to enter front doors and shit.

  Fuck crawling in windows now.

  “Liam!” Maggie said with surprise as I leaned in the doorjamb of the dorm’s office. “What are you doing here?”

  The familiar wag of female tongues began behind me. That chick, Rachel—the one who offered to blow me—called out my name like we were friends. I ignored her.

  “I thought Charlotte was working?” I was here to pick her up for a very special appointment with a doctor who might explain what had caused Charlotte’s miscarriages.

  “She just finished,” Maggie announced with a grin. Her hair was different.

  “Purple hair?”

  “I’m going through an experimental stage.”

  “Didn’t have the green Kool-Aid packets on sale this week at Big Y?”

  She nodded appreciatively. “Good guess. And you’re right.”

  I tapped my head. “It’s good for something sometimes.”

  “Where’s your snake?” someone called out. A flurry of giggles followed.

  “Just act like they aren’t there,” Maggie whispered.

  “How many of them are there?”

  “About ten of them, all filming your ass with their cameras.”

  I wiggled my butt.

  Fireworks of giggles followed.

  “What are you doing?” said a chocolate-rich voice as Charlotte exited her apartment. Smart, tailored khakis and a curve-flattering business shirt with a wide collar made her look good enough to work with and even better to fuck. Around her neck she wore these enormous red beads, and lipstick that matched. A thick red wool coat with big black buttons. Black hiking boots.

  A look that said she didn’t care what anyone else thought.

  A very hot look.

  I walked to her from behind and nuzzled her neck in full view of the drooling harpies, making sure RachelBlowJobQueen caught an eyeful. Charlotte stiffened, then I could feel her brain cells activating, computing and debating as she paused, turned around, and kissed me like she meant it.

  And man, oh man, did she mean it.

  The smartphones stayed high in the air.

  “I thought you—!” someone said in a pouty voice.

  Rachel.

  As our lips parted and my fingers laced with Charlotte’s, Maggie gave a little wave of goodbye as we sauntered right past the group, who all looked like Easter Island statues with their mouths open.

  Charlotte stopped. “Thought I—what?” she asked the group. No one would own up to asking the question.

  Then that fine, fine ass sashayed on out of there, whistling the melody to “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer.”

  Charlotte

  You think you know your place in the world, who you are, what you mean, what kind of person you are. But really, you don’t know anything. No one does. We have no idea how this world works, even as we operate within in it.

  A part of me felt so hollow and empty, not just from my second D&C and second baby loss in five years, but from the hole in my chest where my heart was supposed to beat.

  Three months ago I was fine. Just fine. I lived an orderly life and worked hard as a professional, working full-time and going to grad school, hosting vibrator races on kitchen floors for extra money and spending every waking moment of my life trying to pretend I didn’t miss Liam McCarthy.

  And now? Now I was sitting with him, and my mom (whom I’d invited, at the urging of the doctor), listening to a post-mortem of how my body was a failure, and would continue to fail over and over again.

  Unless…

  “The test results tell us there’s no way I can carry a baby to term, then?” I asked, my voice colder and calmer than I had any right to be, considering I felt like I was watching this entire appointment from above, like Spider-Man.

  “That’s not what she said,” Liam replied gently. “She said you’ll need extensive monitoring.” Blood rushed through my ears like a tsunami, making me catch only a handful of words, plucked out of the space around me like a child pulling dandelions.

  “But the tests say that there’s something connecting my miscarriages and my mom’s stroke?”

  Dr. Lewiston was a decade younger than Mom, with super-short, pixie-like hair turned a perfect white, and eyes so blue she could have been Liam’s mother. She was trim and tall—nearly as tall as me—and her office was absolutely immaculate.

  “Charlotte, I suspected a blood-clotting issue when you were referred to me, and tests confirm it. It’s rare, but according to tests you appear to have something called anti-phospholipid syndrome. And”—she faced Mom—“so does Caitlyn.”

  “Is it genetic?” Mom gasped, horrorstruck. We were private people, and this combined doctor’s appointment had sounded like a good idea at the time, but her discomfort made me rethink the whole scenario.

  Liam just sat there, trying to absorb everything. “Something in Charlotte’s blood makes her miscarry?” He tactfully didn’t mention that it must be in Mom, too.

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but at its simplest there is a blood-clotting factor in both Charlotte and Caitlyn that makes your immune system attack certain proteins in the blood. You can develop clots.”

  Mom gasped. “My stroke!”

  Dr. Lewiston nodded and smiled sadly. “And the eight miscarriages.”

  “Oh, dear God. If only Hugh were still alive. At least he’d understand why.” Mom’s shining eyes looked at the doctor with gratitude. “We never knew. We just kept trying.”

  “And that’s going to happen to me, now, isn’t it?” I said as a rolling boil of anger surfaced inside, blocking out all reason. I’d only been in the hospital for one night, back to working within a couple days, and the three weeks we’d waited for this appointment had felt like three years.

  And now I found out if I’m lucky I’d have to go through more miscarriages to get one premature baby?

  “Every case is different. Every woman’s body is unique. What applies to you may not apply to another woman. All we can do is treat you medically and see what happens in the future,” the doctor said.

  The look on Liam’s face made me want to cry.

  “You find out your body works well enough for long-shot babies and then it turns out mine can’t hang on to them,” I ground out, my jaw aching. “What a couple.”

  He sat up, a firm look making him seem so mature. “Don’t do that, Charlotte. It’s not like that. We don’t know—”

  “It is not like that,” the doctor said sternly, reaching across the desk to hand me some papers. The words bounced on the printed page like ping-pong balls dropped on a parquet floor from above. “The advances in treatments over the past twenty years make the chance of carrying a child to near-term quite good.”

  “And Mom’s stroke? Can you help her? Does this mean she’ll have more?”

  “We can put her on blood thinners, which—incidentally—you could go on as well for part of future pregnancies.” She made a flicker of eye contact with Liam, who reached for my hand and sighed. “Every case is different.”

  “But the chances?” he asked.

  “Are good,” the doctor reaffirmed.

  I heard the words. Really, I did. And they were supposed to be helpful, but I just kept remembering the blood of five years ago, waking up in Liam’s bed covered in blood, how blood carried so much finality, gravity, purpose.

  And now blood represented the absence of life to me.

  “Consider this good news, dear,” Mom said to me with a tight smile, her eyes kind. “It means you’ll be spared what I went through.” Her voice caught at the end and she swallowed, tipping her head down, digging through her purse and finding a tissue.

  “It also means we can work to prevent future strokes, Caitlyn,” the doctor added.

  “A condom breaks and it leads to th
is. Finding out there’s some genetic blood-clotting disorder that explains everything from Mom’s miscarriages to mine to her stroke,” I said in a flat voice. I felt deflated.

  Liam looked at me with alarm all over his face. He turned to the doctor and said, “My mom had two miscarriages before she had me. Could it be in my family, too? And if we have a daughter in the future, could she…”

  My heart fell through the floor.

  Dr. Lewiston leaned forward and folded her hands, long, slim fingers touching her chin. “We could test you, but two miscarriages in most women are pretty average. Eight, like Caitlyn experienced, are extreme.”

  Daughter. He’d said daughter.

  “So what now?” I asked, wanting to escape, to run through the woods, to fall into an ocean and float forever. Liam and I had plans—very specific plans—after this, and I was so ready.

  “Actually, I’d like some time alone with your mother, because her condition is more acute. For you, Charlotte, we need to make certain you’re using safe birth control. Nothing hormonal, for the time being.”

  “Not the pill?” I asked, incredulous. “But I’ve been on it before. Was on it the first time we…you know.”

  “Just for now, no hormones. Use barrier methods.” The doctor began shuffling papers and focused on my mother.

  Mom shifted in her seat and turned the color of an old British payphone box.

  “Message received. And we will use it. Religiously.”

  “Socks in the shower,” Liam muttered.

  I punched him and stood up.

  He grinned and we made our exit, leaving Mom to unpack her past as I struggled to understand my future.

  Liam

  “Dad pulled me into his office last night,” I said abruptly as we made our way to Walden Pond from the doctor’s office near the Fenway. Route 2 was remarkably clear for the week before Thanksgiving. Two more days and it would be a parking lot, jammed with holiday travelers and the gazillion college students who lived in Boston fleeing for home as a refuge before final exams.

  “And?”

  “And he fired me.”

  “WHAT?” She looked so shocked. A little too much like the Esme doll. “I can guess why,” she added. “No baby, no need for a stable job, right?

  “He said I can keep the car, and he’ll carry me on his medical insurance until I’m twenty-six, though.”

  She gave me a half-smile. “Watching a live chicken get eaten by a snake on stage can make a man soften up.”

  My booming laugh made what came next a little easier to manage. The grief counselor at the hospital had sent Charlotte some information about pregnancy-loss groups, but she hadn’t wanted any of it, instead turning to me and her friend Maggie for comfort.

  Maggie had given us two beautiful, polished soapstones, perfect for worrying over in your hand. “Write the word you need to release the most on the stones. And, when you’re ready, find a body of water and say your piece. Whatever comes to mind. When the words are over, throw the stone in the water and don’t look back.”

  It sounded like new-agey bullshit, but Charlotte was into it, so whatever.

  Here we were. The stone was like a third nad, resting in my pocket, cuddled up against my not-so-useless-after-all balls. It was warm and solid, with a certainty that made my bones around my heart ache a bit.

  We were tired. Exhausted. Drained and a bit tentative with each other these days. The crying hadn’t really stopped, and every night I held Charlotte in my arms, mouth trying to connect to my inadequate brain as it worked to put the right, soothing words on my lips. Nothing I said worked. Nothing I did fixed this.

  The worst thing you can do to a man is give him a problem he can’t fix.

  Throwing a stone with a word written on it in the very lake where Thoreau cleaned off his dirty parts and built his cabin with his own two hands was a lame-o gesture, but it was something to do.

  I had something in common with Thoreau (and it didn’t involve skinny dipping in Walden Pond). If I lived simply, I didn’t need to work for anyone else, at least not for a while. The big concert had blown all earnings out of the water, and we’d each gone home with a nice four figures of pay.

  That, and Sam and Darla were fucking geniuses. Darla and Sam had arranged to have the concert taped. With Amy’s help, they’d figured out how to get ads on videos on YouTube, and all those viral videos—with millions of views—were making bank for us.

  The band split all the money, and between what we’d made from the concert, the spike in sales of CDs and mp3s online, and what we knew was coming in from the ad money, it all meant I didn’t have to work right now.

  Which meant I was with Charlotte most nights.

  And no more climbing through windows.

  I couldn’t officially live with her—we had to be married for that to happen. When—not whether—we’d marry was a question that was on hold for now.

  We had deeper issues to consider.

  I parked and we walked down the sloped trails, tree roots jutting out under burnished leaves, the cool November air making the end of my nose sting. Charlotte hung back from the water, the empty, abandoned lifeguard chairs a little too desolate, the boarded-up ranger cabins like something from a horror movie set.

  Our horror, our danger, was over. We knew who we were, where we stood with each other, and no more miscarriages if medical science had any say in it.

  And some of my swimmers worked.

  What more could a man ask for?

  I slipped the stone out of my pocket, its absence suddenly a bit off-putting. The smoothness made it seem bigger than it was.

  That’s what she said, Dad’s voice invaded. This was not the time for jokes, but my mind grasped at anything to stop thinking about the pain this entire trip represented. Pain we were supposed to release, to move on from, to…

  What?

  I wasn’t sure anymore.

  I dropped to my knees, the cold sand cutting into my kneecaps. It felt good to feel real, physical pain, like it neutralized some of the ephemeral ache that I couldn’t touch. My arms wrapped around Charlotte’s hips and she jolted in surprise.

  “What are you doing?”

  I unbuttoned her red, wool coat with the big black buttons from the bottom, one thick button at a time, until I reached her waist. Then I gently lifted her sweater, pulled her turtleneck out from her waistband, and pressed my cold cheek against the creamy skin of her belly.

  “Oh, Liam,” she whispered, knowing exactly what I was doing. I felt a drop fall on the top of my scalp. Then another.

  It wasn’t raining.

  “I wasn’t there the first time,” I said to the soft flesh of her navel, speaking to a visitor who was long gone. “I was so, so stupid.” My own tears choked my throat and wet her belly button, but she didn’t move away. Instead, her hands slipped softly through my hair.

  “But I was there the second time, and I’ll be there for the third. And the fourth. And for all the babies that will come. And for the two of you who we miss so much, maybe some day your spirits will come back. And the door is always open.”

  Charlotte’s legs buckled and I grabbed her, helping to lower her to the ground, her body racked with sobs.

  And then I showed her my stone. I’d written only one word:

  Hope.

  Charlotte

  “So many people told me I was overreacting,” I whispered between hiccups, hoping that I could say what I needed to say, worried until this very moment that perhaps Liam was one of them. “You feel it, too?”

  He nodded, his head down, eyes away from me.

  “Not overreacting,” was all he said.

  The placid pond waters seemed deceptive. A raging storm sending waves that topple ocean liners churned between us, yet feet away the water barely rippled.

  “I thought I’d lost my friend forever,” I said savagely. “When you left, and then when I bled out. And getting a second chance with you was like a cosmic joke.”

  He je
rked his head up, eyes streaked with red amidst the impossibly clear blue, chameleon eyes that reflected his emotional state. “Joke?”

  “It was everything I wanted for all these years, and nothing like I’d imagined. And that you thought you were sterile…and now it turns out we both have issues that make the two we just lost that much more precious to me.” My final words came out in a series of gasps and sputters.

  He held me tighter.

  “We’re not supposed to be like this,” I said, sniffing and staring up into the cloudy sky. “We’re twenty-three and twenty-four, and we should be partying and being wild and having the time of our lives.”

  He smoothed the hair off my fevered skin, tracing the line of my brows with tough fingertips forged by guitar strings.

  “I am having the time of my life. Right now.”

  I wiped my nose with a shaking hand and opened it, showing him my stone.

  I, too, had written one single word:

  Hope.

  He pulled me to my feet and we faced the water, my body screaming with a thousand cries of unfinished business, his hand steady on the small of my back as we made our way. Birds cried out in the sparse outline of trees gone dormant, their leaves dropped, waiting for a new season for life to bloom once more on their delicate branches.

  And then he raised his hand, encouraging me to do likewise, and without needing to count—just knowing—we released the rocks into the mirror-like water, letting our release of hope ripple out and spread to shores unseen.

  We walked hand in hand to the car, pausing as he unlocked it, my hitched sobs slowing, winding down. I reached into my pocket to warm my hands and felt a familiar object.

  “Wait!” I told him. “I forgot something. We need to go back to the pond.”

  His eyebrows knitted in confusion.

  “Why?”

  “When I told Darla and Amy what we were doing, Darla came to me later with this and asked me to release it into the water for her.”

  I pulled the ragged, egg-sized piece of granite out of my pocket.