by Scott Savino
Rising from the surface, he grasped at the space where Omar’s head last crested and came away with nothing. “I would’ve followed you anywhere, even with Jessica, with anyone. But you had to have this—well, fine then! I’m going to meet someone else, you hear me? I’m leaving, and I’m going to be happy the rest of my life. But there’s no rest of our lives for you, because you fucking threw it away!”
Miguel thrashed at the pond and a shudder ran up his gut, out his mouth, and into the water. He paddled back to shore, where he fell on the sand, spent. His gaze did not leave the pond except to glance at the sky, where the faint crescent moon smiled out of reach. Grass stirred with buzzing mosquitoes. A brown bird that’d played its tongue for a worm now nestled between two rocks, its belly filled.
Where the young men once sat, Miguel stirred the glowing fire back to life. If Omar was out there, he might see it and drag himself to shore.
He wouldn’t. Miguel knew that. The moon made no light of its own, reflecting only what it stole. But just in case, Miguel waited. The grave of the dream needed tending, and perhaps when summer dried the canal, so would other graves.
Dear Jane
ERIN B. LILLIS
DEAR JANE,
In the simplest of terms, it is over. But as I sit in my sparse room, I hear the heart of you still professing, “I love, I love, I love.” In response I say, “I know, I trust, I love,” ad infinitum. Yet, it is over just the same, as so many sang on the last night I held you.
In our beginning, you were recalcitrant while I teased and prodded you for attention. I was so undeniably attracted to your sassiness I could not relent. You must have worried at my jealousy, though. I will admit I have swallowed the bile of jealousy in the past, forcing it down until it erupted in frightening ways, but I knew I could control it when I took you into my home and heart.
Though I knew not what I was doing, and surely bungled along the way, I vowed to tend to you as your health declined. In time you showed me your hunger for more vitality and spoke to me of how trapped you felt.
“Set me free,” you would beg me.
At night you whispered it in my ear.
When the sun spilled through the window you screamed it until it echoed.
No one on Earth could grasp your pain as I did. We are of the same restless spirit, you and I, and being so close to deliverance, yet so far, it must have seemed like torture.
It was the middle of April when I realized I might never hold you again. I find it interesting it is a date associated with taxes, since it was spending time together that came, ultimately, at the cost of my emotional well being. That was when fortune taxed me with the task of giving you up. You were determined to leave me that night, as if an army of angels stood by your side, pulling you from my arms. I do not think I will ever forget the look on your face when I began my tearful goodbye. Never waning in my affection, I held onto you as tightly as I could, until you ceased to shake and tremble, and our bitter tears stopped mingling between our lashes.
As I held your still form in sleep, the gentle carpenter who constructs my dreams presented me with a plan for the survival of our love. When I told you of our strategy the next morning, you just gaped at me, wide-eyed and silent with implicit trust and understanding. I wish I could convey the enormity of how those little gestures made me feel so absolutely wonderful. Peaceful, even. As if together we could fight any critic or opponent of our union.
But your passiveness in all that followed, I admit, left me with a dry taste in my mouth. Were you aware of all I did to keep us away from those who could not feel our passion? Those who would propose to separate us, as my father did when he suspected my involvement in your absences from school and work? Why must we suffer these times, when our passion is painted as unholy and unnatural instead of pure and true as it is? I am just as human as he, and yet I have seen the disgust in his eyes, as if I am more demon than daughter made of his own flesh and blood.
I know now it was by his hand our secret was uncovered.
The last night I knew I would hold you, you stared blankly through the red and blue lights flashing against the windows of the refuge to which I had taken us.
“It’s over!” They it sang again and again until I submitted. Your parents cried on each other’s shoulders and my father stood in stony judgment. The same look of shame on him then as would be on his face later during the trial.
And now, though I still love you, I can no longer reach you. My advisor, Mandy, has suggested I write you these letters. There was a sparkle in her eye when she told me to do this, so it is my suspicion that she is one of us and might know how to find you. Outwardly, she says this will be therapeutic, that it will help me accept that you are gone, or to at least acknowledge that we are over.
But for me it truly isn’t. Nor will it ever be.
Jane, I would have kept you forever.
With love eternal,
Your Jillian
oOo
Mailed from: St. Caedwalla’s Hospital for Behavioral Health
Facility 2, Building 3
Patient: Gibson, J.
Reviewed and Approved by Dr. Brogan
Dear Mr. Gibson,
Your daughter has asked permission to write and send these letters. As, previously you’ve asked for detailed, as you put it, “no holds barred” updates about her mental state, I thought seeing her own thoughts on paper might illustrate it best, so I’ve encouraged her to write them.
As I’m sure you’re aware, in her last letter, Jillian indicated she believes I know Ms. Matthews’ location. Rest assured, I do not. The records of Ms. Matthew’s burial have been locked down so the family can mourn in private, free from the press and those who have romanticized her death.
This delusion aside, I find it interesting that, though she clearly believes Jane Matthews to be alive, she is still addressing the envelopes to you. I understand this must be a bit unnerving given you were the one who turned her in to the police after the kidnapping, however, I do believe these exercises are helping her process what really happened, as well as her role in the events. Please do let me know if you find these letters too disturbing and I’ll retain them on file instead of forwarding them in the future.
As a final note, speaking both professionally and personally, I strongly suggest you do not try to go through these difficult times alone. The families of convicted criminals have been shown to suffer just as much as the families of victims, so I urge you to talk to others. If you’d like, I can provide references to some excellent therapy groups, grief councilors, and therapists with experience in this field.
As always, I am available during normal office hours. If you have any questions about your daughter or her treatment, please don’t hesitate to ask.
-Dr. Amanda Brogan
The Miracle of Life
EDYTH PAX-BOYR
I WAS ON EDGE IN exam room number two. Long before Kaia’s amber skin was “glowing”, or her belly was “showing”, or she was craving, or itchy, or moody, I had been a full-blown ball of stress because pregnancy—the act of making a whole new human person—freaked me the fuck out. I wanted nothing to do with it.
My therapist used fun terms like “phobia” and “neurosis”, but it didn’t really matter what labels were slapped on it. When it came to reproduction, I was not down for it.
Sex?
No thank you.
I’d tried it a few times in high school and found the whole ordeal to be more effort than it was worth. Boys or girls, it didn’t matter. The binary was still strong back then, but I’d given them all a go, mostly because society had told me to. And because everyone else seemed to like it, so I assumed I would too.
Eventually.
Ultimately, it hadn’t mattered what parts someone had been packing, or how they had identified, or what kind of motion their ocean had provided: sex just wasn’t my thing. It was neither fun, nor functional for me.
Insemination, then?
Gross.
That’s when we knew if we wanted kids, Kaia would have to carry them.
And even now that the act was done and the baby well on its way, I couldn’t even remember the insemination process. I knew we’d gone somewhere fancy with a California-style, West Coast name like “Ovi+” (where the “plus” was pronounced “positive”, because of course it was), but I couldn’t remember any of the details.
And since then I’d had to be reminded of every appointment along the way to check on Kaia’s progress and the baby’s health, because my brain kept washing its hands of the whole mess. I’d almost forgotten to bring us to our appointment today, but Kaia had been on it with the gentle reminders and long-suffering smiles, and somehow we’d even managed to be a little early.
Sitting next to Kaia in the exam room, though, I wasn’t sure it had been such a good idea to come. And not just because everything around us was designed to remind aspiring parents of the “miracle” of life. Stock photos featuring happy families and expectant mothers grinning over their distended bellies leered at me from every wall as I fought off the beginning of panic attack.
Did we really need the doctor? Couldn’t we just go home and guess the baby’s sex? We had roughly a fifty percent chance of being right. That was good enough, right? And if we were wrong, the kid could always correct us. It would be fine.
The blissful, yet sorely exhausted look on Kaia’s face told me all I needed to know, just in case I’d been tempted to pitch the idea of ditching, so I tried to ignore the weirdness that was all of pregnancy. Despite it being right in front of me.
It wasn’t even that I was opposed to children—actually, I’d always kind of liked the idea of a miniature human bouncing around the apartment—I was just uneasy with the concept of another life growing inside me. An entire other awareness just there. Inside me. Moving and expanding. Developing its sentience while wearing my body as a gestational Evangelion.
The whole process gave me existential anxiety.
Kaia, on the other hand, was made for motherhood. The pure joy of carrying new life inside her had ignited a fire that would not die. Even when the morning sickness had left her sweating and unconscious on the bathroom floor and growing pains kept her up all night begging for relief. It carried her through the days when she barely had the strength to eat, and through cravings that would have killed lesser mortals, like half-cooked hamburgers covered in fried crickets and Nutella; Greek yogurt with figs, sriracha, and salted tarantulas; or scorpions. Just scorpions. Sometimes chocolate covered, but still just 100% dead scorpions.
And now here, in the exam room, as we awaited the results of our second ultrasound, that joy kept her spirits high. I could tell, because even though I was the one smiling and patting Kaia’s brittle hand, it was Kaia’s smile that gave me hope. Hope that the most turbulent pregnancy in the history of man would finally hit its stride and mellow the fuck out.
I still worried, though. Of course I did. Kaia’s health had been failing for a while, and while the doctors were concerned for her, they had also reassured us multiple times that not every pregnancy manifested the same way. Some were just more strenuous than others. We had also been told there were no obvious complications, and though there were some unexpected hormone spikes, they were nothing to be afraid of.
Except now, maybe, while we waited an eternity for a startled nurse to return with the doctor. And what was taking so long, anyway? Was it just my anxiety, or was something really wrong?
The visit had started just fine. Kaia and the nurse had been all smiles and chit chat. And if Kaia’s usual glow had been more sallow than tan, and her smile a little more tired than bright, that fire inside let her power through it.
With greetings aside, the nurse had pushed cold gel around Kaia’s belly with the stick-wand attached to the machine. He’d grinned and fiddled with some dials (I thought, though I hadn’t exactly been paying attention) and honed in on the baby. Then, within a couple minutes his grin had turned hollow and the cheer had left his eyes. I had never seen anything like it. I’d read plenty of stories that described it, but to actually have seen an emotion drain from someone’s eyes ...
It did not inspire confidence.
He had done his best to cover his nerves, but he had also quickly excused himself. He said to fetch the doctor.
That had been twenty minutes ago.
“We’re fine,” Kaia said, her voice thinner than usual.
That meant the baby was moving again.
My eyes shifted from Kaia’s sweet smile to her belly. I had no idea when babies were supposed to start moving, but I didn’t think it was supposed to look like a scene from Alien yet. Or maybe ever. But there it was, stretching my wife’s belly, gliding beneath the skin all sharp and angular like an elbow or a knee.
Did babies have those at five months?
A brisk knock on the door startled us, and the baby stilled as the doctor entered, her back flanked by the nurse and two other staff in lab coats.
The doctor smiled, seating herself on the little wheelie stool by the bed as her entourage closed ranks.
“Hi, Kaia. Naomi. How are you two doing today?”
“We’ve been better,” I said, gently squeezing Kaia’s hand as much as I dared. Kaia simply smiled back to the doctor, her free hand slowly massaging her sore belly and the unruly baby within.
The doctor nodded, a look of sympathy creasing her features. “Let’s get a good look at what’s going on in there, shall we? See if we can’t get some good news for you.”
I had no idea what information could be gleaned from an ultrasound. Every one I’d seen had been a blurry mess of wobbly grey-and-black with a giant sort-of-head in the middle. When eager parents pointed out all the bits that were supposedly baby, I just couldn’t see them. I still nodded along and cooed on cue, of course, because not being able to appreciate a baby smudge didn’t mean I had to be a dick about it. That said, blurry Xerox babies and sex reveals were the limit of my understanding of ultrasounds and their uses.
I hoped that was not the limit of ultrasound capabilities, though.
Or—god—the doctor’s understanding of ultrasounds.
The doctor was talking again and I realized I’d missed most of it.
“—hiding a bit,” the doctor was saying as I tuned back in. She was moving the wand against Kaia’s belly, trying to chase the baby down. At least that’s what it looked like to me as she wiggled it against Kaia at what I thought was an unusual angle.
That’s when the baby shifted. Just a little bump. A little kick, or a punch. It was quick, but everyone saw. I, however, saw how pale the doctor had become because of it.
“Is …” I looked to Kaia nervously. “Is everything okay?”
The doctor didn’t respond. She looked at the monitor with an intense frown of concentration. The two extras leaned in, muttering and pointing at the screen, and one of them sent the nurse out again with an order that sounded suspiciously like “prep for surgery.”
The doctor finally turned to us, a strained smile pulling at her features. I knew the effect was meant to be comforting, but it was just shy of horrifying: the way the doctor’s eyes flitted between our faces and Kaia’s belly, fear obviously dilating her pupils.