Bright Before Us (15 page)

At the hospital I signed my name on a form and followed the blue line painted on the floor. The first time, Greta had already heard the doctor's briefing when I arrived. But now we sat in the exam room together as he explained what her body had just undergone. He described the idiopathic event that had killed our eightweek-old baby, shaking his head with practiced regret. Then he told us,
This isn't your fault.
It seemed, to me at least, an odd thing to say. But Greta nodded, holding my hand. I was alarmed by her inexhaustible flow of tears.
The doctor told us we would need to wait six weeks before another attempt.

In the car, Greta said,
Six weeks isn't so long.

Greta,
I said,
I can't do this again.
I surprised myself, but immediately I went from fear of her reaction to pure elation: the words had finally been spoken aloud.

I felt her peering at me.
You can't do what again?

She deflated in her seat.
This is the only thing I've ever asked you for.

I stated what I viewed as simple fact.

You never asked me anything,
I said.

Why are you with me?
she said, her voice calm. Her question wasn't rhetorical; she wanted to know.
I don't understand anything you do.
She shook her head, puzzled.
I don't understand how a man who is terrified of people becomes a bully. How a man who hates children makes a career of teaching them.

I leaned back in the driver's seat.
You don't have to understand me,
I said.
Because I could be anybody, as long as I gave you what you wanted.

Fuck you,
she said, wincing. It hurt her, matching my unkindness this way.

Tell me one thing,
I said,
off the top of your head, that makes me different from anyone else.
I laughed; it was suddenly funny.

The stoplight held at red, threatening to change. I glanced at her. The wounded look on her face disappeared, replaced by a quickness in her eyes I didn't recognize.
You know,
she said,
I just figured it out.
She grinned through her tears.
There's no fucking mystery here. You're transparent.

Enlighten me,
I snapped.

She leaned in as though spilling a secret.
You choose the path of least resistance and then you find it boring. You choose the high road and you fall off it. You'll keep on doing things you hate so you can keep on feeling robbed, walking around bewildered, wondering how you got cheated out of everything you wanted. So you want to know the thing I like about you, Frank?

She narrowed her eyes.

You're predictable,
she said.

 

For the six weeks that followed, we were silent. I recall it now and half shudder. It was an endurance contest; it was the nadir of our time together. When I think about those weeks, I remember the house being unbearably stuffy. I remember feeling like there wasn't enough air. I remember that time being like a brief, reversible death.

Each night, we retired to our separate spaces—me in the living room, her in what she persisted in calling “the baby's room”—before, in an act of mutual masochism, sleeping in the same bed. We were careful not to touch. We ate separate meals, watched separate television, pretended we were fine in the supermarket's checkout line: the cashier would make jovial chatter and we would laugh in unison, chirping to each other and to him, turning the performance on and off at will.

And all the while, I watched the calendar, knowing what was to come.

A few days after the six weeks ended, I arrived home from school and found Greta standing in our bedroom, changing the sheets. We had only tentatively begun talking
aloud again—post-fight, her inaugural words had been
Do you need any socks washed?
—and the way she said hello felt like a formality, as though she were meeting me for the first time.

Hey,
I said, setting down my backpack. I took off my shirt, my pants, leaned down to peel off my wet socks. It was January, and raining so hard that driveways became lakes. I started the shower, feeling my full-body chill begin to ebb away.

A moment passed before she came naked into the bathroom.
Can I get in?

I nodded, startled. As she bent to get a fresh towel I looked at her brown hair, wondering why she had begun dyeing it—her blondeness had been the one thing about her looks that people complimented.

She stole glances at me, reaching for the shampoo. I rolled my neck until it cracked, the harsh sound echoing.

The same,
I said. I washed my face beneath the spout.

I borrowed some money from my dad,
she said.
I'll drive so you can drink.

I smiled bitterly. So I can drink. She was trying to liquor me up.

There was a pause. She hadn't expected candor.

I know,
she said.

I know,
she said again. She put her hands on my hips and her wet head on my chest, resting her ear against my
sternum. I knew it like I knew anything—she was plotting the course by which she would get me to acquiesce.

And then I blurted out the words on my tongue:
You look pretty,
I said, awash in something like—I don't know, what? Empathy, maybe. It occurred to me that as awful as the previous weeks had been for me, they had likely been worse for her. I had only been insulted, taken to task. But she had been bereaved and let down and told, in so many words, that she was selfish. She had been manipulated into thinking she was manipulative. A spasm of guilt weakened my knees.

I'm sorry about how it's been,
I said.
I'm sorry we fought.

Her fingers were warm, like a dangerous, engulfing fever. I turned down the hot water and when I looked up again she was so close to my face, glancing at each of my eyes in turn, searching them. Her palm molded itself to the plane above my nipple. She was hunched, sighing. I squinted. It wasn't dye. Her hair had darkened over time. She had aged. Her hand moved down and grabbed me, too hard, and I winced. She didn't notice. She placed my hand on her breast. I held it there, unmoving.

She checked my expression, and when I didn't object—when I stared at her vacantly, breathing through my mouth—she turned and faced the tile wall. We hit our familiar marks, took our places like seasoned actors: I set one hand on her back as she bent forward, the movement automatic. I met no resistance. We made no noise. The water reddened my eyes and flattened our hair.

Weeks later, she would give me the news. The yellow accoutrements were pulled from their boxes, and she began
to tally the days. I told myself the course had been laid years before, that I had made my bed. I tried to repackage my apathy as selflessness: hadn't I given her what she wanted? I would let her live this pain ad infinitum. I would sit with her in the doctor's exam room as she asked how long we would have to wait before failing another time, and again.

I braced myself with one hand on her hip, then I put both hands in her hair—her hair that had grown darker with age, with time, with everything that had come to her. I pulled, hard. Greta's head jerked back as I groaned and sputtered, calling out in bitter rapture, feeling something inside me wither and pass away.

That Tuesday night, the favorable sonogram behind us, Greta went into an upswing, cleaning the house with a fervor she pretended had been there all along.
This is how you're supposed to do it,
she said. Her actions took on a frantic, repentant quality, as though any show of capability would stave off what had come to feel inevitable.

As she cleaned I slipped into the garage through the hallway door, telling her I would tidy the boxes of Christmas decorations, old school papers, other unnecessary shit we kept out of obligation. But then I snuck out through the retractable garage door and walked down the driveway to retrieve a bottle of whiskey from my trunk. I drank, among the Christmas lights and mildewed boxes, until my belches were accompanied by wet trails. I spun my wrist, cracking it: click, click, click, the tendons vibrating like harp strings. I continued drinking until I couldn't stand.

I woke up on the cement a few hours later, walked back into the house, brushed my teeth, and was happy to find Greta silent, perhaps even sleeping, when I came to bed. I slept deep and heavy, like something was pressing on top of me. But at the sound of some nocturnal animal rustling outside I stirred, my hand going to my head. I turned toward Greta. Her eyes were open.
It's okay,
she said.
You had a nightmare.

It's okay,
she said again, brushing her hand across my temple.
What are you so scared of?

I ran my dry tongue over the ridged ceiling of my mouth.
I'm not scared,
I said.

You're terrified,
Greta said. In the dark it was hard to see. Her expression shifted with the shadows.

I didn't have a nightmare,
I said.
Why did you say that?

I can tell,
she said.

There was a knock at the bedroom door.

Come in,
Greta said.

A massive stroller, its seats lined up in a row, rolled forward and into the room, and around us swelled an awful, searing light; the paint on the walls began to blister. I looked down into the stroller. Four faces stared placidly back.

Oh good,
Greta said.

 

When I woke a moment later, Greta was standing in front of the mirror.

It's okay,
she said flatly.
You were having a nightmare.

Wednesday morning, I skipped the shower and instead rose from bed, walked to the bathroom, ran the tap, and dunked my head in the sink like I was blanching a vegetable. I was so hungover my lips trembled; my tongue was still numb from the alcohol. My neck was destroyed—that familiar injury from the car accident, reawakened now and again by a hasty turn or an incorrect angle to my pillow, had this morning limited my mobility to a sickening degree: I wasn't sure I'd be able to look over my shoulder when changing lanes. I stepped back into the hall, dripping, and Greta was waiting.

I guess you got a lot of cleaning done,
she said, holding up the empty whiskey bottle.

I opened my mouth, and closed it. She tapped the glass with a fingernail.

I need you to not crumble right now, Frank. I need you to do whatever it is you do when you're in need of solace—Jesus,
she said, interrupting herself,
do something, anything, to keep it together. Do you want to talk to someone? Do you need medication?

I pointed at the bottle, smirking.
I thought I was.

She blinked.
I understand that you're in pain,
she said.
And you have a right to be in pain.

I closed my eyes, my head against the wall. The water in my hair ran into my ears. I thought about the pills in the glove box.
Thanks for your permission,
I said quietly.

She shifted her weight, narrowing her eyes.
I think you ought to be glad, Frank, that I'm being as kind to you as I am.

On the last word, she dropped the bottle to the floor. I think she had hoped it would smash, but it broke tidily
into two pieces—
clunk
—and then the bottle's squat neck rolled toward the heater vent. She stormed into the kitchen, and I bent to retrieve the broken glass, then dressed in the first clothes I found, walked briskly outside, and popped the last of the Vicodin as I made my way to work.