Here to Stay (37 page)

The fever persisted and, worried about infection, the hospital kept Daisy another day. She spent it in bed, dozing and waking, holding Kees while curled in her mother’s arms.

Erik shied from anyone touching him now. He paced away or slumped through the prickling, shapeless hours, feeling more and more caged. He wanted to go home.

Texts and voicemails piled up on his phone. Most he let go. Some he returned.

“I’m so sorry,” Mike Pettitte said, his voice tight and gruff. “I’m here for you. Please know I’m here. If there’s anything I can do, Erik, you call me.”

“Oh my dear, I feel terrible,” Vivian said. “I’m so sorry. I’m thinking about you all the time.”

“Sweet boy,” Aunt Trudy said, with Aunt Kirsten on another extension. “Our hearts are broken for you.”

“Thank you,” Erik said over and over to his people. “Thank you.”

“I can’t put him in the ground,” Daisy said. “I can’t bear the thought.”

“No,” Erik said. “I can’t either.”

“He needs to be near us.” Her voice was syrupy with tears and pain. “He’s so little. I want to keep him.”

“I do, too.”

The arrangements were made for them. They didn’t have to lift a finger or make a call. Their sole task was to hold Kees and press him into their memory before they took him away.

And sign the certificate of stillbirth.

And remember to take it to the registrar at some point.

And collect his ashes.

And…

PEOPLE WERE UNBELIEVABLY KIND. The house filled with food: casseroles, soups, pies. The counters creaked under the offerings, the fridge exploded with sympathy. Flowers filled every room. The fruit bowl overflowed. A waterfall of envelopes spilled from the mailbox. Cards, notes, letters. Donations were made to charity in Kees’s name. A Jewish family in the neighborhood had a memorial tree planted in Israel. Another had a star named for him. Every deed was accompanied by beautiful loving words.
You’re in our thoughts. In our prayers. We’re broken-hearted. I’m sending you my love. I’m lighting a candle.

A package arrived from deWrenne Atelier and they unwrapped a beautiful silver hummingbird with a jeweled eye. A note from Vivian read:
In the spirit world, hummingbirds are messengers of joy. But they are also known for the ability to get in and out of small places, and their ability to heal. I send you all my love in this little bird, and hope it can hover in the small dark places of your hearts and help heal you.

The MacIntyres sent flowers.
Come to Clayton anytime you wish. Come home and stay with us. We’ll take care of you.

Mike Pettitte texted often.
Hey buddy. I’m out on the boat. I’m thinking about you. I’m here if you need me.

Love came from all directions. On paper, on screens, in dishes and words and deeds.

We’re thinking of you every minute.

I’m sorry.

We’re sorry.

We’re so sorry…

Kees came back to them as a few cubic inches of ash. Most of the cremation urns offered by the funeral home were cloyingly kitschy. They picked the simplest one available for the time being.

They didn’t quite know where to put it. The mantelpiece seemed too obvious and lonely. The kitchen was the center of their household universe, but it seemed an odd location to keep an urn. They took turns keeping it on their bedside tables for a week until Daisy placed it on top of the upright piano. Erik took the black and white picture of four Fiskare generations from his desk and set it beside his son.

And baby makes five.

He fussed and arranged the composition of picture frame and urn, trying to get it perfect. Wishing he could reach fingers into the photograph, rip his infant self out of his great-grandfather’s arms and put Kees there.

“Take care of him,” he said under his breath, meeting Emil’s eyes. He imagined the old man, who had lost a son in the war, nodding as his arms tightened protectively.

These things happen and they are terrible things to bear.

Erik sat and played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Then he felt dumb and closed the lid over the keys.

“Play the Prelude in C,” Daisy said. “It’s a lullaby.” She sat on the floor and he noticed she was working a jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked, feeling dumber, as if he ought to know why.

She looked at him as if she thought the same. “I just want to put something together.”

He nodded and opened the piano’s lid again. He played a flat, soulless version of the Bach prelude. Started a Mozart sonata but stopped for no reason and went to sit on the floor by Daisy. He poked a finger through the box of pieces, looking for the borders, which he slid across the table to her. Her thank yous were clipped and businesslike, as though he were passing her instruments during a surgery.

He helped her for half an hour, not speaking. Then he got tired and lay down on the couch. His hands were ice cold and he held them tight between his knees.

He thought of the time he was eleven and had watched the movie
Poltergeist,
which had scared him past healthy terror into a unshakable, manic upset. The only thing that could assuage the freaked-out distress was bodily contact with his mother. He slept in her bed for nearly three months.

Christine was patient with the obsessive rituals he insisted on. He had to sleep on the left side of the bed, far from the closet door. The closet itself had to be scrupulously inspected and then remain wide open. In bed, Christine’s back needed to be tight against his back, no gaps. Above all, his hands had to be between his knees. Only then was he safe against the fiery, preternatural
thing
that lived on the other side of a too-tenuous border between real and unimaginable. A nameless predator that made maggots erupt from steak and made you want to claw your own face off.

He closed his eyes, his hands safely tucked in. A light doze and a foggy wakefulness passed him back and forth. He opened his eyes and Daisy was still at work.

“Are you getting tired?” he asked.

She shook her head. He fell back asleep, woke again later and she was sitting still, her hands motionless among the colored pieces. Bastet perched on the table, her silvery neck stretched out long and she was licking the tears off Daisy’s face.

Daisy’s mouth trembled between a touched, grateful smile and a grimace of despair. “You funny little thing,” she whispered. “You’re so sweet to Mommy.” Her voice broke apart on the word and her chin dropped between her shaking shoulders.

Erik touched the back of her neck. “Do you want to go to bed?”

“No.” A world of hurt packed into the single syllable and a surprising amount of force behind it. It slapped his face. Bastet jumped off the table and pattered away on silent paws.

Erik stared at his wife, back at work now, her jaw tight and her brows pulled down. Into the soil of his broken heart a seed fell:
This is going to change us.

It’s already changed us. It will never be the way it was before.

He looked around the living room. Looked at the picture of them over the fireplace, wrapped up in Daisy’s wedding veil. Looked at their son’s remains on the piano top. Looked at their house, their life, their doing and their making. It all gazed benignly back at him, eyebrows raised.

Well?

He slid his fingertips along the tender bumps of Daisy’s spine, then flattened his hand across her nape. “If I lose you, I will die,” he said.

Her hands went still. She turned her head toward him. Her eyes were closed, her thick lashes damp and spiked. “I need to put this together,” she said through the wall of her teeth. “Or I will start breaking things.”

He had an intense vision of maggots and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m scared we’re going to break.”

“I’m scared for us, too,” she said. “Let me do this.”

He let her. It was how she was keeping the closet door open. Keeping the face-clawing demons on their side of the boundary. He would be patient and keep his presence against hers. No gaps.

He dozed off again. When he woke, it was done. The puzzle was complete and Daisy had her head pillowed on her crossed arms on the table, fast asleep. Bastet was curled in a neat, precise ball inside the puzzle box’s lid.

Erik woke Daisy just enough to get her on her feet. Then he picked her up like a child and carried her upstairs.

“Good job,” he whispered, strangely proud. “You did it.”

EVERY DAY HE BECAME more and more aware how the past was made up of stepping stones to now. No coincidences. No accidents. You gravitated toward and attracted the people you were meant to have in your life. They belonged to you, they were precious to you. They deserved to be told so.

John Quillis called. “Oh God, Fish,” he said, his voice soft but strong. “My heart’s broken for you guys.”

“I never thanked you,” Erik said, “for what you did for Daisy.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do have to. Because too often these things go unsaid and it ends up being too late. Not a day goes by I don’t look at her scars and think she wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. I mean it. I owe you an apology for the past. And I owe you my gratitude for… Forever. If you’ll have it.”

A small pause on the other side of the line. “I’ll have it,” John said. “Thank you. It means a lot. Honestly, Fish, I only did what any man would’ve done.”

“But you did it when it mattered. I left and you stayed. You were more of a man than I was and I won’t ever forget it.”

Erik’s ex-wife called. “Miles and Janey told me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry.”

Her ubiquitous use of baby used to grate on his nerves. Now it settled like cool water on a burn.

“And I’m sorry,” he said, setting his forehead against the cold refrigerator door. “I understand so much now, Mel, and it’s making me think of when… I mean, I…”

“I know,” Melanie said. “I know, baby. You don’t have to explain. I put you and Daisy on the prayer board of my church. We’re holding you tight. Now you rest and take care of yourself.”

Daisy’s ex-boyfriend, Ray Bonloup, who had lost a child of his own, sent a book of Mother Goose rhymes with breathtaking watercolor illustrations.
It was going to be a birth gift,
he wrote.
And I’ve been agonizing what to do. I send it with my love and my compassion. I know you think nobody understands. Please know I do. And know I will tell you the truth. One day it will hurt just a little less. One day, you will smile again. Beauty still exists. Joy still exists. I promise, you will find them again.