Tattoo (9 page)

EIGHTEEN

The conversation about Sammie's body was about as much as Lauren had spoken for that whole first week. When we had gotten home, Lauren went right into the bedroom and shut the door, pausing only for a second to look at the closed nursery door that still held the big pink bow.  We had decided to leave it there until Sammie came home. I passed the door and took it down.  There was no use in pretending, Sammie was coming home in a tiny box, not in our arms. 

The people at school didn't have much sympathy, my teachers or the coaches. They only gave me a week off for mourning, then it was back to the grind. Lauren spent most of her time in bed, with the shades drawn, closing herself in all darkness. I handled the first week with an empty nursery differently than Lauren. I buried myself into whatever I could to take my mind off of Sammie's little face. I was religious about class and studying, forcing my mind to stay on task. I threw every pitch as perfectly as possible, determined to be the best pitcher on the team. I even tried to take care of Lauren when I could. I'd attempt to make dinners, or try to get her to watch a movie. But it never felt like enough. I never seemed to be able to even come close to ignoring the pain that was settled so deeply inside.

After the second week, I decided we needed a change. I opened the door to the darkened bedroom and took another try at reaching Lauren.

"Hey baby, do you want to go out to eat?" I asked her.

She shook her head no.

"Come on." I moved to the side of the bed and sat down. "I made reservations at our place." I picked up her hand and kissed it.

She shook her head again. 

"You can't stay in here forever. You need to come out."

"I'm not hungry," she told me. In the week she'd been home, I imagine that she not only lost her baby weight but a little more as well. She was looking so thin, but this time I noticed.

"Lauren, I...I can't lose you."

She looked up at me. Her wall slowly started to break, she hadn't looked at me since we left the hospital. Her eyes quickly looked away.

"How about a walk?" I asked, trying another way.

She took a deep, shaky breath. But to my surprise, she nodded.

"Let me take a shower," she told me. 

"I'll be right outside."

I kissed her cheek and left the room. I waited in the living room for her, and to my even greater surprise, she came out from the bedroom, hair damp and clean. She was wearing my old high school baseball hoodie. She could still take my breath away, even standing in an old ratty hoodie.

"I'm tired, can we just watch some TV?" she asked me.

I patted the seat next to me, and she came and sat down. I put my arm around her shoulders, which stayed stiff against me. She smelled so good, like strawberries again. I pulled her a little tighter and she finally gave in and melted into me. 

"Do you think about her?" she asked me suddenly.

This time it was me that turned stiff against her, my shoulders turning to rock.

"I don't want to talk about this," I told her.

"Eric, we haven't even mentioned her since we came home."

"I told you I really don't want to talk about it right now."

She sat upright and broke away from my arms. "Well what if I do? God, Eric, how aren't you upset? Don't you miss her?"

I grabbed the remote and started flipping aimlessly through the channels, my eyes not leaving the screen. "How can you miss something you never had?" I asked her.

She let out a noise like I had slapped her in the face. But it was true to me. I didn't miss Sammie, how could I? I'd never even heard her cry. But was I completely broken at the thought of what might have been? Absolutely. There weren't enough words to describe what I felt.

Lauren didn't take it that way.

"How can you be so cold?" she asked. She stood up abruptly and stormed back to the bedroom. 

I wanted to explain, I wanted to tell her what I meant, how I felt. But I knew if I started breaking down, I may never stop. So I didn't follow her that night, instead I slept on the couch, staring at that tiny box of ashes on the mantel. 

It wasn’t until the third week that I cracked open a bottle of whisky and almost drank the entire thing myself. As good as I was trying to be for Lauren, as much as I was doing everything I could think of to take care of her, it wasn't working. Once I got her out of her cave, she became an angry monster, content only when she was yelling about something, mostly me.   

"Do you have to leave your socks on the floor?" she'd scream at me. 

"I didn't realize I left them there. I'll pick them up."

"Well, Jesus Christ do you have to be such a fucking slob?"

Lauren very rarely swore, maybe if she stubbed her toe or broke a dish. But most of all never swore at me, especially over a pair of socks. But it seemed that was all she did, yell at me for every little detail I did wrong in a day.

Was I perfect? No, far from it. I was in school, going to practice, and I still had my job at the coffee shop, so, did I leave socks around once in a while? Yes. But did I deserve a little slack? I certainly thought so.

"She's just grieving son, anger is part of the process." That's what her dad told me when I called. 

I told him I was doing my best but my best, didn't seem to be good enough. 

"Give it time, stay strong for her."

Two solid weeks of being yelled at was too much to handle, but I did it.  I listened to her dad and I tried to stay strong, be the man. But I finally got to the point where strength was nowhere to be found. So, since no one was there for me, I decided the whisky could be.

I just couldn't handle the closed door to the nursery where the promises of happiness and laughter still sat untouched. We hadn't opened the door once since we came home without her.  But I felt it was time. Lauren had been seeming a little cheerier one day so I had brought up the topic, lightly. 

"What do you think we should do about the nursery?" I asked her while I was making lunch.

She froze instantly at the counter across from me. "What do you mean?"

"Well, do you think it's time we take the stuff out?"

She looked up at me with ice in her eyes. The air temperature seemed to drop ten degrees cooler, despite the stove being on.

"No, I don't think it's time," she said through gritted teeth.

I stopped stirring the soup and looked back at her. "Well, when do you think it will be time?" the lightness leaving my voice. I couldn't help but snap back at her those days. I handled the first week of her screaming but by the end of that second one I could barely contain my frustration with her.

"I don't know. How about I let you know when it's time?" sarcasm oozing out of her voice.

I slammed down the spoon I'd been stirring with. "There's no reason to keep things in there to torture ourselves. I'm going to pack it away and we can save it." My voice was rising in anger but I couldn't hold it back.

"I want it there and you are not taking it out!" she shouted at me.

"I pay for this place, so, yes I am," I said and shoved past her.

The entire argument was totally irrational and totally unnecessary. It's not like we needed the room for any particular reason but I just couldn't take it anymore. It had been almost a month and Sammie still weighed so heavily on me, it was sometimes hard to breath.  I was losing control of everything I needed to be responsible for, but this room was one thing I could control. 

I opened the door without looking at anything and just started picking up things from around the room in my hands, no where to even put them. My sweaty palms gripped tightly onto the silky teddy bear and random assortment of toys.

"Don't do this!" she screamed as she ran inside. "Don't. Don't. Don't!" She grabbed at the teddy bear and tried prying it from my hands. I wouldn't give and neither would she. We stood in this teddy tug-of-war which only ended when we heard an awful rip.

Teddy's head fell to the floor. 

"Look what you've done!" she screamed at me as she picked up the head. "You've ripped her teddy!" She beat me on the chest with it.

I grabbed her by the arms, stopping her right where she stood. She had the anger but I still had the strength.

"She's not here Lauren! She's never going to be!" I screamed in her face.

I don't know who started crying first but I saw her tears trailing fast down her cheeks at the same time that I felt my own. She took the broken teddy and stormed off to the bedroom and slammed the door. She locked it behind her.

I looked around the room, at the pinks and the toys. I fingered the little baby clothes that I had so carefully put away for her. I couldn't take it. I'd been trying to hide it, hold it in, but it was coming fast. Grief swept over my like a tidal wave and, just like that, I was drowning. 

The whisky numbed me, no doubt about that. The grief became a dull ache instead of the insufferable pain it had been. Every sip I swallowed took the grief a little farther away. The whisky burned at first as it slid all the way down but then that became numb, too. I laid on the couch, watching God only knows what, taking sip after sip. God, was it good. 

Lauren came out of her room late at night, when the liquid in the bottle was half gone and slipping out of my hands. She looked at me, eyes wide in surprise.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

"The store," I slurred out.

"What are we doing?" she asked me. 

I'm not sure if I was supposed to answer or not. I didn't answer though because truthfully, I didn't know anymore. 

NINTEEN

It was the turn around of the century when I woke up, with a jack hammer pounding in my head, by the way. Even still, it was a pleasant way to wake up, to the whisking of eggs and the smell of bacon sizzling hot in the pan. My senses came alive before I even opened my eyes and when I finally did open my eyes, I wasn't disappointed. There was Lauren in one of my t-shirts, a faded black one that was at least four sizes too big. That suited me just fine though, because she wasn't wearing any pants. Her hair was tossed up in a little pony tail and she was humming something completely off tune.

She was beyond adorable and everything I had fallen in love with. I decided I'd sacrifice my pounding head and sat up on the couch. I watched her not able to believe my eyes. Just the night before she was screaming at me, so much hate filled her eyes I could hardly stand it. And the next morning she was making me eggs. I hadn't seen her like that since before Sammie died. The whole scene was beautiful.

She must have sensed that I was watching her because she turned her beautiful face toward me and smiled an easy smile. "Did I wake you?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her and smiled. "But I'm glad you did."

She smiled back. Where had she been hiding this whole time? That smile made me feel like I could finally breathe again, that life would somehow find its way back into place. 

"I thought, after your little whisky bender last night, you might be hungry." She shoveled some eggs onto my plate, I was already salivating. I wasn't sure if it was from the eggs or her, but my erection seemed to know. I stood up and walked to the kitchen where she was placing the bacon on the plates. I slid up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. I rested my chin on her neck, smelled her skin. It had been weeks since I'd been this close to her, it felt so perfect. I started to kiss her neck, making a trail down to her shoulder. I felt her tense and she wriggled away from me.

"I'm sorry, I'm just not...ready yet," she said. She grabbed the plates and headed for our kitchen table. "I was thinking last night, about us, we should talk."

When anyone says in a relationship that "we should talk," it means it's over. There's really no way around it, everyone knows it. My heart started to speed up. I couldn't lose her. I just couldn't. I needed her, loved her more than I loved myself, would put myself in front of a bullet just for her. I'd do anything for her. It only took me two steps to reach her before I grabbed her arms, gently this time.

"Please, please don't say this is over. I just can't lose you, I love you too much." I was starting to get choked up, losing control of my voice.

"I love you too, Eric, but we need to talk about some things. We've been together for not even a year and for the majority of the time I was pregnant. We don't...she's not..." she shook her head, trying to make sense of her words. "We've spent most of our relationship surrounded by her, from the pregnancy to losing her. We have to figure out how we fit together without her."

She said fit together. Fit together had to mean she still wanted to be with me. I needed it to, but I didn't know what she was asking me.

"So, what do we do?" I asked.

"Well, let's try to have a normal relationship, as normal as it can be. But we need to start slow ok? I need to go slow."

I nodded in agreement, anything to keep her. "Are you still going to live here?"

"Well, I'd like to, if you still want me to." She looked shy, unsure.

I took her in my arms and kissed her, slowly, barely parting her lips. "I wouldn't want you anywhere else. I'll do whatever it takes to keep you."

She smiled. We sat down for breakfast. Eggs had never tasted so good.