The Obituary Writer (21 page)

Seeing that she had started to cry, Dr. Brown said it was time to see what’s what.

He shook Peter’s hand again and told him he would be right back.

“I hate him,” Claire said as soon as Dr. Brown had left. “He acts like I’m not even here.”

“I thought he was very professional,” Peter said.

He was adjusting the blinds, trying to close them. Instead, he pulled the wrong cord, sending them flying upward to reveal the dark sky and the parking lot lights. In their glow, Claire could see snow flurries dancing in the air.

Peter got the blinds to go back down, but when he pulled the cord this time he sent half of them up at a sharp angle.

“It’s my baby,” Claire said. “And he hardly spoke to me.”

When Peter yanked on the cord again, he finally got the blinds back down again, and closed.

Without turning around, he said, “That’s the real problem, isn’t it, Claire?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, knowing exactly what he meant.

She saw Peter’s shoulders move up and down, and she thought he might be crying. “Oh, that’s keen,” he said. “Honestly, Claire. You’re a terrible liar.”

“Actually,” she said, wanting to hurt him, “I’m a very good liar. You have no idea—”

“Of how long you were fucking off on me?” he said. “Do you think I haven’t been putting the pieces together for months now? Do you think I’m that stupid? Your sudden interest in politics, in campaigning for Kennedy.”

“No,” Claire said, “I did want him elected. That had nothing to do with it.”

“You did it to be with him,” Peter said. “You never had any political inclinations.”

“You’ve got it wrong,” Claire said, her head throbbing.

Did it matter, she thought, if Peter believed she’d only campaigned for JFK to be near Miles instead of knowing that she’d gone there because she wanted to and found Miles only afterwards, by coincidence?

“Maybe this is the best thing that could happen,” Peter was saying. “So we can move forward.”

Claire tried to imagine what moving forward could possibly mean. Pretending Peter hadn’t walked in that day? Pretending this baby had never existed? Pretending she hadn’t loved another man?

“We’ll do just what the doctor said. As soon as possible. You’ll be pregnant again by spring. I promise.”

“You promise?” Claire said in disbelief.

She had never known anyone who’d lost a baby this far along. Miscarriages, sure. But not a baby so close to being born. Her mind raced with questions that she didn’t want to have to answer. Would there be a funeral? Would people come to it? They hadn’t even chosen a name yet.

Peter sat beside her on the bed.

“We’ll have a dozen more if you want, Clairezy. I swear this is a blessing.”

“It is not a blessing,” she said. “This is my baby. I want her.”

Peter studied her carefully for what seemed forever.

“Is it his?” he said finally, his voice so controlled that a chill went up the back of Claire’s neck.

Claire’s throat tightened. “I think so.”

Peter nodded. “Then I hope it’s dead. God forgive me, but I hope this baby is dead.”

“Don’t say that. You don’t mean it, Peter. I know you don’t.”

The clatter of a cart entering the room startled them. A nurse with a solemn face came in, followed closely by Dr. Brown.

“Let’s see what’s going on here,” Dr. Brown said.

He smiled at Claire. “No matter what, this will be over in a couple of hours and you can get on with things.”

Claire began to tremble. Her hands clutched her stomach. She had gotten so big with this baby, as if it were superhuman, growing with abandon. How could such a baby be dead?

“Why are you so tanned?” Claire asked the doctor. She wanted a different doctor. One who looked less like George Peppard, less handsome and more serious.

“Skiing,” he said.

Claire watched as the doctor walked over to the sink and began to methodically wash his hands.

Move,
Claire willed her baby.
Move.

Her hands cradled her big belly.

“Move,” she said out loud, though no one seemed to hear her.

“The nurse is going to give your wife an injection, similar to what they gave her down in the ER,” Dr. Brown told Peter. “A little Scopolamine for pain. A little Demerol to relax her.”

“She’s pretty agitated,” Peter said.

“We’ll send her down to X-ray for a fluoroscopy to see if we can pick up any movement. I’ll check her here first with a fetoscope. That should let us know if there’s a heartbeat. If things go the way I think they will, we’ll shoot her up with some Pitocin to start labor and the whole thing will be over by midnight.”

“Labor?” Claire asked. “But I’m only twenty-six weeks along.”

The nurse asked her to turn over so she could give her the shot. “To relax you,” she said.

“I don’t want to be relaxed,” Claire said. “I want to understand what’s going on.”

“You have to deliver that baby if it doesn’t have a heartbeat,” the doctor said. “That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Claire said, practically shouting.

“Maybe you can give us a hand?” Dr. Brown said to Peter.

Just like that, Claire was on her side, Peter’s strong hands keeping her still. She felt the needle go in, and within no time that same floaty feeling filled her. She thought her whole body might lift right off the bed and float away. The idea appealed to her. She could float out that window, through the snow, all the way back to Virginia.

“It’s already working,” the doctor said, his voice sounding far off in Claire’s ears.

“She’ll start talking about Remington in no time,” Peter said.

“Rifles?” Dr. Brown asked.

“The artist. She likes this sculpture of his . . .”

Claire stopped listening. Her mind was doing that thing, ping-ponging from one thought to another, unable to settle on any one thing. She had been considering naming the baby Caroline, like Caroline Kennedy, if it was a girl. She got to choose the girl names and Peter got to choose the boy names, that’s what they’d decided. No. That’s what Peter had decided, Claire thought.

Peter was laughing again.

“She’s obsessed with the Kennedys,” he said.

Had she spoken out loud?

“The whole country is,” Dr. Brown said. “I’m a Nixon man myself.”

More reason to not like him, Claire decided. A Nixon man.

“Hold still now,” the nurse said, her mouth close to Claire’s face. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Claire answered. Her tongue felt thick, like she had wool in her mouth.

Through half-opened eyes, Claire watched the doctor put a stethoscope around his neck and place the ends in his ears. Unlike a regular stethoscope, this one had a funny little thing attached to it. Somehow her hospital johnny was lifted and Claire saw the beautiful rise of her belly. The doctor had that attachment on it, and he lifted one finger to keep everyone silent.

Claire struggled to keep her eyes open. She tried as hard as she could to focus. When she’d given birth to Kathy, they had knocked her out completely. She’d gone from searing pain to blackness to opening her eyes and a nurse holding up a tiny baby wrapped in a pink blanket. She’d missed the birth altogether. But she wouldn’t miss this. She wanted to remember every detail.

Dr. Brown kept moving the little piece, lifting his finger, closing his eyes, and listening hard. Again and again, until he’d covered the entire landscape of Claire’s belly. Then he dropped the ends of the stethoscope from his ears and glanced up at Peter.

“We’ll send her for the fluoroscopy, just to be sure,” he said.

“Sure?” Claire asked.

“By this time tomorrow,” Dr. Brown told her gently, “this will all be behind you.”

She had to call Miles, Claire thought as two orderlies appeared out of thin air and began to wheel her out of the room and down the corridor. She had to tell him about their baby. He would come and stop them. He wouldn’t let this happen.

“Excuse me,” Claire said. “I need to make a call.”

“Sure you do, honey,” one of the orderlies said, not unkindly.

“You see, the father of my baby is in Alexandria, Virginia. At an inauguration party. I have the number.”

“She’s high as a kite,” the orderly said.

“Poor thing,” the other one said. “It’s better this way.”

“Maybe you could make the call for me?” Claire asked them.

They were in an elevator, going down.

“703-337-5180. That’s my friend Dot’s number. She’s having the party.”

The elevator doors slid open and the gurney bumped out and down another corridor.

“You’ll need to ask for Miles Sullivan,” she said. “Have you got that?”

“Uh-huh. Miles Sullivan.”

Claire’s mind drifted again. Were they in the basement? Wasn’t that where the morgue was? Had she actually died at some point?

“Am I alive?” she asked.

“You are indeed.”

At some point, she must have fallen asleep because when she managed to open her eyes again, she was back in the elevator going up.

“Did you call Dot? Did you find him?” she asked.

But her words came out garbled. She tried again. But somehow she couldn’t speak any clearer.

Back in the room, the nurse was waiting with an IV all set up.

Dr. Brown was nowhere in sight.

“It’s best not to think about what’s happening,” the nurse told Claire.

But how could she think about anything else?

The clock on the wall with its white face and big black numbers said nine-thirty. Claire’s head hurt from the drugs and from where she’d cracked it. She struggled to keep her eyes opened, focusing on that clock.

Peter dozed in the chair beside her, a newspaper on his lap.

As if she’d spoken, he jumped awake.

“It’s done,” he said softly.

A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun,
Claire thought, remembering her eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Bailey, with her cat-eye glasses and white hair tinged an odd blue-violet. What was the noun for
IT
?

“You’ll feel better when the medicine wears off,” he said.

Claire closed her eyes. She would never be better. Her baby was dead and she would never be over it.

“Don’t cry, Clairezy,” Peter was saying. “The doctor said it went well. You can get pregnant again, we just have to wait a couple of months.”

“Where is she?” Claire managed to ask. “Where’s the baby?”

“They took her right away,” Peter said. “She’s gone.”

“I want to see her,” Claire said, opening her eyes and trying to get up, to get out of that bed and find her baby.

“They don’t do that,” he said, holding her in place.

“Did you see her?”

“God. No.”

The doctor came in, wearing his inappropriate tan, his stethoscope swaying.

“I want to see my baby,” Claire said before he spoke.

“You think you do,” he said, “but you don’t.”

He gently pushed her down into a lying position.

“It was a girl, right?” she asked.

The doctor pressed her stomach. “Tender?” he asked.

“Right?” Claire said, her voice rising.

“A girl, yes,” the doctor said, sighing.

“We have to name her,” Claire said to Peter. She felt hollow, like she’d been literally emptied out.

“In my experience,” the doctor said, “that just makes it worse. Better to move forward.”

“Peter?” Claire said.

“Listen to the doctor,” Peter said. “He’s done this hundreds of times.”

“We’ll keep her overnight,” the doctor told Peter. “But then she’s good to go.”

Peter extended his hand. “Thank you.”

Claire watched the two men shake hands and exchange goodbyes, as if nothing had happened here, as if the baby she had felt moving inside her had never existed. Twenty-six weeks. At twenty-six weeks, a baby had a heart and lungs. She was perfectly formed. Claire knew this from her obstetrician back in Washington. At her checkup just a few days ago, the doctor had shown her a poster that explained all of that.
That baby weighs a couple of pounds now,
the doctor had said.
Your job is to eat well and fatten that baby up.
Claire had told him that when certain songs came on the radio, the baby kicked more.
Well maybe you’ve got a rock-and-roll star in there,
he’d laughed.

Claire realized the doctor had left and she and Peter were alone in the room now.

“Arabella,” Claire said.

“Who?”

“That’s what I want to name her,” Claire said. She didn’t tell him that was the name of the baby Jackie Kennedy had lost.

Peter sunk back into the chair.

“It’s done,” he said again.

After Peter left to go back to his mother’s house and get some sleep, Claire did exactly the opposite: she struggled to stay awake. She didn’t want to forget even one minute of this: the cramping in her stomach, the darkness of the room, the smell of blood and disinfectant in the air, the hospital sounds on the other side of her closed door—crackling intercoms, soft hurried footsteps, the murmur of voices.
I will remember everything about the night Arabella died,
Claire promised herself and her dead daughter. Even if everyone else pretended that a baby had not been lost here tonight, Claire would not.

She was startled by the ringing of a phone by her bed. Peter had spared no cost, apparently. Here she had a private room, and a telephone.

“Hello?” Claire answered hesitantly, because who knew she was even here?

“Oh, sweetie!” Dot’s voice rang out.

At the sound of her friend, Claire began to cry.

“Peter called and told me what happened,” Dot was saying. “I don’t even know what to say, except that we are all so sorry.”

“It was a girl,” Claire told Dot. “A little girl.”

“He didn’t say,” Dot said softly.

“Arabella. That’s what I named her.”

There was an awkward silence. Claire cried into it until Dot said, “Guess what? You won.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jackie wore white tonight. To the inaugural ball,” Dot said. “She looked gorgeous, Claire. The gown was strapless and embroidered with beads and silver thread, so that it kind of shone, you know? And it had a silk chiffon overblouse that made it sophisticated. Of course she would think of something like that. They said she helped design it.”