of Legos and
abandoned stuffed bears.
"Don't look," says Gomez. "None of this is real. We're just testing one of
Charisse's virtual reality games. We call it 'Parenthood.'"
"Gomez?" Charisse's voice floats out of the bedroom. "Is that Clare and
Henry?"
We all tromp down the hall and into the bedroom. I catch a glimpse of the
kitchen as we pass. A middle-aged woman is standing at the sink, washing
dishes.
Charisse is lying in bed with the baby in her arms. The baby is asleep. She is
tiny and has black hair and a sort of Aztec look about her. Max and Joe are
light-haired. Charisse looks awful (to me. Clare insists later that she looked
"wonderful"). She has gained a lot of weight and looks exhausted and ill. She has
had a Caesarean. I sit down on the chair. Clare and Gomez sit on the bed. Max
clambers over to his mother and snuggles under her free arm. He stares at me
and puts his thumb in his mouth. Joe is sitting on Gomez's lap.
"She's beautiful," says Clare. Charisse smiles. "And you look great."
"I feel like shit" says Charisse. "But I'm done. We got our girl." She strokes the
baby's face, and Rosa yawns and raises one tiny hand. Her eyes are dark slits.
"Rosa Evangeline," Clare coos to the baby. "That's so pretty."
"Gomez wanted to name her Wednesday, but I put my foot down," says
Charisse.
"Well, she was born on a Thursday, anyway" explains Gomez.
"Wanna hold her?" Clare nods, and Charisse carefully hands her daughter
into Clare's arms.
Seeing Clare with a baby in her arms, the reality of our miscarriages grabs me
and for a moment I feel nauseous. I hope I'm not about to time travel. The feeling
retreats and I am left with the actuality of what we've been doing: we have been
losing children. Where are they, these lost children, wandering, hovering around
confused?
"Henry, would you like to hold Rosa?" Clare asks me.
I panic. "No," I say, too emphatically. "I'm not feeling so hot," I explain. I get
up and walk out of the bedroom, through the kitchen and out the back door. I
stand in the backyard. It is raining lightly. I stand and breathe.
The back door slams. Gomez comes out and stands beside me.
"You okay?" he asks.
"I think so. I was getting claustrophobic in there."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
We stand silently for minutes. I am trying to remember my father holding me
when I was little. All I can remember is playing games with him, running,
laughing, riding around on his shoulders. I realize that Gomez is looking at me,
and that tears are coursing down my cheeks. I wipe my sleeve across my face.
Somebody has to say something.
"Don't mind me," I say.
Gomez makes an awkward gesture. "I'll be right back," he says, and
disappears into the house. I think he's gone for good, but he reappears with a lit
cigarette in hand. I sit down on the decrepit picnic table, which is damp with rain
and covered with pine needles. It's cold out here.
"You guys still trying to have a kid?"
I am startled by this until I realize that Clare probably tells Charisse
everything, and Charisse probably tells Gomez nothing.
"Yeah."
"Is Clare still upset about that miscarriage?"
"Miscarriages. Plural. We've had three."
"'To lose one child, Mr. DeTamble, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose
three looks like carelessness."
"That's not really all that funny, Gomez."
"Sorry." Gomez does look abashed, for once. I don't want to talk about this. I
have no words to talk about it, and I can barely talk about it with Clare, with
Kendrick and the other doctors at whose feet we've laid our sad case. "Sorry,"
Gomez repeats.
I stand up. "We'd better go in."
"Ah, they don't want us, they want to talk about girl stuff."
"Mmm. Well, then. How about those Cubs?" I sit down again.
"Shut up." Neither of us follows baseball. Gomez is pacing back and forth. I
wish he would stop, or, better yet, go inside. "So what's the problem?" he asks,
casually.
"With what? The Cubs? No pitching, I'd say."
"No, dear Library Boy, not the Cubs. What is the problem that is causing you
and Clare to be sans infants?"
"That is really not any of your business, Gomez."
He plunges on, unfazed. "Do they even know what the problem is?"
"Fuck off, Gomez"
"Tut, tut. Language. Because I know this great doctor...."
"Gomez-"
"Who specializes in fetal chromosomal disorders."
"Why on earth would you know-"
"Expert witness."
"Oh."
"Her name is Amit Montague " he continues, "she's a genius. She's been on
TV and won all these awards. Juries adore her."
"Oh, well, if juries love her-" I begin, sarcastically.
"Just go and see her. Jesus, I'm trying to be helpful."
I sigh. "Okay. Um, thanks."
"Is that 'Thanks, we will run right out and do as you suggest, dear Comrade,'
or 'Thanks, now go screw yourself?"
I stand up, brush damp pine needles off the seat of my pants. "Let's go in," I
say, and we do.
FOUR
Wednesday, July 21, 1999/September 8, 1998 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)
Henry: We are lying in bed. Clare is curled on her side, her back to me, and I am
curled around her, facing her back. It's about two in the morning, and we have
just turned out the light after a long and pointless discussion of our reproductive
misadventures. Now I lie pressed against Clare, my hand cupping her right
breast, and I try to discern if we are in this together or if I have been somehow left
behind.
"Clare," I say softly, into her neck.
"Mmm?"
"Let's adopt." I've been thinking about this for weeks, months. It Ferris like a
brilliant escape route: we will have a baby. It will be healthy. Clare will be
healthy. We will be happy. It is the obvious answer.
Clare says, "But that would be fake. It would be pretending." She sits UP»
faces me, and I do the same.
It would be a real baby, and it would be ours. "What's pretend about that? I'm
sick of pretending. We pretend all the time. I want to really do this."
"We don't pretend all the time. What are you talking about?"
"We pretend to be normal people, having normal lives! I pretend it's perfectly
okay with me that you're always disappearing God knows where. You pretend
everything is okay even when you almost get killed and Kendrick doesn't know
what the hell to do about it! I pretend I don't care when our babies die..." She is
sobbing, bent double, her face covered by her hair, a curtain of silk sheltering her
face.
I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of watching Clare cry. I am helpless before her
tears, there is nothing I can do that will change anything.
"Clare..."I reach out to touch her, to comfort her, to comfort myself, and she
pushes me away. I get out of bed, and grab my clothes. I dress in the bathroom. I
take Clare's keys from her purse, and I put on my shoes. Clare appears in the
hall.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know."
"Henry-"
I walk out the door, and slam it. It feels good to be outside. I can't remember
where the car is. Then I see it across the street. I walk over to it and get in.
My first idea was to sleep in the car, but once I am sitting in it I decide to drive
somewhere. The beach: I will drive to the beach. I know that this is a terrible idea.
I'm tired, I'm upset, it would be madness to drive...but I just feel like driving. The
streets are empty. I start the car. It roars to life. It takes me a minute to get out of
the parking space. I see Clare's face in the front window. Let her worry. For once I
don't care.
I drive down Ainslie to Lincoln, cut over to Western, and drive north. It's been
a while since I've been out alone in the middle of the night in the present, and I
can't even remember the last time I drove a car when I didn't absolutely have to.
This is nice. I speed past Rosehill Cemetery and down the long corridor of car
dealerships. I turn on the radio, punch through the presets to wluw; they're
playing Coltrane so I crank up the volume and wind the window down. The
noise, the wind, the soothing repetition of stoplights and streetlights make me
calm, anesthetize me, and after a while I kind of forget why I'm out here in the
first place. At the Evanston border I cut over to Ridge, and then take Dempster to
the lake. I park near the lagoon, leave the keys in the ignition, get out, and walk.
It's cool and very quiet. I walk out onto the pier and stand at the end of it, looking
down the shoreline at Chicago, flickering under its orange and purple sky.
I'm so tired. I'm tired of thinking about death. I'm tired of sex as a means to an
end. And I'm frightened of where it all might end. I don't know how much
pressure I can take from Clare.
What are these fetuses, these embryos, these clusters of cells we keep making
and losing? What is it about them that is important enough to risk Clare's life, to
tinge every day with despair? Nature is telling us to give up, Nature is saying:
Henry, you're a very fucked-up organism and we don't want to make any more of
you. And I am ready to acquiesce.
I have never seen myself in the future with a child. Even though I have spent
quite a bit of time with my young self, even though I spend a lot of time with
Clare as a child, I don't feel like my life is incomplete without one of my very
own. No future self has ever encouraged me to keep plugging away at this. I
actually broke down and asked, a few weeks ago; I ran into my self in the stacks
at the Newberry, a self from 2004. Are we ever going to have a baby? I asked. My self
only smiled and shrugged. You just have to live it, sorry, he replied, smug and
sympathetic. Oh, Jesus, just tell me I cried, raising my voice as he raised his hand
and disappeared. Asshole, I said loudly, and Isabelle stuck her head in the
security door and asked me why I was yelling in the stacks and did I realize that
they could hear me in the Reading Room?
I just don't see any way out of this. Clare is obsessed. Amit Montague
encourages her, tells her stories about miracle babies, gives her vitamin drinks
that remind me of Ro