 in
the dark.
"Go ahead."
"What?"
"Get a vasectomy. If you have to."
Henry rolls over again and looks at me. All I see is his dark head against the
dark ceiling. "You're not yelling at me."
"No. I can't do this anymore, either. I give up. You win, we'll stop trying to
have a baby."
"I wouldn't exactly describe that as winning. It just seems-necessary."
"Whatever."
Henry climbs off the bed and sits on the floor with me. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." He kisses me. I imagine the bleak November day in 1986
that Henry has just come from, the wind, the warmth of his body in the cold
orchard. Soon, for the first time in many months, we are making love without
worrying about the consequences. Henry has caught the cold I had sixteen years
ago. Four weeks later, Henry has had his vasectomy and I discover that I am
pregnant for the sixth time.
BABY DREAMS
September, 2000 (Clare is 29)
Clare: I dream I'm walking down stairs into my grandmother Abshire's basement.
The long soot mark from the time the crow flew down the chimney is still there
on the left-hand wall; the steps are dusty and the handrail leaves gray marks on
my hand as I steady myself; I descend and walk into the room that always scared
me when I was little. In this room are deep shelves with rows and rows of canned
goods, tomatoes and pickles, corn relish and beets. They look embalmed. In one
of the jars is the small fetus of a duck. I carefully open the jar and pour the
ducking and the fluid into my hand. It gasps and retches. "Why did you leave
me?" it asks, when it can speak. "I've been waiting for you."
I dream that my mother and I are walking together down a quiet residential
street in South Haven. I am carrying a baby. As we walk, the baby becomes
heavier and heavier, until I can barely lift it. I turn to Mama and tell her that I
can't carry this baby any farther; she takes it from me easily and we continue on.
We come to a house and walk down the small walkway to its backyard. In the
yard there are two screens and a slide projector. People are seated in lawn chairs,
watching slides of trees. Half of a tree is on each screen. One half is summer and
the other winter; they are the same tree, different seasons. The baby laughs and
cries out in delight, I dream I am standing on the Sedgewick El platform, waiting
for the Brown Line train. I am carrying two shopping bags, which upon
inspection turn out to contain boxes of saltine crackers and a very small, stillborn
baby with red hair, wrapped in Saran Wrap.
I dream I am at home, in my old room. It's late at night, the room is dimly
illuminated by the aquarium light. I suddenly realize, with horror, that there is a
small animal swimming round and round the tank; I hastily remove the lid and
net the animal, which turns out to be a gerbil with gills. "I'm so sorry" I say. "I
forgot about you." The gerbil just stares at me reproachfully.
I dream I am walking up stairs in Meadowlark House. All the furniture is
gone, the rooms are empty, dust floats in the sunlight which makes golden pools
on the polished oak floors. I walk down the long hall, glancing in the bedrooms,
and come to my room, in which a small wooden cradle sits alone. There is no
sound. I am afraid to look into the cradle. In Mama's room white sheets are
spread over the floor. At my feet is a tiny drop of blood, which touches the tip of
a sheet and spreads as I watch until the entire floor is covered in blood.
Saturday, September 23, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 37)
Clare: I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know
there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand
through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and
feeling are thick and dense. I'm in a diving bell with this baby, just the two of us
trying to survive in this alien atmosphere, but I feel very alone. Hello? Are you
there? No answer comes back. He's dead, I tell Amit. No, she says, smiling
anxiously, no, Clare, see, there's his heartbeat. T can't explain. Henry hovers around
trying to feed me, massage me, cheer me up, until I snap at him. I walk across the
yard, into my studio. It's like a museum, a mausoleum, so still, nothing living or
breathing, no ideas here, just things, things that stare at me accusingly. I'm sorry, I
tell my blank, empty drawing table, my dry vats and molds, the half-made
sculptures. Stillborn, I think, looking at the blue iris paper-wrapped armature that
seemed so hopeful in June. My hands are clean and soft and pink. I hate them. I
hate this emptiness. I hate this baby. No. No, I don't hate him. I just can't find him.
I sit at my drawing board with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of white paper
before me. Nothing comes. I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a
tube of watercolor, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and I fill a
jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens. The paper is
limp with moisture, and darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It smells of gum
arabic. In the center of the paper, very small, in black ink, I draw a heart, not a
silly Valentine but an anatomically correct heart, tiny, doll-like, and then veins,
delicate road maps of veins, that reach all the way to the edges of the paper, that
hold the small heart enmeshed like a fly in a spiderweb. See, there's his heartbeat.
It has become evening. I empty the water jar and wash the brush. I lock the
studio door, cross the yard, and let myself in the back door. Henry is making
spaghetti sauce. He looks up as I come in.
"Better?" he asks.
"Better," I reassure him, and myself.
Wednesday, September 27, 2000 (Clare is 29)
CLARE: It's lying on the bed. There's some blood, but not so much. It's lying on
its back, trying to breathe, its tiny ribcage quivering, but it's too soon, it's
convulsing, and blood is gushing from the cord in time with the beating of its
heart. I kneel beside the bed and pick it up, pick him up, my tiny boy, jerking
like a small freshly caught fish, drowning in air. I hold him, so gently, but he
doesn't know I'm here, holding him, he is slippery and his skin is almost
imaginary, his eyes are closed and I think wildly of mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation, of 911 and Henry, oh, don t go before Henry can see you! but his breath
is bubbling with fluid, small sea creature breathing water and then he opens his
mouth wide and I can see right through him and my hands are empty and he's
gone, gone.
I don't know how long, time passes. I am kneeling. Kneeling, I pray. Dear God.
Dear God. Dear God. The baby stirs in my womb. Hush. Hide.
I wake up in the hospital. Henry is there. The baby is dead.
SEVEN
Thursday, December 28, 2000 (Henry is 33, and 37, Clare is 29)
Henry: I am standing in our bedroom, in the future. It's night, but moonlight
gives the room a surreal, monochromatic distinctness. My ears are ringing, as
they often do, in the future. I look down on Clare and myself, sleeping. It feels
like death. I am sleeping tightly balled up, knees to chest, wound up in blankets,
mouth slightly open. I want to touch me. I want to hold me in my arms, look into
my eyes. But it won't happen that way; I stand for long minutes staring intently at
my sleeping future self. Eventually I walk softly to Clare's side of the bed, kneel.
It feels immensely like the present. I will myself to forget the other body in the
bed, to concentrate on Clare.
She stirs, her eyes open. She isn't sure where we are. Neither am I.
I am overwhelmed by desire, by a longing to be connected to Clare as strongly
as possible, to be here, now. I kiss her very lightly, lingering, linking about
nothing. She is drunk with sleep, moves her hand to my face and wakes more as
she feels the solidity of me. Now she is present; she runs her hand down my arm,
a caress. I carefully peel the sheet from her, so as not to disturb the other me, of
whom Clare is still not aware. I wonder if this other self is somehow impervious
to waking, but decide not to find out. I am lying on top of Clare, covering her
completely with my body. I wish I could stop her from turning her head, but she
will turn her head any minute now. As I penetrate Clare she looks at me and I
think I don't exist and a second later she turns her head and sees me. She cries
out, not loudly, and looks back at me, above her, in her. Then she remembers,
accepts it, this is pretty strange but it's okay, and in this moment I love her more than
life.
Monday, February 12, 2001 (Henry is 37, Clare is 29)
Henry: Clare has been in a strange mood all week. She's distracted. It is as though
something only Clare can hear has riveted her attention, as though she's receiving
revelations from God through her fillings, or trying to decode satellite
transmissions of Russian cryptology in her head. When I ask her about it, she just
smiles and shrugs. This is so unlike Clare that I am alarmed, and immediately
desist.
I come home from work one evening and I can see just by looking at Clare that
something awful has happened. Her expression is scared and pleading. She
comes close to me and stops, and doesn't say anything. Someone has died, I
think. Who has died? Dad? Kimy? Philip?
"Say something," I ask. "What's happened?"
"I'm pregnant."
"How can you-" Even as I say it I know exactly how. "Never mind, I
remember." For me, that night was years ago, but for Clare it is only weeks in the
past. I was coming from 1996, when we were trying desperately to conceive, and
Clare was barely awake. I curse myself for a careless fool. Clare is waiting for me
to say something. I force myself to smile.
"Big surprise."
"Yeah." She looks a little teary. I take her into my arms, and she holds me
tightly.
"Scared?" I murmur into Clare's hair.
"Uh-huh."
"You were never scared, before."
"I was crazy, before. Now I know...."
"What it is."
"What can