Circe (16 page)

“I have a conference to go to next weekend, but after that I promise it’ll get better. I have a long Christmas holiday and we can go someplace and just get away from all this work. And this weekend we are going to the beach to see my brother and we can just sit in the sand and watch the waves crash.”

“I thought we had to go to your boss’s house for dinner.”

“Screw her. You’re what’s important to me.”

She climbed on top of me and hugged me, pushing her face into my neck. “I love you so much. I’m just pregnant and I think I’m having some sort of hormone surge, I don’t know, I just don’t feel like myself. I’m sorry I’m so hysterical.”

“You’re not hysterical. I shouldn’t work so much. I shouldn’t leave you alone so much.”

“You know, while you were gone I think I started going a little crazy. Isn’t there some kind of pregnancy dementia? I think I had it.”

I pushed her back so I could look at her face. “What do you mean?”

“I was throwing-up in the bathroom and I washed my face and when I opened my eyes I saw this insanely hideous thing behind me. I knew pregnancy would be tough, but I don’t think it’s this hard on most women. I even called my mother I was so afraid.”

“What thing?”

“It kind of looked like a woman, but it was covered in bugs and something that looked like vomit. I don’t know. I’m probably fixated on vomiting because I can’t stop throwing up. I’ve lost ten pounds.”

It had to be a coincidence. Something I had described to her from my dreams had manifested itself in her nutrition-deprived brain in the form of a hallucination. “What does your Ob/Gyn say about all this weight loss?”

“He says some women just have more difficulties than others, and he gave me some medicine to make me less sick, but it makes me so tired I don’t take it all the time.”

“I’m coming with you to your next visit. When is it?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll call Cassie now and ask for tomorrow off.”

The phone call was stilted and short. I told Cassie that I was sick. I lied and she knew it. She seemed happy to give me the day and didn’t ask any questions, but I knew she knew I wasn’t sick. I called Andy too and told her that I would start carpooling again next Monday. I explained to her that I had laid down the law with Cassie and that there would be no more long work days. Andy seemed jubilant and was equally as excited that I was having a baby. She even asked to talk with Pria. She offered Pria her help with anything she might need and volunteered to host a baby shower.

I finally felt normal. I had just bragged to a coworker about the conception of my baby. I was reacting the way Pria had wanted me to react from the beginning. That night as we lay in bed I stroked Pria’s flat belly. I only had two weeks left before I was done working with Cassie forever. After that nothing would matter. We would survive this and I would work with Dr. Clement and I would become the perfect husband and father. How much could go wrong in two weeks? I would spend the weekend with Cassie and get her out of my system. I would fuck her until she was nothing but a moaning lump of flesh and then I would spit her out. I would be left with only disgust at her absurdity. The dreams would stop. The anxiety would melt away and I would help Pria shop for houses in Foley. We would move in early and decorate the nursery. Time would pass and all of this would be a joke. A testament to my moral weakness.

I fell asleep with my hand on her belly, thinking of Pria nursing our baby. When I awoke, Pria was in the bathroom again. I got up to get her a glass of water and stood in the kitchen, waiting for her to come out. I assumed I was still asleep. The tiny creature crept up onto the kitchen counter as naturally as a cat. It didn’t seem out of place or extraordinary. It was reptilian, but also insect-like. It wasn’t monstrous, just unnatural. It looked at me with its strangely reptilian eyes and blinked.

It carried itself like a cat and its serpentine tail waved back and forth lazily. It regarded me casually, as if it was waiting for me to give it a treat. I dropped the water glass and stood watching it, waiting to wake up. It cried a wail that sounded like a starving baby. Then the smell came. I began to cough. It was the smell of rotting flesh.

I felt the roaches before I saw them. They were crawling over my feet and climbing up my pants. I knew where they came from. I could see her in the corner. Her smell was so noxious as to make me faint. The black blood she oozed was staining the carpet. And as quickly as they had come, they were gone. Phantoms in the mist.

Pria screamed and it jolted me out of my trance. I ran to the bathroom and kicked the door open. She was hunched over the toilet shaking her hair violently.

“It’s in my hair! Get it out! Get it out!” she wailed.

She looked at me and her eyes widened in terror. “Jesus Christ you’re covered in them!” She slammed herself into the bathtub, hitting the wall violently. There was still vomit at the corner of her mouth. “Fuck, Eric, go outside!”

I looked down and realized that there were at least ten enormous wood roaches on my legs. I ran outside and knocked them off my pants. I killed them with my bare feet, crushing them with a malice I rarely gave to invertebrates. I had no fear of bugs, but Pria did, so when I knew I was clean I went inside and killed the roach that had been in her hair.

“Jesus Christ!” she said in a panic. “Are there emergency exorcists? I mean terminators? You know what I mean. Can you call an all-night exterminator in emergency situations?”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I killed them all. They’re all gone. I’ll call Orkin first thing in the morning.”

“How can you be so calm? You were crawling in them.”

I wasn’t calm. I was stunned and I was awake. This meant I had to be losing my mind. Or maybe I had carried the dream with me from the bed. I had only been partially awake when I came from bed and fuckin’ Cassie had filled my brain with ghosts and demons and they had manifested themselves in my waking dreams. I began to breathe steadily again. I comforted Pria. After I cleaned up the water, I brought her a fresh glass.

“I can’t sleep knowing this house is infested,” she said. “Let’s go to a hotel. Just for tonight. Let’s just pack up and leave until the house has been fumigated. Please.”

“I can’t sleep either,” I admitted.

So Pria and I spent the night at the Day’s Inn. She slept like a baby and I didn’t sleep at all. My dreams had followed me and the hallucination was tearing me apart.

In the morning, Pria called in sick to work. “They’re beginning to get mad at me,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m a new employee. I don’t have any vacation and I’m already pregnant and asking for maternity leave. I have no comp time and I’m using sick leave. I hate this. I hate being the worst employee there.”

“How could you be the worst employee there?”

“I’m not you. I don’t work until midnight every night and I spend most of my day puking. The patients like me, but I'm not always there for them and in physical therapy the patients like continuity of care. Sometimes, I have to call in sick. I’ve lost ten pounds. I can’t eat. What the hell am I supposed to do? They’re going to fire me.”

"I really suck, don't I? I'm sorry. I hadn't even noticed all of this was going on. I knew that you've been having a rough time the last few weeks and that the pregnancy has been difficult, but I had no idea you were missing work"

"You do suck. You don't call to check on me and you’re never home. Did you know that my sister Rachel is going to get married? No. You don't because you’re never here. What’s going on?"

"I just got a little scared. I'm not ready to be a father. I don't want to be my father. I don't want you to end up like my mother. I have no real idea what parenting is. I took developmental psychology and that’s all I know about kids."

"You could have told me that. You shouldn't have shut me out. I know kids. Hell, I have like thirty cousins and second cousins and nieces and nephews. I grew up on a kid farm. I know kids. We can work this out and if we can't, we'll deal with it, but don't run away." She buried her face in my chest. She put her arms around my shoulders. "Please don't leave me now. I'm afraid too. I'm afraid something is going wrong with the baby and I'm so tired."

“You’re going to the doctor today. They’ll think of something.”

* * * *

We went to a little place next to the cathedral where they served the best brunch in the morning and afterwards we went to see Pria’s Ob/Gyn. He gave her new medicine for her nausea and told her it was nothing to worry about. He explained there was nothing wrong with her or the baby, but that she just needed to rest and eat what she could. The first trimester of pregnancy is notorious for nausea and dizziness. It will pass. Pria’s mood lifted visibly at the news and she held my hand happily.

The exterminator came in the afternoon, so Pria and I decided to leave early to see my brother. I went into the house to pack her bags. She wouldn’t even leave the car. It was a blessing that Pria was so well organized, because I was able to grab her clothing without much trouble.

Jeremy was happy to see us that weekend. We stayed in his guest bedroom, which was decorated in the best of ‘80s Florida chic. Everything in the room was a soft pink and the wallpaper was covered in large green palm trees. The carpet was green and looked like it was older than Jeremy. There was very little in the room except a wicker chair, a lamp, and the bed. Pria settled in happily, thanking Jeremy over and over again for his generosity. Jeremy’s wife had gone to stay with her mother, so we got the best hospitality his tiny two bedroom apartment had to offer. He made us scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast. We spent the afternoon wandering the Gulf Shore beaches and went to the Florabama for drinks.

The Florabama is a tradition in the Gulf. It’s a seedy little bar on the edge of Florida and Alabama. If you live in the Gulf of Mexico long enough you have to visit it at least once. Pria made us leave early, however, because she couldn’t stop worrying about how the secondhand smoke might affect the baby. She went to bed early, after taking her medicine, and slept like a mummy entombed in its sarcophagus.

Jeremy’s apartment was well kept, but old. It was in a very run down complex and the only reason it had any value was because it was directly across the street from the beach. Jeremy loved it. The carpet was matted and gray, the walls were stained and the kitchen counters were dented. None of this mattered to Jeremy or his wife. They covered the carpet with huge, inexpensive rugs and put contact paper over the counter tops. They filled the apartment with trinkets and bobbles and a TV large enough to see half the night sky on. I hated his apartment, but when I followed him onto his tiny little balcony at night, I saw its value. The balcony looked over the road at the pricy rental houses that sat on the beach, and onto an endless expanse of topaz blue water and white sand. The stars met the horizon, tipping their hats to the foreboding beauty of the turbulent Gulf.

“Congratulations,” Jeremy said blissfully. “Pria is really glowing. I’m sure you’ll have a beautiful baby. Do you know what it is yet?”

“We have a couple of months, but I can see Pria praying for a girl.”

“Is she okay? She looks a little green underneath all that glow.”

“She’s been having a rough time, and the roaches last night didn’t help any. She hasn’t slept in a couple of nights, and she needs it.”

“I’m glad you took some time off to be with her. She’s been pretty lonely.”

“What do you mean?”

“She called me the other night. You have to know she’s gettin’ desperate if she’s callin’ me.”

“What’d she call for?”

“She couldn’t find you and wanted to know if I had heard from you. She needed someone to drive her somewhere during her lunch break. I can’t remember the specifics. I guess she’s having trouble at work. She really just wanted you. I told her that you never called me anymore.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I’ve only heard from you twice since you moved down here. You called me more when you were in Detroit.”

“You sound like a jilted lover.”

Jeremy finished his beer and started another one. “A worried brother. You never call mom and your wife ain’t doin’ so well. I’m just beginnin’ to wonder if you’re fuckin’ your boss after all.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Yeah it is. I’m your brother. I’ve been taking care of you since you couldn’t use the bathroom by yourself. Hell, I was the one who taught you to pee standing up. How is you fuckin’ up your life not my business?”

“I’m in trouble, Jeremy, and I just don’t need you yelling at me.”

“It’s my job to kick your ass when you need it.”

“Seriously.”

Jeremy turned to look at me. He smiled and handed me a beer. “If it is that serious I guess you’re gonna need this.”

“What happened between you and Brooke, Jeremy?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You used to be so close and now I never see her.”

“She couldn’t have a baby and that was it. She had three miscarriages and after the third one it was over. She never touched me again.” He shrugged dismissively and lit a cigarette. “Why are you askin’?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like I haven’t been paying attention. I went away and you were thick as thieves and now you can’t even look at each other.”

“You haven’t been payin’ attention, but I been payin’ attention to you and I think you need to stop dodgin’ and tell me what’s goin’ on. I’m probably the only person in the world that really cares about you, besides Pria, and if you don’t talk to me you aren’t gonna have anyone left after Pria finds out.”

“I slept with Cassie and, before you say anything, you should know I never meant to. I really meant to be straight with Pria after New Orleans. I gave up the other women. I swear to you, I really don’t think this is my fault.”

“How can it not be your fault? Did she rape you?”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy when I tell you this.”

“I already think you’re crazy.”

I told him the entire story with all the bloody pictures. It felt good to talk about it. Cathartic. I felt all the worry and anger drip away into the ocean before me. “You see, I didn’t want to have sex with her,” I said. “I hated her. Look, I still have the bruises.”