Lost Signals (48 page)

“What is it
 
? What’s wrong
 
?” he says.

Tess turns toward him, eyes as wide and wild as a snake-startled horse. “I don’t know. She started crying and now she won’t stop. I fed her, I changed her diaper, and I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Want me to try
 
?”

Tess nods. He puts Brianna against his chest and paces back and forth in the room, rubbing her back. “Hey, babygirl. It’s okay. Everything is okay now.”

Tess picks up something from the floor—the baby monitor, the small device that usually sits on her nightstand. Her face creases into a strange expression. “I brought it in with me and dropped it,” she says, the words flat.

The minutes tick by and Brianna’s cries don’t let up. “Why don’t you call the doctor
 
?” he asks.

“Do you think we should
 
? What if it’s just gas
 
?”

“Better to call and find out it’s nothing, right
 
? She’s never cried like this before, has she
 
?”

Tess shakes her head. “Okay. Okay then.”

Several hours later, they’re home with a diagnosis of colic and assurances it will go away on its own by the time Brianna is three or four months old. Jackson watches Tess rock their still-crying baby, his chest tightening. Is this their fault
 
? Did their genetic blending gift Brianna with this
 
? He scrubs his face with his hands. Dumb-ass, he thinks. The doctor said there was no known cause. Lots of babies had it
 
; it wasn’t their fault, just bad luck.

Brianna’s cries begin to hitch and soften. He and Tess exchange a hopeful look. Slowly the baby’s eyelids flutter shut and the tension in Jackson’s shoulders bleeds away. Tess carries her upstairs, and when she doesn’t come back down, he heads up to find Brianna in her crib and Tess in their bed, fully clothed and sound asleep, the baby monitor gripped loosely in one hand.

He tries to fall asleep, but instead, stares wide-awake at the shadows on the ceiling while the minutes drag by. The monitor crackles with static and he jumps. Brianna’s cries fill the room and Tess is out of bed and near the door before he can kick off the sheets.

***

“Do her eyes look different to you
 
?” Jackson asks.

“What
 
?”

From his end of the sofa, where he’s sitting with Brianna on her back, stretched out along his upper thighs, he fixes Tess with a look. She’s busy fiddling with the baby monitor, turning it over and over, her face pensive. Thankfully, she has the volume turned low. This time of night, Brianna is wearing out, her cries not quite as ear-splitting.

“Her eyes. Do they look different to you
 
?”

“What
 
? No, of course not.”

“You didn’t even look.”

“Trust me, I see them all day long.”

“Right, but you can see them here in the light and they look different.” They look lighter, but that isn’t all. There’s something else, something he can’t put his finger on.

Tess scoots over, peeks at Brianna, and says, “They look the same to me,” before moving back to her end of the sofa.

“You know you can put that thing upstairs.” He nods toward the monitor. “She’s right here with us.”

“I know that. I can hear her.” She gets up, clips the monitor to her waistband, and extends her arms. “I want to feed her, then put her to bed.”

“It’s a little early, isn’t it
 
? And didn’t she just eat
 
?”

Tess barks a laugh. “My boobs say it’s time.”

He hands over the baby with a wry grin. “Who am I to argue with your boobs. Feed away.”

***

At the end of the day, Jackson’s boss stops by his cubicle, leaning against the half-wall with the air of a man unable to stand on his own. An act, Jackson knows, never mind the deep grooves in Charles’s face and the sagging skin beneath shrewd eyes. The man ran several miles each day with a near-religious fervor. “How’s fatherhood treating you
 
?”

“Colic is another word for hell.”

“You look like hell yourself.” Charles laughs to soften the words. “With kids, it’s always something. Just wait until she’s a teenager. These days will seem like cake.”

Jackson groans and after Charles leaves, he inputs numbers into a spreadsheet until they blur into nonsense. His co-workers file out, and he texts Tess to say he has to work late, but he closes the spreadsheet and rests his head on folded forearms. Brianna was up most of the night and although Tess did her best, he didn’t get much sleep.

He wakes to a stiff neck, a small puddle of drool, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner. “Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters. It’s just shy of eight o’clock and the half-dozen messages from Tess range from
Coming home soon
 
?
to
Your dinner’s in the fridge
to
Hello
 
?
 
?
 
?
He texts a hasty
Sorry. Charles pulled us into an emergency mtg. Left my phone at my desk
to which she responds
Fine
. The lie mixes with guilt on his tongue, but Charles
is
known for spur of the moment, end of the day meetings and sometimes, they run for several hours.

Still, he drives well over the speed limit, giving cursory checks for cops, and races through yellow lights that turn red before he’s through the intersections. Tess is in the living room, the shadows beneath her eyes a dusky purple and her eyes filled with silent accusation. Through the baby monitor, Brianna’s cries are low and plaintive.

An hour later, Jackson turns in for the night, but the nap works against him. From the way she’s breathing, he can tell Tess isn’t asleep either, but she’s on her side, facing away. Definitely still angry. The monitor crackles, the sound stretching out longer than it seems it should, long enough for him to wonder if it’s broken, then Brianna cries, and Tess stumbles from the room like an extra in a zombie movie.

***

He wakes in the middle of the night in an empty bed, the sheets on Tess’s side cool to the touch. He hears a low, rhythmic creak coming from the baby monitor, and it takes a few seconds for him to identify the sound
 
: the rocking chair in Brianna’s room. Tess is whispering, soft and low.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Everything will be okay. I won’t do it again.”

He frowns in the dark and rolls over as Tess hums a lullaby.

***

“I feel so helpless.” He stands in the hallway outside Brianna’s room. Her arpeggio cries are sometimes softer, sometimes louder, but always insistent. While taking out the trash, he mentioned to his elderly neighbor that the baby had colic, and she suggested a bit of whiskey.

“For the baby or for us
 
?”

She grins. “Both.”

“I tried to balance the checkbook today,” Tess says. “And it was impossible, I couldn’t concentrate, so I put her in the stroller and took her around the block.” She cups her elbows in her palms.

“And
 
?”

“What do
you
think
 
?”

“In a few months, it’ll be better.”

Tess half-laughs, half-sobs. Runs her fingers over the baby monitor clipped to the waistband of her pants.

“You don’t have to carry that around all the time,” he says, gentling his words.

She shrugs. Doesn’t meet his eyes. Finally, she says, “I know.”

“Do you think the static’s normal
 
?”

“What
 
?”

“The static from the monitor. Right before it picks up her cries, there’s static and it sounds weird.”

She blinks rapidly, her fingers drifting to the monitor again. “No, it works fine. That’s just interference or something.”

“All right, if you think so. Hey, what did you mean last night, you wouldn’t do it again
 
?”

“What are you talking about
 
?”

“I heard you through the monitor when you were feeding Brianna. You told her you were sorry and you wouldn’t do it again.”

She waves one hand. “Oh, that. It was nothing. I moved and my nipple popped out of her mouth.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes and the shape is off. It’s too small and too tight. He lets it go, not wanting to provoke an argument. They’re both way too tired for that.

***

He scoops a crying Brianna from her crib, angling her so the light strikes her face. Her eyes
are
different, no doubt about it. The blue isn’t nearly as deep, but it’s not just that. She looks . . . afraid. His cheeks burn and even though Tess is still downstairs, he glances over both shoulders. Of course the baby’s scared. He’s holding her with outstretched arms, her legs dangling in empty space. In a few years, she’ll probably love it, but babies like to be wrapped up tight. He tucks her into the crook of his arm and whispers, “It’s okay, babygirl. Daddy’s got you. It’s okay.”

***

Tess, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, is waiting in the kitchen, jingling her keys in one hand, and after a quick peck on the check, she grabs her purse. “We need diapers.”

“I would’ve picked them up on my way home.”

“I know, but I need to get out of the house. I won’t be gone long, and I just fed her so she’ll be fine for a little while.”

“Was today a bad one
 
?”

“You can hear her, can’t you
 
? And she isn’t nearly as loud now as she was earlier.” Her face creases and she blinks away the glitter of tears.

He nods. He’s pretty sure the neighbors can hear her, too. Whiskey might not be such a terrible idea, he thinks. For all three of them.

Another peck on the cheek and she’s out the door. It’s only when the car pulls away that he realizes he can’t hear the telltale echo of Brianna’s cries and the baby monitor is nowhere in sight. As ridiculous as it seems, he suspects Tess took it with her. Truth be told, he’s glad. He’d turn it off anyway.

Upstairs, he lifts Brianna to his shoulder and bounces her gently, whispering, “Come on sweetface, give Daddy a little break. There’s no reason to cry. Everything is okay.” She continues to cry. He tries singing to her, rocking back and forth the way Tess does, dancing around, making silly faces, blowing raspberries, all with the same result. Finally, an ache firmly nestled in his temple, he places her back in her crib, shutting her bedroom door behind him. It helps, a little.

***

Charles calls him into the office for an after-hours meeting, and he sends Tess a message, but she doesn’t respond. Fortunately, the meeting doesn’t run very long.

Tess is asleep on the sofa and Brianna must be as well because the house is quiet. He breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe it’s only a momentary peace, but he’ll take it.

He brushes a stray lock of hair away from Tess’s cheek and her eyelids twitch. “Hi, honey. I’m going to change, but I promise, I’ll be quiet.”

She murmurs something indistinct.

In jeans and a t-shirt, he peeks in Brianna’s room, but he can’t see the baby and his fingers tighten on the doorframe. Brianna’s too small to wriggle around much and—

“Jackson,” Tess calls out from behind, her voice thin and bird-chirp high, and as he turns to look, Brianna lets loose with a sudden, keening wail.

He rushes over to the crib. “It’s okay, babygirl,” he whispers into her hair.

Tess runs into the room, the monitor in hand.

“Is she—”

“She’s fine. A wet diaper, that’s all. Can you shut that off
 
? Hearing her cry is bad enough. We don’t need to hear her in stereo, too.”

***

Tess comes downstairs in her pajamas, her freshly washed hair wrapped in a towel, Brianna’s cries echoing from the monitor in her hand.

“You took that in the bathroom with you
 
? I was with her. I told you I was putting her down.”

“I know. I just like having it near. It makes me feel better, hearing her. And
I
told
you
that before.”

He lets loose with a bitter laugh. “We can hear her fine without it, all the neighbors can hear her, and hell,
she
can probably hear it, too.”

“So I’ll turn it down. Will
that
make you feel better
 
?”

“Just turn it off. Jesus, Tess, you carry it everywhere. You don’t need it.”

He goes to grab the monitor and she whirls away with a snarl.

“I said I’d turn it down,” she snaps.

“What the hell, Tess
 
?”

She fixes him with a blank stare and doesn’t answer.

“Fine. Leave the fucking thing on if you want.” He stomps into the kitchen, the echo of Brianna’s wails following him in.

***

At a small café halfway between his office and his sister’s, Jackson slides into a booth and waits for her to arrive. She’s a few minutes late, as always, and the first thing she says is, “You look like hell.”

“I love you too.”

“I assume the screaming mimi is still screaming
 
?”

“Like nobody’s business.”

“It’ll pass, I promise. Just like a kidney stone.”

He groans. “That’s not even funny.”

After they’ve ordered, she traces her finger in the condensation from her water glass. “Everything else okay
 
?”

He shrugs.

“Come on. Fess up. I can tell something’s bothering you.”

“It’s Tess.”

“And
 
? You have to give me a little more than that to work with here.”

“She carries the baby monitor around all the time. I mean all the time, even when Brianna’s in the same room.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t you think that’s weird
 
?”

“Did you ask her why
 
?”

He drops his chin and peers up through his lashes. “Of course I did. She said she feels better keeping it close.”

“And don’t you believe her
 
?”

“No. Yes. Hell, I don’t know. It’s just weird. It’s like a kid with a security blanket. And every time it turns on, right before it picks up Brianna’s cries, this weird static thing goes on. It’s making me crazy.”