Lost Signals (50 page)

Now, she waited, but his breathing slowed and lengthened far on his side of the bed.

She didn’t roll to him.

She listened to him breathe, and, eyes wide, stared at the empty space in the dark.

Week 25, Third Trimester

Before becoming pregnant, the alarm on her smartphone was enough to wake her up. During the pregnancy, continual morning sickness was her internal clock. Commonly, sickness lasts between the sixth and fourteenth week, though in rare cases it goes longer.

She was sick the entire length of her pregnancy.

Now, consciousness came slowly, grudgingly, like it was something dragged from the embedded silt of a murky riverbed. All three of the alarms on her phone weren’t enough to wake her up. Danny often had to shake her.

This morning, it was sunlight from the bedroom window that brought her around.

During the twenty-fourth week, the fetus is on a regular sleep schedule.

“Danny
 
?” she croaked. Christ, it sounded like she hadn’t spoken in weeks.

Squinting, she rolled over, towards her husband’s side of the bed, guided more by feel than sight. Rumpled blankets. The bedsheet was cool.

She cracked one open eye wider. “Danny
 
?”

No answer. That hum in your ear when emptiness and silence were your only company.

She flopped onto her back. Danny wasn’t home. Right. It was Saturday and he had . . . a thing.

Carrie rubbed her face, as if that would make the answer come.

Nothing.

“Pregnancy brain”, or “Mommy brain”, are common symptoms in women. Increased levels of estrogen and progesterone are noted within the brain, heightening the sense of forgetfulness that comes with body-stress and lack of sleep.

“I’m not pregnant,” she said.

She shook herself and sat up in bed, looking around. The bedroom had two windows, plenty of natural light, and it was like she’d never seen it before. The past few weeks, everything had seemed so goddamned gray.

Her hands cradled her still-flat stomach, fingers splayed.

“
Goddammit
 
!
” She launched from the bed, nearly falling when the sheets tangled around her ankles. She kicked and spat at them until she was free, then stood beside the bed, heart thrumming.

She swallowed. “This,” she said, then closed her mouth.

Deep breath. “This is getting ridiculous.”

For a moment, her face crumpled like paper, her eyes hot stones in their sockets. She ground her teeth together and her face smoothed.

Her husband was gone for the day. He had told her where—she
knew
this—but couldn’t remember and, further, couldn’t even remember the fucking conversation where it had been mentioned. She couldn’t remember the last time her and Danny had exchanged just a few words. More than a month since the

(miscarriage)

and she still had goddamned pregnancy-brain.

Her fists unclenched, moved to grip her belly and she forced them back to her sides.

“I can’t do this, anymore.”

Her eyes fell on the space where the basinet, a hand-me-down from Danny’s sister, had sat for those few weeks. They had accumulated slowly, tentatively as the calendar moved from first trimester to second. It wasn’t until afterwards that they—
Carrie
, really—had realized how much shit they’d gotten.

The basinet here. The crib there. The boxes of clothes and bedding. The laundry basket of toys probably still in the back of Danny’s Jeep. Dishware. Books.

So far, the basinet had been the only thing removed. By her
 
; Danny, if he was in the house, refused to leave the guest bedroom and the ultrasound recording.

Burning in her chest and she grimaced. “Goddammit.
I
carried her.
I
felt her going. That was
my
blood.”

Heat gathered in her face again and she pressed her fists into her eyes. She counted Mississippis, ragged breath after ragged breath, until she cooled.

“Okay.” She moved her hands to the line no longer on her stomach and looked at the spot where the basinet had been. “Okay.”

***

Carrie collapsed onto the single mattress in the guest bedroom and laid there until her heart stopping whamming her breastbone quite so hard. Her head throbbed, a cloud of heat surrounding the crown. She hadn’t moved this much since before the pregnancy.

The crib was gone, shoved into the back of her Subaru along with all the boxes and containers. She’d hauled the pieces to the single bed up from the basement and now they leaned where the crib had. Danny still had baby things in the back of his Jeep, she presumed, but she could get those out when he came home tonight.

She shoved herself off the mattress, tottered, and went to the little desk, where a glass of water sweated into the scattered paper crap and fiberboard. She drank half the glass at a glut, and when she said
“Ahhhh”,
it wasn’t an affectation.

She set the glass down, then froze, her hand still holding the glass.

“What
 
?”

She moved her hand, knocking the glass over onto the carpet and not even noticing, and brushed aside random papers. A thin, clear CD case lay beneath.

“What
 
?”

She fell into the chair
 
; if it hadn’t been there, she would’ve fallen onto the ground. Her legs were a million miles away.

She picked up the case with shaking hands. MY BABY’S DVD, the green DVD label read. Beneath, in smaller print, “This DVD is provided to you and your family as a personal record of an important family experience.”

Her other hand covered her mouth, although there were no words, no sounds. Her chest was a solid thing, incapable of beating blood or taking air.

“I threw this away,” she said through her fingers.

It’d been in her purse for weeks
 
; she’d actually forgotten about it. Another attack of pregnancy-brain. The sonogram appointment had been at eight in the morning and as the ultrasound tech had handed her the DVD, Carrie, as she came down from the rush of watching the fetus

(evelyn)

move and its

(her)

heart beat and counting its

(her)

toes and organs, had been craving more coffee and-or a nap. After seeing the picture in real time, the DVD had been an afterthought.

During the fourteenth week, very fine hair called lanugo covers the baby’s head. The baby’s bones begin to firm. The liver and pancreas begin secreting.

When Carrie had found the DVD at the bottom of her purse during what would’ve been the eighteenth week, she’d thrown it away, buried it in the kitchen garbage before she could stop and think. She hadn’t even told Danny.

Danny.

He must’ve seen it in the trash.

She gripped the case until a silver crack shot across the front. “Danny.” It came out as a hiss.

She dropped the case back onto the desk and, when the inevitable urge to put the DVD into the computer surfaced, she swept the entire desktop off to the side and into the garbage can.

(I carried her. I felt her going. That was
my
blood.)

Her eyes burned, her face crumpling like tissue paper, and she turned her gaze to the computer and its geometric screen-saver.

She swatted the mouse and, of course, the download folder was open with only one file in it.

“Ultrasound—Week 8.”

The file was exactly forty-five seconds long.

Eyes wet, she right-clicked on the icon and selected DELETE. Are you sure, the computer asked.

She clicked Yes only because she couldn’t punch a hole through the screen itself.

Her husband was a bastard, but now the download folder was empty.

She hugged her stomach, which was also and of course empty, as she had when the first whamming cramps had come during the seventeenth week. No cramps now, though. Nothing.

She rested her head against the edge of the desk and squeezed her wet and burning eyes closed.

***

“What
 
?” Danny said, louder than she’d heard him speak in weeks.

She roused herself, rolling over on her bed. She had no memory of coming in here. The windows were dark. Danny’s nightstand clock read seven-thirty.

“What
 
?” Danny said again. He was in the other room. The hardwood creaked heavily under his feet.

She sat up, shook the cotton from her brain, and stood. The room swayed around her and she had to throw a hand to the wall to steady herself. She made her way to the guest bedroom, fingers trailing the wall, her movements stiff, her muscles.

She found Danny sprawled in the little chair, almost falling off it, and staring at the empty download folder on the computer. His shoulders shook. Behind him, the single bed was reassembled and remade, complete with the pillow and comforter she’d pulled from the closet.

He turned to her and his eyes were red and wet and irritated, his face slack.

The fetus doesn’t begin to open and close its eyes until the thirty-second week.

They stared at each other, and the memories rebuilt themselves in Carrie’s head.

Danny’s mouth worked. “You deleted it.”

There were many words that could be said, but what came out was, “And I threw away the DVD of the sonogram. Again.”

He blinked at her. “What
 
?”

Her muscles tightened. It wasn’t due to overwork. “I can’t do this alone, Dan.”

He gaped at her and her fist wanted to go through that expression the way it had wanted to go through the computer screen. “What
 
?”

“
You’re not the only one who lost
 
!
” she yelled and the wet, shrill sound of her voice just made her stiffer. “You’re not the only one who can’t sleep
 
! Can’t eat
 
! Can’t fucking
focus
 
! I
carried
her
 
! Do you
get
that
 
?
Do
you
 
?”

He flinched at the last word and it took all her will to tamp down the scream that wanted to explode.

“I
felt
her, Dan.
I
felt her go, and
I
felt the
pain
of her going.
Me. Not
you. You’ve done
nothing
but listen to that . . . that . . . that fucking
track
for weeks on end
 
!” She squeezed her eyes closed, willing the tears back. “
We both lost something and I’m the only one paying for it
 
!
”

She opened her eyes again and Danny’s face had lost its slackness, was tightening and darkening. A brief, bitter surge of animal triumph swept her like heat rush.
Now
he felt something other than his dopey fucking stupid sadness.
Good
.

She lowered her voice. “Where were you
 
? Where were
you
 
? In here, wishing things hadn’t turned out the way they had
 
?
Well, so do I
 
!
But I don’t have the luxury of pining the fuck away like
you
do
 
! I’ve had to carry this whole goddamn thing
 
! You listen to that track, you kept that fucking DVD when you
knew
it was in the garbage for a reason, and have you once—have you
once
—come to me
 
? Talked to me
 
?
Been
with
me
 
? You skulk around here in your own bullshit,
completely
forgetting
I’m the one who felt our fucking child die
 
!
”

His face was completely dark, his eyes hard. “Wait a fucking minute—”

“No.” She sliced the air in front of her with the side of her hand. “No, I’ve been waiting long enough, thanks.” She’d started hunching over and she made herself straighten. “You wanna be alone, then
be
alone. What’s the difference
now
, right
 
?”

She turned away, but not before she saw the hardness wink out of Danny’s eyes, and there was a true moment of emotional divide in her head. She felt that heat-rush of going-for-the-kill triumph, bitter and green and ripe . . . but she felt her heart open at the same time.

“We
are
alone,” she said and went back to the bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the nightstand lamps.

She jumped onto the bed and screamed into her pillow until her throat, red and raw and shredded, gave out on her.

Later, on the line between awake and dreaming, she heard Danny, still in the guest bedroom, say in a thick voice, “I
have
been wishing. Wishing we were whole and fine and a family. Wishing that we weren’t alone. That’s all I
ever
wanted.”

She crossed the line into sleep and didn’t know if she’d imagined the episode or not.

Week 32, Third Trimester

An extra picture-frame sat on her desk.

She stopped in her office doorway, holding a box of red pens. She had Pandora up on her computer—“These Days” by Foo Fighters played—and it was the only sound in the long, low building. Her office was the only source of light besides the red EXIT signs at either end of the main hall. The next day’s issue of the
Register-Mail
had been put to bed, sent to the printers. Not even cleaning people remained.

And there was an extra picture-frame on her desk—turned away from her, of course, so that the photo would be visible when she sat down. She’d worked for the newspaper for six years, had been in this office for four, and there had always been two photos on her desk—one of her and Danny on their honeymoon, in New York
 
; the other showing Danny teaching at Knox College. She’d looked at those photos so often she no longer saw them
 
; they’d assimilated into the general
look
of her desk.

And now there was a third frame. An
extra
frame. A wasn’t-there-when-she-got-up-to-go-to-the-supply-closet frame.