Lost Signals (54 page)

They both heard the
shhh-POP
and then the recording looped.

“Do you want to see the other files
 
?” she asked.

Danny’s Adam’s apple worked and he shook his head. “I . . . I don’t understand, any of this.”

“Neither do I.” She bit her lip. “I’ve heard voices, too.”

He blinked and the air suddenly cooled between them.

(wrong step)

The sound of Evelyn’s heartbeat didn’t seem so loud now.

“Conversations between you and I,” she said, speeding up, “but ones we’re
not
having. Like, they’re conversations we
would
have if I hadn’t lost Evelyn. I woke up one night and we were feeling Evelyn kick. This morning, I was yelling at you to time the contractions because Evelyn’s coming early. And I
felt
the pain. You were laughing, delighted, and it was
agony
—”

Danny straightened. “Stop.” The last consonant came out like a soft thud. He swallowed, looked at her, then at the slip of paper still in his hand.

Then, quite deliberately, he balled the paper up. Dropped it in the trash.

He looked at the computer screen, watched the little geltab timer on Windows Media Player. “I have to go, now.”

And, with that, he turned and walked out of the guest bedroom.

Carrie sat for a moment longer, then vaulted out. “
Danny
 
?”

He was rummaging around in the bedroom and she came in to find him shoving socks, underwear, and shirts into his overnight bag.

“What are you doing
 
?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I can’t. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“
What
 
?”

He stopped, hands buried in his bag. When he turned to her, his face was tight again, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I can’t explain how you got into my Jeep, that’s true, but the file you pulled from the trash folder.”

“
What
 
?”

He started moving again, going to their closet, yanking two button-shirts, and bringing them back to the bed to roll up. “You could’ve gotten the other files online, easy.”

Carrie was rooted to the spot. “Do you hear yourself
 
?”

Danny stomped into the bathroom and she heard him rummaging around in there
 
; the slam of the medicine cabinet door opening and hitting the wall, the rough, hollow-metallic scrap of him shoving objects around on the shelves. Something plastic thunked into the sink. When he came out, hands hugging assorted toiletries to his stomach, he said, “Do you
hearyourself
, Carrie
 
? Phantom labor pains
 
? Ghost photos and flowers
 
? Fucking
voices
 
? How do you think you sound, hon
 
? Really. How
 
?”

Danny was vibrating—no, she was shaking so much her vision trembled.

“
That’s why I told you, you son of a bitch
 
!
”

“No, you didn’t,” he said, unloading the toiletries into the bag. “You’re telling me
now,
Carrie. You didn’t say
any
of this before. But today, when you’re supposed to be talking with a professional, what happens
 
? Oddly enough.”

She couldn’t make her legs move and that was good. Good because her fists were at her sides, hard rocks she wanted to send into his face over and over and over again. “You motherfucker
 
!”

He zipped up the bag. “I can’t deal right now. I’m sorry, I wish I was a bigger man, a better man, but I can’t. I need to sort what this means out.”

“
It means I need help, you bastard
 
!
”

He looked at her and it was there in his eyes—he didn’t believe what he was saying. He didn’t know
what
to believe, but the look in his eyes was that of a panicked animal, caught within fight or flight. “You
do
, but not the way you
think
, Carrie.”

He moved towards her, but stopped when she didn’t move from the doorway.

“Do you want to hit me
 
?” His body was off-center, as if the overnight bag weighed him down. “I can’t blame you, but it doesn’t change any of this. I need to think. I need to think
away
from this. I need to think of how I can actually
help
you.”

Danny moved around her, into the hall, and she followed. Her teeth ground together. A scream was building, center of her chest, gaining pressure and momentum, working its way up her throat. She had hated a lot of things in her life, passionately, but nothing in that moment as much as she hated her husband Dan Finney.

And then he stopped, froze, in the doorway of the guest bedroom.

It had become Evelyn’s room. The computer was gone. It was seeing it missing to realize that, although Carrie had never hit stop on the recording, Evelyn’s heartbeat had stopped playing.

Danny’s mouth worked. The muscles of his face were on the move again.

“Is that the help I need, Dan
 
?” she said, softly. “Do you need some, too
 
?”

Danny’s mouth snapped shut with a click of his teeth. “You weren’t the only one who lost the child.”

And he turned, walked down the stairs, and out the door. It clicked shut behind him.

“
THEN WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE SUFFERING FROM IT, YOU FUCKING BASTARD
 
!
” She slumped against the wall beside the doorway of Evelyn’s room, the heels of her fists to her eyes.

When the immediate storm passed, she looked through the doorway.

It was their guest bedroom again, though the computer was shut down.

Not that it mattered, she thought.

Day 1, Post-Birth

Drowsing in the murky line between wakefulness and sleep, the hospital bed is comfier than she had ever thought possible. Her lower body is numb—the epidural—but she senses the throb within her lower belly and vagina, biding its time, like a banked fire that just needs a little fuel. Her legs feel odd.

(like how stretch armstrong would feel if toys could feel)

But what she really feels is an
emptiness.
Not a hollowness, like something was taken, but like something has
separate
d.

(evelyn evie she’s here)

She hears her child cry to her right, lusty bursts from new lungs. She tries turning, but the sheet over her is too heavy and she is so, so tired. The dim throb in her lower belly stirs.

Shhh,
she hears Danny say.
I got it, hon. Rest. Lemme check the little princess.

Hungry, she wants to tell Danny, but her jaw is too heavy. Better to lie on the bed, better to feel the sheet. Everything is good. Everything is
right.
They’d had a scare, early in the pregnancy, but that was a nightmare, brief and as easily dispersed upon waking.

Carrie moves her arm, feels the cool sheet—

—and realized she was feeling Danny’s cold side of the bed.

Carrie opened her eyes and the gray light of dawn was beginning to seep into the bedroom. She sat up, the throb fading as Evelyn’s cries dwindled from her head. Her hand went to her stomach, felt the flatness there, felt the firmness that had returned as her body had purged the unnecessary weight.

(in the other world my stomach’s flat, but not firm. i am
not
stretch armstrong.)

She fell back onto the bed. She couldn’t hear Evelyn’s heartbeat, anymore. Of course she couldn’t. Evelyn, somewhere else, was born.

Carrie rubbed her flat stomach.

The alarm on her smartphone went off an hour later, but she was already awake.

***

Evelyn’s room was set up when she passed it three hours later.

Carrie stood in the doorway, hand on the frame. She didn’t walk in. Looking at the room, deep in shadow because the sun was on the other side of the house, was like looking at a museum display. What would this one be titled
 
? Baby Culture of the Early 21st
 
?

(life for the new parent)

(i’m not a part of this world)

The air shimmered, slowly, and the guest room slowly resolved before her.

***

Danny called, but she missed it
 
; she was at a staff meeting and had left her smartphone in the bag. He didn’t leave a message.

She called back without thinking, but when the line clicked over to voicemail, she hung up.

She didn’t try again until after lunch, and the same thing occurred. As if knowing what would happen, she went to the restroom and when she returned saw a missed call—Danny.

I can’t talk to you, these calls said. But I want to.

I just can’t yet.

(somewhere, danny and i are getting used to the idea of being parents and, somewhere, evelyn is getting used to being alive.)

***

Carrie opened the door and Danny was screaming
, bellowing
, upstairs, while the house itself shook with the amplified cries of an infant.

“
My CHILD
 
!
” Danny shrieked and Carrie jumped. “
THIS IS MY CHILD, GODDAMMIT
 
! She’s here, she’s BORN, and you either make time or you DON’T
 
! This isn’t something to be DEBATED
 
!
”

“
Danny
 
?
” Carrie yelled, but she couldn’t even hear herself. She glanced back at the driveway—only her Subaru. “
DANNY
 
! WHAT ARE YOU DOING
 
?
”

“
YOU THINK THIS IS A FUCKING OVERREACTION
 
?
” Danny screamed. Meanwhile the recording of the crying infant—
Evelyn
, she’d know that girl anywhere—kept going on and on. “
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND
 
?
”

“
DANNY
 
!
” Carrie dropped her bag and vaulted up the stairs two at a time.

And the sound of Evelyn and Danny faded. As she ran up the stairs, it was as if she was running away from it. She reached the top, used the newel post to swing her around, and vaulted for her bedroom, passing Evelyn’s room without a glance.

But Danny and the recording were gone.

She stopped in the doorway, panting, her nerves singing with adrenaline. The bedroom had been rearranged. The computer desk sat where the low bookcase next to her bed had been.

She walked around the bed and saw that a fifth file had been added to the open Download file
 
: “Evelyn’s hunger cry.”

Carrie swallowed hard.

The computer desk began to fade, becoming translucent, as the bookcase returned. She blinked and she was back in her own world.

She sat down on the bed, and stared at the bookcase.

Tomorrow,
she thought, without even wondering what she meant.
Tomorrow we come home.

She shook her head and pulled her smartphone out of her jacket pocket. Danny had called again, but she didn’t have the energy to play the game.

Tomorrow,
she thought again, and stared at where, in the other world, the home computer sat, complete with its recordings of her daughter.

Day 2, Post-Birth

Thursdays were reserved for meetings, first amongst general staff, then amongst the various sections, then one-on-one with the editors and photographers, if needed. Contacts were exchanged. Background info was dug through. It was a day where lunches were ordered in and Carrie watched the steady rain through her office window, periodically checking her phone.

Danny called her three times, no messages.

She called the same amount, with the same result.

Today,
she would think, out-of-context with whatever else might be going on.

When she left that evening, her car was gone.

She stood on the curb of the parking lot and looked where it should’ve been—as if, by staring, the car would fade back into the world.

It didn’t.

The sound of traffic on S. Prairie Street, heavy with the weight of rush hour faded as she stepped off the sidewalk and crossed to her spot.

No cubes of broken window glass on the asphalt. No tire tracks.

“Shit,” she muttered, and reached into her jacket for her phone.

Which wasn’t there.

She held her hand in her pocket a moment longer, open, as if the phone, too, would materialize.

The rain, which had become a light drizzle, gained force. Slowly, like a hunter stalking skittish prey, her other hand wandered to her other pocket, where she kept her keys.

That pocket was also empty.

(of course it is)

She straightened, and looked back at the
Register-Mail
’s building. Most of the windows were dark. A few copy-editors and layout people were still present, but far in the back. Her passkey was on her missing ring. She’d have to scale a fence to get to their windows.

(i’m unmoored and i can’t even call anyone)

“We
are
alone,” she said and thought of Danny saying he had just been wishing to be whole again, to be a family like they were meant to be, and how, holy shit, that so hadn’t happened.

If Danny tried calling, would she pick up
 
? And would he realize it’s not the Carrie he’d walked out on, the Carrie who didn’t share this history with him
 
?

She started for the street. Her first step didn’t immediately put her in another part of town.

She took a second step, and the same non-thing happened.

Third step and still present and accounted for.

She picked up her pace, even as the rain came down harder.

Galesburg wasn’t that large, and home wasn’t that far away.

Even if it wasn’t her home, anymore.

***

Danny waited in the mouth of the driveway, as soaked as she was, staring bemusedly at their Jeep and Subaru. With the rain had come an early evening, and the streetlights at the far corner were already powering on.