Random Acts of Hope (33 page)

Mom came out of it and gave me a look of compassion. “This isn’t just a miscarriage for you, Liam. I’m so sorry. I’m happy, too—” She looked horror-struck and quickly added, “—because now you know you can conceive! But so sad that Charlotte miscarried. You must be feeling so many emotions.”
She squeezed her eyes so tight, as if in pain. “And I was so wrong about her back then.” Her eyelids flew up. “I need to apologize.”
 

“Caitlyn is in there, too. You owe a number of apologies.”

“I’ll go right now,” Mom insisted, reaching for me. “I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong.”

“
I owe her a thousand sorries, too,” I said as Mom’s arms wrapped around me. I was a foot taller than her but I felt like a little boy with an owie that could only be helped by Mommy, except this owie was so big, so cavernous, so unyielding and shatteringly painful that no tight hug, no soothing murmurs, no amount of weeping on her shoulder could make it go away.
 

B
ut Mom sure did try.

Liam

I strode up the steps to Charlotte’s dorm in full view of every single person like I was a real human being entitled to enter front doors and shit.

Fuck crawling in windows now.

“Liam!” Maggie said with surprise as I leaned in the doorjamb of the dorm’s office. “What are you doing here?”

The familiar wag of female tongues began behind me. That chick, Rachel—the one who offered to blow me—called out my name like we were friends. I ignored her.

“I thought Charlotte was working?”
I was here to pick her up for a very special appointment with a doctor who might explain what had caused Charlotte’s miscarriages.
 

“She just finished,” Maggie announced with a grin. Her hair was different.

“Purple hair?”

“I’m going through an experimental stage.”

“Didn’t have the green Kool-
A
id packets on sale this week at Big Y?”

She nodded appreciatively. “Good guess. And you’re right.”

I tapped my head. “It’s good for something sometimes.”

“Where’s your snake?” someone called out. A flurry of giggles followed.

“Just act like they aren’t there,” Maggie whispered.

“How many of them are there?”

“About ten of them, all filming your ass with their cameras.”

I wiggled my butt.

Fireworks of giggles followed.

“What are you doing?” said a chocolate-rich voice as Charlotte exited her apartment. Smart, tailored khakis and a curve-flattering business shirt with a wide collar made her look good enough to work with and even better to fuck. Around her neck she wore these enormous red beads, and lipstick that matched.
A thick red wool coat with big black buttons.
Black hiking boots.

A look that said she didn’t care what anyone else thought.

A very hot look.

I w
a
lked to her from behind and nuzzled her neck in full view of the drooling harpies, making sure RachelBlowJobQueen caught an eyeful. Charlotte stiffened, then I could feel her brain cells activating, computing and debating as she paused, turned around, and kissed me like she meant it.

And man, oh man, did she mean it.

The sma
r
tphones stayed high in the air.

“I thought you—!” someone said in a pouty voice.

Rachel.

As our lips part
ed
and my fingers laced with
Charlotte’s
, Maggie gave a little wave of goodbye as we sauntered right past the group, who all looked like Easter Island statues with their mouths open.

Charlotte stopped. “Thought I—
what
?” she
asked
the group. No one would own up to asking the question.

Then that fine, fine ass sashayed on out of there, whistling the melody to “
I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer.”
 

Charlotte

You
think you know your place in the world, who you are, what you mean, what kind of person you are. But really, you don’t know anything. No one does. We have no idea how this world works, even as we operate within in it.
 

A part of me felt so hollow and empty, not just from my second D&C and second baby loss in five years, but from the hole in my chest where my heart was supposed to beat.

Three months ago I was fine. Just fine. I lived an orderly life and worked hard as a professional, working full-time and going to grad school, hosting vibrator races on kitchen floors for extra money and spending every waking moment of my life trying to pretend I didn’t miss Liam McCarthy.

And now? Now I was sitting with him, and my mom (who
m
I’d invited, at the urging of the doctor), listening to a post-mortem of how my body was a failure, and would continue to fail over and over again.

Unless…

“The test results tell us there’s no way I can carry a baby to term, then?” I asked, my voice colder and calmer than I had any right to be, considering I felt like I was watching this entire appointment from above, like Spider-
M
an.

“That’s not what she said,” Liam replied gently. “She said you’ll need extensive monitoring.” Blood rushed through my ears like a tsunami, making me catch only a handful of words, plucked out of the space around me like a child pulling dandelions.

“But the tests say that there’s something connecting my miscarriages and my mom’s stroke?”

Dr. Lewiston was a decade younger than Mom, with super-short, pixie-like hair turned a perfect white, and eyes so blue she could have been Liam’s mother. She was trim and tall—nearly as tall as me—and her office was absolutely immaculate.

“Charlotte, I suspected a blood-clotting issue when you were referred to me, and tests confirm it. It’s rare, but according to tests you appear to have something called anti-phospholipid syndrome. And”—she faced Mom—“so does Caitlyn.”

“Is i
t
genetic?” Mom gasped, horrorstruck. We were private people, and this combined doctor’s appointment had sounded like a good idea at the time, but her discomfort made me rethink the whole scenario.

Liam just sat there, tr
y
ing to absorb everything. “
Something in Charlotte’s blood makes her miscarry?” He tactfully didn’t mention that it must be in Mom, too.
 

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but at its simplest there is a blood-clotting factor in both Charlotte and Caitlyn that makes your immune system attack certain proteins in the blood. You can develop clots.”

M
om gasped. “My stroke!”

Dr. Lewiston nodded and smiled sadly. “And the eight miscarriages.”

“Oh, dear God. If only Hugh were still alive. At least he’d understand why.” Mom’s shining eyes looked at the doctor with gratitude. “We never knew. We just kept trying.”

“And that’s going to happen to me, now, isn’t it?” I said as a rolling boil of anger surfaced inside, blocking out all reason. I’d only been in the hospital for one night, back to working within a couple days, and the three weeks we’d waited for this appointment had felt like three years.

And now I
found
out if I’m lucky I’
d
have to go through more miscarriages to get one premature baby?

“
Every case is different. Every woman’s body is unique. What applies to you may not apply to another woman. All we can do is treat you medically and see what happens in the future,” the doctor said.
 

The look on Liam’s
face made me want to cry.
 

“You find out
your
body works well enough for long-shot babies and then it turns out
mine
can’t hang on to them,” I ground out, my jaw aching. “What a couple.”
 

He sat up, a firm look making him seem so mature. “Don’t do that, Charlotte. It’s not like that. We don’t know—”

“It
i
s
not
like that,” the doctor said sternly, reaching across the desk to hand me some papers.
The words bounced on the printed page like ping-pong balls dropped on a parquet floor from above. “The advances in treatments over the past twenty years make the chance of carrying a child to near-term quite good.”
 

“And Mom’s stroke? Can you help her? Does t
h
is mean she’ll have more?”

“We can put her on blood thinners, which—incidentally—you
c
ould go on as well for part of future pregnancies.” She ma
d
e a flicker of eye contact with Liam, who reached for my hand and sighed. “
Every case is different.”
 

“But the chances?” he asked.

“Are good,” the doctor reaffirmed.

I heard the words. Really, I did. And they were supposed to be helpful, but I just kept remembering the blood of five years ago, waking up in Liam’s bed covered in blood, how blood carried so much finality, gravity, purpose.

And now blood
represented
the absence of life to me.

“
Consider this good news, dear,” Mom said to me with a tight smile, her eyes kind. “It means you’ll be spared what I went through.” Her voice caught at the end and she swallowed, tipping her head down, digging through her purse and finding a tissue.
 

“It also means we can work to prevent future strokes, Caitlyn,” the doctor added.

“A condom breaks and it leads to this. Finding out there’s some genetic blood-clotting disorder that explain
s
everything
from Mom’s miscarriages to mine to her stroke
,”
I said in a flat voice. I felt deflated.
 

Liam looked at me with alarm all over his face. He turned to the doctor and said, “My mom had two miscarriages before she had me. Could it be in my family, too? And if we have a daughter in the future, could she…”

My heart fel
l
through the floor.

Dr. Lewiston leaned forward and folded her hands, long, slim fingers touching her chin. “We could test you, but two miscarriages in most women are pretty average. Eight, like Caitlyn experienced, are extreme.”

Daughter
. He’d said daughter.

“
So what now?” I asked, wanting to escape, to run through the woods, to fall into an ocean and float forever. Liam and I had plans—very specific plans—after this, and I was so ready.
 

“Actually, I’d like some time alone with your mother, because her condition is more acute. For you, Charlotte, we need to make certain you’re using safe birth control. Nothing hormonal, for the time being.”

“Not the pill?” I asked, incredulous. “But I’ve been on it before. Was on it the first time we…you know.”

“Just for now, no hormones. Use barrier methods.” The doctor began shuffling papers and focused on my mother.

Mom shifted in her seat and turned the color of an old British payphone box.

“Message received. And we will use it. Religiously.”

“Socks
i
n the shower,” Liam muttered.

I punched him and stood up.

He grinned and we made our exit, leaving Mom to unpack her past as I struggled to understand my future.

Liam

“Dad pulled me into his office last night,”
I
said abruptly as we made our way
to Walden Pond from the doctor’s office near the Fenway. Route 2 was remarkably clear for the week before Thanksgiving. Two more days and it would be a parking lot, jammed with holiday travelers and the gazillion college students who lived in Boston fleeing for home as a refuge before final exams.
 

“And?”

“And he fired me.”

“WHAT?” She looked so shocked. A little too much like the Esme doll. “I can guess why,” she added. “No baby, no need
for
a stable job, right?

“He said I can keep the car, and he’ll carry me on his medical insurance until I’m twenty-six, though.”

She gave me a half-smile. “Watching a live chicken get eaten by a snake on stage can make a man soften up.”

My booming laugh made what came next a little easier to manage. The grief coun
s
elor at the hospital had sent Charlotte some information about pregnancy-loss groups, but she hadn’t wanted any of it, instead turning to me and her friend Maggie for comfort.

Maggie had given us two beautiful, polished
soapstones, perfect for worrying over in your hand. “Write the word you need to release the most on the stones. And, when you’re ready, find a body of water and say your piece. Whatever comes to mind. When the words are over, throw the stone in the water and don’t look back.”
 

It sounded like new-agey bullshit, but Charlotte was into it, so whatever.

Here we were. The stone was like a third nad, resting in my pocket, cuddled up against my not-so-useless-after-all balls.
It was warm and solid, with a certainty that made my bones around my heart ache a bit.
 

We were tired. Exhausted. Drained and a bit tentative with each other these days. The crying hadn’t really stopped, and every night I held Charlotte in my arms, mouth trying to connect to my inadequate brain as it worked to
put
the right, soothing words
on
my lips. Nothing I said worked. Nothing I did fixed this.

The worst thing you can do to a man is give him a problem he can’t fix.

Throwing a stone with a word written on it in the very lake where Thoreau cleaned off his dirty parts and built his cabin with his own two hands was a lame-o gesture, but it was something to do.

I had something in common with Thoreau (and it didn’t involve skinny dipping in Walden Pond).
If I lived simply, I didn’t need to work for anyone else, at least not for a while.
The big concert had blown all earnings out of the water, and we’d each gone home with a nice four figures of pay.

That, and Sam
and Darla were
fucking
genius
es
.
Darla and Sam had arranged to have the concert taped.
With Amy’s help, they’d figured out how to get ads on videos on YouTube, and all those viral videos—with millions of views—were making bank
for us
.