Permanence Read online

  “Right,” said Jamie, standing as still as a statue. “A boy or a girl. One or the other. Definitely.” Jamie was happy, I think. But here’s what Jamie did not do: he did not come to me and place his arms around me. He did not kiss me. He walked away from me. He moved out of the vestibule and seated himself on the couch in the living room. He stared straight ahead. He seemed to be looking at the wall. He had this stunned look on his face. Maybe Jamie had never thought of himself as a father. We’d never really spoken about having children. “A boy or a girl,” he repeated.

  “Definitely,” I said. I went to my husband, sat down beside him on the couch. I tried to place my arms around him. He would not respond. I tried to kiss Jamie, but he wouldn’t kiss me. He looked at me with a blank stare. “A boy or a girl,” he said. “You’re sure.”

  “For sure,” I said. “No mistake.”

  Jamie turned to me and looked me in the eye. “It’s just taking some time to sink in,” he said.

  “You’re not happy?”

  Jamie nodded up and down again. “Shocked is more like it,” he said. We were silent for some time.

  Then I said, “A little baby,” bringing Jamie’s open hand to my belly, which was still flat. “In there, our little baby.”

  “A boy or a girl,” Jamie said. “You bet.” He smiled but he was still shocked. I could tell. I left him alone, let him think it over. I lifted myself from the couch and walked away from my husband. I went into the bedroom, reached up into the closet, and found the camera. I pulled the camera out of its protective case and laid the case on the bed. I checked for film using the indicator on the camera. Four exposures left. Then I looked into the mirror above the dresser. I stood sideways and looked for evidence of a change. I stood one way and then the other. I hadn’t changed yet. But I knew I would.

  I went back into the living room. Jamie was still sitting there, staring at the walls. I don’t know why I did it, but I did it. After all, this was supposed to be a happy occasion.

  “Smile,” I said to Jamie, lifting the camera to my face.

  “What?” asked Jamie. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Smile,” I said, snapping the photo. But then, Jamie had never stopped smiling.

  Happy time

  I think of my pregnancy as the happy time of my life. The life was growing inside of me. Our life. Jamie’s and mine. There was the feel of the baby in the night while I lay in bed, his little feet kicking from the inside, especially in the final months. But there were other things too. Like constant hunger, for instance. There was nothing like a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk in bed with Jamie beside me, his face buried inside his pillow, face down, sound asleep.

  Look at this photo of me. It was taken by Jamie in my ninth month, after I had gained nearly forty-five pounds. He snapped the photo while lying on his back on the floor, the image of my belly inside the lens gigantic, almost inhuman. This was the shot that later on, after I delivered baby, was placed beside a brand-new photo of me for what Jamie called “the before and after effect.”

  But carrying baby was difficult too.

  During the last few months of pregnancy, it seemed I could do nothing that required physical effort. I took leave from the travel agency. I couldn’t cook or clean. I couldn’t laugh without feeling the weight of baby. I had difficulty making the stairs.

  But I would not take the elevator.

  Jamie did everything. He shopped, did the laundry, made the beds, cleaned the apartment. Jamie spent countless hours making trips to and from the video store.

  My husband and I tried to make love, but we couldn’t. We laughed more than we touched. I was huge. I thought I would never deliver. But listen to this: it was on just such an occasion, when Jamie and I were attempting to make love, that my water broke and baby was about to come into our lives for real.

  The still lives continued

  Baby was born without complication. Eight pounds, twenty-one inches long, with slight yellow jaundice. The nurses kept him under a heat lamp during his first few hours of living.

  “So that he can cook some more,” said the nurse.

  Already, baby was changing the lives of me and my husband.

  Baby made us happy, but afraid too. Baby was so fragile.

  Up here on this mantle, there are some photos of me with baby. These are the photos Jamie took of me bringing baby home to our apartment.

  Here’s one of me carrying baby through the hospital doors. This is supposed to be a happy photo, but looking at it now, I can see how nervous I was holding onto baby. Happy, but afraid. Don’t let the smile fool you. Even now, just looking at the photograph, I can feel my stomach caving in.

  Baby was a beautiful baby. But ugly too. When baby was first born he had a scrunched-up face. His little head was as round as a ball and fuzzy on top.

  Look. Already you can see that baby had my deeply set, almond eyes. He had my shallow forehead. He chewed his fist. He could open and close his hands into fists like a real human being. That’s how strong baby was. But fragile too.

  Baby wasn’t one minute old when the doctor laid him on my chest in the birthing room so that I could feel his moist, warm body. I could feel his little chest rising and shrinking with every breath. He was screaming with life.

  Jamie lifted baby up from me, cradled him in his arms. He walked baby around the birthing room with me still on the birthing table, my legs numb from the anesthesia and the feeling of suddenly being emptied and exhausted but wide awake. Already, Jamie was bobbing baby up and down in his arms. Jamie held baby up for the nurses to see as if this was the very first baby ever delivered.

  Then a nurse shouted: “Put that baby down before you drop him.” She was a short, stocky nurse with calves like hams.

  Baby was alive. But baby was fragile.

  Jamie laughed and handed baby over to the nurse as ordered. He laughed a big, happy laugh. He came to me, where I was lying on the table. He ran his hands through my moist hair. He brought his lips to my forehead and kissed me. I could see the tears in his eyes. And Jamie’s face went blurry from the tears in my eyes.

  “I have a son,” Jamie said. “We have a son.”

  Look at this photograph of baby and me taken the day Jamie and I brought baby home. This is my memory, frozen. I am smiling with baby in my arms. But you can tell that I’m holding too tightly to baby. Look closely. I’m trying to look natural for Jamie’s camera the way he insisted, the way Jamie always insisted when he took the photographs. I was acting naturally. Look. I was holding baby tightly. I wasn’t even aware of the camera lens. This was not a pose. The photo is not a fake.

  I was scared to death over baby. But happy too.

  I loved baby.

  But I was afraid of losing baby, already.

  I couldn’t trust myself. I thought there was nothing I could do to prevent baby from falling right through my arms or Jamie’s arms. I wouldn’t let Jamie out of my sight when he was holding baby.

  Look at my face in the photo. My face tells it all. In my face you can see how happy I am. But scared, too. That kind of photo.

  This Is Your Life!

  For baby, the mantle above the fireplace is like This Is Your Life! Photographs of our little family are everywhere. Happy photographs. There is baby being carried home to our apartment for the very first time. There is baby swinging, baby crawling, baby sleeping, baby rolling over, baby having his diaper changed. There is baby walking, baby falling down, baby lying on his back, his little limbs fluttering in the air. There is baby bundled in thick clothing and playing in his first snowfall.

  These are the moments of baby’s life, frozen in time.

  There is baby in his highchair eating oatmeal with his rubber spoon. There is baby learning patty-cake, smiling a wet, toothless smile. There is baby chewing a tiny rubber horse and Jamie standing behind baby where baby cries in his highchair. Jamie is making a frown, pretending to feel sorry for baby.

  This is baby’s sho
rt, happy life.

  There is baby eating spaghetti, baby covered with spaghetti, baby soaking in the bathtub with me on my knees, looking surprised at the sudden presence of Jamie’s camera, my hair in my eyes, soap on my hands and on my face. I wanted to hide, just disappear.

  Look, in the photograph you can see the water coming from the spigot and pouring into the bathtub.

  For baby, the mantle is a pictorial life history. There is baby first born—yellow skin, scrunched-up face. His eyes were squinted and closed, his little hands covered in white mittens, his body bundled in cotton blankets. There is baby’s Christening, baby’s first steps, baby’s first swim in the baby pool. So many firsts for such a short life.

  But keep looking…

  Eventually, there is no more baby.

  Changes

  Sometimes I wish I could just shrink myself,

  I wish I could make my body two-dimensional and fit right inside the photographs. If I could, I would place time on hold. I would make the world stop turning. I would stop time. I would make the world turn backward. Make time relive itself again. Replay the past. If I could, I would relive the happy moments forever, never stopping. You see, the smiling faces in the photographs on this fireplace mantle are permanent.

  If I could turn back time I would change the outcome for baby and for Jamie. I would be there for baby when he needed me most, at the moment he hit his head against the spigot and fell into the water.

  My life changes again

  My family is no longer with me, but I’ve been seeing doctor. Doctor has been my confidant, my protector, and my lover for six months now.

  Now doctor is my family.

  Lately, I have this persistent yet familiar gnawing sensation in my stomach. I know this: I feel my body changing even as we speak. I recognize this change because the feeling is not a new feeling. This is a feeling I have experienced before. This is the queasiness and the familiar hunger that I do not feed. But I will put on weight regardless. This is the mild back ache and the sudden exhaustion. This is the need to jump out of my skin.

  The physical symptoms that occur in the first few weeks of pregnancy are familiar to me.

  My family—Jamie and baby—is gone, but my life is not over.

  Part of my life is just begun, whether I want it to or not.

  I didn’t plan it this way. Listen: doctor and I only do what comes naturally whenever I see him on late Friday afternoons. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility. Perhaps I never thought it could happen to me again. But I am absolutely sure of it, because I of all people know the signs. I am having doctor’s baby.

  Book Two

  Smoke

  The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills.

  —Ernest Hemingway

  October

  Doctor’s baby

  The problem is my heart. I thought it would break when the vial turned hot pink. This baby will be doctor’s baby.

  This time I used an “Early Response” pregnancy test kit. I checked for an “early response,” despite the fact that the response had been less than early. For weeks I had the sick stomach feeling, the nausea, the urgent hunger, the desire to cry and to laugh.

  Now, eight transparent test vials take up space on the dining room table. I stare at them, dressed in the same clothing I went to sleep in the night before—Jamie’s blue and yellow horizontally striped pajamas.

  I sit and stare at the vials. This is like déjà-vu.

  But I will say nothing of this pregnancy to doctor. I will keep the truth to myself. This is the truth for now and the future: I will not bring this child to term. Never, I think.

  “Never,” I say out loud, as I sweep my hand over the dining room table and shatter the vials against the wall.

  Love

  “I’m learning to live alone,” I say.

  “Why?” asks doctor.

  “Because alone is the way I want to live.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t think about living with another man or anyone else for that matter. I can’t think about someone taking the place of Jamie or baby so soon.”

  This is what I explain to doctor from where I sit on the patient’s couch inside his office on our usual late Friday afternoon. This is my twenty-eighth visit with doctor. I know it won’t be very long before I lose count—a situation doctor is likely to call positive, which is an optimistic way of saying I have become used to doctor. Whether I want him or not. Whether I need him or not.

  Doctor tells me what I already know: “You cannot close in on yourself, Mary,” he says from his leather chair behind his desk. “You can’t be afraid of living again or giving your love to someone else.”

  I say nothing.

  I look into doctor’s eyes but he looks away from me. He bears a mysterious, indifferent frown—a frown I am finding somewhat attractive. But despite his apparent indifference, I feel I am beginning to know doctor perhaps as well as he knows me. For instance, I know this: the someone doctor speaks of—the someone I should not be afraid to give my love to—is not just anyone. The someone doctor speaks of is himself.

  Tricks

  “I have these tricks,” I tell doctor, standing up from the patient’s couch and walking to the window that overlooks the empty parking lot on this mid-October afternoon. “I have these tricks I use for filling the empty spaces left behind by baby and Jamie. I turn off all the lights in the apartment and sit in the darkness and silence—”

  “Isolation,” doctor interrupts, sliding a cigarette from out of the pack on his desk, holding it in his hand and staring at it.

  “No, not isolation at all. But living.”

  Doctor sits back into his leather chair. He lights his cigarette and blows a stream of white smoke to the ceiling.

  “I can actually hear myself living. In the silence of my bedroom I lie on my bed, face down, and listen for my heart beating through my pillow. The pulse keeps me awake. I hear the blood pumping. Listen: I keep myself awake just by living.”

  Doctor says nothing for a time. Then he says this: “You need to get out more often, Mary. You need to start living life again, stop wallowing in isolation and self-pity.”

  I turn away from the window, startled. I glare at doctor.

  “You’re a son of bitch,” I say in a deliberate, whispering voice.

  Doctor says nothing. Not a word. Not even the slightest crack in his indifferent expression.

  But I know this: doctor is absolutely right.

  Reflection

  Doctor continues smoking cigarettes, one after the other. It’s as if he fears clean air. The smoke rises and covers his face in an eerie white haze.

  We are practicing “reflection.”

  This is just a fancy term for draping ourselves in silence. According to doctor, “Not all analysis is conducted through the spoken word, but through the meditative silence of inner reflection.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “But I’m not a son of a bitch.”

  I choose not to speak.

  “What I want to tell you is this: you are concentrating on what you have lost rather than how you lost it.” He pauses, looks to the ceiling and smokes. “You don’t consider living a life for you anymore. You’re still living for your child and Jamie. But they’re gone, Mary. Ridding yourself of the guilt is like facing your worst fear. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to confront just how you lost your baby. But you will do this on your own terms, not in terms of sentiment and guilt. Relive the experience like rewinding a tape. Let it spill out of your system. Then create new memories to take its place.”

  We reflect in the usual heavyweight silence.

  The images flash through my mind at lightning speed—the tub filling with the water from the spigot, Jamie asleep on the couch, baby splashing in the water…

  I take a deep breath and I begin: “I remember the tub filling with the bath water for baby…” />
  “Good, Mary,” shouts doctor, jumping up from behind his desk. “Now finish it. Get it out of your system.”

  But I break down and lose my resolve. I will not tell him the story of baby. Not now.

  Tears stream down my face and into my mouth.

  “I can’t,” I say. “Not yet. Not now. Maybe never…Maybe. Never.”

  Time’s up

  Later on, doctor stands up from behind his desk. He comes to me the way I expect him to. He stands beside me. We see our transparent likenesses reflected inside the window. It is easier for me to watch our reflection than our real-life persons. I’ve stopped crying, my tears having dried on my cheeks.

  I expect doctor’s touch, but he does not touch.

  Doctor lights another cigarette and allows a stream of cigarette smoke to ooze contemplatively from his mouth and lips.

  “What you need, Mary, for your life, is to begin living again.”

  He places his free hand inside the pocket of his woolen pants. He acquires his usual indifferent, stone-like frown. “You need to get out of your apartment for a while, perhaps forever. You’re a travel agent. Schedule a trip to a faraway place. To forget about things.”

  I say nothing.

  Doctor walks to his desk and stamps out his cigarette, only half-smoked. I take a seat on the patient’s couch. Doctor comes to me, slowly, without urgency. He joins me here, on the couch. This is the usual way he comes to me on Friday afternoons. Doctor sits close to me. Our shoulders meet. I do what comes to me naturally. I place my hand on his leg, slide it gently up the length of his thigh.

  But doctor lifts my hand from his leg and places it back against my lap. He wraps his arms around me, gently. He runs his hands through my hair and pulls my head towards him, tightly, against his chest.

  I smell his familiar, musty aroma. I feel his touch. But doctor’s touch is not a sexual touch. I know that after so many months of meeting with doctor, whether I want it to or not, doctor’s touch has become a feeling, loving touch.