When the Lights Go Out(23)

“People get locked out of their own lives, interrogated by police for suspected identity theft when the person whose identity they’ve supposedly stolen is themselves,” Liam says as he drops his phone into the back pocket of his pants, and I utter under my breath, “What a mess.”

I stare down below, beneath the metal grates of the bridge, where a tour is underway, tourists exploring the polluted grayish-green waters of the Chicago River. The tour guide steers passengers’ attention to the bridge—built in 1929, a bascule bridge, she says—and all eyes move to Liam and me, taking photos, pointing upward some twenty feet or more to the bridge on which we stand.

“You really are Jessie, aren’t you?” His words are dry, meant to be funny, though they’re not. His tone is deadpan, his face expressionless.

And though I know it’s in jest, it’s a question that nags at me.

I am Jessie, aren’t I? Am I Jessica Sloane?

We continue to walk. Down Clark and left on Superior, my feet following Liam’s lead. We’re quiet. We don’t speak much. He asks if I’ve been sleeping. He says that I look tired and I pause, looking at my own reflection in the glass facade of a building. I see what he sees. The sunken eyes surrounded by puffy red skin, the tip of my nose red.

I make light of the insomnia. I say that sleep is a waste of time. That there are so many more productive things I could be doing instead of sleeping.

“It’s not good for you, Jessie,” he tells me. “You need to sleep. The melatonin,” he says, same as he did in the hospital when he slipped those pills into the palm of my hand. “Give it a try.” I did give it a try, I think. I tried the melatonin—that and the clonazepam—and slept right on through Mom’s death. Never again.

I tell him that I will but I won’t.

And then he stops beside a mid-rise, saying, “This is me. This is where I live.”

This building beside us is five or six stories tall, flanked with floor-to-ceiling windows. A sign out front offers spacious open-plan lofts for sale. A doorman patrols the revolving front door and there’s something very moneyed about it that makes me feel out of place and ill at ease. The Liam before me is suddenly at odds with the Liam I remember from the hospital, the one who was bedraggled, a bit dog-eared like me.

A look of confusion must pass on my face. “My brother and I lived here together,” he explains. His voice is deep and there’s no rise or fall to his intonation as he speaks, telling me, “He was a software engineer.”

I fill in the missing pieces. His brother made the money. He paid for the condo. And now he’s gone.

“You’ll be okay?” I ask, and his reply is detached.

“What’s that they say?” he asks, plucking at the row of rubber bands on his wrist so that I see now what it says on his hand in the blue ink. Adam. His brother’s name, I think. “About death and taxes?”

That nothing is certain but death and taxes. That’s what they say. But he’s not looking for an answer. What he’s saying is that he may or may not be okay, but there’s no way to know right now. Same as me.

We say our goodbyes. I watch as he slips through the doors of the apartment building, disappearing behind a wall of glass.





eden

November 14, 1996 Egg Harbor

It’s November now.

The gray skies have descended, everything perpetually overcast and sad. The boats have been pulled from the bay, leaving it barren and empty, like my womb. The seasonal shops are closed. The tourists took their cue to leave.

Two weeks ago, on the first of November, Miranda had that baby of hers, a seven pound, three ounce beautiful baby boy who she and Joe named Carter. I visited in the hospital the day after he was born, her only visitor aside from Joe. I saw it in her eyes as soon as I entered the postpartum room, Miranda swaddling baby Carter with a look of arrant dissatisfaction on her face. Her lips were pursed, her eyebrows creased, crow’s-feet forming around the eyes.

As I walked in—swapping places with Joe, who went to the cafeteria for coffee—her disillusioned eyes rose to mine and she confessed aloud so that baby Carter could hear, not bothering to lower her voice or to press her hands to his ears to muffle the rotten words, “All I wanted was a baby girl. Is it too much to ask for one little girl? But instead it’s another goddamn boy.”

Her words knocked the wind out of my lungs. They made it hard to breathe. They were so ugly and vile, and I saw a look in Miranda’s eyes as she spoke of him, eyes dropping to his. A look that made my heart hurt. Only a day old and already she abhorred her baby boy.

I asked if I could hold him and she said yes, handing him off with too much inclination, too much ease, as if grateful to be rid of him. I took baby Carter to a chair in the corner of the room and peered at his inappreciable wisps of blond hair and his heavy, tired eyes, thinking to myself, What difference does it make if he’s a boy or girl, only that he’s happy and healthy?

And I felt angry for the first time at Miranda. Not just annoyed but truly angry. Angry that she had three beautiful baby boys and I had none. Angry that she didn’t love her babies or value her babies, that she couldn’t understand another woman—one like me—would give life and limb for a child.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a child.

I had a thought then.

Would Miranda care if I rose to my feet and carried baby Carter from the room?