When the Lights Go Out(49)

As I make my way inside the bathroom, I find the shower curtain pulled tight, stretched from wall to wall. It billows slightly. Heat spews from a nearby vent, though that’s not the reason for the movement. Instead what I envision is a figure standing on the other side of the curtain, the breath from his or her lungs making the curtain move.

Someone is there, hiding behind the shower curtain.

I tread delicately. On tiptoes. Two steps, and then three.

I reach out a hand, aware that the blood throughout my entire body has stopped flowing. That I’m holding my breath. That my heart has ceased beating.

I feel the cotton of the shower curtain in my shaking hand, the plastic of its liner. I grab a fistful of it and pull hard, finding myself face-to-face with the white tiles of the shower wall.

There’s no one there. It’s only me.

The carriage home is empty. Whoever was here has gone for now.

I do only one thing then, and that’s check the fire safe box where I keep my money, to be sure someone hasn’t swiped every last penny from me. Because why else would someone break into the carriage home except to steal from me? I keep the box in the closet these days, hidden in the corner beneath the hem of a long winter coat where, God willing, no one will ever find it. I open the closet door, drop to my knees and gather the box in my hands. The box is locked. When I slip the key inside, I find every dollar accounted for. Whoever was here didn’t steal money from me.

I try not to let my imagination get the best of me, but to force logic to prevail. I tell myself that I never closed the shades in the first place. That I only thought about doing it, but never did. I think long and hard, trying to remember the smooth, woven feel of the white roller shade in my hand as I drew it southward and let go, watching it hold.

Did that happen, or did I only imagine it did?

Or maybe whatever springlike mechanism that makes the shades open failed to keep them closed. The ratchet and pin that hold them in place didn’t work. Simple human error or mechanical failure.

Or maybe someone was there, lifting the roller shades one by one so that when I returned, they could see me. I tell myself no. That the front door was locked. And that, as far as I know, only one person but me has a key. My landlord.

I step from the closet and make my way to a nearby window where I stare out and toward Ms. Geissler’s home. The room turns warm all of a sudden. Beneath my arms, I sweat.

There’s no one there, no one that I can see.

And yet, as it was last night, there’s a light on in the third-story window of the greystone home. The window shades are lowered, but not pulled all the way down. They don’t lie flush against the window sill. There’s a gap. Albeit a small one, only a couple of inches at best.

But still, a gap.

And as I stare at that gap for half the night, sometime around midnight I see a shadow pass by. Just a shadow, but nothing more.





eden

July 2, 1997 Egg Harbor

Be still my beating heart, it worked! We’re going to have a baby!

One single cycle of IVF and, as I sat on the toilet today after Aaron had gone off to work, the all-familiar pregnancy test cradled between my fingers, I spied not one single line this time, but two. Two! Two pink lines running parallel on the display screen.

My heart hammered quickly inside my chest. It was all I could do not to scream.

And still I had my doubts—after months of seeing only one line, it was easy to convince myself that I was imagining the second one there, that I had quite simply fashioned it in my mind. The one line was bright pink like bubble gum, the same dependable line that greeted me each month, bringing stinging tears to my eyes.

But the other, this new line, was a light pink, the lightest of light, the mere suggestion of pink, a whisper that something might be there.

I pray that it’s not a deception of my mind.

I went to the market wearing mismatching shoes. I drove above the speed limit with the window open, though outside it poured down rain. I ran into the store without an umbrella, saturating my hair. If anyone noticed my shoes, they didn’t point it out.

I purchased three additional pregnancy tests of assorted brands in case one had a tendency toward being inaccurate. I took them home and urinated on them all, every last one of them, and in the end, there were six lines.

Three additional pregnancy tests.

Six pink lines.

Aaron and I are going to have a baby.


July 5, 1997 Egg Harbor

For days we’ve been living in a constant state of euphoria.

I walk around the home, floating on air. I dream up baby names for boys and girls. I go to the hardware store and get samples of paint for the nursery room walls.

At home alone, I find myself dancing. Spinning in graceful circles around the living room floors. In all my life, I’ve never danced before. But I can’t help myself. I can’t stop my feet from swaying, my arms wrapped around myself, holding on to the life within. Dancing with my unborn child. I find an old record and set it on the turntable. I carefully place the needle on it, and move in tune to the music as Gladys Knight sings a song for me.

The day I discovered the positive pregnancy tests, I phoned Aaron at work to deliver the news. He was euphoric in a way I’d rarely seen him before. He left work at once and came home earlier than ever before, pulling his car in to the drive minutes before eight o’clock.

He brought me ice cream in bed; he fed it to me with a bent-out-of-shape spoon. He lay in bed beside me and rubbed my back. He massaged my feet. He stroked my hair. He told me how amazing I was, how gorgeous, and how already I had that beautiful pregnancy glow.