When the Lights Go Out(55)

The day was hot and I wore shorts, and the blood, it saturated my underpants first before snaking down the inside of my bare leg, a thin, red zigzag emblazoned against my fair white skin.

“I have my period,” I told Aaron as we were there in the backyard—he staring openmouthed at me, on his knees, installing chicken wire around the flower bed so the deer couldn’t poach from us again, making off with our beautiful hollyhock blooms.

In retrospect there were warning signs, maybe: the suggestion of a cramp, some lower back pain, tokens of pregnancy as well as menstruation and miscarriage. The fact that the nausea had abated during the last twenty-four hours was, to me, a welcome blessing and not once a sign of catastrophe.

“You’re pregnant,” Aaron said lightly, rising to his feet and coming to me, but I couldn’t process his words, couldn’t make sense of what was happening. It was my period again, come to me like it does every month without fail. There was dirt on his forehead, and his hands were red, etched with the impression of chicken wire. “You don’t have your period, Eden,” he said, dropping the wire cutters to the ground and taking my hands into his.

He wiped the blood from my leg with his own sweaty T-shirt.

In the car I sat on a kitchen towel.

We didn’t speak on the way to the emergency room.

He told the attending physician that there was some blood, that I was spotting.

An ultrasound was performed. This time, there was no heartbeat.

The baby’s heartbeat had disappeared.

Both Aaron’s and the doctor’s eyes wandered to mine, though I wouldn’t meet theirs, too busy staring at the black gestational sac on the monitor, at the stillness of the screen, the lack of movement. The absence of sound.

Aaron reached out a hand to mine but I couldn’t feel it. I only saw that it was there.

I was insensible. I was stone-cold.

“What now?” Aaron asked the physician who’d been sent down from obstetrics to perform the ultrasound, a woman who would soon return to labor and delivery to deliver someone else’s healthy newborn.

“We’ll perform a dilation and curettage,” she said, “to eliminate any remaining tissue from the womb.”

Tissue. As if only a few hours ago that tissue hadn’t been a child.

In that moment, I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even bring myself to cry.

They put me to sleep for the procedure.

I prayed I’d never wake up again.





jessie

I leave Albany Park, taking the train into the Loop, where I make my way to the Art Institute to collect my bike. From there, I pedal to the coffee bar on Dearborn, the one where the man at the garden had purchased his coffee, the name I’d read on the paper sleeve of his coffee cup. People are religious about their coffee and their routines, and so it seems logical enough to think that if he was here yesterday, he’ll come again today. I need to find him. I need to ask him why he was in the garden—Mom’s and my special garden—sitting there, reading her obituary. I need to hear why Mom’s obituary made him sad. How does he know Mom?

I bring the photograph of the man with me. I carry it in the front pocket of my bag.

The man who I think might be my father.

At random stoplights I slip my hand into the pocket of my bag and pull it out. I try to spot some nicety I haven’t yet seen, some minor detail in the image I’ve managed to overlook, like the swollen clouds or the gangly-looking bird that perches on a rock at the water’s edge.

The sleeves of the man’s flannel shirt are shoved to his elbows in the picture. A raised red line bridges a lower arm. Scar tissue, I think, or maybe just an anomaly in the photograph, a streak of light or a reflection. I wonder what any of it means. If it means anything. If the clouds or the birds or the scar can provide details about the man or the land on which he stands.

Where was this picture taken?

And more importantly, who is he?

I search in vain for the smoking gun to tell me who he is. How I know him. What this man has to do with me. I wonder if the answer is there, staring me in the face, and I simply can’t see it.

And then the light turns green and I carefully shove the picture back into my bag and pedal on toward the coffee shop.

When I arrive, I press in through the door, past people who are coming out. The coffee bar is eclectic, cluttered with mismatching tables and chairs. There are stacks of magazines and books.

Between the grinding and gurgling of the espresso machine, the roar of people talking, the coffee shop is loud. I order a coffee and carry it to the kiosk to douse it with sugar. A blue velvet sofa lines a wall, and I help myself to it, sinking into the wilted center, watching as caffeine-deprived customers come and go. The line grows long enough that the last person stands in the doorway because he doesn’t clear the doorframe. Instead he props it open with his body, letting the fall air in. Napkins blow from a table and litter the floor.

As I sit there waiting for the man from the garden to magically appear, I pull the photograph from my pocket one more time, taking in the man’s stature, the color of his hair. Imagining his eyes. In the image, they’re looking out toward the sailboat, away from the camera lens, and so I can’t see them. I can’t see what they look like, but I can imagine.

They’re blue like mine, and he has dimples too.

I sip from my coffee, place the photograph back in my bag.