The Swap(37)

“I was in shock. Maybe I was still high. I don’t know. . . .”

“And then later, when I asked you point-blank, you denied that anything happened with you and Freya.”

“I didn’t deny it. I just told you that you’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to be with. And that’s the truth.”

“But we could have talked it through.”

“I didn’t want to talk it through.” I forced the words past the knot of emotion in my throat. “The thought of you with this rich, handsome fucking athlete eats me alive. I can’t write. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. . . .”

I let her take me in her arms then, let her run her fingers through my hair, let her whisper words of love in my ear. My shoulders sagged with relief, the tension in my jaw relaxed. Jamie was right. We needed to bring this out into the open, to talk about it and heal from it. Then I felt her pull away from me.

“Why were you meeting Freya at the canyon?”

Here it was. The part that would hurt her most.

“That night . . . we didn’t use protection. Freya said we didn’t have to worry. She and Max had been tested for STDs and they’d been monogamous since they moved to the island. And”—my voice caught, but I forced the words out—“she told me she couldn’t get pregnant. She said she couldn’t conceive.”

Jamie’s voice was a whisper as she put the pieces together. “Oh my god.”

“When you told me she was expecting, I didn’t know what to think. I had to talk to her. I had to ask her if . . .”

My wife’s strangled voice completed my sentence. “If Freya’s baby could be yours.”

“The timing’s off,” I assured her. “The baby isn’t due until May. The night we . . . had sex was in July. So, if the baby were mine, it would be due early April.”

“How do you know her due date? Are you taking her word for it?”

I was a step ahead of her. “I asked Freya to show me a dated ultrasound photo. She brought it to me today.”

“Those things can be faked. You know that from the fiasco with the baby in Chicago.”

“It wasn’t like Mia’s ultrasound. This one had the hospital information on it. It looked legit.”

“Do you have it? I want to see it.”

“Freya kept it,” I said. And then, “She’s your best friend. Do you really think she’d lie to us?”

My wife’s brow furrowed as she considered her answer. “I think anyone is capable of lying under the right circumstances.”

“And she lied about you wanting to sleep with Max,” I said, a hopeful lilt in my voice.

“I think she just misread our conversation.” Jamie’s eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “I don’t think she’s a blatant liar.”

“Right. Well, that’s it, then,” I retorted. “We can close the door on this. Forget that night ever happened.”

Jamie’s smile was weak. “Happy to.”

But we couldn’t, of course. What happened that night would haunt us forever.





winter 2020





32


low


One day in late January, just as my mother had promised, Eckhart abruptly stopped screaming. He was really quite cute when his face wasn’t beet red and covered in tears and snot. I began to warm to him. In contrast to his first weeks as a malcontent, he was now extremely chill and docile. And, as if to make up for his months of endless rage, he slept long and hard. I decided to photograph him.

It was bright and crisp that day, the sun high in a deep-blue cloudless sky. After Eckhart had his breastmilk breakfast, I bundled him up, put him in the sling, and walked down a path to the beach-access road. By the time I hit the shoreline, Eckhart was sound asleep. I removed the comatose little parcel and positioned him on the sand as the tide nipped around him. I took a number of shots of my snoozing sibling, and I liked what I saw. It became our routine. After nursing, my mom would hand over my brother. I’d walk him to the beach or into the forest and then photograph him as he slept on a piece of driftwood, a bed of polished pebbles, or a nest of cedar boughs.

The photos were reminiscent of the ones taken by Anne Geddes, but without the silly costumes and flowers. Eckhart was wrapped in a thick, natural wool blanket and wore a simple knitted hat. He wasn’t a tiny newborn, either, but four months old now. He was small for his age, though; his incessant wailing had burned a lot of calories. The images were natural, rustic, and appealing. I’d used Lightroom, a photo-editing program to make them crisp and luminous, the colors deep and saturated. I was proud of them. I decided to print and frame a couple for my parents. I sent the files to the only drugstore in town, and twenty-four hours later, went to retrieve them.

Behind the counter was Thompson Ingleby, a kid from my senior photography class. Like me, he had been persona non grata at Bayview High. He was stocky, about five foot six, with green eyes and dirty-blond hair. I’d thought he was cute once, back in ninth grade, but then I’d grown half a foot and lost interest. He’d spent the first years of high school smoking pot at the edge of the soccer field with the other burnouts, but he’d suddenly became more academically focused in twelfth grade and subsequently lost all his friends. His family lived on one of the remote homesteads in the center of the island. Rumors of drugs and guns and sex dungeons swirled around them. We could have been allies, but throwing my lot in with Thompson Ingleby would not have improved my popularity.