We Own the Sky(63)

blaming you. I’ve been the same. I suppose it’s inevitable.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the patterns on the duvet, pulling on a small piece of thread.

“We used to talk about everything, didn’t we?” Anna said. “Do you remember after we lost the babies and we would sit up late and talk about it? Till one or two in the morning. It was sad and horrible, but it felt good somehow to talk, because we suffered together and we understood each other. I felt I had so much to say. But now, with this, with Jack, I just can’t, I can’t find the words.”

The room was dark, just the low glow of Anna’s lamp. It felt like a hotel room, a room that wasn’t ours.

“I know,” I said. “I feel the same.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” Anna said. “Because that’s what happens when...”

She stopped herself, found her words again. “And I don’t want that to be us.”

I knew what she had meant, what she stopped herself from saying. Because

that’s what happened to couples when their children die. We had seen it in the movies. Anna had read about it in her novels. We knew how it went with those wretched couples. Every time they looked at each other, every time they heard each other’s voice, they would be reminded of what they had lost. The child that had once bound them together now ripped them apart.

Anna started to cry, and even though we had become experts in each other’s tears, this time they were new, undiscovered, like nothing I had ever heard before, as if they came from another place, another age. Her tears just weren’t hers anymore.

I pulled her toward me, and her face was dripping with tears and snot.

“It’s my fault, I know it’s my fault,” she said, over and over again.

I held her tighter because I was worried she wanted to hurt herself, to pound her fist into her face. “It’s not your fault, please don’t say that. How on earth could any of this be your fault?”

And then as quickly as she had begun, Anna stopped crying. Her voice was

insistent, strangely serene. “It is, I know it is.”

“Sweetheart, how? What do you mean?”

Anna swallowed. “The miscarriages.”

“Anna, no, don’t think...”

“I couldn’t hold on to them, and I can’t hold on to Jack,” she said. “It’s my body. It rejected our babies, and now it’s rejecting Jack.”

“No, Anna, no,” I said, starting to cry. “That’s just not true, and you know it’s not true. The two aren’t connected, and you know that. Please don’t do this to yourself.”

There was nothing I could say or do. The horror of watching someone perform a clumsy and unanesthetized surgery on themselves. I could hold her frail body and let her tears and snot drip onto mine. I could pull her close to me, stroke her neck and back, but it would not be enough. It could never be enough.

“I love you,” I said, and those words now felt bitter, laden with guilt.

“I love you too,” she said, and we lay for a while in silence. I wanted to speak, to remove the wedge that had come between us, but I couldn’t find the words, as if I was struck dumb before a crowd of people.

It was strange to hold her in my arms again. We hadn’t touched each other for a long time. Once, all we wanted to do was touch. How quickly, back in Cambridge, I came to know her: every inch, every nook and fold of her body;

every scent, every dimple and mole on her face and back.

Our compatibility never had to be learned; it was always just there, from the beginning. There were no learning curves or proficiency tests. It was our shared mother tongue.

We had managed to keep it over the years, that thrill of the touch. But then as quickly as it once came, it was now gone. We were strangers again, our bodies utilitarian, perfunctory, places to be lived in but not explored.

I knew why we did not, could not touch, why perhaps we had even began to

repulse each other. Because it felt like a betrayal. A betrayal of Jack. Everything was now tainted. To experience joy, to experience anything he could not, felt like a stab in Jack’s back.

That was why I reached under the duvet and started stroking Anna’s legs, my hands gingerly moving around to her crotch. I was trying to get something back, something we had lost. I thought she would resist me, because now most certainly wasn’t the time, but she didn’t and instead angled herself toward me, slightly raising one leg, and I could feel her wetness on my fingers.

I kissed her and then shuffled down the bed, putting my head under the

covers, like a child’s game. I lifted up her nightie and then buried my head into her, feeling her flinch and buck, her legs thrusting and then wrapping around my head.

Subject: Re: Jack

Sent: Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:42 am

From: Rob

To: Nev

Dear Nev,

Thanks  for  your  info  regarding  the  clinic.  I  gave  them  a  call  and mentioned your name and they were very welcoming. They talked about some payment options and I think we’ll be able to manage it, at least for the first few treatments.

I went ahead and booked flights to Prague for the three of us. I haven’t

told my wife yet. We have spoken about it repeatedly but she has made it