The Empty Jar(59)

With a smile I hope is agreeable rather than as bittersweet as it feels, I nod, handing over my phone then uncapping the jar.

I walk out into the yard, the grass tickling my bare feet, and I begin corralling the tiny insects into the big-mouthed jar. Lena excitedly directs me from her place on the patio. “Get that one!” she says. “No, to your left. It’s right there at your head.”

We laugh as I spin at her guidance. I nearly lose my footing more than once as I whirl and turn, looking up into the night sky for the ones she wants me to catch.

Once I pivot toward her, my head sort of spins at the abrupt action, and I pause to get my equilibrium back. My eyes settle on Lena first, and the sight of her expression makes my stomach flip over. From this distance, in the softening light, she looks like the vibrant young woman I married all those years ago. To me, she’s always been that woman, just growing into better versions of her as she’s aged.

I stop to watch her, profoundly grateful that I’m getting to see her this way again. Just in case it’s the last time.

Noticing me watching her, Lena lowers the phone. “What?”

“It’s your turn,” I explain, walking over to hand her the jar and take the phone from her fingers. “You just sit tight. I’ll bring them to you.”

It takes me a few minutes, but I manage to wrangle seven or eight winking bugs and sort of herd them toward my waiting wife. She sits on the end of the lounger, eyes wide, jar at the ready, and as soon as they’re within reach, she starts collecting them. As though God Himself sent a slight breeze to blow them right into her expectant hand, Lena tenderly coerces each firefly into the jar until it’s giving off enough light to illuminate a small room.

Her smile is nothing short of dreamy as she screws the lid on tight and holds up the bright jar to gaze inside it. She considers it from several angles before she glances down at my feet and then up at the camera.

“Look at your father’s feet how dirty,” she says, speaking to our unborn child now, to the eyes that will one day gaze adoringly at her mother’s face as it fills the screen. Obligingly, I aim the phone down and bend my leg so that the green sole of my foot is visible. I laugh and so does Lena. “That is why you need to wash your feet before you go to bed. Never go to bed with dirty feet.”

“I guess I know what I’ll be doing next,” I say into the camera before I turn it back on my wife. She’s slumped a little now, fatigue written in the slope of her shoulders and the sag of her smile.

“And now it’s time for bed. Goodnight, baby Grace,” she whispers, rubbing her bulging belly. “I love you. Always.”

Always.

The single word has a ring of finality to it, even though, by definition, it signifies no end at all. But there will be an end. I hope for longer, better. More. But in my gut…

Just like that, something sweet and meaningful melts into something sad and heartbreaking. Everything does, it seems. It’s unavoidable. No matter how much we laugh or how many good days we have, it doesn’t change anything. Not really. The end is still coming. It’s always out there, hovering, like storm clouds on the horizon. But the storm is coming at us faster than we can outrun. Eventually, it will catch us and drown us.

And we both know it.





Twenty-one

Born to Be My Baby

Nate



June third, Lena wakes up hurting. I hear her gasp.

I roll over so quickly, I nearly fall out of bed. I find my wife propped up on one elbow, pressing her fingertips into her right side at the bottom edge of her ribs.

Her liver.

An arctic blast of torment blows through me like a cold, winter wind. She’s been hurting more frequently and more intensely lately. Maybe it’s that she seems a bit more oriented since her nutrition is better and now she’s aware enough to feel all the pain. Or maybe it’s simply that she’s having more pain.

I don’t like to think about either option.

Both mean that, for matters to get better, I’ll lose my wife. Whether to a state of consciousness that doesn’t involve me (via high doses of painkillers) or to death, I know I’ll lose her if she’s to be free of this pain.

Like so many things in this whole situation, there’s no good answer, no perfect solution.

Only sorrow and heartache or empty devastation.

Within a few minutes, the discomfort that began in her right side, where it so often hurts, begins to radiate into her lower back. She can’t find a comfortable position, can’t get situated in bed, so I sweep her up into my arms and carry her into the living room, to her favorite chair, hoping that will help.

It’s as I’m depositing her onto the thick cushions that I notice the wetness. I look down toward my feet and then behind me, down the hall the way we came, and see that we left a trail of droplets along our path.

I shift my glance to my wife, ready to comment about it, when I see her eyes are already round with a combination of both alarm and excitement. “I think my water broke.”

From that statement on, all hell breaks loose. Everything is a mad dash to move quickly, yet think of everything for all the just-in-cases that might happen.

Lena is only four weeks from term. She’s made it to week thirty-six of a pregnancy she wasn’t sure she’d be able to carry at all.

Now the time is at hand. The baby is finally coming, and I find that I’m struggling to keep a cool head. Fear plagues me, a fear I’ve refused to acknowledge.