The Space In Between(34)

The calls kept coming, and I kept ignoring. It wasn’t until she texted me ‘911’ that my eyes shot up and I removed the headphones from my ears. Everything slowed down. I was sure I was running, but it felt as if I were going nowhere. When I arrived at the doctor’s office, Iris was sitting in the waiting room, drained, but not tearful. She must have cried before I arrived. The doctor told us a bunch of bullshit I didn’t understand. I started hollering at him, tagging him as the cause of my newfound suffering. My eyes shifted to my silent wife. Our suffering.
I demanded a real reason. “Y’all better fix this! Do you know who we are!? Your ass better make this right!!” He’d f*cked up and he should have been able to fix this. Fix him or her.
Fix our baby.
Iris stood up and started to walk away from me, nearing the exit. I narrowed my eyes at the doctor— eyes filled with unwarranted hate— and informed him that this wasn’t the end of it. I rushed over to Iris and wrapped my arm around her. “We’ll fix this, all right?” I whispered over and over again, stroking her hair.
By the time she fell asleep, I’d had a drink. Or three.
The second time it happened, I wasn’t there.
I’d been out having a drink with my manager when I got the call. I looked at her in the hospital bed and her shoulders shrugged. She looked away from me. We didn’t speak a word. When she was released from the hospital, I offered her my hand to hold, but she refused it. I was slapped with a feeling that things would never be the same. As we stepped into the apartment, Iris went to the living room couch and allowed the cushions to soak her in. I asked her what she needed. She whispered a harsh reality. “A husband.”
I wanted to reach out to her and wrap her in my arms, but I couldn’t.
“Can you change the bed sheets? I want to go to sleep.” She rubbed her puffy eyes and rested her hands over her face. She must have cried in the hospital before I arrived. She’d never cried in front of me. Not even on our wedding day. I wandered to our bedroom, willing to at least fill one of her requests. If I couldn’t be the husband she needed in that moment, I could change the sheets.
The red stains on the 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets reminded me of how I hadn’t been there. A vexatious amount of guilt washed over me as my tongue tasted the whiskey still upon my lips. My wife had lain in bed by her lonesome, while our second unborn child cried out for her to notice. Cried out for Daddy to wake Mommy before it was too late.
But Daddy hadn’t been there. And Mommy had to wake to excruciating pain. Mommy probably reached out for Daddy but only found his pillow.
A week later, we were on a red carpet, showing up at a charity event for some celebrity ‘friend’ of ours. “Save the whales. Save the goldfish. Save the goddamn fruit flies.” What a f*cking joke. None of these people were our friends—they didn’t know the shit we had been through. We hadn’t even had time to mourn, but that evening on the red carpet, I wrapped my arm around Iris’s waist and she smiled, my hand almost touching her stomach. I flinched at the thought and moved my hand closer to her side.
That was the closest connection we’d had in weeks, and it was all an act. An image for the paparazzi and media to relish in. Season three of our reality show was about to premiere in a few weeks, so of course we had to hold up our appearances.
No, we didn’t find time to mourn, but I found a few moments to have a drink.
Or six.
After we’d gone through the two previous miscarriages, it had been really hard on the both of us. She never spoke of it, but I knew it ate at her spirit. It sure as hell ate at mine.
I couldn’t think about it anymore. I forced myself to go to sleep, to shut my mind down from all the issues I refused to face..


Chapter Twenty-One

“YOU’RE A STRIPPER.” A ghost-faced Eric sat across from me with his head resting in his hands. He couldn’t look at me. But I couldn’t blame him. His baby sister. A stripper? I could tell he was having a hard time connecting those dots. To be honest, I could hardly connect them myself. The room was filled with a dirty air neither of us was interested in breathing. The moment Ladasha realized it was a family affair, she and Freckles disappeared into her room. Dangit. I could have really used her help trying to explain.
I needed to say something. To somewhat give him some level of comfort that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. I wasn’t as bad as he was envisioning me. I bit the bullet and opened my mouth. “I know what it looks like.”
He looked up at me as if I were a complete stranger and shook his head. “Mom and Dad are going to flip.”
“No! You can't tell them. Daddy will die.” I was pretty certain Dad would fall over and never get up again. I could almost feel my mother’s pain from finding out about me. It would be even worse if the town got a hold of the story. They were still sizzling from Derrick’s death, and this would be another dish to add to Mom’s book club meetings.
This was my fault. I should have called my mom more. Checked in and pretended as if all were well. Made up fake stories about the diners. Told her lies about seeing Broadway shows. I’d slipped up. I hadn’t thought. And now I was embarrassed—but mostly pissed—that I hadn’t thought to cover my tracks better.
“How long have you been working there?”
My voice softened; I could already hear his reaction. “Since I moved here.”
Eric shot up from the sofa. He didn’t even have time to be angry with me. It was all so new to him. His fingers kept brushing across his forehead, trying to figure out where to start. Searching for answers. That was when he started scolding me with questions that could have come directly from our mother. It was a known fact that he was a mama’s boy and I was a daddy’s girl. So he came to me as a grounded spirit, a teacher, an educator. He didn’t even leave time for me to answer all of his questions. He kept rambling off.