We're in Trouble Read online

  Nat says to her, as they walk under the bridge, You’re chasing me today.

  Joan touches her lower back and says, I’d chase you anywhere.

  And that’s when it happens.

  From above they hear the shriek of tires against pavement, and then a crash that thunders and reverberates through the open space underneath the road. Maybe fifteen people are under the bridge; Nat ducks, sees everyone wince and duck. Then they hear a second squeal, two more hideous crashes and booms, and Nat, looking a few steps ahead to the sunny gap between the lanes, sees a doll fall suddenly down from the highway, it strikes a concrete pillar supporting the north lane, bounces off, and drops heavily to rest in the grass and trash, off to the side of the path, not twenty feet from her.

  For a moment everything is quiet, and then a murmur passes through the people under the bridge. All of them are looking at the roadway over their heads. Joan says, Holy shit.

  Nat is looking at the doll. No one else seems to have seen it. She glances at the concrete post again, because something is different there; she wants to make sure she’s really seen it. And so she has. Where the doll struck, high up, there’s a small, rusty smear, like—

  Her fingertips go numb. She has a moment to wonder at herself—why isn’t she screaming? Shouldn’t someone scream? But no one else has seen. The others are moving now. Someone even laughs, nervously; a man pantomimes a heart attack, staggering backward with his hands at his chest. Joan’s jogging ahead, emerging into sunlight and shading her eyes upward, trying to see what happened. Nat turns away from them, smelling smoke.

  She leaves the path, stepping across old rainwater puddles and hummocks of grass. She can hear her own breath. She doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to walk another step, but she knows too that she must, because if she opens her mouth—to tell Joan, to tell anyone—she will scream, and she can’t allow that. Perhaps there is something to be done, some help to give, and she is the only one who knows.

  It’s a girl. She’s wearing a small blue dress. She has thin blond hair, silky child’s hair, tufting in the breeze. She can’t be more than a year or a year and a half old. Natalie can see this from a few steps away; the child is too small to be any older. She lies on her stomach in the grass, her head turned to the side, away from Natalie. Her blue dress is torn, and much of her hip and rear are exposed and pale. She is wearing a tangled diaper. One of her legs is bent, and points away from the other. Nat circles her, stumbling a bit on the uneven ground. She puts a hand over her mouth—she’s aware of a thin noise in her throat—because she can see that the fine blond hair is speckled with glass, can see—Nat’s throat aches—part of the girl’s face, her eye staring out, white and blue and a blossom of deep red, can see that her head is lopsided, falling in on itself like a beach ball losing air.

  Now there’s screaming. Nat sits down, heavily, in the damp grass, and it takes her a moment to understand she hasn’t yet made a sound; the scream she hears now comes from up above on the road, and it is a woman’s scream—of course it is—ragged and panicked and angry; it is the sound of loss, wrapped around a name.

  Nat keeps hers in. Hers is nothing. Only one scream means anything, can mean anything, and she listens to it rising and falling, this scream which can only be a mother’s.

  FOR A WEEK after the accident at the bridge Nat and Joan barely speak about it.

  This means, of course, that they also do not talk about the baby they have agreed to conceive. Nat sees that Joan would like to; Joan meets Nat’s eyes whenever she can, and Nat knows she can barely keep her questions in—Joan’s method has always been to bring things up, to put them out in the open. And, too, Nat knows that Joan is suffering, suffering for her, knowing she can’t say anything that will make things right. Natalie would like to make this easier for her somehow, to ease the tension, but she doesn’t know a way. Whenever she thinks of the dead child—or the one she might have—she feels sick. Her head hurts.

  Nat has surprised herself by talking, instead, with God.

  She doesn’t consider this prayer. She has always been uneasy with prayer—which seemed to her, when she was younger, when she fully believed in God, as greediness: asking for things she could not have. She always told herself, back then, not to be ungrateful—that if she were God she would be overwhelmed, and maybe even made angry, by the millions of requests the world must heave skyward.

  And besides, if she could pray, she wouldn’t know what to ask for. Nat can barely frame the questions. But she needs answers to them anyway, and she knows these answers reside somewhere far away from her, and from Joan, and so Nat throws her voice up to the heaven that isn’t there, to the God in whom she doesn’t—not really—believe.

  She’s not after the big question—why a baby has to die—but the personal one: Why has this happened to them, to Nat and Joan, on the very day Nat’s wish for a baby was granted? (And—if she is being honest with herself—she should say that all along, as she’s dreamed of a baby, she has always hoped, most fervently, for a girl.) Why, of all the people under the bridge, was Nat the one who saw the girl die? Why did she have to walk to the girl and see what death had done to her?

  Because these events, put together, seem far too . . . well, meaningful. Too full of portent. At first she’s just wondering—but then, she’s asking. She’s not requesting a boon. Only an explanation of the symbols. Is she being warned not to have a child of her own? Or urged to hurry? Urged back to church, to God? Away from her lover? Any statement, any possible answer, seems too complex, however she puts it together in her head.

  Finally she wonders if what she needs is in fact much simpler, if her many questions are really one question; if in fact she’s asking the big one after all: Are You there? Or aren’t You?

  In her mind, the only answer she receives is the same one, repeating over and over: the child dropping down from the sky.

  Two weeks after the accident she surprises herself once more. After they have climbed beneath the covers, late at night, Nat says to Joan, I don’t think I want a baby anymore.

  Joan props herself up on one arm. She speaks too quickly, and Nat knows she’s been preparing for this.

  I don’t think you mean that, Joan says. Do you?

  Nat crosses her elbows on her knees and says, I do.

  Why?

  Because the baby will die.

  You don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that. It was a freak accident—

  No, Nat says calmly. The baby will die. Maybe at four, maybe at seventy-nine, maybe it’ll be stillborn. But every baby dies.

  Nat sees the look on her lover’s face. She smiles and touches Joan’s cheek, and adds, I know how that sounds. Really, I do. But don’t you see? A baby decides nothing. We choose to bring it into the world, and the world, or God, or whoever, chooses when it leaves, and all the baby does is get tugged along.

  You’re scaring me.

  Nat says, She was one year old. She hadn’t even started talking yet. What do you suppose she thought about when she died?

  Joan clasps her hands in front of her mouth.

  Nat says, Shouldn’t you at least get to form a thought about it, when you go?

  I don’t know, Joan says, grimacing and reaching for a cigarette. Here we are, thinking about it. Do you think this is better?

  What I mean is, I think I’ve been selfish.

  Having a baby isn’t selfish.

  The world doesn’t need any more babies.

  Maybe not. But we’re free to have one.

  Joan starts to explain, to go over again the things they’ve discussed. At some level, Nat is proud of her for trying. For doing what she thinks is right, to make Nat’s own arguments for her. Natalie hears now the things she’s said, sometimes tearfully, cast again in Joan’s strong voice: How they will be excellent parents, how the world, the way it is, thinking the way it thinks, needs the child they will raise. That problems—all that troubles them about the world—can only be changed by people who rai
se children not to hate, not to fear.

  How can I teach a child not to fear? Nat says. Every time I looked at her I would be terrified. She would know I was lying.

  Nat turns off the light. Joan tries to talk some more, but Nat says, Please, no more tonight.

  Joan waits a while, then stubs out her cigarette, and sighs, and settles under the covers.

  Nat has been calm, but now, with the lights out, her breath shudders, and she begins to sob.

  Joan says, Come here, honey. And Nat, without turning, rounds her back, and Joan molds herself to it and slips her warm hand under Nat’s breasts. Joan kisses her at the nape of her neck, at the line where her hair begins. Her breath is warm on Nat’s neck, on her shoulder blades. Her hands are soft; she rubs Nat’s shoulders and back, along the curve of her spine.

  It’s okay, Joan says. We can do this. We love each other too much not to do this. You have to believe that.

  Nat closes her eyes. Inside her head she sees the car, and inside it the little girl and the girl’s mother. The papers said they were driving to the park, too, headed down the highway to the next exit. (Had everything gone well, Nat and Joan might have seen the mother and the girl in her stroller as they ran, the little girl watching them goggle-eyed; smiling, maybe, in response to Nat’s waving hand.) The mother had the girl out of her car seat, on her lap, because the girl would not stop fussing. Silly—insane—but to the mother, perhaps, it was more bearable to think of the girl on her lap than to listen to that crying, to let her daughter be so troubled. The papers and the news have been unkind to her, but of course the mother could not have predicted what would happen next.

  Natalie hopes it worked, this plan of the mother’s. She hopes the little girl was asleep, as the cars began to slide and cross and collide in front of them.

  Or better: Natalie hopes the girl was awake, smiling, looking into her mother’s face. She hopes the girl’s last thoughts weren’t thoughts at all, but feelings: the wordless surges she must surely feel, staring up at the loveliest face she knows, and seeing all well within it; the swelling of a perfect contentment, a perfect love, before the sky opened up and the baby flew up and out, into a moment of perfect fear.

  III.

  We’ve Come to This

  AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-NINE, ALBERT IS DYING.

  A month ago he was diagnosed with cancer, and after much consultation with his doctors, he has chosen to refuse treatment. This is, he thinks, the right thing to do, the only choice. What he has is extensive cancer of the bowel, and treatment would require chemotherapy, and surgery, and a colostomy bag. As a result of these efforts his life might be extended, but—everyone takes pains to be clear about this—it will most assuredly not be saved.

  His oncologist talks to him slowly, with a lot of eye contact, using phrases like quality of life, and tough decisions. But, to Albert, the decisions aren’t tough at all. A man his age, he knows, is going to get caught by something. No one can guarantee he’ll even survive the surgery, and chemo, they say, is hard on the heart and liver; the treatments are as likely to do him in as the cancer. He’d suffer horribly for what—a year? A year and a half? His wife, Elise, would be forced to watch. Albert knows that if he were a younger man, more forces might be marshaling in his defense, but he is not young. They can call it cancer, but this is what they mean by dying of old age.

  So Albert—a man so healthy and hale it’s been joked about all his life—can see his own end. He’s a goner, and soon—a month, they say, maybe two. He’ll be given medication for pain, and, if the pain is severe enough, he’ll be given an epidural, like pregnant women have.

  I won’t lie to you, the oncologist says to him, when Albert tells him of his decision. There’s no easy way to talk about these things, but I feel you should know what’s ahead of you.

  And here the oncologist looks at both Albert and Elise—Elise who sits straight and grips Albert’s arthritic knee with enough strength to make him grimace.

  The oncologist says, This is a bad way to go, Albert. It gets, progressively, worse and worse. We might be able to keep ahead of the pain, if you work with us, but the methods we use will affect your ability to think and reason, and to act on your own behalf. These are serious narcotics we’re talking about. If you take anything out of this meeting today, make it this: See the people you want to see, and soon. Say your goodbyes now, while you can. Don’t put off signing documents that need to be signed. The decline is faster than you’ll think it can be. I’m sorry—but that needs to be said, and you need to accept it as quickly as you can.

  Albert’s already on codeine—there’s a live animal in his belly, most days—but the oncologist, before Albert and Elise leave, hands him a prescription for oral morphine. This will get you started, he says. The oncologist looks at Albert, his eyebrows raised, and says, in a low voice, Follow the instructions on the bottle. You don’t want to mess around with this stuff. Understand?

  At first Albert thinks the man is being condescending, but as he drives home—Elise can’t; she’s weeping, almost wailing—he understands what the doctor has really told him.

  During the next two days, when he sits in the study with his papers and his records, doing as the doctor instructed, he keeps the bottle of morphine pills nearby. Sometimes he reclines in his easy chair and turns the bottle around in his hands. There’s not much to go over, not much to weigh, but all the same he gives the possibilities a knock or two in his head, and then decides.

  He has never kept a secret from Elise in his life, and cannot do it now.

  I have had a choice to make, he says, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. And I have to tell you what I’ve chosen. I need you to be strong about it.

  Elise, making him potato soup, stops stirring. The phone rings, and they say nothing until the machine picks up. The damn thing rings off the hook these days, since they put the word out. While it rings they stare at each other, and by the time they’re done Albert can see that she knows what he’s going to tell her. Her eyes widen, and her mouth opens a little, and then she covers it with her hand.

  He says, I want to have a few people over. A dinner party. This weekend, I guess. The old boys, and Mark and Danielle.

  Al, she says, please don’t.

  After the party, if I can, I’d like to make love to you. We may not have much longer to try.

  She’s shaking her head, and the wooden spoon rattles slightly against the rim of the pot.

  He says, After that, I’m going to do it. In the meantime, we’ll get the will in order.

  She says, whispering, I can’t let you.

  I have to be able to say my goodbyes, he says. I want you to think about what it means, if I just let this goddamn thing take me. Think about what you’ll have to do. The way you’ll have to see me, and to take care of me—

  I will do anything, she says. You know I will.

  I know it, he tells her. Oh yes I do. But, Elise. There’s no way—he licks his lips, which are dry now, almost always—I know there’s no way to keep you from seeing me dead. But I love you, and I don’t want you to see me dying. I want to say the things to you that ought to be said. I don’t want to go like your father did. Do you want me to have to do that?

  She winces, and this hurts Albert to see, but he had to say it. He knows she’s been thinking of her father all along, just as he has.

  And Elise has been thinking of her father. She thought of him as Albert complained of his stomachaches, and one day, when he came home from his daily walk around the park, clutching at his gut, she saw for the first time how pale he was, his skin nearly translucent. She urged him, calmly, to go to the doctor, but she knew full well what the doctor would find. She’d only seen that color once before.

  Her father had died of prostate cancer. Near the end, drowning in morphine, he’d somehow, in his head, gone back to Parris Island, and even though she sat with him every day at his bedside, he didn’t recognize her at all. He called her awful names, spat and hissed, and sull
enly said Yessir and Nosir when she asked him if he wanted more juice. Albert was with her. He saw everything.

  No—almost everything. She’d shooed Albert from her father’s room when she had to tend to his diaper, and to his bedsore. The bedsore, as wide and deep as her fist, which every day she cleaned and packed and swabbed and dressed—while her father lay on his stomach and howled in pain, cursing her and telling her to hurry, hurry—all the while holding her throat against the slipperiness of the dressings and the heavy soaked packing cotton she pulled from the wound, and the sight that made her clamp her jaws together and pray for strength: the spot at the bottom of the sore, like a blind eye half-closed, that was the white knob of her father’s tailbone.

  And Al, her Albert, still handsome, still there—standing with a hand on the door frame—is telling her what must be said. His eyes are very blue, and lately his eyebrows have gone white and tufted, and this makes him look even merrier than he did when he was younger. His shirt is neatly tucked in, and the buttons are lined up with his belt buckle. Why these things? Why does she think of these things? She knows: because they will soon be gone. These things she loves about her husband will vanish, one by one. Without warning. His mind, sharp and funny and chiding, will dull, become childlike. She will transform from wife to mother to nurse. She has never heard her Albert scream, but that is coming. They can talk about pain control all they like, the doctors, but this is cancer, this is an enemy she knows.

  I’ve thought of Dad, she tells him. Of course I have.

  I have thought about all of this, Albert tells her. And of the things that are precious to me—He breaks off, and pinches his lips together with his hand. But he composes himself.

  I have always loved to talk with you, he says. I don’t want to say anything to you I do not mean.