Bird Box (25 page)

And, so . . .

forty-two

. . . she does.

Malorie sits up in bed and grips her belly before she understands that she has been howling for some time already. The bed is soaking wet.

Two men rush into the room. It is all so dreamy

(
Am I really having a baby? A baby? I was pregnant this whole time?
)

and so frightening

(
Where’s Shannon? Where is Mother?
)

that, at first, she does not recognize them as Felix and Jules.

“Holy
shit
,” Felix says. “Olympia is already up there. Olympia started maybe two hours ago.”

Up where?
Malorie thinks.
Up where?

The men are careful with her and help her ease to the edge of the bed.

“Are you ready to do this?” Jules asks anxiously.

Malorie just looks at him, her brow furrowed, her face pink and pale at once.

“I was sleeping,” she says. “I was just . . . up where, Felix?”

“She’s ready,” Jules says, forcing a smile, trying to comfort her. “You look wonderful, Malorie. You look ready.”

She starts to ask, “Up—”

But Felix tells her before she finishes.

“We’re going to do this in the attic. Tom says it’s the safest place in the house. In case something were to happen. But nothing’s going to happen. Olympia’s up there already. She’s been going for two hours. Tom and Cheryl are up there with her. Don’t worry, Malorie. We’ll do everything we can.”

Malorie doesn’t answer. The feeling of something inside her that must get out is the most horrifying and incredible feeling she’s ever known. The men have her, one under each arm, and they walk her out of the room, over the threshold, and down the hall toward the rear of the house. The attic stairs are already pulled down and as they steady her, Malorie sees the blankets covering the window at the end of the hall. She wonders what time of day it is. If it’s the next night. If it’s a week later.

Am I really having my baby? Now?

Felix and Jules help her up the old wooden steps. She can hear Olympia upstairs. And Tom’s gentle voice, saying things like
breathe, you’ll be fine, you’re okay
.

“Maybe it won’t be so different after all,” she says (the men, thank God, helping her up the creaking steps). “Maybe it won’t be so different from how I hoped it would go.”

There is more room up here than she pictured. A single candle lights the space. Olympia is on a towel on the ground. Cheryl is beside her. Olympia’s knees are lifted and a thin bedsheet covers her from the waist down. Jules helps her onto her own towel facing Olympia. Tom approaches Malorie.

“Oh, Malorie!” Olympia says. She is out of breath and only part of her exclaims while the rest buckles and contorts. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

Malorie, dazed, can’t help but feel like she’s still sleeping when she looks over her covered knees and sees Olympia set up like a reflection.

“How long have you been here, Olympia?”

“I don’t know. Forever, I think!”

Felix is talking quietly to Olympia, asking her what she needs. Then he heads downstairs to get it. Tom reminds Cheryl to keep things clean. They’re going to be okay, he says, as long as they’re clean. They’re using clean sheets and towels. Hand sanitizer from Tom’s house. Two buckets of well water.

Tom appears calm, but Malorie knows he’s not.

“Malorie?” Tom asks.

“Yes?”

“What do you need?”

“How about some water? And some music, too, Tom.”

“Music?”

“Yes. Something sweet and soft, you know, something to maybe”—
Something to cover up the sound of my body on the wood floor of an attic
—“the flute music. That one tape.”

“Okay,” Tom says. “I’ll get it.”

He does, stepping by her to the stairs that descend directly behind her back. She turns her attention to Olympia. She’s still having trouble shaking the fog of sleep. She sees a small steak knife beside her on a paper towel, less than a foot away. Cheryl just dunked it into the water.

“Jesus!” Olympia suddenly hollers, and Felix kneels and takes her hand.

Malorie watches.

These people
, she thinks,
the kind of person that would answer an ad like that in the paper. These people are survivors
.

She experiences a momentary surge of peace. She knows it won’t last long. The housemates wisp through her mind, their faces, one by one. With each she feels something like love.

My God
, she thinks,
we’ve been so brave
.

“
God!
” Olympia suddenly screams. Cheryl is quickly beside her.

Once, when Tom was up here looking for tape, Malorie watched from the foot of the ladder stairs. But she’s never been up here herself. Now, breathing heavily, she looks to the curtain covering the lone window and she feels a chill. Even the attic has been protected. A room hardly ever used still needs a blanket. Her eyes travel along the wooden window frame, then along the paneled walls, the pointed ceiling, the boxes of things George left behind. Her eyes continue to a stack of blankets piled high. Another box of plastic parts. Old books. Old clothes.

Someone is standing by the old clothes.

It’s Don.

Malorie feels a contraction.

Tom returns with a glass of water and the little radio they play cassettes on.

“Here, Malorie,” he says. “I found it.”

The sound of crackling violins escapes the small speakers. Malorie thinks it’s perfect.

“Thank you,” she says.

Tom’s face looks very tired. His eyes are only half open and puffy. Like he slept for an hour or less.

Malorie feels a cramping so incredible that at first she thinks it isn’t real. It feels like a bear trap has clamped down on her waist.

Voices come from behind her. Down the attic stairs. It’s Cheryl. Jules. She’s hardly aware of who’s up here and who isn’t.

“Oh
God
!” Olympia calls out.

Tom is with her. Felix is by Malorie’s side again.

“You’re going to make it,” Malorie calls to Olympia.

As she does, thunder booms outside. Rain falls hard against the roof. Somehow the rain is the exact sound she was looking for. The world outside
sounds
like how she feels inside. Stormy. Menacing. Foul. The housemates emerge from the shadows, then vanish. Tom looks worried. Olympia is breathing hard, panting. The stairs creak. Someone new is here. It’s Jules, again. Tom is telling him Olympia is farther along than Malorie is. Thunder cracks outside. As lightning strikes, she sees Don in relief, his features sullen, his eyes set deep above dark circles.

There is an unbearable pressing tightness at Malorie’s waist. Her body, it seems, is acting on its own, refuting her mind’s desire for peace. She screams and Cheryl leaves Olympia’s side and comes to her. Malorie didn’t even know Cheryl was still up here.

“This is
awful
,” Olympia hisses.

Malorie thinks of women sharing cycles, women in tune with one another’s bodies. For all their talk about who would go first, neither she nor Olympia ever even joked that both of them might be in labor at the same time.

Oh, how Malorie longed for a traditional birth!

More thunder.

It is darker up here now. Tom brings a second candle, lights it, and sets it on the floor to Malorie’s left. In the flickering flame she sees Felix and Cheryl but Olympia is difficult to make out. Her torso and face are obscured by flickering shadows.

Someone descends the stairs behind her. Is it Don? She doesn’t want to crane her neck. Tom steps through the candlelight and then out of its range. Then Felix, she thinks, then Cheryl. Silhouettes are moving from her to Olympia like phantoms.

The rain comes down harder against the roof.

There is a loud, abrupt commotion downstairs. Malorie can’t be sure but she thinks someone is yelling. Is her tired mind mistaking sounds? Who’s arguing?

It
does
sound like an argument below.

She can’t think about this right now. She won’t.

“Malorie?” Malorie screams as Cheryl’s face suddenly appears beside her. “Squeeze my hand. Break it if you need to.”

Malorie wants to say,
Get some light in here. Get me a doctor. Deliver this thing for me
.

Instead she responds with a grunt.

She is having her baby. There is no longer
when
.

Will I see things differently now?
I’ve seen everything through the prism of this baby. It’s how I saw the house. The housemates. The world. It’s how I saw the news when it first started and how I saw the news when it ended. I’ve been horrified, paranoid, angry, more. When my body returns to the shape it was when I walked the streets freely, will I see things differently again?

What will Tom look like? How will his ideas sound?

“Malorie!” Olympia calls in the darkness. “I don’t think I can do it!”

Cheryl is telling Olympia she can, she’s almost there.

“What’s going on downstairs?” Malorie suddenly asks.

Don is below. She can hear him arguing. Jules, too. Yes, Don and Jules are arguing in the hall beneath the attic. Is Tom with them? Is Felix? No. Felix emerges from the dark and takes her hand.

“Are you okay, Malorie?”

“No,” she says. “What’s going on downstairs?”

He pauses, then says, “I’m not sure. But you have bigger things to worry about than people getting in each other’s faces.”

“Is it Don?” she asks.

“Don’t worry about it, Malorie.”

It rains harder. It’s as if each drop has its own audible weight.

Malorie lifts her head to see Olympia’s eyes in the shadows, staring at her.

Beyond the rain, the arguing, the commotion downstairs, Malorie hears
something
. Sweeter than violins.

What is it?

“Oh fuck!” Olympia screams. “Make it
stop
!”

It’s becoming harder for Malorie to breathe. It feels like the baby is cutting off her air supply. Like it’s crawling up her throat instead.

Tom is here. He is at her side.

“I’m sorry, Malorie.”

She turns to him. The face she sees, the look on his face, is something she will remember years after this morning.

“Sorry for what, Tom? Sorry this is how it’s happened?”

Tom’s eyes look sad. He nods yes. They both know he has no reason to apologize but they both know no woman should have to endure her delivery in the stuffy attic of a house she calls home only because she cannot leave.

“You know what I think?” he says softly, reaching down to grab her hand. “I think you’re going to be a wonderful mother. I think you’re going to raise this child so well it won’t matter if the world continues this way or not.”

To Malorie, it feels like a rusty steel clamp is trying to pull the baby from her now. A tow truck chain from the shadows ahead.

“Tom,” she manages to say. “What’s wrong down there?”

“Don’s upset. That’s all.”

She wants to talk more about it. She’s not angry at Don anymore. She’s worried about him. Of all the housemates, he’s stricken worst by the new world. He’s lost in it. There is something emptier than hopelessness in his eyes. Malorie wants to tell Tom that she loves Don, that they all do, that he just needs help. But the pain is absolutely all she can process. And words are momentarily impossible. The argument below now sounds like a joke. Like someone’s kidding her. Like the house is telling her,
You see? Have a sense of humor despite the unholy pain going on in my attic
.

Malorie has known exhaustion and hunger. Physical pain and severe mental fatigue. But she has never known the state she is in now. She not only has the right to be unbothered by a squabble among housemates, but she also very nearly deserves that they all leave the house entirely and stand out in the yard with their eyes closed for as long as it takes her and Olympia to do what their bodies need to do.

Tom stands up.

“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Do you need some more water?”

Malorie shakes her head no and returns her eyes to the shadows and sheet that is Olympia’s struggle before her.

“We’re doing it!” Olympia says, suddenly, maniacally. “It’s happening!”

So many sounds. The voices below, the voices in the attic (coming from the shadows and coming from faces emerging from those shadows), the ladder stairs, creaking every time a housemate ascends or descends, assessing the situation up here and then the one (she knows there is a problem downstairs, she just can’t care right now) going on a floor below. The rain falls but there
is
something else. Another sound. An instrument maybe. The highest keys of the dining room’s piano.

Suddenly, strangely, Malorie feels another wave of peace. Despite the thousand blades that pierce her lungs, neck, and chest, she understands that no matter what she does, no matter what happens, the baby is coming out. What does it matter what kind of world she is bringing this baby into now? Olympia is right. It’s
happening
. The child is coming, the child is almost out. And he has always been a part of the new world.

He knows anxiety, fear, paranoia. He was worried when Tom and Jules went to find dogs. He was painfully relieved when they returned. He was frightened of the change in Don. The change in the house. As it went from a hopeful haven to a bitter, anxious place. His heart was heavy when I read the ad that led me here, just like it was when I read the notebook in the cellar
.

At the word “cellar” Malorie actually hears Don’s voice from below.

He’s yelling
.

Yet, something beyond his voice worries her more.

“Do you hear that sound, Olympia?”

“What?” Olympia grumbles. It sounds like she has staples in her throat.

“That sound. It sounds like . . .”

“It’s the rain,” Olympia says.

“No, not that. There’s something else. It sounds like we’ve already had our babies.”

“What?”

To Malorie it
does
sound like a baby. Something like it, past the housemates at the foot of the ladder stairs. Maybe even on the first floor, the living room, maybe even—