When He Fell (22 page)

“Now I suppose you’re going to ask me why I think in stereotypes or something,” I say, and though I meant it partly as a joke I hear how defensive I sound. I’m nervous today, more nervous than I was last time.

“No. We all think in stereotypes sometimes. It’s human nature.” He smiles, his legs crossed, his hands folded on his lap, and waits. My bag is on my lap and I am clutching it to me like a life preserver. Lewis is silent and still, his face inscrutable. I have no idea what he’s thinking. Will he tell Will what Josh said, about him knowing? Will I?

“So.” Will smiles at us both. “What would you like to talk about today?”

I glance at Lewis; he hasn’t moved. “Actually, I wanted to talk about what happened six years ago,” I say. My face is hot, my voice quavering. “In case it relates to how Josh is handling things now.”

“Okay.” Will’s expression is interested and easy, as if we’re having a chat about the weather. “What happened six years ago?”

“When Josh was two and a half I had a miscarriage.”
Miscarriage.
It sounds so bland, so nothing. Not the same as stillbirth or the death of a child. But that’s what it was, even if the medical term is different. “I was nineteen weeks pregnant,” I continue. I have not spoken about this to anyone since it happened. “A little girl.” I draw a quick, sharp breath. “She was perfect. I mean, there was nothing wrong with her genetically, nothing like that. Apparently she died in utero because of a clot in the umbilical cord. It was discovered when I had a routine ultrasound.” I will always remember the silence when the technician turned on the ultrasound machine. No steady
whoosh whoosh
of the galloping heartbeat. Lewis and I both saw her curled up, in black and white, on the screen. So tiny and perfect and
still.

“I’m sorry,” Will says. “That must have been very hard for you. For both of you.” The words are pat, but I can tell he means them.

“It was. It was very hard.” I am staring at his shoe, a scuffed brown brogue, because I am afraid to look at anything else, see anyone’s expression. I can feel tears starting to pool in my eyes.

Will reaches forward, pulls a tissue from the box on the coffee table, and silently hands it to me. I clench it between my fingers.

“How did you and Lewis handle the miscarriage?” Will asks.

“We…didn’t,” I answer after a moment. Remembering those dark months after the miscarriage is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything is blurry. “I don’t really remember,” I tell Will. “I was…depressed. Neither of us talked about it. Lewis wanted to just go on as normal, but I…couldn’t.”

Lewis shifts in his chair and Will glances at him. “Is that how you remember it, Lewis?”

“More or less,” he answers, and I turn to him, rage streaking through me.

“More or
less?
That’s all you have to say?” I demand, my voice shaking. Lewis gazes back at me evenly.

“What do you want me to say, Jo?” he asks. “What do you want me to do? Nothing I did then helped, and nothing I can do now will either.”

“You didn’t do anything,” I spit, amazed by my own fury, and Lewis shakes his head.

“It seems,” Will interjects, “as if the two of you have different memories of what happened.”

“What happened,” I say, my voice still shaking, “is that Lewis didn’t even seem to care about our daughter. When she was born he told the nurse to take her away. He didn’t even want to look at her. He didn’t want
me
to look at her.” My voice breaks and I realize there are tears streaming down my cheeks. I am still clutching the now-shredded tissue. “I never held her. I never held our baby.”

Will glances at Lewis. “Is that how you remember it?”

“More or less,” Lewis says again, and I let out a little shriek, a sound so unlike me, but we’re finally talking about this, and Lewis still isn’t saying anything, and I feel like I could crack open. Fall apart.

“Whch is it, Lewis?” I demand. “More or less?”

He doesn’t answer. “She was perfect,” I say, and I don’t know whether I am telling Will or Lewis. “Perfect. Tiny but perfectly formed. Ten fingers, ten toes, skin so translucent you could see all her veins. The nurse showed me, from the doorway. She could have fit into my hand. She had fingernails and the beginnings of eyelashes. We were going to call her Josie.” Still nothing from Lewis. “But you told the nurse to take her away, like she was—a piece of trash! Clinical waste.” I turn to Will, my voice wild. “We got a letter, later. Saying how she’d been disposed of. No funeral, no name, no way to grieve. And that’s how you wanted it, wasn’t it, Lewis?”

“No.” The word is barely audible. Lewis’s face is averted. No one speaks.

“No?” Will repeats after a moment. “You didn’t want that, Lewis?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Maybe you should tell us how you remember things.”

Lewis is still looking away from both Will and me. “She wasn’t perfect, Jo,” he says, his voice so quiet I strain to hear it. “That’s why I asked the nurse to take her away.”

“You’re lying!” The words burst out of me. “I saw her. And we had the genetic testing done—there was nothing wrong with her!”

Lewis shakes his head. I can see his eyes are closed, his face contorted. “She had ten fingers and toes. Eyelashes, fingernails. But she wasn’t…she wasn’t as developed as she should have been. Her bones… She didn’t look right. She was like…a jelly baby. Too… soft. I didn’t want you to see.”

I recoil from his words as if he’s slapped me. “No…”

“The nurse said she wasn’t as developed as she should have been at that stage. She said something must have happened, some anomaly, even if it wasn’t genetic.”

I shake my head, the movement violent. “
No.
”

Finally Lewis turns to look at me. His face is bleak. “I’m not saying I did the right thing. I was scared, overwhelmed… I just acted on instinct. And maybe it was wrong. Maybe it made things worse.”

“Did you try to tell Joanna what had happened?” Will asks. “After?”

“No,” I interject, angry now. “He never did. He never said one word.”

“That’s not true,” Lewis says tiredly. It’s as if all the anger, all the fight has gone out of him. “I tried, but you were angry with me and you didn’t want to hear. You turned away every time I tried to talk about it. Soemtimes you put your hand over your ears. You had in your mind what had happened, you’d decided that I didn’t care about her at all, and you didn’t want to hear differently.”

I am silent, remembering the fog of those days. The endless hours I spent in bed, too tired and heartsick to rise. The meals Lewis left by my bed. Josh curled in next to me, knowing something was wrong. Tears silently streaking down my face.

Did Lewis try to talk to me? Did I refuse to listen? I honestly can’t remember. I’ve blocked those weeks out, the pain and grief and anger I felt too overwhelming to cope with; I felt like I was swimming in emotion, drowning in it.

“How long did this go on?” Will asks.

“About a month,” Lewis says. “And then I told Joanna I was leaving.” He rubs his face wearily. “I couldn’t take any more. I felt like I was doing her harm. And so I moved out for about three weeks.”

Will glances at me. “Joanna? Is that how you remember it?”

More or less.
Wordlessly I nod. I remember Lewis sitting on the edge of our bed, me curled up with my back to him. I remember him telling me we both need some space. Promising he’d come every night to be with Josh. I remember the sound of the apartment door closing, and feeling as if I’d just been entombed.

“Did you agree with him, that you both needed some space?” Will asks.

“No.” I swipe at the tears on my face. “No, of course not. I wanted him there. I’ve always wanted him there.”

“So how did you respond when he said he was leaving?” Will asks.

I close my eyes, trying to remember. “I said okay. I said he could go. What else could I say?” It wasn’t as if Lewis had been making a suggestion, giving me a choice.

“I came back,” Lewis says. He sounds so defeated. “After three weeks. I realized I was just hurting everyone by not being there. But maybe it worked, because we moved on. We got over it.” He glances at me, confusion and hurt in his eyes. “At least I thought we did.”

But I never did. I held on to the anger and grief and fear. I sink back against the seat, exhausted, as griefstricken as I was back then. As I’ve always been.

“So when exactly did this happen?” Will asks. “You said Josh was two and a half when you had the miscarriage. When did he start preschool?”

I swallow. “A few months after Lewis left.”

“So perhaps this traumatic event has some bearing on why Josh stopped speaking,” Will says. His voice is gentle.

“But Lewis was only gone for three weeks,” I say, and I can hear how insistent I sound. “He was back in August. Josh didn’t speak for a
year.
”

“Maybe he wasn’t speaking because we weren’t speaking,” Lewis says dully. “Maybe this really is our fault.”

“This isn’t about blame,” Will interjects.

“It’s different now, though,” I insist. “The situation is totally different.”

“Is it really different?” Will challenges. “Josh has experienced a loss, and then an ensuing tension between his parents. He’s experienced this before, even if he doesn’t remember it. And he’s reacting in the same way, with silence.”

Just as Lewis and I reacted with silence. We stare at each other, our eyes wide, our faces bleak, reflecting the realization that I know is pounding through us both.
So much of this is our fault.

Lewis and I leave Will’s office shell-shocked, silent. Outside the building Lewis turns to me.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t handle things better. I’m sorry I got us into this mess.”

Wordlessly I put my arms around him. He holds me tightly, his face buried in my hair. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “For not realizing…”

“It wasn’t your fault. You were depressed. I handled it wrong.” His voice chokes. “I’ve handled everything so wrong.”

And I wonder what else he is talking about, and even now, when we’ve realized how silence has hurt us, I don’t ask.

A week passes, a week of balancing on that tightrope. It’s become our new reality, this careful edging around everything, trying to keep things normal even as we know they’re not.

I wish that talking to Will brought Lewis and me closer, but I’m not sure it did. We’ve expunged the past, perhaps, but the present still lies heavily between us. At dinner one night his phone pings with an incoming text. He reads it, his face bland, and puts the phone down again without saying anything.

I see Josh watching Lewis and me, his expression guarded, wary, darting between the two of us. He doesn’t say anything either.

On Thanksgiving Lewis, Josh, and I have always had a tradition to go out for Chinese food. It’s a day when most people are with their extended family, eating turkey and candied yams and pumpkin pie, and then lazing on the sofa and watching football. That’s never happened for either Lewis or me.

I liked the evenings at the local Chinese restaurant with its round tables and tinkling music. We all ate with chopsticks even though none of us could really manage it, and Lewis attempted a Chinese accent worthy of the worst Kung Fu movie and we cracked open fortune cookies and read the fortunes out loud.

Looking back now, I realize how I took it all for granted. There was a part of me all along that still yearned for more, that wished we had the glossy brown turkey at home, the family around the table, even more children.

After our daughter died, when Lewis had come back, we discussed, very briefly, having more children. We both agreed not to try for a while, to wait. Then Josh had that difficult year of preschool and the thought of dealing with another child seemed impossible. And somehow the opportunity slipped past us without discussing it any further.

We keep with tradition this year and I make the reservation at Pearls on Amsterdam Avenue, where we have gone in the past.

We have just ordered some dim sum and Josh is sipping his Coke loudly through a straw when Lewis says in a deliberately casual voice, “I thought we could visit Ben this weekend. He’s been moved to a rehab facility up in Peekskill.”

Josh stills, his lips closed around the straw, his gaze turned wide-eyed and wary. Lewis gazes evenly back. “What do you think, Josh?”

Josh doesn’t answer.

“Ben might need some time to settle in,” I hedge, and Lewis replies calmly,

“I texted Maddie. She says it’s okay, and she thinks Ben would like to see us.” He turns to Josh. “He’d like to see you, Josh. And I think it would be good for you to see him. He’s your best friend, and he’s doing better.”

I can see the sense in Lewis’s suggestion, but I still feel the deep-seated instinct to protect my son. “I don’t know…” I begin.

“Why not?” Lewis asks. “Ben is Josh’s friend. Maddie is our friend—”

“Your friend,” I correct before I can keep myself from it. “I barely know her.”

Lewis is silent for a moment, and it feels like a chastisement. “I still think we should all try to support her,” he finally says. “I think we should go tomorrow.”

“No,” Josh says softly. Lewis and I both still.

“Why don’t you want to see him?” Lewis asks. “I know it’s difficult, Josh, because of what happened—”

“It’s not because of what happened,” Josh cuts him off, his voice hardening. “Not
that.
”

“What, then?” I ask. Lewis is staring at Josh, a strange, arrested expression on his face that scares me. “Josh, what?”

But Josh just shakes his head. His gaze burns into Lewis, and I realize with a jolt that Josh doesn’t want to say in front of me. Is he
protecting
me, and from what?
God, from what?

“Josh,” Lewis says quietly. “We’ll go tomorrow.” His tone brooks no argument.

Josh lifts his chin. “Fine,” he says, and there is a challenge in his voice, a glint in his eye, that I can tell unsettles both Lewis and me.

19
MADDIE

When Lewis texts me that he, Josh, and Joanna are coming to visit Ben, I can’t help but feel a lurch of disappointment. I don’t want Joanna to come. Then I scold myself for such a thought, because I know it’s better if Joanna is with him. I won’t flirt, I won’t fall into fantasy land, and that is a good thing.