Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

“God, Beth. Jeff—”

“It’s awful, so awful, I’m barely functioning myself. But I think you might feel better, I truly do, if you get up and take a shower, maybe change into some real clothes. Eat something. Mom tells me you haven’t had anything since Friday.”

“Not hungry.”

“Will you try, sweetie? For me?”

I glance at the bedside clock behind her. Two more hours until someone arrives with the magic pills that keep the world at a safe distance.

“Funeral pills,” Dr. Mayer called them yesterday when I asked what they were. Then he went bright red, like he couldn’t believe the words had escaped his mouth. He apologized, but I told him it was okay. I mean, it wasn’t, it was never going to be okay, but there’s going to be a funeral, and as much as I thought I was done with taking pills, it’s clear to me now that I’m going to need them to get through it.

“I don’t have anything to wear,” I say to Beth.

“Of course you do, hon. You’ve got a closet full of clothes.”

“I meant for the…” I pause to gulp in air, not sure I can get the word out. “Funeral.”

Beth brushes my tears away. “Oh, Claire. I’m so, so sorry.”

Sunday night is a fog of drugs and bad, vivid dreams. Seth’s still sleeping with me, and though he hasn’t said much, his sleep speaks for him. He thrashes and kicks and moans, behavior I’ve never seen before, not even when he was a tiny thing. I rest my hand on his chest, above his heart, and it seems to calm him. But if I drift away and my hand follows suit, it’s only minutes until he’s back at it again, a whirling dervish of grief who doesn’t have access to the medicinal solace I’ve been allowed.

When I asked Dr. Mayer if something could be done for Seth too, he told me it wasn’t standard procedure. Kids are resilient, he said.

Meaning what? I almost asked.

And if I need the drugs, what does that make me? Weak? Pliable?

All I know is that we’re both broken and it’s too soon to tell if it’s beyond repair.

I open my eyes in the early light of morning. Seth’s face is inches from mine. He’s also awake. He looks so like Jeff in this moment, same chocolatey-brown eyes, same dark, unruly hair. I stop myself just in time from using his name.

“Were you having a bad dream, baby?”

Usually this term of endearment is met with an eye roll and a reminder to never call him that in public, but today all he says is “Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nah.”

“Maybe if you told me, it wouldn’t seem so bad?”

“Don’t think so.”

“How do you know if you don’t try?”

A tear rolls down his face. “Because when I woke up the dream was still true.”

Whatever pieces of my heart that are still intact break in this instant. I can’t make things better for my son. I can’t take away his nightmares because life is a nightmare now.

Jeff, Jeff. How could you leave us like this?

“I’m sorry, baby.”

He buries his head in my neck. We lie there like this for a while, the room brightening around us, the day marching on, even if we’re frozen.

Around seven, Seth sits up abruptly. “I want to go to school.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not yet.”

“But there are so many people here, all the time.”

“Won’t school be full of people?”

“I’m used to that.”

“Things might be different now.”

“I think I’ll feel…better there than here. Can I? Please, Mom?”

I nod. “Don’t feel like you have to stay if things are hard, okay?”

“Okay. Are you going to be all right?”

“Beth’s here.”

He kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks, Mom.”

Seth gets up. I stay in bed, wishing he hadn’t wanted to go. I keep imagining what it will be like for him, wondering (because I can’t keep my mind from going to dark places) whether it will be like my first day back at work after we lost the baby.

About four years ago, we got pregnant again. We’d been trying for years. We never intended such a large gap between Seth and our second. We’d even discussed having three, but we tried and tried and nothing happened. We saw Dr. Mayer. He tested both of us and found no medical reason for my inability to conceive. These things take time, he said, sometimes. We shouldn’t stress about it. In fact stressing about it would be a bad thing. Stressing about it could make it not happen.

But how do you not stress about something like that? Especially when it’s your body you’re constantly looking for changes in. Do my breasts feel sore today, or is it the usual premenstrual soreness I get sometimes? Do I feel bloated? Is this the way I felt when I was pregnant with Seth?

These thoughts would tumble around and around every month until I was sick of it. I didn’t want to try anymore, I told Jeff. It was driving me crazy. He was disappointed but supportive. He wouldn’t admit it, but I think the pressure was getting to him too. And it was so nice to have regular sex again. When we wanted, without thinking about timing and body temperature and keeping my legs in the air for minutes afterward. Just sex. Sometimes good, sometimes great, sometimes rushed in between Seth’s various activities, sometimes languid and slow and tender. Just us, again.

Then we got pregnant.

I didn’t believe it at first. In fact, I never really believed it. Not when my period was weeks late. Not when I finally peed on a stick and the second blue line appeared, or when the doctor confirmed it with a blood test. Jeff was elated, and I pretended I was too, but deep down, I knew there was something wrong. I didn’t feel pregnant. Not like I had with Seth, not even like I had sometimes all those years when we were trying.

Jeff wanted to tell people right away, too early, but I convinced him to hold off until we passed the third month. That way, if something went wrong, no one would have to know. Nothing was going to go wrong, he said confidently, and in his certainty, I almost found belief. Then night would come, and I’d hold my hand on my still-flat belly and wait for that feeling, that flutter, that extra rush of blood that was supposed to be bringing sustenance to the cells supposedly dividing inside me. I never felt it, not once.

The three-month mark came, and Jeff was pressing me to tell someone, anyone, Seth, our parents, our friends. Wait until the ultrasound, I said, it’s only a few weeks away. Then we can tell. He looked at me for a long moment and asked me in a very quiet voice whether I wanted to be pregnant.

“Of course I do. You know I do.”

“Then what is it? Why won’t you tell anyone?”

“I’m just worried—”

“No, Claire, I don’t want to hear that again. There’s nothing wrong with the baby.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You weren’t like this with Seth. Why are you so convinced…what’s going on, really?”

I gathered the breath to tell him, to confess to my nightly vigils, but in the cold light of day it sounded absurd.

“It’s nothing. I don’t know why I’m so…we can start telling people, it’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. Who do you want to tell first?”

We told Seth, my parents, his, our friends, and soon it felt like the whole town knew. They were all happy, so happy, for me, for us. I accepted the congratulations, the hugs. I told myself that the night flutters would come, that everything was fine.

Then, one of my friends would say in a certain tone of voice, “You don’t even look pregnant,” and a shot of doubt would go to my heart and stay there, joining the others, building, building.

As the ultrasound drew nearer, I started sleeping less and less. I know now that I was in the first throes of depression, but somehow, in the daylight, I was able to put on a happy face and keep it all inside. I was pregnant at last. No, we didn’t want to know the sex, we preferred the surprise, thank you, thank you, oh, right, I’m sure I’ll be blowing up any day now. Any day now.

On Ultrasound Day I woke up at four. I turned my head away from Jeff’s and watched the darkness shift to light. When it was a passable hour to get up, I pulled off the covers and hid in the shower. Looking down at my still-flat belly, I counted out the hours like the beats on a metronome until I’d know what I already knew.

Our appointment was at eight. We were in the waiting room at a quarter to, me almost catatonic, Jeff’s knee bouncing up and down with excitement. The nurse called us in. I put on one of those awful hospital gowns and lay on the table.

Dr. Mayer entered the examination room—“Morning, morning”—his technician had called in sick so he was doing the exam himself, and he spread the cold, thick gel across my abdomen.

I cringed reflexively as he moved the wand around. We were all staring at the screen, me, Jeff, Dr. Mayer, looking for that rapid, whooshing heartbeat, that cluster of cells taking on a proto-baby shape. After the longest minute of my life, he frowned and held the wand in place, staring at a dark spot.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually.

“Sorry?” Jeff said. “What do you—”

I took Jeff’s hand in mine. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

It always struck me, afterward, that he was supposed to be reassuring me, but I never gave him the chance. I’d had so much longer to prepare, you see. I was ready, in a way.

Or so I thought. Dr. Mayer booked me for a D & C the next day, and then, at his and Jeff’s urging, I took the rest of the week off. The message (abnormal cells, no heartbeat, etc.) spread through our family, our life, our town. A week was enough time, everyone said, for me to move past it, to resume my life, to forget. I agreed with them because what else could I do? Tell them I’d had three months and three weeks to get over it? That now, when I put my hand on my stomach at night, I finally felt the flutter I’d been searching for, for so long?

Of course, I couldn’t. When Monday morning came, I put on a suit and ate a banana and drove my car to my office. I made it through the front door and started walking down the hall, aware of the stares, the murmurs. I felt like an arrow moving through the building, sharp and lethal.

The people around me felt my lethalness, I’m sure they did, because they moved out of my way as fast as they could. No one reached out. No one tried to stop me.

Before I knew it, I’d walked the length of the building and was outside again, through the emergency exit, gasping for air next to a big green Dumpster.

And as I count out the minutes it will take Seth to get ready, sling on his backpack, and climb onto his bus, I can’t help but wonder, Will my son be that arrow today? Or will he attract the support he needs, rather than scare it away?

After I get off the line with Julia, my phone remains eerily silent for the rest of the day. I can usually count on several emails from some overeager newbie working on a Sunday, and the inevitable reply-alls that follow, but I don’t even get any spam. The only message I receive is a straightforward text from Brian. She won! Heading back now.

Instead, I ride an emotional roller coaster, cursing myself for calling Julia in the first place. Jeff is fine, he is, and there’ll be some explanation, some funny, crazy story, about why he hasn’t answered me. We’ll laugh about it, and I’ll keep this weekend to myself.

Feeling like I’m going to jump out of my skin, and knowing the golf course doesn’t open for another week, I decide to take a hike up the mountain behind my house.

The mountains were the first thing I noticed about this town, twelve years ago, when Brian and I were trying to decide where to move when he was setting up his practice. The first thing I noticed, that is, once I could see past the sameness of the houses, the gently curving streets meant to slow down traffic to keep the children safe, the blond Scandinavian look most of the denizens seemed to have.

I already felt like my darker features made me stand out, like a Hungarian invader. And I wondered if I could ever feel at home in a place so different from the concrete modernity I’d grown up in.

The town is built in an ancient caldera, created when a meteor crashed into the earth long, long ago. The result is a round, flat plain, surrounded by mountains that must once have been craggy and sharp but are now smoothed and tame. Mountains that change with the seasons, the time of day, that cup the light and fill the eye in every direction above the asphalt roofs of the never-ending three-bedroom split-levels.