I read in a book that only 2 percent of pregnancies that make it past the sixteenth week end in miscarriages. Lynn’s happened in the twenty-third. The doctor at University Hospital said our baby just died, “aborted” was his word. He spoke like a man who has had children, and he said there would be nothing to keep us from having one “down the road.”
Then he put his arm around me and told me Lynn would be fine, we would have each other and that’s what was important, which is what people always feel the need to say.
It was the start of a period in my life in which I stopped paying attention and walked around dreamy and not in myself. I thought about trying again, about talking about things other than our pregnancy, which had so dominated our life. I grew quiet and I found ways to get out of the house. I did this, although I never blamed Lynn for anything.
When I stopped sleeping with her, she left me notes and a DVD, which I was supposed to watch, and she asked me to go with her to see a counselor she’d been seeing at the college.
I went once. He said it seemed like Lynn and I wanted different things out of life, and I agreed. He scheduled us for a Flexibility Workshop he was holding that weekend, and I drove instead to Albany, where I stayed with my friend Neil for a week. Neil has never married.
When I came home again, Lynn had moved out. It took about two months to set up our wedding and four years to work out a divorce. We argued a lot but I think we ended well, no hate or anything—just piles of paper to sort through.
I thought of calling to surprise her and congratulate her, and I thought, No, that’s going backward, move ahead; concentrate on what you have.
I tell part of that story to Abby—the part about not moving backward—by saying I want her to spend the weekend with me and not Carl. We’ll book a cheap flight and head off to the Yucatán. It isn’t her fault, I tell her, but Carl should know not to call her like that.
She says he’s my friend that’s all, he needs me like you need me. I say I’m sorry but that’s how I feel. She says she can’t go to Mexico, she’s failing school. She says she’s spent so much time at my house she’s failing three out of four classes, do I care?
“More than you could ever imagine,” I say.
“No, really. I’m losing myself with you. I’m giving so much and I’m not getting anything back. I look at someone or I talk to someone on the phone and you freak. You change, just like that, and you don’t talk about it. We talk about me and all my problems but I feel like I don’t know you.”
And while she speaks I watch her hands move and her eyes flare and her chest push forward in breath. I can see her knees and part of her thigh beneath her ripped jeans. I imagine us in fifteen years. I’ll be fifty-two and she’ll be my age now, teaching at a junior college or a high school, somewhere like California. I’ll have gray hair and an old-man paunch, and Abby will look like an adolescent boy’s fantasy of a hot professor, a copy of Proust or Emily Dickinson tucked under her arm.
“Really,” she says, and steps back from me. “Tell me something. Tell me something you never told anyone.”
So I tell her a story about stealing money from my dad because I wanted to go to New York and how he found out and decided to take me down there himself on a Greyhound bus, which makes her happy and soft again, though it isn’t true; I never stole a thing.
Before I take Abby to Carl’s house, I take her to a thrift store on Buffalo Street to buy a pendulum rod and bob I saw there. If she’s going away for a couple of days, I tell her, I am going to finish a grandfather clock, something I want to do before I’m forty.
“I’m not going for a month or anything,” she says. “I’ll probably be back Sunday night.”
She has my motorcycle jacket on, my sunglasses, and a pair of my sweatpants, and I’m thinking of what my house has become. We haven’t done a dish in two weeks and the sheets are thick with dust and sex, and it occurs to me I could whip the whole house into shape over the next few days. It might improve my state of mind.
The sky is gray and low as I crest the knoll by two small farms down from Buffalo Street; silos decaying, empty of corn, two bales of hay sitting there like junked cars. It is gray for so long where we live, you forget what spring is like, that it will even come at all.
When we turn onto College Avenue where Carl lives, Abby rests her head on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” she says.
She has a pair of ice skates tied together at her feet and when I look ahead at Carl’s house, a jaundiced two-story student building, I see him in front with his own pair.
I pull the car into his driveway and Carl walks over to Abby’s side.
“What’s up, Willie?” he says.
“Nothing, Carl. Nothing but clocks and snow.”
He looks at me puzzled, and then hugs Abby hello.
As Abby walks into Carl’s house, I’m thinking about sticking around, about hanging out with Carl and his roommates around a bong and some music. We’d order out a pizza, maybe watch a basketball game, which I like to do sometimes. But my sense is that Abby doesn’t want me there.
I’m starting the car and driving toward Homer through the thick gray air, which has frosted with light snow. The farther I drive, the clearer it gets.
I picture them bounding down the hardened playing fields to the hockey ice, which is empty now because the team is away. They’ll be swirling around, holding hands maybe, and making circles in the dim light of the rink. She’ll be singing those songs again, grade-school songs, like a music box that you wind and wind, and then let loose.
I open the windows now and let the cold air in. I drive north for a long while until it’s dark out and I can’t recognize any of the town names. I turn off my headlights then and gun the engine and I think, This is what it feels like to be lost.
Birthday Girl
A young girl lies on a snowy country road. Her head has fallen to the side as though she’s sleeping, and her hair fans out across the snow. She is clothed in a blue parka with a white fringed hood, a red knit scarf, frayed jeans, and dark blue snow boots. She’s alive, thank God (her breath warm enough to melt snow), though unmoving.
I never saw her, you tell yourself. She’d been running in the cold night with her dog, who sprints up and down the road, barking. You were rushing a little, to score some Advil before the market at the gas station closed, but really, the girl came from nowhere. You are banged up yourself, a cut on the inside of your lip, and shaking, and the scene emerges before you in pieces: dog/girl/car/snow/scarf. You can’t wait for it to settle, for now there is getting the girl to a hospital. You don’t own a cell phone to call for an ambulance. You will take the girl yourself.
But loading the girl into a compact car isn’t easy, as you are five foot three, and in your doctor’s words, small boned. Straining, and chanting profanities under your breath, you manage to drag and then slide the girl—who looks to be around fourteen, but weighs as much as you—positioning her with legs bent and head ducked down, so that the door can close without hurting anything. You recall too late the rule about not moving someone when they’re injured.
The dog, you think then, because you can’t just leave him out on the road like this. You yell, Here, boy. Come here, boy, to no effect. You grab a slice of chicken from the plastic container of your dinner leftovers and hold it out in your palm. He walks over, dragging his leash, and eats from your hand. Thatta boy, you say, and then wrestle him into the passenger seat of your car. He has a blue bandanna around his neck, same shade as the girl’s jacket, and tan-colored fur. You try to calm yourself down.
In ten minutes or so you reach the emergency room entrance of the hospital, which lies at the eastern border of what they poignantly call downtown. You run inside and shout, “Can someone please help me? There’s a girl in very bad shape. She’s been hit.” An attendant with greasy blond hair tied back in a rubber band rushes out with a metal gurney. He braces the girl’s neck, places her carefully on the gurney, and rushes her inside.
You follow with the dog. There is dried blood on your hand, which you rinse clean at a water fountain. A few people smile over at you when you sit down in the waiting room. They think it’s your dog.
Eventually a young man in faded green scrubs with a chart in his hand emerges. His sentences come forth in disconnected sounds: The police dropping by . . . a report.
You give him the sequence of events. A flash of something in your headlights. Brakes. A skid. A crashing sound. It doesn’t feel like you’re slurring your words.
“So the dog was running ahead of the girl,” he says.
“I guess. I didn’t see either of them.” If only you’d hit the dog, you think. But it’s good you didn’t hit the dog.
“Where were you coming from?” he asks.
You consider telling him the truth, that you were in a bar, but because you ate at a restaurant called Howell’s on Montgomery Street earlier, you decide to simply say “Howell’s.” You were with two friends, talking about your week of housesitting for your boss, who was on vacation in the Florida Keys. You liked staying in a place with leather couches, a nice sound system, and shelves of clever movies. Even now you’re wearing her stylish red wool coat.
“Did you have anything to drink?” he asks.
“A glass of wine,” you say, and surprisingly enough that seems to satisfy him.
“One,” he says, writing this down, and you say, “Yes.”
People are rushed in, one woman crying in pain and others with small or invisible bruises and limps. A TV plays Fox News, a story about a man donating his kidney to his brother. Beneath the television, a waist-high plastic Santa stands behind a pack of small plastic reindeers. There are other Christmas decorations still up, and a small fake tree adorned with little red ribbons. A young boy asks if he can pet your dog, and you say yes.
“What’s his name?” the boy asks.
“Max,” you say, the name of a hamster your father gave you when you were six.
You consider calling one of the friends you’d been to dinner with, but it’s late now, and they are likely both asleep. There was a lawyer you dated a few times last year, but you’d lost his number, and that had ended awkwardly.
As you wait for the doctors to evaluate the girl, you are waiting too for the blood levels in your brain to shift, though you can’t tell if it’s alcohol that’s causing the dull ache in the front of your head, or if it’s an aftereffect of the collision. There is a formula that has to do with your weight, what you’ve eaten, and how many hours have passed. You recall seeing a chart about this a few years ago on a bulletin board at college, with the message A GOOD TIME TO MISPLACE YOUR KEYS. Your mouth feels dry. It’s hard to swallow. You drink a cup of weak coffee from the dispenser in the waiting room and take several long sips of cold water from the hallway water fountain.
It’s no big deal to drive with a few drinks in you, not in a town without traffic, where you can down a few shots of Patrón at a place like Finnegan’s or The Orchard and still make it home—people do. You’ve had far wilder nights and been fine, although once after a party you did scrape a curb, and after another you pulled into the wrong driveway.
On a dare when you were thirteen, you once told four separate store managers it was your birthday—though it was still months away—and that no one in your family had remembered. You were so convincing in your disappointment (your eyes were disturbingly red) that you walked home that night with a compact disc, two T-shirts, a poster, and a beautiful silver necklace with a locket, which you are wearing now. It was alarmingly easy to do. The key was tricking yourself into believing it. You think of this as you think of what you’ll say to the police.
At the sink in the women’s room you splash cold water on your cheeks, then pat dry your face with a paper towel. You look like you always look. You have no record of unsafe driving, not even a speeding ticket.
An image through the windshield flashes in your mind. The girl’s eyes are less scared than bewildered, as though she’d seen not a car coming at her but a UFO.
“You all right?” There’s a woman at the next sink; you don’t remember her walking in.
“Fine,” you say. “I thought I lost a contact.”
After a second coffee you feel more jittery than sleepy, and nervous, though this doesn’t distinguish you from anyone else in the waiting room.
You can be whatever you need to be here, which is something you’ve always been good at. It was your inborn empathy, your drama teacher said. You’d starred in three plays in high school and another in college for which you’d earned a fawning write-up in a regional newspaper.
For now you focus on your role here. You locate a plastic soup bowl and fill it with water for the dog. It isn’t much, but it feels good to watch him drink.
A couple in their midforties wearing heavy coats and scarves arrive and run to the desk. They have kind faces, you think, and are tightly gripping each other’s hands. You recognize them from when you worked as a cashier at the Price Chopper. You realize you’ve seen their brown-haired daughter before, and vaguely remember slipping her a packet of gum her mother had denied her. The girl was eight or nine. Her mother had been fumbling through her purse and didn’t see the exchange, but the girl’s face had opened into a smile. At that thought a chill crosses your skin. You consider slipping away now, but then the nurse is pointing the parents over to you, and you rise from your chair.
“Thank you so very much for driving Eden here,” the mother says, and then glances at the dog, “and look, you brought Lemon here too.”
The parents thank you for driving their daughter to the hospital and for taking care of Lemon. They are so appreciative you realize they don’t know anything more than that you might have saved their daughter’s life.
You tell them how you worked at the hospital as a candy striper in high school, mostly in the pediatric ward. And then you report what little you’ve heard about the condition of the girl.
At some point in the conversation you tell them—because you have to, and because you figure you are as sober sounding as you are likely to be—“I’m the one who hit your daughter.”
Your declaration confuses them.
“I’m so sorry. She came out of nowhere. I never saw her.”
“It was you?” the father says.
“Dear God,” the mother says, and she sits down.
“It was all ice out there. I wasn’t going very fast.”
“You were going fast enough,” the mother says. “How long have you had your license?”
“I’m twenty-three,” you say.
“Then there’s no excuse.”
“No, you’re right. There isn’t,” you say. “I wish more than anything in the world that I could do something. I wish I could go back wherever she is and do something.” You feel yourself growing upset. “I really don’t want to bother you. But I’d like to stay here until Eden wakes up.”
The father studies your face, then looks over at his wife. They are registering the fact that you look quite a bit like their daughter.
“I want to make sure she’s all right,” you say.
He purses his lips and nods.
“I’m just so very, very, very, very sorry this happened,” you say, close to tears.
His expression softens. “I believe you,” he says.
A doctor emerges with an update for the parents. The good news, he tells them, is that the CAT scan showed no skull fracture and no evidence of internal bleeding.
“She isn’t awake yet,” he says, “but her pupils are reactive, which suggests she might simply have a concussion.”
“So she’s going to be all right,” the father says. He’s trying to read the doctor’s face, which reveals only an affable competence.
“We’ll have to wait and see. There could be some things the CAT scan didn’t catch,” he says, and adds that they may need to take her to another hospital for an MRI. They’ll have to keep wat
ching her closely.
Eden’s left kneecap is shattered, he adds, probably from the impact of the car, and her left shoulder was dislocated, “but we did a pretty good job of putting it back in place.”
The father nods. “We appreciate all you’re doing for us,” he says, and from your seat you nod too in thanks.
It is a record night for accidents, someone at the nurses’ station says. Already there have been three other serious ones in and around town, including a fatal, which is why the police are so slow in getting here. If enough terrible things happen out on the roads, they may forget about you, though you know it’s wrong to hope for this, and really, all you want is for everyone to be fine and healthy and sleeping in a bed, which is where you should be right now. Your headache has eased and your buzz feels weaker now, almost not even there.
Over the next hour and a half there is a heart attack and a bar fight, more people being wheeled in, and more waiting. You talk with the girl’s parents about Eden, who they tell you is an accomplished gymnast, swimmer, and amateur comedienne. She performed stand-up at a school talent competition. “She’ll have some good material about this,” her father says.
He is a short sandy-haired man with the build of a wrestling coach. His eyes pucker at the corners with appealing little wrinkles. You think of your unnervingly handsome father who left when you were eight, and who’d stop in on the odd year to take you out to dinner, then ask you to pay half, or for all of it, explaining in a fatherly voice that he would pay you back next time.