Face Of The Monster

29 - Raft

What an enormous, stifling body my grief has.

I walk into rooms and they fall silent, its long, powerful arms asphyxiating conversations. When I close the door and step inside, a blanket of stillness settles over my house. People speak to me in whispers, touch me with hands like airy clouds.

No one seems to understand that my grief is not singular, but plural. Sadness squared. Loneliness doubled. No one except Cande, at least.

I cry myself to sleep every night, but no one comes to comfort me. I suppose they think it's normal, that a grieving wife should sob into her pillow at night, should bite down on the fabric to try and suppress her wails. But I can never stop. My brain conjures half-wakeful visions of the love I lost, her long, sturdy arms cradling me to sleep. Then she snaps away, leaving me even further mired in my grief for her.

New York. New York, New York. San Diego, California. A grave plot in Mount Hope Cemetery. Is there any difference at all?

I begged her, got on my knees and begged her, to stay with me. To stay in touch. To write, at least, to send me a bit of paper that smelled like her, but she told me I was embarrassing myself. She told me to get up.

Is she on the plane by now? Has she landed in New York? Is she in a cab, watching her new home whip past like the luminous stripes of a hulking monster? Is she closing her eyes and thinking of me?

A selfish idea, of course. Phoebe has other things to be concerned about. She very well might never think of me again.

There's a knock at the door, short and soft. I don't answer. The door creaks open anyway. It's my daughter, still in her pajamas with my dog in one hand and a plate in the other. I groan, turning away from her. They won't stop forcing me to eat. It seems to be all they do anymore. Here, Emma, here's some soup for you, here, Lindsey dropped off this casserole, have some, here, Mom, I made you macaroni and cheese, just have a few bites. Everything tastes like it's been regurgitated.

Cande approaches me with quiet footsteps. All the kids keep a distance from me, now, as if afraid. It isn't that I smell -- I know that much. In the books, the grieving wives retreat into their corner of misery and forget to shower or feed their kids. For me, it's been the opposite. I stand under the scalding hot water for hours until the tap goes cold. For just a moment after I get out, I feel clean.

I've made sure the children aren't neglected, either. My mother is here, big and loud as ever. She asked if she could come visit, but it wasn't a real question. She was going to show up whether I said yes or no. Now, she's in the kitchen making lunch for the kids and Isabel and I. Ricky's mother packed her bags and went home the moment mine appeared.

I love my mother, but in a distant, over-the-phone sort of the way. I don't want to see her, don't want her begging me to talk to her. Why doesn't she understand that I only want to sleep? Is that so difficult?

Duckie's birdlike body drops onto the bed beside me. His warmth is faint, quiet. I let him throw himself over my limp arm, whimpering at me with his belly up. I give his pink stomach a half hearted rub.

"Mom?" Cande says. I wince at her voice. Every sound, every word, feels like an attack these days. Birds in the trees, pots and pans clanking in the kitchen, tires against the road. I wish, day in and day out, for a dark, silent world. "Nana made a sandwich for you."

"Okay." I pull Duck into my arms, lay him down on my stomach. He's so old, so tired. We know each other like no one else knows us.

Cande doesn't leave. She hovers beside my bed, her lips hesitating into a word. "Mom? Can we talk for a minute?"

I don't want to talk for a minute, but the rational part of my brain is still alive and it reminds me, she is a teenage girl who just lost her father. The least I can do is listen to her grief. I pat the bed beside me and she sits down.

"I just wanted to ask you something," Cande says.

"What?" I murmur. I can't look at her. Her face brings up great waves of guilt in my stomach. Her father is there in her eyebrows and her too-big nose and her pleading brown eyes. It's all Ricky, all Ricky who I couldn't love quite well enough, who I let go of too soon.

Cande reaches over to pet Duck, missing the way I flinch when her hand comes toward me. "Nana said something this morning," Cande says.

". . . Okay?"

"She says you're pregnant. Or, she thinks you are. She says you're acting like it, whatever that means. And she said she hears you throwing up in the middle of the night sometimes. I heard her telling Auntie Claire on the phone, too."

My blood freezes in my veins. Cold sweat coats my skin. I want to murder that woman. I avert my eyes from my daughter, hoping she can't see me shaking with rage. "Don't listen to her. She doesn't know what she's talking about."

"But . . . but I heard you! That night, with Dad--" her voice breaks, shocking me. She didn't cry at the funeral. Only stood with her head down, looking angry. "That night with Dad in the bathroom, and he said you were pregnant and you didn't deny it. You just started crying."

My heart doesn't seem to be pumping blood any longer. I feel frozen. "Why were you listening to our private conversations?" I demand.

"It wasn't like that," Cande says.

But I don't let her finish. "First you break into my computer and read my writing, now you're telling me you were eavesdropping on your father and me? What else were you doing that I don't know about?"

"Mom, you can get mad at me later, okay? Right now, I just want to know if you're pregnant. Please? I won't tell anyone."

"Looks like your Nana's already taken care of that . . ."

"So you are?"

"Don't tell your brother."

Cande looks me over, eyes bright with concern. "What are you going to do with it?" She asks.

"What do you think I should do with it?"

"Keep it."

"Keep it?"

She nods. Her hand flinches, then she reaches out and places it on my stomach. I let her, my skin crawling at the feel of human touch. "Don't you think that after losing Dad, gaining someone new will help us?"

I sigh. She touches my stomach, touches her little sibling. "Maybe it will," I say. "Maybe."