Her voice is quavering.
I walk to the bathroom door, knock softly. “Julie?”
There is no moaning now, only a rhythmic click and shuffle that I associate immediately with a night spent doubled over on the toilet.
“Baby, are you okay in there? Are you hurting?”
Two words sent explosively outward on an expulsion of breath, barely audible.
“What?”
“Go away.” Followed by a gasp of pain.
I turn to Jane. “Get a blanket from the hall closet and put it in the car. My keys are on the table. I’ll be down in a few minutes.” She leaves immediately to follow my orders.
Facing the bathroom door, I say, “Julie. You’re going to have to let me in. You’re going to unlock the door, okay?”
Nothing but a moan and the rhythm of the clicking toilet seat.
The next thing I know, I am in the bathroom. I don’t remember this part, but Tom tells me later that he woke up to pounding (mine) and screaming (Julie’s), and that by the time he made it to the hall in his boxers, my arm had already disappeared up to the shoulder in a ragged hole in the bathroom door, and then I was turning the doorknob from the inside, pulling my arm out, and opening the door. Between my bloody fist and the blood on the bathroom floor, there was blood everywhere, and he turned around and around looking for the intruder who had laid waste to the household.
But however I got in, when I see Julie, I know what’s happening to her right away. I had one myself, after Jane. It’s a painful, bloody thing, though I remember wishing during the worst times that I had lost Julie that way instead of the other.
Tears are streaming down her face, and I wrap a towel around her shoulders and help her to her feet. “I’ll call you from the hospital,” I tell Tom, who is still shaking as he follows us down the stairs and into the kitchen. The last thing I say to him, as he stands by the island in his boxers, is “I didn’t know we even had a gun.” More to remind him he’s holding it than anything else. He stares down at it in his hand as if he hadn’t known either.
“She’s okay,” I tell Tom over the phone from my chair in the waiting area. “Ovarian cysts can be very painful when they rupture. Tell Jane it’s okay.” He protests. “Yes, they’re concerned about the blood too, but they don’t think it’s anything serious. It was mostly mine, from the door. The ultrasound —”
The ultrasound showed a tiny, irregular smudge, already half disintegrating, washed out in the early morning, tiny bits of tissue in a thick red exodus. When she saw what was on the monitor, she went pale and silent, dropped my hand, and said, “Get out.” I got out, but before I did, I saw her face.
She knew.
I end the call with Tom, put the phone back in my purse, and sit. If any of the staff in the emergency department heard me and knew I was lying, they didn’t care enough to give me even a glance. I bet they’ve heard plenty of miscarriages become ovarian cysts on the phone with Dad.
I reach for a magazine and wince at the pain in my bandaged knuckles. Thinking of the clothes I bought her, I grimace. Have the snug jeans become more snug in the past few weeks? Have I failed to notice? I remember the tattoo, remember, above all, what she told the police: “Six months.” Now seven. And hate myself for thinking, She lied, she lied, she lied.
But omissions aren’t necessarily lies, are they? This is what the therapy is for, telling the horrible details that don’t add up but make all the difference. Surely that’s what she does in the therapist’s office for ninety minutes twice a week: talks to a surrogate me — isn’t that the theory? A trained professional onto whom she can project a version of me that, unlike the real me, will be able to handle everything, hold everything, make it all make sense?
The therapist, Carol Morse, suddenly seems like the answer. She can’t tell me anything confidential, of course, but maybe under the circumstances — a pregnancy, a miscarriage, Julie’s health at stake — she’ll find a way to give me some insights into what’s going on with my daughter. There’s so much more to her than I know, but I can handle Julie’s truth. I’ve already had the worst thing happen to me that can ever happen to a parent. And now, in a sense, Julie has too. It’s something we share.
When she’s finally discharged, we walk to the car. Another late night has turned into early morning during our time in the hospital. The sun is coming up, the freeway still clear, the heat just a soft shimmer that promises more to come. We drive for a few minutes in silence.
“It was the guard,” she says. “In the helicopter. I don’t know why I didn’t want to say. I guess because —” She struggles. “It wasn’t really rape.”
Pause. I take in this detail, try to make it fit.
“What I mean is, I offered. I thought he’d be less likely to kill me. I — I didn’t want to tell you. Because I was ashamed. Anyway I thought —” She gasps a little. “I thought I couldn’t get pregnant. My period has never been regular since —” She stops when a tear rolls down my cheek. “Well, ever.”
I nod. This woman is older than twenty-one. I am not as old as she is, and I am forty-six, with lines of mourning etched all over my face that will never go away. But she knew. I saw her face when she looked at the ultrasound screen.
“I love you,” I say, and it’s the truth, the absolute truth. But in this new world, after the miscarriage, it sounds like a lie.
“Mom,” she says, despairingly.
“I won’t tell your father or Jane. This is between us.”
A warm wave of relief radiates from her as she settles back in her seat. This is what she has wanted all along. She looks out the window, and I look at the road ahead, and we are closer in our secret than we have ever been.
woke up to a fresh round of cramps with a strangled cry.
The television was on, but muted; was it the same movie she fell asleep to or a different one? While she was still half asleep, Tom came running down the stairs from her bedroom, which he was using as an office during the daytime while they figured out where to move his desk. This made her nervous, but she didn’t want to say anything about it.
Looking at him now, standing at the bottom of the stairs, she briefly remembered him from last night, holding a gun. She wondered where it was now.
“Did I hear you calling? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a bad dream.” At first she’d dreamed of Cal, but it got bad near the end, when the cramps started rocketing through her body louder and louder. She couldn’t remember the worst of it with Tom standing there, just a feeling of dirt all around her mouth and the colors yellow and red — the shades of the afghan, she noted with disgust, throwing it off her. Now that she was awake, the sharp pain in her abdomen was already subsiding to a dull, empty ache.
“Can I make you some tea?”
“I’d like to get out of the house.” The air in here was somehow both cold and stifling, and the big windows made her feel like some kind of specimen under glass. Or maybe it was the way they all watched her. “Can I take the car?”
“You mother left a few minutes ago. Jane’s got mine,” he said swiftly. She could tell the idea of her driving without a license still made him uncomfortable. “Your mom should be back soon. She was just going by her office for some late term papers. Why don’t you keep resting for a while? You could watch another movie.”
She swiveled her feet to the ground. “It’s okay. I’ll just take a walk.”
He watched her doubtfully as she pushed herself to standing. Her legs felt quivery, as if her feet were still in the stirrups. “I’ll be fine, Dad,” she