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Tilting my car seat back and wondering how someone could feel so full and so empty at once.
“Are you okay?” Walker’s voice sounds a bit frightened.
I open my eyes and find myself clutching my abdomen as I lie in the fetal position. The grass pokes the side of my face as I push myself up until I’m sitting again. My mind keeps flashing back to the inside of a car. The words tilt your seat back echoing endlessly.
What does it mean? Does it have to do with how I ended up driving out here to the middle of nowhere?
“Cass? Are you okay?”
My eyes shoot up to meet Walker’s. “What did you call me?”
He looks confused, possibly even frightened, by the intense look in my eyes. “Cassidy. That’s…your name, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “No, you called me Cass. Why did you call me that?”
He narrows his eyes at me as if he’s sizing me up. “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem…different.”
I get to my feet and stare into Walker’s blue eyes for what feels like an eternity. I know there’s something to be gleaned there. Finally, he looks down at the grass, and I shake my head in dismay. Something is not right.
I turn around and glance in the direction of the meadow, where I heard the laughter of a small girl. My stomach is in knots as I attempt to piece it all together.
“He called me Cass,” I whisper to myself. “Cass. Cass. Cass. Cass.”
I repeat the name over and over again, trying to figure out why it feels so familiar. Carter calls me Rabbit. Lina calls me Cassidy. My mother calls me sweetheart. But there’s someone else. Someone else who calls me Cass.
I turn around and stare at Walker again. “Did you call me Cass, or did I imagine that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t think so. But I can’t be too sure.”
The way he seems to shrink under my scrutiny makes me feel like a total jerk. But I know what I heard.
Suddenly, I have an unexplainable urge to race toward the easel to see what he painted. As I run across the grass, Walker follows closely behind me. Despite my injured foot, I make it there first. But when I see the canvas, I’m even more confused.
It’s not a painting of me. It’s another painting of The Last Supper.
Ask Me Anything
Four months earlier
Lina opened the front door of our townhouse for me. “Watch your step,” she said as I clumsily traversed the threshold.
The black console table in the foyer was piled high with Amazon packages—I tried to fill the hole in my heart with an online shopping spree a couple of days ago. The coat rack next to the table stood empty. Marc wasn’t back from the office yet. Today was supposed to be his last day as a lawyer. I thought I’d get a jump on the celebration by getting my first and only tattoo.
It took a while to find a tattoo shop that would take my business. You’re not supposed to get inked while you’re pregnant. But I finally found a little place downtown with an artist who’d loved my father’s books as a child. When I described the design I wanted tattooed on my arm, she agreed to help me out.
I didn’t expect the pain and the sight of my blood being continually wiped away to make me so queasy. I managed to hold in my vomit until the tattoo was finished, but I didn’t think I could drive myself home. When I told Lina where to pick me up, she was significantly less angry with me than I expected.
“You have to drink lots of water,” she said, guiding me toward the staircase. “I’ll take you upstairs so you can rest.”
As I climbed each step very carefully, Lina stayed right behind me. “You’re my best friend,” I said, my voice thin and raspy from the vomiting.
“Marc is your best friend,” she replied. “I’m your number two.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t know him. We’re basically friends with benefits.”
She guided me toward the bedroom, passing the nursery on the way. “You painted the baby’s room?”
“Marc did.”
“Would a friend with benefits paint your baby’s room for you?”
I shrugged as I entered the bedroom and saw the unmade bed where Marc and I had made love this morning. “Maybe he would if he’d knocked me up.”
Lina dropped her purse on top of the gray velvet armchair in the corner. “Get under the covers. I’ll bring you a barf bowl.” She always loved ordering me around. “Are you hungry? I can order something.”
Lina couldn’t cook a pot of chicken soup if her life depended on it. But no one could order takeout or delivery as expertly as she could. Leave Lina in charge of the food for an event, and we’d end up with a sommelier and a caterer carrying a list of everyone’s food allergies and preferences. She had at least a dozen of her favorite Philly restaurants on speed dial. She’d always hated our trips to rural Pennsylvania to visit our grandmother, because there were no McDonald’s chicken nuggets nearby.
Lina, Carter, and I all had our special “needs,” which were taken care of by my father’s wealth. Lina had a live-in housekeeper who cooked all of the family’s meals. Carter had multiple rental properties across the city, which generated enough income for him and his boyfriend to travel ten months out of the year. I had the luxury to work a job where I was underpaid, and my husband could still quit his job, all while having a baby on the way.
I understood how privileged I was. I could afford the best therapist in the city for dealing with pregnancy loss. I could afford to take unpaid family leave from my underpaid teaching job. But I still couldn’t afford to demand my husband tell me all his secrets.
I couldn’t even explain to myself why I knew that kind of demand would be the end of us. I just knew. If I pushed Marc, that would be it.
That was what made me get the tattoo.
I knew it would start a fight. A bad one. And I needed a reason to bare my teeth. To dare him to leave.
“Can you just bring me some water and leave?” I asked Lina. “Marc will be home soon. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here when he sees this,” I said, holding up my bandaged arm.
She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder, then leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Okay. But you’d better call me tonight. I need to know you’re okay.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
She smiled and set off toward the door.
“Lina?”
She stopped in the doorway and turned around, her eyebrows raised in a question. “Yeah?”
“Thank you for being the best sister in the world.”
She shook her head as the corners of her eyes glistened with fresh tears. “I’ve…always felt guilty for having so many kids.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Like I w
as just flaunting it. Just popping out one after another.”
“Don’t do that,” I pleaded. “Please don’t do that. I don’t want you to feel that way.”
She continued shaking her head as she wiped away tears. “I don’t want you to hurt. And I see how being around the kids hurts you. I don’t ever say anything, but I see it. I see the…the hurt in your eyes. And I can’t help but feel responsible.”
“My pain is not your responsibility, Lina,” I replied, sitting up despite the slight dizziness. “Marc and I have dealt with this the best way we know how. We haven’t done a very good job. Obviously. But my pain is not your fault. My pain is my grief. It’s as simple and complicated as that.”
She watched me for a moment before she came over and hugged me tightly. “You’re the strongest person I know,” she whispered in my ear, then she stood up and brushed my hair out of my face. “I’ll be right back with your water.”
As I watched her leave, I considered following after her, so we could continue our conversation. I missed seeing Lina all the time, like I used to before the first stillbirth. But grief doesn’t just change you, it changes your relationships. And Lina and I were no longer as close as we used to be. Maybe we never would be.
“Cass, wake up.”
My eyelids fluttered open, and I squinted at the bright light. “What time is it?”
Marc smiled as he set a glass of water on the nightstand. “It’s ten a.m. You’ve been sleeping for seventeen hours. I thought you’d probably want to wake up.”
I looked to the left, toward Marc’s nightstand, and saw the digital clock indeed read 10:14 a.m. “Oh, my God. I…must have been really tired.”
Marc sat on the edge of the bed. “I called your OB to make sure there wasn’t something wrong, maybe blood loss or contamination from the tattoo, but he said that your body was probably just recovering from the stress of the situation. He assured me everything should be fine.”
