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I try to swallow again, but my throat is too dry; my Adam’s apple only jerks.
“That was the last fight we had. I told her we should wait to paint, and she got so upset, screaming at the top of the stairs, clutching at her belly…I was scared she might fall. Scared she might get so upset it would hurt the baby somehow… After that, I let her do whatever she wanted.
“We stopped fighting, but the connection between us only deteriorated. She was trying to hide some of her strangest behavior from me, and I was trying to hide it from everyone else. I thought everything would be okay once the baby was born…”
I choke on my own bitter laugh.
“What a lie I told myself. When James was born, it got a thousand times worse. Lila’s mother and sister visited—she was talking a mile a minute, full of energy like she hadn’t just given birth. She wouldn’t let anyone else hold the baby and kept pacing the room with James in her arms.
“Her mom pulled me aside, tried to talk to me in the kitchen—I said Lila was fine, just excited. After they left, she demanded to know what we talked about. I tried to explain without getting anyone in trouble, but she was furious and after that, she wouldn’t let anyone visit. She said they were trying to take James away from her…”
“Was she upset that he was a boy?” Remi asks.
“I’m not sure…she was quiet after the ultrasound, and she never repainted the nursery, she left it pink…but she seemed happy, and she started buying boy’s clothes…”
My guts feel like bricks. That time is a cold, black well in my mind—no matter what direction I tried to swim, I only kept sinking…
“She was fixated on James; she’d barely let him out of her sight… She’d feed him and diaper him and bathe him and change his clothes, sometimes several times a day, different outfits for breakfast, lunch, and dinner… But other times, she’d stand over his crib and stare at him while he slept, and her face would get blank… I’d say,What are you thinking about?And one time she said…she said,Sometimes when I’m standing at the top of the stairs, I’m scared he’s going to slip over the railing…like my arms will just let go…and I knew, I fucking knew, Remi, that something was wrong.”
Remi’s round blue eyes gaze up at me, full of sadness and sympathy.
Sympathy I don’t deserve.
I put my hands on her shoulders like I’ll push her away, but I can’t quite seem to do it. I’m so fucking weak.
“My son lived for thirty-two days, and every single one of those days I was terrified for him. I stopped going to work, I stopped going anywhere…I’d wake up again and again through the day and the night, every time Lila got up to feed him, I’d creep out of bed, too, and wait just around the corner, listening, sometimes peeking in…and she’d always just be sitting there, rocking him, nursing him, taking care of him like the best possible mom. But I knew, I fucking knew he wasn’t safe…”
Remi’s arms tighten around my waist. She’s trembling slightly, but she doesn’t let go.
I close my eyes and force myself to finish.
“One afternoon, she was nursing him, reading a book. I was reading on the other couch. The next thing I heard was screaming, and my head jerked up…
“Lila came running out of the bathroom naked, dripping water on the floor, saying,He drowned, he drowned in the bath…”
Remi holds me so tightly, it’s like her arms are the only things keeping me together against the maelstrom in my chest that wants to tear me apart—guilt and regret and the bitter, black anger against myself…
“He drowned,” I repeat. I make myself say it out loud. “My son drowned, and it was my fault because I fell asleep. And even more my fault because I didn’t pick him up and carry him out of that house the instant I saw Lila staring down at him with emptiness in her eyes.”
“You think she hurt him?” Remi whispers.
“I don’t know!” I howl, clutching at my own face, my nails digging into my cheeks. “I don’t know, and I’ll never fucking know. She said she fell asleep, too; she said it was an accident. But when she looked at me, all I could see in her eyes was guilt. I couldn’t know what really happened…because I didn’t trust her anymore.”
“I’m so sorry, Dane—“
“Don’t apologize!” I bellow. “Don’t give me sympathy! It’s all my fault, every lie I told myself, every cruel thing I said to her…it’s my fault she got so fucked up in the first place. It’s my fault she had a baby to try to set things right between us. And it’s my fault I didn’t protect him—that was my one job, to keep him safe, and I failed. I fucking failed him…”
Remi shakes her head silently, tears running down her cheeks. I am trying to push her away now because I can’t stand her sympathy, I don’t deserve it, but she clings to me, stronger than she looks.
“And I failed Lila worst of all.” My voice is hoarse, tears dripping off my jaw onto Remi’s hair. “Because it really might have been an accident, a fucking horrible accident…but I blamed her. When she looked to me for comfort, all she found was judgement.”
I have to tell Remi this last part though it twists like a knife in my guts.
“I falsified the death certificate—got an old friend to help me out. He wrote that James died of meningitis. I didn’t want anyone to know what really happened. But when I told Lila…it was like admitting I thought she did it on purpose. The look on her face—it was pure betrayal. She stopped talking about James. She stopped talking to me about anything. Stopped eating. Stopped going for walks…”
Lila pulled away from me, and I let her go. Instead of turning to each other in our greatest pain, we closed up like clams and isolated in our hollowed-out house.
I’d never heard silence like when James was gone. He’d only been there a month, but my ears were already tuned to his little gurgles and cries. The emptiness without him was like the barrenness of outer space.
