Tenacious Magic

 

She’d been standing at the sink washing the carrots when she heard his car pull into the driveway and she’d stopped to dry her hands. He was early. That was unusual for him and it irritated her for some reason. Best to get on with it.

 

She met him at the door, hands still damp, but with a kiss ready for him, just on the left side of his mouth. She took his jacket.

 

He looked awkward as if he were too large for that small hallway and she got him a beer before she continued with the carrots, chopping them methodically in the thick quiet. He spun the beer can slowly on the table, staring at but not registering the circle of condensation that dribbled in its footprint. The sound of the can scraping wetly on the table almost kept time with her chop-chop-chopping and it felt enough like conversation. This went on.

 

By the time the meat was tender, dancing in the pot, and the potatoes and carrots had joined the jig she had had enough. She sat down next to him for some reason, ignoring the seat across the table. In response he leaned back in his chair a little, only taking his eyes off the beer can briefly.

 

To tell the truth, he knew what was coming because he had smelled it on the wind for weeks now. He’d done his best to ignore it, but the distinct aroma of borrowed time had haunted him with every interaction. It had first arrived, faintly, two and a half weeks ago when she’d taken the time to remove and place her earrings on his nightstand before she allowed him to make love to her. He caught a whiff of it on the oversized sweatshirt she wore to the movies with him last weekend. This week she seemed to forget her cell phone at home a lot, and the stench of it hung like smoke over everything he tried to do. By the time she’d called to invite him to Sunday dinner he could barely take a breath.   

 

She was agitated, impatient, but she sat motionless for a minute, almost shimmering, like water in those last few seconds before it boils. Briefly she considered suggesting a coaster for the can, but that seemed moot now. She stroked the fringe on her placemat quietly, deliberately. In that moment he thought she might not have made up her mind and right then it occurred to her to wonder why exactly had he come early? She almost asked him, and she turned suddenly towards him as if to do so, but she stopped herself. She did not want to be derailed, and she knew his answer, if he told the whole truth, would do exactly that.

 

She looked at his profile then, his gaze fixed so intently on the beer can, turning it with such concentrated effort, as though everything might depend on it. He was there, but he wasn’t there; not putting up a fight, but also not even able to meet her gaze. From that angle, with the light hitting it just right, she could see the lovely soft down running all along the top of his cheekbones and on up. He was a beautiful boy. Sometimes a sullen, petulant, exasperatingly unreliable boy, sometimes an enchanting, endlessly fascinating wunderkind, but always, always, always a boy. The urgency came back in a hot rush with the full force of her intention. She was tired of carrying him and tired of caring for him. She could feel it simmering now, this close to boiling over. She should just do it now. Get it over with. Why wait?

 

He did not look up. He just blinked those long feminine lashes and the room held its breath except for supper bubbling happily away on the stove. He had to know, didn’t he? Still he came? And he came early. That never happens. Was he just going to sit there, waiting to be told? Ready to take whatever she dished out? She looked down at her own fingertips still mechanically arranging and rearranging the fringe on the placemat in front of her. Could this maybe wait at least till after dinner? There was an open bottle of Cabernet on the counter after all, and the stew smelled wonderful…

 

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I’ve been trying to explain this to them for a while. They’ve had me locked up in here for a while, and I keep trying to explain, but they’re not really listening. I can tell. Even if they were, they can’t understand. But I can’t stop trying.

 

I remember when she was born. I almost choked on it, how much I loved her I mean. I just sat there and stared at her when she slept. Mostly you hear that new moms are tired, and they can’t get enough sleep, but not me. I would stay up and just stare at her. Like having her near me was so distracting I couldn’t sleep. She was so perfectly perfect. Everything.

 

And I always had to have her near me. I remember I was worried a lot, after I found that out, about how would I go back to work, you know? How was I going to sit at that desk and answer that phone and not have her near me? I had only three months with her off work and I already made arrangements for the daycare, so that wasn’t the problem, but how was I going to take her there? How was I just going to get in the car, and drive her there and then just drop her off like some dry cleaning, and drive off? How was I going to do that?

 

It worked out, though, that I didn’t have to do that because a month and a half into it they told me about her. They told me about how she – they just told me that she was sick and they couldn’t fix her and how it was going to be. There was more to it than that, but I stopped listening I think because…I don’t need to think about that now. I just stopped listening for a second and they got quiet but I remember it seemed like the room got really, really loud. At least it got loud for me and that loud followed me all the way home.

 

Rob shouldn’t really be blamed for any of this. He wasn’t planning on it and he didn’t carry her, in his belly, for eight months and seven days. He wasn’t there when she was kept under the lights with the machines hooked up and that constant smell of the NICU. The nurses looked at me like they felt sorry for me because I was alone there, waiting. But I didn’t want him there anyway. I didn’t want him around when I was pregnant and I sure as hell didn’t want him around when she got here early and there was so much to think about and so much praying that needed to be done. Rob was not even a question mark for me. He was a period. Full stop.

 

So, you see, that’s why I didn’t really sleep or even need to sleep when she finally came home with me. They thought everything would be alright, and, like I said, she was so perfectly perfect. I’ve never seen anything so perfect. I couldn’t get close enough to her, I couldn’t stare long enough. I just wanted to breath her back into me. I would kiss that soft baby head and smell her breath and put her tiny little hand in my mouth sometimes, just to have that sensation of her in me. And she would move her little fingers around in my mouth just like she used to kick in my belly except this time I could look into her eyes while she wiggled those fingers and I was so full, inside of me.  I hadn’t really ever had a home that you could call that, so she was that for me. She was my home. I seriously don’t know why God gave her to me, because she was so so soft and I am so hard. Not mean. Just hard. I mean, compared to her.

 

After they told me she was sick I took her straight home and I started my praying and I added the extra part of the prayer, like I had done at the NICU before. The part where I asked God to make it so he could hear someone like me because I was praying, really, for her and she hadn’t ruined anything yet. She hadn’t made it so He couldn’t hear her, like I had. So I added that bit, because it worked before in those first weeks and I was thinking it would work this time, again. She was so beautiful and when she looked at me with those eyes, I could feel Him looking at me, so I knew she was an angel for sure, but for some reason, she was an angel who needed me instead of the other way around.

 

I didn’t care what it took from me or of me, everything I was, was hers now, and I had one thing only to do and that was take care of her. When I fed her, and it was hard at first to get her to the breast, but when I fed her it was like the whole thing came full circle and I could understand why God would trust someone like me to take care of someone like her. So I could see it right then.

 

We did everything, me and the doctors. We did everything we were supposed to but it didn’t work. It was a Thursday when I woke up and she was cold, right there beside me. She was perfect but she was cold. And still. I wasn’t expecting that and I remembered that I shouldn’t have slept so this might have been a failing on my part. If I had been awake, I mean. But I wasn’t going to fail her again.

 

First I put her inside my t-shirt and I was rubbing her back really hard and pressing her against my bare breasts and I knew that she must have just gone, just then, like I could still catch her and rub her back into her little perfect body if I just warmed her up fast enough. When she was in me, it was my body that kept her warm and safe. It was my body that made hers. My body had somehow managed to collect what little bits of beauty and love that still lived in me and pulled them all together into this perfect little creature and then I had held her, safe and perfect in my belly. I did everything right for the only time ever in my life. With her, I did everything right.

 

It was letting her out of me that was the problem. She came out too soon and since she’s been out in the world I tried my best to keep her as safe as she was before, but it couldn’t be done. Just being out in the world is enough to kill you, I guess. But I’m not going to make that mistake again.

 

This is the part that I keep explaining but they don’t get it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her tiny body get sunk into the cold dirt far away from her mother. I’m not leaving her out there in the weather all cold and frightened and alone. I’m not letting her little body fall apart like that. I just have to get her back inside me where she’s safe. How can they not see that?

 

They were all acting like there was something unholy or unnatural going on when they got in. I tried to ignore them but it was hard to do after a while, you know, and then they had a key. She was just tiny but she was a lot to take back in and when she left her body behind there wasn’t much time. She was still so soft though, when I started. I could smell her baby smell, and I swear it felt like taking communion. It felt holy. I remember that part. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and now, taking her back into me, where she’d always belonged, there was nothing wrong in it. It was all perfectly right. And it was like every time I swallowed she was more a part of me than she was before. Like she could go on then, through me, if I could just get her back in my body. And this way I got closer to her, closer than we’d been since she was born. We would be one person and she would be the best part of me. She would live in me, and she could make up for me. I would take every bit of her, every drop of blood and my body would build with it, build her inside of me again. I didn’t want to let my little baby down when she needed me. And I would have managed it, it’s just that my jaw got so tired and it was harder to do than it sounds. Than you would think. She was such a tiny baby. It took longer than I had and they stopped me before I could finish.

 

Now they have me here and they won’t give her back to me. I don’t even know where she is. They won’t let me have her so I can finish and I won’t stop screaming until they give her back to me. I won’t stop until she’s all the way home.

 

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Part of it is just unshakable faith. Belief in what is right. Or rather, that what is, is right. Must be.

 

I don’t think I heard the noise, but I knew. I didn’t even hurry. That’s how well I knew.

 

When I got there, the gate was open and the tracks led into the forest. He was gone.

 

I did then what I always do when this happens. I closed the gate.

 

I did not go after him. I did not follow the tracks out into the darkness. I did not prepare for his possible return. I simply closed the gate.

 

It’s 1:47 in the morning and pitch black except for the snow falling silently. I’m standing here in nothing but my nightgown and my boots. I’m standing here alone in the dark and I am telling myself over and over

 

This gate is closed.

He could not have escaped, because clearly the gate is closed, yet there is no horse.

The gate is closed and there is no horse.

I say it again and again like a mantra

I check the gate. Yes, it is closed.

I check the pen. No, there is not a horse.

Until finally it all adds up.

There must never have been a horse.

I must have imagined the whole thing.

There was never a horse at all.

 

And if I do what I always do, I will walk slowly to the house and leave my boots dripping in the entryway as usual. I will leave the damp nightgown in the hamper, climb into bed and lie there shaking until I sleep.

 

In the morning it will seem like a dream to me. The snow will have erased all traces of the escape.

 

Any remaining evidence of the horse --any riding gear, food left in the bin -- I will chalk up to foolish hope and unshakable faith. Preparations made for a horse that I dearly wanted but never had.

 

 

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