It’s now or never. And one thing I know for sure – never isn’t an option.
“Yeah. It’s all true,” I admit.
“Oh, Trey.” Her throat hitches and her eyes are brimming with sadness. She steps closer, touches my arm. Rubs her fingertips against my skin. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to tell me about them? About Will, Jake and Drew.”
I stumble. Like I’ve been hit. But she grabs my hand, steadies me. “You remember their names?” I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she remembers.
“Yes,” she says with a nod. She links her fingers through mine, leads me to the nearby stoop. I follow her, and the feel of her hand in mine is extraordinary. She sits down, turns to me, takes both of my hands in hers. I watch her, amazed that she’s not looking away, that she wants to listen. That she’s not going anywhere. That she cares. Deeply.
“Tell me.”
So I begin at the beginning.
My parents were young when they had me, just finishing their residencies. I was the only child for a long time, but when I was twelve they were ready to expand, they said. They were established, with a well-respected plastic surgery practice that doubled as a mint. They were raking it in and ready to become a bigger family.
Soon my mom was pregnant with another boy. All was well and her pregnancy was picture perfect. But at four and a half months, I heard her wake up shrieking at four in the morning, then my dad rushed into my room, told me he was taking her to the hospital and that Mrs. Fitzpatrick down the hall would come babysit.
I didn’t go back to sleep that night.
I stared at the clock and waited. When morning came, Mrs. Fitzpatrick told me to get ready for school. She took me to the deli at the end of the street, bought me a bagel, and walked me to school, even though I knew the route myself, thank you very much. When the day ended, my dad was waiting for me on the steps of the school.
He shook his head, gave me a sad smile, and then when we were far enough away from the school he wrapped me in the kind of hug you give when you’ve lost someone and you want to hold on dearly to those you have left.
“We had a son. He was too small to live,” my father said, choking out the words, his eyes rimmed with red.
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
“Her water broke too soon.”
“So, where’s the baby?”
“She was only twenty weeks pregnant. He couldn’t survive.”
I was glad we were blocks away from my school. I didn’t want anyone to see me cry, but I could feel the tears prick at the back of my eyes, threatening me.
“What did you name him?”
My father tilted his head as if the question didn’t make sense.
“Did he have a name?”
“No, Trey. We didn’t name him.”
“Oh,” I said, and that’s when my chest felt like a dark, black pit. He was nameless. That was worse than death. I grabbed hard on my dad’s arm, desperate for him to understand. “We need to name him, Dad. He needs a name. He has to have a name.”
“Okay,” my dad said, holding his hands out wide, a helpless gesture. “What should we name him?”
“Can we name him Jake?”
“Sure,” he said in an empty voice. “We can do that. We can name him Jake.”
Then my father broke down and cried on Madison Avenue, falling to his knees on the sidewalk and clutching me, like I was the anchor.
“You miss Jake, don’t you?” I asked.
He nodded against my chest.
My parents tried again, and my mom made it further, but at her seven-month appointment the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. She went to the hospital that day to deliver the baby, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick brought me over in the evening so I could meet my second brother. I held him, the baby boy named Drew who was wrapped in a standard hospital baby blanket, with fingers the size of matches bent into a miniature little fist and a heart that no longer beat.
The next day, Mrs. Fitzpatrick came by the apartment with flowers and sympathy and a year later with wallpaper samples and paint chips since my mom was pregnant once more. I was fifteen then, and this was their last shot. My mom was optimistic, bright, cheery. Third time’s a charm, she said, as Mrs. Fitzpatrick helped her pick out colors for the baby’s room.
When Will was born – alive, red, screaming at the top of his lungs – everyone erupted into cheers. But soon after he was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect and given only a few days to live.
The doctors told my mom, “At least we know now why you keep losing the babies.”
As if that gave her solace.
We brought Will home to give him “comfort care.” We were hidden away in the apartment, on some sort of death watch. The clock was ticking, and we were simply unwinding the minutes until he died.
I was the one holding him.
I didn’t let go for the longest time.
Then, my mom cleaned out the baby’s room, threw away the crib, ripped off the teddy bear border from the wall, and turned it into a cold, sleek, modern office, with two desks where my parents buried themselves in medical journals each night.
The expansion plans had failed, and so it was time to move on.
Dust off your hands. Don’t look back. Don’t even breathe a word.
I planted the trees myself. In Abingdon Square Park alone, late one night, the moon and the city my only company. The only one who wanted to remember.
And if they were going to numb themselves, I figured I could too. When I turned sixteen, I started visiting Mrs. Fitzpatrick, ostensibly for her home-baked cookies and for her keen interest in talking about feelings and all the things my parents would never discuss. Like that card with the saying about the stars in the sky. She looked at it with me. She talked about it with me. She said she believed too. Then, we stopped talking about feelings because I was done with them. I wanted to feel other things. I wanted to feel her. I wanted to numb myself in pleasure, in women, in sex. I wanted nothing but euphoria, but never-fucking-ending ecstasy. I wanted the opposite to take the pain away. She taught me everything I knew, and sent me off on the merry path of curves, and breasts, and sixty ways to make a woman scream your name at the top of her lungs. I worked my way through the building and the beauties and the cougars and I made them feel all the highs that only losing yourself in sex could ever bring.
Her cheeks are stained with tears. Her lower lip is quivering. She’s swiping at her cheeks, trying to wipe the evidence of her sadness away. But it’s futile.
She blinks several times, swallows, and says in a broken, choppy voice, “I am so sorry.”
But her words don’t stick. They bounce off me, like I’m made of rubber. It’s not her though. It’s me. To tell that story I had to disengage. Disconnect. That’s the only way I could get it out without choking on a river of tears. I barely feel rooted to the steps right now. It’s as if my vision went blurry, and I’m seeing fuzzy, silver streaks before my eyes. I’m a ghost, floating above, watching this scene transpire from another plane of reality, from one where I can’t be hurt.
She brings her hand to her chest, and her shoulders are shaking. The tears fall like a fucking rainstorm now, unleashed, and it’s so strange to watch someone else’s reaction. I’ve been living my own reaction for years, inside of me and locked up in my head, and now this story that’s only been told in hieroglyphics on my body is someone else’s to own, to process, to feel. It’s as if I’ve given her a piece of my heart, and said there, do with it what you will. I’m frozen in time, waiting, to see if she’ll kick my heart away.