turned toward him in slow motion, her heart pounding. She squeezed her hands into fists, her arms stiff and close to her sides. She opened and closed her fists several times and took a couple of deep breaths before she spoke, “Let them think I’m crazy.”
Even though her voice was barely audible, it was strong and clear. Eric squinted and tilted his head in her direction, straining to hear what she had said.
“What did you say?” he asked, almost afraid that he’d heard her correctly the first time.
“I said, let them think I’m crazy!” she repeated, saying each word more loudly than the last. By the time she finished the sentence, she was shouting. The priest, who was getting into his car at that moment turned and looked in their direction. He froze in place, balanced precariously between offering some assistance or driving away as quickly as possible. He offered up a fervent prayer, ducked into his Volkswagen Beetle and slowly inched his way away from the painful scene.
Eric stared at her, not knowing what to do or what to say. He looked over toward the cars by the curb and hoped the people inside of them hadn’t heard his wife’s outburst. Finally he just said, “Annie.” He looked at her helplessly, hoping she’d snap out of this strange behavior. “You’ll feel better if you get away from here.”
“I’m tired of being told how I feel or how I should feel! My baby is in that casket -- my baby! He’s so tiny and all alone. I can’t leave him. I just can’t.”
She was sobbing now, struggling to breathe in between each word. Annie stood there alone, her arms folded across her chest. She winced when her arms brushed her engorged breasts that Eric had helped her wrap with an ACE bandage. Her milk had come in that morning, filling her up with sweet milk that no baby would drink.
One of the nurses had explained that when the milk came in, it would be very painful for a day or two until it dried up on its own. “With no baby nursing, the milk production will stop by itself,” she had said in a very matter of fact way. “It can be rather uncomfortable, so sometimes it helps to bind them with an ACE bandage. Any questions?” She looked up from her list of topics to go over with new mothers, peering at Annie over the half-glasses that were perched on the end of her nose. She seemed perplexed to see Annie staring back at her with a horrified expression on her face. The nurse shook her head and smiled, “Oh honey -- don’t worry about it -- you’ll be just fine. It’s just what happens if you decide not to breast feed, which by the way, is the best thing to do for your baby. So, let’s see -- what’s next here? Oh yes --” she looked up at Annie, “what type of formula will you be feeding your baby?”
“My baby died,” Annie said softly. She gazed out the window at white fluffy clouds on a background of brilliant blue sky. She swore the clouds were taking the shape of a baby sleeping on its tummy. She blinked hard and looked again only to find it was gone.
“What was that, hon?” the nurse asked distractedly as she organized her paperwork.
Suddenly she stopped, her head snapping up to look at Annie. “Oh my God -- you had the stillborn, didn’t you? Oh dear - I am so sorry! Oh, you poor thing - I am so sorry! I’ll - I’ll be right back.” She scurried out of the room.
Annie just sat there, feeling guilty for ruining the woman’s day. She caught a glimpse of her out at the nurse’s station, talking excitedly, wringing her hands as she spoke to the other nurses. At one point they all turned and looked toward Annie’s room and shook their heads sadly. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her and yet somehow she could. Nothing would surprise her ever again. She and Eric just had the ultimate surprise -- nothing she could think of could top it.
Eric’s somber voice brought her back to the moment. “He’s my baby too, Annie. I know how you feel --”
Annie’s words pounced on him. “You don’t know how I feel! You don’t know! Do you feel empty inside? Are you filling up with milk that has nowhere to go? Are you the one who failed?” She stood there, almost daring him to contradict her. Then she saw how dejected and confused he looked and sighed heavily. She walked over to him and put her arms around him. She laid her head on his chest. He in turn wrapped his arms around her gingerly, as though she might break so as not to cause her any more pain.
“Yes, Eric. He was your baby too.”
They stood there together for a few more minutes, looking at the little white casket and then very slowly and gently, Eric guided Annie toward the car. There, on the other side of the street, she saw the blonde in the black dress, wave good-bye as she drove away.
The Photograph
“Can I get you some, um, coffee or something?” Eric’s younger brother Joe asked Annie awkwardly, interrupting her thoughts.
She was standing near the dining room table laden with “funeral food” -- lunch meats, buns, potato chips, macaroni salad, jello, bars and cookies -- when he approached her. She wasn’t the least bit hungry, but she knew she’d be prodded to eat something. She looked up at Joe, surprised and relieved to have something to do, someone to talk to.
“Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.” He handed her the cup of steaming coffee that he already had in his hand. “Thanks, Joe.” She held it in both hands and blew on it a little to cool it off.
Joe nodded, embarrassed, but proud to have helped her in this small way.
Not knowing what to do or say next, he backed away from her and escaped to the other side of the room. She smiled, touched by his sweet, awkward gesture.
Annie surveyed the food again. She knew she needed to eat, but the knot in her stomach was taking up more than its fair share of the room. It was strange, because she hadn’t noticed feeling that way until she saw the blonde woman at the cemetery. Grief had robbed her of an appetite during the past couple of days, but she hadn’t felt the queasy tension that she did now. It gnawed at her relentlessly. She wondered if a Rice Krispie bar would make her feel better and was walking over to the table to get one, when she heard them.
“I just can’t get over how much he looks like Jessica,” Terri exclaimed to Eric’s mother. “They have the same eyebrows, the same mouth. It’s kind of eerie.”
“They do look alike, but Jessie is changing so much every day. Two months ago when she was first born, though, they could have been twins.” Both women stood next to each other, shaking their heads back and forth slowly. It seemed to Annie that they were looking at something on the table in front of them.
“I’m just glad I had Jessie first. Can you imagine how it would be if I’d had her after all this happened?”
“It sure would’ve been hard to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it? Yeah -- I really enjoyed that back labor,” Terri said sarcastically. “And colic is such a treat.” She took a bite of the sandwich she held in her free hand.
Annie stepped up next to the table to see what they were looking at and froze in her tracks. There on the white lace tablecloth were the Polaroid pictures the nurse had taken of Dillon right after he’d been born.
“Where did you get those?” Annie asked, shaken by the sight of her child, the child she had left behind at the cemetery less than an hour before.
Up snapped their heads as well as the pictures as Evelyn, Eric’s mother grabbed them and pulled them close to her chest as
