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Everything feels wrong. If only she can keep it together while her son is gone, while her husband retreats behind white walls. She paints. Painting focusses her mind. Painting steals time. She returns her brushes and her roller and a new spongy edger and she wonders, how did things get like this? * * *
She's at it again. Putting a fresh coat of powder blue paint on the walls. It's our ritual, now. I cover them in a nice eggshell, and she comes along behind with the bucket of blue. We've played this game so long that the room seems smaller to me, like all those layers of paint are squeezing in on us. We picked out the blue when we heard our little squirt was a boy. A son. I cleared out the "extra" room, a dump site we'd allowed to grow because it was hidden behind a closed door. All that spring she was laid up on the couch, queasy, I was up there in that room, searching for the floor. The pregnancy was ordinary, I guess. Queasy led to feeling good and that led to indigestion. Come fall, he was here. God, he was perfect. Right from the start. He came out all clean looking with a beautiful round head, even after thirty some hours of trying to get here. He was an easy baby. Happy to go anywhere we took him. Ate well. Slept well. He was almost too easy. We took him out shopping as soon as Dee was able. She wore him in one of those sling things, across her chest. "How old is he?" a grandmother-faced woman asked. "Three days," Delia said and opened the sling to give the woman a peek. "He's a big one," the woman said, then looked Dee right in the eyes and said, "Lord, aren't you tired?" "Exhausted," Dee said. But she smiled when she said it. His whole life felt scripted, like it was leading up to something wonderful. * * *
When she strokes paint on the wall, she is careful to brush out the drip marks. She edges like it's for a spread in Architectural Digest. Because this room is her son's. It has to be perfect, as perfect as she can make it. Why does he keep painting it white? Like white is a color for a child's room. When she strokes the blue on, she imagines him here. On the rocking horse. Sitting in front of the train track. Building a Lego tower. His golden hair shimmering as he moves. And this makes her smile, makes her all the more conscious of her painting technique. She even paints a height chart on the back of the closet door. They will mark his growth here, so he can see how far he's come. How fast. How time changes everything. Everything external. She will show him the eternal things in other ways. The things that are impossible to chart on the back of a closet door. It's a small room and it doesn't take long to paint it. She always finishes by washing her brushes, cleaning herself up. Then, she returns to the blue to sit, to wait. Because it is his room, it is where he should be. * * *
He was a big baby and soon too heavy to hang around her neck in a sling. We took him to one of those baby superstores and bought a stroller. It was a grand thing, big and comfy. You could flip the passenger section around so he could face you, like an old fashioned baby carriage, or he could face away, like a regular stroller. It would lie completely flat or adjust to a variety of angles up to nearly ninety degrees. We were so proud of that damned thing. And he loved it. Who wouldn't? We could take him anywhere, he was happy as can be in that stroller. It was awkward, folding it and stowing it in the back seat of our car, so we didn't always use it. But if he was going to have to be strapped in for long, we wanted him in the bigger, roomier stroller. He was in it that night. * * *
She doesn't sleep well. Sometimes she goes out to the garden. It's grown wild the last few years, but at night it's still magical. It is here that she sees something that she's never seen before. It's a realization that comes as she tries to decide whether or not to untwine a morning glory from the sumac. The garden isn't hers. It never was. It belongs to the creatures who sustain it and whom it sustains. Worms and crickets and aphids and ladybugs and once even a small green snake no bigger than a child's fat pencil, which zipped into the oregano when she surprised it. She feels light when she's in the night garden. She feels unreal, like she glides across the uneven grass with her feet barely skimming the ground. She spends a lot of time out there. She watches the stars. She knows the path of the moon and its heft. She has weighed it in her hand. * * *
I don't know what to do. I think maybe she's lost, lost somewhere in her own mind. I know sometimes she doesn't see me, doesn't hear me, when I'm right there in front of her. She's not a mean woman. Never has been. She wouldn't punish me like that, by ignoring me. I don't know what she does all day. I can't stay home with her. I took off a month, already, and I can't see that it made any difference. The painting thing started when softball picked up again. She wouldn't go anymore and I know she didn't want me to, either. But the guys, well, they're like a little patch of sanity. I mean, it's softball. We play ball. Talk ball. Drink beer after. All light and easy. Can't she see I need that to keep steady? She thinks the whole world should pause--forever. I understand. I do. But I can't do that. I can't stop. If I did, then what? What would there be? * * *
There's nothing wrong with her. She knows this just as she knows any other true thing. He plays softball Wednesday nights, but she no longer accompanies him. There's a guy on the team who always looks aggrieved. A twitchy silence smothers them. Makes her want to scream. So she doesn't go anymore. None of the other wives go, anyway. Why does it matter? * * *
May 17. He was nine months old exactly. We joked about celebrating it. You know, nine months in, nine months out. It seemed like some kind of milestone. But I had softball that night. We had a doubleheader, as usual. The first team, Billy's Body Bangers, run ruled us. Which basically means the game was called out of mercy. We didn't mind. It gave us a chance to move our cars closer to the field and swig a beer to calm our muscles. It happened before the beer. Nobody's fault. Just one of those things. * * *
She hears the sound in the night, in her dreams. It wakes her, and she goes to the room. The clear blue room. She turns on the Pooh lamp and screams. * * *
"What is the matter with you?" I said as calm as I could. "What is this?" "You don't like it." "Where's the blue?" "I covered it once and for all. It's under the wallpaper." "No." "Delia. . . " She turned out the light and sat in the center of the floor. What can I say? I was tired. And tired of this. All of this. So I turned around and went back to bed. I left her there. Sometime, I fell asleep. Not deeply and not well, but deeply enough to be awakened. I heard a sound on the other side of the wall, coming from that room. A steady, low, rhythmic sound. It was not a frightening sound, in and of itself. But it was four in the morning and my wife was in there in the dark and I was frightened. I thought maybe she was sleepwalking or something and I didn't want to surprise her, so I got up and walked on the balls of my feet in the darkness and opened the nursery door. She was there, her hair wild in the moonlight that tumbled in great slabs through the blinds. She was just where I'd left her, except, bathed in that blue light like the only actor on a stage. I stood frozen, as first relief then anger then pity came over me. I stayed still and let them pass on by. And then I said, "Delia, he's gone." "No." "Where is he, then? Where is our son?" She said my name then, which was also his. "Ben." And her voice pricked the hairs on my neck and the sensation moved down my spine and crawled inside me. "Ben, turn on the light." * * *
The whole thing was so bright in my mind. How we all left the first game, walking in little groups of two or three. One of the guys had trouble with his truck. It wouldn't start, just made that sprg sprg sprg sound. Delia and I were walking side by side, pushing that big beautiful stroller with our happy golden boy in it. He was facing away from us. Because of the game. Because Delia wanted him to feel a part of things. He wasn't strapped in. It was such a short walk. He was facing forward, away from us, a teething biscuit in his hand. We were perfect, then, the three of us. It was one of those moments, crystalline, pure, that you recognize even when it's happening, and you think, wow, this is a beautiful moment. A moment that we'll turn over in our minds one day. And then two things happened. Todd's dog, Lita, leapt out of his truck to meet Ben, and a white car flashed into my peripheral vision. A fast white car, headed straight for the dog. The driver saw the dog in time and swerved. It was Tim, center field. Good reflexes, I thought, right before he barrelled into the baby carriage. And then it was gone, ripped away from us. And our boy was in the air. Ridiculous, really. He hung there forever. Angel that he was, who knew he couldn't fly? I could have caught him if I hadn't been stuck there, staring dumbly at my airborne son in wonder. He couldn't fly, of course. Tim never saw him. No one made a sound. Not Delia. Not me. And not Ben, who tumbled through the sky, eyes full of wonder. He was flying. * * *
"Ben, turn it on." My hand hung, senseless, at my side. A dumb thing. "Delia--" "Turn it on." And this time, her voice was so quietly commanding that my hand simply obeyed. Click. The wallpaper hung in shreds. She had peeled it off with her fingers, peeled it down to the blue. "Get help," she said. Or maybe it was, "Please, help." I looked at her, then, in the light. Blood oozed from her torn fingernails and had found its way to her face. She looked like a thing from mythology. "Let's clean you up," I said, trying to keep my voice normal. Because this was the worst, seeing the wildness in her again. I offered my hand to help her stand. "No! Help me get this off!" Her arms took in the whole room. Took in my tasteful wallpaper. "I'm sorry, Dee." "It's his room." "Why keep it baby blue? He's gone either way." "No he's not,” she said. “And you don't have to be, either." I reached over and turned out the light. * * *
In the darkness, she remembers that night. They went to the softball game. The first game was a blowout but nobody minded. It was a gorgeous night. It felt good to be outside. Todd's dog, Lita, was in the back of his truck. She'd pointed to the dog and said, "See the puppy, honey? That's a doggie." And Ben gurgled and shook his teething biscuit at Lita in greeting. And Lita smiled. She remembers it clearly because it seemed such a human thing to do, to smile at a baby. But she had, she'd smiled. And right at that moment Tim came barrelling, backwards, out of his parking space, and she'd screamed and he'd skidded to a stop and they'd all stood there a moment, stunned. Todd, Ben, Tim, her, and the baby. Just stood there in a semicircle facing the smiling dog. Then Ben said "da!" and squealed and shook his teething biscuit and Lita barked in a friendly way and they had a beer and went back for the second game. * * *
"So nothing happened," he said. "That's right." "And Ben is . . . ?" "At your mother's, until you're feeling better." "I've been sick?" he said, and there was a glimmer. The tiniest bit of light. "Yes, Ben." "Why?" "Why? Who knows why people get sick? It happens. You missed a month of work, even. Don't you remember?" He did. He remembered missing work. But he remembered differently. He wasn't sick, was he? He had no recollection of sickness. Maybe that was the sickness. Maybe he'd had some sort of breakdown. If he was sick, everything might be alright. Even Ben. "You're sure Ben's fine?" he said. "He's perfect." She looked at him with her serious grey eyes. Luminous. And he knew she would never hurt him. Not on purpose. "If he's okay, then where's the stroller?" "The stroller?" "I have a bad memory about the stroller," he said and it felt like an admission. "The stroller is fine," she said. She had that look on her face, the look you sometimes see when people talk to children and sick old folks. "Where is it?" he persisted. "It's in the attic. He's too big for it, now." He wanted to believe her. He almost did. "Let's get it," he said, excitement building in him. Because, if the stroller wasn't wrecked, then Ben was at his mom's, and he was just crazy, and crazy was so much better than this. He pulled down the ladder and climbed into the darkness. Softly, from below, he heard, "How's Todd's dog?" "What dog?" He reached for the string to turn on the light, his mind already re-remembering the past months. And it was like he had a second chance. He was already considering the best way to remove wallpaper when he heard her again. "You know, Lita." "Lita?" Why wouldn't she be quiet? Who cared about a dog? "Lita. The golden retriever. She loved Ben." Lita. She did. She had. He could see her so clearly, racing toward the carriage, causing the crash. She had been the first to reach Ben after he had returned to the earth with a polite little thud some twenty feet away. She had sniffed him, and then she had lain nearby and remained there while De kicked her. She had lain there and let herself be kicked. And kicked. He closed his eyes and all the air went out of him. Finally, he was able to say, "Lita's dead. You killed her the night Ben was hit by the car." Delia just shook her head no, no, and he didn't want to but he turned on the light because he knew, he'd known all along, there was no stroller there.
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