ONE Monday, June 3, 1996 (Clare is 25)

ONE


Monday, June 3, 1996 (Clare is 25)

CLARE: The first time it happens Henry is away. It’s the eighth week of the
pregnancy. The baby is the size of a plum, has a face and hands and a beating heart. It
is early evening, early summer, and I can see magenta and orange clouds in the west
as I wash the dishes. Henry disappeared almost two hours ago. He went out to water
the lawn and after half an hour, when I realized that the sprinkler still wasn’t on, I
stood at the back door and saw the telltale pile of clothing sitting by the grape arbor. I
went out and gathered up Henry’s jeans and underwear and his ratty Kill Your
Television T-shirt, folded them and put them on the bed. I thought about turning on
the sprinkler but decided not to, reasoning that Henry won’t like it if he appears in the
backyard and gets drenched.

I have prepared and eaten macaroni and cheese and a small salad, have taken my
vitamins, have consumed a large glass of skim milk. I hum as I do the dishes, imagine
the little being inside me hearing the humming, filing the humming away for future
reference at some subtle, cellular level and as I stand there, conscientiously washing
my salad bowl I feel a slight twinge somewhere deep inside, somewhere in my pelvis.
Ten minutes later I am sitting in the living room minding my own business and
reading Louis DeBernieres and there it is again, a brief twang on my internal strings. I
ignore it. Everything is fine. Henry’s been gone for more than two hours. I worry
about him for a second, then resolutely ignore that, too. I do not start to really worry
for another half hour or so, because now the weird little sensations are resembling
menstrual cramps, and I am even feeling that sticky blood feeling between my legs


and I get up and walk into the bathroom and pull down my underpants there’s a lot of
blood oh my god.

I call Charisse. Gomez answers the phone. I try to sound okay, ask for Charisse,
who gets on the phone and immediately says, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m bleeding.”

“Where’s Henry?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of bleeding?”

“Like a period.” The pain is becoming intense and I sit down on the floor. “Can
you take me to Illinois Masonic?”

“I’ll be right there, Clare.” She hangs up, and I replace the receiver gently, as
though I might hurt its feelings by handling it too roughly. I get to rny feet with care,
find my purse. I want to write Henry a note, but I don’t know what to say. I write:
“Went to IL Masonic. (Cramps.) Charisse drove me there. 7:20 p.m. C.” I unlock the
back door for Henry. I leave the note by the phone. A few minutes later Charisse is at
the front door. When we get to the car, Gomez is driving. We don’t talk much. I sit in
the front seat, look out the window. Western to Belmont to Sheffield to Wellington.
Everything is unusually sharp and emphatic, as though I need to remember as though
there will be a test. Gomez turns into the Unloading Zone Or the Emergency Room.
Charisse and I get out. I look back at Gomez, smiles briefly and roars off to park the
car. We walk through doors that open automatically as our feet press the ground, as in
a fairy tale, as though we are expected. The pain has receded like an ebbing tide, and
now it moves toward the shore again, fresh and fierce. There are a few people sitting
abject and small in the brightly lit room, waiting their turn, encircling their pain with
bowed heads and crossed arms, and I sink down among them. Charisse walks over to
the man sitting behind the triage desk. I can’t hear what she says, but when he says
“Miscarriage?” it dawns on me that this is what is going on, this is what it is called,
and the word expands in my head until it fills all crevices of my mind, until it has
crowded out every other thought. I start to cry.

After they’ve done everything they could, it happens anyway. I find out later that
Henry arrived just before the end, but they wouldn’t let him come in. I have been
sleeping, and when I wake up it’s late at night and Henry is there. He is pale and
hollow-eyed and he doesn’t say a word. “Oh,” I mumble, “where were you?” and
Henry leans over and carefully embraces me. I feel his stubble against my cheek and I
am rubbed raw, not on my skin but deep in me, a wound opens and Henry’s face is
wet but with whose tears?

Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14, 1996 (Henry is 32)


HENRY: I arrive at the sleep lab exhausted, as Dr. Kendrick has asked me to. This is
the fifth night I’ve spent here, and by now I know the routine. I sit on the bed in the
odd, fake, home-like bedroom wearing pajama bottoms while Dr. Larson’s lab
technician, Karen, puts cream on my head and chest and tapes wires in place. Karen
is young and blond and Vietnamese. She’s wearing long fake fingernails and says,
‘Oops, sorry,’ when she rakes my cheek with one of them. The lights are dim, the
room is cool. There are no windows except a piece of one-way glass that looks like a
mirror, behind which sits Dr. Larson, or whoever’s watching the machines this
evening. Karen finishes the wiring, bids me good night, leaves the room. I settle into
the bed carefully, close my eyes, imagine the spider-legged tracings on long streams
of graph paper gracefully recording my eye movements, respiration, brain waves on
the other side of the glass. I’m asleep within minutes.

I dream of running. I’m running through woods, dense brush, trees, but somehow I
am running through all of it, passing through like a ghost. I burst into a clearing,
there’s been a fire—

I dream I am having sex with Ingrid. I know it’s Ingrid, even though I can’t see
her face, it is Ingrid body, Ingrid’s long smooth legs. We are fucking in her parents’
house, in their living room on the couch, the TV is on, tuned to a nature documentary
in which a herd of antelope is running, and then there’s a parade. Clare is sitting on a
tiny float in the parade, looking sad while people are cheering all around her and
suddenly Ing jumps up and pulls a bow and arrow from behind the couch and she
shoots Clare. The arrow goes right into the TV and Clare claps her hands to her breast
like Wendy in a silent version of Peter Pan and I leap up and I’m choking Ingrid, my
hands around her throat, screaming at her—

I wake up. I’m cold with sweat and my heart is pounding. I’m in the sleep lab. I
wonder for a moment if there’s something they’re not telling me, if they can
somehow watch my dreams, see my thoughts. I turn onto my side and close my eyes.

I dream that Clare and I are walking through a museum. The museum is an old
palace, all the paintings are in rococo gold frames, all the other visitors are wearing
tall powdered wigs and immense dresses, frock coats, and breeches. They don’t seem
to notice us as we pass. We look at the paintings, but they aren’t really paintings,
they’re poems, poems somehow given physical manifestation. “Look,” I say to Clare,
“there’s an Emily Dickinson.” The heart asks pleasure first; And then excuse from
pain...She stands in front of the bright yellow poem and seems to warm herself by it.

We see Dante, Donne, Blake, Neruda, Bishop; linger in a room full of Rilke, pass
quickly through the Beats and pause before Verlaine and Baudelaire. I suddenly
realize that I’ve lost Clare, I am walking, then running, back through the galleries and
then I abruptly find her: she is standing before a poem, a tiny white poem tucked into
a corner. She is weeping. As I come up behind her I see the poem: Now I lay me down


to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the
Lord my soul to take.

I’m thrashing in grass, it’s cold, wind rushes over me, I’m naked and cold in
darkness, there’s snow on the ground, I am on my knees in the snow, blood drips onto
the snow and I reach out—

“My god, he’s bleeding—”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Shit, he’s ripped off all the electrodes, help me get him back on the bed—”

I open my eyes. Kendrick and Dr. Larson are crouched over me. Dr. Larson looks
upset and worried, but Kendrick has a jubilant smile on his face.

“Did you get it?” I ask, and he replies, “It was perfect.” I say, “Great,” and then I
pass out.