SIX Saturday, June 3, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36)

SIX


Saturday, June 3, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36)

CLARE: I’m sitting at the kitchen table idly flipping through the Chicago Tribune and
watching Henry unpack the groceries. The brown paper bags stand evenly lined up on
the counter and Henry produces ketchup, chicken, gouda cheese from them like a
magician. I keep waiting for the rabbit and the silk scarves. Instead it’s mushrooms,
black beans, fettucine, lettuce, a pineapple, skim milk, coffee, radishes, turnips, a
rutabaga, oatmeal, butter, cottage cheese, rye bread, mayonnaise, eggs, razors,
deodorant, Granny Smith apples, half-and-half, bagels, shrimp, cream cheese, Frosted
MiniWheats, marinara sauce, frozen orange juice, carrots, condoms, sweet
potatoes...condoms? I get up and walk to the counter, pick up the blue box and shake
it at Henry. “What, are you having an affair?”

He looks up at me defiantly as he rummages in the freezer. “No, actually, I had an
epiphany. I was standing in the toothpaste aisle when it happened. Want to hear it?”

“No.”

Henry stands up and turns to me. His expression is like a sigh. “Well here it is
anyway: we can’t keep trying to have a baby.”

Traitor. “We agreed..”

“...to keep trying. I think five miscarriages is enough. I think we have tried.”


“No. I mean—why not, try again?” I try to keep the pleading out of my voice, to
keep the anger that rises up in my throat from spilling into my words.

Henry walks around the counter, stands in front of me, but doesn’t touch me,
knows that he can’t touch me. “Clare. The next time you miscarry it’s going to kill
you, and I am not going to keep doing something that’s going to end up with you
dead. Five pregnancies.. .I know you want to try again, but I can’t. I can’t take it
anymore, Clare. I’m sorry.”

I walk out the back door and stand in the sun, by the raspberry bushes. Our
children, dead and wrapped in silky gampi tissue paper, cradled in tiny wooden boxes,
are in shade now, in the late afternoon, by the roses. I feel the heat of the sun on my
skin and shiver for them, deep in the garden, cool on this mild June day. Help, I say
in my head, to our future child. He doesn’t know, so I can’t tell him. Come soon.

Friday, June 9, 2000/November 19, 1986 (Henry is 36, Clare is 15)

HENRY: It’s 8:45 a.m. on a Friday morning and I’m sitting in the waiting room of a
certain Dr. Robert Gonsalez. Clare doesn’t know I’m here. I’ve decided to get a
vasectomy.

Dr. Gonsalez’s office is on Sheridan Road, near Diversey, in a posh medical center
just up the way from the Lincoln Park Conservatory. This waiting room is decorated
in browns and hunter green, lots of paneling and framed prints of Derby winners from
the 1880s. Very manly. I feel as though I should be wearing a smoking jacket and
clenching a large cigar between my jaws. I need a drink.

The nice woman at Planned Parenthood assured me in her soothing, practiced
voice that this would hardly hurt a bit. There are five other guys sitting here with me.
I wonder if they’ve got the clap, or maybe their prostates are acting up. Maybe some
of them are like me, sitting here waiting to end their careers as potential dads. I feel a
certain solidarity with these unknown men, all of us sitting here together in this
brown wooden leather room on this gray morning waiting to walk into the examining
room and take off our pants. There’s a very old man who sits leaning forward with his
hands clasped around his cane, his eyes closed behind thick glasses that magnify his
eyelids. He’s probably not here to get snipped. The teenage boy who sits leafing
through an ancient copy of Esquire is feigning indifference. I close my eyes and
imagine that I am in a bar and the bartender has her back to me now as she mixes a
good single-malt Scotch with just a small amount of tepid water. Perhaps it’s an
English pub. Yes, that would account for the decor. The man on my left coughs, a
deep lung-shaking sort of cough, and when I open my eyes I’m still sitting in a
doctor’s waiting room. I sneak a look at the watch of the guy on my right. He’s got


one of those immense sports watches that you can use to time sprints or call the
mothership. It’s 9:58. My appointment is in two minutes. The doctor seems to be
running late, though. The receptionist calls, “Mr. Liston,” and the teenager stands up
abruptly and walks through the heavy paneled door into the office. The rest of us look
at each other, furtively, as though we are on the subway and someone is trying to sell
us Streetwise.

I am rigid with tension and I remind myself that this is a necessary and good thing
that I am about to do. I am not a traitor. I am not a traitor. I am saving Clare from
horror and pain. She will never know. It will not hurt. Maybe it will hurt a little.
Someday I will tell her and she will realize I had to do it. We tried. I have no choice. I
am not a traitor. Even if I hurts it will be worth it. I am doing it because I love her. I
think of Clare sitting on our bed, covered in blood, weeping, and I feel sick.

“Mr. DeTamble.” I rise, and now I really feel sick. My knees buckle. My head
swims, and I’m bent over, retching, I’m on my hands and knees, the ground is cold
and covered with the stubble of dead grass. There’s nothing in my stomach, I’m
spitting up mucous. It’s cold. I look up. I’m in the clearing, in the Meadow. The trees
are bare, the sky is flat clouds with early darkness approaching. I’m alone.

I get up and find the clothes box. Soon I am wearing a Gang of Four T-shirt and a
sweater and jeans, heavy socks and black military boots, a black wool overcoat and
large baby blue mittens. Something has chewed its way into the box and made a nest.
The clothes indicate the mid-eighties. Clare is about fifteen or sixteen. I wonder
whether to hang around and wait for her or just go. I don’t know if I can face Clare’s
youthful exuberance right now. I turn and walk toward the orchard.

It looks like late November. The Meadow is brown, and makes a rattling noise in
the wind. Crows are fighting over windfall apples at the edge of the orchard. Just as I
reach them I hear someone panting, running behind me. I turn, and it’s Clare.

“Henry—” she’s out of breath, she sounds like she has a cold. I let her stand,
rasping, for a minute. I can’t talk to her. She stands, breathing, her breath steaming in
front of her in white clouds, her hair vivid red in the gray and brown, her skin pink
and pale.

I turn and walk into the orchard.

“Henry—” Clare follows me, catches my arm. “What? What did I do? Why won’t
you talk to me?”

Oh God. “I tried to do something for you, something important, and it didn’t work.

I got nervous, and ended up here.”

“What was it?”

“I can’t tell you. I wasn’t even going to tell you about it in the present. You

wouldn’t like it.”


“Then why did you want to do it?” Clare shivers in the wind. “It was the only way.
I couldn’t get you to listen to me. I thought we could stop fighting if I did it.” I sigh. I
will try again, and, if necessary, again.

“Why are we fighting?” Clare is looking up at me, tense and anxious.

Her nose is running.

“Have you got a cold?”

“Yes. What are we fighting about?”

“It all began when the wife of your ambassador slapped the mistress of my prime
minister at a soiree being held at the embassy. This affected the tariff on oatmeal,
which led to high unemployment and rioting—”

“Henry.”

“Yes?”
“Just once, just once, would you stop making fun of me and tell me something I


am asking you?”

“I can’t.”

Without apparent premeditation, Clare slaps me, hard. I step back, surprised, glad.

“Hit me again.”

She is confused, shakes her head. “Please, Clare.”

“No. Why do you want me to hit you? I wanted to hurt you.”

“I want you to hurt me. Please.” I hang my head.

“What is the matter with you?”

“Everything is terrible and I can’t seem to feel it.”

“ What is terrible? What is going on?”

“Don’t ask me.” Clare comes up, very close to me, and takes my hand, one pulls
off the ridiculous blue mitten, brings my palm to her mouth, and bites. The pain is
excruciating. She stops, and I look at my hand, Blood comes slowly, in tiny drops,
around the bite mark. I will probably get blood poisoning, but at the moment I don’t
care.

“Tell me.” Her face is inches from mine. I kiss her, very roughly. She is resistant. I
release her, and she turns her back on me.

“That wasn’t very nice,” she says in a small voice.

What is wrong with me? Clare, at fifteen, is not the same person who’s been
torturing me for months, refusing to give up on having a baby, risking death and
despair, turning lovemaking into a battlefield strewn with the corpses of children. I
put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, Clare, it’s not you.
Please.”


She turns. She’s crying, and she’s a mess. Miraculously, there’s a Kleenex in my
coat pocket. I dab at her face, and she takes the tissue from me and blows her nose.

“You never kissed me before.” Oh, no. My face must be funny, because Clare
laughs. I can’t believe it. What an idiot I am.

“Oh, Clare, Just—forget that, okay? Just erase it. It never happened. Come here.
Take two, yes? Clare?”

She tentatively steps toward me. I put my arms around her, look at her. Her eyes
are rimmed red, her nose is swollen, and she definitely has a bad cold. I place my
hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into
hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.

Friday, June 9, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36)

CLARE: Henry has been terribly quiet, distracted, and pensive all evening. All through
dinner he seemed to be mentally searching imaginary stacks for a book he’d read in
1942 or something. Plus his right hand is all bandaged up. After dinner he went into
the bedroom and lay face down on the bed with his head hanging over the foot of the
bed and his feet on my pillow. I went to the studio and scrubbed molds and deckles
and drank my coffee, but I wasn’t enjoying myself because I couldn’t figure out what
Henry’s problem was. Finally I go back into the house. He is still lying in the same
position. In the dark.

I lie down on the floor. My back makes loud cracking sounds as I stretch out.

“Clare?”

“Mmmm?”

“Do you remember the first time I kissed you?”

“Vividly.”

“I’m sorry.” Henry rolls over.

I’m burning up with curiosity. “What were you so upset about? You were trying to
do something, and it didn’t work, and you said I wouldn’t like it. What was it?”

“How do you manage to remember all that?”

“I am the original elephant child. Are you going to tell me now?”

“No.”

“If I guess will you tell me if I’m right?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am exhausted, and I don’t want to fight tonight.”


I don’t want to fight either. I like lying here on the floor. It’s kind of cold but very
solid. “You went to get a vasectomy.”

Henry is silent. He is so silent for so long that I want to put a mirror in front of his
mouth to see if he’s breathing. Finally: “How did you know?”

“I didn’t exactly know. I was afraid that might be it. And I saw the note you made
for the appointment with the doctor this morning.”

“I burned that note.”

“I saw the impression on the sheet below the one you wrote on.”

Henry groans. “Okay, Sherlock. You got me.” We continue to lie peaceably in the
dark.

“Go ahead.”

“What?”

“Get a vasectomy. If you have to.”

Henry rolls over again and looks at me. All I see is his dark head against the dark
ceiling. “You’re not yelling at me.”

“No. I can’t do this anymore, either. I give up. You win, we’ll stop trying to have a
baby.”

“I wouldn’t exactly describe that as winning. It just seems—necessary.”

“Whatever.”

Henry climbs off the bed and sits on the floor with me. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He kisses me. I imagine the bleak November day in 1986 that
Henry has just come from, the wind, the warmth of his body in the cold orchard.
Soon, for the first time in many months, we are making love without worrying about
the consequences. Henry has caught the cold I had sixteen years ago. Four weeks
later, Henry has had his vasectomy and I discover that I am pregnant for the sixth
time.

BABY DREAMS


September, 2000 (Clare is 29)

CLARE: I dream I’m walking down stairs into my grandmother Abshire’s basement.
The long soot mark from the time the crow flew down the chimney is still there on
the left-hand wall; the steps are dusty and the handrail leaves gray marks on my hand
as I steady myself; I descend and walk into the room that always scared me when I
was little. In this room are deep shelves with rows and rows of canned goods,


tomatoes and pickles, corn relish and beets. They look embalmed. In one of the jars is
the small fetus of a duck. I carefully open the jar and pour the ducking and the fluid
into my hand. It gasps and retches. “Why did you leave me?” it asks, when it can
speak. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

I dream that my mother and I are walking together down a quiet residential street
in South Haven. I am carrying a baby. As we walk, the baby becomes heavier and
heavier, until I can barely lift it. I turn to Mama and tell her that I can’t carry this
baby any farther; she takes it from me easily and we continue on. We come to a house
and walk down the small walkway to its backyard. In the yard there are two screens
and a slide projector. People are seated in lawn chairs, watching slides of trees. Half
of a tree is on each screen. One half is summer and the other winter; they are the same
tree, different seasons. The baby laughs and cries out in delight, I dream I am
standing on the Sedgewick El platform, waiting for the Brown Line train. I am
carrying two shopping bags, which upon inspection turn out to contain boxes of
saltine crackers and a very small, stillborn baby with red hair, wrapped in Saran Wrap.

I dream I am at home, in my old room. It’s late at night, the room is dimly
illuminated by the aquarium light. I suddenly realize, with horror, that there is a small
animal swimming round and round the tank; I hastily remove the lid and net the
animal, which turns out to be a gerbil with gills. “I’m so sorry” I say. “I forgot about
you.” The gerbil just stares at me reproachfully.

I dream I am walking up stairs in Meadowlark House. All the furniture is gone, the
rooms are empty, dust floats in the sunlight which makes golden pools on the
polished oak floors. I walk down the long hall, glancing in the bedrooms, and come to
my room, in which a small wooden cradle sits alone. There is no sound. I am afraid to
look into the cradle. In Mama’s room white sheets are spread over the floor. At my
feet is a tiny drop of blood, which touches the tip of a sheet and spreads as I watch
until the entire floor is covered in blood.

Saturday, September 23, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 37)

CLARE: I’m living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there’s
a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an
hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick
and dense. I’m in a diving bell with this baby, just the two of us trying to survive in
this alien atmosphere, but I feel very alone. Hello? Are you there? No answer comes
back. He’s dead, I tell Amit. No, she says, smiling anxiously, no, Clare, see, there’s
his heartbeat. T can’t explain. Henry hovers around trying to feed me, massage me,
cheer me up, until I snap at him. I walk across the yard, into my studio. It’s like a
museum, a mausoleum, so still, nothing living or breathing, no ideas here, just things,


things that stare at me accusingly. I’m sorry, I tell my blank, empty drawing table, my
dry vats and molds, the half-made sculptures. Stillborn, I think, looking at the blue
iris paper-wrapped armature that seemed so hopeful in June. My hands are clean and
soft and pink. I hate them. I hate this emptiness. I hate this baby. No. No, I don’t hate
him. I just can’t find him.

I sit at my drawing board with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of white paper
before me. Nothing comes. I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a
tube of watercolor, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and I fill a jar
with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens. The paper is limp with
moisture, and darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It smells of gum arabic. In the
center of the paper, very small, in black ink, I draw a heart, not a silly Valentine but
an anatomically correct heart, tiny, doll-like, and then veins, delicate road maps of
veins, that reach all the way to the edges of the paper, that hold the small heart
enmeshed like a fly in a spiderweb. See, there’s his heartbeat.

It has become evening. I empty the water jar and wash the brush. I lock the studio
door, cross the yard, and let myself in the back door. Henry is making spaghetti sauce.
He looks up as I come in.

“Better?” he asks.

“Better,” I reassure him, and myself.

Wednesday, September 27, 2000 (Clare is 29)

CLARE: It’s lying on the bed. There’s some blood, but not so much. It’s lying on its
back, trying to breathe, its tiny ribcage quivering, but it’s too soon, it’s convulsing,
and blood is gushing from the cord in time with the beating of its heart. I kneel beside
the bed and pick it up, pick him up, my tiny boy, jerking like a small freshly caught
fish, drowning in air. I hold him, so gently, but he doesn’t know I’m here, holding
him, he is slippery and his skin is almost imaginary, his eyes are closed and I think
wildly of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, of 911 and Henry, oh, don t go before Henry
can see you! but his breath is bubbling with fluid, small sea creature breathing water
and then he opens his mouth wide and I can see right through him and my hands are
empty and he’s gone, gone.

I don’t know how long, time passes. I am kneeling. Kneeling, I pray. Dear God.
Dear God. Dear God. The baby stirs in my womb. Hush. Hide.

I wake up in the hospital. Henry is there. The baby is dead.