We're in Trouble (2 page)

Until this morning, when motherhood has returned to her, when Joan said to her, Okay, let's do this. Let's have a baby.

For the entire second year of their relationship Natalie and Joan have argued about a child. When the issue first arose, Joan told Nat she didn't want to give up any part of her career to child-raising. She's a medical researcher, and a good one; she likes her job and works long, long hours. Natalie, on the other hand, works for an accounting firm she dislikes. She has never felt particularly tied to work—none of her jobs has ever seemed like the point of her life. She told this to Joan: I don't have anything to want other than you. Do you want me to be like that?

And besides, Nat said, it's a baby. A
baby.

Joan told her, You say that word like some people say
Bible.

For months, they were tense, awkward—until Natalie had begun to think her first great love was ending. Of course they loved each other, of course they meant to stay together. But the want of a baby—this was intractable. Natalie couldn't hide her disappointment, and Joan's way was to be annoyed with her for it.

But then—almost miraculously—things began to change. A month ago Joan said, I can see what this is doing to you. So let's talk. I love you too much to go on like this.

And so they talked. They started in the abstract: They're not too old. Nat's just twenty-nine. Joan's a bit older, but it's Nat who wants to carry the baby, to be pregnant. They feel permanent. They've bought the house—and the house has been perfect. They are financially secure. And, even after all the argument and tension, they feel, now, more in love—if such a thing is possible—than when they began.

But despite all the positives laid out before them, Joan stopped short of agreement. She said, Well, it's possible, that's for sure. Let me think, okay?

For a week or so after their talk Natalie felt light on her feet, almost giddy. A year from now, she kept thinking, and it will have already happened. She went to a store that sold baby clothes, found herself picking things out, fondling tiny shoes. But more and more days passed, and Joan kept silent, and Natalie understood that she was taking too long. Joan was either pretending to decide, or deciding against it. Nat prepared herself to leave—because she would have to; the pain and longing she felt had taught her too much about her life. She loved Joan, but that love alone just was not going to be enough.

But then came this morning. As they lay curled together, Joan told her—from nowhere, and after a short, loud stutter—that sometimes she sees children in the mall, along the sidewalk, and she feels pulled to them, feels that she could, maybe, see herself as a mother.

Joan—Joan, of all people—blushed when she said it.

Nat, seeing this, began to weep.

Are you all right? Joan asked.

Yes, Nat said from behind her hand.

So you want to have a baby?

I love you, Nat told her.

That afternoon they go for a run. Joan runs every day; she has been a fanatic about it since high school. On weekends in the warm months Nat goes with her. They run at a public park not far from their house, where a paved track circles a lake almost exactly a mile in circumference. Joan runs several circuits, and Nat keeps pace with her for the first, then jogs and strolls as it suits her after that. Nat has learned to like these excursions together, but even so she remains unathletic, soft. They go to clubs sometimes, she and Joan, where Nat is still uncomfortable. There she sees other couples—all the dykes who have so obviously split up into hard and soft, masculine and feminine—and though she and Joan have laughed about the obviousness of this, Nat wonders sometimes if that is in fact how
they're
seen: Joan with her lean body and short hair, Nat still with her love for long skirts and her ponytail and her need for a baby and her shyness at these places, where she falls behind Joan's smiles and greetings until all she can do is nod and flutter like a wallflower at the prom. Be brave, she tells herself, and sometimes she thinks this to make herself run faster, to catch Joan, to bring more air to her lungs.

The lake is next to a divided highway; to reach it they drive down from the road and park in a small lot on the other side, and then walk underneath the highway on a wide concrete footpath. Natalie has never liked the path, because from beneath, the bridge seems too flimsy, the highway and the cars too near overhead. The concrete shakes and echoes, and she's aware of the tons of steel zipping along just a few yards above, and when she walks through the sunlit, open space between the north- and southbound lanes she winces, expecting some automotive horror to spill over onto the steady traffic of runners and cyclists and children and dogs underneath.

But she doesn't think of this today, when she and Joan walk beneath the bridge. It's a beautiful June day, not too hot, not too humid, and Natalie is looking forward to the run. She's keyed up, almost jumpy—all she can think of is waking to Joan's kisses on her shoulder, Joan's cool palm on her belly, and the merry and secretive look in Joan's eyes just before she spoke.

Nat says to her, as they walk under the bridge, You're chasing
me
today.

Joan touches her lower back and says, I'd chase you anywhere.

And that's when it happens.

From above they hear the shriek of tires against pavement, and then a crash that thunders and reverberates through the open space underneath the road. Maybe fifteen people are under the bridge; Nat ducks, sees everyone wince and duck. Then they hear a second squeal, two more hideous crashes and booms, and Nat, looking a few steps ahead to the sunny gap between the lanes, sees a doll fall suddenly down from the highway, it strikes a concrete pillar supporting the north lane, bounces off, and drops heavily to rest in the grass and trash, off to the side of the path, not twenty feet from her.

For a moment everything is quiet, and then a murmur passes through the people under the bridge. All of them are looking at the roadway over their heads. Joan says, Holy shit.

Nat is looking at the doll. No one else seems to have seen it. She glances at the concrete post again, because something is different there; she wants to make sure she's really seen it. And so she has. Where the doll struck, high up, there's a small, rusty smear, like—

Her fingertips go numb. She has a moment to wonder at herself—why isn't she screaming? Shouldn't someone scream?
But no one else has seen. The others are moving now. Someone even laughs, nervously; a man pantomimes a heart attack, staggering backward with his hands at his chest. Joan's jogging ahead, emerging into sunlight and shading her eyes upward, trying to see what happened. Nat turns away from them, smelling smoke.

She leaves the path, stepping across old rainwater puddles and hummocks of grass. She can hear her own breath. She doesn't want to look, doesn't want to walk another step, but she knows too that she must, because if she opens her mouth—to tell Joan, to tell anyone—she will scream, and she can't allow that. Perhaps there is something to be done, some help to give, and she is the only one who knows.

It's a girl. She's wearing a small blue dress. She has thin blond hair, silky child's hair, tufting in the breeze. She can't be more than a year or a year and a half old. Natalie can see this from a few steps away; the child is too small to be any older. She lies on her stomach in the grass, her head turned to the side, away from Natalie. Her blue dress is torn, and much of her hip and rear are exposed and pale. She is wearing a tangled diaper. One of her legs is bent, and points away from the other. Nat circles her, stumbling a bit on the uneven ground. She puts a hand over her mouth—she's aware of a thin noise in her throat—because she can see that the fine blond hair is speckled with glass, can see—Nat's throat aches—part of the girl's face, her eye staring out, white and blue and a blossom of deep red, can see that her head is lopsided, falling in on itself like a beach ball losing air.

Now there's screaming. Nat sits down, heavily, in the damp grass, and it takes her a moment to understand she hasn't yet made a sound; the scream she hears now comes
from up above on the road, and it is a woman's scream—of course it is—ragged and panicked and angry; it is the sound of loss, wrapped around a name.

Nat keeps hers in. Hers is nothing. Only one scream means anything,
can
mean anything, and she listens to it rising and falling, this scream which can only be a mother's.

F
OR A WEEK
after the accident at the bridge Nat and Joan barely speak about it.

This means, of course, that they also do not talk about the baby they have agreed to conceive. Nat sees that Joan would like to; Joan meets Nat's eyes whenever she can, and Nat knows she can barely keep her questions in—Joan's method has always been to bring things up, to put them out in the open. And, too, Nat knows that Joan is suffering, suffering for
her
, knowing she can't say anything that will make things right. Natalie would like to make this easier for her somehow, to ease the tension, but she doesn't know a way. Whenever she thinks of the dead child—or the one she might have—she feels sick. Her head hurts.

Nat has surprised herself by talking, instead, with God.

She doesn't consider this prayer. She has always been uneasy with prayer—which seemed to her, when she was younger, when she fully believed in God, as greediness: asking for things she could not have. She always told herself, back then, not to be ungrateful—that if she were God she would be overwhelmed, and maybe even made angry, by the millions of requests the world must heave skyward.

And besides, if she
could
pray, she wouldn't know what to ask for. Nat can barely frame the questions. But she needs answers to them anyway, and she knows these answers reside
somewhere far away from her, and from Joan, and so Nat throws her voice up to the heaven that isn't there, to the God in whom she doesn't—not really—believe.

She's not after the big question—why a baby has to die—but the personal one: Why has this happened to
them
, to Nat and Joan, on the very day Nat's wish for a baby was granted? (And—if she is being honest with herself—she should say that all along, as she's dreamed of a baby, she has always hoped, most fervently, for a girl.) Why, of all the people under the bridge, was Nat the one who saw the girl die? Why did
she
have to walk to the girl and see what death had done to her?

Because these events, put together, seem far too . . . well,
meaningful
. Too full of portent. At first she's just wondering—but then, she's asking. She's not requesting a boon. Only an explanation of the symbols. Is she being warned not to have a child of her own? Or urged to hurry? Urged back to church, to God? Away from her lover? Any statement, any possible answer, seems too complex, however she puts it together in her head.

Finally she wonders if what she needs is in fact much simpler, if her many questions are really one question; if in fact she's asking the big one after all: Are You there? Or aren't You?

In her mind, the only answer she receives is the same one, repeating over and over: the child dropping down from the sky.

Two weeks after the accident she surprises herself once more. After they have climbed beneath the covers, late at night, Nat says to Joan, I don't think I want a baby anymore.

Joan props herself up on one arm. She speaks too quickly, and Nat knows she's been preparing for this.

I don't think you mean that, Joan says. Do you?

Nat crosses her elbows on her knees and says, I do.

Why?

Because the baby will die.

You don't know that. You can't
possibly
know that. It was a freak accident—

No, Nat says calmly. The baby will die. Maybe at four, maybe at seventy-nine, maybe it'll be stillborn. But every baby dies.

Nat sees the look on her lover's face. She smiles and touches Joan's cheek, and adds, I know how that sounds. Really, I do. But don't you see? A baby decides nothing. We choose to bring it into the world, and the world, or God, or whoever, chooses when it leaves, and all the baby does is get tugged along.

You're scaring me.

Nat says, She was one year old. She hadn't even started talking yet. What do you suppose she thought about when she died?

Joan clasps her hands in front of her mouth.

Nat says, Shouldn't you at least get to form a thought about it, when you go?

I don't know, Joan says, grimacing and reaching for a cigarette. Here we are, thinking about it. Do you think this is better?

What I mean is, I think I've been selfish.

Having a baby isn't selfish.

The world doesn't need any more babies.

Maybe not. But we're free to have one.

Joan starts to explain, to go over again the things they've discussed. At some level, Nat is proud of her for trying. For
doing what she thinks is right, to make Nat's own arguments for her. Natalie hears now the things she's said, sometimes tearfully, cast again in Joan's strong voice: How they will be excellent parents, how the world, the way it is, thinking the way it thinks, needs the child they will raise. That problems—all that troubles them about the world—can only be changed by people who raise children not to hate, not to fear.

How can I teach a child not to fear? Nat says. Every time I looked at her I would be terrified. She would know I was lying.

Nat turns off the light. Joan tries to talk some more, but Nat says, Please, no more tonight.

Joan waits a while, then stubs out her cigarette, and sighs, and settles under the covers.

Nat has been calm, but now, with the lights out, her breath shudders, and she begins to sob.

Joan says, Come here, honey. And Nat, without turning, rounds her back, and Joan molds herself to it and slips her warm hand under Nat's breasts. Joan kisses her at the nape of her neck, at the line where her hair begins. Her breath is warm on Nat's neck, on her shoulder blades. Her hands are soft; she rubs Nat's shoulders and back, along the curve of her spine.