“Because you’re eating so well!” Melinda huffs. “Maybe you should have a sticky bun. Bring it up a little.”
Iris slips away from her. She grabs her purse. She is going to vomit. She is going to fall over. She feels like her head is in a vise, like her fingers could fall off. There is a painting next to the door that says “Just That Sort of a Day” from the Tribeca Film Festival. It is black with white letters. “We have to go.” She grabs her phone. Dave. She has to call Dave, who will have a brand-new stroller in the back of the car, the price tag hanging from the handle, the car seat bright and new with instructions. He will start joking with her when he picks up the phone. I’m not getting the swing today, he’ll say.
Melinda stands in front of her. “Now just calm down, honey. You’re all worked up. Look how pale you are.” She holds her shoulders. “Breathe, baby. Breathe.” She smells like cinnamon.
There has to be an explanation, Iris thinks. Maybe babies move less as they get bigger. Maybe she felt her move an hour ago but just can’t remember. Phoebe has been growing inside her all this time. Her heartbeat has been boisterous and urgent at every appointment. Why is Iris jumping to this conclusion?
When she found out about the baby in the fall, she felt the way she does now: sick, unable to breathe, paralyzed. She told Dave maybe they should consider an abortion. It was too soon. She’d known him for only a few months. She had school, the graduate degree in occupational therapy. She wanted to go to Europe. She wanted to enjoy her twenties and not have a baby yet. She loved Dave, but she wanted to be sure this was permanent. Look at Melinda. She didn’t want to be Melinda; Phoebe to be her. Damn it, she thought. Damn it. For the first few weeks, she wanted to wake up and not be pregnant anymore.
And now what if she isn’t? No movement. The lower blood sugar. What if she failed because she didn’t love Phoebe enough, because she was ashamed to be pregnant? What would her professors say? she thought. What would Melinda say? What would New Dad say? But Alex had been superb. He chuckled. “How wonderful, Sunshine!” he said. It was his acceptance of the baby that made her okay with it. His approval, and then later his wife Kay’s warmth, the gift of finally meeting her. Kay so encouraging and nonjudgmental made Iris feel like she could do anything. Alex had always been her best adviser, her barometer. And Kay was another feather in her cap. Even Melinda had been excited. “You little devils,” she said, wagging a finger at her and Dave. Now Iris loves Phoebe. She dreams about her tiny face, her future voice. She wants her so badly.
She leaves the apartment with her mother, and notices every detail: the jingle of the car keys, the noise of her teeth chattering as she walks, slowly, down each step of the stairwell, the whistle of the oblivious mailman who nods at her as he opens and closes all those tiny mailbox doors.
* * *
A month later, after her final exams are over, after she stands in front of everyone and meekly accepts the master’s degree, after she starts her job, mostly doing occupational therapy in nursing homes and treatment centers, after it gets too warm to sleep without air-conditioning—so soon, it seems—Iris is up in the middle of the night looking out at the quiet streets. She sees the dark storefronts with dim lights glowing from inside, the still sidewalks, the row of parking meters, the spots mostly vacant.
The stroller sits in the corner of the apartment. The stupid monitor is in a drawer, never sent back to Amazon. Iris is up, thinking about Phoebe. The image of Phoebe so still and purplish as they handed her to Iris—for just minutes, it seemed—and then took her away.
Phoebe, whom she had to deliver anyway. So tiny and shocked, it seemed. As if she could have never made it in the world.
Iris is thinking about Melinda, who said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and proceeded to declutter her drawers and throw out the box of sticky buns.
She is thinking about Dave, who held her for hours. She heard him weeping in the bathroom that first night. He wouldn’t look at Phoebe, but instead shook his head like a sad child and asked them to take her away.
She is awake the way she would have been. She would have been up all the time, tiptoeing around the quiet apartment, the light above the stove glowing, the shadows on the furniture. She waits for the teapot to boil, sits in the big chair and bites her thumbnail as she looks at the black outside the window, and doesn’t know what the heck she’ll do. She has her job, but it only eats up eight hours a day. Until now she could busy herself with school, with all those final items: the clinical fieldwork evaluations, the extended project for her advanced research seminar that still needed to get done whether she delivered a dead baby or not.