Cradle Lake (3 page)

“It's good to have new neighbors,” Hank added, giving Alan a toothy smile. Hank was tall, his skin nicely tanned, his black hair cropped short and turning gray at the temples. He wore an IZOD polo tucked into his overly tight jeans, and reflective sunglasses hung around his neck by a nylon cord. “Old guy who used to live here was a real curmudgeon.”

Alan, who had never heard any adult male use the word
curmudgeon
in his life, forced a smile and said, “He was my uncle.”

Hank's face seemed to drop like an elevator crashing through floors. “Oh, hey … jeez …”

Lydia slapped her husband on the arm. “See that? Always opening your mouth.”

“Didn't mean anything by it …”

Alan shrugged. “It's no big deal. I hardly knew him. In fact, I'm surprised he left us this place in his will.”

“They brought us food and wine,” Heather said.

The detour in conversation was as loud as an explosion. Everyone turned and looked at her.

“Ah yes,” Lydia said, still maintaining her perfect smile. “Some tuna casserole and a bottle of Pinot.”

“Well, thanks,” Alan said. “That was very nice.”

“We were going to invite you over for supper,” Hank
said, “but we didn't want to impose on your first night in your new home—”

“We really went around and around about it,” Lydia interrupted. “Should we invite them or shouldn't we.”

“Should we or shouldn't we,” Hank parroted. It was like watching a tennis match. “Moving is a hectic thing. We didn't want to add any confusion. And it looks like you've got a lot of boxes to go through, too.”

“Yeah,” Alan said.

Lydia touched Heather's arm. “Maybe later in the week we can have you both over. We're just across the street.”

Wonderful,
Alan thought.

Heather smiled wearily, her eyes unfocused. It looked like one of her hands was beginning to tremble slightly. He would have to give her more Ativan.

“So what do you do?” Hank asked, perhaps discomforted by Heather's obvious detachment.

“I'm an English professor,” Alan said. “I took a job at the community college. I'll be starting in the fall.”

“Wow,” Hank said. “A professor, huh? Way cool.”

Alan just nodded and thought,
Way cool? What the fuck?

“Oh, hey, great tats,” Hank said, suddenly noticing the tattoos on Alan's arms.

Lydia tugged on her husband's elbow. “Come on. Let's get out of their hair.”

Hank Gerski clapped Alan on the shoulder as his wife pulled him toward the front door. “I'll give you a shout later, Alan,” Hank said, his smile like the chrome grille of an eighteen-wheeler. “Fill you in on the neighborhood's tawdry secrets.”

“Sounds inviting,” Alan said, feigning a smile of his own.

As they filed through the door, Catherine went to pet Jerry Lee on the top of his head. The dog took a step backward and growled deep in his throat. The girl's hand froze in midair, her eyes wide.

Alan got down on his knees and raked his fingers along the dog's head. “Cut that out.” To Catherine, he said, “He's a friendly guy, really. He's probably just a little scared, being in a new house in a new town.”

“What's his name?” Catherine asked.

“Jerry Lee. Like the piano player.”

“Oh,” said Catherine. As if she had any clue about piano players.

“Come on,” Hank called to her. He and Lydia stood in the doorway, a mutual look of distaste on their faces as they stared at Jerry Lee.

“Really,” Alan promised, “he's a big old dummy. Perfectly harmless.”

“I'm sure.” Hank cleared his throat and put one hand on the back of his daughter's neck. “Well, anyway, you folks have a good night.”

They left.

“Hey,” Alan said, looking into the dog's sloppy eyes. Jerry Lee seemed perfectly fine now. “What's gotten into you, huh, bud?”

“He's probably cranky from the car ride.” It was the first thing Heather had said to him without being prompted in what seemed like forever.

“Probably.” Alan went to the front windows and peeked
out past the latticework of vines that veined the windowpane. “I don't think I've ever heard a grown man use the word
tawdry
before.” He watched the Gerski family cross the street toward their house. They looked like the perfect middle-class
Leave It to Beaver
family. Well,
almost
perfect: he noticed Hank walked with a slight limp.

When he turned away from the window, Heather was gone.
Blink—right out of existence.
Yet he could hear her in the kitchen, setting the food down on the stove. Alan went to the bathroom and peered at his reflection. Even without the peppery sprinkle of a bruise on his right cheek, which indeed had swollen to nearly twice its normal size, and the bleeding laceration above his eyebrow, he was surprised to find his reflection looking haggard and run-down.

I'm thinking too much about it,
he told himself. It was the truth.
I'm thinking too much, and I'm going to cause the goddamn ulcer to act up again. Stop it already.

The ulcer had developed last year after the second miscarriage. At the time he had thought it fitting that he should suffer with stomach pains after Heather's womb had equally suffered. But what was so easily rectified in him with antacid tablets and misoprostol could not take away the memory of the miscarriages nor fix whatever was inside Heather that had caused them.

After scrounging around in a number of cardboard moving boxes, Alan finally located the little white first-aid kit with the red cross on the lid. He applied peroxide to the gash above his eyebrow, gritting his teeth at the sting.

Five minutes later, when he felt somewhat better and
his face was cleaned up, he went into the living room and found Heather sitting on the sofa, right in the middle of the room where the movers had left it, staring blankly at one wall.

“Hon,” he said, “you hungry?”

He waited several moments until the silence grew intolerable.

Then he went into the kitchen and uncorked the bottle of wine.

Long before Alan Hammerstun had ever dreamt he and his wife would be living in his uncle's house in North Carolina, they had spent five months trying to get pregnant. They had talked long and hard about children, though they both agreed early on that they wanted a big family.

One question, among myriad others, was that of location. Heather had grown up in the Midwest, with sprawling acres on which to run and play, lots of animals and friends and well-meaning neighbors at every turn. Alan, on the other hand, had been a child of Manhattan and knew of no other life. There was some brief talk, initiated by Heather, about relocating outside the city for the benefit of their future children. Alan had insisted city life would be good for their unborn progeny, citing the importance of learning how to deal with different types of people while attaining certain street smarts that he didn't believe were easily come by outside a major metropolitan area.

Those conversations died down, however, after months and months of trying to conceive without result. Each time Heather had her period there was a definite gloom that overtook them but nothing serious. Not in the beginning, anyway. They didn't truly start to worry until, ironically, they went to the doctor to see if there was a problem and found out Heather
was
pregnant—that her missed period did indeed signal the arrival of new life. They scheduled an appointment with an obstetrician who inserted a gelled rod into Heather's body. Squiggly, ill-defined shapes, like the suggestive presence of ghosts, appeared on the ultrasound monitor.

Mommy books came quickly. Hasty phone calls were made to close family and friends. Alan bought a stack of classical music CDs, which they played on rotation on the portable CD player by their bed at night, because they had heard playing classical music made your fetus smart.

Then, two months into the pregnancy, Heather sat up in bed—

“Alan?”

“Yeah?”

“Alan … Al—Alan—”

“Babe—”

“I think—”

“Heather—”

“I
think—”

Under the blankets, his right foot slid in something wet.

Heather screamed, jumped out of bed, and raced to the bathroom down the hallway of their tiny Manhattan apartment.

Alan hopped out of bed as well, the sheets tangling around his ankles, and flipped on the light switch. As he
listened to Heather's moaning from the bathroom, he stared in horror at the mattress. A dark crimson smear of blood stood out obscenely on the white sheet. At its center was what looked like a small twist of black fibrous tissue. Alan thought of bloody noses blown into Kleenex.

In the bathroom, Heather was curled in a fetal position on the floor. Her inner thighs were wet with blood, and there were dark red asterisks on the yellow linoleum tile.

It had been a horrible evening that segued into a horrible two weeks. Neither of them wanted to talk about what had happened. And neither of them did. Heather put in extra hours at the art gallery, and Alan buried himself in his work at the university.

Time continued to move on. Clocks ticked.

(There was no explanation and these things sometimes happened. It was nature's way, Mother Nature up to her old tricks, and anyway, it was just one of those things and they would get past it and move on from there, everyone said so.)

They did not make the effort to try as hard this time. They let things happen naturally. Perhaps, Alan thought on occasion, it was the stress of trying to get pregnant that had caused the pregnancy to end prematurely. Even the obstetrician agreed that it was certainly a possibility.

So there was no stress, no effort to make things happen.

(these things happen)

Several months later, Heather discovered she was pregnant again. She told Alan one night over dinner, after having already gone to see the doctor for confirmation on her own. Everything looked fine. They were happy again. More phone calls were made.

As time progressed, Alan moved his computer and desk out of the spare bedroom and painted the walls a neutral yellow because it was too early to determine the sex of the baby. Heather watched what she ate—no deli meats, no sushi or undercooked food, no more coffee—and, because that was sometimes hard to do, Alan watched what
he
ate in an effort to support her and put up a unified front. So they suffered caffeine withdrawal together. In bed at night, they thought of names. Heather suggested William if it was a boy, but Alan didn't want to name his child after his father.

“The first one was a mermaid,” she told him one night as he was about to fall asleep. He was half-dreaming of pastel paintings and great seagoing vessels. Lighthouses and cresting waves.

“How do you know?” he mumbled.

“I just know.” She pressed her face against him, warm in the cool night. “This one will be a sailor.”

Heather carried the baby midway through the second trimester before she collapsed one afternoon at the art gallery and was rushed to the hospital. Alan arrived to find her gray and withdrawn in the hospital bed, nearly catatonic. He talked to her and tried to get her to respond, but it was futile. She could do nothing, it seemed, except stare at the blank wall across the room. Touching her hand was like touching a mannequin's. A nurse had disposed of Heather's slacks, which were apparently soaked in blood. None of the doctors could give him a suitable reason for why any of it had happened.

Out in the hospital corridor, Alan stopped one of the nurses whom he'd recognized going in and out of Heather's
room. She was a heavyset black woman with a lacquered coiffure and neon orange talons for fingernails.

“I want to see it,” he said.

The nurse said she didn't understand.

Calmly, Alan said, “Then I will explain it to you.” And he did—that he wanted to see it, needed to see it. Where was it?

“We don't do that.” She seemed disgusted by the idea.

“Then get me someone who will,” he said and waited.

Other nurses filtered by, and some of them tried to give Alan coffee or take him down to the cafeteria for something to eat. Tried to distract him, change his mind. But he wouldn't be distracted, wouldn't change his mind. He wanted to
see
it.

Eventually, a grizzled old doctor with rimless glasses and hair like a nest of copper wires approached. He spoke in a low voice. His breath reeked of onions. He used phrases like
highly unorthodox
and
would not change what happened.

“I know that. I'm not a fool,” Alan said. “I want to see it.”

The doctor nodded. “Then follow me.”

He would suffer nightmares from what he saw that afternoon in a small room at the end of the long corridor. A very clean, antiseptic room. The thing itself was in a clear plastic bag, vacuum-sealed and with a biohazard sticker on it. He could
see
it … the suggestion of delicate limbs, the misshapen cranium, the vagaries of all the things that make humans human. A single foot, tiny toes splayed, five of them, all five …

Back at the apartment, Heather refused to leave the bedroom. She quit her job and spent her days in bed, reading
trashy romance novels and watching daytime television with the volume turned all the way down. She refused to come out for dinner; like a prison guard, Alan simply left food on the nightstand.

For two weeks he slept on the pull-out sofa in the living room. A needling white-hot pain began to spread in his guts. He thought of nonspecific cancers and ravenous tapeworms; of African orphans with bloated bellies whose faces served as banquets for giant, flesh-hungry flies. He thought, too, of exploding fireworks and bloody stool. Half-dreaming, half not.

Then one night he was jarred awake on the pull-out sofa by something that may or may not have been a dream. He crept down the hall to the bathroom. A sliver of tallow light radiated from beneath the closed door. Gently, he knocked. “Heather?”