The Other Life (32 page)

What would it be like to go through all that to give birth to a dead baby? Her daughter, lifeless and blue. Quinn imagined driving home from the hospital with Lewis, the backseat empty. They would pull up in the front of the house and slam the car doors shut, the still air of their suburban street muffling the lonely sound. Later, there would be a funeral. A tiny coffin.

The steady heartbeat continued to pulse.
Woosh-woosh-woosh-woosh.

Quinn turned toward Lewis. “I don’t know what to do. Tell me. Tell me what to do!”

“You want me to make the decision?”

“Yes.
Please
.”

He rose from the bed and sat on the small metal stool in the corner, as if he needed some physical space for his thoughts. He began to rock, just a bit, which Quinn recognized as deep concentration. Finally, he got up again and approached her bed.

“You are my world, Quinn,” he said, his eyes now red and watery. “You matter to me more than anything. I hate to see you go through all this, and I wish I could fix it. I wish I could make the baby well. I wish I could make this pregnancy easy and healthy. But I can’t.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I think . . . I think it’s best to terminate now while we can. And I think that deep down that’s what you really want . . . isn’t it?”

“Deep down I want her to be alive and okay. That’s what I want.”

“I know.”

Quinn put her hands behind her head, her fingers interlocked. She remembered being in the same position on a lounge chair in Fiji, overlooking the crystal blue Pacific Ocean. What an easy life. What a stupid, easy life. And how cursed she was to know she could so easily slip away.

She didn’t want to terminate this pregnancy. She wanted to have this baby. But the very real possibility of losing her later—of having to give birth to a lifeless little girl—was more than she could bear.

Quinn sat up and unbuckled the strap holding the fetal heart rate monitor in place. She took it off and laid it next to her.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll terminate.”

QUINN WASN’T SURE WHY SHE WENT DOWN INTO THE BASEMENT when she had no intention of leaving. She only knew that at three in the morning, when she was still wide awake in bed, she felt compelled to face the beast in her life and rail at it about the unfairness of it all.

Why? Did she feel that it was the portal’s fault?

No, that wasn’t it. She was furious that a part of her was still tempted. It would just be so easy. She could slip through and all of this would be gone. There would be no appointment for an abortion in the morning. No pregnancy at all. But of course there would be no Lewis and no Isaac in her life, either.

Until now, it was something she had avoided contemplating, because leaving her husband and son was unthinkable.

Wasn’t it?

But what if she did? What would it be like to leave all these problems behind? Would she and Eugene enjoy a perfect life filled with friends and money and traveling and parties and fame?

Quinn remembered a joke from one of her favorite films,
Annie Hall
. Diane Keaton’s character was trying to get Woody Allen’s character to abandon the East Coast for the West Coast, where they would just sit around all day watching movies. “And gradually you get old and die,” Woody responded. And everyone understood the pithy joke. Life was meaningless without some struggles.

But of course she never felt her life with Eugene was carefree. He needed constant attention. And it was never enough.

“I’m kidding myself,” she said out loud. She loved her husband. She loved her son. If she simply had to choose between her life here and her life with Eugene, there was no contest.

The wild card was Nan.

Quinn opened the ironing board, put her hands on either side of the fissure, and wept. She missed her mother so much. If only she were here, Quinn thought. If only ...

“Mommy?”

It was Isaac. Quinn hadn’t even heard him come in.

“What are you doing up?” She was angry. Isaac was the last person in the world she could deal with right now.

His tongue traveled around his dry lips, a bad habit that got worse when the weather turned cold. This time of year Quinn usually put Vaseline around his mouth before putting him to bed, but tonight she had forgotten.

“I had a bad dream,” he said.

How could she comfort him and be the sweet, tender mother he deserved when she couldn’t even give the baby inside her a chance at life? And, worse, how could she be a mother at all when she was contemplating leaving this life altogether?

“Go back to bed,” she said to him.

He didn’t move. He just stood there, in his SpongeBob pajamas, staring at the fissure. “What is that?” he said, pointing.

“It’s nothing. Go back to bed.”

“Is the wall broken?”

“A little, yes.”

“I want to feel it.”

Quinn thought about the day she first discovered a portal in her life and dared to touch the other side. She wasn’t much older than he was now. What would have happened if she had gone through and relived her life without breaking her leg that day? Would everything have been different? Would the tiny shift in her life have changed what followed? If she hadn’t spent those weeks in bed reading and falling more and more in love with books, would she have gone to work for Baston’s as an adult and eventually met Eugene and then Lewis? Or would she have had a different life entirely, with a different child, a different husband, different everything? Would she, at this moment, be standing in a cold basement on the last night of her unborn daughter’s life?

Would her mother still be alive?

Nothing about the choices she had to make in her life seemed fair. She wished Isaac wasn’t standing before her now, poking at the part of her heart that was throbbing in pain. She needed to be left alone.

“I want to touch that,” he repeated, taking a step forward.

“No!”

He reached toward it. “It looks silver.”

Quinn grabbed his hand before it reached the fissure. “Did you hear me?” she shouted. “You get back upstairs this minute!”

“Why are you yelling?”

“Because you’re not listening to me. Now, go! I don’t want to
see
your face, I don’t want to
hear
your voice! And I don’t want you
ever
touching this wall. Have I made myself clear?”

Isaac’s eyes went wide. His mother had never spoken to him like that before. Ever. His face turned bright red and a terrible grimace transformed his pretty features into an ugly mask.

“Mommy!” he wailed as he started to cry.

And just like that, Quinn’s fury morphed into the acid of self-loathing, and she collapsed onto the floor, where she rolled herself into a ball, sobbing. Isaac put his tiny hand on her back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry!”

But Quinn couldn’t stop crying.

“Go back to bed,” she said. “Just go.”

Isaac turned and left, sniffling. Quinn wept as she listened to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.

The weight of Quinn’s sorrow was heavier than the total of everything she had ever lifted. It did, in fact, feel like a physical force that threatened to crush her, and she didn’t have the strength—or even the desire—to push it off.

Quinn kept her eyes shut tight, wishing that when she opened them everything would be different. But it wasn’t. She was still there on the floor of the laundry room in her basement.

But then Quinn noticed something she had never seen before. It was another fissure—a new crack in the foundation wall starting from the floor and reaching up two and a half feet. At once, she knew exactly what it was—a portal to the life in which she had made the decision not to terminate the pregnancy.

The weight bearing down on Quinn doubled. How would she be able to go on with this life, knowing that she had also made the opposite decision? There was no chance for peace. She would spend the rest of her life second-guessing this choice.

She reached toward the fissure and let herself feel her life on the other side. It was just as tortured. There she worried whether she had made the right decision to go through with the pregnancy. Her other self was consumed with the fear of giving birth to a dead baby, but equally terrified of the tragic life her damaged daughter might have.

Then a more horrific thought occurred to Quinn. If her daughter was born alive in the other life, would she be satisfied staying in this life? Or would the temptation to cross over just be too great? Would she spend the rest of her days crossing between two lives, the one with a disabled daughter and the one without? How could she—how could any mother—cope with such a daily struggle?

The longer she lay there on the cold floor, the more she felt consumed with a madness she couldn’t fight. It was all simply too much.

She remembered, then, what her mother had said about the depression that drove her to attempt suicide. It wasn’t just sadness, it was blackness. That was exactly how Quinn felt. The darkness was so complete, she couldn’t imagine a pinhole of light could exist anywhere.

Quinn didn’t know how long she had been on the cold tile floor. She was barely even aware of rising. But the next thing she knew, she was climbing onto the ancient ironing board and crawling through.

THE JOURNEY WAS TERRIBLE, COLD, NAUSEATING, BUT IT WAS the last time she would make it. Each time Quinn crossed over, the passage back had become harder, and now, she knew, it would be impossible. For not only had the opening to her basement become smaller, her body had grown larger. So even if she could make it as far as the foundation wall—which seemed unlikely, as the temperature of the bathwater would have to be so cold now that Quinn doubted she could even survive it—she would be unable to fit through.

Quinn emerged from the bathtub in her Manhattan apartment, shivering. She wrapped herself in a big towel and tiptoed into the dark bedroom, where Eugene was asleep. There was enough light from the window for her to discern his form. He was on his side, facing the wall. She quietly opened a drawer to find some clothes, and heard the rustle of sheets. Quinn froze, watching as he turned over and threw his arm over her side of the bed. Would he awaken? She listened until she could make out his breathing, deep and steady. She dressed and slipped out of the bedroom carrying her shoes.

The kitchen was dimly lit by the glow of the microwave clock. She switched on a small counter light, picked up the phone, and dialed her parents’ number on Long Island.

“Hello?” Nan’s voice was hoarse with sleep.

“It’s me,” she whispered.

“Quinn? What’s wrong?”

“Can you meet me at the Blue Bird?” It was a diner in Queens, about halfway between Quinn’s Manhattan apartment and her parents’ home on Long Island. Best of all, it was open all night.

“When? Now?” her mother asked.

“In about half an hour. I’ll drive straight there.”

“What time is it?”

Quinn looked at the digital clock. “Almost four.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I need to talk to you.”

There was a brief pause while Nan considered the request. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

Quinn gently returned the phone to its cradle and walked toward the front door, still carrying her shoes. She put them down and opened the closet. It squeaked. She held her breath. Nothing. Quinn sighed, relieved. She pulled out her coat and slipped it on, then bent over to put on her shoes. When she rose, Eugene was behind her.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Her hand went to her heart. “You startled me.”

“It’s four in the morning,” he said.

She stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat so that he wouldn’t see them trembling. “I have to go see my mother,” she said.

Eugene folded his arms. He was wearing print pajama bottoms and no shirt. “Are you having an affair?”

“For God’s sake, Eugene.”

“You are. You’re having an affair. I knew it.”

“I’m
not
having an affair.”

“Why would you be going to see your mother at four in the morning?”

“Why would I be going to see a
lover
at four in the morning?”

“To get laid.”

She rolled her eyes. “You have to trust me.”

“Something very bad is happening,” he said. “I feel it.”

She turned and opened the front door. “Take a Xanax and go back to bed,” she said.

“Please, don’t go.” He looked frightened and desperate, as if he suspected he might never see her again.

“I have to,” she said, and shut the door behind her.

“Are you even going to say good-bye?” he shouted through the door.

 

 

DRIVING TO THE DINER, Quinn tried to reconcile seven years of longing with the reality that her mother would now be in her life. The problem was that the most agonizing moments of missing her had a direct connection to what she had just given up.

She remembered the night she had given birth to Isaac. She was so depleted. It had been almost two days since she’d had any sleep. Lewis had gone home and Quinn was alone in her hospital room. She was weak, hormonal, emotional. The epidural had worn off and her bottom was throbbing in pain where she had been stitched. Still, she was sure she would fall fast asleep. How could she not? She was as spent as she had ever been.

And yet. Sleep would not come. It felt as if her body had forgotten how to shut off. Quinn teetered on the sharp edge between restlessness and anxiety.

The other bed in the room was empty, so she was free to turn on the television, which usually had a soporific effect on her. This night, it did nothing. She turned it off and an hour later she was still awake. She switched on the light and picked up the book she had brought with her. After a few chapters, the paragraphs stopped making any sense, so she put it down and finally drifted into a light sleep.