Watchlist (16 page)

They began having sex, but soon he stopped. “Sorry,” he explained. “I feel like I'm watching a surgery in progress or something,” he said. Cora was annoyed but thought it was better to pretend to be confused. She got ready to say, “There's no surgery,” or tell him she'd had the operation over a year ago, except she got distracted by her dresser's mirror. She watched her heart beating again and again like an unanswered question, like a phone in her chest that would not stop ringing. “Hello?” Cora said. In the mirror's reflection, she could see that the man was no longer next to her in bed. Maybe he'd gone to the bathroom, or maybe he'd quietly left.

He was about the size of a wooden match and floated—arms spread out—like a skydiver in a small jar his wife had given him, perhaps because they were childless and he was always traveling.

She gave it to him on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, in October, while they were on a retreat at a monastery in northern New Mexico. They were having dinner at Francisco's, just north of Tres Piedras, sitting by the fire when she said—more tenderly than he'd ever known—“Here Mark, I'd like you to have this.”

At first he thought it was a small salamander, for they used to catch those in mountain ponds, but upon looking in astonishment he could see that this tiny figure swimming about in a thick fluid appeared to be a man—perhaps because of its short black hair. He could see no sexual organs, and the body tight he thought it was wearing appeared to be its own skin.

“Claire, what a wild gift,” he said. “Thank you. Where'd you get it?”—then from her solemn, penetrating, and almost religious stare, he knew it was real.

Sliding, sometimes somersaulting, while at other times resting on its side, the tiny figure always seemed buoyant.

“Well,” he said, as if to bolster his own disbelief, “
he
must have cost a fortune!”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Where'd you get it? Some lab in California?” he said in jest, half mockingly, but she only smiled, as she did when he'd asked her to marry.

Smiling again, she added, “He'll keep you company on your trip, since I have the cats, but don't open the jar. His food source is infused in the liquid and all the waste is absorbed.”

Too good to be true, he thought—a pet man—and nodded in disbelief. He was driving to Los Angeles on Friday and would be there for a month, doing some research on language divinely inspired, more specifically on “speaking in tongues,” and the Pentecostal Church had its American origin around there in the early 1900s.

T
HE DAY BEFORE
he left, Claire explained once more why they could no longer live together—how they wanted different things. “Books are your family,” she said. A phrase that haunted him, but he finally agreed. It was something they'd both long sensed—talked about—and she was going to move in with her elderly mother.

“Take care of your little man,” she said.

They both felt terrible, but in one sense he was glad to be leaving. En route he stopped in northern Arizona at a rural B&B called La Rose des Vents, run by a French couple. After a long and wonderful meal, which included salmon pâté and bouillabaisse, he retired to his room where he read and watched the tiny creature glide effortlessly about the jar on the end table. Later he placed the jar on his chest, in order to get a better look as he lay in bed, feeling guilty that he hadn't given it a name, perhaps because he was still a bit spooked by the recent course of events, and how at times that homunculus would push its tiny face against the glass like a child peeking into a house full of other, hidden children.

Later that evening as he stared, mesmerized by its movements, it appeared to be writing something on the inside of the jar, writing furiously with all its will—some word over and over. Slowly he unscrewed the jar and with his finger reached toward its outstretched hand, but when he tried to pull it up the inside of the glass, the arm detached and the wound, like a slow red spill into a greater stain, suffused first the body, then the entire liquid to an incandescent pink.

W
AKING, STARING INTO
the desert sunrise, he wondered if it was his own name or perhaps Claire's that it had tried so willfully to trace on the glass, and he saw how large and red everything became there, forgetting who he was, as he reached toward the open window.

Nadia works at the convenience store a block away from my house. They sell anything from Vaseline to saltines, bruised apples, and floss. I mostly go there for stamps, quarters, and Cascade. Nadia is from North India and she has two teenage sons and one daughter, away at college. She praises the daughter and curses the sons. She says her sons are slow. Her daughter, on the other hand, is studious and diligent and always tries to please. “Similar to you,” she adds.

I stop by the store maybe once a week, sometimes twice. Nadia has taken a liking to me. She usually comments on my appearance, which at first made me uncomfortable but now I have gotten used to it and I realize it's just something she does. Scrutinizing my face, she will say that I look tired, or that I have lost weight. I tell her that I always look tired. Once she asked me about my eyebrows because she liked the shape. Another time she wondered about the small blond hairs on my upper lip. “How do you get rid of them?” she asked from behind the counter. Yesterday when I ran into the store for a bottle of water, dressed in black jeans and a white button-down shirt for teaching, Nadia raised her eyebrows, impressed, and told me I should wear makeup more often. “You look better today,” she said, pinching her cheeks. “More color.”

Oftentimes it seems as if she is squinting into the sun, her own long shapely eyebrows drawn together. Her skin reminds me of how tea looks when clouded with milk. A few gray strands glint in her light brown hair, which she has recently cut because she says it's easier this way. I ask if her husband liked her long hair better, but she laughs bitterly and says he doesn't care at all. I ask this only because my husband prefers long hair to short and was disappointed when I cut it off last summer. Since then, my hair has grown back, longer than it ever was, past my shoulder blades.

Nadia's husband sporadically appears in a gray BMW with tinted windows. He owns the store. On an odd Tuesday morning or late Friday afternoon, he'll pull up to the curb and check things out. He has salt-and-pepper hair and a beard trimmed close to his face. She will argue with him about not having enough inventory. He will cajole her into covering another shift. I imagine they also fight behind closed doors because Nadia has said that she hates her life. She tells me this casually, ripping off a neat line of ten stamps from the roll. The coiled-up little American flags are released into my open palm. Her sons are stupid and she must help them with their homework every night after working here all day. If not, they will never get into college. Behind her, miniature bottles of Purell gleam on the shelf, along with new toothbrushes and disposable razors. Her sons are twins and I have seen one of them riding his bicycle down Lincoln Boulevard, dangerously weaving in and out of traffic, his T-shirt billowing in the wind. She constantly tells me not to have children because children will ruin my life. “No more movies, no more vacations, no more anything. All your freedom, gone! I work here day and night to send my daughter to college in Canada. It costs fifty thousand dollars a year.” I nod, wondering why her daughter is in Canada. The cash register opens, signaled by that high-pitched ring. Instead, she advises, a dog is better than a child. She allows my dog into the store even though dogs aren't allowed. My dog sniffs at all the candy bars and packaged nuts, leaving a slight trail of saliva on the plastic wrappings.

W
HEN I GOT
pregnant I felt nervous about going into her store. Especially since I knew I was having a son. But I finally forced myself to go there because we were in dire need of milk and paper towels one morning, and when she saw my protruding stomach she was solicitous and asked if my hair had grown thicker, if my skin had stayed clear, if I felt sluggish? When I answered each question, I wondered if she secretly thought that my life was ending. Nonetheless she pressed a special ginger drink from Australia into my palm for nausea. The dark brown bottle felt cool to the touch.

Walking home, I ran my palm along the honeysuckle hedges, the white flowers nestled in the green, giving off a sweet puckered scent. It was the height of summer and the jacaranda trees were shedding their lavender petals, crying violet. Bougainvillea sprouted erratically over walls and fences, bursts of magenta and faded orange. I walked up the hill, noticing my shortness of breath, which I had also noticed a few days ago in ballet class during the barre exercises. I placed a hand on my stomach, and felt the heaviness there.

I could see my next-door neighbor standing outside on her porch, fussing with her potted plants, all succulents, her white hair in a wispy bun. She never leaves her house and on rainy days the smell of cat piss emanates through her screen door. She has lived on this street for forty years with her husband who has gray skin and gray hair and does not speak. He is eternally busy in their garage tinkering with a vintage car that seems irreparable. When we first moved here three years ago, she used to stare at us through her living room window. When we ate dinner, and I passed the salad, I'd catch a glimpse of her ghostly face peering through the darkened window. Once she took a photograph of us, the flash reflecting off the glass and I screamed, which my husband thought unnecessarily dramatic. When my husband confronted her, she explained in a lilting little girl's voice that she was only taking a Polaroid of her cat. After that we hung curtains in the living room and planted more ficus trees along the border of our property.

As I approached my house, she turned around and the sight of her high forehead, a great expanse of white papery skin, startled me. She fixed her eyes on my face and dropped her rake. The clang of it against the cement sent my heart into a frantic throb, as if someone could see it beating under my shirt. I hurried inside, closing the front gate behind me, relieved to find myself safe in our sequestered front yard, enclosed by thick ficus trees. But I was sweating, and in an instant, I remembered a dream from last night. I looked into the old woman's attic, as if the roof of her house had been lifted off. An empty baby crib stood in the middle of the room with faded newspapers scattered on the floor. The crib was old and made of dark wood, cushioned with a few dirty blankets, and bats flew in and out of a broken window. A mobile hung lopsided from the ceiling, circling over the crib. The dreamscape was bathed in monochromatic light; all muted sepia hues as if I were examining an ancient photograph. I wondered where the baby was, and even now, the dream hung in the air as I tried to calm down and reassure myself that this was real life, here in the garden with our nice garden furniture made of weathered teak. The lone table and two chairs planted on the far side of the yard was where my husband and I sometimes drank coffee. Yesterday, sitting there, we'd shared raspberries straight from the carton. This was real. The dream wasn't.

A
WEEK LATER
we found an enormous spider hanging from the carport, dangling from its web as nimble as an acrobat. The spider was light brown and furry and as large as my outstretched hand. Standing in front of it with our arms crossed over our chests, we debated what to do. I worried that the spider would make its way into the house and hide in some dark corner, and when the baby was born, the spider might creep into his crib, and kill him.

“What do you think?” my husband asked.

“Kill it.”

But I knew he felt bad about killing insects. He always let spiders and bees go free, ferrying them carefully out of the house in a wad of toilet paper, depositing them into the potted aloe plants.

He looked at the spider wistfully, his hands deep into his pockets. The spider slowly began to lower itself down and then stopped at eye level.

“If it's poisonous then it'll be loose, running around,” I said, convincing him to get a can of Raid. He sprayed the spider until it became weak and fell from its web. Then he smashed the spider with a large rock from our garden, to make sure it was dead.

That day, while I was explaining the Russian scorched earth policy to my class, I stopped feeling him move. It must be the heat, I thought, and he's probably just resting. I pictured him with his little baby legs crossed, hands behind his head, as if he were at the beach taking a break. After dinner I thought I felt him moving again while we watched TV in bed, a stupid romantic comedy about a house sitter and her search for the owner's standard poodle. Of course the woman finds the poodle and in the process, falls in love with a landscape architect.

Early the next morning, I went to the doctor. “Just to make sure everything's fine,” my husband said, kissing me lightly on the mouth. “Because I'm sure it is,” he added.

“Yes,” I said, buoyed by his optimism, “of course.”

I lay on the examining table. The nurse had already tried to find a heartbeat, but she seemed unfamiliar with the Doppler machine and I internally criticized her lack of skill, for the way she nervously fumbled around my abdomen, moving the Doppler from one side of the stomach, and then to the other.
She just doesn't know what she's doing
, I thought. Then my doctor walked in and she looked concerned, impatiently taking the Doppler from the nurse. She said, “You should have come earlier.” Earlier than what? I wanted to say, but didn't, cowed by her voice. I remember staring at her silk wrap dress, a paisley print against navy blue. I almost said I liked her dress but for some reason decided against it because by that time she too was fumbling with the Doppler and it didn't seem appropriate to compliment her dress. I remember thinking that she wasn't wearing her white coat because she had just come into the office, and her hair, freshly washed, was slightly wet. I remember the ghostly sound of the swish of my blood coming through the Doppler and nothing else. It sounded as if someone were whistling through the skeletal shells of bombed-out buildings. And then she quickly said she would do a sonogram. I nodded, feeling reassured by the word sonogram, as if this would all be cleared up in a minute. I remember wondering why she wasn't saying anything, and why her unwavering eyes, a light blue, kept staring at the screen in front of her where she had the image of the baby up. The screen was behind my right shoulder. I remember thinking that I didn't even have to ask her what was wrong. I already knew from her face, a face stripped down to its bare elements as if blinded by the sun, rendering her mute. After a pause, she looked away and said, “I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I cannot imagine, I'm sorry.” I heard myself say, “Is he gone?” She nodded. Then she left the room, saying she'd be right back, and before the door closed I heard her curse, “Jesus fucking Christ.” I sat there, my legs dangling off the examining table, the white thin paper crinkled under my thighs, and I couldn't believe this was really real but I knew it was real and I knew that I would have to call my husband very soon, the cell phone was in my hand, and I would tell him what happened and then it would be real for him too and the more people who knew the more real this would be and the less real everything that came before this would become.