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jomiddlemarch · 11 months

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there are shadows because there are hills

From experience, Grace knew they had Ellie for about twenty solid minutes.

Maybe twenty-five if they pressed her to rinse out her bowl and not just leave it on the table, the spoon listing to one side, the cloth napkin wadded up like an abstract artist’s take on a white peony. She had emerged from her room about two hours after dinner (venison stew, fresh bread, two helpings, her baked apple and most of Joel’s) professing she was close to starvation and was there anything to eat. Joel was in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, so it was Grace who reminded her that she could eat the last of the stew but there would then not be any left for lunch the next day or she could eat some of the baked oats and pears. Ellie thumped around assembling the oats, using up the milk Grace had been saving for breakfast, and settled herself at the table, shoveling in the first few bites while Joel came over and handed Grace a freshly made hot water bottle. He laid a hand on her shoulder for a second, almost chucking her under the chin, a brief caress Ellie wouldn’t notice enough to squint at but stopped short of ruffling her hair, his thumb grazing her cheekbone. She’d set aside the complicated fisherman sweater she was knitting for Ellie but hadn’t gotten up to get the far easier scarf she was making for Ted, mindless work that would have occupied her hands and maybe distracted her.

“Grace, are you sorry you never had kids?” Ellie asked, her mouth only half-full of oatmeal, so that the words were adequately articulated and Grace would probably get the stink-eye if she told Ellie to take human bites or possibly a snarky remark about how offensive a comment like that was considering clickers. She couldn’t very well retort Ellie’s question was offensive, because Ellie would probably wait another decade before she asked anything personal, and because it wasn’t offensive as much as unexpectedly intimate. Joel, sitting across from her in the beat-up armchair that was unofficially his, didn’t say anything but his expression altered subtly, somewhere between apology and concern. And then Ellie spoke again before Grace could answer.

“Especially because you get such bad cramps and shit like now and it’s totally for nothing.”

Fortunately, Ellie then took an obscenely large spoonful of oats, nearly unhinging her jaw to fit it in, and closed her eyes in a moment of bliss, buying Grace at least three seconds to consider her response. And adjust the hot water bottle lower on her belly where the pointless cramps Ellie had referenced continued, alternating between a sharp clawing and deep, aching vise.

What she wouldn’t give for 800 mg of ibuprofen, an 80% cacao dark chocolate bar, and access to a brilliant and patient family therapist.

She had a hot water bottle, half a leftover baked apple, and Joel, looking like a sphinx or the Lincoln Memorial. Stony, however you sliced it. If he shared Ellie’s question, she’d only have a flicker in his dark eyes to go on, but she was answering them both regardless.

“It wasn’t something I thought about for a long time,” she said.

Before, capital B Before, she’d been single, focused on her medical training, trying to keep in touch with her friends from college and get home often enough to keep her parents from giving her the silent treatment when she did come home. Trying to get her act together enough to go on some dates and then keeping her burgeoning relationship with Peter alive despite her on-call schedule and his sixteen hour days as an engineer, trying to make it be a relationship and not just two exhausted people who got along okay and who knew at least their parents would approve of their choice. Kids, plural, a baby singular (or God help her, twins) hadn’t crossed her mind or hardly at all. Most women doctors had their kids in their 30s. It was just that the world ended when Grace was 27.

After, she had been staying alive. Toggling between wanting to desperately and wanting to be put out of her misery. After there had been Kian and maybe one or two daydreams that seemed daring and hopeful and hers, that she hadn’t confided in him, not wanting him to shoot her down or warn her, practically, about the risks of childbirth outside of FEDRA-protected zones and the need to dismantle FEDRA and then they were captured and he was murdered.

She hadn’t thought about children then.

She hadn’t thought she’d ever think about children until she found herself in Jackson, where families existed and the leader got pregnant and rested a hand on the brazen curve of her belly and Joel came into town with a girl who was so clearly his daughter that having a child seemed possible.

Having a child. Not getting pregnant, not after whatever eggs she had left had probably shriveled up or scrambled and she’d be a geriatric primigravida if she even conceived, without access to anything but the most basic prenatal care. It wasn’t something she thought about, not even when she felt the first cramps, always in her back, like a wave cresting. If the wave was made of bayonets.

(Yes, three months ago she’d been late. Late even for her these days which she’d chalked up to perimenopause and then she’d bled heavily and her breasts had been horribly tender, her bras too tight, and she’d gagged brushing her teeth for about two weeks before she’d soaked through her favorite black jeans and had had to be thankful she’d dealt with the clean-up and the laundry before Joel came back from helping Tommy with some rotting window frames and found her with her feet up on the couch and a mug of herbal tea perched just below her navel. She hadn’t told him because there was nothing to tell, and nothing would have hurt him when he didn’t need to be hurt anymore.)

Ellie must have taken the edge off her prodigious appetite (a growth spurt and finally feeling like she had a home were doing a number on their groceries; Grace and Joel often agreed it was a good thing Jackson actually was a commune) because she was eating more moderately. It allowed for more conversation, generally a good thing. Generally allowed for exceptions, like right now.

“But like, are you? Sorry you never had a kid of your own?” Ellie pressed.

“It kind of seems like I do now,” Grace replied.

They lived together, she and Joel made sure Ellie had appropriate clothes for the weather and enough food, did her homework, came home at night. Grace worried about her and she and Joel stayed up late at night talking about her future, dancing around her carrier status and what the Fireflies would do if they found out, where they’d take her, how they’d keep her safe. Ellie got annoyed, stomped around, sometimes cuddled up next to Grace on the couch like Beard’s favorite goat Meriweather butting her head against the man’s hip. She recited endless puns, borrowed Grace’s fleece vest without asking, sassed Joel, broke Grace’s heart when she practiced folk songs on the guitar Joel had gotten for her, singing along under her breath, mimicking his every intonation and pause.

“It’s not the same,” Ellie said.

She was thinking of the mother who’d died after she was born, the one who’d named her and stayed alive long enough to hand her to someone else. She was thinking of Sarah and how Joel spoke of her rarely, the stories Tommy told when Joel wasn’t in the room of how he’d rocked her to sleep every night when she was a baby and how she looked like their Aunt Myrna. She was thinking of Sarah’s mother and Maria and maybe even Tess, who had lost her son in the worst way, the boy he was gone, the clicker he’d become trapped, or worse, wandering somewhere. She was thinking of the way Ted said his son’s name and the shape his hands took when he was talking about him.

“It’s not the same,” Grace agreed. “But it kind of is too.”

She moved the hot water bottle, just an inch maybe, as if it would make a difference. It didn’t.

“You would’ve made a good mom,” Ellie said. “To a little kid, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

She wouldn’t qualify it. She understood what Ellie was trying to say, some of it anyway. It was as much as Ellie could say right now and Joel was listening and watching them both and they all knew it.

“Sucks about your cramps,” Ellie offered.

“I’ll live,” Grace said.

“Before, could they do something?” Ellie asked.

“Some. A lot more than now, but plenty of women, people, still had a terrible time. Sometimes we did surgery if we couldn’t get meds to work,” Grace said. Enough medical history, Ellie really wanted more personal details. “I didn’t have as hard a time when I was younger. My periods were more predictable, manageable.”

She made a point of speaking frankly, not modifying her tone or the words she chose because Joel was in the room. Ellie was his second daughter and they’d all lived through too much for any squeamishness about ordinary bodily functions. Ellie already had to keep a secret about her body and Grace didn’t want her to feel like there had to be any others. Not at home.

“You want some more hot water?” Joel said. “Hot water bottle’s no good if the water isn’t hot anymore.”

“I could get it,” Ellie said. “I’m full, I have to go take care of my dish anyway.”

“Okay. But I think I’ll take it with me to bed,” Grace said.

“G’night, sleep tight, bedbugs and all that,” Ellie said, grinning. Grace grimaced, dramatically, at the bed bugs, as she was supposed to and then nodded at Joel.

“I’ll bring it along to Grace, Ellie,” he said. “Coach wants you up early for practice, you oughta head to bed yourself.”

“How’s this?” Joel asked an hour later, placing his palm very gently against her belly on top of the oversized tee-shirt she’d worn to bed. The hot water bottle had grown cold and Grace had stuck it on the bedside table, trusting it wouldn’t leak on her stack of books. She was curled in on herself, alternating practicing deep breathing and mentally cursing at what seemed like the near-total lack of effectiveness of deep breathing, especially as compared to her memories of NSAIDs, the heavy-duty, stomach-lining-stripping kind that annihilated prostaglandins. Joel had come in, taken a look at her, and quietly and quickly gotten ready for bed, lying on his side at her back, close but not crowding, offering tenderness instead of pity. Or in addition. Unlike some people, Grace didn’t have an issue with being pitied, not when she had to deal with a degree of pain that made her consider whether a hysterectomy was really off the table.

“Better,” she said, relieved by his warmth and by being able to tell the truth.

“Were you lying to Ellie? About havin’ a baby,” he asked. It was a loaded question, especially coming from him, as she was well-aware he’d lied about what happened at the hospital and had her suspicions about what Ellie herself said versus believed. He was asking about Ellie but she knew he meant him; she knew he was daring her to decide whether she’d lied to herself.

“No, I wasn’t,” she said.

“You never answered her,” he said. She let herself stretch out a little and he was still right there behind her, calm, his voice pitched low, like he might start singing to his guitar. “You never said whether you were sorry.”

“That’s not what she was asking,” Grace said.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “Now, though, I’m asking. Are you?”

How could she tell him how she felt? She’d have to know for herself first.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry I never felt like I could even think about it. That it had to be a relief, not getting pregnant, not having a child. There wasn’t any other way for it to be,” she said. “And now it’s too late—”

“I wish it wasn’t,” he said. This would be the moment to tell him what she thought might’ve happened three months ago but then he’d know and they’d both know and know what—a possibility, another loss speculated, not confirmed, a dream they’d either discuss or they wouldn’t. A little while ago, I thought… she’d begin and he’d tense up, his shoulders and his thighs and his forearm but not his hand. He’d keep that light and open against her and she’d feel without consciously knowing how it hurt him. He’d want to ask if she’d been sure (she hadn’t been) and if she’d hoped (she had, kicking herself for it, baffled by it, chalking it up to an evolutionary imperative and the way Joel held baby Kim), if she’d been scared (terrified and also despairing), if she’d have told him before he figured it out.

(She didn’t know. She hadn’t had to find out. That was a small mercy, the smallest. Seemed like the only kind of mercy there was left. Melodramatic, much? dead-Lauren remarked but with all of the kindness Grace missed since her death.)

“Wishes. Those fuckers,” Grace said. Who’re you trying to fool? dead-Lauren asked.

“I’m sorry,” Joel said.

“You don’t have to be. You don’t have to say that,” Grace replied.

“I don’t say shit I don’t mean. Not to you. I can be sorry and still not want a baby,” he said. It was an interesting shift. What she wanted, what he wanted. And after all, he’d had a baby and lost her, had almost lost Ellie. “I don’t want one with anyone. I want you safe. I want what we have and I want you to want that too—”

“I do,” she said. She couldn’t prove it to him and he’d probably always wonder.

“I’m not tryin’ to upset you, Gracie. Hell, I was tryin’ to do the opposite. Probably should’ve just shut the fuck up,” he said.

“I told you I felt better,” she said.

“Yeah, before I said anything,” he replied.

“I feel better than that better then,” she said, letting him hear the smile in her voice, the soft sigh that went along with the easing of the pain in her belly, her uterus finally getting with the program and calming the fuck down. Maybe they’d try that next time, trying to fuck their way out of the pain. She dimly recalled glossy women’s magazines recommending it and then taking an extra ibuprofen instead but her options were more limited now.

“You’re a good mother,” he said, startling her. Holding her more closely when she jerked against him in surprise.

“I’m not—you—”

“That’s what Ellie wanted to tell you, but she can’t. I can,” he said, nuzzling the back of her neck, stroking his palm against her slowly. “You don’t have to believe it all the way for it to be true. It’s good to hear it. It’s good to say it.”

“You’ve always struck me as an actions speak louder than words kind of guy,” Grace said.

“Yeah, well, you’re smart but you’re not right about everything. And sometimes, you don’t want loud. You want quiet, so that they pay attention. Take you serious,” he said.

“All right,” she said, then yawned.

“It’s late. You should’ve gone to sleep a long time ago,” he said. “I kept you up.”

“No. I wouldn’t have slept at all without you. And I couldn’t have made any warm milk to try and help—Ellie drank it all.”

Joel laughed. Grace felt herself getting dozier, looser, the pain receding enough she could slip into the darkness. He felt more present, not less, his body a refuge, his voice the counterpoise to her regrets.

“I’ll get up early and get some before breakfast,” he whispered.

“Ted said he’d make strudel,” Grace said.

“Strudel? How the fuck’s he going to—fine, I’ll get the strudel too,” Joel said.

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