Selena Kitt - The Baumgartners Plus One

When I passed Carrie on the way back from getting my mail one brisk October afternoon-there was a silver row of boxes at the end of our line of apartments-she stopped me with a hand on my arm, reminding me just exactly why I’d cracked out of my shell in the first place. Just her gentle touch through my coat made me shiver and not from the autumn wind.

“Wow, nice dress!” She eyed me appreciatively. “Going on a date?”

“Coming back from an interview,” I countered with a smile. “The last step in the application process for studying abroad.”

“How exciting!” She sounded genuinely enthused which was really nice to hear. It was certainly a change from Mason’s reaction. Even my mother was against my going, but that was just because she wouldn’t be able to afford to call me every week in Italy and tell me how I’d ruined my life. “Hey, Doc won’t be home until late. Do you want to come over and order pizza? I’m jonesin for some Bella’s.”

I hesitated. I had a paper to write this weekend on Dante’s use of numbers in the Divine Comedy, but it was Friday after all. And Bella’s had the best pizza in town. “I have to change first.”

“Okay,” Carrie agreed cheerfully, getting her mail and following me back to my apartment.

“I hope you’re not allergic,” I remarked as Jezebel met us at the door, tail swishing. Carrie had never been in my- our -apartment before.

“I love cats.” Carrie squatted and held her hand out to Jez by way of introduction.

Jezebel, like most cats, took her time getting to know someone. She sniffed and twitched and swished, stalked away and then wound her way back. Carrie just waited patiently through these ministrations until Jez nudged her hand to be petted.

“I’ll be right back.” I tossed my purse, keys and the mail on the table and went through the kitchen into my bedroom. I was nearly stripped down completely when Carrie came in, Jezebel following, both of them startling me.

“Have to pee!” Carrie waved on her way through to the bathroom. I just stood there, seeing her looking at me in my black bra and panties before she grinned and shut the bathroom door.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a Counting Crows t-shirt while Jezebel mewed at the door Carrie had disappeared through. Even Jez had a girl-crush on her.

“Traitor,” I whispered, sticking out my tongue at the cat and sitting on the bed to wait.

“I love your soap.” Carrie came out of the bathroom sniffing her hands. “It’s so fruity and nutty. What is it?”

“It’s Italian.” I smiled. “Imported. It has an olive oil base.”

“No wonder your skin is so smooth!”

I flushed, remembering the afternoons we’d spent on the lawn when she’d spread oil over my back. “I can give you some.”

The words were out of my mouth before I’d even had time to think. The bar in the soap dish was the last of it-unless I wanted to go into the closet in Isabella’s room, which I decidedly did not want to do.

“Really?” The glow in her eyes was so hard to resist. “I’d love it!”

How could I say no to that? I got up, moving mechanically toward the door to the second bedroom, sure the doorknob would be made of fire or ice when I touched it. I hadn’t been in Isabella’s room in over a year.

“Oh how sweet.” Carrie was behind me, glancing over my shoulder at the nursery, all set up still, ready and waiting. Mason’s mother had wanted to take it all down when I was still in the hospital and I’d told him I would kill her if she did. He’d somehow managed to stop her. I think it was the one and only time he’d said ‘no’ to his parents, aside from making the decision to marry me in the first place. And so it had stayed for the past year and a half.

“It looks like Pepto-Bismol threw up in here.” I looked around at all the pink-the walls, the comforter in the crib, the stuffed animals lined up on the windowsill. “Why did I buy so much pink?”

It wasn’t just me, though. Once we’d seen the ultrasound and had announced it would be a girl, nothing arrived in any other color.

“What happened?” Carrie asked gently, looking at the picture on the dresser-a tiny baby on a pink blanket, eyes closed, mouth slack, so obviously lifeless.

“Isabella.” I breathed her name. How long had it been since I’d spoken it out loud? I turned to open the closet, giving myself something to focus on. “She was stillborn.”

“Oh no.” Behind me, Carrie gasped. “Dani, she’s so beautiful. She looks just like you!”

She did-thick dark hair, the same little rosebud mouth and sooty lashes. She was the prettiest baby I had ever seen. Even the dark hue to her lips, so unnatural in a newborn and caused by the blood pooling, just served to accentuate her beauty, as if someone had rubbed her lips with kisses before sending her to me. I didn’t know if her eyes were dark like mine though. She’d never opened them.

I blinked back my tears, finding the soap in a box up on the shelf and grabbing two bars. “Here. Let’s go.”

Carrie put the picture back on the dresser and I saw her eyes filled with tears too.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me too.” I swallowed, holding out the soap, and she took it. “Come on.”

She followed me out and I felt a little bit of relief when I could shut the door behind me.

“You don’t want to talk about it?” Carrie sat on the bed and looked at me.

“Most people really don’t want to hear about it. They say they do, but they don’t.”

I shrugged. “Grief lasts a lot longer than sympathy.”

“I know. I’ve lost three.” The tears that had welled up in her eyes spilled over.

“But never like that. I can’t even imagine.”

“I’m sorry.” I echoed her own apology to me, sitting on the bed to slide an arm around her shoulder. They were such useless words.

“Just miscarriages.” Carrie turned the soap over in her hands. “All before twelve weeks. We keep trying, but…” She shrugged and I saw tears fall onto the soap label, blurring the words.

“A baby is a baby,” I said firmly. “Love is love. I loved Isabella just as much at twelve weeks as I did at thirty-eight weeks.”

I thought saying her name out loud, making her real like that and bringing her back into this world, would just break my heart into a million pieces all over again. I thought it would take me back to that time when I couldn’t do anything but stay in bed and sob, full of leaking milk and love for a baby who would never need it. Instead, I found it almost a relief to be able to tell someone about her, someone who had experienced a pain similar to my own.

“I can’t imagine losing a baby at thirty-eight weeks.” Carrie’s wet eyes meeting mine. “How do you survive that?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head, my hand squeezing her shoulder. “Sometimes I think a miscarriage would be even harder. At least I got to feel her kick and move inside of me. I got see her and touch her. Hold her.”

She gave me a sad yet grateful look. “Why do these things happen?”

“Isabella had a knot in her cord.” I swallowed, remembering the doctor showing me as if revealing the solution to a mystery-ah here it is, this is the reason your daughter isn’t breathing, kicking, crying, this little knot, like a kink in a garden hose.

Such a small thing, yet enough to kill a child, drive a woman to the brink of insanity, a man to violence. As if anyone could ever solve that mystery?

“Why anyone has to experience that kind of loss?” I shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

We were quiet, just sitting there together on the bed, Carrie brushing her tears off bars of soap and me watching Jezebel butting up against our shins for attention.