Deanna Roy - Forever Innocent

When she left, I curled into Gavin. He put his arms around us so that we wrapped Finn up between us. I held my breath as long as I could, waiting for Finn’s belly to rise, but I couldn’t make it. I took in another long breath and waited again. Still nothing.

My chest started heaving and Gavin held me tighter. We waited for the next breath, but it didn’t come. I wondered what death really was, when you stopped breathing, or the silence of the heart? I had thought it would be so definitive, and that I would know.

“His face has changed,” Gavin said.

I looked at him, the tiny nose, the gentle mouth still pink around the edges from the tape. And I saw what Gavin meant. His jaw was loose now, his mouth open.

I yanked him tight against my shoulder, tighter than you should hold a baby. I would not let him go, they could not take him from me. Deep inside my body a wail began, a low sound, completely outside my control. He was gone. He was gone. My baby Finn was really gone.

Gavin clutched at me, and we supported each other on the bed, rocking back and forth, the three of us. I don’t know how long we did that, but eventually a nurse came back in and tiptoed back out without disturbing us.

When I couldn’t sit up any longer, my own body giving out, I slid down on the bed, curling Finn’s body into my chest. Gavin lay down with me, and we stayed that way until a doctor came in, one we didn’t know, and checked Finn’s heart. “He’s gone,” he said, but by then, I already knew, had already ached and cried, and I couldn’t do anymore. He glanced at the clock. “Time of death, 9:03.”

He laid a hand on the baby. “You can stay here with him as long as you want, overnight if you choose. Nurses will check on you. You will not be rushed.”

So we settled back on the bed, the three of us, and even though I didn’t sleep, we let the night fall over us, quiet and deep.

The rough surface of the rock bit into my shoulders. “Corabelle?” I nudged her, still lying across my chest. I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.

She sat up and swiped at her eyes. “What do you think it is about stargazing that makes us think of Finn?”

I stared up into the night sky, showered with dots of light in a way you never could see in the city. “The infinite. The unknown. The Lion King and the souls of all the kings that came before.”

Corabelle nudged me halfheartedly. “I never was able to finish singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ to him.”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “That’s all right.”

I thought of all the paths our lives could have taken. The one if Finn had never existed. The one if he hadn’t died. The one if I hadn’t left after the funeral. And this new one, if Corabelle hadn’t come to UC San Diego and signed up for astronomy.

The North Star stood out, brighter than the others. It was definitely easier when you were out here to believe that some great cosmic something was guiding our fate.

“Your stomach just rumbled in my ear,” Corabelle said.

“Then feed me, wench!” It was an old joke born of too many pirate movies.

She smacked my ribs, but still sat up and felt around for the bag. “Where’s that flashlight?”

“Not sure. It’s darker than I figured.”

We both felt around the edges of the blanket until our hands crossed paths. We both stopped, grasping each other. “I’d kiss you but I’m very likely to miss,” I said.

She leaned into me, and now I could navigate the shadow of her, face and hair and arms and waist. My lips found hers and she sighed, sinking into me.

Her mouth was an oasis in the dry air; her tongue made me forget all the grief I’d felt thinking of Finn.

She pulled away with a broken laugh. “Why do I have a feeling I’m going to have bruised knees tomorrow?”

I pulled her down onto the blanket. “Because you are.”

The night was cool, almost cold, so I pulled the blanket around us as I exposed each part of her to the autumn air. I laid my head against the skin of her breasts, listening to her heartbeat, still seeing the monitors in my mind, a little jagged line across the screen that told us Finn was with us.

I made my way down to her bare belly, where he’d been, tucked away for seven months. We hadn’t known that this was the best of times, him kicking inside her, none of us having any clue that we should have celebrated every day.

I kissed my way along her hip bone, bringing the jeans down with me. Corabelle sighed and lifted her hips, and I delved into her, feeling her shiver, listening to her sounds, and once again thanked the stars for bringing her back to me.

A buzzing noise startled me awake later that night, after we’d gone home from the rock. I rubbed my eyes and looked first at Gavin, sprawled across his bed. Then the clock, which read one in the morning.

The noise was persistent, the sound of a cell-phone text message, one after the other.

For some reason I just knew it was Jenny, and Lumberjack had ditched her somewhere, and she needed help. I scrambled across the floor and dug through our clothes, trying to find my phone.

The light of a screen showed through a bit of fabric and I snatched it up.

But when I saw the image, I dropped it again.

I tried to breathe, suddenly feeling like I might hyperventilate. It was probably some mistake. Some porn bot or a friend making a joke.

I lifted the phone again, Gavin’s phone, and swiped it to get past the preview and into the actual message. The image was still there, a naked woman sprawled on a bed, legs wide, fingers spreading herself open.

Below it, the message said, “Miss you, Gavin baby. I need a booty call.”

I meant to set the phone down and crawl right back into bed. If this woman missed him, that means he wasn’t seeing her anymore. So it was fine. He’d delete the messages in the morning, probably relieved I hadn’t seen them. As I tried to bury the phone back in the clothes, another message popped up. “I dumped Jerry. Pimp free, like you said! Give me a shout. I’m good for a freebie.”

I washed cold. Who was this girl? I glanced up at the bed. Gavin was still out. I knew I shouldn’t read any more, but I remembered Jenny at the coffee shop saying, “What do you really know about Gavin, as he is now?”

I scrolled through the messages that woke me up. Her name was Candy, of course. She asked where he’d been lately. Then, “I learned a little rope bondage just for you. Tie up those strong arms.”

When he didn’t respond, she’d sent the picture.

Maybe it was a joke, maybe the picture was random. Maybe this was a friend. I set the phone down, unwilling to spy any more.

But then I thought — is he being careful? We were using condoms now, but we hadn’t been. What if he had been with a prostitute?

I picked the phone up again and clicked on Candy’s name to bring up their entire history. It went back a year. Meetups. Him telling her to ditch Jerry. Him worried because she had a black eye. Lots and lots of sexting. Him writing her, asking if she was available that night.

But nothing about ordinary things, dates, or movies, or normal conversation. In one she warned him Jerry was forcing her to up her rate to $125.

I wanted to put the phone down, but then I saw another name that looked suspicious. Lolly. I clicked on her. She also sent images of herself, large heaving breasts, pulling aside her panties. He was not as close to this one, as all their communication was businesslike. Locations. Times.

I closed the phone. What had he done? I sorted through the clothes, my chest heaving, fat tears dripping off my nose. I wasn’t going to blame him for what he’d done. That was his past. But he wasn’t the person I thought he was. He’d become somebody else, someone I wasn’t sure I could live with.