Tiffany Reisz - The Night Mark

But this job wasn’t a wedding.

Faye knew she’d been in the bathroom long enough she was risking a fight, and though she wasn’t scared of getting in a fight with Hagen, she was just too tired for it tonight. Out of guilt she made herself try to go. When she did, she discovered exactly why she’d been feeling so tired and miserable and aching all day.

To stall for time, Faye washed her hands. She washed them till they went pruny and then kept washing them. She washed them for so long she forgot why she was washing them. Once she’d read a phrase in a book—the valley of tears. She didn’t know where she’d read it, but she guessed the Bible. This was the moment she should go into that valley and find her tears. She wanted them. She needed them. In her heart she wandered through brambles and thorns and down a steep ravine and into the valley. At the bottom she found a river, where all her tears were supposed to be. The riverbed was dry. She had no more tears left.

She heard a soft knock on the bathroom door and started.

“Faye?”

“Yes?”

“It’s been ten minutes.” His voice was testy, impatient, his usual tone with her these days. All day every day.

Faye dried her hands and opened the door.

“Sorry,” she said.

He nodded and turned around. “I’m going back to bed. Hurry up, okay?”

Faye didn’t want to hurt Hagen; she truly didn’t. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but there was no way to say it that wouldn’t hurt him.

So she hurt him.

“I’m bleeding.”

He stopped. His broad, powerful shoulders slumped and the air seemed to go out of his body like a balloon with a pinprick in it.

Slowly, he turned around.

“I’ll call Dr. Melzer.”

“Don’t call anybody.”

“But—”

“Don’t.” She couldn’t face any more doctors. She couldn’t face more pity, more sympathy, more tests, more shots, more touching parts of her she never wanted touched again.

He started toward her and she took a step back.

“Please don’t touch me,” she said. If she thought for one second he would hold her to comfort her, she might have let him. But he didn’t want to comfort her. Hagen wanted her to comfort him, and that she couldn’t do. She had nothing to give him.

“Faye?”

“I think I should just go to bed.”

His eyes looked black in the low light of the hallway. Her toes were cold on the hard bamboo floor. Where were her woolen socks? Hagen always kept the house so cold.

“You’re having another miscarriage, and you’re going to bed.” Hagen wasn’t asking her a question. He was registering his disgust with her.

“You have to be pregnant to have a miscarriage. It didn’t take,” she said. Hagen had begged, practically demanded, she try one more IUI procedure, and she’d agreed to it when he’d called it their “Hail Mary.” Well, they’d hailed Mary and Mary hadn’t hailed back.

“Do you have a fever?”

“No.”

“How heavy are you bleeding? Maybe it’s still—”

“It’s over, Hagen. It’s just... It’s all over.”

Somewhere in the valley, the tiniest trickle of water appeared in the riverbed, the tiniest trickle of water appeared on her face. She wiped it off immediately.

“Faye...please.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t worry about you? You tell me you’re losing the baby, and I’m not supposed to worry about you?”

She returned to the bedroom, Hagen following her. The bedroom. Their bedroom. Their ridiculous bedroom. Hagen had picked out all the furniture. It looked like something from the Biltmore—king-size iron bed; chocolate-colored walls; brick fireplace; oversize espresso leather armchairs, artfully distressed, of course; gilt-frame landscape paintings on the wall picked out by the decorator by artists neither of them could name. It was a showroom more than a bedroom. Look how much money we have. Look at how sexy we are. Look at how glamorous our marriage is. She hated everything about the room except for the pillow-top mattress. Sleeping was her favorite pastime these days. She took her mattresses seriously.

“I wasn’t pregnant. It didn’t work. And even if I was, it’s not like you can do anything about it,” she said, climbing back into bed. She reached for her book. It would make a fine shield between them.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading.”

“You’re reading. While having a miscarriage.”

“I got my period. It is what it is.”

“You don’t care, do you? You don’t care that this is happening?”

“I can’t care,” she said.

“Why can’t you care?”

“Because if I let myself care about anything that happens to me, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed.”

“You don’t get out of bed anyway.”

She sighed and met his gaze. He was looking at her, eyes boring into her. Did he see her at all? Or did he just see what he wanted to see? Pretty brunette with violet eyes and good breasts. Quiet, biddable when necessary, like when he trotted her out for company functions and she painted on a smile and wore it until her cheeks hurt.

“Oh,” she said. “Good point.”

“Do you care at all?”

“Please leave me alone, Hagen. Please don’t make me have this conversation now. I was washing blood off my hands five minutes ago. If you won’t let me read, then let me sleep.”

“Sleep? I called you at noon, and you were still in bed.”

“It’s almost impressive, isn’t it? Give the lady a prize, right?”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“Don’t bring Will into this.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot I’m supposed to pretend he never existed. I’m sorry.”

Hagen stopped at the edge of the bed. Faye tried to rest her head back but the stupid iron headboard might as well have been a wall of nails.

“You know what your problem is?” Hagen asked.

“Yes,” she said, because she did, but Hagen went on as if he hadn’t heard her.

“You want to live in the past. You watch old movies. You haven’t read a book written after 1950 in four years. You listen to Frank Sinatra and Ethel Merman all day long like a goddamn ghost in my house.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not? Really?”

“I got this book yesterday, and it was written two years ago.”

Hagen plucked it out of her hands and read the title in as cold and cruel a voice as any man had ever read a book title.

“The Bride of Boston; A Jazz Age Mystery. Who the hell is the bride of Boston?”

“A girl who disappeared in 1921,” Faye said. “Vanished into thin air. But it has a happy ending.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the happy ending?”

Faye smiled. “She was never seen again.”

Hagen threw the book across the room.

“Jesus Christ, Faye, what the hell is wrong with you? Women would kill to be in your place.”

She rolled onto her side and into the fetal position. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes onto the pillow. She willed them away, willed Hagen away, willed the world away. But they didn’t go away because her Will was gone.

Hagen must have seen he’d gone too far. He knelt by the bed so they could look each other eye to eye. As he reached out his hand she flinched, fearful he’d strike her even though he never had before.

“Faye.”

“Will never threw anything but baseballs,” she whispered to herself.

“You can’t live in the past. It’s not living. The past is dead,” he said, his hand on her face. It did nothing to comfort her.

“Everything I love is dead.”

“Don’t say that.” Hagen spoke through gritted teeth. He had such nice straight white teeth. “Don’t say stupid stuff like that. It’s melodrama.”