Frederick Busch - Girls

We walked. It used to be an empty road, and then, for years, an almost-empty road. Now there were new houses, all of them with those semicircular windows that look like winking eyes and don’t admit enough air to make a difference when it’s warm. The winds were gentle. I didn’t want to seem optimistic about anything, but it seemed possible that we might be approaching the end of winter.

He said, puffing a little, “Tell me.”

“You’ve been saying Fanny and I have to talk about our baby.”

“I’ve been saying so much, I decided not to tell you anything anymore. I can’t figure out whether you want to and can’t or you really just don’t give a flying fuck about it and you want something else out of this incredible analytic mind I keep serving you from for no additional charge.”

“You never charged me a penny.”

“You’re my friend. And you work for the school. I’m giving you the service you’re entitled to.”

“Sure.”

“And you’re my friend.”

I stopped. We were at a level part, where someone building a house had been caught by winter. The framing was done but not the roof, and they’d have damage to contend with. It didn’t seem to me that anybody capable of building a house ought not to be capable of understanding a little about weather.

“I know I am,” I said. “You’ve been great.”

“You leaving town?”

“No.”

“Good. You sounded a little valedictory there for a minute.”

I shook my head.

“Like you were saying good-bye?”

“That,” I said.

“Tell me, Jack.”

I felt the same hesitation as when I’d asked Fanny to come back home. But I pushed through it. I said, “I didn’t kill our little girl.”

His hand came up on its own, it looked like. He seemed to me surprised to find it on my face, just touching my cheek and part of the side of my neck. If he had pulled, I’d have stepped closer and set my head on his shoulder. He just touched me like that and then he dropped his hand.

“I didn’t think you did.”

“She died.”

“Dying doesn’t mean killed.”

I walked ahead, and I heard him follow. We went on to where the hill climbs again, and I stopped because I heard him breathing harshly. I didn’t mind not moving because of how my ribs felt. He stopped and caught his breath a little. I heard him open his mouth, then close it. I turned to look at him.

“You can kill a kid, sometimes, by shaking her. You don’t mean to. Your life’s crazy, or you’re sick, or you haven’t slept in — forever. However many nights.”

“I know,” he said. “It happens a lot.”

“You can be half dying because you’re worried about the kid, but she’s going on with that sick little tired little nagging kind of crying, over and over, and nothing you do does her any good. Nothing. Hold her, put her down, try to feed her, sing to her, turn on the radio, dance in the bedroom with her, sit and touch her so she knows you’re there.”

He said, “That’s right.”

I looked anyplace else. I couldn’t see. I felt the wind, I felt him very near, but I couldn’t see anymore.

He said, “Jack.”

I said, “That’s all right.”

“Fanny doesn’t remember?”

“She thinks she remembers me doing it. I went up. I heard something when they were up there. Then I went up. By the time I got there and got hold of Hannah because Fanny was crying and crying … by the time … by the time I got there, all I could do was breathe into her mouth. I held her and I breathed. I breathed and breathed. We drove to the hospital. They called it, I—”

“Sudden infant death syndrome,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Instead of shaken child syndrome.”

“Archie. She turned and found me. When she came out of it, or came to. Whatever happened. I think she went into this blackout so she wouldn’t see what had happened.”

“She saw you.”

“Holding her dead baby.”

“She thought you did it.”

“When she lets herself remember that much.”

“But nothing about herself.”

“Nothing.”

“That’s why you can’t talk to her about it,” he said. His hand came up again, and he put it again on my face. It wasn’t warm up there — the temperature was below freezing — but his face was running with sweat.

“I don’t want her remembering what happened.”

“So she remembers what didn’t happen.” He was very cold, I saw. I realized he’d been wearing sneakers, not boots, and they were soaked dark. Shifting his feet, he said, “God. She needs help, Jack.”

“Help? You think Fanny needs help? You think I do, Arch? You think I didn’t stumble onto that insight by myself? Yeah. I think we need some help. The thing of it is, I can’t come up with any ideas about help that don’t have to do with locking us both up for murder or craziness, or shooting us full of drugs and killing whatever’s left of us, which isn’t a fucking whole hell of a lot right now to begin with.”

He brought his other hand up, and he stood there with me, shorter and fatter and smarter by a dozen lifetimes. He couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

So I told him, “I didn’t expect you to come up with a, you know, a miracle cure for her. Or something that maybe would freeze my memory up so I could be the same as her. That’s what I want. To remember the same as she does. I know she doesn’t want to hurt me. She knows I don’t want to hurt her. The way it is now, I know what she knows, and she has no idea of what I know. If we can even stay that way, that fucked and fouled, I’ll take it.”

He said, “A marriage often dies when a child does.”

“You were good enough to share that insight with me before.”

“It’s why you pay me,” he said, squeezing my face and letting his hands drop.

“I wanted you to know,” I said. “You’ve been good, helping me. Talking to me the way you have.”

“I haven’t helped,” he said. “I’m not sure there’s help for this.”

I nodded.

“Something else,” I said.

“Jack, there can’t be anything else.”

I said, “Tell me one more time you were the one wanted me worrying at the Tanner girl thing.”

“You’re still pissed about that?”

“No. But you were the one, and because it might help me.”

He said, “Yeah. But of course that was when I thought all you were coping with was this unbearable, shattering loss. I didn’t know it was some kind of a Greek goddamned play.”

I made myself look at him again. “Whatever happens,” I said, “I want to thank you.”

“What’s that mean, Jack? The ‘whatever’ part?”

“Thank you,” I said.

“What’s that ‘whatever’ mean?”

“I think I’ll be in touch with you later, Archie. Maybe you can think of something you could do for Fanny?”

“When you get the boulder to the top of the hill, don’t let it roll back.”

“What boulder?”

“That’s about all I can think of,” he said. “Make sure I hear from you soon.”

I knew that I wasn’t going to work when I dropped him off at the Blue Bird. He got out without talking because I think we’d run out of words. Instead of driving onto the campus, I stopped across from the Blue Bird at the public phone and called the dispatcher. I didn’t tell her I was sick. I told her I wasn’t coming in and then I hung up. I drove out of town to the south and east and I went to the Tanners’.

She was in the same chair and wearing the same clothing and blanket. He was at the little woodstove, putting in a thick log that might smolder most of the morning. I liked the smell of the smoke but not the heat. My ribs and fingers were hurting and my headache was worse. The brightness of the sun behind the cloud cover moving in seemed to make my eyes throb.