Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“Do you remember? Or am I crazy? Wasn’t it safe? Didn’t it look like we were gonna make it?” She stared through the windshield, focused on nothing. Her questions could have been spoken to anyone, to God or her dead child.

Max answered. “Yes. Everyone thought it was going to be okay. I read in the papers that even the pilot thought we were going to make it.” But I knew, Max thought. I knew otherwise.

“Then didn’t the wheels hit the ground? Didn’t you think we had landed?” She was urgent, scared he might contradict her.

“Yes.” Max undid his seat belt and shifted to be closer to her. She didn’t turn in his direction — he was near to the smooth skin around her lips, to her full pouting mouth. He felt sorry for her and he wanted to make love to her. He agreed softly, “Everything — for one second — seemed okay.”

“I—” she announced herself loudly and then her lips trembled.

“You…?” Max whispered encouragingly to her transfixed profile.

“I had Bubble in my lap. I had crossed my arms over him like a seat belt, I had the fingers crossed — like this—” she locked her hands together in a fist, like a child praying, the skin turning white and the nails red from the pressure. “And I let go to clap,” she did it now, tears coming to her eyes, although her voice was enraged. “I clapped.” She released the fingers, put the tips together gently — demure pats, polite applause. “Then we hit and I lost him. My hands were open. There was nothing holding on to him.” She whispered in horror, “I was safe in my belt and he wasn’t.” Tears were flooding her eyes but she wasn’t sobbing. She stared ahead at her memory.

“I see,” Max said. “So it was your fault.”

She snapped her head toward him. He had her full attention. The tears stopped. Carla’s mouth sagged open; her eyes were wild and scared. She opened her lips in a mute plea.

“It wasn’t that the accident killed your baby,” Max said into her horrified look. “You did it.”

“I wasn’t holding him!” she whispered, terrified, as if the words damned her.

“You killed your baby,” Max continued, fascinated by the inexorable, inarguable logic of her guilt.

“His seat belt didn’t work — I was supposed to hold him — did they tell you that?”

“Yes, my lawyer told me about your seat belt. He’s your lawyer too and he told me about your case.”

“I didn’t tell him the truth. I didn’t tell him I let go.” Carla’s head got erect. Her deep-set eyes stared out at Max, scared. “Manny wants all this money and I have to talk in court.”

“I understand,” Max said. “You’re a liar also.” She not only had killed her child, she was going to collect for it, compounding neglect with greed.

“I’m very weak,” she said and her body no longer fought against her terror. She dropped her head and shut her eyes. She locked her fingers together, pressed the double fist against her lips and whispered furiously, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She repeated the prayer over and over without pause, until the words came so fast and quiet that they were no better than the frightened moans of a child.

“Carla,” Max said. He touched her shoulder and shook it gently to rouse her.

She was oblivious. She keened in the seat, her seat belt swishing along with the whispering words of terror and longing: “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

He tried again, shaking her shoulder more vigorously. “Carla. Stop. It’s not your fault.”

She didn’t react to his touch or his voice. She rocked and prayed, her eyes fixed on her clenched hands, her head bowed as if ready for a blow.

Max’s mouth went dry. His tongue felt enormous, stuck, blocking him from speaking. She was lost. He had destroyed her.

What an arrogant meddling fool. He felt contempt and rage at himself. She had no defenses against his fanciful ideas. She wasn’t ambivalent about the child she had lost. She loved her baby. Her pathos wasn’t diluted by ironies or insights. To feel such a loss was unimaginable to him.

No it wasn’t. Losing Jonah would hurt him that much. And no psychobabble on earth or television could convince Max that it hadn’t been his fault. The universe had given him a son to protect and any accident was his responsibility.

He had done wrong. How could he fix it? What could he do with Carla? How could he explain this to her husband and mother? What did it mean about him that he could so casually harm someone, someone he claimed to love?

Max couldn’t speak with his tongue so thick. The heated air of the car was too hot for his nostrils to absorb the oxygen.

Carla’s dreadful prayer hurt his ears: “Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Max thought it so natural for her to pray to another mother, to a perfect mother.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God—”

Max opened his door and got out. The cold cleared his eyes of pain. Carla didn’t react to his departure.

“—pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Max shut the car door on her.

The hour of our death — the words infected his brain. The hour of our death. Had it come at last? What was Max connected to if he had driven this woman — the only person he had been able to feel comfortable with in all these months — into madness?

Max went to the trunk and opened it. Folded neatly in the corner beside the red plastic box of emergency tools was a plaid blanket. They used to cover Jonah with it when he was little. Max smelled the fabric. He imagined he smelled the sweet dank odor of a child.

The hour of our death. Were they dead anyway? What was the difference?

Max lifted the emergency tool box. The jumper cables inside were so thick the top didn’t close completely. Max felt the weight of the box in his hands, judging whether it was enough. Too light. He looked around and saw — near the base of the seawall, amidst a broken bottle, a squashed beer can, and a destroyed transistor radio — two partially broken bricks.

He emptied the plastic box of the jumper cables, gloves, tire gauge, the can of pressurized air, black electrical tape and other sundries. He carried the red box over to the bricks and put them in. They fit perfectly and gave it a good weight, in Max’s judgment, close enough to what would be needed.

He used the electrical tape to attach the plaid blanket so that it completely wrapped around the plastic box with the bricks inside. He opened the back door on the passenger side and put the blanket and box inside.

Carla’s rhythmic prayer continued, “…pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Max left the back door open and opened Carla’s door. He spoke into her small perfectly shaped ear. “I want you to sit in the back.”

She looked into his eyes, but continued in a whisper, “Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…”

“I’m just going to move you to the backseat, that’s all.” Max undid her belt and pulled her halfway out of her seat, lifting her by her clenched arms, rigid from her posture.

“No!” she shouted and fought against him, interrupting her prayer at last.

“I’m not getting you out of the car. Just getting you in the backseat.”

He pulled and this time she came out, although still stuck in her pose, arms locked, hands entwined into a fist she kept at her mouth. Her eyes darted from side to side warily. “Holy Mary,” she whispered frantically as he guided her to the rear, “Mother of God, pray for us sinners—”