Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

He turned back to the window, but after a full minute of squinting and standing on his toes to peer down, there was no sign it. Of her.

I was imagining it.

He returned to the library and sat. The dogs stepped around him, whining and sniffing for food. He patted them reassuringly and sat down.

'Soon. Soon.'

Scenting the foul spirit he carried, they gave him one last confused look and returned to the kitchen. He heard them scratching at the door, knocking open cabinets for something to satisfy their empty bellies, and his own growled in sympathy. After several minutes, they click-click-clicked their way back to the living room to lie in waiting on the couch. His eyelids grew heavy and he fought to stay awake.

He drifted off and fell to his side, curled fetal on the floor. Hours - or perhaps just very long minutes - passed. He doze-dreamed of the dogs feeding. Heard their frenzy as the bag was ripped. The tinkling of the kibbles spilling, impossibly, into their bowls. Were they feeding, or was someone feeding them? There was a long silence. He lost track once more, and slept on.

It was still dark when he woke again, this time to the sound of water running. He listened with his eyes closed, trying to trace the flow through the pipes, to understand from where the water was flowing, and to what end. The flow stopped. The sound of dripping - plop plop plop - continued for a few seconds and then ceased. The woman was crying. Soft sobs that ebbed and flowed over the course of minutes that stretched on and on. Definitely not the child this time. This was a mother grieving as only a mother can.

She was in another room. She had come for him, and she wanted him to come to her, to find her. She wanted him to understand.

In the hot night a controlled panic entered his bloodstream, propelling him to his feet. His legs were throbbing, and he grabbed a bookshelf to steady himself. The blood fell down and he almost blacked out.

Water. She was in the bathroom, then. He walked out of the library, into the rear hall toward the bathroom. His feet shuffled on the carpeted landing, swishing.

A dim glow was visible under the bathroom door, which was open a hand's width. Hadn't he left it wide open only hours before? He went to it and pressed his palm to the old wood. He pushed the door open.

The woman in the tub was sitting upright, hunched over. Her long black hair draped in strings over her shoulders and breasts, on to her knees. She was not moving. Her hands and arms were dirty and he saw the maroon crusts around the shores of her fingernails. She was no longer crying, and he saw no intake of breath.

The bath was shallow, its water a pink cloud.

She lifted her head and stared at him.

Her eyes were also black and deeply set in a pale countenance. The mouth appeared as a seam, the scar above running from her top lip to her thin nose, then opened, revealing small teeth. She was dreadfully beautiful. The eyebrows were thicker, grown nearly together and her eyes were devoid of color or emotion. He could feel her weight, her bone structure, her hardened flesh in his mind as surely as if he were holding her in his arms.

His words were hushed. 'What do you want?'

'There's no one here. It's just me.' Her voice was raw. 'There's no one here.'

He moved closer, weightless with fear. He knelt beside her, looked into her eyes, the dark circles around them. Her metallic scent enveloped him.

'What have you done?'

Her eyes were full of death. This lifeless creature could not be his wife.

'Our baby is dead. I'm waiting for it to come out.'

35

But of course it was Jo. At last she had returned.

He waited in the bedroom for her to finish her . . . bath. He sat on the bed and tried to figure when, exactly, she had come home. At first he had assumed she arrived an hour or so ago, come in, fed the dogs, then gone straight to the tub. But that just didn't feel right.

The bath drained and the shower started. The dogs waited for their mistress outside the door, ignoring him as she rinsed and scrubbed and rinsed. He could hear her sobs through the spray. He had never seen her this upset. He knew he was responsible for half of it.

'Where were you?' she had asked in the tub, in that dead voice, staring at him with colossal disappointment.

'The house. The house is haunted,' he said.

She blinked at him. 'Get out.'

He stared at her hands. The dried blood under her nails. 'I don't understand what--'

'Leave me alone.'

He left her, shaken by the change in her eyes, her body.

He was sitting on the bed trying to understand what was so different when he felt rather than heard her return. He stood and turned around. She was standing in the doorway, staring at him with that same faraway look on her face.

'Oh, Jo, Baby,' he said. He walked up and tried to hug her, but she jolted at his touch and blinked furiously.

'I've been in hell all week,' she said, moving away. He saw the bulge of the pad in her panties just before she drew her pajamas up to her waist and let the elastic snap. She pulled back the covers. She hesitated, smelling the sheets.

'I'm sorry. I let the dogs sleep with me. Haven't changed the bedding since you left.'

He stood there useless as she stripped the bed and went to the linen closet. While she was away, he replayed that answer in his head - I've been in hell all week . Did that mean she had started to miscarry a week ago? Did it really take that long? Or by 'hell' did she mean her general state of mind while not being able to reach her husband? Something about the timing felt wrong.

It's your wife, Nadia had said . She came home. I need to leave.

Was it possible Jo had been here?

No. Not for three days. He'd searched the house.

But one day earlier? He'd seen someone in the yard.

Jo came back carrying fresh sheets and Conrad studied her. Something more was off. She was no longer wounded, just tired.

'What?' she looked confused, suspicious.

'Are you sure we shouldn't be at the hospital right now?'

'I've been to the hospital.' She moved around him, tucking everything in. 'You would have known that if you'd answered the phone.'

'I was worried about you. I wanted to help--'

'Help? You're in no shape to help anyone.'

'But tell me again. When did you come home?'

'After I left the hospital.'

'When did you fly home? Did you rent a car?'

'I . . .' Her eyes glazed over. She thought about it too long. 'When I left the hospital.'

Conrad's scalp began to crawl. She's talking like a goddamned robot again.

'What did the doctor say?'

When he said 'doctor' she flinched, and not subtly. He took a step toward the bed.

'Jo? What did the doctor say?'

She flinched again. She stared at him, unsmiling.

'He wasn't much of a docca,' she said.

'A what? Did you say--'

Jo blinked, rubbed her eyes. 'Don't come to bed until you're clean.' She looked away, then abruptly crawled into bed and turned off the lamp.

Conrad could not bring himself to stand there looking at her in the dark.

But there are few states of mind a hot shower cannot improve, and as the water washed away his stale sweat and he dug into his scalp to clean under his fingernails, a frisson passed from his stomach to his toes, forcing a comical sigh from his mouth. She had been through a miscarriage. She was bound to be a little off kilter. What was important was she was home. There would be a talk. Perhaps a reckoning. She had been through something awful. Like Nadia. But now Nadia was gone and this was better. It was proper.

But what about the baby? Was it really gone?

He returned to the bedroom and watched her sleeping, thinking of the first night they had finished unpacking. How he'd been so content, so confident their new life together had finally begun. What if the past six weeks were just an interlude? What if this was the real beginning?