AJ would never know what woke him up that night. All he knew was that it was still dark when
he awoke, abruptly, in the middle of the night and that, at first, he was
disoriented.
He sat up halfway, squinting blearily at the bedside clock. It was one-thirty in the morning, which meant
he had only been in bed for a couple of hours.
He lay back down and rolled away from the clock, intending to go back to
sleep. That was when he saw that Jori’s
side of the bed was empty.
AJ sat up again and reached over to his bedside table to turn on the
lamp. He looked around the room, but
Jori was nowhere to be seen. The sheets
on her side of the bed were rumpled where she had slept – or rolled around, at
least, since Jori rarely slept well these days.
She had gone to bed with him before midnight, but she must have gotten
up again after he’d fallen asleep.
For a full minute or two, he sat stewing over whether or not to get up
and check on her. On one hand, he was
still tired and wanted to go back to sleep.
On the other hand, he was concerned about Jori and wanted to make sure
she was alright. In the end, he realized
he would not be able to rest until he knew where Jori was, so he dragged
himself out of bed and went to find her.
It didn’t take long. When he
padded into the darkened hall, he noticed a soft glow radiating from an open
door to the right. Lucy’s bedroom. Invisible fingers squeezed his heart. He and Jori always kept the door to the
nursery shut. The only time he had
opened that door and gone inside since the day they’d come home from the
hospital without their baby was when Jori had asked him to pick out the clothes
Lucy would be cremated in. She couldn’t
do it, she’d said. As far as he knew,
she hadn’t been in the room since.
But she was in there now.
Standing in the doorway, he could see her sitting in the rocking
chair. She was hunched over, holding
something in her hands – one of Lucy’s stuffed animals, by the look of it. He could see her shoulders shaking and knew
she was crying. He hesitated, unsure of
whether he should go in and comfort her or just let her be. With Jori, he never knew what to expect, and
he couldn’t predict how she might react.
Her grief had manifested itself much differently from his own. While AJ had welcomed the support of friends
and family, Jori had isolated herself, spending long hours locked up in her
room, refusing to see anyone. Whenever
he tried to talk to her about Lucy, she shut down, insisting she wasn’t
ready. And although he had stayed sober
for her sake, Jori had drowned her sorrows in alcohol. AJ had tried to get her help for her
depression, even suggesting they attend grief counseling together, but Jori had
declined every offer. She’d stopped
seeing the therapist she had started talking to after Lucy was born, leaving AJ
to live with the fear that he would wake up one morning or walk upstairs one
evening after work and find her dead, too.
So in a way, it was a relief to find her in Lucy’s room, visibly upset
but very much alive. He made up his mind
and took a tentative step into the room.
It was musty from being shut up for so long, but underneath the stale
smell of dust, he could still smell the cloying scent of baby powder coming
from Lucy’s changing table. The carousel
lamp by the crib was on, splashing colorful shapes across the walls and
ceiling. The light illuminated the mural
Jori had so painstakingly painted.
Neither of them had the heart to paint over it, nor had they packed up
any of Lucy’s things. Her clothes were
still hanging in the closet, and her toys and books were still stacked on their
shelves. Sometimes Jori acted as if Lucy
had never existed, but to AJ, it looked like she’d never left.
“Jor?” he whispered, and she jumped out of the rocker, startled.
“God, you scared the shit out of me!” she said shrilly, glaring at him
through eyes that were red and puffy.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly.
“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.
I just wanted to see why you weren’t in bed. What are you doing in here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she snapped, flinging her hands
into the air. As the stuffed animal
she’d been holding flew across the room, he recognized it as Lucy’s octopus,
the one Jori’s mother had given her on their trip to Indiana.
He stooped to pick up the toy. “Do
you always come in here at night?” he wondered aloud, winding one of its
tentacles around his finger. “Or is this
the first time?”
“Why does it matter? Why are
you always so concerned about what I do, what I think, how I feel?”
He could tell that she’d been drinking. With a pointed look, he replied, “Because I
love you, Jori.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” she muttered.
It was half under her breath, but he heard it anyway.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. If you love me so
much, do me a favor and leave me alone, okay?”
AJ just stared at her, looking for some sign of the woman he loved
behind the walls she had built up around herself. Some days, she was hardly recognizable. He wanted to be there for her, but she
wouldn’t let him in. In the six months
that had passed since Lucy died, their relationship had deteriorated to the
point that he wasn’t sure when or if they would ever get married. Out of habit, Jori still wore the opal
engagement ring on her finger, but she hadn’t made any more plans for the fall
wedding she’d wanted. It was already
November. The leaves had fallen from the
trees and withered on the ground. Winter
was on its way. AJ knew there would be
no wedding that year.
But he still wanted to marry Jori someday. He still loved her, and so, although her
response stung, he stood his ground.
“No,” he said firmly. “I will not
leave you alone. You’ve been dealing
with this alone for months and not doing a very damn good job of it. You need to open up and start talking to me
about this stuff, Jori. We’ve been
through hell together. We’re never gonna
heal if we don’t help each other out.
Let me help you.”
He reached out to her, but she turned away.
“Jori, please,” he begged, but she took a step toward the crib,
ignoring him. He knew how stubborn Jori
could be, but he was determined to break through her defenses that night.
Had he not been, she might have lived to see the light of morning. But AJ was just as stubborn as Jori, and he
persisted until she finally cracked under pressure.
“Come on, babe,” he said, coming up behind her and placing his hand on
her back. “Talk to me.”
“Talk to you about what?” she asked, without turning around. “About Lucy?
About the day she died?”
“Whatever you wanna talk about.”
He rubbed her back in slow circles, gently encouraging her to keep
going. “Just tell me what’s on your
mind.”
She sniffed. “I can’t stop
thinking about that day,” she said softly, and AJ was encouraged.
To him, it was a relief to hear her start talking, after months of
keeping her thoughts to herself. But by
the time she finished, he would wish she had never said a word.
“It was raining,” she went on, still facing the wall. “Lucy was fussy, and I was dragging. I just wanted to go back to bed. I put her down for her morning nap, but she
wouldn’t go to sleep. She just lay here
in the crib and cried.” Her fingers
closed around the crib rail. “I tried to
leave her – you know, so she could learn to self-soothe. I walked away and closed the door to her
room. I went back to our room to lie
down. I could hear her crying on the
baby monitor. I tried to block out the
sound so I could sleep, but I couldn’t.
So I shut off the monitor.”
AJ’s heart sunk. He had a
feeling that Jori had been harboring some feelings of guilt, as the one who had
been with Lucy that day, and her admission that she had turned off the baby
monitor confirmed these suspicions.
“Baby, you can’t blame yourself,” he said, still stroking her back. “You couldn’t have heard her stop breathing
on the baby monitor. She died in her
sleep.”
Jori shook her head. “I could
still hear her crying through the walls,” she continued, as if he hadn’t
interrupted her. “I closed my eyes and
lay there, waiting for her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.
So I got up and went to get her.
I walked into her room, and she was still screaming her head off here in
the crib.” She bowed her head, looking
down into the bed in which their baby had slept. “I just wanted to calm her down. I grabbed her octopus, and I sort of shook it
in front of her – you remember how she liked to watch the tentacles wiggle
around.”
Though she couldn’t see him behind her, AJ nodded, a lump clogging his
throat as he remembered Lucy’s slobbery smiles.
“I thought that would work, but she just wouldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stand it anymore; it was driving
me crazy. Literally crazy.” Her voice had started to shake. “I don’t know what came over me. I just know I couldn’t take it anymore. I just wanted her to stop crying. So I took the octopus…”
AJ’s grip tightened around the toy in his hand.
“…and I put it over her face, to cover her mouth… and I held it down.”
His heart jumped out of his stomach and into his throat, hammering so
hard he could scarcely breathe, let alone speak.
“I closed my eyes, and I held it until I heard her stop crying.
“No,” whispered AJ, as he realized what Jori was telling him.
A sob escaped her throat. “When
I lifted it off her face, it looked like she was sleeping.” Her voice had gotten so shaky, it was hard to
understand. Still, AJ hung on to every
word. “So I went back to bed and lay
down again, and I fell asleep. And when
I woke up… I realized she was gone.”
“BULLSHIT!” The word spewed
from his lips like venom, startling her.
She spun around, tears streaming down her face. He glared at her, his heart beating pure rage
through his veins. “You didn’t just
‘realize’ she was gone when you woke up.
You let me go six months thinking she had died in her sleep, when all
this time, you knew full well that you fucking killed her! You KILLED OUR
BABY!”
Jori shook her head, but she did not deny it. All she said was, “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”
AJ just stared at her. Through
a fog of fury, he saw the woman in front of him, but he did not recognize her
as the love of his life, the mother of his child. The person who stood before him was a
stranger.
She quailed under his furious stare, stumbling backwards as if her
knees were on the verge of buckling.
Clutching her face in her hands, she let out another sob, then turned
and ran from the room. AJ could hear her
crying as she rammed clumsily through the apartment. Then the door swung open and slammed shut,
and she was gone.
He was left standing alone in the center of Lucy’s room, reeling with
the shock of Jori’s confession. In a
matter of minutes, he rapid-cycled through a full range of emotions, from
disbelief to anger, to sadness, and back to anger again when he realized he was
still holding the stuffed octopus. His
hand shook as he held it up, looking into its friendly, smiling face with
revulsion. What had once been an
innocent baby toy had become a murder weapon, the very same one his fiancée had
used to smother their daughter.
Why? he thought
desperately. Why? Jori had tried to
explain, but he couldn’t understand how the woman he’d trusted to take care of
his child could have done something so unspeakable. He couldn’t let her run away from this. He needed more than an apology. He needed answers.
“JORI!” he roared at the top of his lungs, storming out of the
room. “JORI, GET BACK HERE!”
She was probably already outside the building, but she couldn’t have
gone far. He spotted her keys still
hanging on their hook beside the door and swiped them on his way out of the
apartment. He took the stairs two at a
time and barreled out the back door of the building, barely feeling the cold
sting of the wind and rain as he made a beeline for her tie-dyed truck. He jumped in and jammed the key into the
ignition, revving the engine to life.
The tires squealed on the wet pavement as he peeled out of the parking
lot.
There was no telling which way Jori had gone, but AJ turned right,
heading toward the liquor store three blocks down the street. His instincts proved correct. He had only driven a few yards when his headlights
splashed over a familiar silhouette, running on the side of the road. She kept weaving, her hair whipping wildly in
the wind as she turned her head to look at him.
A red hot rage descended upon him as he squinted through the rain-soaked
windshield, the wiper blades keeping time with his racing heart.
Acting on impulse rather than conscious thought, he pushed the pedal
to the floor, forcing the old pick-up to accelerate. She twisted around to glance over her
shoulder again as he came up behind her.
Then she tripped, stumbling out into the street. In the split second before he hit her, AJ saw
the look of horror in her eyes as his headlights shone directly into them and
felt a short-lived sense of satisfaction.
Then he felt the impact against his front fender, heard the crunch of metal and
glass and broken bones, and saw Jori’s body bounce onto the hood of the truck
and roll off again. And when he looked
into the rearview mirror and saw the lifeless lump lying in the middle of the
street, AJ just felt sick.
What have I done? he wondered,
meeting his own wide, crazed eyes in the mirror. Oh God,
what have I done?
***