All i want, p.22
All I Want, page 22
“See if she’ll eat,” says the nurse.
The baby’s already latched on. The baby gulps like a little fish.
Emma feels overwhelming happiness, love, and joy. She has never in her life felt love like this, never in her life loved anyone like this, never…
Over the baby’s head she sees Ben, smiling guiltily. The smile of someone who’s done something wrong and wants to make it up to her.
That’s when the truth comes rushing back. If the truth ever left.
“Iris,” she says. “Baby Iris.”
Ben will agree to the name. He owes her.
“We’ll talk about it,” he says. “Before we make it official.”
“Iris,” Emma says with all the strength she has.
“Okay,” says Ben. “Okay. Hello, Iris.”
His voice sounds hollow and forced.
“Hello, Little Person,” says Emma.
* * *
THE NURSES SAY it’s normal to be tired after giving birth. That’s why they call it labor.
Every time Emma’s awake, it’s to hold and nurse the baby. Ben’s always there, and she’s superstitious about letting Iris hear her parents argue during her first days on earth. The baby’s presence is a buffer, a wall over which they can only communicate with expressions and gestures. Every look that Emma gives Ben is a giant WHY? A silent, astonished How could you?
Emma still doesn’t understand. She knows about Lindsay and the journal. She knows Sally is dead. But the rest is still a mystery. There must be a simple explanation. It can’t be as complicated—as wicked—as it seems. Why would anyone go to all that trouble? The journal. The photos. Sally.
She spends two nights in the hospital. There’s some problem about how much their health insurance will cover, but Ben says he’ll pay no matter what. And the nurse says it’ll probably be fine.
Ben says he wants Emma to stay there until she feels strong enough to bring the baby home.
He tells this to several nurses.
“Of course,” each one says. “Of course.”
Ben goes home and is back in the morning by the time Emma wakes up. He sits in the chair. He helps Emma go to the bathroom. He holds Iris, staring into the baby’s eyes. He seems totally enchanted.
One afternoon, while Iris sleeps in Emma’s arms, Ben whispers, “I’m sorry. I made mistakes. I know that now. I love you. I want to be with you and the baby. Iris. I love the name. It’s perfect for her. I want to be with you both. We’ll go back to the apartment. We’ll sort things out. I’ll explain everything. I’ll do whatever it takes for you to forgive me.”
That Ben loves Iris’s name cheers Emma. Or almost. She wants to hear his explanation. His version. But why does she look at him like he’s the detective about to explain the mystery, when the fact is, he caused the mystery. He is the criminal.
Why did he pick Lindsay? She seems like such an airhead. And why does Emma have to ask why? Lindsay’s young, she’s pretty, she’s sexy. She’s free. She’s not pregnant. And for a few seconds, at that nightmarish rehearsal, Emma saw that she wasn’t just a country Realtor. She can sing. Emma watched her become Peter Pan: Ben’s old Twitter handle made flesh.
* * *
THE BABY GURGLES at Emma’s breast.
Being patient, giving this time, not accusing Ben, not insisting he explain is the most difficult and strongest thing she’s ever done.
Ben says he wants them home at the apartment. He’ll work from home. He’ll take care of them. He’s found a perfect crib to put next to their bed. He’s stocked the place with diapers and wipes and cloths and anything they might need. All of Emma’s favorite foods. He’ll cook her delicious meals every night. Until she gets her strength back.
Here’s what’s going to happen:
They’ll talk this through. Ben will explain. She’ll either forgive him or not. Lindsay. The journal. Sally. JD. Were they all plotting against her? Are they still?
She has to stay calm. She has to hope for the best. She has to prevent fear, mistrust, and panic from getting into the milk that baby Iris is so greedily, joyously drinking down.
Obviously, it’s too early to tell, but as far as Emma can see, Iris has a sweet, easygoing nature. She’s happy to be held, to be carried, happy to be sung to and rocked. If she cries it means she’s hungry or needs her diaper changed.
* * *
EMMA IS READY to go home.
Passing the time until Emma’s discharged, Ben and Emma avoid the painful subjects. But they talk constantly. It’s been a long time since they were this close. They go over the list of things Ben has bought. Diapers, wipes, a changing cloth. Check. Little onesies. Check. A crib with the highest rating from every place that rates child safety, the most expensive infant car seat, even though, as Ben points out, they’ll only be using it to get from the hospital to the apartment and then for six months or so until Iris grows out of it.
Six months.
He’s turned Peter Pan over to Avery and Rebecca.
And to Lindsay, Emma thinks. But neither of them says that.
They’re not ready for that.
They’ll stay in the apartment. They’ll order in and feed and change the baby and take naps and sleep when they can. They’ll take baby Iris out for walks when it warms up a little. They’ll bring Iris to the doctor for well-baby visits. Give her time to get strong. They’ll let JD work on the house. He and Emma and Ben can discuss things on the phone. If there are choices, JD can send them images of the options. From now on, she and Ben will decide everything together.
A stream of social workers and nurses come through Emma’s hospital room, making sure Ben and Emma don’t have any questions about what to do when they get home.
Emma has plenty of questions—but none the social workers can answer. What is she supposed to do about a husband who’s conspired with his lover to forge a journal and gaslight her in every possible way? A husband who’s made her think she might be going out of her mind.
But now… Ben seems different. More like how he used to be. Maybe the baby has changed him already. Another miracle. He couldn’t be more tender or caring. His touch, as he helps her and the baby into the wheelchair that the hospital insists on, is the touch of a man who loves them both.
The baby adores her car seat. She waggles her tiny arms and legs in the straps as Ben fastens them. The nurse watching says how unusual that is. Most babies cry.
“She trusts us,” Ben says.
Emma can’t help thinking: Why should she?
Emma braces herself for Ben to complain when she sits in the back with the baby. He’s always made fun of couples who do that. But Ben is beyond criticizing anything she does, no matter how sensible or (he thinks) neurotic.
It won’t always be this way. This is the first time they’ve taken the baby out, even if it’s just across town to the Upper West Side. Of course she’s going to be cautious.
She stares into the baby’s huge dark eyes. Iris can hardly see her, Emma knows, so why does it seem as if she does? Emma watches every flicker of expression that passes across the baby’s face.
So she’s slow to notice.
Ben should be driving across the park and north along Central Park West. But he’s turned south onto the West Side Highway.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ve had a change of heart,” he says. “I want to go upstate.”
“I thought we were going to the apartment. I thought it was all arranged.”
“The country house is just as good. Lindsay and Beth have gotten everything we need.”
“Lindsay and Beth? Lindsay and Beth?” She hears her voice rising to a high, strained pitch. How can she be, at the same time, so furious and so numb?
How could Ben not have consulted Emma? How could he have changed their plans, just like that, without asking her?
Panic washes over her. Adrenaline speeds up her heartbeat. Something’s wrong. Are she and Iris in danger? Or is she panicking for no reason? Her husband has changed his mind. People change their minds all the time.
Even as she tries to reassure herself, she’s fighting the impulse to jump out of the car. She can’t. Of course she can’t. They’re speeding along the highway, and it would mean leaving the baby behind. That’s the last thing Emma wants to do.
It’s impossible to process everything at once. For the moment, just for a little while, she longs to go back to the way things were, before she found out about Lindsay. She tells herself: This is Ben. Her husband, not her kidnapper. He’s had a change of heart. Emma can go with it. She loves the country too. They’ll be on their own, with the new baby. Ben will fall in love with the baby, and with Emma. Again. He’ll regret what happened with Lindsay. He’ll beg Emma to forgive him. They’ll sort the rest out later.
“I got all duplicate stuff up there,” he says. “The crib, the diapers, etcetera. Because, to be honest, I hadn’t made up my mind.”
His mind? His mind? What about her mind? What about what they want?
“I thought we’d decided.” Emma’s voice sounds weak. Well, sorry. She just had a baby!
“Not really,” Ben says.
They’re heading into the Lincoln Tunnel. There’s hardly any traffic. What time is it? The lights on the tile walls strobe past.
Ben says, “If you squint, it’s kind of like the candelabras in the Beast’s house, remember Emma?”
Emma remembers, but she now thinks the lights look like prison-yard beams.
When they emerge on the Jersey side, she searches through her purse for her phone, but she can’t find it. Whom would she call? Her old friends, the ones she’s hardly seen or spoken to since she got pregnant and moved to the country? Her doctor? JD?
And if she called them, what would she say? Still, she wants to know where her phone is. “Where’s my phone? Did I leave it at the hospital? Do you remember taking it?”
“I have it with me,” Ben says. “I took it. You won’t need it for a while. Just try to get some rest.”
There’s something new—something hard—in his tone. She hardly recognizes his voice. It’s like they’ve wandered into one of those science fiction movies in which a familiar person has been taken over by an alien entity.
She and Iris are in trouble. And now Emma is really scared.
“Where are we going?”
“Upstate. Obviously.”
Emma closes her eyes. Somehow that makes it easier to say what she has to say. “Ben, you need to tell me. Why did you and Lindsay do what you did—the journal, the photo at the historical society?
Ben says, “Emma, are you sure you’re okay? I have no idea what you’re talking about. What journal? The one you were looking for in the attic, the one you must have thrown out and forgotten or maybe—”
Unless Ben looks in his rearview mirror, she can’t see his face. He’s concentrating on the road. A safe driver. She’s always loved that.
She remembers that first day they drove to the house. Now she wishes they’d never…
Iris is sleeping peacefully, but Emma can’t let herself doze off. She needs to stay awake and aware. Vigilant.
At last they turn onto their driveway.
“Watch out for the oak,” Emma says.
“I always do,” says Ben.
Chapter Eighteen JOHN DAVID, AKA JD
DO I THINK a house can be cursed? Of course. That’s why those haunted-house films are always popular. Everyone’s scared of certain houses. Do the math. If your house is a hundred years old, chances are someone died there. Now divide that by whatever percentage of people you think—depending on your view of human nature—are evil. An evil person died in your house. Or several people died young. Children died. There were nasty accidents.
Someone was murdered.
Now let’s take a house in which people suffered. I don’t mean those houses where kidnapped girls were chained in the basement, but from the stories we heard about Hideaway Home, there may have been some of that. People drinking themselves to death, losing their families and jobs. Sad old actors down on their luck. Didn’t their misery seep into the walls?
And those were the good old days.
After that, the three siblings.
* * *
EVERYONE IN TOWN knows something happened to me in that house.
High school, junior year. The usual story. Too much beer and boredom and too many girls to show off for. Anyone who took the dare and went into the house or even tried would get free beer for the rest of the night and the girls would look at him differently.
Girls liked me already. That was partly why I did it.
It was a hot July night. We left our cars down the driveway. The others hid in the bushes. The dare was that I had to get in the house and signal them by lighting a match they could see from an upstairs window.
It was a serious dare. Your basic horror-film dare. The first guy who goes into the haunted house is the first one who gets killed and flayed and hung from the rafters for the others to find.
But really, what could happen? Three old people lived there. No one knew. They never left the house. They had everything delivered. My friend’s cousin delivered for UPS. Once he’d brought something that had to be signed for, and he couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. The person was old. Very old. With long hair and a beard. He said it could have been a woman with a beard.
I guess one of the old people could have shot me—and gotten away with it. I was an intruder. But I was too young and drunk to think of that. I wasn’t thinking in the stand-your-ground mode but in the haunted-house mode. I was basically a nice guy, but it didn’t occur to me that creeping around in some old people’s house wasn’t a nice thing to do.
All the lights were out. The house looked massive.
The three hermits were in there somewhere, probably asleep. All the windows were closed. The screens were torn. They didn’t want bats or raccoons in their kitchen. Maybe they weren’t so crazy.
The kitchen door was unlocked. I walked in very quietly. I navigated by moonlight. The place was a mess. There was a horrible smell: dust, sour milk, rotten cabbage, something sweet and rotten underneath. There were piles of junk everywhere. But no one was around.
I remember a hall and a lot of rooms. Little rooms with all the doors shut.
And now here comes the crazy part.
That’s the last thing I can remember.
The next thing I knew I was back on the lawn.
I’d come blasting out the front door.
* * *
I’VE READ ABOUT people who have been hit by lightning. One woman said her tongue sizzled like bacon. That’s sort of what this felt like. Not that my tongue sizzled. It was more like my whole brain was being fried.
Fade to black, and then I’m on the lawn, blinking up at my friends.
No one believed I didn’t remember. They thought I was hiding something. Holding out on them. Being cool.
Ted believed me. He believed I’d seen something awful that I couldn’t remember. He believed it was screwing me up. Ted sent me to a therapist in Ellenville and even a hypnotist in Middletown, but nothing worked.
Before this happened I would have laughed at anyone who told a story like mine. I saw something. My mind went blank. Poor me, I had the shock of my life, and now my life is crap.
But when it happens to you, it’s not funny.
After that, everything took what I’d guess you’d call a turn for the worse. My grades tanked. I stopped seeing my friends, I didn’t apply to college. I quit the baseball team. I got into coke. I forged a small check on Ted’s account. Lindsay found me going through her backpack—looking for what?
They didn’t report me. They didn’t have to. I was ashamed of myself. I left home.
I got busted for shoplifting a ripe avocado and some chocolate chip cookies from a supermarket in San Francisco. I was not in my normal state. I don’t even like cookies.
I finally wrote to Ted for bus fare so I could come home. He sent me money, and when I got back, he insisted I go to a doctor. The doctor said I’m bipolar. I don’t personally think that’s true. He prescribed pills that I never took. By now I’d know if I needed them.
I work on houses. I bought and fixed up my own little house. I got a truck, a crew. I get good jobs. I’m good at it. Excellent. If I had a renovation to do, I’d hire myself. No more trouble. I keep super-meticulous records. I pay all my bills, my helpers, and my suppliers on time.
Lindsay knew it wasn’t just any house she was asking me to work on. She wanted to see if I would do it and how much money it would take to make me work on a place where I’d had some kind of trauma—or whatever. Also, the fact was she needed someone who could take on a job that big. Or anyone at all. All the other builders were booked for the summer, which I should have been, would have been, if my clients hadn’t gone broke.
Lindsay knew that something had happened to me in that house. I guess you could say it was old news, but so little happens in our town, old news stays pretty young.
As soon as the house was officially empty and abandoned, and listed by the bank, I used to drive up that long driveway and park outside, waiting to see if anything came back to me. I didn’t want to go inside, even when it was empty.
All that changed when Lindsay asked me to work there.
I liked the idea. Of course, it crossed my mind that maybe if I spent enough time there I might remember what happened. And, to be honest, I also liked the thought of taking a sledgehammer to those little rooms. To make something come out of the walls.
At the risk of sounding stupid, I thought, I’m not just renovating a house, I’m exorcising demons.
Plus, I needed a job.
Lindsay knew it was sort of a dare, a second dare that might reverse the bad effects of the first. Or something like that.
I never liked Lindsay. In high school she was a mean girl, one of those people who changed friends, ghosting old ones and making new ones on her way up the popularity ladder.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll look at the house. See what we’re talking about.”
