An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination_ A Memoir - Elizabeth McCracken [46]
In the morning he folded the bed back up, and we asked the midwife if we could leave and go into Bordeaux. The morning’s blood had already been taken. They had no more plans for me that day. She spoke to the doctor, and we were given a two-hour pass, as though I were a patient on a mental ward.
We left the car where it was and took the streetcar downtown and found one of Bordeaux’s hidden backstreet plazas. As we turned the corner, a black cat suddenly ran in front of us.
“You’re too late, mate,” Edward told it.
We bought a pack of cigarettes without discussing it and sat down at a café, and I ordered an enormous glass of strong beer and lit up. We were in France. In the United States a heavily pregnant woman would be lynched for less, but here nobody seemed to notice.
The weather was horribly good.
That morning at 6:00 French time I had finally gotten hold of my parents. That is, my mother had answered the phone and I’d told her. It was not quite midnight in America. It was still the day before. Dark there, dawn in Bordeaux. My parents had been out at a party. I pictured my mother sitting on the edge of their bed. “Here,” she said, “your father’s just coming in, do you want — ” Then she said in a certain voice, almost to herself, “I’ll tell him.” I was absurdly grateful that she’d made the decision for me. I could bear almost anything but breaking the news and wanted to do it as few times as possible.
(This is still true. There are friends, not close ones of course, who knew I was pregnant but did not hear what happened, and when they’ve written and said, “How’s motherhood? Your son must be a year old by now!” I have simply never answered.)
At the café I called my parents again. My father answered, and when he heard my voice he said, “Oh, my darling, what can I say but that I love you with all of my heart.”
I called my friend Ann. I could hear her excitement at my voice — she’d been waiting for her happy phone call — and I told her my news and said that I needed a favor. Anything, she said, getting ahold of her tears. The sun at the café was quite bright.
I asked her to phone my friend Wendy and to split the calls to my other friends between them. I read aloud telephone numbers.
Why am I finding this harder to write about than anything?
There was no oxygen in the little plaza in Bordeaux. Edward and I both felt it. I could not look people in the eye, lest they smile and ask me about my baby.
“This was a mistake,” said Edward. “We don’t belong here.”
Meaning, Out in the world. We’d escaped, but where could we go, with me in my condition?
Time had bent again. Time had developed a serious kink. Our old life — the one where we planned our existence around the son we were expecting — had ended, but our new life — the one where we tried to figure out how to live without him — couldn’t start yet. We were stuck in a chronological bubble.
He was there, after all, still. He rode with us on the streetcar. He sat at the café table with us. He appeared in the shop windows we passed, though I didn’t look to the side to see. We just pretended that he didn’t.
Here’s my question: was I pregnant then?
I was in the shape of a pregnant woman. I’m sure I walked like one, though my arms floated away from the fact of my stomach (no rubbing, no resting, no thoughtless, fond tapping). Really, what was I? Was I pregnant? There should be a different word for it, for someone who hasn’t yet delivered a dead child. Maybe there is and I don’t know it, but I’m not about to ask.
My child had died. The next day I would see him for the first time. But until then, what was I? A figure common in old paintings and poetry. The bereaved carrying the remains of my beloved dead. Not out of bravery. Not out of devotion. Not out of hope that God had gotten it wrong and would change His mind.
Because I had to.
We went back