Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [40]
“Come here, my fertile and knocked-up wife,” he says breathlessly, and brings me closer. I tuck myself underneath his shoulder, and we lie in silence, our chests rising and falling in time with the other and with the waves beneath. I stare at Henry’s toes which, in my dream, are abnormally long, disproportioned such that they consume nearly his entire foot. The air smells like sausage, and I hear frying from the galley, and I wonder who is making us breakfast.
I flop my arm over Henry’s stomach, fingering the gentle loft of hair that floats just below his belly button, and then a foghorn sounds loudly, bleating like a laboring cow, in the distance. The cacophony stirs me, and I shudder, then glance down to discover that my belly has already expanded, that it is morphing even before my eyes, growing like an alien puffer fish, like a balloon filled with a rush of helium. I try to raise myself up, but I’m flattened, paralyzed in the bed, and I can only watch in agonizing horror until my body is so ripe that I’m nearly bursting with child, and that at any moment, I am poised to explode.
“Henry!” I scream with a shrillness that could puncture our miniature glass window. “It isn’t time! I only just found out! It isn’t yet time!”
I reach for him, but my hand grasps nothing but air. Frantically, I will myself to move, pushing frozen, unheeding muscles, commanding them until they relent, and nearly sitting up and lumbering under the new weight of my stomach, I scream again. “Henry! Get over here now, Henry!”
But he doesn’t answer. There is nothing but silence, even the horns from the passing boats and the sizzle of the sausage have fallen away, and just before I shake myself awake, in the last few gasping seconds of my dream, I find myself weighted to the bed, bulging and terrified, and realize that I am utterly alone. Henry is gone, vanishing into the blackened waters that push against us at every turn, as if he were never there in the first place, as if he were never there at all.
EVENTUALLY, AFTER STARING at the ceiling fan and listening to gulls on the beach, I fall back asleep. I dream of nothing, or at least nothing that I choose to remember. I am wasted in slumber when a ringing phone jolts me awake.
Jack’s hand flashes toward the nightstand, and he gropes for his cell.
“Urg,” he manages, before he pushes out, “hello.”
I look at the bedside clock. It’s 5:15 A.M.
“Is she okay?” I hear Jack saying. He reaches for the lamp and clicks it on.
“Oh, come on!” I hiss and throw myself under the covers.
“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” His voice is giving way to increasing urgency. “No, of course not. I would have been there in a second. I’m just here with Jill! No, no, it’s just a weekend vacation. It‘s not a problem.”
I pull the blanket back and shoot him a look to let him know that while I have no idea what his comment was in reference to, I’m considering being deeply offended.
“No, no, I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in a few hours. Okay. Yes. See you then.” Jack stands and pulls his jeans off a wicker chair in the corner of the room.
“What’s going on?” I ask. My voice croaks with sleep, and I can taste my sour breath.
“My mom,” he answers, tossing a T-shirt over his head. I’ve never seen him dress so quickly. Clothes are flying through the air at superhuman rates.
“Is she okay?” I prop up on my elbows and scan my brain. I have no recollection of any heart attacks, car accidents, or other brutalities that might cause such panic.
“She broke her hip,” he says. “Last night, trying to string lights on the tree out back for their Labor Day party. Fell off the ladder.”
Ah yes, that’s right.
“I have to head to the hospital. I’m sorry, babe, to cut the weekend short.” He is shimmying his feet into his sneakers, trying to weasel them in without untying the laces.
“Well, I’ll come,” I say. “I’m happy to come with you.” I swing my legs off the bed and feel my back crack in two places. My body is begging for a few more hours to be dead to the world.
“No.” He shakes his head. “No, no. It’s fine. You stay here