The World Outside, 28
Falling
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With such a paradisiacal honeymoon, it was probably no surprise that Erik and Joanna would crash, come Wednesday morning—though it caught Joanna off guard nevertheless. Their first few days were spent stepping on each other’s toes, both literally and figuratively, as they figured out life in such a small space. Erik had grown accustomed to waking up at six in the morning and often returning home, exhausted and dirty, around seven in the evening. He liked to save any household chores for Sundays, and he rarely had the energy for much in the evenings. Joanna, on the other hand, wanted every day to begin and end with an hour or two of snuggling and the last thing she wanted to do on their one day off together was chores. That, plus the fact that Erik was a neat freak, satisfied with a couple of PB&Js for dinner, and even a little bit cheap when compared to Joanna’s slobbish tendencies, habit of lingering at the table, and predilection toward free spending gave the two of them several opportunities to fight during the times that they were together over the first couple of weeks of married life.
Erik worked only a half day on the last Saturday of September. Joanna took advantage of her time and called Mary. They’d barely gotten a chance to chat since the wedding, and Joanna missed her.
“So, guess what?” Mary said as soon as she picked up. “Turns out I’m pregnant.” Joanna shrieked and then laughed when Mary told her she’d already known at the wedding and then they talked and gushed and planned for the next hour until Mary had to hang up. Joanna set about cleaning the house, all the while daydreaming about Mary’s baby and how it would be when she flew down to Virginia in April to help out.
The nice thing about their house was that Joanna was able to give the whole thing a deep clean in about an hour and a half, leaving her with plenty of time to shower before heading to the grocery store.
Erik was relaxed when he got home in the middle of the afternoon. He wrapped his arms around Joanna’s waist as she stood at the counter, chopping vegetables.
They went to bed early and spent the next morning being lazy and then walked down to the ice cream stand in the afternoon and ate their cones on the beach.
Things were better for the next several days, but then their mutually-unmet expectations bumped up against each other again and, over the course of the next couple of months, Joanna noticed a pattern: a period of calm and heady happiness, followed by a time of bickering and poking at one another. There was always only so much one or the other of them could stand. Joanna wondered if it would always be this way.
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In November—just as Joanna’s schedule was ramping up and Erik’s was starting to slow down—she spent a week with her head in the toilet, unable to keep anything down. In her lucid moments, she kicked herself for letting her husband see her in this state so soon, but there wasn’t much she could do.
And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the bug worked itself out of her system. She woke up one morning with an insatiable need for bacon and a strawberry smoothie, a need that Erik met with hesitation, but the grease and yogurt did her good. She stuck to that for the next three days and, little by little, she began to feel better, stronger. Good thing too—hell week was starting the next Monday.
On the evening of her first day back at work, Lara, Mike’s wife, called her at home. “Michael told me you were sick,” she said, “and I’ve got some advice for you. Get a pregnancy test.”
She was stunned but did the math—she hadn’t had her period for more than six weeks. She remembered it because they’d planned to go out on Bruce’s boat, but Joanna had woken up that morning with cramps and a headache and had sent Erik on his own. Joanna took Lara at her word and told Erik what she’d said.
Thirty minutes later, she took the small package into the bathroom; it took her a moment to figure out how to aim something she couldn’t see at a narrow strip off the end of a narrow stick (which she also couldn’t see), but she did it and then sat back to wait. “Erik,” she called out a couple of minutes later. He must have been standing right outside the door, because he was beside her in a moment, gazing at the tiny PREGNANT in wonder.
“Wow,” he whispered, putting his arm around her and kissing her hair.
Joanna’s first thought was about Mary’s baby. They would be the same age. They’d fantasized about that as middle schoolers, but she’d never expected it to actually happen.
Joanna was fascinated, in the coming days and weeks, to examine the shifts in her mindset. They decided, together, not to tell anyone, Poppa or Erik’s mother, until Christmas, when she was just about at twelve weeks. They bought a white onesie, painted it with the words Welcome, baby Donovan! June 2010, and laid it across Joanna’s stomach. They took a picture with the two of them and planned to print and frame it for everyone as Christmas presents that year.
The worst of her sickness had subsided, but her body still felt in constant flux. Foods that had never bothered her—shrimp, spicy foods—messed her up for days, while foods she’d never been interested in—oranges, chicken nuggets—became mainstays. She was bone-deep tired, too. She stayed in bed until the last possible moment before work and went right back to bed as soon as she got home. She spent weekends, dozing on and off on the couch, only venturing out for short walks when Erik coaxed her up for a bit.
Whenever she was alone, she talked to the baby. Stroking her stomach, she would narrate her days, sing her favorite songs, read passages of her favorite plays. She’d never been religious, but she couldn’t deny a spiritual connection to this baby, whose development was the closest thing to a miracle that she’d ever experienced.
Erik, for his part, took advantage of his emptier days and did the cooking and cleaning so Joanna wouldn’t have to. He settled on the couch next to her, with her feet on his lap and his hand on the baby, and he talked to the baby, too. Joanna was reassured to see how in love he already was with their new reality—a reality that, she couldn’t believe now, they’d hardly ever talked about.
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On December 23rd, as Erik was out getting some last-minute Christmas gifts, Joanna noticed some spotting. Her heart raced a bit, but she put it out of her mind. What she saw that morning looked like what all the books said was normal. She had a doctor’s appointment the following week; she’d bring it up then.
Two hours later, she’d bled through a whole pad and had developed cramps, along with radiating pain across her lower back, and she knew that the worst was happening. Erik had just gotten home; telling him to drive her to the emergency room—seeing the understanding pass over his face—was awful.
The rest of the day passed in slow motion. Joanna was shuffled through the entire process, but she let Erik carry the weight of listening to what people were telling her. She couldn’t stop thinking about the blood: had it been hers? The baby’s? Both?
The ride home was a quiet one. Erik was grim; his hands kept flexing on the steering wheel. Joanna’s were cupped, loosely, in her lap.
The baby could have fit in there, with room to spare.
When they got home, Joanna went immediately to the couch. She laid down with the blanket over her head and closed her eyes. She heard Erik’s footsteps pause near the end of the couch, a foot or two away from her. After a long pause, she heard him climb the ladder up to the loft and then return to settle on the floor beside her.