It was Saturday morning. I heard Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” from the living room. Natalie’s iPhone was playing. She didn’t see me. Her head was back, her arms in the air, and she was singing and dancing with abandon: “And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake…”
Natalie ate a chocolate croissant for breakfast. I made coffee for myself. She perused the apartment, looking at my books, my desk, and in my closet.
I showered and dressed. When I came out of the bedroom, I saw her standing in front of me with her backpack over her shoulders. Her arms were crossed in front of her body and she was staring at the ground, as if she didn’t want to meet my eyes. “I need to go upstairs and make a quick phone call.” She turned abruptly and left.
Initially she’d said she wanted to stay for the whole morning.
I turned my attention to unloading the dishwasher, which I’d run the night before. I placed all the bowls on one shelf and the plates on a different shelf. When finished with that task, I loaded the washing machine and folded the towels that I’d left in the dryer. I’d purchased expensive Turkish towels when I’d moved. I enjoyed folding them and running my hands over them.
Then I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat on the patio outside my back door. I contemplated the cherry tree, the birds, the sunshine, and found all of it too perfect this morning. I felt certain there was a flaw hidden somewhere.
I heard an incoming text on my phone. It was from Amelia. We have a problem here. Please come upstairs.
My stomach dropped. Something bad was about to happen or had already happened.
I wrote back: Sure. Just a few minutes.
Natalie had appeared disturbed by something. What had happened to her? The floor underneath my feet was shifting. I needed to know the nature of the problem. I couldn’t walk into the Straubs’ house defenseless, without the necessary tools.
In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and dried it. Then I applied moisturizer, under-eye concealer, mascara, and lip gloss. I combed through my hair. Finally I was pleased with my reflection in the mirror.
I walked up the stairs, entered the Straubs’ front door, and proceeded down the hallway. From across the room, I could see that Amelia, Fritz, and Natalie were all seated around the dining table. The morning sun was shooting in through the skylight from above and through the bifold doors. Amelia’s skin looked bright white in the sun. Her lips had disappeared, but her dark eyes were taking up more space than usual in her face. Next to her, Fritz sat expressionless, his eyes flat and dull. Seated across the table, Natalie was looking down, seemingly focused on pointing and flexing her bare feet.
As I approached, I could see that Amelia was holding something in front of her. I took a few steps toward her. It looked to be a thick pile of papers in her hand. I took a few more steps and could now tell it was a stack of photographs. I neared the table, close enough to see the edge of the top photo, and then recognized it. I felt the ground dropping out from underneath me.
It was a graphic photo of me and Fritz in bed together—including a computer-generated image of Fritz’s naked groin that I’d photoshopped and fine-tuned until it appeared completely realistic. I’d scrupulously deleted all such photos from my hard drive, but I’d chosen to keep a few of the prints.
I was falling. “Oh God,” I said. “That was … was so stupid.”
“What is this?” Amelia whispered.
Fritz looked up at me, as though he were hoping for a valid explanation.
Amelia flipped to the second photo in the stack. Then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth. She laid them out on the dining table in front of her. They were photos of me and Fritz in different sexual positions. Over the last few months, whenever I’d been bored, I’d gone back to these photos. Sexual experimentation in the photographs had been exciting for me.
I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding like a cackle. “Oh God, see, I had a photo-editing challenge with my colleague.…”
“What … what the hell?” She held up a photo of me, Fritz, and her in bed together. A ménage à trois.
I felt myself to be in free fall, in a vertical drop. “… and we were using a new program, trying to create realistic photos … and…”
Amelia stood up from her place at the dining table, her face moist and pink and her eyes cloudy. She looked feverish and wild. “Are you fucking Fritz?” she bellowed into the atmosphere.
“No!” Fritz yelled loudly.
“Amelia…” I said.
“Yes or no?” she said.
“No!” My mind raced for a way to escape. I looked around the room for possible exits. Itzhak was crouched low in the corner, growling.
“What is it?” Amelia gasped. “Barbie and Ken having sex? Are you so desperate you need to fuck my husband in a picture?”
She fanned the remainder of the photos out like a hand of cards. Then she placed them back on the table in a stack, and separated them out, one by one. I held my breath. She came to one of herself and me drinking martinis at Buttermilk Channel, then one in which I was very pregnant and we were shopping on Court Street, then one of me cooking in the Straubs’ kitchen, and one of her feeding me birthday cake. And next, the photo of Jasper lying asleep in Natalie’s room.
“Is this your son?” She looked disoriented.
A pit of nausea in my stomach was making its way to my throat. “Yes,” I said quietly.
“When was he here?”
I searched for the correct response to the question. “He was—”
Layers of her confusion seemed to obstruct her speech. “When … when … was he in the house?”
“I was—”
“Why is he in Natalie’s room? Why is he in the photo?”
“It wasn’t—”
“Is it really your son?”
“I…”
“Who is it?”
She came to another shot of Jasper and his family. My clients.
“It’s not your son, is it?”
In addition to a growing panic, a deep anger was threatening to overtake me. I resented Amelia’s disrespectful tone.
Her voice blasted through the house. “DO YOU HAVE A SON?”
“Jasper is my son.” I believed in Jasper. I clung tightly to his image in my head.
Natalie was still looking away, resting her head in her hands.
Amelia came to another group of photos. Lucia. A sharp pain made its way through my skull. It was one of the photoshopped versions and I had drawn a large red X on the photo.
“It’s a picture of Lucia,” Amelia said. “Why do you have it?”
“I took a few shots of her.”
“What does the X mean?”
“It’s not—”
“Why do you have it? WHAT DID YOU DO TO LUCIA?”
I backed away from her toward the kitchen island.
Fritz stood up. He looked like a wild animal. A speeding train was coming toward me. Head forward like a bull, he ran straight in my direction. He stopped abruptly when he was two feet away and pulled his upper lip back with disgust. “You are some sick pervert.”
His words hit me in a bad place. I tried to control myself. I held my voice low. “I’m sorry.” I had to say the right thing.
“How dare you use my image?” he growled. “How dare you bring your depravity into our home?”
Natalie looked up. She was watching her father. Her face was pale.
Amelia burst into hysterical sobs. “You should be down on your knees with gratitude to us,” she said between her sobs. “Are you mocking us? After all we did for you.”
“Did you do something for me?” My breath was catching in my throat. “Remind me.”
“You used us.” Amelia spoke through clenched teeth.
I was in a tunnel of rage—having difficulty allowing air into my lungs. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.” In that moment I hated Amelia with every molecule in my body.
“You are repulsive,” Amelia said.
“Mom,” Natalie said. “Enough!”
“It’s OK.” I tried to make eye contact with Natalie. “I’ll leave. As soon as I can get a moving truck.”
Amelia took long strides down the hallway toward the front door, grabbing a ring of keys off the hall console table. “You have more shit downstairs. I need to see all of it.”
“No.” I followed her, but she was fast. In an instant she was out the door, down the front steps. I was behind her. I refused to allow her into my computer, my files, my home. Whatever she thought she was going to see, she was wrong. I caught up to her at the top of the exterior stairs that led down to my garden apartment. I held her arm to prevent her from descending. She wrenched away from me. I ran ahead of her and put my body in front of hers, on the step below her, to block her way.
“Get out of my way,” she said.
“It’s my private apartment,” I said. “You can’t enter without notice.”
“Bullshit.” She pushed me aside.
I stepped back to catch myself, but my foot didn’t make contact with the step below me. My feet shuffled to get a hold, but I fell to the stone steps and rolled sideways down the remaining stairs. I landed at the base.
Perhaps this was the way it was meant to end. I felt the cool cement beneath my face. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Amelia’s blurred face appeared over me, contorted in a sick grimace, and her breath was briefly suspended. Fritz was standing behind her.
“What did I do?” she whispered. “No, no, no, no.”
Both of Fritz’s lips were pulled back to reveal his gums and teeth. “We need Delta out of here today,” he said.
Amelia moaned—a sound from deep inside her. “The baby.”
I felt my hip bone and the side of my face against the cement. I felt moisture between my legs. And a viselike sensation around my abdomen.
Amelia knelt by my side. “What did I do?”
“Mom, you pushed Delta?” It was Natalie’s voice in the distance.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Amelia grabbed Fritz’s wrist.
“Calm down,” he said.
I was watching both of them, as if in a film—as if I were slightly removed. I noticed the shadows in Amelia’s face, hollow spaces that made her look old.
“This baby is my life,” Amelia said. “My life.”
“I hate you,” Natalie hissed from the top of the stairs.
“Go upstairs, Natalie,” Amelia said. “Now.”
“No.” Natalie didn’t move.
“Delta, let me help you,” Amelia whispered to me.
I felt blood running down my legs. Amelia’s gaze landed on my bare foot, which was covered in blood. It had run all the way down my leg.
“No, no, no, no!” she wailed.
A weight on my chest pressed me to the ground.
Up the stairs, I saw Natalie’s outline, then her gleaming eyes, her lanky arms, her charm necklace with the clay heart and the zigzagged line down the middle. Fritz led her up to their house. I was left alone with Amelia.
She helped me up. My body was pounding. She helped me inside my apartment. “We need to go to the doctor,” she said.
“I think it’ll be OK,” I said.
“No. No. No.” Amelia’s eyes were glazed.
I told her I needed to lie down. She insisted I go to the doctor.
Right now I’m the child’s mother. And I need to talk to my baby.
I’m the child’s mother. Delta Dawn.
And did I hear you say, he was a-meeting you here today,
To take you to his mansion in the sky?
It was my loss. It was my baby.
Amelia drove me to the closest emergency room in downtown Brooklyn. I told her that I would go in by myself. I needed privacy. I’d been asking for privacy when she pushed me down the stairs. This time she didn’t dare to object.
Late that night I was released from the hospital. I called Amelia. “I lost the baby.”