22

Ed is running the mower around the backyard when Alice goes into the garage to get another box of garbage bags from their Costco closet. She has to squeeze past the Cutlass, always a little too close to the wall—she wishes Ed would get his eyes checked—and sees the white poster board still in the backseat, along with the empty beef jerky package. It feels like he’s brought her flowers.

For Ed to give up on an errand is unusual. Ed is more the forge ahead, fight the blizzard to get to the store, damn the torpedoes kind of guy. Always has been. It puzzles Alice that Ed came home with the task unfinished, not even saying a casual word about why. Did he run out of tape? Was he turned away from hanging one at Potter’s?

The only answer she likes is one she interprets from the way the dog and man came bounding into the house, pals returning from an adventure. The dog greeted her with enthusiasm, prancing on his back legs as if he’d never expected to see her again. Ed hung the leash on a peg, then his hat, his back to her until she straightened up from petting the exuberant dog. He was smiling an old, familiar smile, the one he used to give her when they were young and every meeting was a gift. A smile that engaged his eyes, his dark blue smiling eyes now crease-framed by years of not wearing sunglasses. Ed had been smiling, but he hadn’t said anything about not hanging the posters. What he did say was, “He’s one smart dog. You should see what he can do.”

The forgotten posters make her smile, and in the reflection of the car’s back window, she sees a vestige of her old self, a ghost of the girl who smiled like that when her man came calling.

When they had given up on ever becoming parents, it was understandable to have found some other outlet for their unfulfilled nurturing urges. They adopted two mature cats, but neither one was affectionate and did nothing to fill the void. They sent money to Save the Children and got a letter every few months from the child in Peru who was supported by their donations. But they never heard her voice, or developed any real sense of her existence. Ed took the promotion to floor supervisor, putting in lots of hours, promising the extra money would ensure a comfortable retirement. And he nurtured her, encouraging Alice to sign up for classes at the community college, to seek out activities that would give her fulfillment. The years of frustrated trying had been irrevocably lost; now they would relax and accept their circumstances and enjoy the rest of their lives. The absence of child no longer felt like a hole; how could you miss something you’d never had?

And then they did.

On the eve of her thirty-ninth birthday, against all odds, Alice found herself pregnant.

And the second time they found themselves childless, there was simply no outlet. Alice pushed away Ed’s devotion. She was too angry. For a long time, there was nothing she could do but wait for each day to pass and hope to sleep for a few hours at night. A few hours, at most two or three, when the circling thoughts simmered down enough to let her rest, when the why and the what if and the self-doubt and the desperate search for a reason might give way to the exhaustion and let her sleep unmolested until she’d wake before dawn and meet the incomprehensible truth wide-eyed.