CARMEN COULDN’T SLEEP. THE rain fell softly onto the skylight above her bed, but it wasn’t the drumming of the rain that kept her awake. She was accustomed to that sound now—it had become something of a lullaby this past week.
Resting next to her, on the blanket, were the photograph albums. She and Chris had sat in the living room for two hours after Jeff left, paging through the books and their evocative pictures. The one album was familiar to her, the one with their wedding pictures and the dozens of snapshots chronicling their early years—their happy years—together. But she had never seen the other pictures, save the one newborn shot of Dustin taken by the hospital. All wrinkled brow and dark hair. All promise and potential. She was astonished by the care Chris had taken in putting the album together, at how carefully he had organized the photographs, had dated and labeled each one. At how he was still, more than four years after Dustin’s birth, adding to the collection.
At first, she had looked at the pictures objectively, with a certain clinical detachment: My, Chris, what a good job you’ve done with this. Look at how beautifully you’ve arranged four photographs to a page, look at how neatly you’ve written the date below each one, when your handwriting is normally so indecipherable.
It wasn’t until they had looked at the last picture—a shot of a four-year-old boy in a bean bag chair—and Chris had turned back to the first page and said “Let’s start over,” that she realized how tightly she was hanging onto the slim thread of her composure.
“No,” she’d responded, starting to get off the sofa. “Let’s make some coffee.”
But he’d held her down, one hand snug on her shoulder. “We’re looking through it again, Carmen.”
She studied Chris’s face, and it was as though she hadn’t seen him, hadn’t really noticed him, in over four years. He had aged. When he didn’t smile—and he wasn’t smiling now—there was no boyishness left in his face at all.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice husky. “It was too hard the first time.”
“You didn’t even see these pictures the first time,” he said, softly. “This time, I want you to look at them. Look at Dusty.”
She lowered her eyes reluctantly to the picture of the baby she had carried with such hope, such terror, after losing his two siblings. Next to that picture was one of her sitting in their bed here at Sugarbush, Dustin on her lap. She could almost remember the moment Chris had snapped the shutter on that photograph. She had just nursed Dustin. Her robe was still open, one full breast partly exposed. Her gaze was focused entirely on the baby snuggled in her arms, her beautiful dark-haired son, and she felt again that aching in her breasts, that oddly pleasurable pulling in her belly.
She began to tremble. “I can’t,” she said to Chris. “It hurts too much.”
“I know it does. Believe me, I know how much it hurts.”
At first, she was frightened by her tears. She didn’t want to lose control, afraid she might never find it again. But there was safety in Chris’s arm around her shoulders, and the tears gradually began to feel welcome. Cleansing. She no longer struggled to hold them in. She no longer bothered to wipe at them with the back of her hand. They fell like raindrops on the plastic-covered photographs of the album as Chris turned the pages.
Her child’s eyes were ruined. If he were ever to be out on the street, out in public, people would stare at him. Children would be frightened by him. They would ask their parents what had happened to that little boy. They would have nightmares that they themselves might wake up one morning with their own blue or green or brown eyes turned the sightless color of an overcast sky.
And yet there was such beauty in him. By the third or fourth page, she no longer noticed the milky eyes, but rather the thick dark lashes, the perfect, pouting mouth. “I’ve missed out on so much,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” The terrible wrenching tone of his voice told her that he misunderstood. He thought she was referring to what she’d missed out on by not having a healthy child.
“No,” she said. “I’ve missed him. Dustin. I had him for just a few hours. A few days. They seemed so… magical. But then I turned my back on him. Jeff was right. I—”
“You were sick,” Chris interrupted her.
She shook her head, a sense of conviction growing inside her. “I’m not sick anymore,” she said. “Can we go see him?”
He didn’t bother to mask his look of surprise. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
“Now?”
He smiled. “It’s a little late. How about tomorrow?”
Carmen knew he wasn’t quite convinced she was all right, because he said he would spend the night in her guest room rather than go back to his cottage. And that was where he was now. Two rooms away from her. Her husband. Ex-husband.
She got out of bed and left her room. The tiled floor was cool on her bare feet, and a breeze slipped past her as she walked down the hall. She opened the door to the guest room without knocking. Chris was lying on his side under the peach-colored blanket, facing the window. He turned when she walked into the room, and she knew he hadn’t been sleeping either.
“Carmen,” he said.
She raised her nightgown over her head and dropped it on the chair by the window. He drew back the covers for her, and she slipped into the bed next to him. And when he pulled her close to him, when he pressed his body against hers and buried his head deep in the crook of her neck, she knew she would cry again that night. But it would be a long, long time before she would cry again from unhappiness.