The soft, lambent light shows me the broken heart in her eyes, killing me at a glance. They aren’t teary or red-rimmed or puffy. There are no telltale signs of distress, but that secret joy that lit her eyes to precious-metal silver for the last few months has been snuffed out. They’re dulled to pewter, an alloy of pain and grief, a mixture of mourning.
I take a tentative step, only to freeze when I spot the things flanking her on the floor. To her right sits a tub of her favorite cookie dough ice cream. The lid is off, and a large serving spoon spears the creamy, untouched surface. To her left is a half-full bottle of her favorite liquor, vodka. No glass, so I assume she’ll be taking it to the head, if she hasn’t already. My heart thuds behind my ribs because that must be a sign. Bristol hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since she found out she was pregnant. She would never endanger our baby, unless the point is moot, unless she has already decided something I thought we would decide together. My heart painfully draws its own conclusions, even though I can’t make myself ask her the question.
What do you want to do?
Each word of the unspoken inquiry is like a drop of acid burning through my tongue. I can’t ask. I haven’t even gotten up the nerve to ask myself. I poured my pain and anger and frustration out on the only place that ever seems to offer me any relief, besides Bristol—on paper. I wrote an embittered manifesto that no one will ever read, but I haven’t asked myself what I want. I’m afraid I already know, and if Bristol wants something different, that’s what we’ll do.
And it will kill me.
It’s Bristol’s body. She would have to carry and nurture this unspeakable tragedy to its inevitable end, not me. I know I have a voice in this, but I can’t ask that of her. I’ve been afraid all afternoon to ask myself if I even want to. There are no right answers. Everything is wrong. We have door number one and door number two, and they both lead to hell, one just faster than the other.
I settle beside her on the floor, mirroring her posture—knees pulled to the chest, back to the wall. The half-empty bottle of vodka draws a line of libation between us. She blinks, still not meeting my eyes, tracing patterns on the darkened screen of her phone before placing it carefully on the floor.
“Your ice cream is melting.”
“Yeah.” Her voice scrapes into the quiet, giving me nothing. “I don’t need it anyway.”
She always says that before she eats half the pint.
“And the vodka?” I keep my voice even, free of condemnation.
“That I need.” She flicks a side-glance to me, searching my face for judgment, I assume. “I need a drink, and I’ve been sitting here wondering if it matters anymore if I have one.”
“Did you have it? The drink, I mean?”
I’m asking more than this. She knows it, and her slim shoulders stiffen.
“Not yet.” She shakes her head, bites her lip. “Does it matter if I do?”
I’m still not ready.
“What were you looking at on your phone?” I dodge her question, avoid my answer.
Her eyes are windows with bars. Showing me just slices of what she’s feeling before she tucks it away behind her lowered lashes. One shoulder lifts and falls. I grab her phone from the floor beneath the arch of her knees and press the home button, bringing up the last thing she saw.
“Grip, don’t look—”
“Shit.” The strangled curse garrotes my throat. I blink over and over, but the images don’t disappear. Stubbornly, they barely blur as the first tears sting my eyes. It’s a page of horrors: bulging eyeballs straining from babies’ faces, rounded backs and the exposed gray matter coils of brains, heads half gone, tiny bodies twisted into a mangle of flesh and bone.
“This is how she’ll be?”
They aren’t my words. It’s not my question, but it takes over and barges past my lips. It uses my voice. It possesses me, this demon question I hope she won’t answer.
“Maybe.” Bristol swallows audibly, her mouth unsteady before she disciplines it into a straight line. “Probably.”
There is nothing I’ve ever experienced that prepares me for these images, for the possibility that this will be my daughter and then she will die. Looking at these pictures, I can’t help but ask if death would be a mercy. Am I merciful? Am I selfish? Shallow? Weak? These are just words, assigning no value to the emotions rioting inside of me. I am under siege. Terror, rage, and hurt are a fevered mob, torches lit and setting my heart on fire. It’s not fair. All my life I’ve been tuned in to injustices, to inequities, but at this moment, they all fade to nothing. They are dust compared to this. This . . . this is not fair, that a baby, not even fully formed, has a death sentence waiting for her, that this world is already tuning its instruments for a dirge, a requiem for her life before it begins.
This is injustice.
“What do you want?” Bristol finally asks.
And there it is. She’s braver than I am. She asked me the question I came to ask her but haven’t been able to. It’s the same question she asked me before I moved to New York, when I wanted her
with me but didn’t want to pressure her. I find myself once again possessing power I don’t want to use.
“Bris, you have to decide that.”
“This is just as much your baby as it is mine.” Her voice is a thin line that wavers then draws taut. “Don’t abdicate this to me. Don’t do that.”