The Birthing House Page 21

  Conrad flinched back over the sink and covered his face. His ankle twisted and his knees gave out. He sat there on the shag throw rug, staring at Eddie’s twitching legs until they stopped. Another minute seemed to pass before he realized what had happened. He stood up. Eddie was face down, his neck askew. Something shiny and white dangled from his ear . . . and it was the rest of his ear. Conrad was only slightly relieved he did not have to look into the boy’s eyes.

  His first coherent thought was, Thank God it wasn’t me.

  His second was, It’s his fault. I didn’t shoot him.

  And last but not least, It happened in the shower. Easier to clean up.

  He was reaching for a towel when he remembered Nadia.

  Jesus Shitting Christ she’s pregnant and shot.

  He turned away, closed the bathroom door, and crouched next to her in the hall. Nadia’s foot pedaled the air and banged against the wall of the trailer a couple times, found purchase, and pushed her shoulders against the opposite wall until she was stuck and partially folded, her eyes rolling back and around, searching while her mouth puckered and emitted ‘nnnya-nnnyaa-nnnyaa’ sounds.

  Conrad pulled her shoulders off the wall until she was lying flat on her back. It seemed important to get her straight. Her shirt was red from the waistline up to her breasts and sopping wet. His vision became foggy. Eyes watering up as if the wind were blowing invisible particles into them.

  ‘I’m here, girl. Okay, we’re going to be fine . . .’

  He didn’t know this would be fine. He ran back to the bathroom and - don’t look! don’t look at that problem in the shower, not yet, not now! - grabbed two yellow and white striped beach towels off the rack, spun to the sink. Was he supposed to wet one first? No - soak up the blood. The medicine cabinet was open and he saw a tin of Band Aids and some Preparation H.

  He crouched and pressed a towel into her abdomen.

  Nadia screamed and kicked.

  ‘Hold still, hold still!’ He sounded too loud, so he repeated it softer until she blinked and saw him, twisting against the pain, trying to get away. She beat her head against the floor and clenched her teeth, staring through him, and he knew she was angry on top of the pain. Was he to blame for this, after all? Probably, in some way.

  Three gunshots. Someone must’ve heard. The police will be here soon.

  He felt the towel dampening beneath his hand and lifted it to make sure he was pressing in the right spot. Her shirt was up, revealing white skin gone grainy and smeared. He couldn’t see the wound’s exact location yet. There was too much blood. He inspected her hips. Jesus Christ, where was it?

  ‘Be still. Nadia, be still!’ The blood was pooling in her belly button. ‘Oh God . . .’

  Nadia was whimpering. So much for the hope she was in shock. Shock would be a blessing. ‘Burns, it burns,’ she whimpered.

  He put his finger to her navel and she screamed, jerking toward him. When she came up, his finger slipped under the flap of skin at the ring of her belly button until he was certain he was poking her in the guts.

  Nadia howled and stretched herself taut as a piano wire. He snatched his hand away and fresh blood poured out.

  ‘I know, I know! Stop moving!’ Amazingly, she swung her hand around and clutched his forearm, her grip fierce. That was something, wasn’t it?

  ‘Easy, easy, I have to stop it.’

  She gritted her teeth.

  Conrad wadded the end of the second towel to a conical point and pushed it in. She opened her mouth to unleash another scream and nothing came out. Her circuits overloaded as her face went ash-gray and her breath locked up. She blinked through tears for a long silent spell. When it broke, the hot gust of her sour breath poured over him without a sound. Then she started panting, everything on autopilot.

  Now she was in shock.

  He had pushed the towel under the flap of skin. It went sideways, a tear in her outer fabric. He lifted the towel again and fresh blood flowed once more, but not before he saw that the core of her navel was intact. The bullet had not gone in. It had gone across shallowly, sideways through her belly flesh, entering at the navel and exiting three inches closer to her hip. It was possible that the curvature of her belly had prevented Eddie from getting a direct shot, and in doing so saved the child. Her skin under the blood was stained gray with either gunpowder or the first bruising. Underneath the ripped exit wound he saw yellow fatty tissue made pink with her blood.

  No sirens. What are you waiting for, asshole?

  The saner voice in his head screamed at him to call an ambulance and get the girl to a hospital. Yet he hesitated. This wasn’t his fault, but there would be many questions. What made Eddie go off? What had you two been doing before this happened? How could you let this happen to our daughter? Our grandchild? Gail and John would rush home. Nadia would make the news. Jo would never return, or kill him when she did.

  They would blame him. Tell the truth - you shot Eddie, didn’t you? You wanted him out of the picture. Well, now he’s out of the picture!

  ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck . . .’ Panic was setting in.

  Wait. The phone. Eddie killed himself. His suicide note was on Nadia’s phone!

  Fine. Let Eddie be Eddie. But Nadia needs an ambulance - now.

  But still he hesitated. Needed to get his story straight. He couldn’t think it through, and the longer he sat there the more frightened he became. He just wanted to go home. The sane voice was losing the battle, being drowned out with each passing second by another voice, the one that had been there as his hand healed from the dog bite and been there still as the dogs themselves healed.

  This is a healing place.

  Was this what it wanted? The house and the things connected to the house? To make life out of life?

  He imagined it was so.

  He parked behind the garage and carried her up the backyard, over the deck, into the house. He had to set her down in the kitchen to catch his breath and she almost fell down, but he caught her. After more screaming and coughing, he got her up the stairs and into bed, carrying her like a bride. It took another twenty minutes to stop the bleeding, and he held the towel on her, offering her water she could not swallow without coughing and shaking and reopening the wound.

  He went through the motions of doctors he’d seen on TV, in films. He cleaned and semi-sealed the borders of the bullet-torn flesh with Neosporin before applying butterfly bandages from the first aid kit they’d moved from Los Angeles. He cleaned, dabbed and staunched it with more ointment and clean gauze, taping her waist all the way around with more of Luther’s flex-bandage. It held. Outside, the wound was the shape of a question mark. Whatever the damage on the inside, it would have to take care of itself.

  Finally, half an hour later, her breathing slowed and she whimpered one last time before dozing off. She was tougher than he would have guessed, maybe tough enough to have made it in Seattle. A granite slab of guilt pressed down on him. That he had pushed Eddie to do this to her; that she was here at all.

  He held her hand and thought about the baby inside. The life between them they had discussed only in vague questions and long silent stares now seemed enormous, everything. A bullet had grazed its soft thin shell and what was inside was now a little hero.

  This is a healing place. If she does not get better in a day or two, I will take her to a doctor.

  He didn’t think anyone had seen them come home.

  The afternoon and evening passed. Conrad awoke just before dawn with a pounding headache, convinced this was the day the Grums were coming home. He counted back, ticking off days that had become a frightening blur, until he realized Nadia’s parents were not due for two or three more days. Perhaps.

  He did not call to alert them to Nadia’s condition, and she had not asked him to before the double-dose of Tylenol PM took her under for the night. He’d also slipped her two of Alice and Luther’s Baytril tablets, a broad-spectrum antibiotic he knew from working with Dr Hobarth to be mild and safe for h
uman consumption. She did not question the pills - she was just out.

  The Doctor. You’re playing Doctor.

  He did not answer the phone when it had rang just before midnight. He doubted Jo would call so late. He had no idea what he would have said to his wife, and did not have the energy to pretend everything was fine.

  Early the next morning there was a knock at the door. By the time he’d gotten up and pulled the curtain aside, they had gone. If they had found Eddie, the police would have come in a car, or three. He saw no police cars. Another UPS shipment from Jo? He did not see or hear a truck. Still, he remained at the window, waiting for Steve Bartholomew or the mailman or someone to reappear in his front yard, looking up at the second story, pointing an accusing finger. No one materialized and he did not linger.

  Through the morning Nadia was in and out of it, but stable. The wound had reddened, puffed, cracked and seeped blood, and he changed her bandages. The bleeding had stopped. He brought her orange juice. Nadia swallowed more Baytril but did not speak. She fell into a long afternoon nap. He stretched out and lay beside her, careful not to disturb her.

  Twenty-four hours had passed since Eddie went Eddie on them.

  The second time the doorbell rang, he was awake and assumed his post at the window. It was nearly dark. No cop cars. Just as he dropped the curtain aside, he saw a figure step back in the yard and look up. Conrad could not make out a face. Might be Steve Bartholomew, their trusty neighbor. He dimly recalled how just a few weeks ago he’d thought Steve was the kind of man with whom he might strike up an easy friendship. Maybe be more than just neighbors, borrowing each other’s tools and drinking beer during the annual neighborhood water-balloon fight in the street on the Fourth of July. But that window of opportunity had passed.

  The figure on his lawn paced like a tiger in the zoo, peering into the front parlor windows, searching for an opening. The tiger planted his hands on his hips.

  Conrad whispered into the curtain. ‘Go home or pounce, buddy.’

  The figure disappeared and Conrad lost the line of sight through the thick leaves of his one-hundred-and-forty-year-old maple tree. He relaxed.

  Dong-dong-dong! The doorbell.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Nadia stirred in the bed. ‘What’s going on?’ She squinted at him in the dark, her hair matted, eyes crusty with sleep. ‘Are my parents home?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s fine. Stay there.’

  The doorbell rang again, setting the dogs off.

  Conrad slipped out of the bedroom. He left the lights off as he padded to the door - no use backlighting himself before he knew who was there. He stopped and grabbed a knife from the block on the kitchen counter. It could be the police. He left the knife in the kitchen and headed for the door.

  29

  Conrad flipped the porch light on, casting their visitor in a yellow spotlight. The guy had his back to the front door, but it was obvious from the buzzed flat-top and hunter-gatherer posture it was Steve Bartholomew.

  ‘Hey, Steve, what’s up?’ Conrad stepped out and pulled the door shut before the dogs could escape and Steve could move in.

  Steve turned. ‘Conrad. Did I wake you up?’

  ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, are you sick?’ Conrad realized he hadn’t showered in some forty-eight hours.

  ‘My dogs are beat up, Steve-O,’ he said, going on the offensive. ‘I came home to smashed mirrors and bleeding dogs, and it wasn’t easy finding a vet in this little conclave of ours, so I apologize if I haven’t been exactly out and about.’

  Steve frowned. ‘Your dogs?’

  ‘You saw Nadia and I leave the other day, right? She helped me get them to the vet. Thirty-six stitches in Luther’s legs. Alice almost lost an ear.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I have no idea, Steve. Dogs can be dogs.’

  ‘How’s your wife? She come home yet?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Sounds like you got them fixed up. Speaking of fix up, how’s your little job next door going?’

  For a minute Conrad was so sure Steve knew about Nadia he forgot about the work he was supposed to be doing at the Grum residence.

  ‘Yeah, how ’bout that?’ he said, stalling for time. Did that mean the Grums had called Steve, maybe poking around after they couldn’t reach Nadia at home? Or had he seen something suspicious? ‘Seems like every time I get around to pulling the ladder out it rains.’

  ‘Anything I can help you with? We’re expecting John and Gail, what, tomorrow?’

  ‘Day after or the next. And no thanks. I’ll manage.’

  Conrad yawned. Beat it, Steve-O.

  ‘Hope John and Gail had a good time. They deserve a break. These kids’ll wear you out.’ Steve grinned without pleasure. ‘I know Jesse’s keeping me awake more nights than not.’

  ‘Jesse’s your daughter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said she’s up at UW Madison?’

  ‘Virginia Tech. School’s fine, but these kids. These kids.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Conrad didn’t know if this was going somewhere or just small talk.

  ‘I didn’t like the boys she was hanging around with here in town. Wastrels, the lot of them. Only now, she’s calling her mother every night. “Mommy, Josh is being a jerk. Mommy, Josh said it’s normal to see other girls in college.” You see where this is going.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not sure—’

  ‘I ever get my hands on this sapling Josh who’s been sticking it to my daughter? He even thinks about coming to my house for one of his booty calls? I’ll drive him down to the limestone quarry and only one of us is coming back.’

  Conrad flinched. Steve was suddenly too close and smiling too widely.

  ‘So, where’s Nadia hiding?’

  It came out so quickly that Conrad heard, where you hiding Nadia? But of course that was silly. If Steve really—

  ‘She’s not at your place, is she?’ Steve glanced over Conrad’s shoulder.

  Conrad scoffed. ‘No. Maybe she’s out with friends?’

  ‘What about Eddie? He been around?’

  ‘She said he was calling her, trying to put the band back together. But I didn’t get the impression they were exactly hot and heavy these days. I tried, but she told me to mind my own business, Steve.’

  ‘Her parents are not going to be happy, Conrad.’

  ‘She’s twenty. It’s not like she’s a minor. Can’t ground her, can they?’

  Easy, ’Rad. This whole show is dry kindling and you’re throwing lit matches.

  ‘She’s nineteen, and pregnant,’ Steve said. ‘And you obviously don’t have children.’

  ‘Nope, not yet.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, if you ever want to, you might do well to tell Nadia to get her ass home before Big John returns. I’ve seen the man bend rebar with his bare hands.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Imagine what he’d do to your neck.’

  ‘Eddie’s neck,’ Conrad corrected.

  Steve nodded. I know, and you know I know.

  ‘Good luck with your chores, Mr Harrison.’

  ‘Night, Steve-O.’

  Conrad went to the liquor cabinet and poured three fingers of warm silver rum. It tasted like rubbing alcohol and burned for five minutes while he checked the doors front and back, locking everything twice.

  The night of Steve’s visit, she began to feed herself and he watched her from the reading chair he had pulled into the room. He knew the big talk had arrived, and he waited for her to go first. Her voice was strong and clear, almost professional.

  ‘I feel much better now. But I think I should see how bad it is.’ She reached for the bandage.

  ‘No, no, don’t. It’s superficial, but it needs more time to close up.’ He patted her hand. ‘I was very worried about you. You’re lucky Eddie was a bad shot.’

  ‘Did you call my parents?’

  ‘No. Should I have?’


  She licked her lips. ‘Where’s Eddie?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  She just stared at him. He considered what to tell her. If she knew the truth, she would probably panic and ask him to call the police. And she might never forgive him.

  ‘It was bad, Nadia. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was worried about you.’

  ‘Did he run away?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a fight. He had the gun in his hand. I didn’t . . .’ He couldn’t finish.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You just left him there?’ She didn’t sound angry, just stunned.

  ‘I had to take care of you first. I should have called an ambulance, but I didn’t want it to . . . we were there, but it was Eddie’s fault.’

  She was crying soundlessly.

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ he said. ‘I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’

  Nadia closed her eyes.

  ‘He left his suicide note on your phone, Nadia. He shot himself in the head on your voicemail. You thought he was dead.’ She squeezed her eyes together. ‘We tried to help. Now he is. Dead. I’m sorry.’

  After a long while, as if trying it out, she said, ‘We were never there.’