Chương 2
The silver pot rested on the rumpled duvet.
Claire could hear a television downstairs.
Some comedian’s audience laughed.
Vivian folded her arms over her burgundy robe.
“She is performing,” she told Nathan.
Nathan looked at the pot.
Claire watched him swallow.
“She’s talking to 911.”
“I know what she’s doing.”
“No, Mom. I don’t think you do.”
Vivian’s expression sharpened.
“You were the one who came to me.”
Claire stopped breathing for a different reason.
Nathan closed his eyes.
Only for a second.
The dispatcher was asking whether anyone had been injured.
Claire answered automatically.
“No physical contact. She hit the mattress beside my hand and the headboard beside my face. I’m pregnant.”
“How far along?”
“Eighteen weeks.”
“Are you having pain or bleeding?”
“No.”
Nathan was still looking at the floor.
Vivian was looking at him.
The sentence remained between them.
You were the one who came to me.
Claire told the dispatcher there were no guns in the room that she knew of. She gave Vivian’s name. She described the pot because the dispatcher asked what object had been used.
Then she ended the call only after being told officers were on the way.
For perhaps ten seconds, nobody spoke.
Claire could hear Nathan breathing.
She turned the phone back toward Vivian.
“What did he come to you about?”
Nathan lifted his head.
“Claire.”
“What did you tell her?”
“It wasn’t—”
Vivian laughed once.
It was not amusement. It was contempt.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Tell her.”
“Mom, shut up.”
Claire had never heard Nathan use those words with his mother either.
Vivian’s eyes widened.
Nathan rubbed a hand over his face.
“I had a test done before we got married.”
Claire waited.
“A fertility test.”
Something inside her went cold.
Nathan continued too quickly.
“It was because of something that happened in college. I had an infection. The doctor said it probably hadn’t caused long-term problems, but I got checked because we were talking about kids.”
“You told me everything was normal.”
“It mostly was.”
“Mostly?”
“The numbers weren’t great.”
Claire stared at him.
“How not great?”
“I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You’re thirty-four. You’ve had two years to learn how to explain it.”
Vivian cut in.
“The doctor told him his chances of fathering a child naturally were extremely low.”
Nathan snapped his head toward her.
“That is not what he said.”
“It is what you told me.”
“I said lower.”
“You said unlikely.”
“I said I was scared.”
Claire looked from one to the other.
The room had changed more completely than it had when the pot struck the headboard.
The violence had been simple.
This was not.
“When did you tell her?”
Nathan did not answer.
Claire knew.
She hated that she knew.
“After I got pregnant.”
He nodded.
“When?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“How many?”
“Claire—”
“How many weeks ago?”
“Six.”
She laughed.
It came out small and wrong.
Six weeks.
Six weeks of Nathan rubbing lotion on her stomach even though there was barely anything to rub. Six weeks of discussing names they both claimed not to be serious about. Six weeks of him taking pictures of the ridiculous fruit comparisons on her pregnancy app.
Six weeks of him wondering.
She looked down at her phone and realized her hand was shaking.
Vivian saw it.
Her voice softened, almost tenderly.
“Now you understand.”
Claire looked up.
“No.”
Vivian’s mouth tightened.
“You should.”
“What I understand is that you brought a pot into my bedroom.”
“I picked it up because you were refusing to answer me.”
“It was in my kitchen.”
“You’re avoiding the point.”
“No, I’m finally looking at the point.”
Sirens sounded somewhere beyond the bedroom windows, faint at first.
Vivian’s head turned toward the sound.
For the first time, she seemed frightened.
Nathan walked to the window but did not touch the curtain.
Claire stayed in bed.
She could have stood. She could have gone downstairs. Instead she pulled the bedding higher over her legs and watched the pot sink slightly into the mattress.
The absurd domesticity of it made her angry.
She had cooked spaghetti in that pot on Sunday.
Nathan had eaten two bowls.
The police arrived four minutes later.
There were two officers at first, then another patrol car. Claire learned their names and forgot them almost immediately. The first officer who entered the bedroom was a woman perhaps ten years older than Claire. She looked at Claire, at Vivian, at Nathan, then at the pot.
Her eyes moved to the dent in the headboard.
“Everybody stay where you are for a minute.”
Vivian said, “This is a family disagreement.”
The officer looked at her.
“Ma’am, I didn’t ask yet.”
Vivian went silent.
The officers separated them. Claire remained upstairs with the female officer. Nathan was taken into the hall. Vivian went downstairs with the other two.
Claire played the recording.
She hated watching it.
The opening frame showed mostly pillow and the corner of the room because Claire had hidden the phone. The audio was clear.
Vivian’s voice entered first.
You’re going to tell Nathan tonight.
Tell him what?
Don’t insult me.
I still don’t know what you’re talking about.
That child.
Claire heard herself laugh nervously on the recording.
What about my baby?
Not your baby. The baby. We don’t know whose it is.
Then Claire’s voice, sharper.
Get out of my room.
Vivian again.
You’re going to fix this before he puts his name on something that isn’t his.
The officer stopped the video.
“What did she mean by ‘fix this’?”
“I asked.”
Claire’s fingers pressed into the duvet.
“She said there were ways not to ruin three lives.”
The officer’s face did not change.
“Was that recorded?”
“Keep playing.”
The next seconds were worse.
Claire heard herself say, Are you telling me to end my pregnancy?
Vivian answered, I’m telling you that if you have any decency, you won’t trap him with another man’s child.
May you like
Claire told her to leave.
Vivian said, Then maybe you need a scare badly enough to stop lying.
