I find Joshua in his battered armchair, reading by the dull twilight coming through the window. He looks up and gives me a stiff smile as I walk into his study.
“Hey.” He gestures to the velour chair beside his. The place I always used to sit. We’ve spent countless hours reading and talking here. Why does it feel so awkward now?
A vaguely familiar perfume wafts around me but when I seek it out, I only smell the familiar musty old books. Noticing my hesitation, Joshua leans forward, patting the chair encouragingly, his smile stretched, now, to the point of breaking.
I perch on the edge of my pale lavender chair, hands on my knees. “So...I’ve had quite a bit of free time lately--”
He perks up. “Are you thinking about going back to work? That’s--”
“I told you, I’m still not ready. It’s too much like living it all over again.”
“Who says you need to keep doing hospice? Most nurses get to help people survive, remember? Changing specialties--”
“I said I’m not ready.” Heat creeps into my face and neck.
“Of course. Forget it.” He frowns. “So what were you going to say?”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to clear my head. “I’ve been reading a lot of your books and I think I’ve found a common theme.”
“Have you now?” He sets the book in his lap and weaves his fingers behind his head. “What theme is that?” His voice instantly takes on that patient, longsuffering tone normally reserved for his first year undergrads.
“It’s the way that they talk about death.”
He raises an eyebrow but says nothing.
“They...at least, a lot of them, seem to leave hints about a true reality outside this one. Maybe some kind of realm beyond death.”
His irritation melts into something worse: pity. “Oh Theia…” He reaches out for my hand. My hand’s more like a claw, really, with how tightly I’m gripping my knee. Joshua hesitates, his big hand hovering close enough over mine that I can feel its warmth. Swallowing audibly, he pulls his hand back into his lap without actually touching mine.
“I may not know the subject like you do,” I continue, pulling my shoulders back, “but I know these philosophers were smart people. They weren’t talking nonsense.”
“Fair enough, but Theia...they weren't saying what you think they were.”
“How do you know?” I lift my chin.
“Some outdated ideas still carry over from old thinkers. Plato and his World of Forms, for example. Which even he described as hypothetical, by the way. But no respectable thinker actually contends that there’s some realm beyond this one that holds the true form of things like circles and triangles.”
“If nobody believes it, why do so many people still talk about it?”
He shrugs. “They’re just doing the same thing we all do when we can’t make a case for what we need to be true: appealing to authority and hiding behind obscure language. I get it, of course, but for the last couple hundred years, philosophers have pretty much all admitted that it’s become impossible to make an honest case for God.
“I never said anything about God.” I mutter, lifting my feet onto my chair and drawing myself into a ball.
“All right. But even if we’re just talking about death and other realms...take this fly here.” Joshua points to a tiny, winged corpse in the window sill beside him. “It would be silly to wonder where it went. It’s clearly not in some far off realm--it’s still here. It’s just not alive anymore. There’s no mystery. Mystery only comes into play when simple facts get too heavy to bear.”
An ache builds inside my throat. “I think that’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
His face pales. “Shit. I’m sorry, Theia. I wasn’t thinking.” He rakes his hand through his wavy hair. “I talk that way with my students all the time but...I just didn’t consider what it would mean for us right now. I am such an idiot. I’m so sorry.”
“No...it’s okay,” I wave my hand as if to say it’s nothing. “I really do want to hear what you think. So.” I pause to take a deep, steadying breath. “You think people dream up imaginary worlds. And that they do it because... even the best of us are just scared, stupid children. Have I got it right?”
Joshua sighs, closes his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Theia. Maybe it breaks us, being able to look into the future...realizing how it all has to end. Maybe the only way to push back the horizon now is to tell ourselves it’s just an illusion.”
“You mean death?” The ache in my throat threatens to become a sob.
He nods.
By now, my hands are balled so tightly into fists that my knuckles are white. “Just promise me something,” I say, putting every ounce of effort I have into keeping my voice steady. “Promise you’ll trust me. That you’ll keep an open mind and won’t be too afraid to reach out to her.”
“Afraid? Theia, what are you talking--”
“Just promise me!” My voice cracks and a single tear bursts free, hot against my cheek as it runs to my chin.
“Okay, of course I promise. Whatever you need.” He reaches out toward me again but I jerk my hand away. I can’t stand to be confronted by his inability to actually touch me again.
His face turns brittle but softens again so quickly I barely catch it. “Theia...have you ever considered that maybe the best way to honor Evy is to...try again? Not right away, of course, but...it’s not too late. We can still make the same leap we did with her.”
Shaking, slack-jawed, I stare at him. Did our neighbor get to him? Carol must have hammered her solution to our pesky dead-child problem down his throat one too many times. “I could never have imagined you siding with her. Not in a million years.”
“Who?” His brows pull together. “Evy?”
“Nevermind.” I shake my head, briskly running my palms up and down my shins. “But seriously, at our age? With my history? You will recall that the doctors recommended against keeping the first pregnancy, even back then--"
"But they were wrong, Theia." His deep, dark eyes swim with emotions I can only guess at. “Tell me you still know that.”
I study him for a while. "I just don't get you. The one possible silver lining of losing Evy is that you’re not tied to me forever anymore."
He flinches like I’d slapped him.
Nausea twists my stomach. I want to snatch the words back. I don’t even know why I said them. I try to soften my voice. "The baby wouldn’t be Evy, you know--”
“Of course I know that!” Joshua says, incredulous.
“It would just be one more thing taking us farther away from her. We’re already too far gone as it is. Just the fact that you’d suggest replacing her...it’s like...it’s like you’ve totally given up on the idea of meaning--the idea that we had her for a reason.”
“What? I--I’m sorry, Theia, I just can’t keep up with your logic here. We had Evy because we were reckless kids. We weren’t thinking and I accidentally got you pregnant. What reason, outside that, could there be?”
“You know what I mean. The doctor didn’t just recommend termination, he said it was the selfless choice--because otherwise, I’d almost certainly be inflicting a life of suffering upon someone who never asked for it. Remember?”
He nods.
“And do you remember why I didn’t go through with it?”
“You...you just couldn’t. And I told you I’d stick by you, whatever you chose.”
“No,” I hiss, “That is not what happened. When it came time to make a decision, you...you saw something. Something you couldn’t explain. You saw...you saw her. Who she’d become, anyway, and you spent the next two weeks trying to paint what you saw.”
He stares at me, a stunned expression on his face. “I knew I should have thrown that stupid painting out a long time ago. It’s not even good--it would blend right in at a high school art fair. See, this is what you do. You take every little thing somebody does and assign cosmic significance to it. Want to know what was really, honestly going through my head back then? I was scared. We were kids, for christ’s sake. The idea that you were pregnant--that I’d gotten you pregnant--was too much to take in. I painted that because back then, painting was how I dealt with stressful situations. That’s all it was, Theia. A way to cope. While I waited for you to make up your mind.”
“Then why does the girl in the painting look just like Evegale? If it was just a distraction, how did you paint the girl she would eventually become?”
Joshua laughs but his face contorts into a grimace, like he’s only laughing to fight back tears. “Theia. That was you in the painting. You. Is it so shocking that our daughter would turn out looking like her mother?”
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “It never looked like me. It’s her. It was always her, even if you didn’t know it.”
“Do you even hear yourself? I painted that, as a distraction for myself, and as a gift. For you. Because I felt horrible for putting you in that position. The painting was about you and me. That’s it. Why is that so hard to understand? Why can’t that be enough for you?”
“Because it’s...not...true.” I say softly.
“Look. Theia. If all I’d painted was a skeleton--as generic as it gets--something that literally could have been anyone, I’m betting you’d still have seen Evegale. Actually, that really would have been much more prophetic, come to think. I mean, if we’re preoccupied with the idea that I somehow knew back then what our daughter would become...”
“Shut up! Just...shut up. Please…”
“I’m sorry, Theia… and I know you’re not ready to hear this, but our lives don’t have to keep revolving around Evy forever for her life to have meant something--meant something to us--and that has to be enough. If you don’t want to have another baby, fine. But we can’t spend the rest of our lives looking back. It doesn’t help anyone--most especially, it doesn’t help Evy.”
I want to point out that, since he hasn’t managed to touch me in months, there’s not much chance of another kid happening in any case. But the lump in my throat is so big now that I can’t talk past it. And what would be the point, anyway?
I lower my feet to the floor and walk out of his office without turning back. I can't remember ever feeling so alone. As I pad up the stairs toward Evy’s room, all I can think is that I was wrong. He doesn’t know anything that could help me. I don’t even know how I managed to convince myself that he could.
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