The Day There Were No Magi

    I returned to work early. It was two days before Little Christmas. I usually stayed home during this time of year. For Maggie, for Brian, and for the kid in me. This Christmastide, I had to call Swathmore, a potential client whom I had been trying to land for months.

    When I called Swathmore, I knew that Brian was at school, but I didn't know that Maggie was driving to a medical lab. I don't know if I would have wanted to know because my pulse would have quickened and my blood pressure would have rose as hers must have when technicians drew blood, carried cups of her urine away, greased her belly, and waved the sonogram wand over her belly. Rather than screaming in celebration "I got Swathmore," I would have sat with Maggie in silence as we drove back to Dr. Maslowe's office. Rather than puffing on a victory cigar in my office, I would have watched Maslowe sit on the edge of his desk. Rather than feeling colleagues clap me on the back, I would have seen Maslowe look into Maggie's eyes and I would have seen what I still find incomprehensible and would have heard the words.

    "There's no easy way of saying this." In repeating the conversation,
Maggie told me he paused for an eternity. "We can no longer get a
heartbeat," he said.
    "What do you mean?" I can see Maggie not believing.
    "There's no heartbeat. You'll have to go full term. I'm sorry. It's a
matter of days. I would induce you but you might hemorrhage."
    "My baby's dead?" She would have leaned back, her hands over her mouth
after she uttered the words.
    "Probably so. You must listen. I know it's hard." He paused again.
"There remains a chance you will hemorrhage even if you go term." He
hugged her.
    "My baby's dead?" She said through her sobs.
    "I want you to call your husband. Now. I'll do it if you want, but you
should call. Use my personal phone."
    "Yes."
    Maslowe would have left the room.
    She would have cried. Before picking up the receiver, she would have
drawn a deep breath.
    I will never forget the ring. I remember thinking at the time it sounded
celebratory.
    "Seth," she said.
    "How you doing? I landed that pain in the ass Swathmore. We've got to
celebrate. Dinner out tonight?"
    "Seth." There were tears in her voice. "The baby's dead." She wailed.
      "What?"
    "The baby's dead."
      "A miscarriage? Where are you?"
      "No miscarriage. He's dead in me, inside of me. Shit," she yelled.
      "What do you mean?"
      "Shit, Seth, he's dead. I have to go term. The doctor is afraid I'll
hemorrhage. Shit, this isn't suppose to happen. Not to me." She cried
more. "I've got to go."
    "Are you all right?"
      "I guess."
    "I'll be there shortly."
      I threw the cell phone at the wall, pieces flying. Evelyn was standing
near my threshold, her mouth opened wide. She was staring at me, the
office Iceman.
      "I have to go home. Tell whomever."

    Maggie drove the back streets of Quinnipiac, I the interstate. I pulled into our driveway just as Maggie got out of her car. She saw me and cried. With my arm around her, we entered the house. We took off our coats in the kitchen. She rubbed her stomach. She cried.

    "The examination was so weird," she said as she wiped the tears. "It wasn't what Maslowe was doing that was weird. It was out of sequence. I can't explain. It didn't feel right. Then the look on his face. It was blank. Then the other look."
    "What look?"
    "The nurse. The look in her eyes when she gave me directions to the labs. Then the driving. It was so hard. God, I'm more than eight months pregnant. I knew something was wrong. The technicians all stared. Maybe they didn't, I don't know. Maybe it felt like they were staring. Saying nothing. The silence. Then Maslowe. Listening to him. He was trying to be kind. He did tell me after I hung up with you that it was no one's fault. It was a thousand to one shot. Who makes up those odds anyway?" She paused. "Shit!"
    "What?"
    "I just remembered my appointment two weeks ago."
    "And."
    "I told Maslowe that the baby was barely moving."
    "You never told me."
    "I was too scared, I guess. I thought it was me. Anyway, he said that it's not uncommon for a baby to slow down in the third trimester."

   "Did he miss something?"
    "No." She looked frightened. "I'm not sure. I don't think so. He monitored the heart beat. He did it for me. I saw the beat on the monitor. I can even remember him saying, 'Feel better now.' I did. But I'll never forget feeling that something wasn't right. It's my fault."
    "If it's anyone's fault, it's Maslowe's."
    "You don't understand. I could feel it."
    "Maggie, if you knew something was wrong, you would have done something."
    "But why didn't I? He was my baby." She cried. I tried to hug her. I wanted to cry with her. To tell her he was my baby too. But I couldn't. I didn't think she wanted to hear that yet. She would have blamed herself.

She would have apologized to me, saying "I'm sorry." I couldn't bare that.
    "I don't want to see anyone. I mean anyone." She stood at the kitchen sink looking at the basin for a while. "I don't mean you or Brian. I need you two, nobody else. Nobody. Okay?"
    "Sure."
    I waited for her to say something. Without thinking, I pounded my fist into the wall. My knuckles swelled, but there was no pain. "Fuck."
    Maggie held me.
    We talked for an hour, about what I can't remember. Then we cried until our words and sobs dissolved into nonsense.
    We were sitting at the kitchen table when Brian came in the back door. He was home from first grade. The bus had stopped in front of the house, and we never heard it. He waited at the door. He stared at me. I was never home in the middle of the day during the school week.
    "Don't tell him," Maggie said, almost in tears.
    "Maggie, we have to. He can see something's wrong."
    "But he's so little."
    "Maggie, we've got to. Brian, come here."
    I grabbed his hand. We walked into the living room. Maggie followed. I lifted him into his favorite seat. I knelt in front of him. "I've got to tell you something that's lousy."
    "What?"
    "The baby's dead."
    Brian looked at Maggie. Then at me.
    "Yes, the baby is still inside Mommy's stomach, but he's dead. Something happened, we don't know what. It's no one's fault. No one's. Not Mommy's, the doctor's, mine, or anyone's. Got that."
    He looked at me and nodded. He stood. He started to run. I grabbed him and hugged. He cried, collapsing in my arms, his knees sinking to the rug. I closed my eyes and saw him and Maggie on the couch, he feeling the baby's kicks, asking if the baby was a boy or girl, wondering when he could play with the baby, fascinated at where the baby was growing, that he too grew in there. He pulled away. I let go. He ran to Maggie and hugged her legs.
    I was preparing a dinner of cold cut sandwiches. Brian was watching tv. Maggie sat at the table.
    "He was strangled and suffocated," Maggie said, the words sounding
colder than the January night air.
    "Who?"
    "Shane."
    "Who?"
    "Our son Shane." She had pushed for the names Shane or Jeanette for several weeks. I didn't want to name the child until he or she was born.
"The doctor said the sonogram was clear. He asked if I wanted to know the baby's sex. I said yes. He told me, 'Boy.' Then he explained that the umbilical cord was knotted and was wrapped around his neck."
    "Shit." I cried.
    Maggie hugged me. She let go and stepped back. "I don't want you in the delivery room."
    "Why?"
    "The doctor thinks there's a chance he's not right. Doesn't look right. He wouldn't show me the sonogram. I asked if I could hold Shane after the delivery. He said that I could, but that I might not want to because of." She sobbed, and I felt a silence and, in that silence, lie a wish to scream so loud as not to be heard. I whispered, "Whatever you want. I'll be there or not. Whatever you want."
    We ate. We didn't talk. Later Maggie phoned her mother while Brian and I watched television. Brian was in my lap, snuggling. I have no idea what we were watching. I had imagined many things, the death of Brian, of Maggie, of being abandoned by her, but I never thought of losing a child before his birth. Of watching Maggie feel her body being transformed into a sarcophagus. Of imaging an umbilical cord, strong, thick, and bloody, twisting into a noose. Of hearing Maggie blame herself for a death. Of wondering if I could have scared the child in my sleep. Turning, accidentally hitting him, forcing him to twist, coiling the cord around his neck.
    As we held each other in bed that night, I wondered if she wanted to die. I begged god, God, the universe, or whomever or whatever to trade my life for the baby's.
    The day before Little Christmas, I woke early. As the coffee brewed, I went into the attic with a thirty gallon trash bags. Into the black bag I dropped a stuffed lamb, a special room deodorizer, and a check, as well as other stuff still in boxes wrapped in gold and silver. When I lifted the bag, a plastic cherub fell out. I crushed it with my foot and put the pieces in the bag. By the time the coffee was done, the bag sat next to the outside trash bin.
    Maggie was still asleep, and I didn't wake Brian for school, but he slept only an extra fifteen minutes. He asked for instant oatmeal. I was drinking a cup of coffee as I waited for the water to boil. The doorbell rang. Ann stood at our doorstep, suitcase in hand. A taxi pulled out of our driveway. I could hear the memory of Maggie's voice, "I don't want to see anyone." I asked Ann to wait outside in the cold. I ran upstairs and woke Maggie, expecting her to say, "Send her home." She walked down the stairs, opened the door, and hugged her mother. They talked for an hour in our bedroom. The remainder of the day is lost between grief and fear.
    The next morning, I woke early. It was Little Christmas, the day when twelve geese are alaying, the end of Christmastide. My neighbors had yet to yank down their decorations, and in the predawn light, the ribbons and wreaths drooped. I looked around. No stars. No shepherds. No angels. No Magi. No gifts. No geese. No newspaper. I walked back into the house.
    Brian and Ann were asleep. Maggie was up, sitting at the kitchen table. I joined her. We waited for the coffee to brew. Maggie was walking with her empty coffee cup to the kitchen table. In mid-stride, her water broke. Her body froze. Her eyes teared. I stood staring at her.     We woke her mother. Told her to care for Brian. That we'd call.
    I drove Maggie to the hospital. She timed her contractions.
    The prep area was small, its walls papered with a floral print. Monitors beeped, red dots traced spiked patterns on green screens, and nurses moved about quietly without making eye contact with either of us. In that moment I realized that I had never noticed the room's size, its decorations, or the equipment when Brian was born.
    Maggie was in the bed. "The room's cold."
    I walked outside the prep room to look for a nurse.
    "Seth, come here."
    "What?" I walked back into the room.
    "I don't want to be alone."
    A woman in another room screamed. I presumed she was in transition. Maslowe came in. He was old, an age assuring, at least to me, that he possessed the knowledge needed to keep Maggie safe. "Do you feel any unusual discomfort?"
    "No. Nothing."
    He moved the sheets and examined her. "Everything is progressing as it should."
    I hated that should. Everything wasn't progressing as it should. I remained silent. I had to coach her, but could anyone coach her? Inside me I was screaming: Who'll swap places with me? Who has the guts to tell a woman to blow during contractions while inside her awaits the confirmed death of your son, the potential of her guts spilling onto the floor, life draining from her as if she were gutted by the child for whom she cared for thirty-four weeks, five days? Then to remember if you had sex a week, a day, an hour earlier, or had you ejaculated a minute or even a second sooner or any God damn equivalent later, maybe none of this would have happened. What could a man know of birth, never having felt that moment when the body tingled with the excitement and fear at the notion of conception? The aches and pains of a normal pregnancy. The vulnerability of walking and sitting with thirty, forty, fifty pounds hanging off your abdomen. A baby dancing on your kidneys, bladder, and intestines. I knew none of that. I just knew fear and loss. Of knowing that in a flick of time I would lose Shane and could lost Maggie.
    She started transition.
    "You have to leave now." The nurse guided me to the door. In the waiting room, there was coffee table covered with issues of Sports Illustrated's, Newsweek's, American Baby's, Ladies Home Journal's, and Women's Day's. Brochures in a wall rack spoon fed tips on nursing, diapers, doctors, parental emotions, and finances. I needed information about morticians, funerals, plots, baptisms, limbo, heaven and hell. I slapped the rack, knocking it down, scattering the brochures.
    A television was tuned to Jeopardy. I sat, staring at the door, waiting for a nurse to show me  my scrubs. I counted ceiling tiles. Floor tiles. Watched the show. A contestant selected the category "Africa." I never heard the answer. I thought only that death was the anticipated but unwelcomed guest of parents in the third world, but not in America, not if a couple followed a medically recommended prenatal regiment. In just a little more than two days, I was shoved out of that America into a third-world place where the mysteries of birth, death, and living converge without benefit of medicine and where chance proves the more powerful ally to the living than science. I wondered how third-world parents coped with infant death. Could there be grief when there is no birth? Is there loss when nothing but a biological promise is gone? In that moment, I understood what millions of third-world parents take for granted: Birth and death are wrapped in an identical garment.
    Maslowe entered the room. His face was drawn, his skin ashen.  "Maggie is in recovery. You can see her in a few minutes. She's tired and medicated, so don't stay too long." He looked at the floor. "I'm sorry about your son. I can't explain it. I haven't seen anything like it in forty years of practice."
    "Is she all right?"
    "Yes. We need a minute to help her feel more comfortable. Then you can see her."
    Maslowe waited as if he expected me to speak, but I didn't. He left the room. I remembered that Maggie had celebrated the news of this pregnancy by dancing a mock strip tease on the kitchen table, pulling me in tightly against her legs, demanding that I make sure the pregnancy take hold. We made love twice that night. Once on the kitchen table, then again at three in the morning on our bed.  A nurse peered over the side of the door.
    "You can see your wife now."
    Maggie was lying on her side, facing away from me. Her black hair flowed down her back. She turned. Her eyes were large, red, and moist. She reached for me. I walked over. She grabbed my forearms, pulled me towards her, and hugged. She cried, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
    Each time I repeated, "Don't say that" into the shoulder of her hospital gown. I wasn't sorry but glad. She was alive. I wanted to wheel her out of the hospital, down the street, to our home.
    "We're taking her to her room, so would you say goodbye. You both need rest," the nurse said.
    "Say hello to Brian for me. Give him a kiss. Tell Mom I'm fine."
    "Sure. We'll see you in a few hours. Rest."
    "I love you."
    "I love you too."
    I drove forty-five miles per hour through the streets of Quinnipiac. Halfway down one, I slammed the brakes. A tear clung to my right cheek as I pounded the steering wheel.
    Ann, Brian, and I visited Maggie twice that day in the maternity ward. She was in a room by herself, but as we sat, usually watching television in silence, we could hear the babies, the happy relatives, the joy that come in birth's aftermath. After each visit, I asked the floor nurse to move Maggie off the ward. That night after visiting hours, she was moved to a room at the end of the hall.
    The next day, Maggie and I were watching a soap. Brian was at school, Ann in the hospital cafeteria getting some coffee. Maggie complained that the nurses were avoiding her. I ignored the statement by recounting how the doctor explained that the maternity ward was medically the best place for her and that she would be out in a day. I never told her of the cries of healthy babies that I heard as I walked down the hall, nor the voices of celebrating uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and fathers. The muttering of nurses to new mothers about nursing, washing, and handling babies. I absorbed the sounds, sucking them deep inside and holding them so Maggie wouldn't hear, would never hear.
    "Seth."
    "Yes." I looked at her, making sure she knew I was paying attention.
    "I want the baby cremated." She said it without taking her eyes off the television.
    I never responded. I couldn't. I've never lied to her, but I couldn't have Shane cremated. He had a name. I wanted a grave, a place to visit, to grieve. Shane and Brian were my hopes, my promises that existence had purpose, and with  their new lives, they  represented the potential of what humankind can become. I never told. That afternoon, I went to a mortician with my mother. His office was down street from the hospital. He had asked many questions, name, address, telephone, and so on. My mother answered for me.
    "What do you want done with the deceased? You do have several options in this case."
    "Burial at a grave site." My mother answered.
    "Will you stop? This is my child." I paused. "My wife wants to cremate the baby."
    "Many couples make similar arrangements."
    "But I don't think that's what I want to do."
    "Do you need more time? You can. We can do the initial preparation."
    "No. I want him buried." I wanted a recognition of his existence, a marker of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
    "He should be buried in this," my mother said as she passed a box to the mortician. It contained a white baptismal gown, my grandfather's. She turned to me suddenly, "He was baptized, wasn't he?"
    "What's the difference? Probably. It is a Catholic hospital. I hope someone had the brains to do that. But what's the damn difference? God wouldn't deny a chance at Heaven to a baby for want of a ritual. If He could, then He can go fuck Himself."
    "I was just asking." My mother looked away.
    The mortician stared for a second. "These are difficult times," he said.
"For everyone. We can make it simpler. We have several programs." He paused again. "Let's start with the basic questions. How much can you afford?"
    "It doesn't matter." My mother said.
    "It does matter," I answered her. "Five hundred, I guess."
    "That's more than enough. We have programs from two to four hundred. May I suggest the three hundred one."
    "Sounds all right, I guess," I answered.
    "I assume there will be no services at the funeral home."
    "Right."
    "What about at the grave site?"
    "I want a priest, but no one will be present."
    "I will be." My mother said.
    "No, you will not."
    "But I want to. He should have it."
    "He doesn't care at this point. And Maggie should be the first one at the site. There's no discussion, Mom. None. Okay?"
    "Okay."
    I wondered by the tone of her voice if she would attend the service anyway, but I realized what I didn't know, I wouldn't care about. There were more important things, primarily Maggie, Brian, and me, and I had forgotten about me, especially after Ann, Brian, and I returned from the hospital each night. The phone calls, especially at first night, seemed endless. Family, friends, and work associates repeated hollow phrases, none listening to me, repeating their own grief, uttering false hopes, and then asking for news of Maggie. After the first three calls, I sounded as if I were reading a script. Then after the final call, Ann and I would exchange a few facts about Brian and say nothing more. We would watch television, she drinking scotch, me wine, both neither feeling drunk, although that was always our goal, at least mine. In bed, I would
think of Maggie, hoping she was sedated, dreaming, and forgetting in night's shroud.
    When Maggie came home, she rested on the sofa while Ann cleaned, sent Brian to school, and prepared meals. I returned to work. I had a lot to make up, but I didn't have the enthusiasm. My colleagues stayed away from me. Some probably thought I wanted to be left alone, but most were afraid.
    A week after Ann left, I found Maggie crying in our bedroom when I came home from work.
    "I never got a chance to say good-bye," Maggie said.
    "I never had him cremated." I waited for an explosion, her rage at everything being released at me in a single instance.
    "What do you mean?"
    "I don't mean anything. I had him buried at St. Michael's."
    Laughing and crying, she ran to me. As she lay her head on my shoulder, she said, "Thank you for not listening to me."
    Six weeks later Maggie's milk had dried, but she still hadn't had her period. Maslowe put her on a hormone therapy. Maggie, who usually never stopped talking, was quiet. I watched her depression deepen. At night, she would lie on the sofa, watching television. She would fall asleep at nine. When I woke her, she would refuse to go to bed, insisting that she was watching the show. Later we would drink, staying up until two, wrapped in silence and booze. When she did talk, she mixed images of death and sleep and forgetfulness in the same sentence.
    I was worried. I would leave late for work in the morning and rush home early at night. I would call from the office or the road three times a day. I would let the phone ring, seven, eight, nine times, and with each ring my pulse would quicken, my stomach churn, my palms sweat, as I imagined her lying on the ground, blood pooling around her body, and Brian screaming. I would call back every five minutes until she answered, usually after getting out of the bathroom or returning from the store.
    One Saturday I took Brian to Burger King. The house had become so gloomy, Maggie in particular. I wanted Brian out of the house.
    "Why the treat?" Brian asked as he nibbled some French fries.
    "I thought you could use the break. Mommy and I have been so busy with things lately. I thought you were getting the short end of the stick."
    "Oh."
    "So how are the French fries?"
    "Daddy?"
    "Yes?"
    "Where's Shane now?"
    "We've been through this."
    "I know, but where?"
    "Heaven, with Grandpa. Remember?"
    "Yes."
    "Is he happy?"
    "Yes."
    "Doesn't he miss us?"
    I sat looking into his brown eyes. I wanted to cry. I wanted to say how much I missed him. To crawl into a ball. "I cannot explain it. At least now. Please just believe me. Will you?"
    "Yes."
    There was a long pause.
    "Daddy?"
    "Yes."
    "Why do you look sad?"
    "I can't answer that one either, Brian. Why don't you eat your burger."
    Eventually Maggie got her period. She dropped the hormone therapy. She returned to work. We got on with our lives as too many people had told us to do. Maggie had drained herself, every emotion had leaked from her body. She went to a support group, listening and talking. I went for three sessions, but I couldn't bear the grieving, a group of people not letting go, all becoming reminders of pain, a pain I would never forget. I stopped going, and my pain stands as a shrine to Shane. No one notices. I go through the motions. Never forgetting what I buried during that time, not just the loss of Shane but the loss of an innocence, of not being able to protect my family, my children. Along side the shrine lay cool ashes buried six feet into my consciousness of conversations that vanished. The simplistic sentiments that I head for weeks after Shane's death: "Maybe it was for the best," "Now he, it was a he wasn't it, is in God's hands." Screw the best, screw God. Screw the women who dismissed my torment, telling me to support Maggie, for whom they drowned with compassion. Screw the men, God, double screw them. They didn't want me to mention the subject, and the few who listened would give a half-time speech about being strong. Where was I to get the strength, the willingness not to pour a quart of wine into my gut each night, the ability to ignore what I was feeling. Then there's the image, the crimson placenta and umbilical cord from Brian's birth, which Maslowe showed me. The cord was strong, filled with food and oxygen, yet smooth and soft to the touch, and that which gave life to Brian hanged Shane, tightening itself, strangling his soft small neck, at the same time constricting into a knot, cutting cut off oxygen and food. Starvation, malnutrition, affixation, and not yet born. One in a thousand chance. His death had one chilling explanation. Dr. Shaeffer would have given it to me to solve. He isn't an ob-gyn but my professor of probability. Shane was the reality of problems I solved one semester: What is the chance of Shane being strangled by his cord, assuming his parents followed prescribed prenatal care? Therefore probability is more powerful than the protection I afforded Shane, Maggie, or Brian. It is more powerful than God because God, unlike Herod, wouldn't kill the innocents for some larger plan.
    We were back to normal, and I was driving to work. My vision was suddenly covered in my own blood. I saw a knife cutting into my left wrist. I watched as blood dripped like juices from a roast. I blinked. I shivered.
    The image has returned at an unpredictable frequency, and each time I shiver with fright and my heart sags for I remember that which buried is never gone but that which is gone is forever lost.

Contributor: Joseph Conlin