Her Best Friend's Baby

Unshaven. Eyes red. Clothes wrinkled. Trench coat hanging open as if he didn’t have the energy to button it.

She wanted to slam the door. Whatever he’d come to her door to tell her, she didn’t want to hear it. She never wanted to hear it. Mary Jane. I have something— She began to shake.

His mouth opened, but no words came out.

Don’t say it, she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t speak. No. No. This was a nightmare. She’d gone to bed, and now she was having a bad, bad dream. The worst kind of dream. Wake up, Mary Jane.

His mouth opened. His words slurred. “She’s de—”

“No!” Mary Jane hurled herself at him, beating her fists against his chest. “Don’t you say that!” she screamed. “Don’t you ever say that!”

Tears pouring down his face, Morgan took the blows as if he couldn’t feel them. Then he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him as she screamed, and screamed, and screamed some more.

She struggled, trying to get away from him, away from what he was trying to tell her. He wrestled her inside the house and still he wouldn’t let her go.

“Listen to me,” he shouted, his voice raw as he kicked the door shut. “Arielle—”

“No!” She fought him. If she could get away and go upstairs to her bedroom, this nightmare would be over. She would wake up, and tomorrow Lana would take Polaroids of The Belly, and they’d send them to—

“…a wreck,” he said, gasping as he crushed her against him. “Oh, God, Mary Jane. Don’t do this.” He began to sob. “Don’t do this, Mary Jane. Please.” He sank to his knees, pulling her down with him. “Help me.”

She stopped struggling. With a wild, keening cry she wrapped her arms around him, pressing his head to her chest as if his tears could somehow stop the pain that burned there. She rocked back and forth, clutching his head with one hand and his heaving shoulders with the other.

“It’s a mistake,” she whispered. “Somebody made a mistake.”

He shook his head and continued to sob.

“A mistake,” she insisted again. “A m-mistake. A—” Then her throat closed and she bowed her head over his, pressing her open mouth against his hair to stifle her cries.

“The baby…is all…I have.” He gulped for breath and held her tighter. “All I have left.”

This couldn’t be happening. She tried to escape to some faraway place, but his words kept coming, dragging her back to the pain.

His voice was toneless, muffled against her breast. “She was on her way…to the airport. To get…that artist. Raining…slick…she…skidded. It was instant.”

The blood roaring in her ears was loud but not loud enough. She heard what he said. She ached all over. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t believe me, either. But it’s true.” He clutched her tighter. “It’s true.”

“No.”

“It happened yesterday. No. The day before. I…don’t know anymore.”

Arielle. She started to get up. “We need to go.”

“Why?” He held her in place. “She’s gone.” He broke down again. “Oh, God. G-gone.”

“No!” She tried to pry herself out of his grip. “We have to do something. She needs…” She searched for the words, couldn’t make herself say them. “A…tribute.”

He lifted his head, his face twisted with anguish. “She didn’t want that,” he whispered hoarsely. “She told me…after we got married. If she died, she wanted no funeral. Nothing.”

And then Mary Jane knew this horrible moment was real. A steel band of grief tightened around her chest. Arielle had always said that she didn’t believe in any of that. A person should be allowed to slip quietly out of this life, she’d said, without making such an embarrassingly big deal out of it. Mary Jane had thought that very sophisticated, very evolved. Now it made her furious.

“How could she?” she cried. “How could she leave and not let us…not give us a chance to…”

“She didn’t think how it would be.” Morgan reached up and brushed his knuckles over her wet cheeks. His voice rasped in the stillness. “How it would be for us.”

Mary Jane stared at him for a long time. Her mind didn’t seem to want to work. “What should we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

She’d never felt so empty in her life, or so chilled and weary, as if she’d been forcing her way through a violent storm. He looked as if he felt the same way, as if he hadn’t slept since… She still couldn’t say it to herself. Maybe tomorrow she could say it. Or the next day. When she wasn’t so battered.

“You need to rest,” she said finally.

“I’ve tried. Can’t sleep.”

But he would collapse soon. She could see that. “Come upstairs and lie down. I’ll stay with you. Maybe then you’ll sleep.”

“You need your sleep, too. For the baby.”

She couldn’t imagine going to sleep now, but she wouldn’t tell him that and upset him even more. “I’ll try to sleep, too.”

“Good.”

“Tomorrow we’ll think about what to do next.”

He nodded. Slowly he stood and helped her to her feet. Supporting each other like war casualties, they made their way up the stairs.

In her bedroom, Morgan stripped down to his T-shirt and shorts with mechanical detachment and climbed into bed. She left the light on as she crawled in beside him. For the first time since she’d been four years old she was afraid of the dark.

He pulled the covers to his chin. “I can’t seem to stop shaking.”

“Me, either.”

As if by mutual agreement they turned and scooted into each other’s arms, holding each other close.

Fine tremors ran through him, as if he had a fever, and his bristly chin scraped her cheek. “I tried to call,” he said.

“I know.” Not minding his scratchy beard, she snuggled closer, needing the body contact while she tried to keep her own shakes under control, tried to get warm.

“That was stupid. Trying to tell you on the machine. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay.” She wanted to rewind the day and go back to that golden moment before she’d played her messages. That moment when she’d been excited about two days off. She would work every day of her life if she could make this not be true.

“It’s not okay. What if…what if the shock of hearing it on the phone…what if something had happened to the baby?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth against the wail of despair that strained at her throat. Arielle’s baby. And the little girl was Arielle’s, in every sense except that she would develop in Mary Jane’s womb. And now Arielle would never see her daughter.