There was a figure in the bed. She could not see it well, but there was a little light from the parking lot, and as her eyes adjusted she could see that the figure was the man. He was asleep on his back. His mouth was open. He was shirtless, and Meredith remembered that she, too, was shirtless, and as soon as she remembered this goose bumps ran across her stomach and down her arms. There was only one blanket on the bed—a royal-blue fleecy thing—and it was on the man, though only up to his waist, and thrown over him haphazardly as if by someone else. It was not tucked in. One swipe and it was hers. One swipe and she could be back in the bathroom and Lisa could be warm.
She lifted a corner of the blanket. No, not a swipe. Surely that would wake him. Gradual was better. Gradual and he wouldn’t even know it. Then she could return it later, in a few hours, before he woke up.
She took a step backward and the blanket slid a few inches below his waist. He was wearing underwear, the black boxers Meredith had seen before. She stood still for a moment, then she took another step backward, then another. Every small step drew the blanket down a few more inches: past his thighs, then his knees, then his hairy blank shins. Finally, with a little lift, it was over his toes.
The man lay motionless in the bed. Maybe he was passed out drunk. Maybe that was why he was so still.
Meredith backed all the way into the hall, dragging the blue blanket, then gathered it into a soft bundle in her arms and turned to the bathroom. The door was closed.
She did not recall closing it.
She put her right hand on the doorknob and turned. The knob turned one inch and stopped. The door was locked.
“Lisa,” she whispered.
No sound came from inside the bathroom. There had never been a quieter place than this apartment. It was as if the whole thing was frozen in time, a tomb, a relic. Meredith looked back into the bedroom. The feet, unmoving.
“Lisa,” she said, a little bit louder. She tapped as quietly as she could with the tip of her index finger, not daring to make a fist, not daring to knock.
“Lisa. Come on.”
Lisa was sick. She had lost a lot of blood. So now maybe she was unconscious, lying there in the tub, unable to move. But if that were the case, then who had locked the door?
Meredith tried the door again. Maybe it wasn’t locked. Maybe it was just stuck. She gave it a shake. It rattled against its frame. Still the knob did not turn. She checked the bedroom. The feet, unmoving.
“Lisa,” she said.
She shivered, pressed the blanket to her bare stomach. The apartment was as cold as a cave. She made a fist. She knocked.
“Please. Come on, Lisa. It’s me.”
?
Dinner was what her mother always called catch-as-catch-can, leftovers heaped on a plate and each person’s individually microwaved. You were responsible for your own meal. They ate at the kitchen table. Meredith thought her mother looked horrendous. She looked like she’d wandered from the wreckage of a plane or something. Was this the result of last night’s blowup? Where had her mother been all day anyway? Right, she remembered, the old folks’ home, whatever it was called. Probably not a very happy place. But her mother didn’t just look sad; she looked sick.
“Can I please spend the night at Becca’s?” Meredith asked, sliding in the “please” as a favor, a peace offering, even.
“Who?” her mother asked, squinting slightly.
“Becca Nichols,” Meredith said, annoyed. How was it even possible, after last night, that her mother had forgotten Becca again?
“They were supposed to go shopping,” her father explained quickly. “But it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah,” Meredith said. “So she wondered if we could do a sleepover instead.”
“Maybe she could come over here,” her father said.
“She invited me over there,” Meredith said. “There might be other people, too.”
This part was a lie. When she’d texted, Becca hadn’t said anything about other people. But who knew? It was always possible there might be other people. She hadn’t said there wouldn’t be other people.
“Hey, is that Amy Nichols’s sister?” Evan asked.
“Yeah,” Meredith said, too late realizing why he’d asked, then trying to backtrack. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”
“She almost had her baby in the library on Wednesday. No joke. Somebody ran for the nurse. But it was a false alarm.”
“Her sister’s pregnant?” her father asked. “How old is she?”
“Her sister’s not my friend,” Meredith said. “She doesn’t even really like her sister. I don’t even know if that’s her sister. It’s a common last name.”
Her parents exchanged looks across the table. Now it would come, she thought. Now it would come. Bring it on, she thought. Try to tell me what I can’t do. Try to tell me you know anything about me. You don’t know where I spend my days. You don’t want to know where I spend my days. Tell me I can’t go and I’ll tell you that it could have been me, should have been me, was me. Tell me I can’t go and I’ll tell you what he did to Lisa. Bring it. She looked at her mother. Bring it.
“Fine,” her mother said softly.
Her father turned to her mother, surprised. “Are you sure? We could—”
“It’s fine,” her mother said.
“I—” Meredith started.
“Go,” her mother said, looking at her squarely. There was something wrong with her mother’s eyes. It was like her mother had seen something terrible, and it had actually done something to her eyes. Suddenly Meredith wasn’t sure what she should do, if she should even go to Becca’s. She recalled that night after Evan’s second surgery, her mother crying in the kitchen, alone. And then, unexpectedly, she pictured Lisa, shivering in the bathroom, alone.
“I don’t—” she started.
Her mother looked away and shook her head. “Please,” she said. “Just go.”
?
Meredith could not stop looking at Amy Nichols’s belly. She had never been so close to someone so pregnant before. It was ridiculous. It was like she was pretending to be pregnant and had stuffed a beach ball under her shirt. It didn’t look like it could possibly be real, like a body could even function like that.
“It’s kicking like crazy,” she said to Meredith. “You wanna feel it?”
“I’m okay,” Meredith said.
She and Becca were sitting on the couch and Amy was propped in a recliner.
“Really, it’s totally cool. Come on. You should feel it.”
“You should, Meredith,” Becca said. “It’s super weird.” Her phone buzzed and she took it off the arm of the couch, glanced at it, and laid it back down.
Meredith had never felt a baby kick before. She got up and put her hand as lightly as she could on the peak of Amy’s stomach. Amy grabbed her hand and moved it down six inches and Meredith felt a little thump. There was no mistaking that something was in there. In truth, it made her feel a little bit like throwing up.
“Wild, right?” Amy said. “Sometimes she turns around and you can feel her little butt. So weird.”
“You know it’s a girl?”
“Yeah. We’ve already done up her room and everything. It’s really cute.”
“You wanna see?” Becca asked. “Let’s go see it.”
“I’m not going,” Amy said. “I’m not moving.”
Meredith followed Becca upstairs to the nursery. There was a crib and a chair and the white walls were painted with pink and purple clouds. She stood in the dark with Becca. Becca’s phone buzzed again but she didn’t look at it.
“It’s cute,” Meredith said.
“My mom says it will be less cute when there’s something crying in it. She said it’s all great until there’s a baby, and then it becomes a horror show.”