After brushing her hair off her face, I left a kiss on her temple and convinced her to eat the bagel and swallow the pills. There was nothing I could do to shield her from this loss, and nothing to say that we hadn't already heard.
These things happen.
There was nothing you could have done to prevent it.
It's more common than you think.
Don't blame yourself.
You can always try again.
I held her close and stroked her hair, and stayed there long after the tears dried and she surrendered to sleep. Then, I set out to fulfill her one request. The alcove where we'd been stockpiling tiny t-shirts and socks, story books, blankets, and stuffed animals had to disappear. As I folded each item, I was filled with the dim sense that I'd never unpack them.
Ididn't expectthem to come, but I should have. If there was one thing my siblings did with remarkable consistency, it was show up, and it took this moment to realize that Ihadbeen holding them at a distance.
But they didn't let that distance stop them. They circled around us.
Shannon arrived the next day, and without a word, she crawled into bed with Tiel and cried along with her. Andy and Lauren turned up not long after, and I was ordered away.
They promised to care for her, and though I still felt powerless, as if I was watching her slowly drown, I trusted these women. They were each strong-willed forces of nature in their own rights, but their love was the greatest force.
I found Riley, Matt, Patrick, and Will surveying the roof deck—God forbid anyone slipped up and called it a roof garden because Patrick was never more than moments from unleashing his loathing of roof gardens—with measuring tapes and the level app on Matt's iPhone. At one time, Riley and I entertained the idea of engaging Magnolia to renovate this area, but that had been cooling on the back burner.
"There's a lot of dry rot here," Patrick said, motioning to the old deck flooring. "I'm not seeing anything that should be salvaged. We're going to pull it up and replace it with some better materials."
"You don't have to do that," I said.
"I told them that," Riley said as he devoured an apple.
Matt pointed to the low railing that faced the Fort Point Channel. "What about some benches over here? And I think you're going to want some shade. Maybe a pergola."
"Yeah," Patrick murmured to himself as he walked the perimeter. "Yeah. Let's build some of those deep planter boxes, like the ones we used on my terrace. Cypress trees would give you shade and privacy. You can never have enough privacy when it comes to women and patios."
"I appreciate the offer, but honestly, it's fine. We don't use this space and—" They weren't listening. Will was prying up decades-old wood, Matt was recording measurements, and Patrick was scoping out the roofline.
"Is she doing the naked tanning thing again?" Will asked Patrick.
"Jesus. Yes," he growled. "The first mild day of spring, she was lying out on the terrace and bare-assed for the entire North End to see."
"I lucked out with the ginger," Will said. "She's the only person I know who wears more clothes at the beach."
"You really did," Patrick answered.
Will pulled up another plank and said, "We're gonna have a lot to haul away."
Matt glanced at his watch. "I can have a construction dumpster here in an hour or two."
"Okay, all right," I said. Building a deck seemed like the last thing I should be doing while my wife was recovering from a miscarriage, but damned if I knew the first or second things to do in this situation. "If we're doing this, we're using the right tools." I pointed at Will. "Just because you can break boards with your bare hands doesn't mean you should."
"No," Will said, shaking his head slowly, "that'sexactlywhat it means. You should seize every opportunity that life gives you to tear shit apart."
We spent the weekend demolishing the old deck, and in some brutal way, it was exactly what I needed. What we all needed.
16
Sam
June
