“Do you remember him? Drew?”
CarolAnna shook her head. “I don’t know anyone named Drew.” She kept on shaking her head, as if she’d forgotten how to stop. “I don’t remember.”
“Ask her,” Drew said. He leaned across the table, until his face was only inches from CarolAnna’s. How could she not sense him, his voice vibrating the air? “Ask her if she remembers what she saw underwater.”
“What did you see underwater?” Lacey said.
“Nothing.”
“And you left me!” Drew shouted at CarolAnna. CarolAnna mimicked Drew’s previous posture, resting her chin on her hands. If she was mirroring him, wasn’t she somehow aware of him? Lacey’s head whirled. Drew was so close, CarolAnna must have felt his breath on her eyes. She never blinked. “You went away,” he said. “You left me all alone and now you can’t even see me!” He was gone, leaving a hum of anger that made Lacey breathless but didn’t appear to touch CarolAnna at all.
“Why did your family leave?” Lacey asked. Her breath was short, and she was panting like Bibbits on the verge of a coughing fit, yet CarolAnna seemed to sense nothing unusual.
“My dad got a job in Atlanta. My mom had bad dreams.”
“What else do you remember?”
“Nothing. We lived here the spring of 1991. The people who came after us, I remember their name because it was so unusual. Warm and fuzzy. I named a hamster after them. Honeywick. The hamster was orange with white paws. I’d better go.”
Lacey walked CarolAnna to the door. CarolAnna dithered, waiting for a pause in the rain. “Maybe you shouldn’t stay,” she blurted. “Not with the baby coming. Maybe it’s not a good house for a baby. You can’t blame me, I tried to tell you.” And she was gone before Lacey had time to answer.
Chapter Eighteen
SOMETIMES, INSTEAD OF GOING FOR LUNCH with the rest of the office, Eric stayed at his desk to browse baby-related websites. Lacey spent hours on YourBabyNow.net; she was always calling him into her room to share some new and interesting fetal fact. The baby’s retinas were fully formed. He could recognize individual voices. But when Eric wanted to put together a list of names, she shook her head.
He’d been dreading the day when Lacey would announce they needed to buy the baby furniture they couldn’t afford. The day never came, and now it was her silence he dreaded. She hadn’t bought so much as a single baby blanket. Why wasn’t she getting ready? Eric, sisterless, had an impression, distilled from movies and sitcoms, of the rituals of pregnancy. A baby shower. He asked why she didn’t have one. “You can’t give a shower for yourself,” she said. “I don’t know anyone in Greeneburg.”
So he called a couple of her old friends, fellow students and teacher colleagues from Columbia, to let them know that Lacey was taking her pregnancy hard and felt lonely. He had disliked those women when he was dating Lacey, knowing she discussed him with them—what did she say? Did they advise her to hold on to him, or did they shake their heads and tell her she’d be better off alone? And even after they were married, she took it for granted that she’d go out with her friends without him, just the same as before. When they first moved to Greeneburg, he’d been happy to see those connections fade. The Lacey who came home from a night out with her friends was hard and loud with the smell of beer in her hair, not a girl he would ever have dated—not his Lacey. Now he found those friends on her phone and asked for their help.
A few days later, her old roommate, Phyllis, called to tell him that Lacey had vetoed the idea of a shower and wouldn’t even let any of her friends come visit. “She’s feeling superstitious,” Phyllis said. “Don’t push it. Let her do what she has to do.” Eric noted on his calendar in November: Invite Phyllis for Christmas party. Lacey needed her friends; he didn’t have to like them, but he had to welcome them for her sake. She wouldn’t be drinking with them, anyway.
Alone, he wandered the infinite shopping aisles of Amazon and found everything babies needed. He marveled at the five-thousand-dollar strollers and fell in love with a tiny little newborn-sized tuxedo onesie with a red bow tie. That was his first purchase, and he was hooked. He bought clothes, diapers, chewable books, and tiny little socks. He bought crib bedding and stuffed animals, Eric Carle prints, and a mobile of Dr. Seuss characters. He bought a diaper presterilizer and a bassinet but decided to hold off on the crib until Lacey felt better; the baby would use the bassinet for the first three months.