aside from making the decision to marry me in the first place. And so it had stayed for the past year and a half.
“It looks like Pepto-Bismol threw up in here.” I looked around at all the pink-the walls, the comforter in the crib, the stuffed animals lined up on the windowsill. “Why did I buy so much pink?”
It wasn’t just me, though. Once we’d seen the ultrasound and had announced it would be a girl, nothing arrived in any other color.
“What happened?” Carrie asked gently, looking at the picture on the dresser-a tiny baby on a pink blanket, eyes closed, mouth slack, so obviously lifeless.
“Isabella.” I breathed her name. How long had it been since I’d spoken it out loud? I turned to open the closet, giving myself something to focus on. “She was stillborn.”
“Oh no.” Behind me, Carrie gasped. “Dani, she’s so beautiful. She looks just like you!”
She did-thick dark hair, the same little rosebud mouth and sooty lashes. She was the prettiest baby I had ever seen. Even the dark hue to her lips, so unnatural in a newborn and caused by the blood pooling, just served to accentuate her beauty, as if someone had rubbed her lips with kisses before sending her to me. I didn’t know if her eyes were dark like mine though. She’d never opened them.
I blinked back my tears, finding the soap in a box up on the shelf and grabbing two bars. “Here. Let’s go.”
Carrie put the picture back on the dresser and I saw her eyes filled with tears too.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.” I swallowed, holding out the soap, and she took it. “Come on.”
She followed me out and I felt a little bit of relief when I could shut the door behind me.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” Carrie sat on the bed and looked at me.
“Most people really don’t want to hear about it. They say they do, but they don’t.”
I shrugged. “Grief lasts a lot longer than sympathy.”
“I know. I’ve lost three.” The tears that had welled up in her eyes spilled over.
“But never like that. I can’t even imagine.”
“I’m sorry.” I echoed her own apology to me, sitting on the bed to slide an arm around her shoulder. They were such useless words.
“Just miscarriages.” Carrie turned the soap over in her hands. “All before twelve weeks. We keep trying, but…” She shrugged and I saw tears fall onto the soap label, blurring the words.
“A baby is a baby,” I said firmly. “Love is love. I loved Isabella just as much at twelve weeks as I did at thirty-eight weeks.”
I thought saying her name out loud, making her real like that and bringing her back into this world, would just break my heart into a million pieces all over again. I thought it would take me back to that time when I couldn’t do anything but stay in bed and sob, full of leaking milk and love for a baby who would never need it. Instead, I found it almost a relief to be able to tell someone about her, someone who had experienced a pain similar to my own.
“I can’t imagine losing a baby at thirty-eight weeks.” Carrie’s wet eyes meeting mine. “How do you survive that?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head, my hand squeezing her shoulder. “Sometimes I think a miscarriage would be even harder. At least I got to feel her kick and move inside of me. I got see her and touch her. Hold her.”
She gave me a sad yet grateful look. “Why do these things happen?”
“Isabella had a knot in her cord.” I swallowed, remembering the doctor showing me as if revealing the solution to a mystery-ah here it is, this is the reason your daughter isn’t breathing, kicking, crying, this little knot, like a kink in a garden hose.
Such a small thing, yet enough to kill a child, drive a woman to the brink of insanity, a man to violence. As if anyone could ever solve that mystery?
“Why anyone has to experience that kind of loss?” I shrugged. “I wish I knew.”
We were quiet, just sitting there together on the bed, Carrie brushing her tears off bars of soap and me watching Jezebel butting up against our shins for attention.
“Okay, I think we need to take a little trip, you and me.” She wiped her face with the end of her t-shirt, standing up and holding out her hand.
I looked at her, bemused. “Where are we going?”
“Margaritaville.”
* * * *
We took a long, extended vacation that night in Margaritaville, and who could blame us? We discovered that we both loved alternative music and turned it up way too loud, dancing around the living room, whirling like Sufis in ecstatic bliss. We had Bella’s pizza to fill our bellies, margaritas to numb the pain and music to drown out our sorrows.
It was a recipe for either perfection or disaster and I think we delved into a little bit of both.
It was Carrie who took her shirt off first.
“Too fucking hot!” she gasped as she threw it onto the sofa. I followed suit about ten minutes later with my own t-shirt and we danced in our bras, belting out the words to
“Teen Spirit” as loud as we could. I don't remember when her pants disappeared. Or mine for that matter. We were doing “Flashdance” imitations in our bras and panties by the time we heard the pounding on the door.
“Shit!” Carrie turned the music down, rushing to the door in her underwear. I think the cop who stood outside was more than a little surprised to find two half-naked, sweaty women drinking margaritas and shaking their tail feathers. Thankfully he wasn't really a cop-just campus security. And I think he was fairly distracted by our state of undress. Not to mention our teasing. Because Carrie had clearly talked her way out of a ticket or two in her life time and was putting her skills to good use.
“I'm sorry, ma'am, but we had a complaint about the noise.” He stood there with his hat in his hands, kind of twisting it around, his gaze skipping from her back to me as if trying to find a safe place to look. “Can you keep it down?”
“Oh, we're just having a little fun, officer.” She winked and crooked her finger at him. “Want to come in and join us?”
He cleared his throat and blinked really fast. “I'm just trying to do my job, ma'am.”
“Ma'am!” She rolled her eyes, glancing over her shoulder at me. “I'm not that old.
Do I look like a ma'am to you?”
“M-miss,” he stumbled, correcting his mistake. “I just need to ask you to turn the music down a little. I'm sure you can keep on…um…doing what you were doing. Just do it a little quieter.”
“Do you want to see what we were doing?” Carrie put her arm around my neck as I came up behind her, pulling me so close I could smell the fruity mix of alcohol on her breath.
“No, ma'am.” He shook his head, eyes wide. “Miss. I mean, I just need you to-”
His words stopped when Carrie kissed me. Everything stopped, I think. At first it was just the soft press of her lips, but then her tongue licked at my mouth, seeking entrance, and I couldn't help but give it to her. I moaned softly and wrapped my arms around her, pressed belly to belly. Right there in front of the cop with the door open, standing in bra and panties for the whole world to see, we kissed and kissed and kissed. I felt her melting against me, her breasts molded against mine, and as undressed as we already were, I was wishing for less clothing.
“Want to join us?” Carrie breathlessly asked, turning her face to the cop. I couldn't stop looking at her, the soft curve of her jaw, the delicate stretch of her neck, the way her hair fell over her shoulders. The cop couldn't either. In fact, he looked like he wanted to say yes. He looked like he wanted that very much.
“I'm going to leave now.” He took a step back as if to convince himself. “Just keep it down. Please don't make me come back, okay?” He was actually pleading.
Carrie shut the door, giggling, and looked at me. “Well, that was fun while it lasted.”
“You're bad.” I was still breathless from our kiss, my heart hammering in my chest.
“You have no idea.” Her eyes had a very naughty glint and when she reached out and grabbed me, pulling me in again for another kiss, I didn't protest at all. I'm sure it was partially the alcohol, and partially our afternoon of painful confessions, but mostly I think we just both wanted to.
