Crimes by Moonlight

Richard was staring at me now openly. I hadn’t used the F word since the birth of the boys. “I don’t need you coming unglued,” he said. “That’s not helping. And I’m not making any decisions tonight.”

Yes, you are, I wanted to scream. But I saw myself reflected behind him, in the mirror over the fireplace mantel. Big-bellied and wild-eyed. Paranoid. Hormonal. Hysterical. Sees witches.

I took a deep breath, as deep as the baby pushing against my diaphragm would allow. Enforced calm. “Want some beef bourguignon?”

Richard shook his head, still staring at me. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

I went into the kitchen, Tooth trailing me. I unplugged the Crock-Pot, dumped its contents into a colander, turned the faucet on it full blast, picked out the beef, and threw the rest in the compost bin. I fed the meat to Tooth, a piece at a time. He rewarded me by licking my fingers clean and not throwing up.

I felt ill. I wanted to rewind the clock, go back an hour to when my biggest problem was witches. I wanted to know less, or I needed to know more. I needed sleep. I looked at the bay window, and all thoughts of sleep fled.

The window was perfect. Uncracked.

I walked, shaking, back to the living room. Richard was snoring now. I bent to put an afghan over him, then read, through his splayed fingers, the cover page of the report on his lap. “Somdahl & Associates Internal Memo-do not photocopy or distribute.” I began to ease it out of his hands, but he stirred, so I let it go. I covered him with the afghan and climbed the creaking stairs.

I lay a long time with Tooth up against my belly in the king-sized bed. I didn’t think I could sleep, but suddenly I was dreaming, haunted by a series of numbers that I struggled to focus on. They were important numbers, I knew, like the gestational age of a baby, or a dosage of medicine, so I tried to memorize them. But there were ten of them, much harder to keep track of than twelvey twenty-one-y. I realized I’d been dreaming of the numbers each night, over and over, like the fairy tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and that each morning the numbers were gone.

And by morning they were gone.

I woke to the sound of a door closing. Richard going for a run, maybe. It was just after five, still dark outside. My mind felt fuzzy, like bits of brain had been left behind in my dreams. I lay there drowsy, heart-sick, anxious. I tried to focus on what we’d do if-when?-Richard lost his job, how we’d live, but instead my mind came up with an alternate spelling of Madeeda: Matita. Paco and Charlie didn’t distinguish between Ds and Ts. I sat up, determined to Google this. It was a pointless impulse, as relevant as Madame Defarge knitting by the guillotine, but I couldn’t help myself.

On the kitchen table was a note: “Gone in to work early. I’ll call. Don’t worry.” Early? It was practically the middle of the night. And was there ever a command as unenforceable as “Don’t worry”?

I woke the computer and typed in “matita” and clicked on the first of a few hundred thousand hyperlinks.

Matita Pereira, an elusive bird known for its melancholic song. The bird is one form taken by the Saci, a one-legged mulatto child, legendary character in Brazilian folklore, who wears a magical red cap that makes him disappear and reappear, and requires him to grant wishes to anyone who steals it.

What was I to make of this? Brazilian folklore was no more meaningful than South African soccer players and Sudanese desserts. Although I did have a red baseball cap, left in the trunk of my car by someone from Richard’s office. Not stolen, of course, but not mine either. I kept forgetting to return it, and it often came in handy when I got caught bare-headed in the merciless California sun.

I slumped in the desk chair. What did it matter? My Madeeda obsession was a distraction from the real problem, Richard’s ethical dilemma, now my dilemma. Could we, as Richard proposed, forget it? Was doing nothing the wisest course, financially? Almost certainly. Morally? No. But was this my decision to make? What about everyone else at Somdahl & Associates? What about our own three children? Didn’t we owe them a roof over their heads?

Tooth came into the room and stretched, wanting to be let outside. “I wish,” I said to him, “that I knew what to do.”

Something shifted inside me, something palpable, physical, and I realized I was sitting in something wet. As though my bladder had gone out of control, or my water had broken. But it wasn’t amniotic fluid or urine. The brown leather chair was darkening rapidly, and when I touched it, my fingers came away red with blood.

“BLEEDING in early pregnancy can often be insignificant.” Dr. Iqbal sat on a swivel stool at the foot of the exam table. The wand in his hand made little circular motions on my bare stomach, now wet with gel. His eyes were on the black-and-white TV screen, which showed a grainy image of my unborn daughter. “However-”

“However-?” I looked at his face, trying to find reassurance. The hospital lighting did not become him. “She’s okay, though?” I persisted. “You can tell, right? You’d know, right?”

“There’s movement, her heart rate’s normal, cord’s not wrapped around her.”

“But-?”

“But bleeding in the last trimester’s never good.” He glanced at me. “This one’s a head-scratcher. It could be placenta previa, but it’s not. It’s not placental abruption. And it’s not labor. Also, you’re not bleeding now. You’re sure it was actual bleeding? Not just spotting?”

“It was flowing. Gushing. All over the chair I was sitting in.” Which was leather, at least. I’d cleaned it as well as I could, waiting for the ambulance. Cleaned myself, too, although traces of blood remained on my i

“And the color? True red? Or brownish? Pinkish?”

“Red. Ketchup red.” It was a relief to say it, with no equivocation. A relief to be here in the hospital, all antiseptic and stainless steel and charm-free linoleum. No creaky floors. No personality. No rustic appeal.

Dr. Iqbal switched off the monitor, then grabbed a paper towel and wiped the gel from his wand and from my stomach. “Richard still here?”

“He just left. Went home to take care of the kids. A friend’s been watching them since five thirty a.m., but she has to get to work.” She wasn’t really a friend; she was a woman I’d met exactly twice at a Mommy and Me class. But I had her phone number, and she’d come over at once, without hesitation. She was a friend now, I realized.

“Well, let’s take a wait-and-see attitude. The baby’s thirty-six weeks, so if she had to come out now, she could. But she’s better off staying in, and without a clear reason to induce… I’ll keep you here a day or two for observation.”

I nodded, suddenly dead tired. If the baby was safe, that was all that mattered. Somdahl & Associates seemed very far away at the moment, and as I lapsed into a half sleep, I thought how absurd it was, in this overlit hospital room, to believe in witches.

And once more I dreamed of numbers.

“DON’T squish your mommy,” Richard said.

“They’re okay,” I said. Charlie and Paco were in the hospital bed with me, Charlie holding the TV remote and Paco pressing the buttons that raised and lowered the mattress. I’d missed them. I was never away from them.

“I’m go

“Is that your bathroom?” Paco asked, pointing to the door that Richard closed behind him. I nodded.

“Madeeda has a bathroom, too,” Charlie said. “And Madeeda has a curtain in her room.” He pointed to the curtain separating me from the empty bed across the room. “Madeeda has a TV on the ceiling.”