Relativity (38 page)

Then Claire danced her variation from
Swan Lake
. Her mind had gone blank when the music began, so she couldn't actually recall dancing, whether or not she'd danced well. It was a fluid memory. All she remembered was how she'd felt in the moment: weightless, calm, exhilarated, an ecstatic release of pressure. Like coming home. Normally, Claire had a sharp instinct for gauging an audition's success, but she wasn't sure this time. Based on the company's lack of confidence in her ability to juggle ballet with a baby, she suspected she'd screwed up. Part of her craved consolation from Mark, but after how hard she'd fought to get here, how could she tell him auditioning was a mistake? Claire lay in the darkness nursing her disappointment—in the audition, in herself—in lieu of nursing her son.

Ω

WHEN SHE LANDED
in Sydney the following morning, Claire rushed off the plane and out into the terminal. Mark had promised to pick her up and bring Ethan to the airport. But they weren't there among the crowd; she couldn't find them anywhere. She collected her bag and searched the arrival hall for their faces.

Claire dialed Mark's number but nobody answered. She tried the house phone; it kept ringing too. Perhaps they'd gone out. She tried his cell again.

“Hey,” he said wearily.

“Hi, it's me. I'm at the airport. Remember you said you'd pick me up?”

Mark exhaled. “Sorry, I totally lost track of time. Ethan's being really fussy. Nothing makes him happy, he doesn't want to sleep, eat, be touched or left alone. I don't know what to do. He's impossible.”

“Maybe he's overheating,” Claire offered. She heard the baby howl in the background; the sound made her long for him. Ethan's cries were like cryptic signals Claire needed to decode. “It's boiling today. Give him a bath; it might calm him down. Does he still have that rash under his arms?”

Mark replied but she couldn't hear him over Ethan's loud shrieks.

“I'm coming straight home. See you soon.”

Her right breast had started to leak, and below its curve, she could feel warm milk seep into the creased skin. As if the constant ache of being away from Ethan wasn't enough, her body gave her visceral reminders. Time to get back to him. She waited in the line for a taxi, the smell of breastmilk sweetening the humid air.

Ω

MARK FOUND THE RASH
under the baby's arms. May as well give Ethan that bath; maybe the rash was what had been bothering him. Maybe he'd finally calm down. All night, Ethan had been inconsolable. The baby wailed as if he were being tortured, loud and urgent, like the wail of a siren warning of emergency. Mark's sleep deprivation veered toward madness. He kept trying to return to his thesis—he was so close to grasping antimatter's riddle—but his son kept howling and he couldn't think.

Problem solving didn't work with babies; Mark couldn't find a solution to Ethan's problems. He consulted the manuals again, every parenting book in the apartment, looking for answers, but nothing fixed the crying. Ethan wailed and screamed, squirmed and writhed. Mark considered calling his father and brother for advice, but knew they'd just laugh at him. Call him out for being pathetic, for asking for help, for allowing Claire to leave him alone with the baby. Overnight, his frustration had made him punch the wall.

Mark picked the baby up and walked to the bathroom. It was the most beautiful room in their apartment, almost bigger than their bedroom, with a large picture window that looked out onto the courtyard. Sun spilled onto the white tiles and reflected off the mirror. He turned on the tap.

With its four legs on wheels, the yellow baby bath looked like a headless giraffe. It didn't take long to fill—it was no bigger than a sink. Claire had bought lots of neutral-colored items for the baby—mint greens and lemon yellows—as she'd had some idealist notion that their child wasn't going to grow up conforming to gender stereotypes.

Mark lay Ethan down on the changing mat. Claire had taught him to check the water temperature and he pulled up his sleeves and dipped his elbow in the bath. Too hot. He cooed absentmindedly at his son then abruptly stopped. Mark hated baby talk, all that inane babbling and senseless noise. Perhaps it was just the way he was genetically wired to love his child, but there was something about that baby that made Mark forget that he was acting like a fool.

The bathwater had cooled now and Mark undressed his son. As his cold hands braced Ethan's body, the baby screamed again. He kicked and fought and wriggled as Mark struggled to lift him up into the tub.

Later, this yellow bath ended up in court. Evidence from the scene of the crime in a criminal trial, standing out of place in the middle of the courtroom, inspected by lawyers and a jury. The tub was probably still kept somewhere with other left-behind evidence, in a room of forgotten things at the storage facility of the courthouse. Nobody ever went back to collect it.

Ω

WITH ONE HAND,
Mark held the baby's shoulder to support his head, and tried to wash Ethan's body with the other. But the baby wasn't cooperating. His limbs thrashed, he splashed and shrieked, forcing his own face underwater. Mark breathed out and tried to compose himself. He washed the baby's hair. Ethan pushed his legs against the edge of the tub, spilling water over the floor. The baby's strength was surprising. Claire was wrong; this bath was not calming him down.

Mark lifted Ethan out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel, lemon yellow with an embroidered duck. The baby kept crying. Roaring. Piercing decibels that climbed each time he opened his toothless mouth, rising octave after brutal octave. Mark's eardrums hurt—it felt like they were bleeding—and the pressure inside his head escalated to a crushing throb.

What was wrong with it? Nothing calmed this baby down. Where was Claire? Why wasn't she back yet? He was furious at her for leaving; it was unfair. He felt racked by a dark impulse to settle the score. The baby howled and arched its back. What did it want? Why wouldn't it shut up?

Mark noticed urine running down Ethan's leg. Great, it was everywhere. He'd only just been cleaned. Mark would need to run the bath again, start all over. Fuck.

The baby kicked and yelled. His cries boiled the marrow inside Mark's bones. His unbroken scream was grating and shrill, like a deafening alarm; it set Mark's nerves close to breaking point. The baby screamed louder. Stop crying. Stop.

Mark grasped Ethan, his hands tightly gripping the baby's ribs.

He shook him hard.

The screaming stopped.

Ω

MARK COULDN'T PINPOINT
the moment he'd lost control; he didn't understand how it happened. It was like standing on a train platform and doing what we all imagine: that universal morbid urge. The train approaches. You look down at the tracks. You think to yourself, I could easily throw myself down there, I could die.

Or you could be standing at the edge of a cliff, looking over the edge. You imagine yourself falling down, your body tumbling toward the earth and breaking against the rocks below. Everyone thinks about it, feels that flickering impulsion. It's like a cognitive itch you shouldn't scratch, the way the brain assesses risk. So you stop yourself. You make a choice. You choose to live.

When Mark was a teenager, he went on a family holiday to Airlie Beach on the Whitsunday Coast. He befriended one of the local boys—Mark had long forgotten his name—who was about his age. One morning, they took the boy's speedboat around the shoreline. In the backwoods, by the freshwater cascades, was a line of rugged quartz cliffs.

Mark craned his head up, staring at the tallest cliff. “Can we go all the way up there?”

“Yeah, sure,” the boy said.

The cliff was about fifty feet high. Although the climb wasn't hard, Mark grazed his knee against the rocky edge. He wiped the blood off with his palm.

“Do you wanna jump?” the boy asked when they had both reached the top.

“Is it safe?”

“Reckon you'll be all right.” The boy ran off the edge of the cliff and jumped into the water.

Mark felt sick to his stomach looking at the drop. He counted backward. Ten. Nine. He looked down at the water, a slick of black on its surface. Eight. Seven. He took a step backward. Six. Five. Four. Then a step forward. Three. You only live once, Mark thought to himself. If he did this now, he'd never have to do it again. Two. One. Zero.

Zero.

There's nothing to lose at zero.

Mark stretched his feet and jumped.

The fall was over before he knew it. He landed in the water.

It was over. It was done.

Ω

THE BABY FELT LIGHT
in his arms; Ethan's slack limbs flopped by his sides. His head dangled forward. His eyes were closed. Fingers clenched in a fist just moments before were now splayed out and lifeless. Mark stared at this limp creature in his hands. The baby was almost like a piece of meat. A skinned rabbit. A plucked chicken.

What had he done?

Mark quickly put the baby back into the bath. Ethan tried to open his eyes but immediately closed them again. Then he pooed—an eruption of orange diarrhea—all over the inside of the bath. Its sour stench made Mark gag. He didn't know what to do. Should he wash Ethan again? Did he need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? Surely it wasn't that serious. He moved his ear to Ethan's mouth to listen to his breath. Was he breathing? Mark wasn't sure.

“Claire?” he called out, then remembered she wasn't home.

When something terrible happens in a film, the world suddenly exists in sinister slow motion. Light intensifies; we want to shield our eyes from the glare. Voices drop, background sounds muffle, and the camera moves in and out of focus. As Mark held the stiff, cold baby in his arms, he realized this wasn't a movie. It was real life. But he felt sedated and calm. Like he was inside the eye of the storm, as the hurricane of reality swirled and warped around him.

His thoughts wandered to the violin, to what music might best accompany this unfocused moment. Something slow, with low tones. Mark could almost hear the string's vibrations inside his mind fill the air.

But crucial seconds were slipping out of his fingers, faster than oxygen was disappearing from the baby's lungs and brain. Time played tricks on him. He was trapped in some liminal space, frozen, unable to respond or react. By the time Mark heard Claire's keys in the door, he didn't know how many minutes had passed since the baby's chest stopped moving.

Ω

WHEN CLAIRE ARRIVED
back at the front door, she was relieved by the silence. Maybe the baby was asleep. Or if he wasn't sleeping yet, she could feed Ethan and settle him on the bed and they could have a nap together. She was careful to be quiet when she turned her keys in the lock and removed her shoes before walking down the hallway.

“Claire?”

Mark's voice was off.

Something was wrong. She dropped her bag.

Before Claire heard the words, she heard the panic—an irregularity of breath, a strain of vocal cords, a cry, a gasp. Panic existed on a frequency of its own. Air into air, particle by particle, it vibrated through the elastic atmosphere faster than the speed of sound. The most sudden and terrible thing, it pierced the calm and propelled her toward the worst place. Before the words came out, the anxiety was there, roaring on the other side of silence. Before her brain registered what she was being told, she knew that something was wrong. And before she could respond it was already too late. Because once she'd heard those words, an event was set in motion and everything had already changed.

“Help,” Mark said. “He's not breathing.”

Ω

THEY WERE ONLY
four words, delivered calmly, considering. Four words, five syllables, nineteen letters, six vowels, thirteen consonants. Practically nothing. But it's often the sentences with few words that land the hardest punches. I love you. I hate you. Will you marry me? I'm pregnant. Words that turn your world upside down. But they are in most people's vocabularies, common exchanges in the trajectory of love.

Claire screamed.

She didn't remember doing it at the time, only when she had to recount it later for the police. She didn't hear the sound that came from her throat, but Claire never forgot the glimpse she caught of herself in the hallway mirror. Her contorted mouth. Terror in her eyes. She could still to this day see the reflection of her face as she had let out that long, loud piercing cry.

What happened next played out in a blur. Ethan wasn't breathing. Claire heard her pulse pound against her temples. Her chest tightened. She needed to find the phone, she had to get help. She didn't know what to do by herself; someone needed to give her instructions. Where was the phone? She had to find it now. Was he dead? Claire dialed 000, her body on autopilot. She clutched her throat and held the phone up to her ear. Her breathing was louder than the phone ringing on the other end of the line. Hurry up. Come on.

“Emergency Services. Police, fire, or ambulance?”

“Ambulance.”

“Ambulance service. How can I help you?”

“My baby isn't breathing. Please, I need an ambulance right away.” Claire almost yelled into the receiver.

“What is the address?”

She repeated their address several times. “Please hurry,” she pleaded.

“We're sending one to you right now. How old is the child?”

“Four months. You have to hurry!”

“Please try to stay calm. What's your name? Would you like to speak to an ambulance officer?”

“Okay. Yes. Claire.”

She hadn't seen Ethan yet. Claire didn't know if he was alive or dead. Her first instinct had been to get help but now she was frantic to see him. As she walked up the hallway to the bathroom, her legs fought to carry her weight. While Claire desperately wanted to be with her baby, at that very moment she dreaded what she might see when she opened that door.