The most beautiful feeling a woman could ever have is the feeling of carrying life within her.
I could feel the moment Rachel was conceived. We were in our new house in San Francisco, my back was against the wall. Taylor's knees buckled so bad we nearly collapsed. He was still inside of me, and I knew. I looked up at his face, and his eyes were sincere and soft - as they always looked when we were done making love. He smiled, satisfied, and lay with me on the floor.
I said, "I think this is it." And he nodded with his head resting against my breasts. I wasn't sure if he had actually heard me.
"I could make love to you all night." He said.
And he did.
When he did find out, he glowed for weeks. When I started to show he put studio headphones on me and played classical music. He called everyone he knew, and started making room in the new place for a new baby to sleep. With Taylor it was different. When Theo was conceived, I had felt the same rush - the moment it happened, Zac and I on the floor of my bedroom - but I spent the months weary and lonely. Every time Theo kicked inside of me I cried, feeling Zac all around me, masturbating with my eyes closed to try and make it seem like he was filling a space when he wasn't there at all. But now... Taylor was with me - slaphappy and wonderful. He was experiencing the same high I was - and sometimes I just wished he could feel her inside of me, moving around and living - underneath my skin.
There were times when I thought I wanted to be pregnant forever - my hair was shinier, my complexion was clearer - and everyone everywhere treated me wonderfully - asking about the baby - offering favors... wondering about my life - showing interest - and all the while this beautiful, wonderful, absolutely fabulous force of nature was blossoming inside of me - just waiting to come out. The whole concept of a whole new human being coming from one hot moment absolutely amazed me. Watching, feeling my children is and knowing that I was bringing life into this world is unreal, maybe even a bit crazy.
Taylor's eyes were blue and deep, and he smiled at everything now. At night he wanted to see me... and when my belly got big he marveled and asked questions like an impatient child. "How does it feel? Is it strange? Isn't it beautiful? Is my little girl awake?" When we made love he laughed and the vibration from his body sent shivers of pure ecstasy down my spine. He was so refreshed - so changed - so perfect. I never wanted it to end... never.
He was by my side, channeling the same love and compassion as I had our baby. He was amazing. I clutched his hand until there were bruises but not once did he flinch. I always felt that Taylor could understand pain, physical and emotional; I always felt he could take it away, even then - screaming and crying as everyone around me encourages me to push, just a little bit more, almost there. I wondered why I was putting myself through this a second time, my feet propped up on stirrups and everyone in the room telling me to do something that I didn't feel I had the strength, or capacity to do. My memory was more than refreshed, though, as soon as I put my arms around our new baby girl, whose eyes were brighter than Taylor's.
Taylor's face glowed in a way I had never seen. The smile he wore when he held Rachel in his arms for the first time couldn't compare to the elated smiles he gave after putting on a good show, or the way he smiled when he first found out I was pregnant. Later when we were moved to a more comfortable maternity suite, and he was sitting beside me holding Rachel in our bed, I caught a glimpse of the red bracelet they snapped onto his arm. For a second I remembered a thin sick boy, holding Theo for the first time. So much had changed since then.
There were parts of Taylor that would always be hard for me to live with. He was emotional, and drawn to instability, it was part of his personality - a trait that he reluctantly possessed. The events of the years when our lives fell apart would haunt him forever, the nightmares lessened, but they never stopped. But still, when we made our wedding vows that light June morning, I realized that I was the only one left on this earth that could understand him. There were aspects of his personality that were permanently affected by the mental stress he had been through; things that he would never be able to explain: the reasons why he lapsed in conversation, why he cried in his sleep, and why there were some days when he wouldn't speak a single word. I had been through it all with him, even if I didn't understand it myself, I knew where it came from, and those were things that he could have never conveyed to someone else. We were stuck together, the two of us.
He never knew that I knew where he hid the box with Annissa's things in it. He kept it tucked away in a shoe box in the back of the closet, covered over by things and objects which are more handy, leaving a small shoebox more likely to be ignored. I memorized poems and the way Annissa looked, just so I could picture her in my mind when he sighed her name in his sleep. I read the poetry he wrote for her, and every word of it made a small ball in my chest grow larger. I never wondered what it was like to relive the moment you watched someone die, and I knew that he thought about her every day, even if he didn't mean to. Sometimes I just close my eyes in bed and try to bring myself to another place, imagining that the soft even breathing beside me was Zac, and that we were still 17.
I never really stopped loving Zac, or stopped thinking "What if?"
But "What Ifs," I've discovered, are foolish. The further time goes on, the more I become aware that too much has changed to go back. It's too far away now for me to be able to comprehend what my life would be like if he hadn't died that day. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about it, or him, but as I grow older, and as things change - the more seperate Zac and I become. There is a thread of us, weaving through two pieces of fabric, so closely woven together, but never completely complete. Over and over again in my head I am standing in the ambulance with him and he's awake and laughing. He made everything so much easier, even his own death.
"Glad we decided to have our baby early." He smiled, I think he knew before the doctor's could say anything that he was paralyzed. "I'm not like Taylor. I don't need my legs." He touched my stomach where it would soon be swelling with the life he put inside of me. "You take care of him, okay?"
I never knew who he was talking about. Taylor, or the then sexless baby to which the reference seemed to be made. At the time I had no idea what he was saying, but looking back now, the words seem to fit.
It was in those moments that he seemed perfectly fine. His fingers were gently intertwined with my own, and his face showed no sign of pain, not even sorrow or anger. It was when he lay still on the stretcher that those moments were shattered. His breath was in gasps, and I could feel the grip of his hands tighten and then loosen significantly. For a second his face went blue, the paramedics pushed me roughly out of the way and our hands separated. From that point until his last hours in the hospital, I knew he knew he was going to die. He was just holding out long enough to say goodbye, and be with the people that he loved. It was no surprise to me that he chose to die in the presence of Isaac and Taylor playing music for him. They were everything he ever knew - his lifetime friends and his brothers - singing songs to him like a lullaby. If you were to ask them they wouldn't say it, but I think he let their voices lull him to a sleep he would never rise from. I think he chose his death, and he wanted them, needed them at his side before he could gain the strength to say goodbye.
When he died I felt him pass through me. It's a feeling that you would never understand unless it happens to you. My bones chilled for a second, and immediately I knew it was he, I could feel his being inside every part of me. I ran fast down the corridor toward Zac's room, and it was nearly instantaneous. Taylor and Isaac were in the hallway, the news plastered all over their faces.
I heard it coming even before Diana that day, the storm had started. Taylor was having a panic attack, and Isaac's wailing was almost like a scream. While Taylor was yanking out his hair and being carried down the hallway, Isaac couldn't let go of his hand. Taylor didn't realize he was having a panic attack, because he kept pushing the medicine back at the doctor, his hands were shaking, then clinging to his hair as he hyperventilated. They kept saying that they needed to get him up, because they were sure he was going to be sick, as Isaac had when he saw his mother's pain stricken face, but once he took the Valium he passed out in an instant.
Everything since then had been a rough head over heels tumble down a mountain into pricker bushes. Every time I look at Theo he reminds me of his Daddy. I miss Zac all of the time; and Taylor, even though he doesn't talk about it much, I know he does too. I see him staring at the photographs of he and his brothers scattered all around the house, perhaps trying to imagine something else, a life where Zac was included. He stares at those portraits as much as he mutters e.e. cummings under his breath. At night, sometimes, we both cry ourselves to sleep.
He was whispering e.e. cummings that evening. I couldn't hear the words because he was telling Rachel and I was barely conscious, drowsiness making me fade in and out of reality. He touched her nose gently and I could hear him singing songs to her very quietly. His voice seemed louder once I became aware of it, but it faded every time I nodded out.
When I woke up he was still next to me. Rachel was on a small cart next to us and I reached forward to touch her chubby cheek, laughing out loud at how good I felt when she stirred. Taylor's eyes were peeking at me from underneath a pile of hair in his face, blue as the sky in the morning. For a moment our eyes locked, and then he turned, like me, to look at Rachel.
He locked his hand with mine on top of the sheets and then he smiled at me like he would never be unhappy again.
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who knows if the moon's
-e.e. cummings
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky-filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should
get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited, where
always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves