He tried again, shaking her shoulder more vigorously. “Carla. Stop. It’s not your fault.”
She didn’t react to his touch or his voice. She rocked and prayed, her eyes fixed on her clenched hands, her head bowed as if ready for a blow.
Max’s mouth went dry. His tongue felt enormous, stuck, blocking him from speaking. She was lost. He had destroyed her.
What an arrogant meddling fool. He felt contempt and rage at himself. She had no defenses against his fanciful ideas. She wasn’t ambivalent about the child she had lost. She loved her baby. Her pathos wasn’t diluted by ironies or insights. To feel such a loss was unimaginable to him.
No it wasn’t. Losing Jonah would hurt him that much. And no psychobabble on earth or television could convince Max that it hadn’t been his fault. The universe had given him a son to protect and any accident was his responsibility.
He had done wrong. How could he fix it? What could he do with Carla? How could he explain this to her husband and mother? What did it mean about him that he could so casually harm someone, someone he claimed to love?
Max couldn’t speak with his tongue so thick. The heated air of the car was too hot for his nostrils to absorb the oxygen.
Carla’s dreadful prayer hurt his ears: “Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Max thought it so natural for her to pray to another mother, to a perfect mother.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God—”
Max opened his door and got out. The cold cleared his eyes of pain. Carla didn’t react to his departure.
“—pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Max shut the car door on her.
The hour of our death — the words infected his brain. The hour of our death. Had it come at last? What was Max connected to if he had driven this woman — the only person he had been able to feel comfortable with in all these months — into madness?
Max went to the trunk and opened it. Folded neatly in the corner beside the red plastic box of emergency tools was a plaid blanket. They used to cover Jonah with it when he was little. Max smelled the fabric. He imagined he smelled the sweet dank odor of a child.
The hour of our death. Were they dead anyway? What was the difference?
Max lifted the emergency tool box. The jumper cables inside were so thick the top didn’t close completely. Max felt the weight of the box in his hands, judging whether it was enough. Too light. He looked around and saw — near the base of the seawall, amidst a broken bottle, a squashed beer can, and a destroyed transistor radio — two partially broken bricks.
He emptied the plastic box of the jumper cables, gloves, tire gauge, the can of pressurized air, black electrical tape and other sundries. He carried the red box over to the bricks and put them in. They fit perfectly and gave it a good weight, in Max’s judgment, close enough to what would be needed.
He used the electrical tape to attach the plaid blanket so that it completely wrapped around the plastic box with the bricks inside. He opened the back door on the passenger side and put the blanket and box inside.
Carla’s rhythmic prayer continued, “…pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace…”
Max left the back door open and opened Carla’s door. He spoke into her small perfectly shaped ear. “I want you to sit in the back.”
She looked into his eyes, but continued in a whisper, “Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…”
“I’m just going to move you to the backseat, that’s all.” Max undid her belt and pulled her halfway out of her seat, lifting her by her clenched arms, rigid from her posture.
“No!” she shouted and fought against him, interrupting her prayer at last.
“I’m not getting you out of the car. Just getting you in the backseat.”
He pulled and this time she came out, although still stuck in her pose, arms locked, hands entwined into a fist she kept at her mouth. Her eyes darted from side to side warily. “Holy Mary,” she whispered frantically as he guided her to the rear, “Mother of God, pray for us sinners—”
Max put her in the back, positioning her in the middle where there would be no obstruction from the bucket seats and pulled the lap belt across her, locking it. He took the red box and slid it onto her lap.
She stopped praying at the feel of the weight. She looked down at the box, stupefied.
“That’s your baby,” Max said. “Hold him upright.” He lifted the box so it would stand on its side. It came up to her chin which he imagined would be about right. “This is Bubble. This is your chance to hold on tight and save him.” Max shut the back and front doors. He raced around to the driver’s side, watching her through the window, worried she would balk. She dropped her head to study the blanket. Her black curls covered the top and her face. But she held onto the blanket and box.
Max got into the Saab, put on his seat belt and started the car in a hurry. He pulled out into the street and shouted at her: “Did you pray in the plane?”
No answer. He saw the road was clear. He pushed on the accelerator, watching the speedometer. At fifty miles an hour that should be enough for a test and yet perhaps not enough to get himself squashed. He glanced in the mirror. Carla’s face was white, her eyes wide and pitch-black, staring at him with grave attention.
“Did you pray in the plane?” he shouted.
She shook her head.
“Hold on to him tight! Pray to God to give you the strength to save your baby!”
Three blocks ahead the road curved to the right, around a brick warehouse wall. If Max went straight they would smash into it. Nothing was parked alongside to obstruct a direct hit. They were going forty miles an hour. Max pressed the accelerator.
“Pray and hold on!” he shouted and glanced at the rear-view mirror.
Carla lowered her eyes. “Hail Mary—” she whispered. She folded her arms around the box, crossing past each other, each hand gripping the opposite side, holding it tighter than she could possibly have held her child.
Max glanced at the speedometer as the wall loomed — he saw the word PRODUCE written in half-faded red letters — and noted that he had already gone past fifty miles an hour…
Too fast for me, he realized. I’ll die. Pray for me now at the hour of my death. He shouted, “Hold on to your baby!” as they hit the brick wall.
AFTERLIFE
19
Carla felt Bubble break away from her. He slipped the entwined grip of her fingers, flung her arms wide and flew out of her lap. Her body tried to follow him, but only the top half could. Her head passed between the front seats. Her cheek gently touched a bloody face that had turned toward her to make a plea. It belonged to Max. Max disappeared. She was yanked to the rear. A hand whacked the back of her head, the way the Sisters at school used to hit her if she talked in line. There was deafening noise, like countless drawers of silverware emptying at once on a tile floor. Yet she kept on thinking through it all, “He couldn’t stay. I couldn’t hold him.” Even in the quiet aftermath — all she could hear or feel was something spinning behind her — a corner in her heart opened to a glad feeling of comfort.
“You see—” she heard Max say.
She opened her eyes and screamed. A strange face was staring at her.
“You see…?” it mumbled. Max’s hand pointed at the smashed windshield: the glass was gone, replaced by bricks; the frame had buckled at the top and sides. The blanketcovered box was where the rearview mirror used to be, stopped from flying out of the car only because of the brick wall. The box looked to be half of its original size.