Page 70 of Beneath the Poet's House

“Once,” she begins, “there was a young woman who met a young man in Providence. They fell in love, and they were married. Things were good until they weren’t. Things were good until the woman wouldn’t fall in line. It wasn’t just that she wanted a career, a voice, of her own. He’d allow her that. He was educated, after all, a self-proclaimed feminist. No, it’s that she wanted him to care about her career, her voice, as much as she did his. She wanted him to care about—to see—her as a person, the way she, of course, saw him.

“Years passed, and the relationship became strained. The woman figured they were heading for divorce. But when she brought it up, the husband looked at her like she was mad. He said he thought they were ready to have a baby. He knew about her condition. The diagnosis that made becoming pregnant as risky as cliff jumping or cave diving. But the husband wouldn’t let it go. He dragged her to every cardiologist in New Jersey and half of New York, as well as every obstetrician, including his best friend, Dr. Aidan Vesper. Hoping to get a different answer. A different probability. Some number, a set of odds, that would make her feel comfortable enough to move forward. That would make her change her mind.

“At first, the woman attended the appointments. She listened as every doctor said the same thing: ‘It’s feasible, but dicey. With a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, delivering a healthy baby while remaining safe is a study in risk.’ Eventually, the woman hit her breaking point. She told the husband the matter was closed. She would not attend another appointment, nor entertain any further conversations about getting pregnant. Maybe, she told him, if their relationship recovered from the strain it’d been under, they could look into adoption. But for the time being, he’d have to get used to the idea of being childless.

“That night, the husband acted like he accepted her decision. He bought a bottle of champagne and cooked dinner. He told her he wanted them to recover, that they were celebrating the next chapter, childless or not. She hadn’t realized how much stress she’d been under, and she drank way more champagne than she’d normally allow herself. She woke up later to the husband on top of her. Finishing inside of her. If she wasn’t going to give him what he wanted, he was going to take it. He made that perfectly clear.

“Why did the woman stay? Why didn’t she tell someone what was going on? She was depressed, for one. She had long since stopped writing. And every day, the husband filled her head with the most horrible sentiments. She was evil. Debased. The very opposite of a woman. She was damaged goods, with her defective heart and her defective brain. That her mind was only as good as the stories it could no longer produce, her body as good as the child it couldn’t create.

“He came into her bed for two years. Not every night. Not every week. But every month, unless he was particularly busy at work. The woman was drowning, dying, until, on a whim, she started seeing a new psychiatrist. With the help of this doctor—and an adjustment to her antidepressant, as well as birth control prescribed for hormone regulation that would help her mental state—the woman started feeling better. The husband’s words stopped seeming like gospel. And then, one weekend, she went to her mother’s home in Connecticut to regroup,planning to demand a divorce when she returned to her husband on Sunday.”

Saoirse pauses, taking stock of Emmit’s expression, the placement of his body on top of hers. He’s engrossed in the story, sitting back now, not even trying to hold her upper body in place. She slides her right hand down to her thigh and slips her pointer and middle fingers into her pocket. Careful to keep every other muscle still, she pinches her fingers around the stopper of the syringe.

“She wasn’t supposed to return until Sunday,” Saoirse continues, “but after speaking with her mother, after committing to her plan, she hadn’t wanted to wait.” She looks hard into Emmit’s eyes. “The woman came home Thursday evening. Not Sunday.Thursday.Around eleven p.m. Three days earlier than planned.

“I drove the three and a half hours back to Cedar Grove from Connecticut without stopping,” Saoirse says, switching from third to first person unexpectedly, wanting Emmit to hear theI’s andme’s. “But when I got home, I almost lost my nerve. Rather than leave my suitcase and purse in the car, so that I could take off to a hotel after I told him, I brought them inside, terrified of what I was about to do. The walkway was ice-strewn and muddy. Snow clung to patches of grass around the yard. The key to the front door was cold in my hand. I took a final, deep breath and pushed open the door. The house was silent.

“I dropped my bag in the foyer and looked to the top of the stairs, thinking,I could go up right now and get into bed. Wait until tomorrow to tell him I’m leaving.Instead, I started down the hallway. Toward Jonathan’s office.

“The door was closed, and the light that seeped from the cracks was molten amber. If he was at his desk, he’d be accompanied by a rocks glass of bourbon. He’d be volatile. I was walking into a trap. Still, I’d come too far to turn back now.

“The room smelled so strongly of whiskey it made me dizzy. Jonathan sat at his massive desk with his back to me. I cleared my throat, but he didn’t turn. Intent on dissipating the sickly glow in theroom, I moved toward the floor lamp, but my hand smacked against the shade, sending it wobbling. With excruciating slowness, Jonathan raised his head and turned, until he was looking right at me. ‘You’ve come to tell me you’re leaving, haven’t you?’ he asked. I closed my eyes.

“When I opened them, the office felt different. Warmer. No longer dangerous and silent but charged. Something waited for me. Something more than a house haunted with the sound of floorboards creaking beneath my husband’s footsteps, on his way to me in the night. The warmth was the idea of my freedom. Of getting my life back. ‘Yes. I want a divorce,’ I said.

“He grabbed me in one lightning-fast movement, one hand wrapping around my throat, fingers not yet squeezing but the pressure heavy, the pads of his fingers pressing into the cords at the side of my neck. With the other hand, he reached for his bourbon, brought the glass to his mouth, and drained it. ‘Why would I give you somethingyouwant when you won’t give me whatIwant?’ A prescription bottle peeked out from the pocket of his button-up shirt. I couldn’t see the label, but I knew it was one of his ‘nighttime meds’: Ambien, perhaps. Or Valium. ‘I’m not asking for something outlandish or unreasonable,’ he continued. ‘You’re my wife. I want a child. Our purpose for being here becomes diluted if we cannot pass on our possessions, our wealth, our genes. It’s not a difficult concept.’

“His eyes were bleary, despite the laser-sharp focus of his words. ‘It’s not that youcan’tgive me what I want. That, I could understand. If you were physically unable to conceive, I’d have a different set of decisions to make. Maybe I’d leave you for a woman who could have children. Maybe I wouldn’t. But that’s not the situation we are in here, is it? It’s that you’re a selfish’—he poked me in the sternum—‘brutish, difficult woman who refuses to give me what I want just because she thinks she can. And therefore, I will take—’

“He faltered. The expression on his face became bewildered, as if he’d belched among dinner company and was not quite sure how it had happened. ‘I will take what is—’ he tried to continue, but somethingwas happening. He put a hand to his chest, and his mouth twisted. I knew that gesture. Knew that expression. But I didn’t dare believe—

“He fell to his knees, clutched his chest, and grunted, then looked at me, wincing with pain. He managed to get out a single word. His voice was hoarse, like something that’d been buried for the darkest, coldest, and longest of the seasons.

“‘ . . . miiiiine,’ he said.”

Chapter 47

Saoirse hears the word echoing out into the future, across months and places, from the writhing mouths of specters and the lying mouths of lovers, blaring in her mind like a siren. It hasn’t lost its volume. It hasn’t lost its power. Emmit is staring at her, his face twisted in an expression of horror.

“He pleaded with me,” Saoirse says. “‘My phone,’ he said. ‘It’s right there. Please, call an ambulance.’ I remember the way his breath caught in his throat, the continuous heaving of his chest. But I didn’t know where his phone was. I never looked for it. I never took my eyes off him. The man who held me prisoner in my own home. My own mind. Who would have traded my life for that of the baby he wanted on mere principle.

“He made one final attempt as he leaned, half-crumpled, against the side of his desk, his eyes pleading. The way mine had pleaded with him night after night after night for years. ‘Call,’ he whispered. ‘Please, Saoirse. Please.’ But I didn’t. And do you know why, Emmit?”

Emmit flinches at being addressed. He shakes his head. As he does, Saoirse pulls the syringe from her pocket and flicks off the cap.

“Because this was my momentous, soul-crushingly significant thing,” she says.

Emmit’s eyes widen, and he pulls back as if he’s been slapped.

Saoirse continues, “I watched him die, and I didn’t call for help. Had I known he’d sent a text to Aidan—that’s the man you kicked outof my house the night you kidnapped me—telling him I’d come home early, I would have deleted it.” Saoirse stops. “I still can’t figure why Aidan hasn’t gone to the police.” She shrugs one shoulder, using the movement to further move her arm into position.

“Anyway, after Jonathan died, I stayed in the house for three whole days while his body rotted.” She tilts her head. “Most people think that flies don’t appear on a corpse until a few days into decomposition, when the body starts to bloat. But did you know that blowflies and flesh flies often arrive on the scene within minutes after a person has died? They swarmed the office, the house, in droves, and I endured them, so that I could say he was dead when I found him.” Slowly, she lifts the hand with the syringe. “He was dead when I found him,” she adds thoughtfully. Her thumb thrums against the plunger. “Or, at least, he might as well have been. Twelve years earlier on a moonlight night in Providence ... he was already dead to me.”

Saoirse drives the syringe into the front of Emmit’s thigh and slams the plunger down, dispensing every milliliter of its contents. Emmit howls and propels himself off Saoirse, rolling back onto a low stack of concrete slabs. Saoirse scrabbles backward, careful to steer clear of the holes in the floorboards. On a wide, somewhat sturdy-looking beam, she jumps to her feet.

Emmit clutches his thigh and struggles to stand. Already, his eyes are glassy. His muscles contract in a series of shudders. He tries to maneuver off the slab, but he can’t figure the best way forward. He’s surrounded by joists and noggings, no baseboard. To jump from his current position to an opposite joist would take dexterity and balance, and Emmit no longer has either.

He clambers to the farthest side of slab, where a frayed rope hangs out of reach. Before Saoirse can consider why this jump might seem like a better option to a man whose vision is blurring and whose hands are starting to tremor, Emmit leaps for it. He misses, falling toward a vertical alcove against the chamber’s back wall. Through sheer luck, he lands on a thin piece of wood that juts across the space, keeping him fromplunging to some subterranean level below. With slow, labored movements, Emmit pushes himself to a sitting position, blinking across the yawning expanse of empty space, the crisscrossed beams and haphazard piles of building material, the chaotic loops of rope and open walls.

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