Page 104 of Guy's Girl
When he flips the page and is faced with a photograph of his again-pregnant mother, his father crouched at her side, one hand on her belly, he freezes. There he is. Adrian, in utero. They look elated, ready to bring yet another member into their little family.
But they don’t know the truth: that Adrian’s conception is the beginning of the end.
He can barely look through the rest of the photographs. Beatrix, a toddler now, their pregnant mother, and their excited father. He can’t look at the cups of coffee, at the walks along the river, at the birthday parties and saint’s holidays at their grandparents’ house. He doesn’t want to see it. He knows what comes next.
His mother is massively pregnant. His sister is grinning with only six teeth. His father has his arms around them both.
Then Adrian flips the page, and there’s nothing. No photo. Just an empty plastic sleeve.
He flips to the next page. The next. He’s in denial. He’s certain that if he just looks a little harder, he will find something. The photos will not end here. They cannot end here.They cannot end here.
He flips the very last page. He has reached the end of the album. There is nothing left. He shoves the book off his lap. It lands on the floor facedown, pages bent and smushed at an angle. Adrian bends over and wraps his arms around his legs. He tips over onto his side. He is sobbing now. The gasps come in deep and heavy, shaking his body. He cannot breathe. He cannot think.
He fumbles in his pocket for his phone. He pulls it out with unsteady hands. The screen is a blur. He presses the screen several times, finally finding the call icon. He scrolls until he finds a contact that saysMOM. He hits call.
She picks up after just two rings. “Adrian!” she says, but before she can say anything more, Adrian interrupts:
“It’s my fault.” He sobs, speaking in Hungarian. “It’s my fault.”
“Sweetheart, calm down.” His mother’s voice is alarmed. “What is it? What are you talking about?”
“It’s my fault, Mom. He would never have died if it wasn’t for me.”
“Who—”
“He died on the way to the hospital. On the way to meet me. It’smy fault.” He can hardly breathe, can hardly get the words out. “He died for me. I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so, so sorry.”
His mother says nothing.
Adrian makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a wail. “I didn’t mean to take him away from you.”
No one speaks. The only noise comes from Adrian sobbing into the telephone. Some part of his brain recognizes that he should feel ashamed for acting so irrationally, but another part of him—an overwhelming majority—wishes that he could cry even harder. That he could push out every ounce of water in his body. Maybe if he did, it would expel the pain that built up in him while he flipped through that photo album. Maybe it would drain away the grief now filling every crevice of his body.
After a minute or two, his sobs subside. As they do, he begins to hear his mother’s breathing on the other end. He tries to focus on that, on the sound of her breath. To let it pull him in and out of himself, too.
“Adrian,” she says finally. Her voice is soft. “Your father’s death is not your fault. You know that, right?”
He says nothing.
“It was an accident. One of the worst accidents that has ever happened, but an accident nonetheless. Yes, he was taken—but it wasn’t by you. It was by a patch of ice.” She pauses. “You understand that, yes?”
He sniffles.
“God may work in mysterious ways, but he does not take a life for a life,” she says. “That is not his way.”
“But his way meant that Dad had to die before I could be born.”
“That may be, Adrian. But that does not make it your fault.”
He inhales raggedly. “I can’t take it, Mom.” His voice cracks. “It’s too heavy.”
“What is, honey?”
He exhales. “Everything.”
Though he cannot see his mother, he thinks that he can feel her nodding through the phone. He can imagine the expression on her face: grave but understanding, lips pursed, two thin lines in her forehead. It’s an expression he’s seen hundreds of times—the same she wears in church when the priest says that we are all sinners and we must repent for our sins.
“I know, honey,” she says soothingly. “I know.”
