Upstairs the nursery still throbs.
I notice the red light on the answering machine in the hall flashing. Four messages. I flick through the list of registered phone numbers and recognise friends’ numbers. I leave the answering machine, not able to listen to their condolences quite yet. Then I freeze. I go back. I flick through the list again. There it is. Monday evening. 7.10 p.m. Again at 7.12 p.m. My second chance to take the call. The call I had foolishly rushed down the stairs for and sacrificed my child’s life.
They have left a message. With shaking fingers, I press play.
‘Hello, this is Xtra-vision, Phisboro calling about the DVD The Muppet Christmas Carol. It says on our system that it’s one week late. We’d appreciate it if you could return it as soon as possible, please.’
I inhale sharply. Tears spring in my eyes. What did I expect? A phone call worthy of losing my baby? Something so urgent that I was right to rush for it? Would that somehow warrant my loss?
My entire body trembles with rage and shock. Breathing in shakily, I make my way into the living room. I look straight ahead to the DVD player. On top, is the DVD I rented while minding my goddaughter. I reach for the DVD, hold it tightly in my hands, squeeze it as though I can stop the life in it. Then I throw it hard across the room. It knocks our collection of photographs off the top of the piano, cracking the glass on our wedding photo, chipping the silver coating of another.
I open my mouth. And I scream. I scream at the top of my lungs, the loudest I can possibly go. It’s deep and low and filled with anguish. I scream again and hold it for as long as I can. One scream after another from the pit of my stomach, from the depths of my heart. I let out deep howls that border on laughter, that are laced with frustration. I scream and I scream until I am out of breath and my throat burns.
Upstairs, the nursery continues to vibrate. Thump-thump, thump-thump. It beckons me, the heart of my home beating wildly. I go to the staircase, step over the rug and onto the stairs. I grab the banister, feeling too weak even to lift my legs. I pull myself upstairs. The thumping gets louder and louder with every step until I reach the top and face the nursery door. It stops throbbing. All is still now.
I trace a finger down the door, press my cheek to it, willing all that happened not to be so. I reach for the handle and open the door.
A half-painted wall of Buttercup Dream greets me. Soft pastels. Sweet smells. A cot with a mobile of little yellow ducks dangling above. A toy box decorated with giant letters of the alphabet. On a little rail hang two baby grows. Little booties on a dresser.
A bunny rabbit sits up enthusiastically inside the cot. He smiles stupidly at me. I take my shoes off and step barefoot onto the soft shagpile carpet, try to root myself in this world. I close the door behind me. There’s not a sound. I pick up the rabbit and carry it around the room with me while I run my hands over the shiny new furniture, clothes and toys. I open a music box and watch as the little mouse inside begins to circle round and round after a piece of cheese to a mesmerising tinkling sound.
‘I’m sorry, Sean,’ I whisper, and my words catch in my throat. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
I lower myself to the soft floor, pull my legs close to me and hug the blissfully unaware bunny. I look again to the little mouse whose very being revolves around eternally chasing a piece of cheese he will never ever reach, let alone eat.
I slam the box shut and the music stops and I am left in silence.
‘I can’t find any food in the apartment; we’re going to have to get take-out,’ Justin’s sister-in-law, Doris, calls into the living room as she roots through the kitchen cabinets.
‘So maybe you know the woman,’ Justin’s younger brother, Al, sits on the plastic garden furniture chair in Justin’s half-furnished living room.
‘No, you see, that’s what I’m trying to explain. It’s like I know her but at the same time, I didn’t know her at all.’
‘You recognised her.’
‘Yes. Well, no.’ Kind of.
‘And you don’t know her name.’
‘No. I definitely don’t know her name.’
‘Hey, is anyone listening to me in there or am I talking to myself?’ Doris interrupts again. ‘I said there’s no food here so we’re going to have to get take-out.’
‘Yeah, sure, honey,’ Al calls automatically. ‘Maybe she’s a student of yours or she went to one of your talks. You usually remember people you give talks to?’
‘There’s hundreds of people at a time,’ Justin shrugs. ‘And mostly they sit in darkness.’
‘So that’s a no then.’ Al rubs his chin.
‘Actually, forget the take-out,’ Doris calls. ‘You don’t have any plates or cutlery – we’re going to have to eat out.’
‘And just let me get this clear, Al. When I say “recognise”, I mean I didn’t actually know her face.’
Al frowns.
‘I just got a feeling. Like she was familiar.’ Yeah, that’s it, she was familiar.
‘Maybe she just looked like someone you know.’
Maybe.
‘Hey, is anybody listening to me?’ Doris interupts them, standing at the living-room door with her inch-long leopard-print nails on her skin-tight leather-trouser-clad hips. Thirty-five-yearold Italian-American fast-talking Doris had been married to Al for the past ten years and is regarded by Justin as a lovable but annoying younger sister. Without an ounce of fat on her bones, everything she wears looks like it comes out of the closet of Grease’s Sandy post makeover.
‘Yes, sure, honey,’ Al says again, not taking his eyes off Justin. ‘Maybe it was that déjà vu thingy.’
‘Yes!’ Justin clicks his fingers. ‘Or perhaps vécu, or senti,’ he rubs his chin, lost in thought. ‘Or visité.’
‘What the heck is that?’ Al asks as Doris pulls over a cardboard box filled with books, to sit on, and joins them.
‘Déjà vu is French for “already seen” and it describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher Emile Boirac, which expanded upon an essay that he wrote while at the University of Chicago.’
‘Go the Maroons!’ Al raises Justin’s old trophy cup that he’s drinking from, in the air, and then gulps down his beer.
Doris looks at him with disdain. ‘Please continue, Justin.’
‘Well, the experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of eeriness or strangeness. The experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience genuinely happened in the past. Déjà vu has been described as remembering the future.’
‘Wow,’ Doris says breathily.
‘So what’s your point, bro?’ Al belches.
‘Well,