Errata Literary Magazine
Her by Don Swaim
She's carried from the delivery room. Her flesh is blue against the white blanket. Her eyes are shut. Tight. Nurse holds her in strong arms. Is she supposed to be so blue? Is she breathing? "A little complication," Nurse says. "Why don't you go in and see your wife?" Wife is asleep, exhausted. I touch Wife's hand but don't stay long. As I leave St. Margaret's I pass the nursery. She's in a crib, eyes still shut. Skin not quite as blue. I aim my camera, take her picture through the glass. Nurse waves at me and smiles. "She'll be fine. Just fine, I'm sure." I'm encouraged. Whistle as I turn on the car radio. Castro takes Havana. Switch the dial to music. "Everything's Coming Up Roses." I buy a new hat. I never see her again. She's in a little coffin. The casket rests on some boards over a grave. Undertaker kicks a chunk of dirt into the hole. Wife and I hold each other. Dark down there. She'll be alone in the dark. The dirt hits the bottom. We can hear it. I cry. Wife doesn't. Autopsy shows nothing, they say. I sleep for three days. Wife and I bring her home from the hospital and lay her between us in our bed. She's tiny. I want to sleep next to her but I'm afraid of crushing her or smothering her in the night. I lower her into her crib. She reaches out with miniature fingers for the mobile dangling above her. She crawls into the bathroom where I'm shaving. I splash her with the bathwater. She giggles. She stands in her highchair. Her face is smeared with Easter chocolate. There's a wide smile on her face. Thank God she's wearing a bib. The lights of Christmas reflect in her eyes. I've just come from the voting booth. Goldwater's going to get a licking. Balloons bounce in the backyard. Her fifth birthday. She opens her presents and laughs. The neighborhood kids run in circles around her. She blows out the yellow candles on her cake. There's icing stuck to her chin. I buy a beetle. She vanishes on a June afternoon in 1966. Her mother and I drive the neighborhood in our separate cars searching for her. My heart pounds, stomach churns. I call the police. "Have you been looking for me, Daddy?" she says. Her eyes are wide. "I was at Lucy's." Can't take Sgt. Pepper off the turntable. She jumps through the surf at Rehobeth. I leap after her, grab her, spin her around as the waves tap my knees. She steps on a beehive. I slap the bees away from her with my jacket. Principal calls me at the agency. "It was a fall from the playground swing. She's at the hospital." I run the red lights to get there. She sits forlornly in a corner, her arm in a cast. "I'm all right, Daddy." Optometrist fits her for glasses. She's ten. Brown horn rims. Her eyes are blue behind the lenses. I'm reading the Times. She sees the headline and looks up from her homework. "Where's Chappaquiddick?" she asks. Before I can answer she says, "I hate them! My glasses!" She wears a pink dress to her sophomore dance. She's beginning to walk like a woman. Weeps as much as she laughs. Her mother adds extra feminine items to the shopping list. She almost makes cheerleader. Is part of the yearbook staff. Flunks chemistry. Lands the second lead in her junior class play. "I think that boy you're seeing is smoking dope," I say. "I can see anyone I want." "And I expect you in by eleven." "I'm sixteen!" "As long as you're living in my...." She's asleep. I step into the darkness of her room. The radio is on very low. "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." I turn it off. Watch her face in the half light from the hallway. Kiss her mouth gently, absorbing her breath. I carry her bags into her new dormitory room, the paint still fresh. Drive off seeing her become smaller in the rear view mirror. How can I leave her alone like this? Without me? She makes the swimming team. Pledges Phi Gam. Is managing editor of the campus daily. She falls in love. Thinks she is. I lie in my bed. The all-news station drones. This bulletin. John Lennon has been shot and killed. I rush for the phone to call someone. Then I realize I don't have anyone to call. She wears a purple robe and a mortarboard, standing on The Green holding her diploma. "You're not mad at me about the, the..." she says. "Let's not talk about it," I say. "It didn't hurt," she says. "All the girls seem to be having them these days," I say. I snap her picture. She puts her arms around me and pushes her head into my chest. We see her mother approaching from the columns. I shake her mother's hand. "Nice to see you again," I tell her mother. Reagan is shot, Sadat assassinated. What the hell is AIDS? She's a gofer for a travel magazine. Has an affair with an editor who's in his forties and married. "Daddy, I can't help myself." It ends as she knew it would. Her tears wet my shoulder. She moves to Seattle and stays six months. An IV sags from my arm. My temple pulses. My chest feels as though it's been crushed. I open my eyes and see her face close to mine. "Daddy?" "What happened to me?" "Your heart, Daddy." "Heart? I'm barely fifty!" "The doctor says you're going to be okay." I read Graham Greene. Start my exercises. Lose weight. Give up Pall Malls. Cut down on the Seagram's but not too much. My old desk is waiting for me at the agency. "Welcome back," they say. I see her byline in the magazine. I clip out her article and hang it on the wall. Her name is my name. "But you're already an associate editor," I say to her. "At twenty-five! Why give it up right now when you're doing so well?" "Ben wants to go to Portland." "Ben! Ben! What about your career?" "I love him, Daddy." Rock Hudson has AIDS. Leon Klinghoffer is murdered. I meet a woman. Seven die in space. I see the fireworks light the Statue of Liberty. I buy tickets for Into the Woods. The Dow peaks at 2,722. A surgeon removes a growth in my nose. I remember Roy Orbison. I send her a check for five big ones because she and Ben need it. I start The Bonfire of the Vanities but never finish it. The Attorney General is unindictable. She's thirty. I wait for her to arrive. It's been a year. The tube is on. The World Series, delayed by an earthquake. I don't even like baseball. The bell. She stands at the door. I love her smile. Ben's behind her. She hands me a small white bundle. "Here he is," she says. "He's got your name." I search for the pictures I took of her long ago in St. Margaret's. When she was blue. Blue. And so little. I can't find them. There's a lot I've lost. Her mother and I never even got a marker for her grave. I'm going back to the cemetery some day to look for her.