Elephant Wallpaper
Barney, we were going to call him. It’s a family name, Amy’s dad’s middle name, after her great-great-granddad Barnaby. It’s a name we imagined calling up the stairs. She would’ve sewn it into the collars of polo shirts. I might’ve gotten it tattooed somewhere. But when the nurse asked us if we had a name in mind, Amy shook her head, staring at a low spot on the wall. No, I said. We didn’t have a name. So the nurse wrote “Baby Boy Field” on the bag of remains and gave it to me, and I put the bag in my breast pocket and buttoned it. We still call him “Baby Boy” if we call him anything. To tell the truth, we don’t mention him very much. It’s hard to reminisce about someone who never had any life at all, who never even opened his eyes.
The night we lost him I woke up thinking I’d wet the bed. That’s really what I thought. Can you imagine? I put my hand out and it was wet. And I was wet through my pajama bottoms. I’d had a couple of drinks. I’d been out with some of the lads from work. My first thought was, She’s going to kill me. I thought, My god, I’ve pissed the bed, this is a new low. I was just figuring out what I was going to say by way of apology, reaching for the light, and at the same time I was thinking it didn’t smell like urine. It was fishy and metallic, and sort of warm, like when you overload a plug socket. And then I found the switch and turned it on.
I scattered Baby Boy on a bright day in March. I did it on my own. Amy had to work and anyway, she said, she didn’t want to be reminded. She found the whole thing sort of morbid, I think. I didn’t find it morbid. It seemed like the right thing to do. I’d been saving my holiday because work only gave five days’ paternity. I had all this holiday to use up.
With my dad, there’d been a whole jerry can of ashes. I remember it was like emptying a hoover. But I couldn’t have filled an eggcup with what was left of Baby Boy. I did it in the meadow behind our house because Amy said she didn’t want to tread on him by accident when she was weeding the garden. The ashes were almost white, and I remember I thought of veal, how veal is very pale compared to beef. I don’t remember if I cried.
The second time was different. No blood, no panic. No fraught drive to the hospital in the middle of the night. Just a week-twelve scan with no heartbeat. Then quietness, waiting. A fortnight of dead time before the repeat scan, and she could have the misoprostol. I kept myself busy, went to work, came home. Sometimes I went for a drink after work.
She planted climbing roses and screwed trellises to the wall. She cleaned the top of the kitchen cupboards and took on extra accounts at work. She rented a pressure cleaner for the driveway. She made inquiries about the guttering. She looked into getting the house re-carpeted.
She started converting the spare room back into an office. The wallpaper’s coming away easily, she said, standing just outside the door. I had one foot on the landing, one on the stairs. Music was playing on the portable radio in there, a song I knew but couldn’t name. She pushed her goggles up her forehead with the heel of her hand and took the cup of tea I’d made her. It’s coming down in sheets, she said. She drank some tea, looked for a moment like she might smile. Then she put her hand on the wood of the door. Her skin was dry and sore-looking. Have a look, she said. It’s almost an elephant-free zone.
Not right now, I said, already going down. I’ve got so much I need to be doing.
Kathy Stevens (@KathyStevens91) is from Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Granta online, Litro, MIR, The Pig’s Back, and others. She has a creative writing MA from the University of East Anglia. Her day job is a butcher.