Stories
by Joy Renee

Iris let the book she had just finished fall closed. It lay on her lap, the weight of it like despair. She had just read this lengthy expose of the foster care system as part of her research into ways for her and Greg to create a family despite their unexplained infertility. She hadn�t discussed it with Greg yet, though she assumed he knew. How could he have missed seeing the books and brochures on adoption and foster care laying about for the last several months? Now she needed to talk about it and didn�t know how to broach it, for it was too closely related to the fact of their childlessness. They had talked that topic to death long ago and buried it under a tombstone marked TABOO. Yet it remained, a black hole to which all other subjects gravitated and were distorted, leaving naught between them but the vacuum of her womb.

She flipped her thick hempen braid behind her in order to reach for a Kleenex and then had to drag it back over her shoulder before she could get comfortable again in her nest of pillows and blankets in the loveseat-rocker.

"Ugh!This lousy cold!" She blew her nose vigorously. She should never have read such a downer book while down with a cold. Facts and anecdotes from the book were seething in the juices of her outrage. Oh, how she wanted to talk about it!

"Tell me about it!" Greg, stretched out in his recliner with his own book, suddenly loosed a convulsive sneeze. He fumbled for his box of Kleenex and found it empty.

�Here, catch.� She tossed her box into his lap. For a moment there she had thought he was inviting her to tell him about the book. But why would he ask her to add to the aggravation of this already defunct week-end with one of her harangues at the injustice of a universe that bestows multitudes of kids on indifferent to hostile parents, while withholding them from those who want them with passion and would bathe them in an ocean of love. Meaning, of course, Greg and Iris, who had spent the last five of their ten year marriage holding monthly wakes for hope.

She took a chocolate candy-kiss from a bowl on the table beside her, peeled it and popped it in her mouth. Luxuriating in the bitter-sweet flavor flooding her mouth, she thought: NO, Greg would not thank me for bringing that up today. It was bad enough their summer colds had thwarted their plans to spend the week-end camping at the coast--together with their families. The others had gone on without them, to soak up surf and sun, leaving Greg and Iris to soak up Kleenex at home. So she caged her tongue behind gritted teeth and reached for another candy-kiss.

Chocolate could cure broken hearts and rainy days and do wonders for the common cold. Too bad it couldn�t solve the dilemma of their childlessness, now that this book and uprooted her budding interest in foster care as an alternative. She was no David to take on such a bureaucratic Goliath. She just wanted some kids to love. But love was suspect in a realm where kids received mostly pain from the love of their parents, and false hope from the love of their foster families.

What a conundrum! Thought Iris, licking chocolate off her fingers and then drumming them on the cover of the book. She gazed hard at Greg and the sight of him sent a surge of inarticulate need through her--a need to hold and be held, to hang on for dear life. When her hand floated into the space between them, reaching for him without a direct command or even permission from herself, she looked at it, awed by its singularity. She closed her fist on emptiness and drew it back into her lap. She was glad Greg hadn�t seen that. She would have read in his eyes recognition of her need and then watched as knowledge of his impotence to fulfill it overwhelmed him and he looked away, turned away, walked away. So many ways to go away without getting away.

Not that Greg was impotent in any literal sense. But their childlessness had muted their passion, turned sex into a calendar event, a dutiful reaching out in the dark, a somber clutching or furious fumbling, eyes closed, faces averted and tongues held quiet in the coffins of their mouths. If nothing is said then there can be nothing to misunderstand. Isn�t that so? She grimaces at her sarcastic thought, forced to recognize her own part in their conspiracy of silence. Thus the marital bed becomes a veritable mausoleum for two.

Iris slid the book onto the coffee table and something fell over the edge onto the floor with a soft plop. She bent to retrieve it, her arm fishing blindly under the table, patting the carpet until her fist closed on something that felt like rubber spaghetti and paper meatballs she reeled in her arm to find her hand full of Koosh balls and used Kleenex. She separated out the dried wads of tissue, tossing them over Greg�s legs into the trash can--three overhand throws with her left hand, each followed by the twonk that signaled success.

She grinned, pleased with herself, but then felt silly thinking: Leave it to a childless day-care provider to find fulfillment on a Sunday afternoon by chucking desiccated snot rags into a tin can from across the room. Her arm, having got the knack of it, was reluctant to stop, and before Iris quite knew what she was about one of the Koosh balls was arcing over Greg�s chair. It cleared the rim of his book which immediately fell from his hands as his startled �Hey!� echoed off the walls.

His glasses were askew and Iris laughed with glee as he adjusted them with one hand and found the offending Koosh ball with the other. She held two more Koosh balls aloft in an obvious challenge.

�It�s like that is it?� he said, letting fly. As did she. His skimmed her cheek with a breeze and landed behind the loveseat, which put it out of bounds. At least until somebody was willing to perform major acrobatics to retrieve it. He caught hers and tossed it back as she lofted the third one, which he again caught. And so on. Until wild throws landed both Koosh balls out of reach and they were scrambling to re-arm.

Once out of their chairs the room became the arena as they dodged and ducked and danced until they collided in the center of the floor, laying simultaneous claim to a solitary Koosh ball--another one having been lost behind the loveseat. Greg got it first so she clambered over the coffee table and onto the loveseat. She dove over its back, feet flailing air and hands groping carpet but all she got for her efforts was a handful of her braid. Then Greg caught her by the waist one armed and stuffed the Koosh ball down her back.

�Oh, that Tickles!� She squealed and tried to untuck her T-shirt from her jeans but he penned her arms and laughed as she squirmed. Then they were face-to-face, laughing and panting and Greg was about to kiss her. Iris knew this the way animals know earthquakes or hurricanes are imminent. He was going to kiss her and it would be like their first kiss ever, full of wildness and wonder. But instead, a knock at the door--and destiny took a detour. Greg went to answer it, still grinning while Iris, still gasping giggles, fished out the Koosh ball.

Then Daisy May, her fifteen year old, Down�s syndrome sister, (who, their mother always said to anyone offering sympathy, graced her parents� golden years with her generous heart was lumbering across the room to wrap solid arms around her. �I love you Iris June. she said, rocking them side to side.

�And I love you, Daisy May.� Looking across her sister�s bulky shoulders at her approaching parents, she was startled by the age lines etching their faces. Iris had always gazed upon her mother, Irene, as upon a time-warped mirror. This is what I�ll look like thirty years from now, she had told herself at every stage of her life, and the prospect had given her comfort. But not today. Today it sent chills into her soul.

�What are you guys doing here?� Her voice was a battleground where the giggles left over from their romp conflicted with the alarm she felt at the sight of her parents� somber faces. �I thought you�d gone off camping with Aunt Carla and Uncle Ron.� She continued to call Greg�s parents Aunt and Uncle as she had all her life. Carla Kelsey Vickerson having been Irenes best friend since college, the two families were as entwined as needle and thread.

�Candy Kiss fell asleep in the waves and the hell copper couldn�t wake her up and it flew her into the sky.� Daisy May sing-songed against  Iiris' neck.

�What?� Iris shot the question at her parents.

�Candice has had another seizure. It looks very bad this time. Irene spoke carefully, her voice calm but her eyes locked on Iris� as she doled out the weighted words one by one. �It happened while the girls were playing in the surf, so we assumed at first she had drowned.�

�Iris disentangled herself from Daisy May who bent to pick up the Koosh ball at her feet. �Let�s play catch� She tugged at her sister�s hand.

�Later, Sis.� She patted Daisy May�s arm. �I need to talk to Mom right now.�

�Mommy can�t wake up Candy Kiss either and Auntie Carla cried black tears all over Uncle Ron�s shirt.� Daisy May held the Koosh ball by one stretchy strand and watched it twirl, completely absorbed by its revolutions, as if they held clues to the meaning of life.

"Mom?" Iris' voice was pitched high with panic.

�We didn�t want you to hear this over the phone.� Irene said. �We�ve been driving for hours. And no sleep last night. Dad needs a cup of coffee.� She nodded towards Daisy May and then towards the kitchen.

Iris followed her mother through the dining room and into the kitchen where she began fumbling with the coffee maker. She caught sight of Greg standing at the other end of the kitchen, in the doorway that led into the long hallway which joined the living-room to the rest of the rooms. He stood to his full height, as though on guard, arms across his chest. Even without his uniform he looked like the court bailiff he was on week-days. He stood like a mountain, a ward against all but earth-shattering disaster.

"What's going on Mom?" she dropped the box of filters on the floor.

�Never mind, dear.� Her mother bent to lay a hand on hers as she bent to retrieve the filters. Their heads collided. The box slipped from her fingers and tumbled across the floor, scattering filters helter-skelter. �The coffee was just a ruse to get you in here. Little pitchers have big ears.� Irene raised an eyebrow in the direction of the living room where sounds from the television informed them that Daisy May was occupied.

Iris looked at her mother through the sheen of tears brought to her eyes by the bump on her head. They each held a hand to their scalps, rubbing their sore spots like some bizarre mirror image. This brought a grin to Iris� lips but, sensing the seriousness of her mothers news, she restrained it.

�So, is she in coma again?� She was already thinking how to rearrange her schedule so as to participate in the around-the-clock bed-side vigils that had become near routine in the fifteen years since Candy�s first coma at age three.

But Irene was shaking her head and Iris felt suddenly that it was imperative that she go stand by Greg, even behind him, to be shielded from her mother�s next words. But the obstacles between them were insurmountable, not the least of which were space and time. For the words were coming NOW and even as she heard them, before their import reached her, she saw their impact on Greg, saw his shields buckle. No protection there.

"No." Irene was saying. "It's not coma this time.� Her pause to draw breath was an eternity inflated, was no time at all. �This time she�s brain-dead.�

Her mother had laid the words out between them with the bluntness of shock--to her way of thinking, kinder than drawing out their hope, but leaving them un-tethered in a suddenly weightless world. And into the well of silence her voice had dug rang the laugh they all knew as Candy�s.

They stared at each other, no one wanting to be the first to admit to hearing it. Iris� Dad cleared his throat and fiddled with his hearing aid. Greg, who could see into the living room with a slight turn of his head, spoke first: �Daisy May just found the play button on the remote.�

"Oh," Iris said. "That's the tape I made of the girls� slumber-party last week.� She led the way back through the dining room, stopping in the wide, arched doorway to the living room. Her parents stood beside her and Greg faced her from the other end of the room, having just had to turn himself sideways to move from the kitchen�s doorway to the living room�s. His arms, no longer crossing his chest, hung at his sides like wounded wings. She held out a hand to invite him to her side, but he shook his head.

They each had a clear view of the TV screen and of Daisy May, standing in the middle of the room fidgeting with the remote. She reversed and paused and fast-forwarded the video completely unaware of her audience. Watching Daisy May watch herself, Iris felt a giddy detachment, as if she had stepped back to watch her family and herself watch Daisy May watch herself. An infinity of recursive scenes that threatened to spin her off into wonderland.

Daisy May replayed the water-balloon fight several times. She finally let it play past that but during the picnic dinner of fried chicken, corn-on-the-cob and watermelon, she paused every time the camera focused on a messy face or gooey fingers to laugh. She fast-forwarded through most of the long Candyland game they had played, but for the Twist game that followed she worked the remote like a ten-key, calculating the value of love.

The video reached the final scene, where the girls and Iris snuggled into sleeping bags on this very living room floor and whispered stories in the glow of a lava-lamp, until sleep stole upon them. Daisy Mays voice, thick with exhaustion, called from the depths of her sleeping bag: �Hey, Handy Dandy Candy, Blow me a Candy Kiss.� Candy obliged her, blowing a long, slurppy kiss off her hand, which Daisy returned in kind. Now Candy had a request, �Hey, Lazy Daisy Mazy sing Candy Man.� �If,� Daisy bargained, �You sing with me. And Iris too.� Iris hummed the opening bar and they began to sing but by the refrain, Iris sang alone. The video continued to play until the faces of the girls took on the repose of slumber, then the image of Iris aimed the remote at the viewers and turned on the chaos of white-noise.

Everyone, except Greg who had disappeared early on, had tears of laughter running down their cheeks. �Oh,� Iris gasped. �That felt so good. Let�s watch another one. I have stuff going all the way back to when Daisy was born on cassette. The stuff before that hasn�t been transferred from reels yet.�

�Not tonight, dear.� Irene patted her daughter�s shoulder. �But you might remind Carla and Ron you have all this. They may want to put together a little memorial piece to play at the service.�

Iris embraced herself and shivered convulsively. "I dont think the full reality of this has hit me yet. I should be wailing into my pillow or shouting curses at the sky or something equally hysterical."

�These things work themselves out in their own way. Thee are no �shoulds� about it.� Irene put her arms around Iris, who leaned into their comfort, her chest heaving around huge dry sobs, her arms clutching her waist where a heavy heat smoldered in the vicinity of her womb--the weight of empty promises. She felt gravid with something immense and unnamable. A few moments more of this and the reservoir may have burst, like an overfilled water-balloon, drenching the two of them with the soothing brine of tears. But Daisy May barreled into them, burrowed her head between them and wrapped her arms around them.

Iris felt a pang of resentment towards her sister just then, that surprised her with its intensity. She had to step back to resist the urge to push Daisy away. Imagine that, she mused, I�m experiencing sibling rivalry for the first time at thirty-five.

�We�ll go on home now.� Irene cupped Iris� chin in one hand as she caressed Daisy May�s back with the other. �Go to Greg.� she said. �He needs you right now. And you need his comfort more than you need mine.�

Iris saw her family to the door and after brief hugs all around and a few kisses blown to her sister, she closed and locked the door. She took the remote Daisy May had handed her and muted the TV to silence the white-noise which inundated the room with its belligerent nothingness. Then, thinking how wonderful it would be if bringing back the past were as easy as this, she pressed rewind. She wanted to re-watch the tape with the control in her hand, so she could relive her last hours with the girl who had been the first baby she ever bonded with, who had called her �Mama Too� from the moment she started talking.

Candy Kiss was the nickname seventeen-year-old Iris had created for little Candice Kelsey Vickerson when she became her nanny. That perfect little baby had given her a thirst for motherhood that intensified with each passing month that her womb remained barren. When three-year-old Candy Kiss welcomed newborn Daisy May into her private day care, Iris� joy was doubled. Briefly, for that same summer bright, vivacious Candy suffered a viscous allergy attack (her sinus cavities filled beyond capacity as she slept, putting untenable pressure on the brain) that left her in a coma from which she awoke, weeks later, with the mind of an infant and susceptible to seizures that often returned her to the coma.

She regained language and motor skills, but never the luminous promise of genius and grace that she had possessed. The only thing she retained from before was the ebullient love of life and unfathomable affection she bestowed on all living things. �When Candy hugs you, you know you�ve been hugged.� Ron Vickerson would say of his daughter."Even the trees stand taller when Candy blows her kisses to them.� Carla would agree. The two mothers had been college roommates and were both teachers--Irene of kindergarten and Carla a media-science instructor at the local college. So when it came time to consider the girls� schooling they decided to manage it themselves. They designed the curriculum and supervised Iris as she home-schooled them. This had been so successful they had co-authored academic papers and magazine articles about it, and were working on a book. Inundated with requests for help from parents of special needs kids, Iris went after her Master�s in Education and began taking in students. Her day-school--held in the other half of the duplex she and Greg owned--had enrolled six to ten students each year for the last ten years.

The tape clunked to a stop and Iris was about to press the start button when she remembered her mother�s advise. How could she have been so callous? That she hadn�t given a thought to Greg�s ordeal this evening was disgraceful. Her husband and best friend gets such devastating news about his baby sister and she hasn�t had the presence of heart to go to him--even after her mother�s gentle reminder. She dropped the control on the couch and plunged down the long dark hallway towards the light and the sound of rushing water.

She found Greg in the bathroom. The shower was running full hot, filling the room with steam as it filled the tub with scalding water. He was stripped to his briefs and leaning against the wall, supported only by his forehead as cradled in his hands, against his breast, was the bag of Epsom salt. It was Greg�s habit, after a stressful day standing guard at the courtroom door, to soak in a hot Epsom salt bath with the room all steamed up. He had found it the most reliable way to relieve the muscle ache and joint pain.

Iris was awed by the singular starkness of his silhouette, by the stillness of his stance, by the enormity of the anguish enclosed by his skin. Her throat closed on all the words that came to mind, none of them adequate. Clouds of steam whirled and settled on him, giving his skin the sheen of polished granite and a glowing aura that seemed to undulate with a rhythm like heart-beat. She reached out her hand but pulled it back, fearing that her touch might trigger something cataclysmic, something she cold not control.

She laid a gentle hand on his wrist and almost jerked it away when she felt the throbbing of his pulse against her fingers. It was electric, conducting a tingle of vital need through skin, muscle and bone--straight to her heart, which clamored within the cage of her ribs in its attempt to enlarge itself to meet it.

�Greg?� Her voice was hoarse with urgency to ease his pain, her own pain coalescing into a pool of compassion. �Shall I add the salt for you:� she asked.

"The first time I saw her," Greg said, releasing the bag into her hand as if it were a newborn. "She was no bigger than this.� Then the weight of it was in her hands, like the weight of a memory. She poured salt into the tub, and stirred the already wrist-deep water with one hand. When she touched one scalded finger to her tongue--it tasted of tears.

The steam in the room had saturated her clothes and her hair was glued to her scalp and forehead in heavy clumps. Sweat mixed with the steam, forming rivulets that stung her eyes and left a bitter taste on her lips. Unable to stand the way her jeans clung to her, she began to struggle out of them, so engrossed in her effort, she failed to notice Greg�s escalating travail and was startled when his fist swung past her, to crash into the towel rack. She blinked spasmodically at the buckled metal rail, reminded by its shape of compound-fractures.

When she ventured to look at Greg, his arms were at his sides, stiff as bone, his fists clenching and unclenching empty air. �Oh, Baby.� she whispered. �Don�t.� She laid a hand on his chest, light as baby�s-breath, yet at her touch he folded over and collapsed, sitting heavily on the rim of the tub, sucking air in fits and starts. She hovered over him, once more afraid to touch him.

�Whyyyyy?� His wail reverberated in the room, so primal a thing Iris felt her nipples harden and tug at her as if responding to the hunger cries of an infant. The water beat on his back and the tub half full, she reached past him to turn it off, but he grasped her by the waist and buried his face against her belly, stifling his next cry and the sobs which followed. As he shuddered against her, her womb clutched and un-clutched its own hollowness as though trying to enclose his need.

Instinctively she began smooth, rhythmical rocking motions, as she caressed the back of his head, the tautness of his neck. She leaned over him to place her lips against his ear and said to him, almost hummed to him. �Oh, my love, I know, I know.� Her T-shirt had ruched up so his tears flowed hot against her skin and pooled in her naval. Still, her own tears are unreleased.

The shower, still going full blast, sprayed Iris� face with hot substitute tears, but she ceased to notice, her focus, contained within the span of her arms, where Greg, finally quiet, still held himself firmly clasped to her. When he began to move his lips across her skin, laying a trail of kisses and kneading her back with his hands, she suddenly knew, with galvanic certainty, that this was the right thing--the necessary thing.

She kneeled before him, gazing past his contorted face into the glowing furnace of his eyes. �Iris,� he choked out. "I need..I need..I need.." But he was unable to articulate his need and Iris knew this was the essence of it.

�I know.� she said. �so do I.� She joined her lips to his and with the kiss drew him to the floor with her, where his need was soon buried within her need--mutual need weaving them into a single entity that convulsed in the throes of birthing comfort. As the tub overflowed, flooding them with tear-warm brine.

Iris jumped up, starting to laugh, but bit her lip as she looked at Greg, only to find him grinning. �Candy would be the first to find the humor in this.� he turned off the now cold shower. But iris still felt a shiver of guilt, thinking: Greg may have earned the right to laugh with his tears, but have I?

Some time later, after mopping up the floor with handfuls of towels and bathing as best they could in the tepid salt-water, Iris and Greg once more submerged their turbulent need in the ocean of their love for one another. Afterwards, cradled in Greg�s arms among the love-tossed covers, with his warm, even breaths against her back, Iris felt herself sliding into sleep, as into a sea-grave, wondering if there was something wrong with her that she hadn�t yet cried for Candy Kiss.

Sleep denied her its longed for oblivion, offering instead a vision of Candy at about age three, with her mocha curls and espresso eyes. She was begging to go to the park, but Iris was busy and barely glanced at her when she told her �No.� She ignored the brief tantrum that followed and hardly registered the sound of a slamming door in the distance. It was only when her absence began to weigh on her senses like white-noise, that she went in search of her.

She wandered through empty rooms haunted by Candy�s laughter and tears, but found no trace of Candy. A sense of doom was building to a crescendo within her and she began calling to Candy as she rushed through the sunless gloom of the house. Suddenly, light--a strange, pulsating, green-tinged glow like the presage of a tornado--flooded in on her from a window that hadn�t been there just moments before. She ran to it, pressing herself against it with panic. She saw Candy running across the yard, away from the house, straight towards the swirling, sucking creek that separated her from the park.

Iris pounded on the window, calling to her. But Candy did not pause in her headlong rush. She splashed into the water, spurning the bridge further on, and paddled towards the deepest part. The water took her, tumbling her about, then tossed her up on the far shore. Iris held her breath until she saw the tiny figure scramble up the steep bank. Then she began a frantic search for a way out of the house. She must bring back Candy Kiss. What would she tell Carla and Ron? How could they ever forgive her for losing their baby? How could she ever forgive herself?

She would get to her if she had to break the window and swim the creek herself. But the window had vanished, taking with it the numinous light and she kept losing her way in the catacomb of the house. Then it was too late, for Ron and Carla were there and she had to tell them what had happened. She was first bewildered, then outraged by their reaction. They seemed pleased at their daughters independent and adventurous spirit. They explained to her that parents began to learn on the day of their child�s birth how to let go, little bit by little bit. If Candy was ready to go to the park alone, who are we to stop her? �You�ll see.� Carla reached out and patted the suddenly expanded balloon of Iris� belly. �Soon now, you�ll understand.�

�But she�s just a baby.� Iris wailed. �You don�t let babies go anywhere alone.� But they just smiled their sweetly patient smiles at her. She turned and ran from the room, continuing her frantic search for a way out, further hampered by tears of rage and fear. She stumbled into walls, she tripped and sprawled out on the floor only to struggle back to her feet and continue on.

Emptiness inflated within her and her belly, already grotesque in its immensity, continued to grow until she was forced to support it with her arms. The hollow weight of it like guilt, pulled her to her knees. She couldn�t bear it any longer. She felt forsaken. Not only by Candy and her parents but by her own humanity. She lay her forehead on the floor, her arms relinquishing their hold on her belly.

The pain attacked her like claws, beginning behind the breastbone and raking into her womb. She convulsed around the gross bulge, clutching at it. She tried to scream but could get no air into her lungs. The house filled with a howling noise and trembled as though gripped in the fist of a tornado. The pain came again, this time accompanied by a scalding gush of fluid. And she did scream. And she kept right on screaming, intending never to stop.

Then Greg was shaking her, calling her name, and she woke to find her face contorted by unshed tears. �I can�t�I can't.. I can't.." she choked on words like foreign objects.

�I know, babe.� he said. �I know.� He held her against him for a long, long time as the dry sobs wracked her and his tears bathed her cheeks, sliding beneath her eyelids to free her own to flow. When they kissed, their mingled tears tasted of wine.

*************

Four and a half months later, (the Vickerson�s having had to seek a court order to release their daughter from the machines) at the graveside service, when all the participants released helium filled balloons that each contained a single chocolate candy-kiss; at the moment when, standing on her toes and reaching for the sky, the string entwined about her fingers tugging at her--at that exact moment--Iris felt the first flutters in her womb and the sweet weight of it held her to the ground as she let go and the candy kisses blew over the treetops.

Four and a half months after that, Iris held her daughter to her breast. Kelsey Irene Vickerson opened her eyes and bathed her mother with her gaze, a singular baptism. When she sensed Greg at her side, Iris reached for his hand, weaving their fingers. He bent over to coo at his daughter. The sound of his voice drew Kelsey�s eyes to his face and a moment later she was pursing her lips in perfect imitation of him. �Better watch that,� he said to her. �You�ll be earning the name Kiss before you know it.� Iris laughed, a buoyant belly-laugh, joyously awed by this new life, this one-of-a-kind girl-child that lay on her lap, the weight of her like hope.