The Dogs of Babel

THIRTY-SIX

I didn’t know before she died. She never told me herself. It showed up in the autopsy, of course; Detective Stack called to give me the news. She was two months along. But I knew even before that. I had found a scrap of paper, a corner of cardboard from a box that had contained a home pregnancy test. I didn’t find the test itself; she was careful to get rid of that. But in the bathroom trash—I’ll admit now that in those first days, I tore apart the house looking for hints as to what had happened, I went through every piece of lint on the carpet and every soggy, coffee-stained envelope in the garbage—and in the bathroom trash, underneath the tissues and cotton swabs and tangles of minted floss, I found a scrap of pink cardboard that she must have missed. It was one of the… anomalies I found during those terrible days. One of the clues that started me down this path. The piece of cardboard had three letters on it: CLE. I didn’t recognize the lettering or the color of the cardboard as anything we had had in the house recently, so I went to the drugstore with my little pink scrap in my hand, and I walked the aisles until I found the box it matched up with. The letters were from the word “clear,” and the box contained a home pregnancy test. And I knew.

It didn’t happen in New Orleans, certainly; that’s much too early. But when? We were using birth control all along, and I don’t remember any specific incident when we thought it might have failed. I suppose I’d always had some romantic notion that when you conceived a child, there would be some cataclysm, some indication that something momentous had occurred. But there was nothing like that. I’ve looked at the calendar, using the autopsy report as my guide, and I’ve pinpointed the week when it must have happened. I can recall certain things about that week, some of them quite happy, but there was nothing special, nothing earthshaking. It was just another week in my life.

What does it change, though, to know that she was pregnant? What good does it do me? It hasn’t made things any clearer. It has only widened the circle of images at play in my mind. I’ve thought, for example, well, if she was pregnant, then she might have been dizzy. She climbed a tree for reasons I cannot fathom, but that may have made perfect sense in the moment, and she got dizzy and fell. Or hormones. Pregnant women have mood swings. A wave of despair just as she attained the highest branch. A wave of despair caused by a hormonal shift, having nothing to do with how she felt about me or her life or our child. There are so many ways it could have happened. She had not yet begun to show. Or had she? Had there been a new roundness to her that I was slow to notice? I’ve racked my brain but I can’t remember how she looked the last time I saw her naked. I can’t even remember when it was.

How we come to take these things for granted when we see them every day! There was a time when the sight of her bare body would make me lose my breath. When I couldn’t even look upon her without a wave of arousal passing through me like fire. How long had it been since I came up behind her and cupped her breasts in my palms? How long since the sight of her stepping out of the shower had begun to seem commonplace? My body singing at the sight of her. It’s not that we were making love less frequently than before—well, of course, it was a little less frequent than it had been in those early, heady days. Who can maintain such constant passion for more than the first year or so? But sex was no longer the underlying current of everything we did. Did she notice that? Did she feel I no longer loved her as well as I could? Did she feel rejected? Had my lust for her fallen too far into the background, become too much the wallpaper of our lives and not enough the centerpiece? Oh, God, oh, God, did she think I no longer found her beautiful? Did she worry about the changes a baby would write on her body? No. She wasn’t that petty, that insecure. What, then? What did I do and what did I neglect to do? How did I fail her? How many different ways? In what way am I to blame—I know I must be, the problem is figuring out the details of my failure. The problem is explaining it in a way I can understand. Perhaps even Lexy couldn’t have done that.

Lady Arabelle’s notes aren’t able to tell me much more. The rest of our conversation focuses on the tarot card reading she did for Lexy.

“I do a ten-card tarot reading,” she says, “in a Celtic cross spread. Do you know anything about tarot cards?”

“No,” I say.

“Well, in a reading, I lay out ten cards, and each one has a specific role in the reading. Taken all together, the cards give me a picture of a particular moment in a person’s life, you see? And I can look at the spread and get an idea of what paths this person might take from here. I’m not telling the future, you understand. The future isn’t fixed in place. It all depends on what actions you choose to take from this moment we’re looking at right now. And the cards can help determine the best course of action. You got that, honey?”

“Okay,” I say. “Yes.”

“All right. Now with your wife, the first card I laid out was the Magician.”

“The magician?” I say. I’m looking around for a piece of paper to write this down.

“That’s right. The Magician card was in the Significator position, which is the position that represents the overall place your wife was in her life the night she called.”

“That sounds important,” I say.

“Well, sure,” she says. “They’re all important. They all work together. For the Magician to appear in this space, it means that your wife was in a position to control what was going to happen to her. The Magician represents unexplored potential, you see, he represents opportunities and possibilities. And your wife had the power to follow those opportunities. She was in control of her world.”

“Okay,” I say. “That sounds good.”

“Now the second card, that’s the Crossing card. This is the card that indicates the basic problem the seeker—that would be your wife—is facing. In this reading, that card was the Lovers.”

“All right,” I say, writing it down.

“The Lovers card indicates a choice, a very important choice that has to be made. The decision you make is going to affect the course of your life. There are conflicting forces at work, and you have to look carefully at the implications of your decision. Okay, now, the third card is the Crowning card. That represents the overall situation hanging over the person’s head at this particular moment. For your wife, this card was the Page of Cups, which indicates that she had received some news. Usually it’s news of a birth, or a new start. I took that to be the baby.”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure that’s right.”

“The fourth card is the Base of the Matter. That shows you what’s really at the root of the current situation. For her, it was the Ace of Wands, but it was reversed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the card came up upside down, so it has a slightly different meaning than it would otherwise. Usually, the Ace of Wands means a new beginning—again, sometimes a birth or sometimes just a new business undertaking or something like that—but when it’s reversed, it means that this new beginning wasn’t well thought out. The circumstances aren’t right, and the seeker might not succeed in the undertaking. Or it could mean that she could succeed, but she doesn’t have the confidence to find out.”

“How did she take it when you told her that?”

“I’m afraid that’s not in my notes, sweetheart. But I don’t think she took it badly. I’m sure I would have played up the positive aspect, that if she believed in herself, she’d do okay. I’m sure I would have told her that.”

“Okay,” I say. This is all starting to run together in my mind. It all sounds so weighty, but I don’t know what to make of any of it. I write it down dutifully. The fifth card, she tells me, represents past influences, and in Lexy’s reading it was the Six of Cups; apparently, it has something to do with looking back on happy memories, but beyond that, the significance is lost on me. I shake my head to clear it and resolve to listen more carefully.

“The next card,” Lady Arabelle says, “the sixth, is the opposite; it represents forthcoming influences. Here it was the Seven of Wands. This is a card that tells the seeker it’s time for her to take action. She may be unsure about what to do next, but she has to do something. Any action is better than nothing.”

“Any action is better than nothing,” I say.

“Right. The seventh card is called Where One Finds Oneself. It’s kind of like the Significator, but it takes it a little further. It represents the inner state of the seeker and gives an idea of what she’s likely to do next. For your wife, the card here was the Fool.”

“Are you calling Lexy a fool?” I say, sort of trying for a joke. I’m feeling punchy.

“No, not at all. But the Fool represents someone who… well, if you could see the card, it’s a picture of a man walking off a cliff. And in the picture, it varies from deck to deck, but there’s usually an animal trying to stop him, sometimes a dog or something like that.”

“A dog?” I say, sitting up.

“Or sometimes a bird. The point is, those around the fool can see he’s making a mistake, and most likely the fool knows it himself. But he’s refusing to see it, and if he keeps going the way he’s going, he’s going to walk right off that cliff.”

“So it’s a card of death?”

“No, it’s not usually that literal. It just means the person has a choice to make, and if he makes the wrong choice, the consequences could be great.”

“Okay,” I say.

The eighth card, she tells me, is the card that represents the way other people saw Lexy. It was the Ace of Cups, which Lady Arabelle says is a very good card. It represents happiness, love, fertility. A happy marriage and family life.

“But that’s how other people saw Lexy?” I ask. “Not how she saw herself?”

“Well, that’s the position of the card. But that doesn’t mean anything, sweetie. I didn’t see anything to suggest she wasn’t happy with your marriage. I didn’t see anything like that at all.”

I nod, unable to speak. I have a sudden lump in my throat.

“The ninth card—hang in there, baby, we’re almost at the end—is the Hopes and Fears card. The idea is that hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. The Five of Swords came up here. That’s a very negative card, implying great loss and tragedy. Complete ruin. I guess that’s what your wife was afraid of.”

“Well, isn’t everyone?” I say.

“Sure, sweetie,” Lady Arabelle says. “That’s what we’re all afraid of. Now, the last card, the tenth card, that represents the Final Outcome. But that’s a little misleading, because, like I said, and I would have told this to her, too, there’s nothing written in stone. ‘Final Outcome’ just means the likely outgrowth of the current circumstances.”

“Okay. And what card was that?”

“Well, I don’t want you to make too much of this, baby, but it was the Hanged Man.”

“Good Lord,” I say.

“The Hanged Man doesn’t mean death, though, sweetie. It just means self-sacrifice. It’s a card of renunciation. It means you may have to give something up for the sake of something more important.”

“I see,” I say. “And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” she says. She pauses. “I want to emphasize,” she says, “that this was not a bad reading. There was nothing in here that made me worry about this woman’s future.”

“Okay,” I say. “And that’s all you have in your notes?”

“Well, let me see. I have that she was thirty-five years old, married and pregnant, and that she hadn’t told her husband about her pregnancy. That much she told me up front. I have her birthday, and I have a list of the cards I read for her. I also wrote that she had stopped crying by the time she hung up. She thanked me, and she said I’d helped her. I’ve got a plus sign next to the call, which means I thought it went well. And that’s all I’ve got.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome, baby,” she says. “Keep yourself well. Try to let go of this. I’m sure that’s what she would have wanted.”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

I hang up feeling lost. For so long I’ve been pinning my hopes on this call, and now it’s over, and I know no more than I did before. I have my pages of careful notes to file away with all the other pages of notes I’ve taken—notes on Lorelei’s behavior, notes on canine physiology, lists of books shelved side by side in an order that seems to mean nothing at all. I suddenly miss Lorelei very much. What I want most, more than all of death’s secrets revealed, more even perhaps than my wife back in my arms, is to crawl into bed and to feel the comfort of Lorelei’s great, furry heft beside me. To rest my hand on her warm, breathing flank as I drift off to sleep. I get up and go into the bedroom, stopping to close the curtains against the bright day. I lie down on my bed and slip into a troubled, bereft sleep full of falling women and the barking of dogs always out of sight.