My Wife Was Seven Months Pregnant When She Stopped Leaving Bed—Then I Lifted the Blue Blanket and Realized My Mother Already Knew What Was Underneath

PART 1 — THE BLUE BLANKET

Clara was seven months pregnant with our first child when she stopped getting out of bed.

At first, I told myself it was normal.

Pregnancy was hard.

She was tired.

Her hips hurt.

Her ankles were swollen.

She had started waking three or four times a night because our daughter apparently considered two in the morning the ideal hour to practice gymnastics.

We lived in a modest apartment on Chicago’s Northwest Side, the kind of place where the rumble of the L train made the glasses in the kitchen cabinet tremble every twenty minutes.

It was not beautiful.

The bathroom tiles never quite looked clean.

The radiator hissed like something angry lived inside it.

The couple upstairs apparently rearranged furniture every Sunday at midnight.

But it was ours.

And when Clara became pregnant, I started treating the apartment as if every loose rug, cupboard corner, and slippery floor tile were personally plotting against her.

Before leaving for my shift at the hardware store each morning, I filled a glass of water and put it beside the bed.

Fruit.

Prenatal vitamins.

Sometimes toast.