Hudson

Chapter Fourteen

Before

Trying to ignore the Christmas music my mother had playing, I concentrated on entering some figures into a spreadsheet from one of the companies my father was letting me work on over the break. Plexis, a Pierce Industry subsidiary with a great outlook. If my modifications to the business plan were successful, the earnings for the coming year would far exceed what had been predicted. It was exciting enough to make spending time with my family over the holidays bearable.

“I don’t see any diamond ring size boxes under here,” my mother said behind me.

I glanced back to see her arranging the presents under the tree in the living room for the fifth time in an hour. There were more gifts than I’d ever seen growing up, and I bet that at least half of them were for the baby.

“There’s not going to be a ring, Mother. I’m not marrying Celia. I’ve told you that.”

“I keep hoping you’re trying to surprise me with a Christmas engagement.” She’d talked nonstop of marriage plans since Thanksgiving. I’d thought it would have been Celia’s parents driving a union. Turned out Sophia was even worse.

“I really wish I’d known what color to buy.” She added another gift to the heap. “I saved all the receipts though. In case you and Celia get sick of green and yellow.”

When I’d arranged for limited fathering of Celia’s child, I’d neglected to factor in my mother. Since we’d announced our news, Sophia had been a buzz of excitement. Every conversation stemmed around our child. Every day was another chance for her to dote on her unborn grandchild. It seemed she might not be drinking as much too, though that was hard to prove, especially when I’d been away at school for much of the last few weeks.

She moved a present from the back so that it was more visible. It was one I hadn’t seen before, the package shaped very much like a rocking horse. How long would it be before a kid could even use that? With a sigh, I turned back to my computer.

“I’m so glad Celia’s not going back to school next semester. I wish you were staying here.”

This was another conversation we’d had repeatedly. By phone and then at least twice a day since I’d come home for break. “Boston isn’t far. I’ll come up for every prenatal exam. I’ll make sure I’m here for the birth.”

“That’s what you keep saying. But labor can come on quickly. What if you missed it?”

I didn’t answer. Honestly, I’d be glad to miss it. Seeing Celia in a delivery room did not rank high on my-fun-things-to-do list. The rest, though—the exams, the ultrasounds, even the damn yellow and green layette—that I’d begun to look forward to with surprising enthusiasm. I was going to be a father. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t biologically mine. Because I’d claimed it, it was mine in every way that would ever matter.

Sophia didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t responded. “You know, we don’t have to wait until after Christmas for the gender reveal ultrasound. We could probably get in with one of those 3D ultrasound places. Should I call Celia and arrange it? My treat.”

“No.” I paused while I finished entering the formula I was working on. “Madge doesn’t trust those things. She wants to wait for her scheduled exam.”

“We don’t have to tell Madge.”

“Even if you are capable of keeping a secret from Madge, I don’t think Celia would want to go without her mother.”

“What I don’t understand is why you’re not more excited about it?” My mother’s voice came nearer as she spoke. Then she sat at the table next to me. “It’s your first child, Hudson. Take some more pride.”

Perhaps I needed to do a better job at mustering enthusiasm. My father, though, hadn’t shown much more excitement than me. No wondering why there. We’d never talked about it, but if he didn’t assume the baby could be his, then he was an idiot. Even if he believed I actually was responsible for Celia’s pregnancy, he had to be at least a little uncomfortable with the idea that he’d shared a woman with his son. It would bother me, anyway. But my father and I had obvious differences in what was socially acceptable and what wasn’t.

“I’m not very expressive,” I said, not looking up from my work. “It doesn’t mean I don’t feel things.” It was a line I’d stolen from some movie. Wouldn’t it have been something if it were actually true?

She put a hand on my arm. “I’m glad to hear that, Hudson. I used to worry you didn’t.”

My mother had never given any indication that she noticed my lack of emotional response. I typed in one more figure and shut my laptop. “What exactly worried you, Mother?”

“You, Hudson. You worried me.” She dropped her hand from my arm to the table. “Do you remember when you were twelve and you had those entrance exams for Choice Hill?”

I nodded. Choice Hill had been the elite middle school I’d gone to. The admissions process was a rigorous six-hour session of various IQ and personality tests. The children accepted were not only the wealthiest in Manhattan but also intellectually gifted.

“One of the psychologists that worked with you—” She furrowed her brow as if trying to remember something. After a few seconds, she waved her hand dismissively. “His name escapes me, but anyway, he suggested that you struggled with emotions. He recommended we had you tested further to rule out sociopathic tendencies or schizoid personality disorder or Asperger’s Syndrome. Because you had a blunted affect. Or experience avoidance. Or something like that. I don’t remember the terms.”

My heart thudded in my chest. This was the first time I’d heard any of this. “But I don’t remember being tested for anything.”

“Oh, no. You made it into the school, so we didn’t see any reason to pursue the issue further.”

I sat back in my chair, incredulous. “I made it into the school,” I repeated, “and so you didn’t see any reason to find out if your child might be suffering from a major psychological disorder?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t act like it’s such a big deal. You’re obviously fine.”

How on earth did she think I was fine? I’d never been anything but fine. While I wasn’t particularly eager to experience the volatile, irrational emotions of my peers, I at least wanted to know what the fuck was wrong with me. What the hell made me so different?

My parents’ casual dismissal of a potential problem disturbed me most of all. Whatever my issues were, I at least knew how to feel anger. And I was exceptionally angry at the moment.

I hadn’t finished deciding whether or not to express my rage when the phone rang, making the decision for me. The housekeeper had the day off, so Mother got up to get it. By the tone of her “hello,” I knew it must be one of her friends.

I tuned her out, opening my laptop instead to do some internet searching. I’d just typed in “blunted affect” when my mother gasped. I looked across the room to her. She was shaking her head, her hand raised to clutch her chest. For a good second, I wondered if she was having a heart attack.

Then her eyes met mine. “Okay. Okay,” she kept saying into the receiver. “We’ll be there. We’re coming. See you soon.”

She hung up, and I saw that all the color had left her face. “Hudson. Hudson. Oh, no.”

My forehead creased. Was it Dad? He’d taken my siblings ice-skating at Rockefeller Center earlier. Or Mirabelle? Or Chandler?

Mother rushed toward me, and I stood to catch her. She was crying already as she buried her face in my shoulder. “It’s the baby,” she said into my sweatshirt. “Celia’s losing the baby. She’s at the hospital. We have to go.”

I never pushed return in the search field. The results for blunted affect never made it to my script. I didn’t need the internet to tell me whether or not I could feel. At that moment, all I felt was numb.

I watched the drip of the IV in a daze, the measured beeps of the heart monitor the only sound in the quiet, darkened room. Celia was sleeping. She had been for several hours. I hadn’t spoken to her or seen her awake since I’d arrived.

When my mother and I had gotten to the hospital, Celia had been in labor. The baby, we were told, was dead already.

After, she hadn’t wanted to see anyone. Madge and Warren gave us what little information they’d had. They’d gone to the ER when Celia’s water had broken. There, an ultrasound had failed to find the fetus’s heartbeat. The doctors guessed it had passed sometime two weeks before. Celia was admitted to the obstetrics ward. Labor continued naturally, and a few hours later, she’d delivered. It had been a boy.

I spent the evening comforting my mother in the waiting room. Eventually, my father arrived and took her home, where I guessed she’d mourn in the way she knew best—with a bottle of vodka. Though Celia still refused to see me, I stayed. Around midnight, the Werners said goodbye, promising they’d return first thing in the morning. That’s when I snuck in her room. I spent the night awake in an armchair by her bed. I had no reason to be there. I had no reason to go.

“Why are you here?” Celia’s voice drew me from my stupor.

I wiped my mouth and cleared my throat before trying to speak. “You’re awake.”

“I am.” She pushed a button, and the bed tilted her into a sitting position. “And you don’t need to be here. The façade is over. You can go.” Her tone was straight, empty of expression.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Why?”

I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

She leaned her head back into the pillow, accepting my answer. She didn’t ask me to leave again, and something told me it was because she really didn’t want me to go.

Though I knew that conversation wasn’t necessary, I asked all the same, “How do you feel?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Numb.”

That was an emotion I knew well. “That’s natural.”

“Is it?”

Who the fuck knew what natural was? Certainly not me. “I don’t really know, Celia. I assume it is.” She stared at me with blank eyes. So I said more. “I imagine it’s some sort of defense mechanism to the trauma. Do they know what happened?”

She started to shake her head and stopped. “One of the doctors told me—in private, when my parents weren’t in the room—that there appeared to be developmental issues. I asked if it could have been because….because I’d partied early on. I, uh, drank a lot. And there was drug use. Before I knew I was pregnant, of course. He said that he couldn’t be sure, but it was probably a contributing factor.”

Her voice was raw with the honesty—or perhaps it was the fact that she’d just awoken and the day before had been more than rough. Either way, I sensed I was the only person who would hear this truth.

And I had nothing to offer her in terms of comfort. I didn’t even try. I wondered, though, in the quiet that followed, if she blamed me. It seemed a reasonable reaction from what I’d learned about human behavior. She’d lost her child because of drug and alcohol use. She’d used because she’d been broken. She’d been broken by me. It was fair to say, then, that she’d lost her child because of me.

She wouldn’t have even been pregnant if not for me. It was easy to say her actions were her responsibility, but I had manipulated her for the exact reason of studying how she’d react. I did have culpability.

I didn’t feel guilty or even regretful, necessarily. I simply wondered if she blamed me. Even here in this inappropriate moment, I searched to understand the nuances of human psychology.

Celia broke the silence. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Coming after my internal dialogue, her apology was particularly out of place.

She blinked several times, and I realized she was crying. “You aren’t really the father, but I feel like I need to say this to someone. So I’m telling you I’m sorry. I’m sorry I killed our baby.”

Her tears flowed in gentle streams that she wiped at with the tips of her fingers. She was silent and her body still as she grieved. I watched her, taking it in. Not completely heartless, I did notice a certain melancholy wrap around me. It was refreshing almost, to feel something other than even. Though, it appeared to be much less comfortable of an emotion for Celia. That was unfortunate.

When the crying let up, she threw a glance at me. “It was fun for a moment, wasn’t it? Pretending it was ours.”

I tilted my head as I contemplated that. Our scheme had been easy to fall into. People had been ready to believe, and that had inspired a kind of secret delight. Celia had been in California for the majority of our ruse, but in the days before she’d left, I’d recognized her own euphoria. She’d tried to hide it behind the pretense of embarrassment and guilt, but I could read her too well.

“I feel like I understand you better now, Hudson.” She waited until I’d met her eyes with a questioning brow raise. “Why you play those games. Why you played that game with me.”

My heart stilled for a beat. I had to have misunderstood her allusion. I clarified. “What game?”

She let out an exasperated sigh, throwing her head back onto her pillow. “Let’s not do that right now, Hudson. Please? Be honest with me for a minute.”

Maybe it was the circumstances surrounding us or the lingering melancholy. Or perhaps the darkness of the room. Or the lack of sleep. Or finally a chance to speak with someone who was willing to hear. More likely it was the combination of all of the above that allowed me to step onto sacred ground and bare my secrets.

In a steady low voice, I let down the first wall. “They aren’t games.”

“What are they then?” She matched the tone and timbre of my voice, as though she understood as well as I did that this moment was unusual. That this conversation was unique.

“They’re experiments.” I trained my eyes on the steady blip of her heart monitor. “I don’t…understand…people.” Blip. Blip. “What makes them feel. I experiment to understand.” Blip.

“You don’t feel things?” Blip. Her heart rate didn’t alter.

Blip. “I don’t think I do. Not the way most people do.” Blip.

“That explains a lot.”

I met her stare. “Does it?”

“Yeah. It does.” She wasn’t accusatory. Simply matter-of-fact. We were alike, in a way. She understood things about people. She understood things about me, at the very least. “You’ve done it with more than just me then?”

I nodded once slowly.

“Have you learned anything?”

“I’ve learned a lot.”

“But you still don’t feel things?” She was curious but accepting.

“I don’t.” I gripped the arms of the chair and let them go again. “I don’t think that’s something that will ever change. It’s not why I do it. If anything, the more I experiment, the less I feel. Except with you. You…I don’t know.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share. I just didn’t have the words. “You’re too much like family, I think. So I have…I did feel…something.”

“You don’t know what, though?”

“No.” I’d tried to figure it out so many times. “Obligation, maybe. Responsibility.”

She fiddled with the edge of her bedsheet but kept her focus on me. “But with the others, you didn’t feel anything?”

“No.”

She let go of the sheet, turned and propped her head up on one hand. “Do you ever feel anything else?”

God, we were actually doing this, then? Examining all the pieces, letting all the walls down. Might as well get comfortable. I crossed an ankle over my jean-clad knee. “Not really. Anger sometimes. Disgust.”

“You’re never happy?”

“I’m often content.” I didn’t mention that the only excitement I felt revolved around the manipulation of others. I was stripping myself in front of her, but I didn’t need to be vulgar.

“What about sorrow?”

“It’s more like disappointment.” I cleared my throat. This was the closest to sympathy she’d get from me. “Right now, I’m disappointed for you.”

Though, there had been a moment—the moment that I’d learned Celia’s baby was dead—and the disappointment had been something else. Something more intense, more intolerable. It seemed to start in the center of me, the sensation so strong it sounded in my ears. Soon it reverberated in my bones, in my skin, until every part of me had…ached.

But all it took was a straightening of my spine and a decision to not feel it anymore. And with a whoosh, it was silent. Gone. I was hardened.

It had been a unique incident. One I’d never experienced. Perhaps it warranted a relabeling for Celia’s benefit. “Very disappointed for you.”

She bit her lip as if she were fighting a fresh set of tears. “What about guilt? Or compassion? Or love?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t love your mother? Or Mirabelle?”

“That’s more complicated.” It was difficult to explain my lack of emotion to someone else when I barely understood it myself. “I have a fondness for them. I feel an affinity toward them. But that’s all.”

She took in a ragged breath, and I could only assume this revelation disturbed her.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I added, “they do mean something to me. But it hardly measures the depths that I believe others feel for people they care for.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It intrigues me. Bother me? Not really.” I was grateful for the semi-dark room. It made the honest conversation less intense. “It actually makes me strong, I think. No one has the power to hurt me.”

This idea had itched at me for a while, but had never fully formed. Now that I’d said it out loud, I sat back in the chair and soaked in the revelation. This incident had actually been the best test of the notion. This had almost hurt me. Not quite, but almost. And watching the Werners and my mother and Celia bear the pain like a terrible fever with no relief was exhausting in itself. If I’d ever thought my impassivity was a curse, I didn’t now. It was my blessing.

Accepting this didn’t change anything—didn’t change me—but perhaps it propelled my interest in studying the human psyche. It gave me a mission. Because in learning why others behaved the way they did, I discovered more of my own strength.

“Hudson.” Celia’s small voice drew me from my reverie. “Teach me, Hudson.”

I raised a questioning brow.

“Experiment with me.”

“What? Why would you want me to…?” I didn’t know how to react to the insane request. “I’m not experimenting on people I know anymore.”

“Not on me. With me.” She sat straight up. “I want to learn how you do it. Teach me.”

Understanding her real intent didn’t make the request any less strange. “No. That’s absurd.”

“Please.”

“No.” But now she’d planted the thought, and I couldn’t help but explore it. “Why?”

“Because I want to be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like someone who doesn’t feel.” She fell back into the bed. “I don’t want to feel anymore. I said I felt numb, but there’s worse hiding underneath that. Jagged spikes of pain. I wanted that baby, Hudson. And before that, I wanted you. Not anymore, but I did. All that’s left from all that want is hurt. I tried to hate you, and I do a little. But mostly I can’t help but admire you. Your methods are impressive. Maybe you’re an example of evolution. Maybe a lack of emotion is what it takes to move the human race to the next level. Because I think you’re right—it is your strength. And I don’t know if you were born that way or if you turned into this over time because of your fucked-up family—sorry, but it’s true—but I think I could learn that. Or at least try. What’s the harm in letting me try?”

Her voice had strengthened as she talked, and now her words echoed in the quiet room. Honestly, there was little to refute. And the possibilities her monologue had inspired…

“Okay.”

She perked up in surprise. “Okay? Really?”

My mind was already swimming with plans. I never went looking for experiments. They’d arise out of situations and relationships around me that were interesting, that I wanted to explore. As it happened, there was a newly married couple that had just moved into my parents’ building. Though they’d recently pledged their lives to each other, I couldn’t help but notice the way he eyed other women. There was a lot I wanted to study there. Celia would actually prove helpful. “After Christmas. If you’re up to it.”

“I’ll be up to it.” She was excited.

My pulse kicked up a notch. How sick was it that her enthusiasm was a mental turn-on? I stifled my adrenaline rush by adding practicality. “There will be rules. Some we’ll have to make up as we go since I’ve never worked with a partner.”

“Of course. What’s the fun of a game without rules?”

“They aren’t games.” It came out harsher than I’d intended, but it was important to me that she understood the difference. “They’re experiments. It’s science.”

“Whatever you want to call it, Hudson. It’s semantics. There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun with it. I know you do.”

So it didn’t matter that I hadn’t told her the games excited me. She already knew.

And Jesus, I was already referring to them as games myself. If I weren’t so looking forward to the new phase of my research, I might have been irritated.

“Maybe,” I conceded. “There is an enjoyment at correctly predicting how people will react.”

She smiled—the first sign of joy since she’d awoken in the cold, sterile room.

“What have I agreed to?” But I genuinely smiled back.

She took a deep breath. Then her expression eased into something more solemn. “Thank you, Hudson.”

“You’re welcome.” Also genuine.

We settled into a comfortable silence. My mind swirled with ideas and notions. Perhaps good really had come from all of the Celia mess. Though somewhere deep inside of me, a warning bell sounded, and while it was quiet enough to ignore, it was persistent and left me with the slightest niggle of doubt and dread.

After a moment, she chuckled. “You’re so ridiculous, you know. You’re like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. All the time he doesn’t think he has a heart and yet he really does.”

“An interesting comparison.” I’d always identified more with Hannibal Lecter from the famed Thomas Harris series about a psychologically curious sociopathic serial killer. Though I wasn’t a serial killer, the way the character molded and manipulated others, studying and predicting their behavior—reading him had felt like looking in a mirror. “Except I don’t really have a heart.”

Even in the dim light, I saw her roll her eyes.

I tapped a finger on the arm of the chair and considered the basis of her analysis—she saw kindness in things I’d done, I guessed. Though she may have perceived benevolence, it wasn’t sincere. “You realize, Celia, anything that appears like an act of compassion on my part is simply that—an act.”

“Why act at all? I mean, with me, for example. Why claim to be my baby’s father? Why let me bully my way into your ‘experiments?’” She used quote fingers when she said the word experiments.

There were a handful of answers I could have given, some with a bit of truth, some downright lies. The fact of the matter was that I felt obligated. It was the one emotion I owned, and as such, I owned it well. If my sense of duty was going to be the reason for most of my existence, then I’d make sure I lived up to it with all I had. I was responsible for Celia’s predicament—there was no doubt in my mind of that—and for that alone, I was obligated to her, no matter how strong the alarm of doubt in my gut.

“I see you formulating a response over there, Hudson. Don’t bother. If you aren’t going to answer honestly, don’t answer at all.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I’d prefer if you just said you didn’t know.”

So that was what I chose to say. Because it was easier. “I don’t know.”

The nurse arrived then, and I slipped out. It was near seven and I had to get home and changed before heading into work. A night with no sleep was going to make for a miserable day at Dad’s office, but worse would be a day with my mourning mother.

The nursery was on the way to the elevators, I told myself, when I found my feet heading in that direction. A lone male figure dressed in a suit and tie stood peering in the windows, and even down the hall, with his body half-turned away, I recognized him.

I didn’t say anything as I approached the windows next to him. I forced myself to look in, forced myself to gaze at the newborn babies. Forced myself to recognize that there had been a loss in this world—in my world—and there should be at least a moment of grieving.

The disappointment from earlier returned. But that was all.

For my dad, though, there was more. Tears streaked his face, and I realized I’d never seen a grown man cry, let alone my father.

Without any greeting, without looking at me directly, he asked. “Was it mine?”

Perhaps it was appropriate that he was the one in mourning. But the facts surrounding his bereavement—the too-young daughter of a friend that he’d knocked up, the wife he’d driven to drink, the secrets that required him to be there incognito in the early hours—angered me too much, overwhelming all else.

“I didn’t sleep with her,” I said, confirming his suspicions. “But that child was never yours. Don’t ever speak like it was anything but mine again.”

He closed his eyes as a new wave of pain furrowed his expression.

I left him there at the windows and headed for the elevators. Left him to struggle through his regret and guilt and sorrow and heartache—all those ridiculous emotions that made him weak.