The Death of Emmeline

Al Mazzoli

In mid-January, Laura’s toddler fell sick and died. She suspected it had something to do with the woman she saw Nick kissing at her cousin’s New Year’s party, when she decided to show up early and surprise him. Then, her feelings toward him changed, and little Emmeline turned pale and started coughing, and her hair withered to a bony white. It was over almost before Laura knew it was happening, and she had no time to figure out how to stop it. The lovebaby Nick had for Laura also died, and by March of that year, both of their bodies had been placed in cedar coffins and lowered into the ground in a small plot in the Springfield cemetery. Laura kept the house and Nick moved into an apartment in Brooklyn. That was many years ago. 

Eventually, Laura sold the house and moved to Miami, Florida. Neither one of them had any ties to Florida, so she was surprised when, on the first day of her new nursing position, she ran into Nick in the hall midway between the children’s ward and the chronic illness ward. He was older than she remembered, of course, but he had the same smile. She soon learned that he had taken a nursing job in the same hospital as her. At first, it seemed unbelievable, but after a few weeks, she got used to it. She started noticing, against her will, the same things that had attracted her to him before—his curly black hair, the way he always smelled like peppermint, his unabashed love for early 2000s rap music. She wasn’t scared that she might fall in love with him again, because she knew if she got pregnant, this time she’d have an abortion, and they wouldn’t have any babies to worry about, whether they got together or not. Stayed together or not.

But she was scared when, one night, she opened her bedroom window to investigate a thumping sound on the wall outside, and saw her child there, from long ago—her bones poking through her skin, her hair matted in dirty tufts, her teeth bared in an eternal smile. The girl banged her fists against the wall. She shook with the same love as before—Laura’s tiny, lovely child, recalled from far away and many years ago, the only thing that could move her.