Close Encounters Read Online Free PDF

dancing in their adoring throngs. I dreamt I sat in the coffee shops listening to the clove-smoking university students talk about Keats and Sartre and the Motherwell retrospective while they drank coffee out of cups the size of soup bowls, and I knew what these dreams meant, and I knew it was all right to feel something was missing in my life, amidst the stodgy, safe conservatism of it all. But after all, I had a good career and a loving husband and a child on the way and perhaps after the baby was born, Michael and I could do something more risqué.
    However, when I went to ask him one morning, as we got ready to leave for work, he came back in the house smiling.
    â€œThe wildflowers you left in the car, Julia, left dirt all over the seat.” He wiped the back of his pants before giving me a quick kiss. “I mean, they’re a sweet touch, but goodness, now I’ve got to change!”
    I began to remember Julia Ann’s laugh, a somewhat sharp, barking squeal, a sound I thought I had forgotten years ago. Out of curiosity, I began trying to imitate it when around colleagues, while out at dinner with Michael, a premeditated bit of spontaneous joy that fell flat, insincere, when it passed through my lips. It was certainly not mine—Julia’s laugh—and yet we had shared the same vocal chords. We had the same muscle of tongue, the same air expelled through our shared lips. I could not understand it, just as I could not believe she was gone. Was she really gone or was she just biding her time, waiting for her moment to emerge, to wrest control of our body from my grasp? Was she slowly consuming my children—or me?
    I am foolish to think such things.
    At some point the stirrings became unbearable.
    â€œYou can’t be going into labor already,” Michael shook his head as I described the feeling of opening, of water breaking, of something pushing, wanting out, wanting to part with me, believing it was time. Or perhaps needing, gasping, wanting more oxygen, more room, more…life. “You have to cancel your appointments at the clinic. We’re going to the doctor this morning.”
    â€œIt is consuming the other one.” The doctor held up the ultrasound. “We’re going to have to abort.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I questioned. “You said the other child was usually harmless.”
    â€œThe in fetu pregnancy is such a rare case that it’s hard to predict what will happen.” He shook the film slightly in his hand. “In this case, the vital child appears to be a malignancy—or have a malignancy—that is consuming it. I’m very sorry.”
    â€œAre you sure it’s not…”
    â€œIt’s not what, my dear?”
    â€œI just feel so…drained.” I put my hand to my head. My thoughts, actions had been so muddled as of late. The reality of the doctor before me was tenuous, grainy, and quite removed, as if I were looking at him through the inside of my head, far away, so far away. I just wanted to sleep. “I’m very weak, you see.”
    The surgery was scheduled for the next morning. Michael and I waited in the hospital room, the antiseptic shell that would protect me from greater harm. As I looked at the cracks in the ceiling, Michael dug into a snack bag of potato chips from the vending machine.
    â€œWe should never have done this.” I shook my head. “Not while she is still here.”
    â€œOh, for Christ’s sake, Julia, you have to stop it with that.” He crunched the shiny cellophane into his fist. “There is no one else. We’ve discussed this over and over. You’ve shown no signs of multiple personality or other dissociative illness. As for the twins—it could have happened to anyone. Certainly there’s a genetic propensity for having twins, but this—this is a complete anomaly.”
    â€œThere is no anomaly.” I pushed the tray away. “I am