Icarus. by Russell Andrews

the chairs around the table, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe. Caroline shook her head, furious at herself for her inadvertent cruelty, but she wondered what the hell he was thinking to want this apartment, because if she knew anything about her husband, it was that he was absolutely, insanely, phobically afraid of heights.
    He had been ever since the day his mother was killed.
    Since then, he had not, if it could possibly be avoided, gone above the sixteenth floor of any building. He didn't like to fly. He wouldn't sit in the upper tier of a sports stadium or a theater. She knew there were specific things that triggered the most painful of his memories and certain moments when the fear would overcome and even paralyze him. She had been with him long enough to know he could never go as close as she had to the wall. She also understood that he did not like seeing other people standing so close to a precipice. Especially women. And especially his wife.
    She watched as Jack sank deeper into the chair, then took the six steps she needed to stand next to him and hold his hand. He looked up at her, the color beginning to come back in his face now, his breathing slowing, becoming easier.
    "Do you like it?" he gasped and she had to burst out laughing.
    "Yes," she said. "I love it. It's my dream apartment. But it might be a little tough living here if you're going to pass out once or twice a day."
    "No," he said, his voice still low and hoarse and his breathing still heavy. "I want it."
    "Jack, it's crazy. Let's just find our beautiful dream apartment that's on the third floor of some other building."
    But he insisted. It was time to get over his fear, he said. Time to get rid of the ghosts that had been haunting him. She argued, told him there were other ways, but she stopped arguing when he said, "It's a good apartment for kids."
    She didn't respond to that at first, let a long silence linger in the air. She spent those silent moments staring at him, squinting her eyes, and then nodding, finally, when she decided she'd come up with the answer. "Do you think," Caroline said, "that when we have kids, they'll grow up and not be frightened by things because they grew up here, above the seventeenth floor?"
    "Yes," he said, not at all surprised that she had understood. "That's exactly what I think."
    She nodded. Then said, "That's an ugly carpet in the living room, isn't it?"
    "Hideous," he agreed.
    "On the other hand, it looks kind of comfortable."
    "Extremely."
    "Comfortable enough to try to make a baby on?" she asked.
    "There's only one way to find out," he answered.
    And he let her lead him out of his chair and into the living room, where they began to make love on the hideous living room carpet of their new apartment.
    – "-"-"RIGHT AFTER THEY moved in, Caroline got pregnant for the first time. Three weeks before the due date, they finished converting one bedroom into the baby's room – a room for a baby boy, as the tests had revealed – and filled it with toys and clothes and even painted stars on the ceiling above the crib. A week before she was due, Caroline doubled over with pain and Jack rushed her to the hospital. The baby was delivered by Cesarean and was stillborn. They grieved for months but they dealt with their loss by loving each other all the more and then Caroline was pregnant again. This time, two months into the pregnancy she began hemorrhaging and the baby had to be aborted.
    A few days before their ninth anniversary, she announced to Jack that she was pregnant yet again. They took every possible precaution. She stayed away from the restaurant, didn't exercise the way she usually did at the gym, drank not a drop of alcohol, and went on a vegetarian diet. They had put off the opening of the Jack's in London because of the first two pregnancies, but they decided they couldn't delay any longer. The doctor suggested that flying was not in her or the baby's best interest, so for the first time she let Jack