“I felt lost,” Tanya says.
Patrick nods, as though this makes sense. “You must be going through hell.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t feel like myself.” She sets her own pretzel down on the bench and holds her hands in her lap. When she glances at him, he’s looking at her softly.
“I was happy when I saw your name on my phone. Tanya Bloom,” he says, smiling a little. “I was so flustered that I didn’t pick up.”
“I was flustered when you called me back,” she admits.
“I know neither one of us is drinking. But if you’re interested, I do have some excellent pot I’d love to share with you. It’s medicinal. I’ve found it to be pretty soothing, if you’re into that.”
“Oh,” says Tanya.
“We’d have to go back to my apartment. We could smoke it on the balcony.”
Tanya’s only smoked pot once in her life, her freshman year at Smith with a group of students in the West Quad, and she can’t say she enjoyed the experience. There was the passing of the joint from mouth to mouth—unsanitary—and all they’d done afterward was order pizza and watch something stupid on television. Everyone seemed to find all the same unfunny things funny, so finally Tanya had left, thinking she probably hadn’t inhaled properly.
But when she returned to her dorm and tried to read “The Yellow Wallpaper” for her Lit class, she found she couldn’t concentrate and her mind kept moving in unfamiliar circles. So Tanya set the book down and turned off the overhead light and put on music: Joni Mitchell’s album Blue. It was the type of music Nessa would have listened to in a moment like that: kind of sad, kind of romantic, kind of lonely.
Was she lonely? she remembers wondering, lying in her dorm room that Friday night. The rest of the campus was occupied. Gathered together in various groups, dancing, playing drinking games, passing joints. In some rooms people were probably kissing or close to kissing; having sex or close to having sex. Across the West Quad, the group of kids she was just with were probably watching another show, still laughing.
“Sure,” she says, turning to Patrick, her stomach a mess of nerves. “Why not.”
So they barrel down Lexington in the backseat of a cab, past Hunter College and Bloomingdale’s and the Chrysler Building. The cabdriver is aggressive, as if he knows what they’re doing is illicit, and that Tanya, given too much time, might change her mind. He weaves in and out of lanes, tears through yellow lights, wastes nobody’s time. She and Patrick are both quiet, watching New York fly by out their windows. When the driver slams on the brakes for a pedestrian and Tanya is flung forward against her seat belt, Patrick casts out his arm, as if to stop her from flying through the windshield. “Careful,” he says sharply to the driver, but the driver says nothing in response.
They’re dropped off in front of Patrick’s building, a high-rise on Madison Avenue, with a wide green awning out front. The doorman smiles, nodding kindly and opening the door for them.
“Thanks, Rudy,” Patrick says, stepping back to allow Tanya in first.
“No problem, Mr. McConnell.”
Tanya enters the air-conditioned lobby. Everything is white marble and spotless. There’s a lounge area with crisp modern couches and a cream-colored rug, floor-to-ceiling mirrors lining the walls across from the elevators. She’s been there before, of course, that December for the work holiday party. She’d arrived drunk, with Eitan. She remembers taking the elevator up in their winter coats, holding hands and laughing to each other about the over-the-top lavishness of the place.
It feels so different this time, sober, and arriving with Patrick. She wonders what Rudy thinks, if he thinks anything at all. They step inside the elevator and Patrick presses the button for the eleventh floor.
“How long have you been here?” Tanya asks.
“Two and a half years,” Patrick says. “I’m thinking of moving downtown, though.”
“This isn’t downtown enough for you?”
“Nah. It’s boring up here.”
“What about Selena? Where does she live?”
“She’s in Brooklyn now. Williamsburg.” He rolls his eyes.
“You don’t like it there?”
“No. To put it lightly.”
“Me neither,” Tanya says. “I could do without the man buns and the Amish beards.”
Patrick laughs as the elevator doors open. “Here we are.”
His apartment is as exquisite as she remembers: an open floor plan centering around a living room the size of Tanya’s entire apartment. Stunning views. “You’ve been here before, right?” he asks.
“For the holiday party. You have a beautiful apartment.”
“Oh, thanks. Please—make yourself at home. Can I get you a water or a seltzer? Soda?”
“Water’s good.”
“Great. And if you don’t mind I’m going to change quick—I’m still in this shirt from work and I’ve just about sweated through it.”
“Go ahead,” Tanya says.
Patrick disappears and Tanya wanders into the den. There’s a huge brown leather couch catty-corner to a love seat, a low-rise coffee table scattered with newspapers and New Yorkers. The opposite wall is entirely floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled to the brim with books. She scans the titles—mostly law books and nonfiction, a full set of encyclopedias, anthologies of essays, biographies, a handful of novels.
Patrick appears several minutes later, this time in jeans and a white T-shirt, and Tanya feels her body react—that unmistakable pulse of pressure between her legs. She’s attracted to him.
“Judging my library?” he asks.
“A little.”
“And?” he asks.
“And what?”
“What’s your takeaway?” There’s a small smile on his face. He’s holding a plastic baggie of marijuana.
“You read mostly men,” she says.
“Ah.”
“And the women you do have seem to write cookbooks.” She pulls one of the books off the shelves—A Traditional Irish Table by Cathleen Kelly. “Do you cook?”
Patrick laughs. “My mom gave me that. I have no idea why.”
Tanya smiles and slides the book back in its place. The word mom makes her weak with sadness.
“Do you mind a little tobacco?” he asks.
Tanya glances at the baggie and an image pops into her head, clear as day: Patrick drinking whiskey from a crystal tumbler at his holiday party in December. She remembers because he’d thrown his arm over Eitan’s shoulder and offered him a sip.
“Man, don’t be drinking that,” he’d said, meaning Eitan’s beer, “when you could be drinking this. Here, try mine.” He handed Patrick his tumbler. “Johnnie Walker Blue. I’ll have Taylor fix you one.”
She wonders if the whiskey that night had been a slip-up, or if the two-years-sober thing he’d told her in the park was a lie.
“I’m sorry,” she says to Patrick now. “But I just realized the time.” She holds up her phone, as if for proof. “It’s later than I thought. I really should get home.”
“Oh, really?” Patrick says. And though he keeps his smile securely on his face, there’s disappointment in his eyes, maybe even a touch of agitation.
All of a sudden, Tanya is trembling. She thinks of Eitan uptown, on the eighth floor of Lenox Hill Hospital, and then she thinks of her baby, and she’s overcome with relief for her small, delicate family.
“You okay, Tanya?”
“No,” she says. “I’m not. And I don’t think smoking that is going to help me.”
Patrick quickly stuffs the baggie in his jeans pocket. To Tanya’s surprise, he looks ashamed. “Look,” he says, “I don’t know what you’re going through. Not at all. But if this means anything, Tanya, you’re one of the strongest people I know. If it were me, I’d have downed the entire liquor store by now.”
He shakes his head a little. “People get through things their own way, and I’m sure you have your things. But from where I’m standing, you’re a fucking champ.” His voice has changed from the assured tone he used to answer his phone, from the seductive one he used with her down in Central Park.
This voice—she can hear the boy in Patrick McConnell. Not in a juvenile way, but rather—for the first time, he sounds vulnerable. She wants to thank him for this, but she knows it will only embarrass him, that she risks losing this side of him altogether.
“People keep saying I’m strong,” she says instead. “As if I’ve had a choice in all this. But I didn’t. It just happened. I’m not being strong. I’m just being.”
Patrick shakes his head resolutely. “But look at yourself. You’re back at work. You got your hair cut. You made the wise decision not to smoke with me.” He smiles. “You’re on a roll.”
“True,” she says. “I mean, I can barely look at a tree without bursting into tears.”
“Hey.” He shrugs. “That’s most people on a normal day. Give yourself a break.”
* * *
—
ONCE OUTSIDE, TANYA BREATHES in the evening air, grateful to be alone. She doesn’t feel the need to call anyone and tell them where she just was, what she almost did. Not Eitan or Nessa or Simone. There’s nothing to confess; no apology to make. Almost is not the same thing as doing. Almost is not a crime.
She walks to Times Square, a place she normally avoids with a passion, though tonight it doesn’t bother her. The garish lights and the flashing billboards, the swarming tourists with their souvenirs and selfie sticks, make it seem almost like a different country. It aligns with the oddness of the rest of her night.
She catches the 1 train uptown. The subway is quiet for a Monday evening, with plenty of open seats, but Tanya chooses to stand. She watches the other passengers. Most are plugged in: listening to music or reading or scrolling or tapping their phones. Some are just closing their eyes.
The secret knowledge of her baby—that she is not alone in this city, on this train, in her own body—comforts her in a way it hasn’t before. She wonders if the little person inside of her has a consciousness yet; if the baby has any awareness of being carried around to all these wildly different places: the courthouse and Graze Salon, Central Park, Murray Hill, Times Square, and now, underground and zooming uptown—Fiftieth Street, Columbus Circle, Sixty-Sixth Street, Seventy-Second Street, all the way up to Seventy-Ninth Street. Can this tiny little soul sense it—she wonders—what it feels like, going home?
IV.
It’s eight a.m., mid-August, and already the city is sweltering, hot air coming up from the vents in the sidewalk like breath. Nessa hauls her suitcase out from the underbelly of the Peter Pan bus and heads toward the subway to catch the train up to Tanya and Eitan’s apartment.
She stands in a long line to buy her MetroCard and when she finally gets to the kiosk, it takes four tries before the machine reads her credit card. When it finally spits out a yellow pass, it feels like an accomplishment.
The trains are packed. Nessa is pressed shoulder to shoulder between a big-boned man who seems to be falling in and out of sleep and a professionally dressed woman with AirPods in her ears. Nessa is close enough to hear the woman’s music, something harsh and syncopated. She clutches her suitcase between her legs and looks around at all the New Yorkers and the tourists, everyone fairly quiet in their own worlds.
When she gets off at Seventy-Ninth Street, the city is calmer than downtown. There are people walking dogs and pushing strollers, and rather than heading in every possible direction, they seem more at the mercy of the city’s grid. Nessa walks from Broadway to West End Avenue and then up four blocks to Tanya’s apartment.
“Hey!” Tanya’s voice crackles over the intercom, once she’s rung up. “Come up.”
The door buzzes and Nessa pushes it open, dragging her rolling suitcase over the threshold of the doorway, then up the two flights of stairs.
Tanya is waiting for Nessa at the door of her apartment. There’s a round, unmistakable melon-sized bump beneath her sister’s shirt.
“Look at you,” Nessa says, overcome. She only learned about Tanya’s pregnancy a month ago, when Tanya called to ask if Nessa could come be with her when she found out the sex of the baby.
They hug and it feels different with Tanya’s belly between them, a third little person.
“Holy shit,” Nessa says. “You’re going to be a mother.”
“The poor, innocent child.”
Nessa kneels and presses her hands to Tanya’s belly. It’s warm and firm. She puts her ear against Tanya’s stomach and knocks gently with her knuckles. “Hey there,” she says. “Who are you in there?”
* * *
—
THAT AFTERNOON NESSA and Tanya sit together in the waiting room at Tanya’s ob-gyn. “So what do you want?” Nessa asks. “Boy or girl?”
“I don’t care,” Tanya says. “As long as it’s healthy and happy—”
“Oh, come on. Don’t feed me that. I won’t tell—”
“No,” Tanya interrupts. “Because if I tell you and I end up with the other one, you’ll always know.”
“Why does that matter? It’s not like I’ll tell the kid.”
“I’m not saying.”
“Fine. I know what you want anyway.”
“You don’t know,” Tanya says. “But don’t say it. Don’t jinx it.”
Nessa purses her lips and picks up a parenting magazine. On the front a beautiful woman with blond hair is holding a blond-haired baby, smiling widely into the camera. If it weren’t for the child pressed up against the woman’s cheek, it could have been an advertisement for toothpaste.
“This is going to be you,” Nessa says, holding out the magazine.
Tanya rolls her eyes.
Eitan rushes in then, sweaty and bright-eyed. “There were major delays on the 6,” he says, collapsing in the chair next to Tanya. “I literally ran here all the way from Fifty-Eighth.”
Tanya smiles curtly. “Time to get back to the gym, huh?”
“Does she always talk to you like that?” Nessa asks.
“Pretty much.”
“It’s for his own good,” Tanya says, patting Eitan’s knee. “I don’t want him to have a heart attack on me.”
“Tanya?”
All three of them look up. A nurse is standing in the doorway. “Come in.”
* * *
—
IN THE EXAM ROOM, the nurse takes Tanya’s blood pressure and temperature, her height and weight. “Change into this gown, please,” she tells Tanya. “With the front open. Dr. Townes will be with you shortly.”
“Turn around while I change,” Tanya instructs Nessa and Eitan, after the nurse leaves and shuts the door.
“But you’re a beautiful pregnant woman,” Nessa says. “I want to see.”
“Turn.”
“So what do you think it’s going to be, Eitan?” Nessa asks, as they both turn around to give Tanya privacy.
Eitan exhales thoughtfully. “This morning I woke up certain it was going to be a girl. But then on my run here I got this really strong feeling that it’s a boy. I don’t know,” he says. “I really don’t know.”
His eyes are almost childlike with excitement, and Nessa wonders what it would be like to be with a man as good as Eitan. A man who treats women kindly, and not because he wants something in return.
Men like that have never expressed an interest in Nessa. For a moment she feels furious, but then the doctor comes in, and Nessa pushes the feeling down, quick and tidy.
Dr. Townes is short with round, pink cheeks and a rounded pink nose. “You’ve got your whole crew with you,” she says, shaking Eitan’s and Nessa’s hands.
Then she examines Tanya, rubs ultrasound gel on Tanya’s bell
y, and gently moves the probe over the bump. “So you want to know the sex of the baby?” Dr. Townes asks.
Tanya glances at Eitan and then at Nessa. She nods at the doctor. “We want to know.”
Dr. Townes smiles. She likes this part. “You’re having a little boy.”
Nessa’s stomach sinks. She looks at Tanya and her sister’s eyes well up.
“Oh my God,” Tanya says, starting to cry. She’s gripping both Nessa’s and Eitan’s hands.
Eitan bends down and kisses Tanya’s cheeks and hair. “A boy,” he says, beaming. “We’re having a boy.”
Nessa steps back so that Tanya and Eitan can hug one another.
The doctor and Nessa and Eitan leave the room, and finally, Tanya is left alone with her baby. The first real, private moment she’ll ever have with her boy. She puts her hands on her belly, and for the first time since she’s become pregnant, she speaks out loud. “You’re my son,” she tells him. Not in a baby voice. It’s just a sentence. Tanya is relieved.
She walks over to the window in her hospital gown. The room is cold, colder by the glass. They’re on the fourteenth floor, and from above, the cars in the parking lot and the ambulances lined up by the curb look miniature, like a child’s playset.
The sky is filled with impossibly huge cumulus clouds, so bright and textured they look artificial—the kind of clouds that if you were religious, or perhaps a child, might make you think of heaven. Tanya looks from cloud to cloud.
“It’s a boy,” she says, and this time it’s to Lorraine. Lorraine, who should have been there in the room with them. It hurts Tanya’s breastbone—a deep, physical ache—that her mother will never meet her son or hold him in her arms. Tanya’s son will never know Lorraine’s voice.
Tanya doesn’t linger at the window, though. She doesn’t believe Lorraine can hear her. Her mother’s absence is absolute.
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