by Ani Katz
And when I stepped out of the office, my irritation melted away into a sense of quiet resolve, because there she was. At some point while I was in there being lectured she’d sat down to wait in the vestibule, her long legs and gangly body nearly swallowed by the enormous leather sofa she had slouched into. She was dressed in her uniform, khaki pleated skirt and crimson polo, too old now for the garnet plaid pinafores we’d always adored. Her left knee was skinned from last week’s soccer game, and she was still tan from the summer. She looked up from her cell phone, which she wasn’t supposed to be using in school, shook her dark hair out of her limpid brown eyes, and met my gaze, her face grim.
My daughter, my Ava.
* * *
■ ■ ■
First there were the Polaroids. Miriam had shoe boxes filled with them—white-framed, washed-out totems from those first years of courtship and marriage. There I am at an outdoor café, bright sun erasing the crown of my head, my shoulder, my wrists. There I am commandeering the grill, smoke like a spirit beside me as I scowl manfully. There we are on the steps of city hall on a gorgeous autumn afternoon, Miriam ducking from the hail of rice thrown by our friends, holding up her bouquet as a shield as I turn toward her, my palm open to catch the celebratory hail.
There we are in photo after photo, self-portraits with our faces pressed together, missing pieces of her forehead, or my chin—one eye, one mouth. There we are at someone else’s wedding, my right hand reaching across my body to hold her arm above her elbow, her right hand twined with my left. There she is with a hand cradling her swollen belly, her other hand brushing back her hair, or wiping her brow, or shielding her face. There we are standing together in the gravel driveway of our life-size white dollhouse, closing documents and keys in hand, grinning like fools.
And there is a parcel of pink on a powder blue bedspread: short chubby legs, feet kicked aloft to touch a tiny chin. A little body on its back, pulled into the shape it must have held in the womb.
Then things go digital, and I mostly disappear. Scroll through the albums that first year of my daughter’s life and it’s all mother and child. Miriam smiling in oversize sunglasses, pale baby flesh pressed to her chest. Close-up of Miriam gazing into the lens, lips puckered to kiss the sliver of baby profile peeking out of a blanket. Baby’s head resting against her mother’s knees in a hammock, pedicured feet stretching up toward a cloudless summer sky. The photographs suggest a never-ending idyll: every hour magic hour, every bottle-feeding and bath and bedtime a work of art.
The reality was somewhat different.
* * *
—
Miriam’s parents were the first problem. They didn’t bother to come to the wedding—they saw no point in dragging themselves across the Atlantic for a civil ceremony—but Miriam prevailed upon them to visit that December, her first Chanukah away from home.
Their taxi pulled up just before sundown. From our front door, we could see their dour faces peering out at the street, as if they were afraid to leave the car. Miriam’s mother was a small and elegant woman, her thick dark hair shot through with white; she said very little, communicating through endless touches on her daughter’s arms and shoulders. Her father was neatly dressed, reserved and unsmiling. He shook my hand firmly, and I met his eyes for a full three beats before he looked away.
I tried to curry favor over dinner as I told them about the house we would buy very soon, my upcoming promotion and raise. They nodded distractedly as Miriam babbled in a torrent of French and English, translating furiously, until her father sighed and held up his hand.
I understand, he said, his voice clipped. He was just too proud to answer me in English that was anything less than flawless.
They were obviously not happy. They’d expected their daughter to come home, or at least marry a Jew. They couldn’t fathom her life in New York, or understand why she’d chosen me. After dinner Miriam’s mother lit the menorah and the family chanted hymns I did not know.
Throughout the week they were in town, I hardly saw them. Miriam took them to museums and other places of interest during the day while I was at the office; the first few nights they came back to the apartment to have dinner and light the candles, but toward the end of the trip they elected to stay in their hotel in the evenings.
I confess they remain somewhat gray to me, these characters that entered our married life so briefly. Promises were made about having a real Jewish wedding in Paris the following summer, promises that were not kept. There would be no long family vacations, no affectionate favors performed for my mother-in-law, no intimacies shared over late-night glasses of scotch with my father-in-law. I never became their son; I can barely recall the particularities of their faces.
When I think of that visit, I mostly think of Miriam’s anxious expression, her eyes flitting back and forth between her parents and me, her husband, as she recognized the sundering between her old life and her new one. I felt a palpable sense of relief when these strangers finally went home, leaving my wife and me alone together.
* * *
—
Her parents may have been the first imperfection in our fairy tale, but as soon as Miriam got pregnant we relapsed into bliss. I always thought it was a cliché to say that women glow when they’re expecting—and I’m sure that for most women, it’s not true at all—but Miriam really did glow. She gave off this warmth, this light, even more so than she usually did. I wanted her all the time, even as her body became strange and unrecognizable to me, with its swollen breasts and new growths of hair. It excited me to think that I was responsible for changing her, that I was the one who had altered her body so markedly.
I only have one bad memory from those months. It was early summer, her second trimester. We were still living in Brooklyn, and I was coming home from work, ambling through the warm violet evening down corridors of sturdy townhouses occupied by prosperous families. I turned our corner and saw her down the block. She was in a cornflower blue maternity dress, facing away from the street, looking into someone else’s garden. Miri, my wife. I came up behind her and put my hand on her elbow, and when she turned I saw that she was smoking a cigarette. It trembled in her fingers for a brief moment before I knocked it out of her hand.
What are you doing? I said. She took a step back from me.
I’m sorry.
Are you crazy?
I said I’m sorry!
I knew we were making a scene, right there on our pleasant street, and the shame of the spectacle inflamed me further.
How could you?
I needed one, she said. Just one.
You needed one?
I couldn’t help it, I’m just so, so—
She couldn’t finish her sentence. She began to cry, and after a few moments of watching her thin frame heave with sobs, I folded her into my arms, the gentle mound of our baby pressed against me.
It’s okay, I said. I forgive you.
That was when I decided it was time to get serious about buying a house, as I had promised Miriam’s parents. The apartment was barely big enough for the two of us, and it was time to start living like adults. Like a family. House hunting would give us a project, a constructive outlet for Miriam’s anxiety, which was beginning to mount. She refused to buy anything for the baby or do more than the bare minimum of research, citing superstitions, the evil eye, other nonsense.
A house would be different. A home was something to look forward to.
We’d gone to a few open houses out on Long Island earlier that spring, just to get a feel for the market, but now I kicked the search into high gear, broker and all, and we spent the summer scouring the hamlets of the North Shore.
Finally, on a warm Sunday in September, we pulled up to 26 Harbor Lane, a Dutch Colonial with a wide porch and dormer windows, half an hour northwest of the house where I’d grown up. Golden light soaked the lush lawn. Looking at the house, I
could imagine the sound of footsteps and happy shouts, could see first-day-of-school photos taken on the porch, trick-or-treaters congregating in the doorway, Christmas lights strung up in the towering apple tree in the front yard. I could smell Miriam’s cooking in the renovated open kitchen, feel the warmth of fires I’d build in the living room hearth. I could see a life lived—our life.
Miriam needed a little more persuasion. She’d gone along gamely with the search, but when it was time to make an offer she balked. She wasn’t ready to abandon the idea of a larger place in Brooklyn, even though I’d told her again and again that with our budget those kinds of places didn’t exist, and that staying in the city wouldn’t make sense for us in the long run. Still, she resisted. It was her trust fund, and the down payment on the house would eat up most of the principal, leaving us house poor aside from my income. But it was what we wanted. She kept asking if we were sure, and I kept reminding her yes, of course we were sure.
We closed in early November, a few weeks before Miriam’s due date, and after leaving the lawyer’s office we stopped by the house that was finally ours, just the two of us. In the front vestibule I popped open a bottle of celebratory champagne, the cork bouncing away from me into the dark and empty living room, ricocheting off the wall.
To us, I said, raising my plastic cup.
To us, Miriam repeated.
She took one sip, then poured the contents of her cup into mine.
* * *
—
Miriam had hoped her mother would come back to New York for the birth, but in the end she couldn’t. I can’t remember why. It may have been prohibitively expensive, or perhaps her husband didn’t allow her to. Her mother’s absence caused my wife some distress; at the hospital, there was much more crying than you may have expected, even considering the challenges of the delivery. Four hours of pushing before they finally cut her open. The bleeding would last for days.
But all the pain was worth it. I would give anything to go back to the beginning and see myself holding my daughter for the first time. To see the excess ink of her footprint pressed to the back of my hand, to see those glittering eyes staring into mine, even though their memory scorches me now. That first moment, holding her—everything they say about it is true.
We named her Ava, for my sister.
* * *
—
We went home, I went back to work, and before we knew it, winter had descended on us. I had imagined that we would settle into comfortable domesticity relatively quickly, but things didn’t work out that way. Months after we’d moved into the house, the floors were still bare, artwork was still unhung, and cardboard boxes still cowered in the corners of the rooms. My mother and the twins didn’t come by as often as I’d thought they would—the girls were obsessed with the new baby, but they still couldn’t drive back then, and after the first few visits my mother was less and less inclined to leave the house and brave the traffic on the parkway.
Other kinds of disorder crept in. I’d come home from work just after seven and see the breakfast dishes still on the counter—yellow slick of egg dried to ochre, curls of desiccated orange peels. Miriam would be on the sofa, the down comforter from our bed tented over her. The television was always on, always set to some costume drama—intrigue among the servants, grand balls, pale-skinned aristocrats delivering restrained professions of love.
I called my mother.
You need to come over more often, I said. Miriam needs company.
She doesn’t want me there, Thomas.
What do you mean she doesn’t want you?
When I call to invite myself she makes all sorts of excuses about why I shouldn’t come. I think she just wants to be alone.
Well, that’s too bad! It’s not her decision.
You try telling her that. I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.
I started to notice that Miriam only held the baby when she absolutely had to, laying her back in her crib as soon as she was done feeding. When Ava cried, Miriam would sit impassively and wait for several seconds of squalling before shaking herself out of her reverie and going to get her.
One evening over dinner—leftover rotisserie chicken, frozen spinach that had been indifferently sautéed—things finally came to a head. I’d turned on the radio to a broadcast of Così Fan Tutte—one of Mozart’s lighter confections, a farce about conniving fiancés that we had always enjoyed. Miriam must have asked me how my day was, because I launched into a monologue about some of my recent frustrations, particularly the bovine inflexibility and lack of imagination in management.
They want it every which way, but it’s completely vague, I said. Their imagination is only quantitative—it’s all about how much money they can wring out of people. It drives me absolutely insane.
I attacked the remains of my chicken breast, chewed and swallowed the dry meat.
But they can’t actually do anything to hurt me, I said. They know I’m not disposable. And that’s the good news, really. This kind of creative work is never going to go away. It will be a long time before machines can generate original ideas. Although I guess you never know these days.
I had been talking like this for a while before I noticed Miriam wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. She hadn’t eaten anything; she stared at her untouched plate as if it were a text she didn’t know how to read. Her eyes bulged with unshed tears. Her lips shuddered.
Miri?
Suddenly I noticed how disheveled she looked. She’d been wearing the same dull blue cardigan for days, its sleeves falling to her knuckles, hiding her engagement ring. Her hair was lank from a week without washing, and a cluster of pimples climbed her neck like a grapevine. Her breath smelled like sour beer, and her face was swollen and pink. She was hunched over, shoulders curled in, neck bowed and tense. It wasn’t like her to sit like that. It was as if she weren’t embodying herself as the woman I knew.
Miri? Sweetheart?
It was intermission. The host was talking softly, crediting the leads and conductor as recorded applause faded in the background.
Miriam opened her mouth to speak.
Why did we move here?
At first I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know what she was asking.
What do you mean? I asked finally. We wanted this house, remember? We never would have been able to afford this much space in Brooklyn. You know that.
But we don’t know anyone here.
We have my family, I said. They’re not far.
But we don’t have any friends.
Our friends aren’t in the city anymore either! I said, showing my exasperation more than I had meant to. They’re all in fucking Jersey, or Westchester or wherever!
Don’t yell at me!
Sorry, I said. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to yell.
She closed her eyes, swaying slightly in her chair. When she finally spoke again her voice seemed to come from very far away.
I can’t stop thinking about it.
What?
Don’t be angry with me.
What can’t you stop thinking about?
Please don’t be angry.
Tell me.
I can’t stop thinking about hurting her.
We were silent for a long moment. On the radio someone was droning on about a membership drive, warning listeners it was their last chance to give.
Miri, I said, nearly choking on her name.
She looked down at her hands, refusing to meet my gaze.
Miri, I repeated.
Every time I hold her, these awful visions come into my mind, she said. I think of how easy it would be to open the refrigerator and leave her inside, or fill the tub and slide her in. Or, I don’t know, just drop her. She’s so fragile, she would just break.
The clarity of these visions startled me. It was as if someone el
se were speaking through my wife—my small, sweet wife who could never hurt a living thing, who could never harbor such thoughts.
Whenever I look at the top of her head and see that pulse beating I just imagine crushing it with my fingers.
She had begun to cry. I grabbed her wrists.
Miri, Miriam! Listen to yourself!
It’s like it’s not even her, she sobbed. I look at her, and I don’t know who she is. Or what she is. I keep dreaming that I go to the crib and she’s turned into a bird, or a swarm of bugs. She’s not my baby.
She is your baby, I said. She’s our baby.
I’m so sorry. I don’t want to hurt her. I just can’t stop thinking about it. I want to kill myself. I want to die.
No you don’t.
Yes I do.
Don’t say that. You don’t mean that.
She squirmed in my grasp, trying to free herself, but I held on, even as she dragged our fused hands through her uneaten food.
I can’t do this. I can’t be her mother. I don’t want to touch her. If I touch her I’ll hurt her.
No, you’re a perfect mother. You’re not going to hurt her. You just need help. We’ll get help for you.
I keep hearing noises in the house. I keep thinking there’s someone else in here.
There’s no one else, sweetheart. I promise.
You don’t understand. You aren’t here. You don’t know what it’s like. All I do is wait for you to come home. That’s all I do. Every day.
You need company. Ma and the twins, they can come over—
I don’t want them. They’re weird—they’re not my family.
Miri, come on.
Just let go of me! Let go!
She was howling, making animal sounds. I’d never seen her like this before—never seen her dissolve so completely. It scared me. It made me see her differently, showing me a capacity for darkness that I had never believed could exist in her. I let go of her hands.