by Julia Fine
I knew this must be Michael. Margaret had promised that she wasn’t truly angry, which must be why she wasn’t giving off the heat. She was inside now, and in need. She had expected someone else.
THE NEXT MORNING Annie was still over, though she’d have to leave soon to go move her car—it was street-cleaning day in Uptown, and she was parked on the wrong side. She made an espresso on Ben’s machine and sat cross-legged while Clara writhed on her baby gym mat. Every so often Annie would jostle the padded poles that held the dangling animals, and little bells would ring inside their plush stomachs. Clara looked skeptical, because she always looked skeptical. Her eyes widened with each reverberation, but her mouth remained consistently turned down.
“I think she likes it,” said Annie, jostling the play gym in a familiar rhythm that I couldn’t quite place. “You go do your thing. Go take a shower, we’ll be fine.”
I ran the shower steaming, letting the mirror fog, half expecting Michael to write a message in the condensation. It made intrinsic sense to me that Margaret had a body—she had a body of work, she had a readership. Michael, on the other hand, had fallen into obscurity. No one was reading her, or buying her, and so she was reduced to an incorporeal self. Michael always craved the spotlight, and her obscurity must have been fuel for her anger. She clearly wanted to announce herself. She might leave a ghostly fingerprint, a ragged lipstick HERE I AM.
But when I stepped out, the glass was just glass. I hadn’t cleaned the master bathroom since Clara was born, and there was a streak of toothpaste globbed at the side of the sink, an upside-down bottle of baby shampoo leaking on the counter. The imperfections were grounding: this was my life and this was real, because why would anybody have delusions of a hard-water-stained toilet? What message would my subconscious be sending with egregious shower mold? Clean up your life. Or: Ben will probably fix all of it once he gets home.
The exhaust fan made a clicking sound that seemed dangerous. Was having Margaret upstairs dangerous? What about the water I’d spilled getting out of the shower, the fact that I’d skipped last night’s dinner, the fact that Clara had been alone here with Margaret and Michael? What if Margaret had hurt Clara? What if Clara had cried herself sick? What if she’d stopped breathing? What if the car couldn’t be fixed, what if the windows couldn’t be closed, what if the upstairs dog bit Solly?
Other than the reality of grime, I couldn’t place what was balanced and what was off-center. So much about my life had changed so quickly, and I couldn’t sort the shifts. Was it unusual that Clara slept at most only four hours at a time? Was it normal to discover a window that couldn’t be seen from the outside of a building? Was my hair supposed to be falling out like this? My breasts, when full, were ridged and veiny, foreign.
I sat on my bed and started a new thread on Mrs. What-to-Expect’s message board under a string of is-this-normal-can-you-helps. I wasn’t sure what to title it, wasn’t sure what time of day was best to post to ensure that the mothers whose expertise I needed would read and respond. I’d been obsessed with the message board ever since I was hacked, but I still hadn’t contributed. Is anyone else feeling weird about new neighbors, I began, before deleting this line of thought entirely. Do you feel like your dreams have been more lucid since the birth of your child? Wrong again. Too academic, and besides, it was my waking life that was the matter. Sleep was dreamless these days, dark. Does anyone else feel like someone they can’t see is watching them? I pressed post and left my phone plugged in on my nightstand to charge.
I WANTED TO get to Margaret before Annie left, to tell her how disappointed I was by her behavior. I’d thought we had an understanding, and it was going to take a lot for her to regain my trust.
I used Solly as my excuse, asking if Annie could stay another minute so I could run her out to pee without having to bring Clara in the cold. Then I went down and opened the door to the alley, tying Solly’s leash to the bottom of the dumpster and leaving her to do her business while I ran back inside. I entered through the garage, where the car was now dead. Ben would have to get someone to jump it.
Racing up the stairs so quickly that I felt my bladder sinking, I made it to the turquoise door. I turned the handle, and for the first time, it was locked.
“Margaret!” I only had a moment before Annie had to leave, before I had to retrieve Solly. “Margaret, it’s me!”
She didn’t answer, but I thought I heard movement: the shuffle of a chair across the floor. I put my ear to the door and caught the low murmur of someone’s conversation—Margaret, most likely, and a man. Something that sounded like a champagne bottle popping. Stifled laughter.
I knocked again, although I knew that she was lost to me. I slid my back down the turquoise door, mad at myself for caring. Trying to listen.
When I went downstairs and checked my phone, no one had commented on my What-to-Expect question—apparently it had become lost in a sea of other questions, a drop in an ocean of drops. Put on your own life vest first, I supposed. Lock your own turquoise door and drink champagne.
BEN LANDED DURING rush hour, and took the el instead of a car to get home to us faster. I heard his key scraping the lock, which I hadn’t yet told him I’d changed. Clara was begrudgingly doing her tummy time—rather than lifting her head or even turning her cheek to the mat, she was facedown in rainbow quilting, protesting silently, and this was just one of the reasons I was hesitant to leave her in the living room while I ducked down the hall. I sat listening to Ben try and fail for a full minute until Solly started whimpering, unable to withstand the anticipation.
I’d known he was coming, but I wasn’t prepared. What face would I wear? Annie had helped me clean the first floor, and I had a frozen casserole already in the oven: I could be happy homemaker. It was impossible to hide the bags beneath my eyes with concealer, my breasts were hard and heavy, and it seemed futile to try to make the bed: I could be the exhausted, self-sacrificing wife. After a week without consistent adult company, I cared more about Ben’s business dealings than I ever had before: I could be the willing confidante. I’d spent an hour this afternoon picking up Clara’s jingle-bell rattle and putting it on one side of the room, only to watch it, of its own volition, roll across the floor: I wasn’t sure what archetype that would make me. Hysterical? Insane? Eventually I had just let it stay under the couch, where Michael apparently needed it to be.
Cupping Clara in an arm, I got up to receive Ben, still not sure who I would be, not sure who Clara would become. He was wet; it had been raining. His carry-on suitcase had repelled the rain in fat drops that pooled onto the floor. Solly slid through them, careening into Ben. Instead of calming her, he came toward me and Clara.
“My girls”—he grinned—“all three of you.” An awkward dance ensued as I decided whether or not he was too wet to hold Clara, made the ultimate decision that he wasn’t. The energy was different, having him here and not on FaceTime—a charged particle hovering between pleasure and pain, relief and dissatisfaction. I reminded myself he wasn’t permanent. He would still go to work in the morning.
“How was the flight?” I asked him. “How was Houston?”
I thought I cared to know the answers, but as soon as Ben began to speak, I realized that I didn’t. Luckily the oven timer would go off soon.
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ve got dinner.”
Ben followed me into the kitchen, still wearing his shoes. Solly followed Ben.
“Look at you,” he said, “getting everything together. Holding down the fort.”
“Since when do you say ‘holding down the fort’?” I asked, but I basked in the compliment. Happy homemaker it was, then, and happy homemaker did not get locked out of her house, or run the car battery out, or make friends with the garbageman after throwing her shirt on his head. Happy homemaker had no time to talk about her recent faux pas with choice of babysitter. Happy homemaker called what had happened a faux pas—a false step. That could all wait. That could wait until later. Or never.
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“It’s one of the freezer meals I made before Clara was born,” I said, leaning down to the oven. Steam came in a great wave. In Ben’s arms, Clara twisted toward the heat.
“She’s cold,” I said.
Ben said, “She wants her mother.”
My shoulders straightened. I let out a gasp. Had no one said this yet? Clara wants her mother? I’d been afraid, and I was still afraid, but with a sudden streak of joy run thickly through. Need is an albatross. To be needed is to wear the weight of stones across your chest. To be wanted, that is different. To be wanted by a child is the cleanest of desires—to still be wanted once the child is fed and rested, once the diaper is fresh and the snot has been siphoned from the nostril and the gas has passed through. To be recognized not just as a body, but a person, a comfort. To be loved.
Not that Clara, in that moment, really saw me as a person. Until she was at least five, Clara would know me as an extension of herself, to be climbed over and drooled on, to send out as a scout to find what foods were safe to eat, what paths were safe to travel. How lovely, I thought suddenly, to be such an integral part of another person’s selfhood. To be a piece of Mommy-Clara, Clara-Mommy, to be a tree that she’d come home to. How stifling, of course, and what a vast responsibility, but also, in a certain light, how nice.
From an outsider’s perspective, there was no way that I’d made Clara safer in her brief time out of utero. However you hung it, I had not been good for Clara. And had Ben known, if Ben ever were to know—
Yet Clara wanted me, her mother. Clara felt safe with me. I traded Ben oven mitt for infant, and she leaned into me and sighed, content. She trusted me, and that trust was the most precious intangible thing I could imagine. It would take more than fifteen years of consistent disappointment to really break that trust—I knew because I’d kept coming back to my own mother, cord frayed but intact, for almost that long. Clara was new, and we could still be new together. I hadn’t yet lost her.
The oven timer beeped, and Ben turned it off and took out the casserole. All it took was the press of a button to make the sound stop. Solly knocked into us, still slaphappy at Ben’s arrival, and Ben’s smile was back to that ridiculous frown as he swept us all together in his arms. In his wet, squeaking shoes he danced us around the kitchen, my hip banging into the island, Clara’s head wobbling.
The whole time she’d really just wanted to suck on my tit, but even knowing didn’t matter. I loved my daughter. Finally it all felt right.
“I WAS WORRIED,” Ben said later, “you might have postpartum depression.” The night had been good, my joy continued. Nursing hurt less, Ben changed diapers, dinner wasn’t freezer-burned, and Clara’s bath was cozy, and now we were lying in bed, our daughter in the depths of sleep that made her impervious. I didn’t say anything, just rubbed Ben’s back in a way I hoped was comforting. “I thought,” he said, “something was really wrong.”
My throat tightened, and I kept rubbing his back. He should have noticed the focus, the consistency of my hand, the symmetry of each circle. He should have known that we were on the cusp of something really wrong, that we were teetering. He didn’t.
“Baby blues,” said Ben, “extremely common.” He was slurring his words in the way that meant he was almost asleep, his brain struggling to spark nerves, his left cheek slack.
The ceiling fan began to spin. I knew for a fact that the main power switch was off—I had checked it. I knew for a fact that we three were in bed and bassinet, that Solly was splayed atop Ben’s foot. I knew for a fact.
The week I’d taken the stick-shift guy’s pills, when I’d peeled the plastic off my cheap razor, finagling until I was left with just a blade, I had, for a moment, thought it better to be nothing. I hadn’t wanted to die, per se, but I had wanted to be nothing. When the razor dug in, the pain of it had throttled me: be something. It had all been a mistake, but in the end, it had hardly cost me.
I was lucky. Clara was lucky. Sometimes it’s too late, even if you’ve changed your mind, and you’re punished for the one stupid decision, the split-second rogue emotion. The impulse ruins you. You end up with life in prison. You end up losing somebody you love. You end up nothing.
“Thank God,” muttered Ben, “I was wrong.”
February 1942
Margaret leaves her car in a mess of cars by the stables, her fur coat on the passenger seat. The wind whips hair across her cheek as it blusters its way around Long Island mansions. No one has stayed behind to meet her, and the hunt crosses ten miles of contiguous estates, but she can hear the clamor of the hounds sniffing the rabbit, the beaglers trailing the hounds. The group has not gotten far.
Monty Hare has come to run with her today—he’s in town putting up a new production of some off-Broadway show or another, and though he isn’t a natural hunter, his long legs will serve him well.
“No promises,” Margaret said last night when she invited him to join the Buckram Beaglers. “But after eating, the dogs look like the grooms in Macbeth. As a man of the theater, I think you’ll be impressed.”
They were at Michael’s apartment, waiting for Michael, who was meant to be hosting a meeting of Margaret’s worlds. It was not yet seven thirty, with the entire dinner party left ahead of them, but Michael hadn’t shown, and Clem was already close-mouthed, Bruce antsy, and Bill overpouring the martinis. Michael was supposed to help make the potatoes, and there they were, unpeeled. Margaret was used to Michael making a fabulous entrance; she’d swoop in unconscionably late with an expensive bottle of wine and no excuse. Probably the night would go well. Still, she felt she had better recruit Monty to discuss things the next day.
She follows the call of the hunt around precisely pruned hedges, through beach plum trees and down along the Sound, to spot him now at the edge of a manicured lawn, just before the plants turn native. Not as fast as the hounds, which yip ahead, spread twelve across, already chasing the hare’s scent, but in good showing—somewhere near the middle of the clunkier human pack. Even with the ten pounds she’s put on during the holiday season, the run to join the group is no trouble to Margaret.
This is their fifth afternoon in pursuit of Flora the jackrabbit, recognizable by a particular notch in the ear, and so named by a boy in the field. At this point the whole club has developed an attachment to the old girl. The hounds can only hunt with their noses, and about a month ago had lost her scent—she’d been in plain sight but the dogs searched in vain, and finally Morgan Wing called “Go it, Flora!” and off she’d gone. The Beaglers will be sorry to lose her. The scent is stronger now, the pack gaining speed.
“So,” says Margaret, darting up and whomping Monty on the back. He mimes exhaustion, then grins. “Already tuckered?”
“Already drunk. Or rather still drunk. You can throw one, Brownie.”
“Michael can throw one.”
Silence, which can be interpreted as Monty just catching his breath, until it can no longer be interpreted as Monty just catching his breath.
“I felt it all went well,” says Margaret finally. “Bruce seemed to like her.”
“Bruce likes anyone who’ll talk to him about his instruments.”
“But?” Margaret has a nagging sense she has to prove herself. By all means she knows the dinner went well—although Clem barely spoke all evening, and Posey had seemed close to tears. But this might have been because of the war. Besides, Clem is so different from Michael, what were they to talk about? And Posey always does follow his lead. Still, there’d been the remark about Margaret’s new book, the one she’d done with Clem and had pulled out to show the party—The Runaway Bunny. The others complimented the watercolor, the cleverness of the language, the whimsy of the rabbits’ transformations. Michael sat down at the head of the table and read quickly, sniffing as she flipped through the proofs.
“Have a carrot!” she scoffed. “How distinctly like Margaret to treat someone who loves her with such disregard.”
The room was silent, until Margaret f
orced a laugh. Then Bruce mentioned an article he’d been assigned. Bill complimented Michael on her arrival, how she’d swept in an hour late—a massive basket of caviar and gourmet meats and cheeses in hand—and dropped her furs to the floor to reveal a sumptuous off-the-shoulder evening gown. Posey was wearing plaid flannel. The chicken that Margaret had been basting went straight into the fridge.
“You know we went to school with Leonard Thomas,” says Monty now, carefully, jumping a downed tree branch and keeping his voice low. Leonard, Michael’s son from her first marriage, is married to a painter and by all accounts a bore. “He used to talk about his mother. Tell us stories.”
“And you think that’s why Clem was uncomfortable?”
Monty allows himself a breath. When the hunt is done, there will be tea with their host and talk of rabbits and society. This conversation has no place there; best to finish it out now. Margaret pulls him out of the crowd, letting the field surge on ahead of them.
“Leonard didn’t always have the nicest things to say,” Monty concedes as his steps slow. “And the way that she picks at you, belittles your career—”
“She’s right. I’m going to graduate to writing for adults any day now,” says Margaret.
“I’m just saying that we want her to respect you. We want to see you treated well.”
“In that case, you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Did I say that I was worried?” Monty squeezes Margaret’s hand.
“When Michael walks in a room, it lights up,” Margaret looks at him with uncharacteristic sincerity. “She’s teaching me to be a serious writer, so that I can do the same.”
Monty opens his mouth to tell her that she already does, or that she doesn’t need to, or that he believes her, or that he is tired. Margaret doesn’t wait to find out which. She’s said her piece and takes off running, at first toward the field, then past it. She imagines watching herself from high above, a smear of straw-colored hair against the deep green of the trees against the breadth of the sky. Here, and then gone.