by Amina Cain
Why is empty space a comfort and a relief? It’s not because I project myself there; it’s because I can’t. It shows me my projections, but they haven’t left my mind. Empty space remains empty, always. And for a little while a small part of me can be empty too.
When I went outside, it was drizzling again and the air was humid. Paintings and the air, so much better than Solange and me, and I found myself a bit restored. Solange and I would never be friends; maybe we would only be enemies.
IT TOOK A WHILE, but finally Antoinette gave me permission to come to her house. It wasn’t as run-down as she had told me, but it was small, fit for one person. She and her husband lived in one room.
“What will you do when you have the baby?”
“We will live here still,” she said cheerfully. “And in a few years I hope we can move.”
Antoinette had made it pleasant, or maybe she and her husband had made it pleasant together. I never knew how people did things. It was crowded, her sofa and chairs were plain, but she had found an oval rug, not fancy, but pretty. Her and Frederick’s room was cozy, and the happiness they shared there was easy to imagine.
I arrived at four o’clock and we sat through the afternoon. At one point, it hailed. I took that as a good sign, something momentous in the air. At first it had surprised us, as hail always will, the balls of ice knocking against the windows. We opened the door and watched them hit the ground, melting almost instantly.
At seven o’clock, Antoinette’s husband came home, carrying a loaf of bread. Antoinette had already made the soup. She’d made it without meat so I could eat with them.
“I’m Vitória.” I didn’t offer my hand. I didn’t want things to be formal.
“Frederick,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.”
His clothes were old and worn, it was true, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and him with Antoinette. I was drawn to their warmth. In that way he looked better than my husband.
The three of us ate our soup and bread and talked easily, about our childhoods and our families, where we had lived. We ate the peach pie I had brought, I washed the dishes, and when I walked home, they walked with me, Frederick pointing out the stars and the constellations. I had had a good time that night.
“There,” he said. “Do you see the Big Dipper?”
We stopped to take it in, burning its shape gently into the dark sky. We weren’t different from the cucumber, the melon, the lettuce, the apple. Not really.
“If I move to the country,” I said, “will you visit me there?”
“Of course, but that would be silly,” Antoinette said. “Where would you live?”
“In a one-room house.”
“But Frederick and I live in a one-room house,” Antoinette responded.
The darkness was behind her again, as it had been in the museum when we had first become friends. Only this time it was soothing.
FINALLY IT WAS AUTUMN AGAIN, and Antoinette had her baby. I went over to their room when I could to help clean and cook, to keep Antoinette company in the afternoons. But it wasn’t just that. They kept me company too.
She wasn’t as peaceful as she had been in the months previous, afraid she would do something wrong, and it was hard for her to sleep. Both she and Frederick looked a little haggard, not that I would have told them that. I’m sure I sometimes looked haggard too, and I had no baby to keep me awake. We cycle in and out of different ways of being, of appearing in the world.
“I want to baptize little Frederick,” Antoinette told me one day. We were walking along the street, the baby in his carriage. “We’ll do it at the church Frederick’s family attends.”
“Why? I didn’t even know you were religious.”
“I was baptized, and so was Frederick. It’s tradition.”
“But little Frederick won’t know what’s happening. It won’t mean anything to him.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll know what’s happening and it will mean something to us. He’ll be able to sense that.”
“Not all traditions are worth following, you know.” Antoinette didn’t respond, so I went on. “I just don’t like seeing a baby in the water in that way, religiously, especially because they have no choice in the matter. I was baptized too, and I watched my brothers and sisters when their turns came around. I always felt strange. Shouldn’t we be able to decide for ourselves?”
“What does it matter to you if we follow tradition? Frederick isn’t your baby, Vitória, he’s ours.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“Then you shouldn’t worry. The baby will not necessarily be like you, or believe in the same things. And maybe he won’t be like us, but he’ll be baptized as we were.”
I looked at little Frederick. He was sucking on two of his fingers. He resembled Antoinette intensely. “You’re right. It’s none of my business.”
Antoinette touched my shoulder gently. “I don’t mind if you don’t like baptisms, but you shouldn’t mind if I do.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.” I meant it.
Little Frederick tried to grab one of his feet. He wanted to put it in his mouth too.
We are such oral creatures, especially at that age, trying to learn about the world. Antoinette bent to button his jacket, then she buttoned her own. Tradition or not, she was a good mother. I could see that.
Little Frederick would be baptized the next month. I would attend the baptism because Antoinette was my friend.
I DON’T HAVE SEX NOW, though once at a farmhouse it did happen. Believe it or not, I was invited to a farmhouse party and I went, though I found no one like Dana or Antoinette, or even Solange. It was surprising how easy it was to have sex again, so I don’t think it is gone from me forever. There will be another party, or there will be another person in my life. Lately I’ve had a vision of drinking a glass of water while lying in a bath. Or a grouping of vegetables on a counter meant for preparing a vegetable soup. I think about the things we need to live. Not my jewelry, which I have laid out similarly on a table in the hallway, which I sometimes still wear, one piece at a time.
In every painting, someone or something emerges. I emerged here into the country. I emerged walking along these dull streets, close to my own mind and what I know of life. Close to my blind spots, my limitations as a person, the limits of what I can perceive, at least for now. I am deeply flawed.
The important thing is that I not harden, that I keep something open in myself, that I remember what it’s like to emerge at fourteen, twenty, and on and on. In some ways unchanged, but in other ways so different. That I not harden into “Vitória in the country” and all that entails for me.
I won’t stay here forever, but I told myself I would give it a year. A year to focus myself completely, a year without distractions. I miss my friends. I’ll want to see them again.
THE MORNING OF THE BAPTISM, Antoinette and Frederick were radiant; it was a public welcoming to little Frederick, after all, not just to the church. Welcome to the world!
I met Antoinette’s brother and sister, who now lived with their aunt, but not her mother, for she had finally died too. I met Frederick’s parents, who were kind and cheerful. They invited me to sit next to them and I did. I hadn’t been in a church for a long time.
It wasn’t the kind of baptism I had pictured, little Frederick being pushed down in the water, Antoinette and Frederick and the minister standing in the water too. Instead, the minister sprinkled him with water three times at the front of the church. I was disturbed, but I hoped I conveyed seriousness instead. It would have been wrong to show any part of what I felt, so I tried my best to keep a mild expression on my face, but who knows what that actually looked like. Antoinette held little Frederick in her arms and he cried when the water was sprinkled on his body. He cried often, as babies do; it wasn’t symbolic. He had been crying even before the ceremony began.
Afterward we ate a plain cake in the basement of the church and I embraced the happy family, all of the somber feelin
g of a baptism now gone. The churchgoers took turns holding little Frederick, gazing at him, and talking as one does to a baby. Sometimes their voices surprised me. You never know what a person’s baby voice will sound like, or his or her pet voice. I talked to the dog and the cat in a high voice, for instance.
When I felt it was safe to leave, that I had been present for a proper amount of time, I said my goodbyes. I could hardly wait to get out of there. Outside, the sky looked like a cliché of heaven, with its big fluffy white clouds, or maybe being inside the church too long had made it appear that way, connected to churchgoing in some way.
When I got home, my husband was sitting in the den reading his paper, taking up his pipe, as men sometimes do. In another life, it might have been comforting to see him there, to return home to someone I loved.
“How was it?” He took a puff.
“Okay, I guess. If you like baptisms.”
“Well, I suppose we’re next.”
I made some kind of strange sound as I went gloomily up the stairs. I don’t know if he heard me. I don’t think I cared.
MEANWHILE, Dana was becoming a bit famous. When I was on the street with her, or in a café or a shop, sometimes people noticed. They had seen her onstage and were now seeing her on the sidewalk. The way she walked was different from what it had been when we first met; it couldn’t be helped. When you hold yourself so consciously all the time, I don’t think it goes away. She was surprised by the attention, sometimes made uncomfortable by it, but at some moments she seemed to like it too. Maybe because of it, she rarely talked about dance anymore. She kept that for herself. She seemed centered, more centered than I could ever hope to be.
“I’m afraid,” I told her in my uncentered way. We were sitting in a café, and sure enough, it seemed the woman at the next table would approach us at any moment. She had furtively glanced several times at Dana. “My husband brought up the idea of a baby.”
“Vitória, you’ve been married now for almost three years. He’s bound to think of it sooner or later, don’t you agree?”
“I guess, but why is it necessary for everyone to think of it, as if there were no other choice? His standing probably somehow demands it. He is required to be a father.”
“Or perhaps he truly wants it, as people often do.” I failed to return the conversation back to her, and she went on, “Why do you think it hasn’t happened?”
“I don’t know, but sometimes I feel I have willed it. In reality, there must be something wrong with one of us. Or both. I hope that’s the case.”
“I hope there’s nothing wrong with you. But I also hope you don’t become pregnant, not if you don’t want to be.”
“Thank you.”
“And how is Antoinette’s baby?”
“He’s sweet. Just like his mother and father. When I see them all together, it makes such sense. He reaches for things already. If I’m eating something, he tries to get it. But he doesn’t cry if he can’t have it. He’s just curious.”
“They want everything they can get their hands on.”
“And their mouths.”
Dana bent her head to drink her coffee and the woman next to us got up from her seat and seemed to head toward us, but I gave her a cold stare. That sent her in the other direction and I was proud of that moment. I had never before sent someone away in that manner.
A FEW MONTHS AFTER little Frederick was born, Antoinette settled into her routine, playing with him in the mornings, and in the afternoons while he slept, she began to make clothes. She had made them for her family when she was younger, but had put sewing aside for a while. It didn’t take long for her to find her way again. She was much more patient and careful than she had been before. She lost that sense of doing nothing she’d had at the museum, and soon something in how she dressed was exciting, such as a red wool sweater dress that rose high on the neck, was fitted on top, then flowed fully from the waist, falling midway down the leg. When women looked at her on the street, I could tell they took notice, especially when she was wearing this dress; still, they never paid her a compliment. Women can be horrible in that way. I complimented her repeatedly.
She also made things for her husband and baby, and for my birthday she made me a long pleated skirt that fit perfectly. She didn’t think I would wear it. The material wasn’t fancy enough, she said, but I assured her I didn’t need fancy cloth.
When Dana saw the skirt, she wanted Antoinette to make something for her too. Now Antoinette’s designs were finally receiving their compliments. Someone known and admired was wearing them.
Though I had expected her to after the baptism, Antoinette rarely went to church on Sundays. Still, on Wednesday evenings she went to mass to sing hymns and listen to the choir. “Will you come with me?” she asked. “Just once. I know you’re not religious, but you don’t have to be. They sing so beautifully, Vitória, as if they really were angels. You would love it, I know you would.”
So one Wednesday I went with her to St. Sophia’s, a narrow cathedral lit by what must have been a hundred candles. The parish sat on one side, the choir on the other, facing each other. At the front of the chapel hung a painting of Christ. I’ll admit that the room pleased me. Its narrowness, the long, tapered candles, the raised pews, which were unusually steep, all gave the sense that the room was more vertical than horizontal. I guessed the point was that the believers were already ascending to heaven when they worshipped and sang here, that they were in proximity to God. Though I didn’t feel close to God, I enjoyed that sensation.
When the choir began to sing, they were truly angelic, exulted in the candlelight. In our pew, Antoinette and I sat upright and received the voices. The narrow benches did not allow for slumping. That it was night changed something. I had always hated daytime in a church, heavy and overdramatic in the sunlight, as the baptism had been. One should be in a church only when it is dark outside.
As I listened to the choir, I found myself thinking about my husband; I didn’t know what I should do. I didn’t want to have sex with him anymore, nor did I want to have a child. How could I stay married to him? I didn’t want to go back to having no money either, to cleaning the museum, but I couldn’t stay where I was forever. I had no vision of it; it didn’t seem true.
Solange came to my mind. Though I had never seen him look at her with anything more than the eyes of an employer, there were those times I’d seen her look at him. Didn’t he deserve someone who would gaze at him in a way I never did? Did she love him?
I came back to the voices all around. Now even Antoinette was singing, and I opened the hymnal in front of me and sang for a while too. I knew these songs; I had sung them when I was a child. But soon enough it all fell away again in my attention and I returned to my marriage. I suppose I was meant for all I had experienced: the writing, the dance classes, my friendship with Dana, the places to which I had traveled, even my relationship. I was grateful for it, but it was time to move on. If I left my husband, I would have to work again, yes. But if he had a reason to leave me? Then he might feel compelled to support me. Could I make him do that?
Antoinette shook me gently. “Vitória, the service is over.” She was already gathering her things.
“I’m sorry. My mind was racing a hundred miles a minute. I couldn’t keep it still.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“My poor husband.”
“Why poor?”
“Because I don’t want him. I don’t want to be married anymore.”
“I figured that was coming.”
“But I want him to leave me, not the other way around.”
“Do you think he’s been faithful?”
“I’m not sure. With any luck, he hasn’t.”
THE NEXT TIME I SAW DANA, I complained about my husband to her too. I saw that I might become insufferable, that I might have to do a lot of complaining from here on out.
“In novels,” I said, “men have affairs with their maids. If only I could encour
age him somehow without him knowing that’s what I’m doing.”
I thought Dana would disapprove, but she didn’t. “Or Solange,” she answered.
“I’ve thought of that, actually. I’m not sure who would be harder to convince.”
“You’ve said something seems funny with her when it comes to him. Maybe she just needs a little push. Permission from you.”
Could my husband pass from me to Solange? Or was that idea too good to be true? She seemed so alone, yet it didn’t have to be that way. I had gotten married, after all, and to a rich man, which I had never foreseen. Life changes and veers and becomes something new.
Now when I saw Solange in the house, I carried this thought with me, and though in any other situation it would have added an extra layer of awkwardness and tension, the relationship between us was already so awkward and tense, it didn’t seem to change anything at all. It gave me room to consider it, to work up to talking to her. But just when I thought I would, I lost my nerve.
Speak to her, I told myself. Try to gauge the waters. No conversation I had ever had with her had gone well, yet maybe this one would. It had to do with her future, after all.
I didn’t think breakfast or even lunch the proper time to bring it up—every time I had tried it during those hours I had almost instantly failed—so I waited until one of the evenings when my husband was working late. I felt it should be dark outside, that in a certain sense everything should be at rest. That Solange should have let down her guard in some way. That I should have let down my guard too.
What a strange thing to bring up, to bring into being. If I failed at this conversation, all would be lost.
It was after dinner and Solange had not brought me meat, having finally given that up. I was sitting in the living room, a book in my hand, in tune, I thought, with reality.
It was now or never. I called her name when she walked near the room.