by Thea Goodman
He filled a backpack with a few bottles of the special homemade goat-milk formula Veronica had learned to make from an expensive herbalist on lower Fifth Avenue. He took diapers and wipes and a few extra onesies. In the hallway he put a hat on Clara and took some cash from a drawer in the console; Veronica said it reminded her of The Godfather, keeping cash in a drawer. But he liked the drawer and took much more than he needed, a little stack of crisp twenties and even a few fifties. He grabbed a long-neglected pile of mail and put it in the bag to peruse at breakfast. Then he dashed off a note—a small good thing they still did for each other—leaving it on the kitchen island.
Outside, the January air was bracing; ice and salt cracked beneath his boots. A distance away he heard the click of a woman’s heels but when he turned saw no one. He would get the poached eggs, and Clara would play with the toast points. They’d sit in the red leather booth. He jiggled her up the block, racing to get out of the cold. When he got to the corner, he cupped his hands to peer through the dark glass of the restaurant. The diner was closed. A wind of desolation whipped at his neck. All around him, old garbage and dirty snow banked the sidewalks like small mountain ranges that would never melt. He turned south toward the hole in the skyline, past the stores. There were so few galleries in Soho now; they’d been replaced by fancy shops. Veronica, with her master’s in modern art, said she minded this, but she didn’t. Who was he to talk? He stacked cash in a drawer just in case. They lived a material life, yet an edge of possibility breathed within it: His reflection in a store window showed the impossible silhouette of a pregnant man. He laughed, his breath steaming in staccato clouds in front of him, then hurried toward Broome Street, looking for someplace that was open.
By the time he reached Canal, the cold was inescapable. Clara burrowed into his chest and he wrapped his arms around her, both daunted and emboldened by her helplessness. The wet wind and intermittent hail bit at his face. An empty cab ambled by. He flagged it down and jumped in. The car was perfectly warm, nicely sealed, and smelled of mint. Sitar music began as a thin sheet of freezing rain glazed the windows. “Where are you headed?” a voice asked.
“Uptown.”
But uptown, Arthur would be asleep, and Ines would be angry if John showed up before breakfast. The Museum of Natural History was closed, the butterflies still. He kissed the baby’s fat, chilly hand, trying to remember the last time he’d been alone with her. He steamed her cold ear with his breath to warm her up, craving an inversion, the opposite of winter. “Actually, go west here,” he said near Carmine Street, thinking of a diner he and Veronica used to go to after late nights in the Meatpacking District. “Little West Twelfth Street.”
As the cab driver wound his way through the tangle of the West Village, John sorted the mail. He found a thick envelope from the passport agency; he’d commandeered the whole family to the downtown office one morning for passports and then dim sum, arguing that they’d go away eventually. He looked for his renewal first. His eyes were clear amber, deadpan, almost criminally expressionless. Veronica looked suspiciously happy in hers, her smile too white above the blue scarf at her throat. In Clara’s photo he admired the single pale tuft of sparse hair (it had since fallen out), the peachy globe of her cheek, her bright dark-blue eyes vaguely crossed as she lay on a white sheet; the same photo she would use for five years.
The driver turned down the music to concentrate, crept around Jane Street, and funneled onto Eighth Avenue. Large flakes of snow began to cluster in the sky and swirl around the car as it moved cautiously. The car grew chilly. John fiddled with the air vent, trying to get more heat. As he leaned forward to tell the driver how to get to the restaurant, he saw that the windshield had whitened completely. The wipers squeaked into motion.
Somewhere in the world the sky was blue, the air was warm. Far away, the sun poured down like gold, melting knots in shoulders, warming hair, making things grow.
“If you could go back,” he said, “to Crosby Street—” The car inched through the gray, clotted streets then sped down Varick. But as they drove east on Canal, past the first fleet of commuters emerging from the Holland Tunnel, the early trucks with Chinese letters creaking under their own weight, as they rolled quietly over the cushion of snow, he marveled at the speed of transportation, the remarkable will of all these travelers: To deliver star fruit to Canal Street, to deliver bread to Mott, to leave a quiet New Jersey lawn and jump into the fray, and at the end of the day to jump out of the fray. To jump out of the fray. This frozen season could vanish, revealing the brightness of the next. He was not ready to go home, and the driver, as if in accord, was lost. They slipped onto Bowery and then to the faded grandeur of Delancey. Up ahead there was the Williamsburg Bridge, a magical leap over the water, and before John had told himself what he was doing, he told the driver the way he liked to get to Kennedy.
“Foreign or domestic?” The driver’s eyes waited like two dark gems in the rearview mirror. To the right of the mirror, he’d taped a photo of a child in pink footie pajamas. There were certain universal joys. For a beat the street beneath them was seamless, an inimical gray dream, dotted as far as John could see with green lights.
“Foreign.”
2
Friday Morning
Veronica
Veronica stretched her arms with relief. She swept her legs, straight as the shadow on a sundial, across the empty bed. John had left and Clara was still asleep. Eyes closed, she felt the incision with her fingers. The scar was insensate, as if it belonged to someone else. She needed to get up and check on Clara, to change her diaper and make her bottle, but the pillow and the pale blue sheets were so comfortable, and having the bed to herself was rare. Even as Veronica lay there, luxuriating in a few minutes of rest, she longed to see Clara. She strained to hear her new early-morning babble, but the air was still, silent.
The quiet felt full, a rest in music, and she turned to the clock. Eight? The baby must have slept through the night. But eight? Eight was hilarious. Impossible. The clock must have stopped the night before, while she was pretending to read about obesity. Clara always cried before six. John always left for work before the baby woke up for the day. The mornings, all the early mornings, were hers. She rushed into the nursery, squinting amid the sunny yellow walls. The white crib, a Swedish thing, bare and unadorned, sat lower to the ground than most, over the sheepskin rug, in case, Veronica had reasoned, Clara fell out. She peered inside it. The baby was gone. Even the beloved lamb was gone. Fully awake, Veronica darted out of the room and into the kitchen, the buffed concrete floor chilly on her feet. She found a mint-green sticky note on the marble counter:
Dear V,
I know you said you could use a break.
Feel better.
It’s good to watch you finally sleep.
Love, John (and C)
He’d signed his name with a flourish, a huge looping J, like a fifth-grader with dreams of fame. She smiled. It was gallant, unusually generous, but he had scared the hell out of her. Had she said she needed a break? She did need one, but it felt like stating the obvious to say this directly. Watch you sleep sounded vaguely romantic. She had slept well; the night had been dreamless and sound, a pure, unconscious spell that was long enough to restore a baseline, an absence of symptoms; joints that did not ache, eyes that were not sore, a mind that was opening like a dry sponge dropped in water. She picked up the sticky note. Her sinuses had cleared. She could appreciate romance now, having slept long and well.
But where was he? She filled the electric kettle and flicked it on. Before Clara, she’d adored John’s spontaneity, but after the birth, his frenetic energy level, his impulsivity, seemed incommensurate with the demands of a new baby. They’d discovered the idea of before and after together, when they were still in the hospital, but now the notion only divided them.
After, he refused to see that Clara had subsumed their lives; after, he suggested ridiculous outings, that they dance capoeira—they never had before�
�or buy a tent and go camping. He didn’t seem to realize that they weren’t going anywhere.
Before, John had incorporated the prevailing, confused ethos for men of his generation—he was supposed to sometimes make dinner, he was to care about a choice of appliances, he was to transfer clothes from washer to dryer without having to be asked and even, sometimes, to vacuum—all the while focusing on the larger destiny, his career. After, it was as if—with the exception of his obsessive nightly visits to check on the baby—he’d forgotten what generation he was born in. He’d become consumed by his own appetites; he touched her not with sensitivity but with the impatient ardor of a teenage boy.
This morning he was giving her a break. She looked out the open kitchen, past the two pretentious Roman pillars, into the stark living room, as she poured coffee beans into the grinder. She could see that the red stroller was parked near the elevator, but the backpack, marketed as a special men’s diaper bag, was gone. Being alone was an unsettling gift. She enjoyed the sudden release of tension in her neck and shoulders, the new lightness in her arms, even as she missed the warm weight and the improbably soft skin of her daughter. A bunch of spotted bananas rested on the counter. Two days ago Clara had celebrated her six-month birthday by tasting one.
Within the whirring sound of the coffee grinder, she shuddered; six months ago Veronica had been taken apart and put back together again. Her reproductive life had begun and ended in the same night. How could that have happened? Despite her great good fortune—she’d had a healthy baby; she had survived—she was left alone circling the question. The proof of her fertility existed, a separate being with growing energy. She had made a person. All day long, even at work, she was dogged by Clara’s existence; the baby amazed her, with her transparent fingernails as tiny and round as lentils, the swell of her torso that contained a perfect set of organs, the way she had just begun, when excited, to twirl her fat wrists like a flamenco dancer.
Veronica couldn’t stop herself from calling John. When she got his voice mail, she spoke quickly. “Hi. I guess you’re going in late. Thanks for letting me sleep in. Give me a call and let me know where you guys are, okay?” The kettle whistled briefly before she turned it off and poured it onto the dark grounds. Through the water’s steam she looked out the window; the sky was a troubled charcoal gray. Fine needles of hail rattled the panes. Disintegrate. How did one integrate? She played the words over and over in her mind. There was the night, the literal bodily rupture, and the rupture in time; everything since—the feel of water on her hands at the sink, the sweet, nutty breath of her daughter, food that had become mere sustenance—came to her in broken pieces. Twenty minutes here. Four minutes there. Experience was chopped and disconnected. She shook her head to dispel the tumble of thoughts, the vast effort of connecting it all. Suddenly she was very tired again. She peered into the bedroom: The soothing blue walls beckoned; the sheets had a satiny sheen. She would just go rest for another minute, as the coffee steeped, no more.
She lay down, wrapping her arms around her shoulders like a girl pretending to be kissed. How long had it been since she’d been kissed that deeply, in the way that children parody? Chilly, she put a pillow over her shoulders: A blanket would be an acknowledged commitment to nap. Still, she fell.
* * *
Veronica was floating and contained, a flute in a velvet case: lithe and strong and capable of beauty. Slowly, the velvet fell away. Noise perforated a vanishing dream. A distant car alarm sounded. Somewhere a clothes dryer shook endlessly. She opened her eyes and for a moment had no idea where she was.
The dry cactus dying on a windowsill, the smear of shark-oil eye cream on the pillowcase: She recognized those first. (She and Ines had succumbed to the whole skin-care line one Saturday morning at Barneys.) She checked the time. A decadent nine-fifteen! She laughed at her unlikely delinquency. Ordinarily by this time she’d have combed through the market’s produce section, selected something green for dinner, found the herbs for Clara’s formula, and sussed out possible organic vendors for the revamp of Jasper School lunches. Busy-ness. Yes, business was the antidote to her loop of obsessive discourse, to the thoughts about the parts. Clara was her reward, a perfect, healthy girl.
Nine-fifteen. The prospect of their nanny, Rosemary’s, mild scolding got her out of bed. Veronica showered carefully, for once not rushing, taking time to condition her hair, then moisturize her ashy knees and floss her teeth. By the time she remade the coffee, which had become cold, and finished her oatmeal, Rosemary still hadn’t appeared. Clara’s nap was in fifteen minutes. Veronica dialed Rosemary’s cell, her heart galloping.
“Hi. Good morning, Rosemary.”
“Hello, missus!”
“I’m just wondering if you met up with them or—”
“It seems your husband is taking the day off with the baby, and he told me to head home,” Rosemary said.
Veronica let her bowl clatter to the sink. “You didn’t go, did you?” A shadow of pain flickered across her abdomen, like a running insect.
“I’m afraid I did.”
“Well, where are they? Did he say where they were going?” She worried a damp finger over a spot of red wine that had stained the counter.
“I assume they’re back home,” Rosemary said, “for the nap.” Veronica gave up on the stain and bit a cuticle. She twirled her engagement ring around her finger. A pretty diamond with twin baguettes. Sometimes when she glanced at it, all that platinum looked like a cavity flashing inside a molar. “Missus?”
“No, I’m here at home and they’re not.”
“He’s gone off taking your baby, eh? American fathers are wonderful. They try to help, but they don’t understand the importance of naptime. The value of the nap. There’s a window of time to get her down and that’s it. Men don’t understand timing, is all, the importance of timing.”
“So true.” Veronica laughed, comforted by Rosemary’s platitude. Irish Catholic, fiftyish Rosemary, who could soothe Clara instantly with her soft, powdery hands. Utterly capable Rosemary, with her attitude of deference and also mild superiority.
“I suppose I’ll see you Monday, then?” Rosemary said.
“See you then.”
As she hung up, Veronica was surprised by a longing for Rosemary. As a child in the seventies, she’d spent long afternoons watching her nanny, Kay, polish silver teapots or convincing Kay to play one more game of Parcheesi. Did Kay love her? She ordered Veronica’s day. She fed her and bathed her, providing all the crucial acts of daily sustenance.
Rosemary, too, had been constant witness and succor for the past few months. Rosemary had even helped her shower during those early weeks after the birth, as Veronica, on heavy pain meds, stood unsteadily in her shattered body. When Veronica had tried to nurse, despite an acute double mastitis, and failed, Rosemary had been there, a bridge to the tiny, curled infant girl with her raw stub of umbilical cord and her ceaseless hunger.
When would John and Clara appear? She sprayed the counters and began to load the dishwasher, packing it with a new fastidiousness. You could be disintegrated, you could suddenly feel like you were a hundred years old, but there were these small consolations.
An easy birth, from the reports of her friends, was an oxymoron. And although a cesarean hysterectomy was fairly rare, she knew stories far worse than her own. The problem wasn’t what had happened, wasn’t merely the clinical facts of the night; it was their mysterious and private—for no one else thought about them—reverberation. The blue sheet had been in front of her face, too close, and the radio (the radio!) had been playing “Stairway to Heaven.” As John left the operating room, her eyes fell to his blue shoe covers, the cloth over the toes darkened with blood.
After Clara, no wisdom bloomed with motherhood, despite her mother-in-law’s prediction. After, she was dumber, puffier, her concentration more transient. Where there had been intelligence now resided a massive cloud, a precipitous fuzzy thing that wouldn’t just go ahead and fucking rain.
The kitchen was clean. The wind had died down. A fragile sun ascended, glowing across the floor, over the small colorful Tibetan rug, to the kitchen counter. Sunlight illuminated and barely warmed her hands as she leaned there, the days beginning to lengthen, the darkest part of winter gone. She had slept in and the world was altered.
She went into the bedroom and fastened the top button of her dress, an embroidered black kimono, then put a black leather belt over it. She applied mascara and picked up the hair dryer, but it felt too heavy, like a weapon in her hand. Before, she would have been quite interested in what the children at the Jasper School had for lunch. In a few months, she’d banished their vending machines. She’d siphoned iceberg lettuce off the menu and introduced the nutritious sprigs of watercress. Before, she had cared. She had cared about many things—Expressionist paintings and community gardens and slow food. What had been the meaning of her previous adult life, her two master’s degrees (the second in public health), when nothing but the baby now truly captured her attention? Who was she if she was not interested? She was just this mammal, this warm mama.
“A mammal?” John had said, when Clara was a newborn. “You’re a Botticelli.” Her hair was center-parted, light brown with natural waves at the ends, like the nymphs’. But she hardly looked like a Botticelli. She was much tawnier, her skin less pink and more apricot. Lately she liked to recall the compliment, the feeling of being adored. Did he still notice her hair?