The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel
Page 18
She’d arrived uptown on a Tuesday and Annalena had been out. Veronica had harbored a sliver of hope that her mother would be there for her with comforting words and all the right distractions for Clara though this was completely unlikely. “Accept reality as it is, not as you want it to be,” Dr. Weiss had repeated; Veronica was alone. John was too. They were not one. But they had once chosen to be together.
The pot bubbled on the stove. The waiting was terrible. She understood how John felt but couldn’t help him. He would relent, but what if by some accident of fate, or stubbornness, he didn’t?
After dinner, she put Clara to bed in the guest room with the bumblebee wallpaper. She held the baby and went through their lengthy bedtime routine with the bottle, the short narration of the days’ events, the incessant pacing while reciting hypnotizing words about sleep. Finally, at the point when Clara began to droop, cleaving to her mother’s neck and shoulders, Veronica felt like she was splintering from the inside with hunger. It was true, what she’d told John: She often didn’t know what she needed, didn’t know whether she was hungry or tired, but now she was feeling those things again, bumping into them as they prickled up like crocuses beneath a deep freeze. She was starving. Go to sleep, she willed her daughter, go to sleep.
That first night, when Annalena and David finally came in, her father grabbed her by the shoulders to “take a look at her,” he said. The firmness of his warm hands made her want to cry. Annalena glanced at Veronica and pronounced her “just fine.” For the first time, her mother’s flat assessment didn’t crush her.
David’s gray eyes scanned her face; then he kissed both cheeks. “Did you want to stay in your apartment? If you wanted to stay there and he wouldn’t leave, I can take care of it.”
“No, Daddy. It’s not like that,” she said, chilled by his intimation. She knew John could not understand her. Could he forgive her?
“Your name’s on the title, right? I’m going to give you Steve Shappel’s number right now before I forget.” He put the lawyer’s card, a thick creamy thing, in Veronica’s hand as if it were simply a referral for a dry cleaner or a salon, for any ordinary service.
The days continued in their gray hourly unfurling. After work one afternoon there was the plush solace of the Frick, where Veronica stared at an Ingres painting of a woman in a gray silky dress staring straight back at her. When the weekend had come, Annalena and David went to Delaware and left Veronica and Clara in the apartment.
She unwrapped some tofu to add to the sweet potato, cutting it into tiny cubes. There was no parallel world, no island or surreal painting in which to enact another life. It was a life of consequence and connection. She cut her finger and wrapped it in a paper towel to stanch the wound. Clara looked puzzled, watching her mother weep without restraint. She had to act.
* * *
At four o’ clock on Sunday, before her parents returned, Veronica left. Fresh snow had fallen everywhere while she’d been inside. Powdery and silent, it already blanketed cars, stoops, and mailboxes. A little boy in a red coat held his tongue out in the air to catch it, his footsteps muffled beside her. The snow seemed pure, as if immune to the fact that this was a city. It was ignorant and lovely in its even democratic covering, painted like sugar glaze on dark-chocolate branches, crystallizing around the edges of fenders and benches. It must have been snowing downtown too, immaculate on the cobblestones of Crosby Street, fine and evenly sifted as flour on the rooftops of Lafayette, and on his shoulders too, the sadness of his exposed sunburned neck as he fumbled for his keys outside their door.
Fifth Avenue was nearly deserted. A lone white gypsy cab rattled softly by, and far away a woman walked a large black poodle. Eventually a bus came. She hesitated as the doors hissed open—she didn’t know how she would find him—and a puff of heat tumbled out, surrounding her, an invitation.
23
Three Months Later
John and Veronica
Cheerios were all over the floor. The baby sat in the high chair, picking them up one by one in her thumb and forefinger with grave concentration, like a jeweler holding a gem in a tweezer. The baby’s mother lay on the rug on the floor a distance away, her arm flung over her eyes. She’d been up since five-twenty, reading the interminable Busytown. The baby’s father was in the shower. It was eight-ten and he had made his offer: John had slept in, so now he would get up and take Clara to breakfast and the new playground in Battery Park while Veronica rested or did whatever she wanted to do. It sounded fair enough. But she was wired from two coffees. What did she want to do? Her will was sometimes indiscernible, still connected, as ever, to the baby’s ever-expanding needs. Veronica was overambitious and dreamy; she wanted industry—perhaps she would finally clean out their hall closet or even go in to the office—and she wanted to crawl back into bed with the newspaper.
She’d take a bath, then decide. She lifted Clara from the high chair and went into the steamy bathroom, that marble vault, to turn it on. John stood shaving, moving with enviable leisure. “Good,” he said, noticing the running water, “you should do that.” She followed him out when he took Clara and snapped her into her stroller.
It was April and Soho was shimmering, the leaves newly green, footsteps echoing up to the third floor loft while John thought about a sweater or a light jacket. There were tulips—red ones that she liked—at the corner deli, and he’d bring some back for her. He put on the navy-blue sweater and tucked a pink blanket over the baby. Veronica crouched down to adjust it, then went to get him a sippy cup of water, a diaper and wipes, and finally a cotton hat. She stood twisting her fingers, watching him collect his keys and wallet. “When will you be back?” she asked.
“Soon,” he said. They kissed, and he felt her tighten her hug for an extra moment before he left.
She lingered at the window and watched for their arrival on the street. She followed the red stroller with her eyes as they moved north to the diner. She swept up the cereal and then—she couldn’t help it—put on a jacket and went outside. She ran to catch up with them. The spring air was refreshing on her face and neck; the assault of winter was over. “I thought I’d walk you there,” she said, out of breath, when she caught up to him.
“We’re here now,” he said a moment later. There they stood. The sunshine moved behind a cloud, then darted out again as she adjusted the shade on the baby’s stroller. Light dappled the space between them, shifting quickly from a glare to an ominous cool and back again. “Are you coming in?” he asked. Lately he didn’t want to be away from her.
The day opened before her, full of possibility. She smelled the damp, floury smell of fresh bread. She shook her head. “No, you go ahead.” There was an ancient mosaic on the floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was surrounded by thin brown ropes to protect it from viewers who might step too close. The security measure made it look like the most stunning crib. She would go back first to change her clothes. She watched her husband and daughter briefly as they went through the glass door to the diner; then she turned and found her way home.
About the Author
THEA GOODMAN has received the Columbia Fiction Award, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and fellowships at Yaddo and Ragdale; her short stories have appeared in several journals, notably New England Review, Other Voices, and Columbia. Born in New York City, she studied at Sarah Lawrence and earned her MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. She has taught writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in Chicago with her husband and children.
THE SUNSHINE WHEN SHE’S GONE. Copyright © 2013 by Thea Goodman. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Goodman, Thea.
The sunshine when she’s gone: a novel/Thea Goodman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9662-0
1. Parenting—Psychological
aspects—Fiction. 2. Marriage—Psychological aspects—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.O59223S86 2013
813'.6—dc23
2012027373
e-ISBN 9780805096637
First US Edition: March 2013