Laura & Emma

by Kate Greathead

  “I meant your tea.” Nicholas glanced at his watch. “Nineteen minutes until the sunset.”

  They resumed staring out the window in silence.

  The door opened and a woman a few years younger than Laura entered with two mugs. Nicholas thanked her.

  “Hey, Kim,” he called as the woman turned to leave, “if you’re free right now, you should make yourself a cup of tea and join us.”

  The woman seemed caught off guard by his invitation. “Thank you, but I’m a little busy,” she said, slipping out to the hall.

  After a prolonged silence, Nicholas spoke. “You need to tell me if somebody did this to you and isn’t doing the right thing.” He was looking straight ahead as he said this. “I would like to know who that person is.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Laura responded. “I did this. This is something I wanted. Something I’m excited for.

  “A happy thing,” she added, when Nicholas didn’t return her smile.

  The phone rang. Nicholas went to his desk to answer it. “He told you what?” he groaned into the receiver. “Mark my words . . .” He pinched the top of his nose. “Mark my words . . .” Whoever he was speaking to must have been cutting him off, because Nicholas kept repeating the phrase.

  Wanting to give him privacy, Laura stepped out to the hall and shut the door behind her.

  Kim walked by. “Restroom’s right there,” she said, pointing.

  “Thank you,” Laura said, realizing she did have to go. When she returned, Nicholas’s door was open. He was still on the phone.

  “Full of shit,” he was saying now. “Guy is full of shit.” He sounded less agitated than vindicated. Seeing her standing tentatively in the doorway, he waved her in and gestured to the window.

  A swath of bronze light had penetrated the canopy of clouds, alchemizing a portion of the East River and refracting off the windows of the buildings in its path, which glittered like rows of sequined evening dresses. Taken as a whole, there was a slapdash elegance to the skyline’s irregularities—sharp angles punctuated by the slope of a domed roof here, a potbellied water tower there. The variations felt random yet majestic, like trees in a forest. Even the mysterious gaseous matter that perpetually spewed from the smokestacks of the city’s industrial outskirts looked less menacing from this vantage point, vaguely celestial, drifting toward the atmosphere in crisp white plumes.

  Shifting her gaze south, Laura could see all the way to New York Harbor, where the boats came in. She could see the Statue of Liberty and those enchanting little islands that sat like crumbs in the East River, home to squirrels and birds and the foundations of abandoned buildings, former hospitals and municipal outposts, whose lovely brick ruins, among the feral terrain, looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  “If he thinks for one second we’re going to bend over and take it,” Nicholas said into the phone, “he’s got another thing coming. Another thing coming.” Nicholas laughed the way he had as a child when winning a game.

  Laura knew very little about Nicholas’s job, beyond that it involved the stock market and helping rich people get richer, but she could see that it made him happy. This was the most animated, self-possessed version of her brother she’d seen in years. He was in his element up here in his little stall in the sky.

  In another minute the sun disappeared and the vista darkened. Laura tapped Nicholas on the shoulder. “I should be going,” she whispered.

  “Hang on a sec,” he told the person he was speaking to. Holding the phone in the crook of his neck, he fished through a drawer in his desk.

  “I know it’s a little early,” he said, handing Laura a box wrapped in tissue paper.

  “Thank you, Nicholas,” Laura said. “Is it all right if I open it at home?” She was afraid she might tear up. She was genuinely touched; her brother was not a present-giver.

  Nicholas nodded and went back to his phone call. “Tear him a new one,” Laura heard him say as she closed the door behind her.

  The present, Laura discovered at home, was a toddler-size T-shirt with the name of Nicholas’s boarding school emblazoned across the front.

  * * *

  LAURA’S MIDSECTION BEGAN TO SWELL but the rest of her remained slender. This continued to be the case as she entered the second trimester of her pregnancy, but as a precaution she purchased a leotard and a copy of Jane Fonda’s pregnancy video. Every morning she would wake up and make a pregnancy milkshake that consisted of two heaping tablespoons of Ovaltine, whole milk, and a raw egg in a blender. Then she would put on her leotard and do the exercises in front of a mirror.

  As the weeks rolled by the bump grew more pronounced. New technology made it possible to see the fetus, and her doctor was always trying to get her to have a look. Laura wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond to the extraterrestrial image on the screen with its chicken-bone limbs.

  When her doctor asked if she wanted to know the baby’s gender, she said no. She knew she was having a boy, but still, she wanted it to be a surprise. She felt proud walking around, thinking of this person inside of her who would one day grow up to be a man.

  LAURA REFUSED TO HAVE A baby shower, but Margaret was very much looking forward to hers. The morning it was supposed to take place the adoption agency called: the birth mother had checked into the hospital with contractions. She was three weeks early, it could be a false alarm—they would know more soon. Margaret took a car to Staten Island Hospital and sent Trip in her place.

  Trip arrived looking anxious, confused, and disheveled. His hair was damp and a small piece of toilet paper clung to a spot on his cheek where he had evidently cut himself shaving.

  “Are you sure she doesn’t want to reschedule?” Janet, who was hosting the shower, asked as she let him in.

  Trip looked intrigued by this option then shook his head. “Just following orders here.”

  Trip had never attended a shower before, and they had to explain to him how it worked: he sat in the middle of the circle and opened all the presents. Though he clearly had no interest in baby things, Trip made an effort to feign enthusiasm for each item, and everyone would ooh and aww as he held it up for them to see.

  Some of the items were unfamiliar to him.

  “It’s a baby monitor,” Janet called out as Trip smiled dumbly at the box in his lap.

  “There’s two of them,” Trip said. “Maybe Laura would like one?”

  “Actually, I gave it to you,” Laura said. “And you’ll need both. One for the baby’s room, one for yours.”

  “Do you know what a baby monitor is, Trip?” someone asked.

  “Don’t bother,” said Margaret’s mother, who was writing everything down. “We’ve got a lot more to go, let’s move on to the next.”

  With the opening of each new present, the routine felt more tedious. Then something remarkable happened that changed the atmosphere of the occasion.

  Trip had identical twin sisters, one who lived in Connecticut, the other, London. There were polite gasps when Trip held up the first twin’s present (a silver spoon from Tiffany’s), and everyone took a breath and prepared to make the same manufactured sound as he opened up the second twin’s present. However, this time the gasps were for real, as Trip held up another silver spoon from Tiffany’s. Identical twins, opposite sides of the Atlantic—the same present! Excitement took hold of the room as everyone marveled at how such a thing could happen.

  “I’ve heard that twins have the same thoughts,” someone said, and the twins did not dispute this fact, adding that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

  “They have ESP,” Trip told the group, and proposed his older sisters demonstrate this by playing a game they’d made up as children. It worked like this: one of the twins would stand in the hall and the group would pick something in the room for the remaining twin to think about. Once this object had been determined, the other twin would come back into the room and guess what it was.

  “This is the most fun
I’ve had at a baby shower,” someone said, and others echoed the sentiment. Everyone was enjoying themselves—even Trip—whom Laura saw in a new, more endearing light.

  The joviality was cut short when the phone rang and it was Margaret. Everyone fell silent as Trip got up to take the call. He nodded soberly and made affirmative noises into the receiver. “Okay-okay-okay,” he said, putting the phone down.

  “Does anyone know the fastest route to Staten Island?” he asked the group.

  They all shook their heads; no one had ever been there.

  * * *

  LAURA’S DUE DATE ARRIVED, BUT the baby did not. Another two weeks passed before she finally went into labor. Laura hadn’t wanted any drugs, but she quickly changed her mind. She pushed and pushed but nothing happened. When eighteen hours of contractions yielded no results, Laura heard the doctor say: “Fine, you don’t want to come out? I’ll reach in and get you.”

  “Don’t worry!” The nurse smiled reassuringly. “He’ll use forceps.”

  * * *

  HOW STRANGE THAT THERE WAS no test you had to pass or license you had to acquire to be a parent, Laura thought when the infant was first lowered into her arms.

  “Hello, hello, hello,” she cooed, smiling and opening her eyes as wide as they would go. She felt self-conscious with the nurse standing there watching.

  After some fussing, the baby fell asleep in Laura’s arms, its curly purple fingers occasionally twitching and extending in a vaguely arthritic way.

  She had a daughter.

  * * *

  TWO ROOMS DOWN THE HALL a famous Hollywood actress was recovering, having also just given birth to her first child. The staff of the maternity ward was very excited about this, but they were even more excited about Laura’s baby, who, at ten pounds, eleven ounces, was among the largest they’d ever delivered. All the more remarkable having come out of such a tiny woman!

  Other doctors who were not her obstetrician came to look at the baby and marvel at her size. “It’s like a terrier giving birth to a Labrador,” one of them said.

  When her parents learned the baby’s name was Emma, Bibs closed her eyes and held a hand over her mouth. A moment later she opened them and smiled. “You’re just teasing,” she said.

  Laura shook her head. “You don’t like it?”

  “How could you do this to me?” Bibs threw up her arms and left the room.

  “Her sister-in-law,” Douglas explained.

  “She thinks I named the baby after Percy’s wife,” Laura said, understanding. “Which makes no sense. We’re not even in touch with them. It’s been years since I’ve even seen that woman.”

  “It’s a beautiful name,” he said. “She’ll get over it.”

  * * *

  MARGARET, WHOSE BABY WAS ALSO a girl, had chosen the name Charlotte. For weeks after bringing her home from the hospital, Margaret had refused to take Charlotte outside. A car could jump the curb, a crane could collapse, a pigeon might shit.

  “Just you wait until yours arrives,” she’d told Laura. “You’ll be the same.”

  Laura’s neuroses concerned the quality of New York City air. Was it safe for an infant to breathe? Emma arrived in the final week of May, but it wasn’t until the second week of June that Laura took her out for her first morning stroll.

  “Here we go,” Laura said, one hand pressing the elevator button, the other gripping the handle of Emma’s pram, which she’d bought last-minute in the basement thrift store of a church in Gramercy. It had looked so sweet and old-fashioned when she’d spotted it among the clutter of antiques, but now it embarrassed her with its extravagant girth and imperious red velvet canopy.

  As she waited for the light to turn, some pigeons picked at the remains of a sandwich someone had discarded in the middle of the crosswalk. Laura got nervous when she heard the flatulent rumble of an ancient garbage truck making its way up the street—with the menacingly slow but unwavering determination of a tank—but the pigeons remained unfazed, flapping out of the way only at the last possible moment. The city was just waking up; soon would come the manic wails of sirens, the violent drilling of cement, and the increasingly unsubtle odors of urine and garbage.

  The baby slept for the first part of the walk, but on their way back she began to stir.

  “Hello, hello, hello,” Laura cooed and made a kissing sound.

  The baby began to cry. It was not happy to be there, and she didn’t blame it. It was a filthy, concrete island they lived on. Laura lived there for no other reason than it was where she was born and had grown up, and the prospect of attempting to move somewhere else and start a whole new life from scratch was too much. And now the cycle was continuing.

  * * *

  LAURA’S WALKS WITH EMMA GOT longer. One afternoon they were at Sixty-eighth Street when Laura realized she needed to use the bathroom. Rather than turn around to go back to their apartment, she continued walking south toward 136, which was closer.

  As Laura fumbled around her purse for her keys, Sandra, her parents’ housekeeper, opened the door.

  “Bambina!” she sang, scooping Emma up from her pram.

  “Would you mind watching her while I quickly use the bathroom?” Laura asked as Sandra took Emma into the kitchen.

  Her mother was home—Laura could hear her talking to someone on the phone while she was in the bathroom.

  Bibs was a loud phone talker. “Sperm donor,” her voice bellowed through the wall. “It’s different from a test-tube baby . . . Yes, well, everyone’s curious but too polite to ask, and I’m sure there’s quite a bit of scuttlebutt, so I figure just come right out and tell them. The donor was Swedish. Emma’s half Swedish.”

  “Betsy Cornwall sends her best,” Bibs said when Laura walked into the living room.

  Laura mustered a halfhearted smile.

  Bibs gave her a scrutinizing glance. “You’re upset with me,” she said.

  Laura didn’t say anything.

  “Darling,” Bibs said with a frown, “if you don’t tell people these things, they make all sorts of assumptions.”

  “I don’t feel obligated to explain to people how I had Emma,” Laura said. “But if people are going to gossip, I agree I’d rather the truth be out there, so you can go ahead and tell people I used a donor. But as far as the specifics of her paternity, that’s no one’s business.”

  “But everyone loves Sweden,” Bibs protested.

  “It’s not anyone’s business,” Laura reiterated. “And when she’s older, I don’t intend to tell Emma where her father is from, either. I don’t want her speculating about him at all.” She looked at her mother.

  “Fine,” said Bibs. “Let her grow up thinking all she has is boring old British blood.”

  * * *

  LAURA DID NOT ENJOY NURSING. She found it tedious and she worried about the irreparable damage it might be doing to her once-perky breasts. She envied her mother and all the women of her generation for having given birth before nursing was something you were expected to do. “You’re not missing anything,” she told Margaret.

  Laura had been granted a six-month maternity leave. She’d never spent so much time in her apartment and began to feel different about it, especially on days the phone didn’t ring. It was no longer a sanctuary; it was a pen.

  The chair she nursed in faced a window with no view, just the shaft between her building and the next. When she moved the chair so that it faced the window overlooking the street, she became preoccupied with a plastic bag snarled in the branches of a tree. Each time a breeze came through, it seemed as though the bag would unsnag and blow away. She began to think of the breeze as a friend to the bag. At the same time she was aware that the breeze was responsible for the bag’s predicament in the first place. Weeks passed and the bag was still there.

  A new sensation would strike out of the blue. It was physical: a leaden feeling in her chest that would gradually seep through her limbs, settling deeper and deeper into her bones, until she was so swollen with
the weight of it that she felt paralyzed. And whatever she’d been doing at that moment she couldn’t bring herself to finish. Dishes piled up and the trash overflowed.

  Laura needed Emma to offer some indication that she wanted to be there, and she wasn’t getting it. Emma was a colicky baby. One night when the crying wouldn’t stop, Laura had a sinister thought: how little it would take to accidentally kill the baby. It passed as quickly as it had come on, but the shame and horror of it lingered.

  The next morning she packed a bag for the two of them and got in a cab.

  * * *

  LIFE WAS MUCH EASIER AT 136. Dinner was prepared, the house was cleaned when she wasn’t looking, she could pass Emma off to Sandra when she needed a break. After a week, Laura decided that it made sense, at least while Emma was a baby, to stay there, and she put her apartment on the market.

  * * *

  THE PLAN HAD BEEN TO stop nursing when she went back to work. But Laura worried that the baby would no longer be interested in a relationship with her, especially as she’d now be spending nearly all her time with Sandra, so she continued to nurse in the mornings and after returning from work.

  One evening she arrived home to a funny odor.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked, taking the baby from Sandra.

  “I just change diaper,” Sandra said.

  “It’s not that,” Laura said. “It smells like burning rubber.”

  “I know nutheen,” Sandra said, putting on her coat. “But your ma-der is crazy, you know.” She walked out the front door for her evening break.

  Laura headed toward the stairs then realized no one was home and decided to nurse in the living room. She had just begun when the front door opened.

  “Yoo-hoo!” her mother’s voice called from the hall.

  Laura jumped up and slipped through the swinging door that led to the kitchen, where Bibs rarely set foot. She didn’t like to nurse in the same room as her mother, who made no attempt to hide her disgust and fascination with it. “It’s just so mammalian.” She’d once gawked upon walking in on Laura doing it, and then did a mean impression of the baby’s mouth in action with exaggerated sound effects.