Belong to Me

by Marisa de los Santos

  Piper’s cerulean eyes bored into me for a few seconds, then she tidied her impeccably tidy bob with one pink-tipped hand, and said, pertly, “Cornelia. Just for the record? Being friends with you does not mean I have decided to go bohemian.”

  I laughed. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

  “Now, for God’s sake, let’s talk about something else.”

  I considered telling her about the uncanny resemblance Lake’s life was suddenly bearing to Piper’s own, but I knew the information would go over like a ton of bricks. No matter how many cordial, albeit accidental, encounters she and Lake had had, they had done nothing to lessen the sting of the ancient Piper/Viper remark. In fact, in a nimble, if waspish, riposte, Piper had dubbed Lake, doubtless for all eternity, “Snake.”

  “Toby moves out tomorrow,” I said.

  Piper frowned. “And in with that ridiculous Miranda, I hope.”

  I sighed. “No, Piper. Into an apartment just a few buildings away from hers, as I’m pretty sure I told you. Twice. At least.”

  “I thought she might have come to her senses and decided to give her baby a decent home.”

  “The baby will have a decent home.”

  “Two homes, you mean,” said Piper, scornfully. “They’ll pass it back and forth like a football.”

  “They’ll raise the baby together, but in two separate residences, yes, although Miranda’s agreed to let Toby sleep on her pull-out couch for the first few weeks.”

  “How sweet of her,” said Piper, acidly. “Make someone else get up in the middle of the night.”

  I smiled. “Toby says getting up in the middle of the night with his baby will be totally cool. The best thing to ever happen to him. More fun than a zillion miles of double-black diamond runs. And so forth.”

  “I’m not sure ‘fun’ is the word, but he’s right about the best-thing-ever part,” said Piper, “although he might not know it at four in the morning.” Then she added, “I hope Miranda realizes that Toby can’t actually nurse the baby. I hope she also knows that not nursing for the first six months is the same as flushing the baby’s immune system and fifty IQ points right down the toilet.”

  “As you know, Miranda is planning to nurse. I get the sense that she mostly wants Toby there for moral support. I think she’s scared.”

  Piper pinched up her face, as though Miranda’s fear were a fly in her soup. “Whatever. As long as Toby’s happy.”

  “He’s deliriously happy about the baby, happy in a deeper, bigger way than he’s ever been happy before. And with Toby, that’s saying something. But he’s sad about Miranda. I’ve never seen him so sad.”

  “Well, she’s an idiot not to marry him.”

  “She doesn’t love him,” I reminded Piper.

  “Of course she loves him.”

  “Not everyone sees him the way you do,” I teased. Despite Toby’s haphazard grooming and rampant goofiness, Piper had liked him instantly, and ever since the day he had straightened the training wheels on Emma’s new bike, the boy could do no wrong.

  Piper threw a piece of red bell pepper at me. “And so what if she doesn’t think she loves him? Has she noticed that she’s pregnant with his child?”

  “Their child,” I corrected.

  “Exactly. If two people are raising children together, they should live together, whether they’re in love or not. Running back and forth between houses makes absolutely no sense.” From the prim, self-satisfied face Piper made, the face that used to make me crazy back when I couldn’t stand her, it was clear that her two Freudian slips had slipped right past her notice.

  “Children?” I said, wide-eyed and as sweet as sugar. “Houses?”

  After a befuddled interlude, Piper froze, a hot blush creeping up her neck and staining her face. Instead of replying, she snatched up the knife and a peeled potato and began to hack.

  Without looking up, she said, “You know the worst part about it? What people would say about Tom.”

  “What do you mean?” What I was thinking was that whatever they would say about Tom, it was nothing compared to what they would say about Piper.

  “They’ll say that he’s desperate to have someone take care of his kids, like he doesn’t know how to handle them, which is complete crap.” I noted but refrained from mentioning Piper’s use of the contraction “they’ll,” as in “they will,” as opposed to “they’d” as in “they would.”

  “Do you think Megan’s husband bothers to read about the nutritional needs of children? Or Kate’s? Or Parvee’s?”

  “No?” I guessed.

  “They wouldn’t recognize the food pyramid if it bit ’em on the ass. I can tell you that. Tom is so far above the rest of the men in this town that they couldn’t spot him if they used a fucking telescope.” She put the knife down and looked at me. “And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “He talks.”

  “He does?”

  I felt a moment’s confusion. With two words, Piper had shifted from discussing Tom as father to Tom as man. It took me just a couple of blank eye blinks to get oriented again, but Piper must have seen my confusion because she explained, “Teo probably talks. But, newsflash: most men don’t know how to have a conversation, at least not about anything important.”

  “I’ve heard something like that.”

  “Well, it’s true. But Tom says what’s on his mind, like it’s just the normal thing to do. I find myself telling him things I never even told Elizabeth.”

  As soon as she said Elizabeth’s name, Piper’s eyes filled with tears. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, and stood that way for a long time, and, then, I saw it: further evidence supporting my parallel-universe theory, a theory that suddenly wasn’t funny anymore.

  I had asked Lake if she loved Rafferty, and as I watched Piper stand there, Lake’s answer came back to me, the part when she said, “yes,” followed by the part when she said, “I can’t help it.”

  I wondered if Piper realized how she felt. I didn’t think so. But she would. She had to. Nothing would be more terrible than if she never admitted it to herself. Even so, a tiny protective part of me hoped that she wouldn’t. Piper worked so hard to keep her universe in balance. I could imagine the information that she loved Tom blasting through it like a supernova, sending it wobbling like a broken top across the black infinity of space.

  Jasper Gregory Bloom-Brown, eight pounds, eleven ounces, pushed his rosy, bellowing way into the world on a glorious June morning ten days post due date, straight into the waiting arms of Tobias Randolph Brown, his father, and amid the undulcet strains of the University of Colorado fight song, which Toby had caused everyone, from the nurses to the obstetrician to Miranda, to commence singing the moment Jasper crowned.

  I wasn’t there, but Teo and I arrived a couple of hours later bearing hot pink peonies, chocolate cigars, a bottle of effervescent grape juice, and the shared, but very slender hope that, in addition to the baby, the birth experience would have delivered Miranda the realization that my little brother was the man of her dreams. At first, I thought perhaps it had. When we arrived, the two of them were sitting side by side in the hospital bed, murmuring to the pink-and-blue cocoon in Miranda’s arms. They were smiling and their faces bore the identical mix of exhaustion and radiance. As soon as Toby saw us, he called out, “Yo! Aunt Cornelia! Uncle Teo!” Then he grinned from ear to ear and said, “You gotta see this.”

  Jasper was a big, fat, fantabulous feast of a baby, with cloud gray eyes and black curls peeking out from beneath a tiny blue watch cap.

  “Good hat,” said Teo. “He looks like a very short lobsterman.”

  “Little guy aced his APGAR,” crowed Toby. “Blew that puppy right out of the water.”

  “And see his eyelashes?” cooed Miranda. “A lot of babies don’t even really have them.”

  I started to say that Toby had. I couldn’t tell if I remembered them directly or only remembered the hospital photo of them, black feathers po
king out around his squinched newborn eyes. But I wasn’t sure if Miranda would welcome this news or not, so I just said, “They are delicious. He is delicious.”

  He was. Somehow, Jasper had leaped past the fragile, otherworldly creature stage and gone straight to being one of those babies you want to chew on.

  Teo smiled at Miranda. “And look at you. You look like you could do this every day.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Miranda, “piece of cake.”

  “She was so hard core,” said Toby exuberantly. “The doctor would say, ‘Why don’t you take a minute?’ and Miranda would ignore him and push like crazy. You should’ve seen her focus. Total Lance Armstrong.”

  Miranda’s laugh was the loosest, most openly happy sound I’d ever heard her make. It shimmered in the funny-smelling hospital room air.

  “You weren’t so bad yourself. You made me laugh during transition labor. How many doulas could do that?” She reached for Toby’s hand.

  “I’d do it again in a second,” said Toby, quietly. He brushed a kiss over Miranda’s knuckles. “You just let me know.”

  I dropped my gaze to the tiny person in my arms, feeling superfluous. We were all superfluous just then, me, Teo, even Jasper. The moment belonged to Toby and Miranda. I looked into Jasper’s serious, slightly crossed eyes, and prayed, to him, I think, “Let her love him. Please. Just let her change her mind.” But when I looked up, the broken expression in my brother’s eyes told me that however immense the past twelve hours had been for them both, the experience hadn’t been enough to push Miranda over the edge and into love with Toby. I knew, too, as Toby must also have known, that if the past twelve hours hadn’t done it, nothing would.

  Carefully, I handed Teo the baby, walked around the bed, and put my arms around my brother.

  “Jasper is dazzling,” I whispered in his ear. “And I love you, sweet boy.”

  I felt him hanging on to me. When he let go, I straightened up and told Miranda, “We’ll let you get some rest.”

  “Come back, though, okay? Later?” she said.

  “Sure,” said Teo. “We’ll bring dinner.”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Miranda, throwing back her head. “I haven’t eaten in eons.”

  A dashing young doctor looking precisely like a dashing young doctor in a television show about dashing young doctors knocked on the open door of the recovery room. I saw Miranda straighten the neckline of her hospital gown.

  “Hey, there. Sorry to interrupt,” said the doctor, and then, to Miranda, “I’m Dr. Hirsch. Alec Hirsch. I’m the attending taking over for Dr. Smythe. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m feeling like the next person who palpates my abdomen gets the crap beat out of him,” sang Miranda, as saucy as a bluejay.

  Toby eyed Dr. Alec Hirsch, who was flashing teeth that made his white coat look downright ecru.

  “I think that’s a good sign,” said the doctor.

  “We were discussing her first meal as a mother,” said Teo. “So what’ll it be?”

  “A chicken-cutlet sandwich from Tony Luke’s, with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone. Extra huge,” shot back Miranda, so fast we all laughed. She smiled demurely. “Please.”

  Teo and I walked back to the hotel room we’d reserved for the night, and made the ultra-subdued, highly choreographed variety of love we made these days. “It’s all I can manage,” I had explained to him apologetically, a few weeks earlier. “Otherwise, I’m haunted by visions of you wrestling with a deranged beach ball. But it’s just provisional, I promise you that.”

  “A stopgap measure,” Teo had replied, a gleam in his eyes. “So to speak.”

  That evening, when we got back to the hospital, Teo ran into a radiologist he knew from New York, and I made my way to Miranda and Toby’s room alone. As I walked in, I heard a shower running and saw Toby sitting on the edge of Miranda’s otherwise empty bed, his back to me. His shoulders in his blue-and-white-striped T-shirt were hunched, and his shaggy curls covered the back of his neck, and for an accordion-like instant, time compressed, and I was in the room with Toby, seven years old. I was his big sister, watching him cry silently, the way he’d always done, as though if he didn’t make a sound, it didn’t really count. Not wanting to embarrass him—and when Toby was a kid, crying set him on fire with mortification—I simply stood there. Then, in the space of one breath, time expanded, and Toby was a man again, a new father, and I was flying across the room, calling out, “Toby! What is it? Something happened to Jasper?”

  But Jasper was there, in Toby’s arms, hatless and perplexed and adorable, and Toby was wiping his own wet face with the corner of his blanket.

  “Jasper’s great,” said Toby. “I just…” He broke off.

  “Tobe?” I sat down next to him on the bed. “Honey? Is it Miranda?”

  He shook his head. Without taking his eyes off his baby, he said in a hoarse voice, “It’s just that this, right here: this room, this day, Jasper. This is my life.”

  “Oh, Toby. It’s a lot to take in. It makes sense that you’re feeling overwhelmed.”

  He smiled at me. “But that’s the thing. I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I mean, yeah, it’s big. It’s colossal. But I get it. I belong right where I am. That’s an amazing feeling.”

  I smiled. “But you always seem that way. You always have. Like wherever you are, you’re at home.”

  Toby nodded, thoughtfully. “I know. I thought that, too. But I was wrong.” His eyes started to fill again, and he rubbed them with his forefinger and thumb. He took his hand away and beamed at me. “I’m Jasper’s dad, and it’s like that’s who I was all this time, but I didn’t know it because he wasn’t born yet.”

  He bent down, put his face next to the baby’s face, and I watched them breathe the same air, Jasper and his father. My brother, transfigured by love.

  “And now he’s here,” I said, softly.

  In a cloud of steam, Miranda emerged from the bathroom, stepping gingerly, wearing a white robe, a towel wrapped around her head.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “And now you’re here,” said Toby. He was talking to his son.

  SEVENTEEN

  Earth’s the right place for love:

  I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

  —ROBERT FROST

  When you considered the whole of human history, which Dev knew was a speck, a subatomic particle in an atom of a microbe on a flea clinging to the colossal breathing animal of the cosmos, which was itself a speck floating on the endlessly deep, endlessly long river of spacetime blah blah blah, the event was tiny. The event was quantum. But what was also true was that it had happened, just as surely, just as much as anything (the big bang, anything) had ever happened, and, in Dev’s private, unscientific opinion, more.

  Dev kissed Clare.

  Dev kissed Clare, although he realized that it might be just as accurate to say that Clare kissed Dev, because he was pretty sure that the movement of her face toward his was dead-on symmetrical in both timing and speed with his toward hers, making the kiss one of the most precisely synchronized acts ever to occur on planet Earth. Even so, Dev had wanted to kiss Clare and, without hesitating, had kissed her, a fact that was hugely important to Dev later, after everything that would happen in the twenty-four hours following the kiss had happened, even more important, though only a fraction, than the miraculous fact that Clare had kissed him. Why it was more important was a little hazy for Dev, but it had something to do with having been, for that one, pure, green, blue, brown, and gold cut-grass-smelling moment, a person who trusts his own instincts, a person—a man—who has a say in the way his life turns out.

  The kiss was perfect. It was perfect not only because of everything that was part of it, but because of everything that wasn’t. Dev had spent the past week in a weird state of frenzied inertia, scrupulously avoiding his mother and trying unsuccessfully to ignore the boa constrictor of lies and truth that had been tightening its
grip on him ever since his grandmother’s phone call. But even before the kiss, at the heart-stopping second he saw Clare walking toward him on her own legs, her own feet denting the grass across Mrs. Finney’s backyard, the boa constrictor fell away like a husk, just disappeared, the way all bad things are supposed to disappear in the presence of something entirely good, but usually don’t.

  Dev had known she was coming. They had planned it, that Dev would be working in Cornelia and Teo’s neighborhood on the morning Clare arrived, that she would find him there. There even seemed to be some collusion on the part of fate because Mrs. Finney hadn’t just hired Dev to cut her grass, she had hired him to take care of her yard for two full weeks so that she could visit her daughter, who had broken her ankle falling off a ladder and needed help taking care of her kids. While Dev knew that viewing someone else’s crap luck as a convenient little piece of your personal grand plan was plain cold-blooded, he had thought about it and was almost positive that a cracked bone was his limit; if anything worse had taken Mrs. Finney to Boston, Dev wouldn’t have felt anything but bad. But no matter how you sliced it, when it came to seeing Clare for the first time in months, more alone was better than less, and completely alone in a pocket of green leaves and grass and yellow sun was flat-out transcendent.

  Despite the plan, though, despite the fact that through close to two hours of mowing, pruning, and watering, all of Dev was waiting for Clare, down to his fingertips and the hairs on the back of his neck and the valleys of his lungs where the air never quite seemed to reach no matter how hard he breathed it in, when she finally arrived, he wasn’t ready. He was standing in the sun watching the water from the hose arc rainbows over a patch of delphiniums so ferociously blue that he could still see the color with his eyes shut, when something, a sound or a shift in the molecules of the air, made him look over his shoulder, and there she was, shimmering against the drapery of green like a hologram or a mirage.