What Is Missing

by Michael Frank

  Now it was Judith, every morning, and again every evening, asking how he was doing, and in a way that always seemed to expect him to answer that something was wrong. She was the kind of parent who liked a problem; liked to sit with it, tease it out, and find a solution. How much of this had to do with her being a psychologist and how much of it just had to do with her being Judith, he would never know. It almost didn’t matter how he answered; still she probed, still she sought to expose, parse, and dissect. It didn’t matter if he told her that he was fine; she seemed almost determined to hear that he was unhappy (much as she was the opposite) about his exile to the Upper West Side, but the truth of his feelings wasn’t that simple. He was unhappy, yet he kind of understood, because he sensed that Henry had never totally gotten over the fact that Costanza and Andrew had met each other and become friends first. He understood because, of all people, weirdly Judith helped him to understand. “You remember when Charlie and I first moved in together?” she said to Andrew at breakfast on the first extra morning he had stayed with her. “It was that summer when your father took you boys to France. Charlie and I seized that opportunity to get used to each other. After a certain age, it’s not that easy to combine your life with someone new, even someone you love as much as I loved Charlie.”

  It had been a long time since Judith had tried to help Andrew sort out a matter related to Henry; but then, when he thought about it, she was also speaking about herself. Herself and Charlie.

  Andrew considered for a moment before saying, “I kind of wish I’d known that before. I thought Charlie moved in while we were away so that we couldn’t have a chance to object.”

  “Well, that was probably part of it too.” Judith tilted her head back, studied her son for a moment. “But you don’t object to Costanza, do you? My impression is the opposite.”

  Andrew tried to put on as neutral a face as possible, which was often difficult around Judith. What she didn’t perceive, she guessed at, and she was more often right than wrong. He had told her almost nothing about Costanza, both out of his own sense of protectiveness and, more specifically, because Henry had asked him before if he would agree not to mention to Judith that Costanza was doing a cycle of IVF. Instead he was to say (echoing Judith as it turned out) that moving in together was stressful and that the pair needed some privacy. Fertility treatment, Henry pointed out, was one of the most difficult things that could ever come at a couple, and having outside eyes on the experience as it was unfolding only made matters more anxious. Judith, for all her expertise at figuring people out, had no idea about any of that, but she did, it seemed pretty clear, sense that Costanza and Andrew shared some kind of affinity.

  “You don’t object to Costanza,” Judith repeated.

  “No. I like her.”

  “Justin told me that you met her before Henry did.”

  Andrew nodded. He wondered how much of a nod was too much. With most people, it wouldn’t matter, but his mother wasn’t most people.

  “I’m kind of curious about how all that happened. How you met her, how they got together.”

  “Mom, you know Henry wouldn’t want me to talk about any of that with you, just as you wouldn’t—”

  “With me and Charlie there was nothing to hide. Almost from the very beginning, for better or worse, we were open, as you well know.”

  “I’m not saying there’s anything to hide. I’m just saying…” What was he saying? He felt his cheeks grow warm.

  “You like her, don’t you? You care for her.”

  “For Costanza.”

  “Yes, Andrew, for Costanza.”

  He shrugged. The shrug was like the nod earlier. He worried his muscles had a little too much activation. He could almost feel the assessing going on behind Judith’s dark brown eyes, the way it did, or so he imagined, with her patients, and it made him uncomfortable.

  “Sure I care for her. I think she’s a good fit for Henry.”

  “I see.” Judith’s tone suggested she saw more, or intuited more, than she was choosing to let on.

  * * *

  Costanza was pregnant. She was convinced.

  Her breasts were tender, and their areolae had changed shape. They were leaking darker, redder pigment out of their normally circumscribed circles. A classic symptom. She had read about it.

  She was nauseated too. The idea of certain foods repulsed her. Cream cheese, for instance, which Henry brought home with bagels for Sunday brunch. Mint jelly. Kiwi. Just touching it, feeling the fuzzy texture of its skin, made her throat constrict.

  Also there were these odd—vibrations. She didn’t know what else to call them. Little twinges, echoes deep within her body, as though it were busy making life.

  She didn’t say anything to Henry. She didn’t want him to know how utterly obsessed she was. She waited for him to leave for work before she took off her clothes and stood naked in front of the mirror, first frontally, then in profile. Of course there was nothing to see, but she had to look.

  She didn’t know when she had last so enjoyed looking at herself in the mirror. My body, she thought. It can do this.

  * * *

  The next morning she again stood naked in front of the mirror. Her breasts were not tender. The areolas were pink again. On her toast she ate cream cheese and mint jelly, just to see. She couldn’t face the kiwi, though.

  Henry had glimpsed her palpating her breasts, cupping them from below, to see if they felt different, heavier. He said, “Just so you know, for lots of women the progesterone can mimic the symptoms of pregnancy. I’ve seen patients set themselves up for a great letdown.”

  The progesterone, which was meant to help the embryo stick, and which he was injecting into her buttocks every night at ten o’clock, a shot so painful that afterward she had to ice her backside. So it was the drugs, not her body, after all.

  “I know the waiting isn’t easy,” he said.

  “It’s excruciating.”

  * * *

  On another day she felt, and heard, a gurgling in her abdomen. She had eaten a simple lunch. It wasn’t indigestion. She could feel her womb working. Her breasts were tender again.

  Later that same day, just before dinner, she went to pee and found a spot of blood in her underwear. Implantation bleeding! She had read about this too. A message from deep within the body.

  Her breasts were tender. She was convinced again.

  * * *

  Some mornings Costanza woke up and in those first few moments of consciousness forgot what she was waiting for, what was going on in her life. She felt a sense of liberation in that interstice between sleeping and waking that was beyond physical. She wasn’t confined to a woman’s body that was medicated and forbidden from exercising and drinking; she was free. Free from the needs, the mechanics, the tricks (the trickiness) of the flesh: freed from carnality; free from being obsessed with her reproductive system; free from eating, digesting, farting, shitting, menstruating; free from bathing, moisturizing, putting on and taking off makeup and washing, cutting, and combing her hair; free from stink, free from perfume; free from panties, panty liners, tampons, bras, T-shirts, blouses, skirts, pants, dresses, sweaters; free from coats (God how she hated a heavy winter coat), stockings, socks, shoes, hats, scarves, and gloves; free from jewelry; free from having to blow her nose, floss and clean her teeth, harvest the wax from her ears; free from having to clip her fingernails and her toenails, shape her eyebrows, shave her underarms, wipe her ass.

  It was bliss. To be free; to forget.

  But then she remembered. After seconds, minutes—it was not easy to tell how long it took for the mind to fly, then land. With a thud. And it hurt. As if she’d been struck. Lashed. She was still trapped in her body and she was still waiting.

  * * *

  When Andrew hadn’t shown up at Henry’s for more than a week, she called him to ask why. Swim practice, he said. Homework. An overnight to Haverford, where his cousin Sophie was a junior.

  The progesterone seemed to h
ave trimmed Costanza’s reserves of patience. “It sounds like you’re making an excuse,” she said bluntly.

  “Honestly, I’ve just been crazy busy.”

  “Don’t say honestly when you’re not being honest. It’s better to say nothing.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the phone line.

  “Andrew?”

  “You said it was better to say nothing.”

  “Tell me the real reason.”

  Another silence.

  “Tell me.”

  Another silence, shorter this time. “Henry asked me to give you two some space.”

  “Ah.”

  “He said that this was a complicated time for you.”

  Complicated. What an interesting word. What a telling and not-telling word. The son was threatened by the father, and now the father was threatened by the son. Threatened? Was that even right, or was she, or were the drugs, inventing it?

  “Your father is only trying to help,” Costanza said, even if she only half believed it.

  “We could always meet out—for one of our walks, if you like. Or a coffee. Or you could come to one of my practices. There’s one on Monday after school up at Asphalt Green.”

  “I don’t know, Andrew. Maybe it’s better for us to wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For all this to be over. Either way, I’ll know in about a week.”

  * * *

  It was the slowest week she could remember living. When she opened up a book, her eyes blurred. The pixels on the computer screen felt like pins pricking her eyeballs. She was uninterested in cooking. She was hot, then cold, then hot. She had so much energy that she imagined taking apart Henry’s kitchen and painting it herself in a single morning (wisely, she didn’t); she was so exhausted that after breakfast she felt she could go right back to bed (wisely, she did).

  All day long Costanza kept looping back to one state of mind, one state of being, a clear unrelenting consciousness of what she was doing, which was waiting. To wait: surely it was one of the most painful verbs in the English language. Aspettare: with that harsh p, even in Italian it was an ungainly word.

  On Monday she set out for a walk. It was a frigid January afternoon, but she felt drawn to the park, to the thin frosting of snow that made the leafless trees look like intricately branched candelabra stuck into a vast white cake. She noted the way the bright wintry New York light, reflected and amplified by the snow, made her eyes ache. She noted the way she moved in her own portable cloud of breath that replenished itself over and over.

  For twenty minutes she stopped thinking about the embryo and her body; the embryo in her body. Instead she thought of the scattering of birds—sparrows?—busy searching for morsels to eat. She thought of the bulbs, buried under the snow, that in a few months would spring to life again with the longer days and the new season.

  Just when her mind was about to deliver her back at the threshold of her bodily worries, Costanza remembered that Andrew had invited her to his swim practice that afternoon. Had this been why she felt drawn out of the house and had been strolling toward the north end of the park? Asphalt Green was north, and quite a lot farther east. His practice began in half an hour. She could watch for a bit and afterward she could visit with Andrew. She would again be taken out of herself, or possibly be made to feel more at ease in herself.

  She could smell the chlorine from half a block away. She followed her nose to the pool, where she took off her hat, gloves, scarf, and coat and sat down in the bleachers. The water was alive with dozens of swimmers doing the butterfly, one after the next making vigorous arcs. She tried to pick Andrew out among them, but all she saw was a rapidly flashing film strip of shoulders, backs, and heads in tight bright yellow swim caps. She listened to the hands and the bodies slice through water. It was a calming, lulling sound. The sound, along with the heat and humidity of the room, made her feel woozy. She closed her eyes and listened to the water frothing, the coach blowing his whistle and barking his corrections. When she next opened her eyes, she saw a line of young men standing at the deep end. Long, thin, muscled young men with milky pink skin, dripping statues in royal blue Speedos. The coach blew his whistle, and the first six dived into the water; another whistle, another six. Andrew was among the third group. His eyes were obscured by tinted goggles, and he, like all the other swimmers, was concentrating on the timing of his dive, so she didn’t think he saw her. But she saw him, strikingly muscled and effortlessly agile as he raised his arms in sync with five of his fellow swimmers. At the coach’s whistle, the six of them sprang into the air and made beautiful arcing shapes followed by precise splashes. Once in the water they rose up and began a classic free stroke, whisking the water into a bubbling, hissing foam.

  Just as Andrew and his team began their fourth lap, she was seized by a hot flash. The air, the damp, the drugs, her doubled-up sweaters—surely. Or mostly? Partly? She was aware of the intensity of her watching now. She was watching Andrew, all these young men, with some—yes—pleasure. It unsettled her. She wished she had brought a bottle of water; she wished she could have a gulp, just a single gulp, of cold water or cold air to clear her mind.

  She could. All she had to do was stand up and leave. She stood up shakily, and she left.

  * * *

  At four o’clock the next morning she was awake, consulting the bedside clock. Did four o’clock count as morning? It was dark outside. The streets were quiet. Henry was sleeping with one arm folded winglike and tucked under his head. Four o’clock was not morning.

  At five forty-five she was up again. Henry, though apparently still asleep, had set the palm of his hand protectively on her belly. She was convinced that in his sleep, in his dreams, he was trying to communicate with their embryo. Maybe his touch, his physician’s touch, would will it to live; live and grow.

  She waited until he had left for work, then she hobbled into the bathroom with a full bladder. She opened the pregnancy test she had tucked in her bathrobe the night before and peed on the stick. Then she waited. Three minutes, the package said. Three long minutes.

  It was unmistakable. It was mistakable. There was a hint of a second line. She held the test up to the light. Then again to the window. It was like chasing a mirage; the more she looked, the less she saw.

  After ten minutes, Costanza threw the test away. Summoning a discipline that was amazing to her, she showered, then sat down to work on her translation. She worked past lunch. Afterward she went for one of her walks. Normally she would then have shopped for dinner, but she had no interest in food. When Henry came home they sent out for pizza.

  “It gets harder the closer you come to the twenty-eighth day, doesn’t it?” Henry said when they sat down and he studied her face. “But think of this. It’s only two more days.”

  * * *

  On her way home from her walk that afternoon Costanza stopped at a drugstore. She had vowed to herself that she would wait until the blood test; it was the only definitive way to know, Henry had warned her more than once. But that was before the drugstore positioned itself right in her path, before she came across, for the first time, First Response Gold, a gilded incarnation of the regular First Response test. And digital too. What would they think of next? Verbal? Imagine a tiny machine speaking the news from a computer chip: “Madam, we would like to inform you…” Madam? Miss? Ms.?

  Costanza bought a box. As before she hid the test in the pocket of her bathrobe. She and Henry went to sleep as soon as they tidied up after dinner. He slept through the night. She woke again at four, again at five-something. At a quarter past six she slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her. On the twenty-seventh day, the pregnancy test was something like ninety-five, ninety-eight percent accurate. That was good enough for her. She peed on the stick and waited. In the window of the test a tiny icon of a clock blinked and blinked. Be patient, this meant. I’m doing my job. Your heart is racing, your neck is damp with sweat, you’re determin
ed to know your fate, and I’m looking for traces of HCG in your urine …

  The tiny clock blinked. Behind her the door opened. Henry padded into the room, squinting. He looked at the test, then Costanza. “How long has it been?”

  “Two minutes.”

  He hadn’t put on his bathrobe. He was shivering.

  She kept her eyes locked on the results window. He kept his eyes locked on the results window.

  The clock blinked and blinked. The last minute felt like an hour.

  Finally the window went blank. Then a word appeared on the screen:

  No.

  No?

  NO.

  She looked at Henry; Henry looked at her. It was as though a current whipped between them with a zap. She felt it, but remained frozen, incredulous. Henry too seemed paralyzed at first, but then, and to her surprise, he emitted a single aching sound, half moan, half sob.

  * * *

  The last time Andrew walked out of school in the afternoon and saw his father waiting for him was when his grandmother died, and Henry had come to tell him in person. That was eight years earlier, when Andrew was in fourth grade. He remembered with great clarity coming out through the main doors of the school with his friend Kevin. They were talking about the kind of skateboards they wanted to buy when they had saved up enough money. The inanity of that conversation would remain forever after frozen in time for Andrew, who had looked up and noticed Henry but was so confused by the incongruity of his father’s appearance at school at that hour that he didn’t stop talking or walking. At first he wasn’t even sure Henry was Henry. Then after a moment he understood that something had to be wrong. Very wrong, for Henry to be there. Then time slowed down, and it took him, it seemed, many minutes instead of a few seconds to reach his father and hear what he had to say.