You Were Made for This

by Michelle Sacks

  Most days, I eat wedges of butter to stave off my sugar cravings and keep my weight down, but when Sam’s away, I unpack my hidden stash from the barrel of the washing machine and indulge in whole bags of crisps and cookies, which I smuggle home from the grocery store under packs of diapers and organic detergent. I am vile. Terrifically unladylike. I pick at my toenails and squeeze out the ingrown hairs from my legs. Sam would shudder if ever he saw me like this. Sometimes I shudder myself, at this version of me. Well, she will need to be banished once Frank arrives. There will be no such escapes for a while.

  Some days, I think it would be nice to go out, to leave our little island territory, but of course Sam has the car. It’s an hour on foot to get anywhere from here, and forty minutes’ walk to the nearest bus station. Sam bought himself a mountain bike for the trails, but it’s been ruled out for me. Too dangerous, he said, with a baby.

  That leaves us stuck. Just us. Mother and child, with nothing to do but revel in domestic duties. I suspect Sam likes it. No, I know he does. My lack of distraction. My utter focus. Actually, it surprises me how encouraging he’s being about Frank’s visit. In New York, I was always hearing complaints about any outside interests or distractions. The parts of me that weren’t entirely consumed with Sam. Sam’s favorite music, Sam’s current reading list, Sam’s teaching materials, his new eating habits, or his latest workout. Sam’s everything. And now Sam’s baby.

  The baby. The baby we made. The baby we let into the world. I remember how I felt that day, standing in the pokey beige bathroom of our apartment which always smelled of the deep fryer from the Indian restaurant downstairs, looking at the two lines faint on the stick, the lines of life, imminent and incontrovertible. It was the second test. Whoopsie daisy. A whoopsie baby.

  The door burst open, Sam home early and unexpectedly.

  Is that? he asked, looking at me, caught red-handed. I did not miss a beat. Yes, Sam, I cried. Isn’t it the very best news.

  The origin of the word suffer is “to bear.” You are not supposed to overcome it. You are only supposed to endure. I am free to leave, this is what anyone would say to me, but the question is how, and with what, and to where. These have never been questions I could answer. They have never seemed like my decisions to make. In this world, I have no one but Sam. He knows this. It is surely part of the allure. That and how I am no good on my own. I would not know where to begin.

  There are sleepless nights and nights that don’t end. I wake sometimes and find the baby in my arms, yet I have no recollection of fetching him. He screams himself awake and I go to his crib, watching him turn red and fuming, tears streaming down his face, cries catching violently in his throat. Feral, raging changeling from the wild. I am reluctant to pick him up, loath to offer him comfort, even though this is all he wants from me, all he asks. I cannot give it. I can only stand and watch, silent and unmoving, until he is all cried out and too exhausted for more.

  Sleep training, I’ll explain to Sam, if he complains about the crying. I’ll quote a reputable pediatric authority, because I like to show him how seriously I take our child’s development. Still, he’ll find things to point out that I am doing wrong. He’ll offer wisdom and advice—minor improvements, he calls them, and there’s always room for these. Yes. He does love to educate me. He is very good at it. Filling in the blanks. I think perhaps he considers me to be one of the blanks, too, and slowly he is filling me in. Do this, wear that. Now you should quit your job. Now we should marry. Now we should breed.

  Over the years he has shown me what to appreciate and what to disavow. Italian opera, classical Russian pianists. Experimental jazz. Korean food. French wine.

  Is it Dvořák? I ask him, as though I don’t know. As though I wasn’t the one raised in the oceanfront house in Santa Monica, lavished with education and private lessons beyond anything I wanted or deserved.

  Husband. Hūsbonda. Master of the house.

  I suppose he only tells me things I don’t know myself. What I need. What I want. Who I am. And in return for this, I give it my all. I give Sam the exact woman he wants me to be. A faultless performance. Nothing else would do.

  The men before Sam wanted to rescue me, kiss away the boo-boos. Sam wanted to make me over from scratch. And I hate to disappoint him, because disappointing Sam is the worst feeling in the world. It is the end of the world, actually, and the return of the hopeless, relentless, gnawing vacancy inside.

  You’ll be a terrific mother, Merry, he told me all through the pregnancy, through the nausea and the discomfort and that feeling of hostile, unstoppable invasion. He couldn’t take his eyes off me, or his hands off my swollen belly. He was mesmerized with what he imagined was his singular achievement.

  Look at this, he marveled. We made this life; we made this living being inside of you.

  The miracle of it, he said.

  It felt like the very farthest thing. But Sam had already carried us away on a dream and a plan: Sweden. A brand-new life. Shed the old skin and slip into another. There was something enticing about the idea of it, of leaving New York with its many secrets and shames. Some of them Sam’s, the biggest one belonging to me.

  The baby, the baby. Sam loves him with such ferocity, it can sometimes make it hard for me to breathe. And now there will be Frank to think of. Frank in my house. Frank in my life. So close. Perhaps too close. We are childhood friends, that most dangerous kind. Bonded over memories and sleepovers and secrets; over betrayals and jealousies and cruelties big and small. She has always been in my life somehow, a lingering presence. Even when we are far apart, separated by cities or continents, it is Frank I think of most. It is Frank I crave. I imagine her reacting to what I do and say, to how I live, to whom I love. I imagine Frank taking it all in. I imagine what it feels like for her, to see my life and hold it up against her own. We need each other like this. We always have.

  I remember when she first moved to New York—snapped up after her MBA by one of the top consulting firms. Suddenly she was a different Frank. Jet-setting between cities, dating hedge-fund managers, living in a penthouse apartment with a Russian art dealer for a roommate. Well, I packed my things and moved there myself a few months later. My father paid my rent.

  But what are you doing here? Frank asked when I arrived on her doorstep one Saturday morning with two cream cheese bagels.

  I’ve always planned to live here, I said, I told you.

  Yes. We need each other. Without the other, how would either of us exist?

  It was nine o’clock when Sam returned home, much earlier than he’d said. The baby was in his crib, newly asleep with the help of a teaspoon or two of cough syrup. I do this occasionally, on the more difficult days. It’s meant to be harmless. Mother’s little helper, is all.

  Other things I do too. Like put pillows too close to the baby’s head. Or set him down to nap just a touch too near the edge of the bed. I don’t know why. I don’t know what it is that compels me. I only know I cannot stop it. Often I weep. Other times, all is numb, whole parts of me dead and blackened like a gangrenous limb. Immune to life.

  I was on the sofa when I heard Sam’s car on the gravel. I startled. I’d been watching a show about women who compete with their best friends to see who can throw the better wedding. I hadn’t yet cleaned myself up. I quickly snapped shut the laptop and opened a book on early childhood development.

  Hello, wife, Sam said, kissing me on the mouth.

  His breath was stale, the smell of rotting meat. My stomach turned.

  How did it go today? I asked.

  He ignored the question, sat down next to me, and cupped my swollen breasts, weighed them like a medieval merchant.

  Our Merry’s in musk, it seems, he said, laughing. I know what you’ll be wanting, he said, a finger burrowing inside my jeans. I was unwashed; I could smell myself on his fingers.

  Have you been using the thermometer? he asked. You have to do it every day so we get the dates right.

  A few weeks ago, he
bought me a basal thermometer. I am supposed to take my temperature every morning and track the stages of my ovulation. Follicular phase, luteal phase, cycle length, everything recorded and set to a graph that displays on an app on my phone. Conception made science. When I am at my most fertile, the phone beeps frantically and a red circle appears on the screen. It’s a red day, it declares. A reminder. A warning.

  I’m using it, I said. But it takes a while to work out your cycle.

  He is impatient with me. He wants me pregnant again. Insisted we start trying when the baby was barely two months old.

  It’s too soon, I begged. Everything hurts.

  Nonsense, he said. The doctor said six weeks.

  I would bleed afterward, shocked pink blood on the sheets and in my underwear the next day. Several pairs I deposited straight into the trash, the blood stiff and dried brown, smelling strongly of rust and decay.

  Come, Sam said. He led me to the bedroom, set me down gently, with purpose.

  I lay there and pretended to enthuse. Oh, yes. More. Please. He likes it when I beg. When I say thank you afterward, like he has given me a gift.

  Some days it is harder than others to remember gratitude. To acknowledge my awful good luck. Sam went slow, stopping to look into my eyes. He repulses me sometimes. A physical reaction to his smell and his touch; the way he breathes through his mouth with his tongue lifted up, the way the hairs on his shoulders sprout in odd patches of wiry black strands.

  Something inside me heaves and shudders to have him close.

  I suppose that’s normal.

  I love you, Merry, he said, and then I did feel it. Grateful. Loved. Or at least I think it’s what I felt. Sometimes it’s hard to know for sure.

  Sam on top, inside, he clutched at me with both hands and breathed into my ear.

  Let’s make a baby, he said, right before he came.

  Sam

  I was up early this morning, shaved, dressed, half out the door. Merry was setting Conor down in his high chair.

  Where are you going?

  Uppsala again, I said. I told you a few days ago.

  You didn’t, she said.

  It’s okay, I said, giving them each a quick kiss. You probably just forgot. You know how bad your memory can be.

  You’re going again?

  It’s a callback, I said. A meeting with the executive creative director this time.

  She nodded. Good luck.

  In the car, I checked the time, then my phone.

  10 a.m., I wrote.

  I pulled out of the drive and headed slowly past the neighboring houses. Mr. Nilssen was out with the horses. I raised my hand in greeting. He’s supposedly a billionaire. Sells his horses to the Saudis but still drives a Honda. God, I love the Swedes. Gives me a thrill every morning, driving out, seeing where we live and how. The sheer good fortune of it all. Sometimes you get lucky, I guess.

  The day was going to be a good one. Sunny and clear. The traffic was smooth.

  In forty minutes, I was outside her apartment door, ringing the doorbell.

  You’re early, she said when she opened up. She was wearing a dress, ivory satin, tied tightly against her so it looked like she’d been submerged in thick cream. Her hair was loose, long, and blond and softly curled at the shoulders.

  Hello, Malin. I smiled.

  Come inside, she said.

  Later, around the boardroom table, I looked at six young Swedes as they watched my reel. It’s a mix of old footage from the field and some new material I’ve been working on in the studio I’ve set up for myself at home. It’s good work. I know my way around a scene. I’ve been told that I have an excellent eye for framing. That I’m a natural at this.

  I sipped an espresso from a mint green cup.

  This is great, the creative director commented, very dynamic.

  I reckon I have a fresh perspective, I said. With my background.

  It wasn’t so difficult, all this self-promotion. Fake it till you make it and all.

  It says here you taught at Columbia?

  Yes, I said.

  Why the career change?

  I gave a wry smile. Well, after enough years teaching young people, you realize you’ve got it in reverse. They know it all and you’re just a dinosaur with a piece of chalk.

  Oh, and I was fired. I guess I could have added that.

  They laughed. A good answer. Endearing, not too cocky. I’ve got it down to an art.

  So you did a lot of filmmaking as an anthropologist?

  Some, yes. Mostly in the early days of my career, the time I spent doing fieldwork in Africa. But film was always what I really wanted to do. That’s why I’ve returned to documentary now.

  They looked at me and I smiled. Not one of them a day over thirty, and all of them so effortlessly self-possessed you’d think they were Fortune 500 CEOs.

  Snow tires. The shoot is for a company that makes snow tires.

  Great, I said. Sounds interesting.

  A mobile phone rang and the producer got up to take the call. Before he left the room, he slipped a business card onto the table in front of me.

  Sorry, the creative director said, we’re busy with a big project at the moment; everyone’s a little distracted.

  It was my cue to leave. I shut my laptop and stood up, knocking the chair back as I did.

  He shook my hand. We’ll let you know.

  How was your meeting? Merry asked when I got back home.

  It was good, I said, really good.

  She beamed. Wonderful.

  She had Conor in her arms, freshly bathed and ready for bed. His eyes were red, like he’d been crying.

  Did you two have a good day? I asked.

  Oh, for sure, she said. The best.

  Merry

  Domestic chores aren’t usually Sam’s department, but last night he volunteered to bathe the baby. He emerged from the bathroom afterward holding him in a towel.

  Hey, he said, what’s this over here?

  He lifted the towel and showed me the child’s thighs. My face flushed. I had not noticed the marks, four little blue bruises against his skin.

  That is strange, I said. I swallowed.

  I wonder, Sam said, could his clothes be too tight? Could that be it?

  Yes, I said, more than likely. I should have bought him the next size up by now.

  Sam nodded. Well, you should take care of that in the morning.

  Absolutely, I said, first thing.

  And so, in the name of new baby clothes, I was permitted the car for today. Sam took the baby and I headed into Stockholm, music blaring, windows open to the warm midsummer air. Exhilarating, the heady feeling of freedom, of leaving the island behind. I had dressed up, a light floral summer skirt, a sleeveless blouse.

  In Stockholm, I parked the car and checked my face in the mirror. I loosened my hair and shook it out. I painted on mascara and lined my lips with color. Transformed. I walked a short way to a café in Södermalm I’d read about.

  Sometimes I do this, page through travel magazines and imagine all the alternative lives I might be living. Drinks at the newest gin bar in Barcelona, a night in Rome’s best boutique hotel.

  I picked up an English newspaper from the counter and sat at a table by the window, pretending to read. I love to people-watch in the city. Everyone is so beautiful. Clear skin and bright eyes, hair shining, bodies taut and well proportioned. There is no excess. Nothing bulging out or hanging over or straining at the seams. Even their clothes seem immune to crumpling. It isn’t just Karl and Elsa next door: it’s a whole country of them.

  Immaculate Elsa. I should probably invite her over for fika, try to make friends. We could discuss pie recipes and child-rearing; I might ask her about her skincare routine. Only I’ve never been very good at it. Female friendships. Well, apart from Frank, I suppose.

  Sam keeps asking if I’m excited for her visit. I try to be enthusiastic. I do look forward to it, I think. Showing off our lives, showing her everything I
have accomplished. Showing her who is ahead.

  But there is another part of me that feels deep unease. Something about the way Frank always sees more than she should. She likes to think she knows me better than anyone—maybe even myself. She considers this a triumph. So she pokes at my life like a child with a stick, prodding at a dead seal washed up on the shore. Waiting to see what crawls out. Peekaboo, I see you!

  She is always digging, digging, trying to go beyond the surface. The real you, she says, I know the real Merry. Whatever that means.

  At the table across from me, I watched a young woman. She must have been in her early twenties, blond and slim and well dressed. She was eating a cinnamon bun, forking small bites of pastry into her mouth. She kept brushing a finger gently to her lips. She talked with an older man, perhaps in his forties, dressed in a gray cashmere sweater and dark jeans. Like me, he watched her movements closely, followed her fork with his eyes into her mouth; followed her fingers as they danced on those red lips. At one point she touched his arm, casual and friendly and innocent of all desire, but for him I could see it was electrifying.

  She was showing him something on a laptop screen, pointing with her long fingers. She wore no wedding band, just a thin gold ring on her index finger, set with a small topaz stone in the center. He nodded intently as she spoke; she wrote something down in a notebook that lay open next to her cup. He watched her take a sip, the way she licked her lips to make sure that no foam lingered. Love or infatuation, who could ever tell.