by Tara Ison
THE CONNECTICUT COUNTRYSIDE in autumn is Sarah’s favorite—the smell of stripped corn, the orange, yellow, and green plaid of trees. Moons that hang low and burn through a haze of chaff and dust. The ducklings have grown glossy over the summer, and waddle around the grounds; the sheep’s wool has grown in enough from spring shearing to gather burrs and a confetti of hay. They bleat inscrutably when she passes by to collect eggs, or rip beans from their twining vines in the arbor. It isn’t really autumn yet—still early August, she knows there’s time left—but it’s beyond the flush of summer; the oversized fruits and vegetables in Emily’s garden have peaked, and Sarah feels a hurry to use everything so the lushness isn’t left to rot. Rubbery zucchini, wilting lettuces, old, uncracked eggs, leathered melons—every day she dumps more used and unused food on the compost heap, which rises to slow, decaying prominence in a far corner of the yard.
Emily is nine days overdue, and the household is on chaotic edge, waiting.
The doula, Sarah reads in the dog-eared pregnancy and childbirth books sagging a kitchen shelf, is the primary female caretaker of the mother-to-be during late pregnancy, labor, and delivery; the midwife arrives only when contractions are reliably prompt and severe, expecting advanced cervical dilation and lots of snacks, and the coach—Emily’s solemn husband, Michael—is himself fully involved in the birth experience. But the doula, while often a dear friend, is still an outsider, a woman who can focus solely on the birthing mother’s needs and wants. This, Sarah is happy to interpret, means the fun stuff.
The housework is done by a nervous young woman in her twenties, who comes twice a week and talks compulsively to Sarah about her coming and going boyfriends; Rachel and Elijah are cared for by their nanny, a mammoth, fleshy grandmother of seven with a blond crew cut, who eight hours a day joshes them out of their whines, listens to Rachel chant her loop of “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” walks them around out of doors searching for dragonfly wings, and lets them ride her like a horse. Being a doula means keeping to the fringe of that, not disrupting the settled flow of the house with her presence—her job is the garnish, to provide distraction and simple comforts. She rubs Emily’s feet with peppermint lotion, brushes out and braids her hair, stirs curry powder and gobs of soy mayonnaise into her favorite scrambled eggs. She takes the bags full of the wool shorn from the three sheep—Messy Marv, Sophia, and Brian—to the carding lady, who teaches her about vegetable-based dyes and shows her how to spin fibers to yarn on a wooden, foot-pedaled wheel. She takes the bored family dog for long, deep-lung’d walks in the woods surrounding Emily’s house, and checks him for ticks. She joins Michael when he is tense and exhausted for cocktail-hour glasses of McCallan 18 whiskey, pops in a reggae CD, and asks him about his day while Emily naps. She fills a wheelbarrow of basil from the garden and makes pesto, scooping cups of it into recycled yogurt containers for freezing. She picks too-ripe blackberries until the juice stains her cuticles like blood, as if she’d tried to claw her way out of a pit.
She picks up the creamy, fluffy curls of wool from the carding lady, and Emily, whose fingers are swollen, hands over knitting needles so Sarah can get to work on this year’s sweaters for the family. She stretches out on the living room sofa with Emily, knitting, humming, massaging the dog’s stiff-haired belly with her toes.
“Was he ever married, this guy? Does he have any kids?” Emily asks, drinking juice.
“One son. I think he’s twenty-eight or nine.” Marty has shown her a recent photo: his son, a stunning version of a much-younger Marty, dancing unabashedly at some wild tribal event.
“He must’ve gotten married pretty young.”
“Yep.” Sarah smiles over her needles at Emily. “He got married the year before you and I were born.”
“Well, you know, it’s what they did back then. Marry young,” says Emily, poking Sarah in the thigh with her foot. “You know, in that generation.”
“He’s still friends with his ex-wife.”
“That’s good. That’s a sign of maturity.”
“Oh, just what I need. Another sign of his maturity.”
“Is that the wool from Messy Marv?”
“Uh huh.” Sarah holds up her work; rows of knitted wool are lining up like a furrowed field. “The pullover for Rachel.”
“Pretty.”
She puts her knitting down, and takes the juice glass from Emily. “Should we do your stomach again?”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks. Is that stuff still okay, you think? It’s leftover from Elijah.”
Sarah sniffs at a bottle of apricot oil. “It’s fine. Maybe a little funky. It’s fine.” She slides a pillow under Emily’s knees, helps pull off her splotched blouse. She pours oil into her palm, warms it a moment, smoothes it in expanding, then decreasing concentric circles on Emily’s swollen basket of an abdomen.
Emily takes a deep breath, and gazes up at the ceiling. “Two more days, and the midwife won’t let me deliver at home,” she says. “Maybe I should swim more laps. Get on the Stairmaster.”
“Or a trampoline. A pogo stick.”
“You can do that harder.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“That’s okay. This isn’t supposed to feel wonderful.” Emily sighs. “It’s meant to be persuasive.”
Sarah pushes her palm with more force, feeling what must be baby foot, baby arm, baby skull. “Are you still going with ‘Ariel’?”
“Yep. ‘Lion of God.’ That is, of course, assuming he or she is ever actually born.” Emily balls her fists, and shoves them under the small of her back. Her naked breasts slip sideways.
“Here . . .” Sarah adjusts the pillow under Emily’s knees. “I’d be so freaked out. But maybe it’s easier, each time? Does it get easier?”
“I think it gets worse. I know what’s coming. I know this really horrendous thing is going to happen, rip up my body and be really traumatic, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s absolutely inevitable.”
“Sounds like being on death row. Waiting for the firing squad.”
“Sort of, yeah. Woop . . .” A droplet of milk spills from her right breast to the couch. “That hasn’t happened in a while. Can you hand me a diaper?”
“Yeah, here. Wait, this one’s a little vomity.”
“That’s okay.”
“The other one, too.” Sarah motions to Emily’s left nipple, where milk is beading up. She watches Emily tuck the diaper under her breasts; they look full and stretched out, and Sarah thinks of wind socks, of how they start to sag just at the moment the breeze first dies, somehow sagging while still taut and weighted with air. In high school, in college, Emily’s body was a picture, the loveliest, unblemished thing. She remembers coveting that body. The body, and Emily’s attitude toward it, blithe, unaware. She used to draw Emily naked, in tribute. A 2B Conte soft crayon for shading the longish lines and curves, a 1 or 2H to get the fine points, an eyelash, a fingernail, a nipple’s crinkled nub. The light from their dorm room window glowing over Emily’s plummy, lissome nakedness; Sarah, skinny and shapeless, drawing her, both of them drinking jug Chablis and analyzing Fauvist art, agonizing over boys, being silly and so-serious and young. A book they’d do together some day, a feminist reinterpretation of fairy tales, Emily writing the text, a series of prose poems, Sarah drawing mock and ironic Pre-Raphaelite heroines in pen and ink. But it would be so different to draw her now. Capture that drummed-flat navel and slumped breasts, the distorted spine, the pearly streaks of stretch marks. The recline on a couch out of weariness and strain. Sarah straightens her own spine and looks down at her own legs, glowing with vibrancy and health, in good shape from all the bicycling and long strolls around Rockaway. She helps Emily mop up milk.
“Thanks. So, tell me stories. I picture this guy quoting Kabbalah at you all the time.”
“No,” Sarah says, smiling. “He doesn’t do that.” She pours more apricot oil, returns to orbiting Emily’s belly with a greased hand. “But he gets up every morning at six-thirt
y to daven.”
“Sarah.”
“I know.”
“I cannot picture this,” says Emily. “You and this guy.”
“There’s nothing to picture. He just likes having me hover around. I’m just entourage.”
“So why don’t you start something? If you want it to happen.”
“But I don’t. I don’t think I do . . .” She is confused, made uneasy by his lack of initiative, by the blurriness between them. She has thought of starting it, yes, but she senses if she is too assertive, too sexual, he’ll just be appalled, see baseness, cast her away with some righteous biblical injunction. “This guy’s too weird. It’s too complicated. It isn’t about sex,” she says. And it isn’t, she thinks. It’s something else, there is something else they must be getting at, but she doesn’t know what. It is unrecognizable, it feels like maybe a place to rest, it is a joke she can make, it is fraught.
“It’s not like it was with David,” she says, finally.
“But that’s all it was with David.”
“Yeah. It was so simple. So well-defined. Clean margins. I miss that.”
“Well, maybe when you go home again . . .”
She brushes the idea away with an oily hand. “I’m too old for David. He was just a kid. All starting out and eager and excited about everything. He was like a little boy.”
“And so now you’re dating Methuselah.”
“Ha.” She mock-raps her knuckles on Emily’s belly.
“Ha ha.”
“Just see what happens with this one. Sounds like he adores you.”
“No, I don’t think he does. Maybe part of the time.”
“Maybe he’s frightened.”
“I think he’s just wildly conflicted. I think he’s a mess. Hey, it’s summer, it’s the beach, it’s something to do. Just fun, like you said.”
Emily nods. She puts her hand over Sarah’s, and they rub her belly together a moment. She gazes out the living room window toward the garden. “We should probably bring in the rest of the Swiss chard soon, if it’s still good. It’s been so hot, everything’s just about compost by now.”
“I’ll go out later,” Sarah says. “We should finish what’s left of the raspberries, too. Before the birds do.” She gets up and tugs open a window, draws the muslin curtains apart to catch any of the late afternoon breeze. They listen to the rasping pulse of insect wings.
“Emily?” Michael enters, looking dazed and rumpled, carrying Elijah pouched in front of him like an infant marsupial. “Honey, are you having the new baby now?”
“No.”
“Then, can you take him? He’s hungry. And I really need a nap. Can this be my time for a nap?”
“Yeah, hand him over,” Emily says wearily. Michael pulls the baby free from the pouch’s straps, and Sarah passes him to Emily.
“Come here, baby boy,” says Emily. “Baby, baby boy . . . hey, where’s Rachel?” she calls.
“Aggie took her to feed the ducklings,” he calls back, as he stumbles from the room.
Emily settles Elijah around her bulk, and molds her nearest breast toward him. She brushes his lips with a brown, pulled-long nipple; he clamps on happily.
She watches Emily nurse. She likes watching this, the world goes sleepy and peaceful. This, is pretty. This would be nice to draw, she thinks, those soft, intimate lines. Maybe there’re some colored pencils around somewhere. Rachel must have a drawerful of paints and brushes, maybe do it as a watercolor.
“Should I stop with the oil?” she asks.
“No, we should go the whole twenty minutes.”
“Okay.” Sarah resumes looping her hand around hard, around, around. The light’s good for another hour, she thinks. I could even get some fresh eggs from the henhouse, mix up some kind of organic tempera paint. Saturated colors. Very Giotto, very Madonna-and-Child . . .
“Just promise me if anything does get started, you’ll be careful. Don’t let this happen to you.” Emily looks down at the tracks of oil on her belly, shiny as rain-slicked pavement, and Sarah smiles.
“Don’t worry. That, I am religious about. And I’m still on the pill, anyway, so . . .” Emily looks mildly disapproving. “I know, I know. Don’t say it.” She thinks about moving Emily closer to the window for a better composition. Taking her long hair out of that ratty braid, letting it float and curl over her shoulders in golden light. So pretty. Like a della Francesca.
“You know, my homeopath has all these natural hormonal birth control things. If you want to talk to her. And I could show you how to check your mucus, know when you’re fertile, know when it’s safe.”
“No, thanks. I’m not taking any chances.”
“I just hate you being on that stuff all these years. What it could be doing to your body.”
It’s better than these stretch marks of yours, Sarah thinks, but doesn’t say. Better than ripping up your body, yes. “I’m not worried,” she says.
“And how it might affect your system, down the road. If you ever change your mind about kids.”
“Now that, I’m really not worried about,” she says.
“Yeah.” Emily smiles. “You sort of already have two kids.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s funny. I was thinking about that, after we talked the other day. How there’s this weird paradox in your life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s your parents, and what happened after Aaron. You had to grow up so fast, to take care of them. And that made you so—”
“I know, I know. You think I shouldn’t feel so responsible for them.”
“No, responsible about them.”
“All right, whatever. I agree. It’s highly dysfunctional.” She gives an elaborately resigned shrug. “But it’s not forever.”
“No, that’s not it. I was thinking how it also keeps you, it’s kept you, your whole life, in this place where you get to stay the child. At the same time.”
Her oil-rubbing hand on Emily’s belly stops. “What do you mean?”
“Well, parents are a kid’s whole emotional focus, right? That’s what home is. Parents create this emotional space the child can live and feel secure in. An extension of the womb. And venturing out of that is frightening. To separate, and be out in the world. Having to create all that space for yourself. Forge your own path. You’ve never had to do that. I’m being figurative, but—”
“But Em, that’s not true! Come on . . .” She hears her voice waver, and tries to lighten her tone, go lilting and carefree. “I am here, look? Right? I have ventured from my literal and figurative home. I have forged. I’m not a child.”
“I know, that’s what I was getting to. You took this huge leap, and now you’re, well, unstuck. I guess I’ve always been more worried how you’d deal with stuff after they’re gone. When that focus is taken away, all that investment, like, then what’s Sarah going to do? On her own, with all her own life to live on her own terms. And now you’re doing it. I’m really proud of you.”
You know what real sin is? she remembers. Inertia. Refusing the responsibility for your own life.
She looks away from Emily’s encouraging smile. It feels so condescending, her praise. Her pity. “I don’t get why you had to be so worried, Em. Of course I’m doing it. It just had to be the right time.” She rubs, firmly, circling, circling. “I told you about my shell painting, right?”
“Yeah. It sounds beautiful.”
“The paintings, I mean. I’ve started a whole series, actually.” She clears her throat, pictures her single canvas, her lonely little shell. The untouched blots of drying paint on her palette. Her faceless, empty canvases turned away and leaning against the walls of her room. “It’s all about shells and hidden undersea lives. What can live without air, then dies when it comes to the surface. Challenging our assumptions about what sustains and nourishes us. That kind of paradox.” She waves her hands in the air, in what she hopes demonstrates paradox and insight. “Very elemental.”
“I can’t wait to see them.”
“It’s amazing, how everything’s really coming along now. Being away from home, being here, it’s all been so . . . generative. Really defining. So don’t worry about me, all right? I’m fine. I’m doing it. I’m in the groove.”
Emily nods, thinking. “The truth is . . .” she pauses, “you were always the talented one. You were blessed that way. I used to be so jealous.”
“Oh,” Sarah says. She looks away from Emily’s gaze, pushes her hands back onto her belly. “Well, thanks.”
“So, when’s the exhibit happening? Is there a date set? Michael and I can escape the kids for a few days maybe, come out for it? I’d love to be there.”
“It’s not really that definite, yet. I’ll want to show her all the work I’ve done here, the whole series, first. The woman with the gallery. Consult with her about the details, the framing, the installation. It’s still way down the road. Don’t worry, I’ll let you guys know.”
A faint eggy smell breezes in. Probably the compost, she thinks. She removes her hand from Emily’s belly to stretch her arms for a moment, flex her own bones. Emily drinks some juice, then offers up the glass.
“You want some more?” Sarah asks.
“No, for you. Go ahead and finish it.”
Sarah swallows the last of the juice. “Hey,” she tells Emily, “you know, maybe you could write the text for the catalog? Would you like that?”
“Sure, I’d love to.”
She smiles, puts her hand back on Emily’s stomach, slides slow hard circles, hard, harder.
“You can stop if you want,” Emily says. “Really.”
“No, I like doing this.”
“I did also think, though . . .” Emily drifts her hand across Elijah’s forehead. “After Rachel was born, and then now, I do think there’s one part about having kids that you’d really like—”