Then she sees them, Mark and Noah, hurrying across the grass from the parking lot. Mark waves an apology at the coach.
The other team, the Aphids, has the ball. There’s a scuffle for it in front of her, and the players’ feet kick up bits of wet grass. Mark makes his way to where she stands, and greets the parents by name. He’s acting like everything’s okay. But everything’s not okay—his glasses are broken. There’s a raised, purple bruise above his right eye.
“What happened?”
He holds up his hands. “I’m fine. It’s stupid. I took Noah on a bike ride. I ran over a branch in the road and fell off my bike.”
“Is Noah all right?” She can see he is. Across the field he’s waiting for his coach to sub him into the game. He bends down to reposition one of his shin guards. When he straightens up he waves.
“It was just me being clumsy.”
“Why weren’t you wearing your helmet? You always do.”
“I was.” He shrugs. “The strap was loose and it got knocked off when I fell.”
She reaches up to touch the contusion on his forehead. His skin is cool and slightly damp. She wonders if he’s lying. “Don’t you have an extra pair of glasses?” She’s speaking to him like normal. But since they yelled at each other in the front yard, things are not normal at all.
“I didn’t want to waste time trying to find them. We were already late.” He takes off his jacket, sets it on the ground, and sits down. He puts his elbows on his knees.
She unfolds her chair and sits too. The whistle sounds. The coach calls for a substitution and Noah runs onto the field and into the striker position. They watch the game silently for a few minutes. The Monarchs gain the ball. A teammate passes it to Noah, and Mark’s eyes follow him as he runs down the field. “He’s playing well.”
“He is.” She listens to the trees rustle overhead. She shifts in her chair, crosses and recrosses her legs. She needs to be here, with her family. She wants to be here. But she wants to be somewhere else too—in her car, turning right out of the parking lot, driving to Edith’s yellow bungalow, and knocking on the door. She didn’t know sex could be like that. So electric, so all-consuming. When Mark touches her there’s no urgency; it almost feels like nothing at all.
“Tell me about the shelter project,” she says. “I want to understand.”
Mark is quiet for a minute; he watches the game. “Those idiots in administration are never going to fund DAMN.”
She suppresses a smile at the acronym. “This is about work?”
“No. Well, yes and no.”
The referee calls time out and the Monarchs huddle around their coach.
“When we bought the house we brought the foundation up to seismic code. We have the generator, and all those crates of water in the garage—”
“It’s not enough.” He digs his elbows into his knees.
“Why does Noah have to be involved? It’s not safe, Mark. He’s only eleven years old.”
“We can’t protect him forever.”
She’s said this very thing to Mark so many times. When he didn’t want Noah to try out for peewee football; when he wanted to go along as a chaperone for Noah’s class hike into the lava tubes on Broken Mountain; when they had to put their old cat Pepper to sleep.
Mark repositions his glasses. “Besides, Noah and I are having fun working on it together. We’re bonding.”
This irritates her. “You and Noah are always together.”
“That’s because you’re never home—”
The referee calls a time-out and Noah runs over and asks Ginny for his knee brace. His cheeks are flushed and his arms flecked with wet grass. “What are you and Dad talking about?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” She digs for the brace in Mark’s bag.
“Are you arguing?”
“We’re talking about how great you look out there.” She reaches over to help him pull on the brace.
“Wrong leg,” Mark says. “It’s his left.”
She shakes her head. “Of course it is.”
The whistle blows and Noah runs back onto the field, with a backward glance at his parents.
Ginny and Mark stand together and watch the kickoff. “I should have told you about the project sooner,” he says.
“You should have.”
“But this is something I need to do, and I want Noah’s help.”
Several players tussle over the ball in the center of the field. Mark claps and moves to the sideline. She looks at the back of his neck, where his pale skin meets his damp, curly hair. There’s some dirt and bits of leaves stuck to his flannel shirt, evidence of the bike spill.
She ought to press him. She ought to find out what’s really going on. But she doesn’t. When Noah emerges from the knot of elbows and knees, he’s got control of the ball.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?” He sounds surprised.
“But I don’t want Noah anywhere near that backhoe.”
He smiles. “The excavation’s done. We’re on to the foundation.”
They fall silent and watch Noah line up at the midfield line for the kickoff. Mark bounces on his toes and Ginny thinks of Edith, thinks of seeing her again, how she can make that happen, and she allows her eyes to wander from the game, to the parking lot and the road beyond.
III
Broken Mountain
TWENTY-FOUR
CASS CARRIES LEAH down the stairs and watches Mr. and Mrs. Mehta make coffee and search the kitchen shelves for a frying pan to make eggs. They bicker good-naturedly about whether to make the eggs with the yolks or not. They’ve been coming over like this for the last two days, to help with laundry or dishes, or to hold the baby so Cass can take a nap. Noah has shown up a couple of times too, and Mrs. Mehta cooks for him, always more than one kid could possibly eat.
This morning Cass has set her laptop bag by the front door. Inside are notes she wrote in the margins of her old paper. The notes are the start of something, her book, her answer to Robby’s Counterfactuals. Her theory of the multiverse. For the first time since the baby was born, she wants to go out, to leave Leah for a few hours. To bend over her laptop, like she used to at the university library, and lose herself among half-formed ideas. To lose track of time, to lose track of her body.
Ashmina, as she’s urged Cass to call her, scoops coffee into the coffeemaker. Her dark hair is pulled into a loose braid, her cheeks rosy with blush. Mr. Mehta cracks eggs into a bowl and hums under his breath. She can trust them with the baby for a few hours, can’t she?
She goes into the kitchen, shifts Leah to one shoulder, and pours herself a glass of juice. Leah kicks her legs against her swaddle, grimaces, and loosens one arm.
“Ready to go?” Ashmina asks.
Cass drinks the juice and eats the eggs, still holding Leah. She puts the dishes in the sink. But then Leah’s arms begin to flail. Her face scrunches, like something’s hurting her. Cass carries her into the living room, circles the couch, bounces her in the air. “Shhh, shhh,” she says in her ear. “Shhh, shhh.”
Ashmina follows, her orchid-print shirt fluttering behind her. She brings the earthy scent of her perfume.
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Cass says.
“Everything will be fine.” Her slightly accented voice is kind but firm. “I promise.”
Cass finds a pacifier in the baby seat and offers it to Leah, but she bats it away.
“All I need is a bottle,” Ashmina says. “And then you can get going—”
Cass shhhhs louder. “I just fed her.” She tries the pacifier again and this time she’s able to wedge it into Leah’s mouth. Cass sways her in her arms until her wails lose some of their volume and turn into eh eh ehs. Leah sucks at the pacifier and her limbs go soft. Her eyes find the light fixture in the hallway, and her hand
finds its spot on top of Cass’s breast.
Mr. Mehta’s voice comes from the kitchen. “We managed to keep our daughter, Sammy, alive. I think we can handle Leah for a few hours—”
Ashmina holds out her hands for the baby.
“If she starts crying, check her diaper,” Cass says, quickly. “She doesn’t like being even a little bit wet. Make sure you use diaper cream. She had diaper rash a few days ago—”
Ashmina’s smile has gone a little rigid, but Cass presses on. “If a diaper change doesn’t work, try the swing. Or you can put her in the stroller and push it back and forth like this.” She moves Leah to one shoulder so she can move her arm in pantomime. She thinks hard about what else to say…
She hesitates. Leah’s damp fingers clutch the collar of her shirt. She slowly loosens her grip. She hands her over, puts on her jacket, and picks up her laptop bag. “Promise me you’ll call if she’s crying for more than ten minutes—” But Ashmina has already walked the baby to the living room windows, turned her toward the pine trees.
“Or…five minutes, even,” Cass calls after her.
She picks up her keys. Her body feels strangely—unsettlingly—light without Leah in her arms, or attached to her breast, or wrapped against her body in the violet wrap.
Mr. Mehta waves her toward the door. “Go, go.”
She stands outside the door. One of Mark and Ginny’s cats emerges from the bushes, stalks across the cul-de-sac, and disappears into the trees. She thinks of the quiet table she’ll sit at in a nearby café, and the hot coffee she’ll drink while she works. She pictures herself typing up her notes and a list of questions she wants to ask Robby. She imagines the feeling of the computer keys under her fingers. But her feet won’t move from the porch. She taps out an email to Amar on her phone.
Dear Amar,
The Mehtas have offered to watch Leah this morning, so I can write. But now I can’t leave the front porch. How did you manage to do this? To leave her? It must have killed you.
Love,
Cass
She can’t help it—she presses her ear against the door and listens. At first there’s nothing, and then a muffled wail. Her throat tightens. She listens harder. The baby’s cries become shrill, and her breasts turn prickly and hot. She’s not good at this. She’s not going to be good at this, not ever.
She barges through the door. Ashmina stands up from the couch with the baby, surprised. “She’s hungry,” Cass says.
“You said you just fed her—”
Cass takes the baby, her little body warm and heavy in her arms, and she feels instantly better.
“Babies cry, Cass.” Ashmina smooths Cass’s hair where Leah tugged it loose from its braid. “I thought you had work to do.”
“I do.” Cass presses her cheek to Leah’s, feels her tender skin against her own. “I want to go work, and I want to stay here.” She feels the sting of tears, and the wet spots in the cups of her nursing bra.
Ashmina’s face softens.
“There need to be two of me,” Cass says.
“It feels like that now. But it will pass.”
Cass shakes her head. Hearing this doesn’t help. It doesn’t even feel true.
“This is a problem we can solve,” Ashmina says.
Cass gestures to her chest. “I can’t leave my breasts at home.”
“You just need a pump.”
“I have one…” It’s in a box somewhere, a strange machine with tubes and wires coming out of it. “I just haven’t figured out how to use it.” Or even unpacked it.
“I sold thirty houses the year Sammy was born. I had to figure out how to be in two places at once—”
Cass presses her nose to Leah’s head.
“Here’s what I would say if you were my daughter. Everything will be okay. You’re not the first person to go through this, Cass.”
But it feels like I am, she wants to say.
* * *
—
When the Mehtas come back that afternoon Cass finds the heavy black bag containing her breast pump, dumps its parts onto her bed, and inspects the strange plastic shapes one by one: clear funnels, flimsy white discs, long thin tubes. The instructions fill a fifty-page booklet. After she’s snapped everything together the directions tell her to Center the assembled breast shields over your nipples. To begin pumping, turn dial clockwise.
She holds up the funnels, now fastened to the pump by the plastic tubing, and she’s grateful Leah’s downstairs with Mr. and Mrs. Mehta. She unhooks her bra, pulls up her shirt, and presses the cold plastic to her breasts.
Your pumping session will start in the Stimulation Phase. While pumping, adjust the speed by turning the dial to your comfort level.
She frowns at the term stimulation phase. Okay, here goes. She braces herself, twists the little yellow dial the whole way, and gasps—it feels like someone’s twisting her breast in their fist. Once she’s turned the dial down the squeezing slows to something more tolerable, but she’s horrified to watch her nipple being stretched to an incredible length inside the plastic tube.
To find your Maximum Comfort Vacuum, increase speed until pumping feels slightly uncomfortable (not painful), then decrease slightly.
Nothing has come out. The bottles attached to the funnels are empty. She turns the dial a little to the right. Then a little more, wincing. The pump’s rhythmic growl, weh ohh weh ohh weh ohh, sounds like a panting animal. If there’s anything more unlike nursing Leah—unlike the tender, pulling suck of her daughter’s small mouth—it’s this.
Finally a drop of white falls into the bottle attached to her left breast, and then another. She feels the familiar pins and needles of her milk letting down, and drops of milk begin to fall into the other bottle too. Measurement lines mark the sides of each bottle, and she watches, fascinated, as the drops slowly add up to a quarter of an ounce, and then a half of an ounce of yellow-tinged milk. It’s spellbinding, really, to see it up close, this substance that’s nourished Leah for the last two months. There’s something exquisite about it, something golden, but also something off-putting, as if each drop of milk contains some echo of the pain it’s taking to wring it out of her.
All so she can go work, all so she can be in two places at once. Maybe that’s why, with each twist of the pump’s suction, she feels something, a cleaving, a separation. Making two of yourself is vicious work.
She wishes she had a pen. She wants to write something down, something for her book, about this idea of splitting herself in two. But she has no pen, no paper. Her computer is in the other room. She checks the bottles. The drops of milk have grown smaller and the bottles have collected nearly two ounces on each side. She turns the dial all the way off, carefully detaches the cones from her breasts, re-hooks her bra, and springs from the bed to her laptop. It’s on the windowsill at the top of the stairs, and she kneels down to open it. She starts typing as soon as the screen appears.
She hears the sound of Ashmina singing to Leah downstairs. She doesn’t have to crouch here in the hallway. She can go out, she can be alone with her thoughts.
Dear Amar,
I’ve started writing again. A new project. It’s too big to talk about yet. But I’m excited. I’ll tell you more when you get home.
Love,
Cass
Downstairs the kitchen counters shine. It smells clean. The two or three boxes that crowded the fireplace in the living room are gone; the Mehtas have unpacked the books inside, put them away in the bookshelves that line the hallway. There’s a bunch of sunflowers in a vase on the dining room table, and on the mantel, some framed photographs—of her parents, and Amar’s parents and brothers. Ashmina must have found them in a box. They’ve been such a big help. She doesn’t know how to thank them, or what she’ll do when they move away.
She hold
s up the pumped milk and Ashmina nods with approval. Noah is here too. He comes out of the kitchen. He’s sweeping up dog hair with a broom, and he smiles and waves. She takes Leah from Ashmina, presses her nose to her patchy head, and inhales her milky, soapy scent. “I’m going out for a little while, teacup,” Cass whispers in her ear. “But I’ll be back soon.” She takes a breath and hands the baby back.
“Everything’s under control,” Ashmina says firmly.
“There’s three of us and only one of her,” Mr. Mehta says.
“Right. Okay,” Cass says, “I’ll be back.”
Leah kicks her legs against Ashmina’s hip. She isn’t crying this time, but her dark eyes seem to search for Cass’s face. And then, like she’s done it a thousand times before, and it’s the most natural thing in the world, she looks at Cass and smiles. She smiles like she’s just seen the most beautiful, spectacular thing.
“Oh!” Cass hears herself say.
Mr. Mehta reaches out to squeeze Leah’s cheek. “Aren’t you a happy baby?”
Ashmina turns Leah around. “How about that. You love your mamma, don’t you?” She picks up Leah’s tiny fist and waves it in the air. “Now we’ll wave bye-bye. Bye-bye, mamma. Bye-bye.”
Cass thought she would be okay to leave. She wants to leave, to get back to the notes she just typed. She’s going to leave. She’s shouldering her laptop bag. She’s waving goodbye. She’s leaving. She’s doing it, but it feels awful. Will it feel this awful every time?
TWENTY-FIVE
ON TUESDAY MORNING Samara turns the key in the lock at the Kells house and hears the now familiar long scrape and faint click of the bolt sliding loose. “It’s rare to find a house this untouched in Clearing,” she says to her clients. “It’s almost entirely the same house it was when it was built in 1959. Kind of like stepping back in time.”
If, Then Page 17