by Rumaan Alam
Priscilla took Jacob from Rebecca’s arms. “I’ll get him down. Now, you get back to work.”
5
MONDAY WAS THE PUNCH LINE THAT NO LONGER PACKED A PUNCH. Mondays, what was so bad? It had been—what, years?—since Rebecca had gone off to work at that bookstore in Boston, that little island of lost souls where certain types with impressive degrees found themselves upon realizing they weren’t tough enough for anything other than books. Neither poetry nor parenthood cared what day it was. Mondays were redeemed, now, by Priscilla’s key in the lock, her footfalls in the foyer, her hearty Hello! Monday, blessed Monday! Rebecca was free. She had only to hand over Jacob. It was that simple, though sometimes she hesitated. Sometimes after half an hour in the office, she’d take out a photograph of the baby. It felt like madness but there it was. Then an hour later, Priscilla would bring the baby in and Rebecca would feel—better?
Once (only once) Rebecca had closed the door to her office and lain on the floor, rolled-up cardigan beneath her head, and fallen asleep for twenty minutes, waking with a panicked start, her first thought Where is the baby? Babies were like that, in the mind at least, wily, capable of slipping away the moment your back was turned, trickster spirits.
But it was Memorial Day weekend. Monday, Priscilla-less, was cause for dread. Jacob woke at eleven, at midnight, at one, at two. Neither hungry nor angry, Jacob was delirious with joy. That, too, is the remit of a child at six months: happiness. They’re darling and perfect, able to coo and burble and grab for their feet and twist and wiggle, crazy with the discovery of their physical form. Every baby in advertising is six months old because that’s when babies are at their most seductive, the marketing department’s ideal.
Rebecca, exhausted, was unmoved. Her third trip to Jacob’s room, she’d cradled the wiggling child and wished to throw him out of the window to the driveway below. Her breasts throbbed, her eyes could not focus, and she was tired in a way that transcended the physical. It was not sleepiness, which meant only lack of sleep; it was part of her essence, like using her left hand, like having ears. She held the baby and he stopped crying and fixed her with that stupid smile. A six-month-old was like a drunk who is convinced that his patter is charming.
At two thirty, it became clear that what Jacob needed was not sleep but an audience. Rebecca took the baby to the living room, switched on a lamp, and settled onto the sofa, the baby’s head on her knees. He babbled and it seemed like a taunt.
“You’re awake.” She looked at the baby and the baby looked at her. “You’re awake, you’re awake. It’s nighttime. It’s time to sleep.”
Jacob turned his head and looked at the dark room. Some cultures believed babies could see ghosts. But a dark room doesn’t seem menacing unless you’re alone, and she was not alone. These rooms were haunted by Jacob, smiling, genial Jacob, who had never been more awake. She tried stroking the side of his face, which sometimes reminded him that he was sleepy. She sang, trying to engage his attention and wear him out. It made him only happier.
Rebecca switched on the television and Jacob arched his back to see the curious blue light. Rebecca held up a book and Jacob had never been more interested. Maybe he was an insomniac? An insomniac baby, was there such a thing?
She needed to punish him. She put Jacob in the bouncy seat and he whimpered. Good, she thought. Maybe he’d cry until he was tired enough to sleep. Then he began to coo, and his happiness was maddening. It was not that she wanted to get into bed, enjoy the relief of the cool sheets, the weight of the heavy duvet, the accompaniment of Christopher’s snore. She didn’t want to sleep so much as she wanted to erase Jacob’s existence, exorcise herself of him. She went into the kitchen and turned on the lights, the halogens a concession, a protest, a tantrum. She peeled back the aluminum foil and ate cold lasagna out of the stoneware dish. She wasn’t even hungry. She put the fork down and hurried back to the living room. Jacob sat in his seat, kicking his legs.
She watched an episode of Three’s Company, and Jacob began to whine. She held him in her arms and he grinned. She watched another episode of Three’s Company and he fussed to be fed. Having drunk, he seemed still more drunk, burped terribly, spit up on her bare shoulder. Then he seemed renewed, delirious, kicking, turning his head this way and that like a baby possessed. She was afraid, then angry. She turned the television off and put the baby on her shoulder and made a circuit around the sofa, twice, futile as the guards at a tomb, just another ceremony. Jacob laughed, then stilled, then shit noisily, then sighed in what could have been relief or could have been delight in how deeply he’d debased her.
She spread a blanket and put the baby on the floor and he took it for a game of peekaboo. She wiped the stuff from his thighs, the raisins of his testicles, and he laughed, and urine dribbled from his penis and into the mess.
“Damn it.” The gummy shit was on her hands, and she wiped them on the blanket and got the clean diaper on. Jacob had never seemed happier than he did that Monday morning at three forty. Rebecca gathered up the shit-stained blanket and left him on the floor and washed her hands in the kitchen sink. It was morning, and she made a pot of coffee. The day had begun or the previous one had never ended. Christopher would be awake soon.
The baby couldn’t roll over but he could move. Jacob had scooted about on his back and looked pleased with himself. She picked him up, her movements abrupt. At least those earliest, newborn nights, Jacob had had the decency to cry, to need to be shushed and consoled. This was something else, the way that mania can seem at first to be simply good humor. She was furious.
They had a mechanical swing in the kitchen and she put the baby there and stirred milk into her coffee. “You’re supposed to be asleep, Jacob.”
The swing groaned. She knew that Priscilla would not come, that there would be no nap on the floor of the office. Rebecca kept a bag in the freezer—the bones of a chicken, the onion that had been going brown, the peelings of carrots, the cloves of garlic that were so tiny it wasn’t worth it to peel them—and dumped this into a pot, filled it with water, set it to boil, to make a quick stock. The room filled with steam, a meaty smell, the noise of industry. She found a bag of frozen berries she’d forgotten about and took those out, too; there were fresh apples, too; she’d bake a crumble, with cinnamon, brown sugar, salted oats on top. Rebecca turned on the oven and began to sing to herself. Jacob seemed content—of course he did, what did he need: the swing made him feel he was being held, and he could see her, and he was not being made to sleep, he had all he had ever wanted.
Rebecca slipped past exhaustion to euphoria. She finished her coffee, poured more, looked out at the day, growing inevitably brighter. The only sound was the liquid in the pot and the creak of the swing, but eventually that stopped, because the thing was programmed to run only so long. Rebecca looked over and Jacob was asleep, of course. It was six o’clock.
Christopher came into the room, and she held up a finger, silencing him.
“What are you cooking?” His whisper was confused.
“Turn off the oven in ten minutes. Wake me in an hour.”
“I have a meeting.”
“One hour.”
She went upstairs and got into the bed. Her shirt smelled like chicken soup. She did not sleep, simply turned over and over, twisting her body much like Jacob did, searching for the pose that would bring relief, to no end. She got up after forty-five minutes and found that Christopher had forgotten to turn off the oven and the fruit crumble was burned and ruined. She set it out to cool, fed the baby, changed him, then dumped the dessert into the garbage.
6
CHRISTOPHER WAS TAKING HER ON A DATE. THEY HAD NEGLECTED each other. Rebecca had read about this, in a magazine, and so the plan had been hers. The theater in Georgetown was overly air-conditioned, but it was a relief from the July heat. (The usual jokes: Washington, D.C., a swamp literally/figuratively.) There was something familiar about Hannah and Her Sisters that Rebecca was unable to diagnose; though the movie w
as entertaining, this was distracting, and it wasn’t until it was almost over that she realized that it was the sense of being a spectator. She was a watcher not a participant, at that moment of course but also in life. Those nights she and Christopher would end up at mansions in Potomac, Rebecca would slip away from the conversation and wander, here a grand piano littered with framed photographs, here a study with that candied bouquet of tobacco smoked in a pipe, here a sitting room hung with Audubon plates, here a solarium with bamboo furniture and a view of a pool lit from within, watery light dancing across the dogwoods. The movie’s beautiful women in expensive-looking clothes—they didn’t feel like Rebecca, but they felt like women she had watched. After, Christopher and Rebecca sat in the restaurant next door, sipped decaf, and ate tiramisu.
“Did you like the film?” Christopher fixed his conversation in the present. He went for observation: the wine they were consuming, the room in which they stood, the achievements of the company that surrounded them. Christopher was adept at the recitation of a person’s curriculum vitae; this attended every introduction. To hear yourself described by Christopher was a wonderful thing. Rebecca never felt more a poet than hearing Christopher declare her one.
“I did.” She took a bite of the dessert, more damp than sweet. “I like his serious movies more than the slapstick.”
“A nice score, I thought.” Christopher’s mouth was full. “Very charming.”
“We’re going to the Arena Stage next month. I got us tickets to this Christopher Durang. A bit of funny might be nice, don’t you think? The news has been so terrible. It’s put me in the most negative mood. Like this movie, did you notice the maid?”
He shook his head. “Was there a maid?”
“She was the only black person in the movie.” Rebecca didn’t know if it was easy to miss her or impossible not to notice her. The woman had darted through the scene, twice, spoken or nodded maybe once. She wore a uniform. Rebecca was at ease around wealth—presumably she was possessed of it, though its source was a mystery, like an underground river—but she’d never seen a servant in livery. “She had one line. Maybe two. At the very end.”
“Oh, in the dining room, yes.” He spooned the last of the dessert into his mouth, not asking her leave, though they were, ostensibly, sharing it.
“Setting the table. But she was there, before that, too.”
“That’s something.” Christopher did not sound as though he believed it was, in fact, something.
“Something . . .” She paused, searching. “Something bad, right? She’s right there, but she’s invisible.” Rebecca had the sudden sense she’d gone the wrong way, misspoken, miscalculated. She could see that Christopher did not understand what she meant to say and what felt upsetting now was not the substance of her words but her husband’s reaction, and the question of whether it was indifference or confusion.
“She’s a maid.” Christopher’s tone was not dismissive, nor was it impressed. “Isn’t that rather the point of a maid? Anyway. The Arena, I think Peter is on the board there. We should see about that.”
“Doesn’t it seem odd? A movie about New York City with only one black person in it?”
Christopher considered this. “There’s also only one Englishman in it.”
“That’s not the same thing.” She was annoyed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It makes you wonder. I actually can’t think of a movie I’ve seen about black people.”
“You watched that Cosby show. But I take your point. She’s quite beautiful, Barbara Hershey.” Christopher was teasing.
“I wonder what Priscilla would think.” Rebecca did not want to discuss this with Priscilla, but she wanted to discuss it with someone, and besides Christopher and Priscilla, the only person she talked to was Jacob. “A movie with only one black person, and she’s a servant. You don’t think Priscilla thinks of herself as our servant?”
“Servants don’t usually nap on the sofa, do they? Never mind using Christian names and rummaging about in the refrigerator. Anyway. How old-fashioned. We’re not old-fashioned people.”
When Christopher was born, Churchill was at Downing Street. Was he not a little old-fashioned? And was it not somehow old-fashioned to have someone like Priscilla in the house? She was deferent. “I would hate to think that that’s how she thought of herself.”
“Well, we do pay her.” Christopher was logical. “Anyway, I doubt she much thinks about it. She dotes on Jacob. We don’t expect her to drink from a different glass, or stand when we enter a room. She comes and goes. She’s a part of our household, she’s a part of our life. That’s the job, when you’re a nanny.”
“But you think about your job, don’t you, even when you’re away from the office?” This plagued her: Did Priscilla think about her and Jacob as much as she thought about Priscilla?
“I’m the special assistant to Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States. Priscilla is a nanny.”
Rebecca flinched. “I’m a poet. I think about that.”
“That’s a profession.” Christopher was more reasonable now. “Being a nanny isn’t a profession. It’s a job.”
“But it’s an important job.” Rebecca did not want this to drop. They were near deciding something significant.
“Priscilla is wonderful. We’re lucky to have her. But I don’t know that she feels as fulfilled by looking after Jacob as you will when the Paris Review comes calling.” Christopher paused. “But perhaps she does. What do I know?” He yawned. He was either tired of discussing this matter or just plain tired.
Rebecca’s coffee had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. Finishing her coffee had something to do with enjoying this date, even though her husband was yawning, even though the movie was now mostly forgotten, just a jazzy riff Christopher would tap his feet to as he drove them home. She wanted to get back and see Jacob but also she did not; she wanted to sit at the table with a warm cup of coffee and say more about the black maid and the nice clothes and how she felt about life, but it was getting late.
7
WHENEVER WORK WASN’T WORKING REBECCA FOUND SOMETHING reassuring in the kitchen (stir, pour, rub the pebble of nutmeg across the back of the plane). Poetry never approached the sublime. It was just more labor, the search for the word, the phrase, the sound, but it was also the search for a starting point, a subject. Worse moments, like today, her life felt too boring. Nothing ever happened to her, or there was no poetry in what did.
Cooking was a relief, like prayer. She liked using her things, the heavy copper pot, the food processor. Cooking was math and miracle: fifteen ounces plus a tablespoon plus three-quarters of a cup, the sum so much greater than its parts. The week before she’d come back from the market with several jars of brightly colored purees.
“Don’t waste your money.” Priscilla tsked. “I’ll show you.”
Priscilla had boiled a sweet potato and mashed it with butter. Jacob ate so much they were afraid he was going to vomit. Once, at lunch with her sisters, Rebecca heard herself say that she couldn’t imagine life without Priscilla, so it must have been true.
Rebecca heard the door swish open then thud shut, the squeak of the stroller’s hard tires. “Hello!” She tried to squelch the gooey note that crept into her voice—maybe everyone did this—when talking to the baby.
Priscilla came in, carrying Jacob. The baby kicked his legs happily when he saw his mother. How loyal.
“You’re cooking.” Priscilla did that, stated the obvious. “We had the nicest afternoon.” Priscilla handed the baby to his mother and poured a glass of water.
The boy smelled of the out-of-doors and was soft chubby damp reassuring as babies should be. He did not return Rebecca’s embrace but settled into it. His eyelashes brushed against her neck and she felt the milk’s urgency. She handed the boy back to Priscilla, dumped the bright green beans into a bowl of iced water.
The baby babbled, approximating conversation, loud, deliberate nonsense. Priscilla squeezed him. “Someone has a lot to say. Go
ing to be talking before you know it, Rebecca. Not going to let you get a word in edgewise.”
Rebecca couldn’t imagine real words from that gummy mouth. Just because you know something to be inevitable doesn’t mean you can summon it. She wouldn’t mind someone else to talk to. “His daddy’s boy.” Charitable, since she knew he mostly saw and therefore imitated her and Priscilla. She was, though, in awe of Christopher’s intellect, his ability to remember less obvious facts like which Soviet socialist republics bordered the Black Sea.
“What’s cooking?” Priscilla reached for the ceramic bowl of blueberries.
“I’m roasting a chicken. It’s too hot for it, but I’m in the mood.”
“You’re trying to make it feel like fall.” Priscilla nodded. “It’s too hot, so you’re trying to fast-forward. I do the same.” Priscilla reached for another berry, bit the small thing in half, and offered one of the halves to Jacob.
“A complicated dinner seemed more appealing than work. Though I don’t know why I would bother, since Christopher is out.” He often was, but she and Christopher had plenty of time to themselves. There were times she didn’t know how to fill it, their conversation a performance, and Rebecca could not remember her lines, her motivation, the situation, the title of the play, none of it.
“A good meal is like a clean house. A present you give yourself.” The boy in Priscilla’s arms shivered with delight, worked his jaws, smacking like a ruminant.
Rebecca turned away from woman and baby, suddenly uncomfortable with this intimacy, though perhaps it was the oven, set to 410. This was the key to crispy skin. She hesitated before the bird’s splayed body, white with butter. “It seems like more fun than writing, today, anyway.”
“Let me show you something.” Priscilla put Jacob, his lips purple like a whore’s, into his little seat. He’d soon outgrow it. Nine months. He’d been in the world for as long now as he’d been inside her body.