by Lisa Zeidner
In the seconds in which the soaked child squirmed from my arms to hers the background behind us blurred into a sea of primary colors with red predominating, like the cheering audience in the stands for a bullfight, but as she took him from me the focus deepened so that I saw that the lovers behind the geraniums now sat up, alert, watching us. Enjoying the theater, the happy ending. Smiling, their hands lightly joined. I felt the arc of my now-wet arms and knew that I was the link that joined the lovers to the mother, sex to parenthood; with a lungful of pride and confidence I saw that I understood something primal I would never have dug down to the loam of, had I not been forced. But here it was, and it was not fragile, not mummified, did not have to be preserved carefully wrapped under special lights. It could be held aloft like the laughing baby, it could take the sun and the breeze, it was strong.
“My God,” the woman said. “How could he be so fast?”
“They’re fast,” I said.
“Oh thank you,” she said and, with the baby between us—reaching now for the fountain, whining his unquenchable need to repeat the scene—she hugged me. “Thanks!”
We made a baby sandwich, then grinned as we pulled quickly apart, and she, realizing she’d gotten my shirt wet, grimaced in apology.
“You’re going to have to put him back in,” I said, “or he won’t give you any peace.”
She sighed, agreeing. “God only knows what’s in that water.”
“Well, he’s not going to drink gallons of it.”
“I was just at the museum this morning, looking at the mummies,” she said. The coincidence of both of us having mummies on the brain was not lost to me. “Do you know what most of them died of, in ancient Egypt?” I shook my head, smiling. “Stomach bugs,” she told me. “Twenty-four-hour GI jobs.”
“Antibiotics,” I said. “You don’t think about ’em.”
“Right. Forget the wheel. Forget electricity. Penicillin is the cornerstone of our civilization. Thanks so much. I—”
“I know,” I said.
The baby screamed, reached, yanked her. She rolled her eyes.
“I know it’s hard,” I said, “but try to enjoy it.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’ll all be over soon enough, everybody keeps telling me. But when you’re stuck in the middle of it, it feels—”
“Yes, but when you feel trapped like that you can always take a deep breath, close your eyes, put your face to the sun. Sort of step out of it, get your bearings.”
She gave me a full-throated laugh. “And who are you exactly, the Dalai Lama?”
“Just someone who has been there, done that.”
Throughout this exchange she had been steadying the stroller with her knee, trying to hold the child’s legs straight and still enough to remove his shoes, her eyes and head darting to avoid his swipes and punches, to hear me over his remonstrances. I remembered, as I thought I wouldn’t, how it felt to be that manacled. But I also remembered—as I watched her turn one miniature basketball shoe upside down and attempt to drain the water out of it, with an expression of defeat, then automatically, unconsciously, lovingly squeezing the pale foot—how sexy babies are.
“When are you due?” I asked.
Her surprise was so strong, she almost spurted it. “I would hate to think I’m showing. I am, like, two weeks into this thing, tops.”
I had no idea, actually, why I’d asked. Pregnancy must indeed bestow that nimbus attributed to it, a kind of fairy dust that glimmers around the outlines of the breasts and hips for anyone attuned to such things, as I was. I had watched so carefully for the signs in myself, for so many years. Now what I felt growing in me was possibility itself. Hope.
The woman was now staring at me, curious. “How about you?” she asked. “How old are yours?”
I caught myself about to tell the comfortable lie of the kid in college, that Brown University freshman on the tennis or swim team so familiar he could have been real. The lie, I realized, was over. I could never use it again. But “dead” did not seem appropriate either; for a pregnant stranger, it was almost hostile. Yet I had to say something. Once again, the inescapability of the Empty Bedroom.
But the right thing suddenly came to me. I held up my thumb and forefinger like a Hindu deity to squeeze the pollen-sized speck that was my future, and she turned to me with the silent congratulations of her generous smile.
That was a lie, too. But a better one.
“I am definitely too old for this,” she said, as she airlifted the child by his armpits back into the fountain. “Not just over the hill. I can’t even see the hill from here. I am so tired,” she said. “Hey, are you hungry? I could go for a hot dog. Just the prescribed healthy food for a pregnant person.”
Because her son was in no way ready to leave the fountain, I volunteered to fetch the hot dog for her, from a vending cart across the street. She was extremely grateful. We talked for a half hour or so about the things women talk about. Exchanged war stories about labor and delivery; discussed the havoc that children wreak on marriage and career (she was yet another lawyer, which even I, with my mind obsessed with synchronicity, did not make anything of). The conversation might have irritated me back home. I had little patience for domestic blow-by-blows, had never managed to get much from playground friendships. But because we would not see each other again and knew it, the simple dailiness of our exchange touched me.
When she left, I realized the lovers had left as well, while I wasn’t paying attention. I found myself staring at the grass where they’d been, expecting some kind of a memorial, like a slant of afternoon light. Did not see it. Still, I felt as if I had closed something.
Ken was going to be with me so soon I could hardly stand it. For a second I felt all of my newfound calm deserting me. Where should I be when he arrived? I’d checked out of the hotel room after all, repaying my shrink in the process. Sitting in the lobby seemed desperate. What I wanted to do was wait here, by the fountain. I wanted to be at ease, and at some point look in the direction of the hotel and see him coming toward me. A trick of timing. It was stupidly romantic, meaningless as mutual orgasm or Rockettes kicking or the synchronized swimming in Busby Berkeley films, but that was what I wanted. I’d told them at the desk that if my husband came to say I was in the park, but what if the desk staff had changed over? I did not want Ken to have to sit in the lobby, waiting for me. I did not want him to merely be told that I’d checked out. That would not please him at all. That would not be fair. I should have left a note, I thought, then attempted to calm myself down by remembering the woman in pink linen, the hand hovering on her back. There was no suspense anymore, after all. He was coming. He would be here soon.
Still my brain was chattering Go back, stay here.
Could not make up my mind. Go back, stay here.
For a while I sat with my eyes trained toward the hotel, but then I forced myself to look away. Patience, I thought.
When I next allowed myself to look, there he was, just as I had hoped. He had spotted me. Nothing but relieved welcome in his smile. And the very blue shirt I had predicted, sleeves rolled up, arms swinging as he came toward me with his long, loose stride but also the tension of his waiting, his holding back. Not until he was closer did he say, slightly breathless from the trip and the heat, from the sheer satisfaction of finding me exactly where I was supposed to be, Claire.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following people for their valiant help as diagnosticians of the imaginary: Ellen Feld, MD; Signe Lundberg, PhD; Allen Oseroff, MD; and Victor Zachian, MD. Thanks as well to members of the security staffs at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia and the Westin William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, who have asked to remain anonymous. Lastly, my gratitude to Jeanne Tift and Daniel Menaker at Random House.
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About the Author
LISA ZEIDNER has published five novels, including the critically acclaimed Layover, and two books of poems. Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, GQ, Tin House, and elsewhere. She directs the M.F.A. program in creative writing at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey.
Copyright
ONE
an imprint of Pushkin Press
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Copyright © 1999 Lisa Zeidner
Layover was first published in the United States by Random House in 1999 First published by Pushkin Press in 2018
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ISBN 13: 978–1–91159–002–6
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