Between

by Angie Abdou

  in the mail. There was no baby and then, suddenly, there was a baby. I

  felt like the arrival of that little baby had nothing to do with me. Even

  after…everything else.” She has adopted LiLi’s ellipses. All that is

  important lives there. “With Jamal, I had him the old-fashioned way.

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  I wanted to run through the hospital corridors screaming, ‘Did you

  see what I just did?’ I have never felt stronger. I told Shane, ‘Let’s have

  ten!’” Vero laughs with LiLi, who gets the joke: Vero cannot handle

  even two. “Shane was so worried that I really meant it, but the doctor

  told him to take me home, lock me up for a few days, and let it pass.

  ‘They get it a bit crazy,’ he said. ‘She’ll snap out of it.’”

  Jamal burrows his face into his pillow while Vero tells the story of

  his birth, as if its retelling bores him.

  LiLi watches these thoughts pass across Vero’s face, waits. “It hurt

  very much, Vero?”

  “Yes, it hurt. With Jamal. Of course, it hurts. Everyone tells you

  that. What they don’t tell you is the feeling of accomplishment. I felt

  like Superman. Wonder Woman.”

  She stops to explain the North American cultural reference, but

  LiLi waves her off. “Oh yes. I know.”

  Vero forgets how small the world has gotten in some ways. “You

  like to have kids one day, LiLi?” Vero finds herself doing this some-

  times when she speaks to LiLi, mirroring her syntax, sometimes even

  her accent—as if that will solve their communication problems. The

  more she talks to LiLi, the less she sounds like herself. It is stupid,

  she knows.

  The stomach-flu look Vero remembers from the kitchen rolls down

  LiLi’s face, and Vero doesn’t know why, but she feels the cold lump

  of apology rising in her throat, almost opens her mouth to let it out.

  Then LiLi smiles, and her features lift back into place.

  “I have a boyfriend in my village when I go to Hong Kong. Yes,”

  she says as if telling the story to herself, checking off the key plot

  points. “I tell you about him—he is poor. When I go away, he gets

  close to my best friend. They get caught in the bed. Together. In my

  country, when young people get caught like that, they married.”

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  Vero senses LiLi needs room to tell this story. There is something

  too private about her face. Vero cannot watch. She turns toward

  Jamal, whose lids look heavy.

  “They have baby now. My friend and my boyfriend. Her husband.

  I—” LiLi’s face breaks into laughter as if in anticipation at a coming

  punch line. “I the godmother. They ask. I say nothing. Nothing to

  either of them. But my nanay, my mother, say you must. She go to

  baptism. Substitute for me.” LiLi shrugs. “Now I godmother. Life

  goes on at home. With no me.” She performs a dramatic sweep with

  her hand. The flourish reminds Vero of a magician making a rabbit

  appear from a hat, but LiLi has made something disappear.

  “I’m sorry, LiLi.” The rightness of the words surprises Vero. She

  feels that rare click—the appropriate words spoken at the right

  time—and she says them again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes.” LiLi pulls a baby blanket from the floor and folds it, pressing

  hard into each crease. “But now I in new country. You my family. You,

  Jamal, Eliot, Shane.” LiLi places the folded blanket into Vero’s lap.

  “Goodnight, Vero.” Jamal has finally fallen asleep, and LiLi closes the

  door softly behind her.

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  CHAPTER TEN

  “Maybe it’s time we start our own family traditions.” Vero

  hates her hypotheticals. Why not just say, It is time. Not maybe. She

  stands in the en suite bathroom wearing plaid pyjama pants and one

  of Shane’s old football T-shirts. “We’ve never been on a vacation

  with just our family. Just me, you, and the kids. It’s always your fam-

  ily’s Mexico place. How about we have a holiday? Us?” She wishes

  she had saved this discussion for bed, where she could stroke her

  thumb over Shane’s hip on each of the dual pronouns— our, we, us—

  her chin jutting out above the covers, the rest of her body pulled

  tight into his side, her head cradled in the warm nook of his arm.

  Instead, Shane lies on the carpeted bedroom floor, sweating. He’s

  recently bought the 100-push-ups app for his iPhone. It counts

  down his rest, and then he’s back on his hands and toes, belly down,

  grunting. Toothpaste foams at the corners of Vero’s mouth. “We

  could even go without the kids. Leave them with LiLi. Your family

  could help out. For one week. Have a second honeymoon.” She

  wipes her sleeve across her lips, striving to look honeymoon ready.

  He continues to grunt through his push-ups, so she puts the brush

  back in her mouth. “Think piña coladas, think suntan oil, think

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  quiet.” Her tongue wrestles with her toothbrush to get these words

  out.

  “Geez, Vee, take it easy on the toothbrush.” Shane comes to a pant-

  ing stop, rolls flat on his back. “You don’t have to wage war on it every

  time you brush.”

  She looks at the bristles, worn flat, shrugs, and presses the tired

  toothbrush hard into her back molars. Cars splash by in the early

  spring melt of the dark street below their window. “Or maybe, you’d

  prefer LiLi came with us? I bet she’s hot in a bikini.” Vero doesn’t

  know why she says this. She’s never before mentioned LiLi’s body.

  She has, though, thought of it. LiLi is twenty-seven and Shane is

  forty-two, the same age as Vero herself. How could Vero never think

  of that? One house is not big enough for two adult women. She won’t say

  it aloud.

  Shane runs his fingers up and down the newly solid lines of his

  abs, while his iPhone beeps out his rest time. His torso glows white.

  “You’re cute when you’re jealous,” he says, but he’s not looking at her.

  If they were in bed, she would forget about LiLi. She would circle

  her index finger around his bellybutton, kiss the fleshy lobe of his ear.

  She would show him what this holiday could be. Instead, she spits

  toothpaste into the sink, noticing the beginnings of a ring of mould

  around the drain. She will have to give LiLi some time to do the

  bathrooms tomorrow. “Please.” she puts all the force she can into this

  plea. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  In bed, Shane smells like pine pit stick. Cheryl had kicked men out

  of her bed for less. Vero doesn’t mind, though. She rolls into Shane’s

  warm side and takes her turn running her fingers up and down his

  torso. He slides his hand into the waistband of her pyjama pants.

  “Missy Frisky. First you talk about a second honeymoon. Now you

  want to make more babies.”

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09 2:37 PM

  She laughs. It comes without effort. They have more of this soft-

  ness, this ease, since LiLi joined them. “My will to procreate has died,

  but my will to fornicate—never.” She swings her thigh across him,

  pinning him to the mattress.

  Shane used to say there should be a horny bonus in any hotness

  rating. “Take a girl who’s a seven. She’s horny? An instant nine. For

  sure.” He’d set his hands low on Vero’s hips. “You’re an easy twelve.”

  “Twelve out of ten,” he says now, close to Vero’s ear, rolling on top

  of her.

  “What if this desire never leaves me alone? What if I’m destined

  to be one of those horny old women in the long-term care facility,

  strapped to my bed so I don’t chase down the bewildered old men,

  trap them in a corner, and dry hump their legs?”

  “You can dry hump my leg.” Shane pushes his hands into the mat-

  tress on either side of her head, sitting up across her torso, his knees

  pressing down into her shoulders. “In fact, you can strap me to the

  bed and dry hump my leg.” He grins. “But I get to go first.” He pulls

  her shirt up over her head, and lowers himself into her, skin on skin.

  She lets go, her body melding into his.

  A groan escapes her. She hears it as if it has come from somewhere

  else, as if someone in the street has stepped on a kitten. “Wait.” She

  struggles to rise.

  “Wait?” He pushes his heft off her. Her body expands in response.

  “What wait?”

  “Baby monitor.”

  “Baby monitor?” He says the words like they are in a different

  language.

  “Is it on? Downstairs? In LiLi’s sitting room.” Vero smacks herself

  in the forehead. “It is. I know it.”

  “I guess we’d better perform well then…If we have an audience.”

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  Shane’s mouth is so close to her ear canal that she feels his words.

  She pushes against his chest. “Shh. I’m serious, Shane. She’ll hear

  us.” Vero’s body is rigid again, her boundaries clear.

  “We can be quiet,” he whispers, lowering himself back into her

  against the pressure of her hand. “So, so, so quiet,” the words move

  down her ear, toward her neck. “So…so…so…qui…et.”

  “Shane, stop.” Vero is up, pulling on her sweatpants, her hoodie, her

  heavy wool socks in short angry motions, though she doesn’t know

  where this anger has come from. “No.”

  “Okay. I got it. I’ll run downstairs. I’ll get the baby monitor.” He’s out

  of bed and into action. “I will destroy the baby monitor. I will smash

  the baby monitor into a thousand pieces. There will be—” he strikes a

  heroic naked pose, standing on one foot, the other stretched behind

  him. She turns her eyes away from the clear evidence that retrieving

  the baby monitor is the last thing he wants to be doing. “—no more

  baby monitor!” He jerks on his T-shirt. “Just hold that thought.”

  But Vero has already lost the thought. “Put some pants on there,

  Super Shane. Your magic wand’s showing.”

  He tugs his shirt below his hips, holding it stretched down his sides

  as he races out of the room to the stairs.

  “God, Shane, put on some pants,” she shouts after him, but he’s

  gone.

  Vero slithers her head under her pillow. It’s just too easy to forget

  that LiLi is in the house, until she remembers, and then it’s impossible

  to forget. This afternoon, Vero set a globe on the counter and spun it

  once. “Okay, Eliot, show me where your nanny comes from.”

  He twirled the world again with his two middle fingers, Australia

  and North America flying past in quick succession, then he palmed

  the ball in his left hand, a miniature God. His pointer landed firmly

  on the Philippine Islands.

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  “LiLi.” He stared as if he could see her there, if only he tried hard

  enough.

  “LiLi,” Jamal repeated and reached for the globe. Vero expected him

  to knock it off the table with his clumsy toddler limbs. She already

  heard the crashing, saw the broken pieces of land and ocean scattering

  across the floor. Instead, he leaned in, slowly traced a circle around the

  island and petted it. “LiLi,” he smiled. Even for Eliot and Jamal, the

  biggest part of LiLi remained in the Philippines.

  By the time Shane returns, baby monitor in hand, Vero is curled on

  her side in the hazy limbo between sleep and wake. “Mmm, Shane,

  sleeping,” she murmurs from that other world.

  He slides his hand under her heavy sweat shirt, his fingers trac-

  ing swirling circles just above her hip bone, the spot he knows she’s

  most ticklish. “What about we start that second honeymoon now?” He

  touches his nose to hers, and she imagines Eliot giggling, Eskimo kisses!

  “I can’t, Shane. It’s hard to concentrate. With someone else in the

  house. I can’t focus.”

  “You just lie there then. I’ll focus for both of us.” He pushes her shirt

  up with both hands and his mouth is on her ribs tracing a swirling

  path down. With her body rigid, her desire gone, this suddenly seems

  like a ridiculous thing to do.

  “Shane. Don’t. I’m serious.” She palms his forehead, pushes.

  He falls heavily onto his back, staring at the ceiling like he did

  between his set of push-ups, only now there’s no panting. Guilty, she

  sets her hand on his arm.

  “I love you,” Shane says into this new kind of silence. His sentence

  lifts up at the end. A question reaching toward her.

  “Sorry, Shane. I know. Doesn’t it just seem weird sometimes?

  Someone else living in our house? Taking care of our children? Here.

  All the time.”

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  “Vero, don’t.” A distance opens between them without him moving.

  Neither of them speaks again until morning.

  ◊◊◊

  Both Vero and Shane turn forty-three in April. Vero opens a card

  from Cheryl showing a haggard woman with a two swimming-pool

  sized glasses of wine. Inside it reads: “As we get older, we should limit

  ourselves to just a couple of glasses of wine on our birthdays.” Cheryl

  has scrawled: “I hope you feel real good on your birthday. Take some

  time for yourself. Love, C.” A crisp fifty-dollar bill falls to the floor

  when Vero opens the card.

  “Well,” Vero says, closing the card. “It should be: I hope you feel

  well. Not good.”

  “Cheryl means no harm, Vee,” Joss says in her Joss way when Vero

  complains over the phone. “Imagine her as a child. Picture her that

  way. Be as gentle and generous with her as you would be with Eliot.”

  But there’s no energy in Joss’s words this time. She has her own

  worries. The cost of living in Sprucedale has climbed dramatically in

  the last few years since it has become a popular destination for tour-

  ists. Sprucedale: Where the Living Is Good. Now that the whol
e world

  knows how good that living is, it comes with a price tag as steep as the

  skiing terrain. Joss and Ian have finally had to admit they can’t afford

  their lifestyle—can’t even afford their boys’ hockey fees—and Joss has

  taken a job at the mine. “My parents disapprove. In their own quiet

  way. An environmentalist at the mine? Oh, Joss, is this what you want?

  I tell them unless we’re all done using coal, we’re hypocrites to blame

  the mines.”

  These days, Joss has enough trouble finding compassion for her

  own parents—or for herself. Her efforts on behalf of Vero are weak.

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  And with an early-morning start at her job, their sunrise runs have

  come to an end. Vero misses them.

  To celebrate Shane’s forty-third birthday, Vince brings his new

  girlfriend Adele over for a dinner party. Vince met Adele at a local

  comedy club where he performs every Wednesday. Adele tends bar

  there on the three nights a week that her ex takes the kids. Over

  dinner, Adele runs her finger up and down the knife tattooed on

  Vince’s forum, and they lock eyes in a way that makes Vero think of

  the fantasy pail that Shane and she started when they first moved in

  together, a glass Mason jar filled with little squares of paper, secret

  wishes scribbled on each. On a slow night, they would pull out the

  fantasy pail. Voilà! Anything could happen. Now the jar sits buried

  deep in the sock drawer, the little squares curling and brown around

  the edges.

  S is for the sex toys

  Disintegrating to dust.

  The filthy house and nonstop whines

  Have cured your mom of lust.

  When Adele moves into Vince’s lap at the conclusion of the main

  course, Vero excuses herself and goes to help LiLi with the dishes. We

  have enough chairs for everyone, Vero wants to say. We’re real adults. This

  is not a Cialis commercial.

  Vero tries to imagine Adele tearing her hair and storming into the

  woods, barefoot and shrieking, back in her first marriage when her

  kids were young and her relationship was old. Vero feels sure that

  Vince and Adele don’t have fights like that now.

  In the kitchen, Vero picks up a tea towel and stands next to LiLi.

  She thinks of herself as taller than LiLi, but shoulder-to-shoulder,

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