The baked Alaska was wheeled in ceremoniously from across the dining room. The waiter placed it atop a cake stand between the Marches, and with a flourish set the dessert on fire. Mrs. March watched it burn under a psychedelic blue flame, its creamy meringue spirals like white roses withering in a drought.
She drank deeply from her wineglass. She hated George for lying to her, hated herself for always being so quick to believe that he had good intentions. From now on, she vowed, she would give herself the benefit of the doubt. She drank again, tipping the glass as she looked up at the ornate crown molding on the ceiling. She deserved to take herself more seriously, to value herself. After all, when had she ever betrayed herself? As she refilled her glass, not waiting for her server, a warm gush of tenderness for herself erupted within her. Her poor beautiful self, always fighting to make everything work. From now on, she pledged with an air of triumph, her attitude was going to change.
All her resolutions faded in the cold, pragmatic light of morning. She was especially disheartened by the sight of another cockroach. In the middle of the night, unable to hold it in any longer after all the wine she’d downed at dinner, a reluctant Mrs. March slipped into the bathroom. As soon as she turned on the light, her eyes darted toward a black spot in the middle of the white floor. Antennae swaying, a fat little body crawled forward. She screamed, calling for George, who wasn’t in bed, and smashed her slipper down again and again upon the insect, leaving a black jelly-like stain on the marble. She used toilet tissue to scoop its remains into the toilet bowl and spent more time than probably necessary scrubbing the sole of her slipper and the tile. “Out, damned spot,” she said out loud. A fluttering laugh escaped her lips, surprising her.
The next morning she pounced into the bathroom, brandishing a slipper. She caught her wild-eyed, disheveled reflection in the mirror and felt sorry for herself. The idea of a uniformed exterminator walking through the lobby and eliciting questions from the doorman terrified her. She weighed her options at breakfast with George. Both sat in silence, George reading the newspaper, Mrs. March stirring her tea. She stared at the centerpiece as George’s teeth crunched into his toast, crumbs dropping on the paper like loud raindrops. Meanwhile, the grandfather clock ticked, ever faithful, in the foyer.
Amidst the ticking, George’s chewing, and the crumbs scattering, it dawned on Mrs. March, in a flurry of inspiration, that she would head to the museum today. She had studied art history (a degree her father had deemed “absolutely pointless”—probably picturing his daughter sketching her classmates’ braided hair all day and filing her nails as she awaited a potential husband), in a New England college so bucolic, so engulfed by red and mustard-colored foliage and detached from the outside world, that she had felt she was in a painting herself. She had luxuriated in the concept of art—the idea of it, yes—but was intimidated by how it seemed to encompass everything, from medieval iconography to Kandinsky’s paintings to avant-garde operas and books and baroque architecture. She even shared a cinema course her senior year with the bohemian students from the drama department, who smoked in class and walked out with an air of casual indifference when told to put their cigarettes out. She had been studious and quiet, an obedient student who received satisfactory but never stellar grades. She was most comfortable as an observer, an awed witness to the spirited debates about what constituted art, about its true value.
“Art is intention,” her favorite professor had said once. “Art has to move you. In any way—positive or negative. Appreciating art is really just about understanding what the piece set out to do. You don’t necessarily want to hang it in your living room.”
Over the years Mrs. March repeated these words as if they were her own at various charity dinners, publication parties, and awards ceremonies. She never stopped to interpret the professor’s message, and would never admit, even to herself, that she couldn’t. Still, she liked the idea of possessing this knowledge, this small intellectual advantage over others. And she quite enjoyed visiting museums. She tingled with the possibility as she prowled the cold, quiet halls that someone she knew might find her there, appreciating it all.
She was going to go today, she decided, and all her troubles would disappear. Smiling, she sipped her tea.
IT WAS COLD but the sun was shining brighter than it had in a long time, and in a bout of optimism she decided to walk, leaving behind her umbrella, which she often carried with her as a precaution. If it began to snow, she could flag a cab, although it always made her nervous to hail one for such a short trip.
The morning air was chilled, rouging cheeks and running noses. Mrs. March experienced New York as if for the first time. Making her way up the street, she smiled at a discarded sofa—cotton frothing from the upholstery—sitting on the curb next to an overflowing trash can. She sauntered past a row of fragrant Christmas trees stacked against some scaffolding, and waved at the sellers huddled against them as they warmed their hands with their breath. On the other side of the street, a hot dog vendor, his face threaded with engorged veins like a horse’s, manned a cart under a striped parasol, while others offered stacked pretzels kept warm under heat lamps. Mrs. March exchanged the last of her cash for a scoop of roasted chestnuts in a brown paper cone. She stuffed them into her purse, with no intention of eating them—she just liked the smell.
She passed an elderly woman in a plush fur coat pushing a toddler in a stroller. The woman had spiky white hair—short like a boy’s—which impressed Mrs. March. She would never be so brazen as to reveal her age like that. Short hair only ever looked good on women with thin frames, anyway, and at the rate she was going, Mrs. March very much doubted she would be a skinny grandmother.
Her heart swelled with undeserved pride as she approached the majestic building with its grand Beaux-Arts façade. Red banners hung between Greek columns in official pronouncement, which gave her a sense of importance but also a feeling of fraudulence, of attempting to belong where she didn’t.
At this time of day, the museum was almost empty, except for a few tourists and chaperoned groups of schoolchildren. A larger party walked past her toward the exit, and among their clothing Mrs. March caught the blurry glimpse of a familiar tennis racket print. Alarm spurted in the dark recesses of her mind as a memory resurfaced—like the whiff of a rotting fruit forgotten in the back of the fridge—but when she turned to look back at him it wasn’t him at all, it was a lady in a strawberry-patterned raincoat.
The click of her heels echoed as she made her way toward the galleries upstairs.
Here, they all needed her, these people in their portraits. Their eyes seemed to find hers no matter what corner of the gallery she was in, some craning their necks to watch her. Look at me, they all seemed to be saying. Mrs. March made her way through the endless labyrinth of corridors, each gallery crowded with eyes and hands and frowns. She passed by an oil painting of Jesus in which his spent body was being lowered from the cross onto a pile of luxurious fabrics in hues of red and blue. Such images were familiar to her, evocative of all those Sunday mornings spent in church. Her parents had always favored St. Patrick’s, right down the street from their apartment. The sermons had bored her. Once, she leaned over to her mother and asked in a whisper why women couldn’t be priests. “Women get pregnant,” her mother whispered back.
She looked now upon the Crucifixion scene, in which Christ was looking to the heavens, eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted. The suffering painted on his features was so dramatic, so enduring—so very female, now that she thought about it.
She continued to the end of the room and turned right, stepping into the gallery that she knew displayed, in its baroque gilded frame, Vermeer’s less popular counterpart to Girl with a Pearl Earring. Cocking her head to one side, Mrs. March took in the portrait. The girl, wrapped in a shimmering, silky shawl, was so ugly, her facial anatomy so odd—ample forehead, wide-spaced eyes, barely-there eyebrows—that if she weren’t smiling, she would be terrifying. There was something unsettl
ing about that grin, too. Like she knew some gruesome fate awaited you, and was enjoying the vision.
“Hello, Kiki,” Mrs. March said.
She had first encountered the girl on a visit with her parents when she was nearing puberty. Upon first glance, she had assumed the girl was slow, or, as shouted by cruel children in the schoolyard, retarded. The eyes did not align properly, and there was something dim-witted about her vacant expression. Mrs. March had hidden behind her father when she’d first seen the painting; when she peeked out from the folds of his jacket, she swore the girl was smirking at her.
Mrs. March saw the similarities between the two of them immediately: their pale complexions, plain looks, and yes, that stupid little half-smile. There were enough unflattering photographs of her at home to reinforce the connection.
That night, in the dark of her bedroom, she awoke to the sounds of thick, phlegmy breathing. It was the girl from the portrait; somehow they had brought her home with them. Panic seized her at first, but after a few evenings, the familiarity of the breathing almost comforted her, and she found herself talking to the girl.
Soon, Mrs. March was interacting with her on a daily basis: playing with her and taking baths with her and dreaming about her too. The girl’s face merged irrevocably with her own, and the girl was no longer the girl from the portrait, but her twin, whom she named Kiki. Her parents, to whom Mrs. March had introduced Kiki over an awkward dinner, brushed it off as a phase, until Kiki began showing up at every meal. A psychologist friend, consulted in passing so as not to arouse suspicion, theorized that Kiki was an elaborate tool for Mrs. March to convey her feelings. Kiki, like Mrs. March, didn’t like pumpkin pie, for example, so Mrs. March would request them not to serve it. Kiki didn’t like the cold, so the maid was asked to be quick in airing out the rooms.
Mrs. March took Kiki with her everywhere. Kiki whispered the answers in her ear during a math test. Kiki amused her while her mother looked at curtain samples at the department store. She would call her school friends on the telephone and tell them her cousin Kiki was visiting and would put her on the phone, speaking in a kind of infantile lisp. Once she wrote a praising letter to herself—with her left hand, so her handwriting couldn’t be traced—and displayed it proudly to her friends, alleging it was from Kiki. Not long after that, one of her classmates told her she wasn’t welcome in their friend group anymore because they didn’t like liars. “I wasn’t lying,” Mrs. March replied indignantly. She knew she had been lying, of course, but she couldn’t face the humiliation of confessing, and she wouldn’t be able to explain why she had done such an absurd thing anyway. Mrs. March’s shame upon revisiting these memories was palpable. To this day she had confided in no one about the lengths she had gone to with her fictitious friend.
She took one last, searching look at the girl, at her Kiki, who looked back at her, tight-lipped, her eyes tired, almost disappointed.
Mrs. March spent the following day busying herself about the apartment in preparation for her son’s return from his school trip. She stocked the fridge with chocolate milk, string cheese, and wieners, and the pantry with toffee and nougat cookies. She arranged his stuffed animals—from tallest to shortest—on the shelf. There were no signs of cockroaches, and the back of her ear was soft again, the scab having sloughed off. One could describe her current mood as, for lack of a more exciting word, content.
As she fluffed up the pillows on Jonathan’s bed, she began to sing, “I’m nesting, nesting, nesting,” quietly to herself. She hadn’t done that since she had been pregnant with Jonathan, and making the connection untethered a succession of unpleasant memories. Memories of the baby shower, for which she had decorated her living room with paper storks and blue streamers. She had invited Mary Anne, her college roommate, hoping she might feel envious of Mrs. March for landing George (George March is the most attractive man on campus), and Jill, a dull acquaintance who had followed Mrs. March around in high school until it was just assumed that they were friends. Two of George’s cousins were also present, as was a former student of his, who seemed almost bitter to be there. Nobody from Mrs. March’s own family could make it.
In a particularly nasty bout of nausea, Mrs. March had retired to the guest bathroom, and between fits of retching, she overheard one of the women say to the rest, “You all know that she’s not ready for a baby. She can barely take care of herself.” Another said, “And with someone who’s already had one with somebody else? I could never. He’s not going to care about this pregnancy, or about this baby—he’s already gone through it all before! I mean why bother.” As Mrs. Marsh flushed the toilet, she swore she could hear laughter.
Wiping her mouth, she returned to the living room wearing a big smile, her voice quavering with overstated euphoria as she announced, “I’m back!” She played a few demeaning games—including “Guess the Mother’s Measurements,” at the gleeful request of her guests, who gripped the yarn and scissors with such relish that their knuckles paled—then she excused herself, claiming further nausea, and sent everybody home. Alone, she stood in silence in the baby’s room, staring up at the hook nailed to the ceiling for the mobile, which she had never gotten around to hanging. Later she gathered up the leftover food and decorations, as well as the baby gifts, in a big black trash bag, and threw everything out.
Then came the birth, a ghastly affair. Despite her attempts to block it out, she could still recall the doctor prying apart her sweaty legs, which she fought, sloppily, to clamp shut in her epidural haze in an effort to hide her vagina from the glaring spotlight. When a nurse folded and cleared away an absorbent pad from underneath her—a telltale sign of defecation—she dissolved into tearless sobs. The medical team assumed it was a hormonal reaction, but the abject humiliation of being prodded and exposed for hours on end was agonizing. All they wanted was the baby, she realized. Nobody cared what happened to her.
In the drugged lethargy the doctors called “recovery,” she woke up alone in her hospital bed to find her father sitting at her bedside reading the newspaper, which was rather unexpected seeing as how he had been dead for two years at that point. “Papa,” she had called to him, over and over again. Not once did he look up.
After the birth, her hair fell out in clumps. Her body secreted a thick discharge tinged with blood. Sanitary napkins were no match for the meaty threads, and the adult diapers from the box she hid behind the guest towels crinkled noisily whenever she moved. Her stitches were slow to heal, causing her discomfort long after the stipulated four weeks of recovery. But that wasn’t the worst part. The very act of being pregnant had been special. People—friends, family, strangers on the street in stores and in restaurants—had smiled at her, had loved her, had seen her. Once the baby arrived and her bump receded, saleswomen no longer approached her excitedly with questions about her due date, nobody volunteered to help her carry groceries home, nobody offered her their cab.
At first people would drop by for visits with the baby, or neighbors would ask after him in the elevator, but by the time her son was walking, their interest faded, and a silent mist of indifference settled over her once again. She blamed her child for this, for their sudden lack of attentiveness, for the wretched changes in her body, for the rapid, mutual loss of interest between her and George. She was angry at her offspring, but her guilt made her simultaneously afraid for him, for his veined, milky fragility. Out of compulsion she would check to ensure that he was breathing, up to thirty or forty times a day, once rushing back to the apartment in the middle of a performance of Swan Lake, humming the score as she ran through a dark Central Park, alarming the vagrants—and the nanny when she burst into the nursery, chest heaving.
She would hover over the crib, sometimes well into the night—in her unwashed nightgown, her hair hanging in long greasy threads—unmoving, observing the rise and fall of Jonathan’s belly, each time convincing herself she’d imagined it, and waiting to see if it would move again. It was after a few unsettling late-night encounters
with this unresponsive, ghost-like Mrs. March that George stepped in and hired the baby nurse full time. Mrs. March still felt compelled to check on the baby, but the urge was less strong now that he was under the care of a woman much more qualified than her.
It struck her, now, as she refolded a blanket on Jonathan’s bed, how long it had been since she had checked in on him like that. He had never been a needy boy; he slept well through the night, had few nightmares, harbored no fear of monsters under the bed or in the closet—and she supposed she had adjusted to his self-reliance. A sharp sliver of self-reproach accompanied this observation: What if she hadn’t cared enough for him? Shouldn’t she be picking him up from his school trip herself, rather than having him ride with Mr. and Mrs. Miller, the parents of a classmate who lived just a few floors up from the Marches? But how could she manage that? Mrs. March didn’t know how to drive, and George was at a book signing in midtown.
The Millers were fine people, she supposed, although she didn’t like the way Sheila Miller sometimes regarded her with a sort of pitying smile, or how Sheila had cut her hair so short, exposing the naked nape of her neck, or how the Millers were always expressing physical affection with each other, holding hands or massaging the other’s shoulders, as if they just couldn’t restrain themselves. Perhaps they were pretending at passion, Mrs. March had fantasized. Or, she theorized, an electric thrill running up her spine, he is hiding his homosexuality and she cries every night, wishing he would touch her in the privacy of their bedroom like he does in public.
As it turned out, Sheila Miller arrived without her husband when she knocked on apartment 606. In tailored jeans tucked into shiny, colorful snow boots—both items age inappropriate in Mrs. March’s eyes—Sheila seemed to be trying too hard to be a cool, modern mom. What rankled Mrs. March most was the ire-inspiring truth that Sheila managed to pull it off with ease. Indeed Sheila was the kind of mother her son would brag about because she could unpeel an orange in a single coil. The kind of mother who was also a friend. Mrs. March’s own mother had often reminded her as a child, “I’m not your friend, nor do I care to be. I am your mother.” Mrs. March knew never to come to her mother with any issue that could be more appropriately relayed to a friend instead.
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