Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

  “How are you feeling?” Stacy asked Kat.

  Kat smiled. “Okay. Ready to give birth.”

  “When are you due?”

  “In a couple of weeks. Although I don’t think I can last that long. It’s going to be castor oil for me in a few days.”

  I smiled at Kat. For all her desperation to be done with the pregnancy, she looked better than she had in weeks. She had started seeing a new therapist, and was working on coming to peace with the various elements in her life that had conspired to reinvigorate her bulimia. She had decided not to go back to work for Nahid after her maternity leave, but to spend at least a few years home with her kids. Reza, to my surprise, had not only supported her decision, but had defended it to his mother. Kat had finally come clean with him about her problem, and they were working on it together. I wasn’t naïve enough to think all was solved for Kat, and that now she would be fine forever. Alicia Felix’s case had taught me just how tenacious and persistent a foe an eating disorder is. But Kat had a good chance of being all right, especially if we all made sure to be there for her. And I wasn’t going anywhere.

  The baby woke in my arms and began to cry. I sat down on a wooden crate that contained the pieces of the Appalachian rocking chair Lilly had sent to me as a baby present. Peter had sworn he would assemble the thing before the baby was weaned, but in the meantime the box made for an adequate nursing chair. I lifted my shirt, and Sadie flung herself at my breast, grunting and snuffling like a miniature water buffalo. I sighed as I felt the tingling of my milk letting down and stroked her velvet cheek with my finger. I knew that one day this little girl, like her sister, would start to think about how she looked and what she ate. Right now, though, I was filling up her body, plumping up her flesh, building her bones and brain. Life is a meager business, sometimes. There are lean times, shortages, tough winters, barren patches. It was my job, my duty and pleasure, to see that she started out suitably, and blessed to be, fat.

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