by Tara Ison
“Look, I know I’m missing out. It’s the most primally important life experience there is, right? I get that. But I’ve got so much other stuff going on in my life, I just—”
“Believe me, Sarah, I’m not proselytizing. But this part, I mean. This is my favorite. This is the best.” Emily kisses the top of Elijah’s head.
“Breastfeeding?”
“It isn’t like a guy doing it. It’s totally different.”
“It must be an amazing feeling.”
“You want to?”
Sarah’s hand stops in mid-circuit. “Breastfeed Elijah?”
“Sure. See what it feels like.”
“I don’t exactly have any milk.”
“Neither do I. He’s sucking down colostrum, now. Anyway, I told you, it’s more of a comfort thing for him. The closeness.”
“I don’t know . . .” The idea of baring her own small breast, of tucking her tiny pink point of a nipple into his baby mouth, feels all wrong. Fraudulent. Like a little girl playacting, outside-the-lines lipstick stolen from a big sister’s drawer, high-heeled shoes sneaked from a mommy’s closet, spooning pretend food into a baby doll’s hard plastic mouth. She feels faintly queasy, must be that smell, compost and baby vomit, this rancid oil.
There’s a sudden, lumpy throb beneath her hand, knobbing Emily’s belly. “Hey,” Sarah says, laughing, “take it easy, kid. We know you’re in there.”
“Any time, Ariel,” Emily says tiredly. “We’re ready and waiting. We’re excited to meet you. Any time you’re ready.” She pulls her nipple from Elijah’s baby-drunk face, and dabs at his chin with the diaper. “It does make me a little sad, I guess,” she says to Sarah. “That you’ll miss out on this.”
Actually, it’s a cliché, isn’t it? Sarah thinks, studying her. “Nursing Mother,” too banal, like a subway ad for La Leche League. A cheesy Hallmark Mother’s Day card. All those relentless Mary-and-baby-Jesus icons. No, she can’t paint Emily now. She is supposed to find her beautiful this way, she knows, still beautiful, even more beautiful, a woman’s body ripe with fruit, performing this miraculous function, pregnancy, birth, but what has happened to this body is just awful. So sad. She can’t draw her in tribute now, it would be something else. It wouldn’t be kind. Like an anatomical study, faintly Darwinian. She’s aesthetically distasteful, now. Scarred. That ugly brown line bisecting her abdomen, down to the pubic bone, a leftover from her two previous pregnancies; it looks like a trail of ants, Sarah thinks, crushed by a careless foot.
“Sarah?” Emily strains to raise up Elijah’s slack, sleepy body, to hand him over, offering him. “You want to? Yes?”
“No. Thanks, but . . .” The most important thing in the world, she can hear herself recite generously to Emily, but it isn’t. It’s the most common thing in the world, farcically pedestrian. It’s no great achievement, anybody can have a baby, be a mother, idiots, drunks, teenagers, dogs, there’s no singular or sacred experience here.
“You sure?” Emily’s kind smile is maddening, a complacent smirk.
She’s trying so hard to offer me something, Sarah thinks, but I’m the one who has it all. I’m just here visiting this life, but she’s stuck in it, she’s trapped. I get to leave when I want. I’m the one with all the freedom, all the choices, the blessings, like she says, the incredible paintings to do, the real achievement, future, an exciting, unencumbered life all my own ahead of me.
“I don’t think so,” Sarah says. “But thanks.”
“You really can, if you want to.”
That drifting, putrid odor again, cloying. “You smell that?” she asks Emily. “That’s awful. I think the compost is too close to the house. It’s encroaching. It’s taking over the garden.” Sarah laughs shortly, gets up, and pulls the curtains fully closed against the smell. “I’m going to go bring in the chard. Should we have it for dinner? Do that thing with the garlic?”
There’s always such a difference, she thinks, leaving without waiting for Emily to answer, between not having a choice—and having a choice but choosing no.
WHEN THE CONTRACTIONS first start, just after eight that night, Sarah goes to the darkening garden and selects a grotesquely oversized and rubbery zucchini, which takes her forty minutes to grate. In between spooning batches of green-flecked batter into loaf pans, she refills glasses of juice for Emily, presses down hard with an orange on her sacrum, and, with Michael, helps her pace the living room near the birthing tub. She pours herself a large glass of McCallan 18 over ice and sips it while she makes nine loaves of zucchini bread, factoring in one for the midwife to snack on during labor, and two to take home with her afterward in thanks, like a party favor. Aggie brings Rachel and Elijah into the kitchen, and slices them thick sweet hunks from the family loaves, spread with butter. Sometime after midnight Nana, balancing on her walker like a pro, and Emily’s parents Leah and Sid, her aunt Rose and cousin Susan, all arrive together in a car from New York, with bags of deli food from Zabar’s. There are loud happy greetings when they see Sarah, a flurry of embracing and kissing and chatter—Did you have a good summer, sweetheart? Nana asks her, Have you enjoyed the house? I’ll be back next week, when are you going home? and Sarah nods, smiles, excuses herself to clean up the kitchen—punctuated by Emily’s groans and Michael’s frustrated efforts to hook up the water hose to the birthing tub properly, and the oven timer dinging on another done batch of bread. The midwife shows up at dawn, yawning but perky, just as Emily is easing into the tub. Michael crawls in behind her, so she can lean against him. Sarah gives them both a mouthful of crushed ice. Rachel and Elijah lean over the tub, patting ripples into the water with their small, sticky hands. Nana, propped by her walker, and Leah, Sid, Rose, and Susan press near, their mouths all dropped into open, giddy smiles. Sarah remembers Emily’s mother Leah making her all those snacks after school, the bananas with chunky peanut butter and homemade squash soups, with those same big, caretaking smiles on her face, and Emily’s father Sid driving her home after it got dark, waiting to make sure there was someone there before driving off so Sarah wouldn’t be all alone. Okay, so you’ll be okay, Sarah? She remembers wanting to go back to Emily’s house, just stay and live there all the time. Emily’s family, robust, huge with cousins, grandparents, uncles and aunts, Emily’s color-coordinated outfits, Leah playing board games with them, trying on makeup with them, buying Sarah her first box of Tampax, taping one of Sarah’s drawings to their refrigerator, and Sid showing up at school events, even the daytime ones, the Open Houses, the art shows, cheering loudly for Sarah, too, because she was there alone, buying one of Sarah’s girlhood paintings for twenty-five dollars to hang proudly on his office wall, dancing with Sarah at Emily’s Bat Mitzvah and Sweet Sixteen parties, teaching Sarah how to ride a bicycle—not her father, she suddenly remembers, sees, it was Emily’s father Sid who taught her, even that was Emily’s, the father who ran alongside the wobbly, released-from-his-grip bike, applauding and cheering her on, the father who knelt and comforted her, cleaned her skinned knees, Emily sharing all that with her, but none of it ever really hers.
But the lemons in your hair, that was yours, she reminds herself, you had that. Your own mother combing your hair, and your own father at the beach, watching to make sure the waves didn’t carry you off and disappear you forever. And the birthday parties, the real, once-upon-a-time parties, before her brother died, when it was still okay to celebrate that she was there and alive. She had that, it was real and they were there, they gave her all of that. Before they were broken or disappeared. They did their best.
So, that’s it, then, why isn’t that enough for you, it has to be. Lemons and ocean waves and candles on cakes. A mouthful of honey. Your parents, waving to you from shore.
The labor gets worse, and the groans more ragged, and a thrill flares through Sarah, a delight in every looming, ugly, torturing second of it. When Emily starts to scream from somewhere deep inside, Sarah gulps from her glass of McCallan and thinks about hospitals and doctors,
and what if something’s really wrong this time, maybe she needs an episiotomy or a Cesarean. Maybe they should just hack her open like a chicken. Or they could go at Emily’s belly like it’s a piñata, the whole family taking turns with a broomstick. She wonders if having this baby’s going to kill Emily, tear her up for real, spill all her insides so the tub is a giant vat of drained-out, frothy Emily-blood, and a dead Emily, Michael crying, everyone hysterical at losing her, the baby still lodged inside, gotten rid of with Emily, and then they’d all turn to her, Sarah, she’d be all they had left, their child, wife, mommy, and they’d all put their arms around her and let her hold back on. It would all be hers, the house in the country with the sheep and the ducklings, the garden and buzzing, endlessly honey-rich bees, the nanny to raise the kids, the maid to clean, the rich husband, the healthy, able mother and father there to take care of her and keep her safe, the art on an easel just waiting for when she felt like getting around to it, because it doesn’t matter, there’s plenty of time, no tick tick tick, there’s nothing at stake, nothing to prove or define. Even the tub full of hot blood would be hers, if she wanted to bathe in it like the Countess in the painting and be frozen in young time forever, all of this would be her home, hers.
Emily screams, and Sarah stumbles over it, blinking, then steps back behind everyone to get out of the way, retreats to the kitchen, gets a handful of ice from the freezer, and there, taped to the refrigerator, is her little-girl crayon drawing: colorful flowers, a happy sun beaming spokes of sunshine, a doggy, three sheep, ducklings, My Family, two grown-up and two child-sized smiley stick figures all holding hands before a thatched-roof cottage. My perfect happy family.
No, it isn’t hers. It’s Rachel’s drawing, she realizes. It’s not her family, her house, it never will be. It’s all a mere fantasy, a birthday candle wish. A childish game of pretend.
She pours more whiskey.
Emily screams again, and, leaning sideways from the edge of the room, Sarah can still see into the tub; she can see the flush of cloudy liquid from between Emily’s legs, displacing the tub water with its thrust, first white, then a brilliant crimson, then the dark crowning of Ariel’s head. Emily takes a slow, deep moan of breath as Michael presses his mouth to the side of her damp forehead. The midwife slides her fingertips just enough inside Emily to coax out a thin lump of shoulder, then, in another brief bright swirl of blood, a white glow of skin, the baby comes rushing through, kicks its legs free of its folded, packed-tight shape, and opens its tiny tadpole underwater mouth. The midwife lifts the dripping body from the water and settles it onto Emily’s heaving chest. Leah and Sid hug each other, Nana is clapping her hands with joy at the birth of her seventh great-grandchild, Rachel is squealing, wanting to touch the baby, and everyone else slowly begins to breathe just as the baby takes its first whimpering choke of air. The dun-colored cord still links from the baby’s belly down into the water, into Emily, and from where Sarah is standing the refraction at the water’s surface gives the illusion that the cord has already been sliced in two.
FALL
SHE AWAKENS TO the sound she’s grown used to: crickets, grasshoppers, and cicadas, swarming bees, their relentless insect rasp. But the clear white light through the windows is seashore light, greenless and blank, and she remembers, after a moment, that she’s back in Rockaway.
The buzz of wings in her ears transmutes to crashing waves, and instead of diapers and fruit and oatmeal she smells turpentine, linseed oil, the meager blots of paint on her palettes. And curry, left in the air from Avery’s dinner the night before, the scent that had greeted her as she walked into the kitchen, hot, tired, yoked with her suitcase and bags of fading vegetables.
“Ah, you are home now! And Emily is having her baby?” He’d beamed, as if beside himself to see her back, and heaped her a plate of basmati rice. She realized that with Bernadette in Sri Lanka the empty house must have seemed very lonely, and so she ate her dinner in the kitchen with him, just to be polite. They sat facing each other and sweating at the rusting, unstable TV tables he and Bernadette always ate on. She showed him the zucchini and tomatoes and basil she brought from Connecticut, and over their curry he boomed for her a long speech on Sri Lankan produce. She finally interrupted to ask if anyone had called while she was gone, if there were any messages. Only her parents, he told her. They were missing her, looking for her, sounding worried, why was she not answering her cell? No, no, there is no emergency, but they called many times; they will call again tomorrow. She must be missing them, too, he stated loudly, When is she going home, Why did she not tell them she was going to Emily’s, She must call them, She must let them know she is fine, When is she going home? All proclaimed in his thundering voice, yelling rebuke at her, chastising her stubborn, pointless flight, her hideous self-indulgent selfishness, and she winced over her plate. Then she remembered how he and Bernadette used to yell at each other, blasting the house with their lilts, how she used to cringe, sitting on her bed and eating her dinner in her room upstairs, at the harsh familiar clap of their words until the day she realized, spotting the beige plastic snailed in each of their ears, they were both just hard of hearing.
She promised Avery in a modified return yell that she’d call her parents first thing in the morning. He nodded, satisfied. What an idiot she was, to think Marty might have called, looking for her. Wondering when she was coming back. She hadn’t called him from Connecticut. Let him wait for the phone to ring, she’d thought. Let him wonder about her, what she was doing, what kind of small or large gap his absence might be creating in her carefully occupied-else-where day. Let him wonder if the lack of him digs in sharp, if it leaves a print. Or if it’s just rinsed away, like a footshape in sand swirls off to grainy water beneath a wave.
It’s Friday night, she thought, watching Avery chew. He must be at Itzak’s for shabbes dinner. Practically down the street. She pictured the family singing like some flame-of-God, End of Days church choir, Itzak pouring her a fat snifter of brandy, Marty nudging over his prayer book so she could see, under the table placing her hand on his thigh.
She didn’t bother to ask Avery if anyone else called. Instead, she inquired if he’d heard from Bernadette, how she was doing.
“Yes, she is calling me from home every Sunday. The surgery for cataracts is very successful. I am very relieved.”
I think I left something to drink in the fridge, she thought to herself, and squeezed herself up to look. Two Heinekens, good. German beer, my shabbes Kiddush. The thought amused her. Should dig up some storm or birthday candles around here, recite the blessing. Avery’d get a kick out of that. She chuckled to herself.
“She is staying now with our oldest daughter Celeste, in Colombo. Our home used to be there, before we are coming here to New York. But when we married, we lived first in Trincomalee. Also by the sea. Always, we are living by the sea.”
“That’s nice.”
“Here, I will show you . . .” He got up eagerly, his swollen knees almost tipping the TV table, and disappeared to rummage through boxes in the storeroom off the kitchen.
“Oh, no, don’t bother,” Sarah called. She hadn’t a clue where Sri Lanka was, didn’t really care. “That’s okay,” she called again, pouring her beer into a glass. She expected an atlas or a globe, a travelogue of every single, poignant place by the sea he and Bernadette ever lived. Her mouth burned from the curry, and she hurried to swallow half the glass of beer before he came back.
He returned with a flowered, gold-ringed photo album, moved her food aside, and propped it open at the first page. A sepia-toned wedding photo of Avery and Bernadette clutching hands, younger by forty years, with thick hair and full-toothed smiles, their stretched lips a brownish black, his military uniform bland as mushroom, her satin gown a dull spread of milk.
“Nice,” she said lamely. “You both look really happy.” She wondered if they’d shouted their vows at each other. She finished the beer and opened the second bottle.
“And her
e, we are on our honeymoon in Bombay. Here is our first child, Peter, with Bernadette in the hospital. And here is our daughter Celeste, and here is Bernadette after giving birth to our younger son Kirin, and here are Celeste and Nissa at school . . . Nissa, she is now a doctor!” The cellophane crackled up, peeling back from the smiling photos like a layer of dead skin, and he carefully smoothed each page down as he went.
“Yeah,” she said, sipping her beer. “Bernadette told me. It’s wonderful.”
He passed through the beaming births, parties, and school graduations of five children and seven grandchildren. By Kirin’s third birthday the photos turned to Kodachrome, the children’s cadmium yellow plastic toys, school uniforms in barite greens and aniline blues, the girls’ lipsticks red as alizarin beets. All primary hues, lurid as parrots. The photos reminded her of the book of shells upstairs, and her own little half-painted shell, all those vivid, glossy color plates putting her attempt at a shell to shame.
A photograph is a dead image, a painting gives life! Not always, she thought. Not necessarily.
“Peter and Kirin are living here now with their families in New Jersey. We are hoping to bring Celeste and her sisters soon, with their families. They are grown-up women now, of course, but it would be good, we would like to have them here.”
“That’s nice,” Sarah said again. She gingerly poked the album aside, so she could get back to her food. “Could we . . . ?”
“Oh, I am sorry. Excuse me.” Avery closed the album, and wedged it between his thick thigh and the arm of the chair.
“So, when is Bernadette coming home?”
“Very soon. I am hoping to have her back soon, we must ready the house.”
“For what?”
“For winter. We must take the screens down. I must check the shutters and the storm windows. It is getting very cold here, during the winter months.”
