by Min Jin Lee
“I couldn’t buy your store, Sabine. It’s your baby.” Casey felt a little stupid after saying that, because Sabine didn’t have children. “Besides, you’re too young to retire.”
“I need to make some plans for the future. You think about it,” Sabine said quietly, not used to such resistance. It hadn’t been her intention really to say all this today, but once she started, she saw that she preferred Casey over everyone else to run the show. A good leader had to have a great succession plan. Sabine was young enough, only forty-four years old, and in good health despite the occasional migraines, but she wanted her legacy to thrive after she was gone. She would need time to groom her successor. There had been offers to buy her store, but the idea of a Federated or some other publicly traded company running this seemed wrong to her. Elle magazine had once written up her store as “Sabine’s: Transgressive and True,” and though she had to look it up, the word made sense to her, and she thought it was accurate, this idea of being against convention, and that it was a good thing for women, because convention ruined all the women she knew. All her life, she had done things differently from the way she’d been told, and it pleased her to no end to collect the payoff on following her wishes and instincts. Casey did not see her own promise, her genius at selling, getting along with American women, at knowing what style was—this very desirable thing that Sabine could identify but could hardly articulate.
“Let me help you, Casey.”
What could she say? For three Saturdays in a row, they had eaten lunch together, and every time there had been this lecture. She had fought Sabine through evasion, deference, and sometimes direct dissent, but secretly guarding the knowledge that Sabine must have been right about absolutely everything. A part of her would not have known what to do if Sabine gave up the fight. In her life, two adults had paid attention to her in a real way, and to them, she had revealed in part some of her fears and herself. Jay’s mother was now lost to her, despite her protests otherwise. Sabine was the merger of a fairy godmother, mentor, and bad cop. It was obvious that Sabine was getting tired of her, of this battle, and Casey knew her debt of loyalty was outstanding. She had never before felt so chosen and recognized by someone so important and smart, and this feeling was near impossible to walk away from. She loved Sabine, because Sabine loved her, but this language of love was incomprehensible to them both. To them, talk was nothing and action was everything.
Sabine looked at her wristwatch. “It’s time, honey. Your break is up.”
Casey put her sandwich and water in her bag. “Thank you, Sabine.” She smiled. “I know you always mean the best for me.”
“I do.” Sabine nodded with self-assurance. Casey returned to her station.
2 BINOCULARS
BABY, THE BID WAS ACCEPTED!” Ted shouted, his voice gleeful. “Accepted! Can you believe it?”
Ella nodded. Not that he could see her. He was calling from the office. And for once, he didn’t sound rushed.
“Well?” He was annoyed by Ella’s slowness, but nothing would keep him from savoring this moment. His phone, as usual, was blinking like the white Christmas lights strung across his assistant’s desk, but Ted refused to pick up the other calls.
“Hel-lo?” He took his time exhaling. If he tried to rush her, she’d reply in her girlish voice, “Ted, I’m thinking.” In general, he liked his wife’s quiet reticence—when they’d first started to date, he had admired it as a kind of conversational tact and goodness. She seemed incapable of gossiping or saying a single mean thing. Her silence didn’t reflect her intelligence level, contrary to the American view that good talkers were smarter. Ted would never have married a dumb woman. A man who marries a dumb woman gets dumb children—everybody knew that. When Ella spoke, she was cogent, insightful. Rarely did he disagree with the precision of her logic. But sometimes he lost his patience waiting for the damn intelligence to manifest itself to everyone else and, namely, him. A week before bed rest was prescribed, they’d gone to dinner after seeing some movie she’d chosen. He’d asked her what she thought of the film, and while she was mulling it over, he’d snarled at her, “Just say it, Ella, goddammit, I don’t expect that much. Spit it out.” She’d then burst into tears at Rosa Mexicano, where they often ate. Then, like a sulking child, she had refused to eat her fish tacos. The waiters who knew them had to pretend they hadn’t seen him yelling at his very pregnant wife. He was so upset that he’d had to step out to have a smoke. But when he’d returned, he’d apologized and encouraged her to order the caramel flan, even though she was gaining far more weight than the doctor had prescribed.
Ted’s impatience, however, only made Ella more nervous. It actually made her withdraw. Not knowing what to say now, she took another sip of prune juice, then rested the glass on the coffee table. The doctor had put her on bed rest because her blood pressure was so high. She was lying on the living room sofa, praying for her constipation to end. On her last doctor visit, one of the nurse-practitioners told her that she had hemorrhoids and recommended more fiber. Pregnancy was a kind of physical humiliation. Ella rubbed her stomach thoughtfully, because no matter, the baby was well. She loved her baby. It was a girl.
“Ella?. . . Ella?” Ted’s phone buzzed with calls. He’d try a different tack with her. When he got angry, she got quieter or cried. “Baby, baby?” Ted deepened his voice, sounding more fatherly. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you happy about it?”
“It’s good, Ted,” she said, trying to sound chipper. Lying down was hurting her back.
Her husband was excited about the town house bid being accepted: a three-story brick house on East Seventieth requiring a gut renovation. Ted’s colleagues thought they were lucky to have it offered for just north of a million dollars. But Ella liked their current apartment. She’d been there not even three years. There was plenty of room for their daughter. Her father had bought this apartment for her, and to buy the town house, they had to sell it and rent it back from the owners if the owners agreed while the lengthy renovation took place. There seemed to be an infinite number of variables simply out of her hands. She tried to raise some of the points, like how they didn’t know the size of his bonus, though the year before he’d made so much money that they could almost have bought the house outright. The renovation would exceed half a million dollars. The numbers were dizzying to her. Her father had never discussed the cost of things, and whenever Ted started to draw his tables, charts, and graphs, Ella entered a kind of gray, smoky cloud. To be fair, she tried very hard to pay attention because Ted needed her to get it. He wanted her to appreciate the factors involved, to share the burden that he faced now as the sole provider of the family. She had to understand the facts of life—that’s one of the things Ted called money—a necessary fact of life. Normally, it was easier to agree with Ted, but she was so tired lately. Sleep was impossible because she had to get up and pee all the time, and during the day, she found it difficult to rest her mind. Ella had gained eighty pounds by her thirty-sixth week—a lot of it was water resulting from her preeclampsia, but she had also been eating almost a pint of ice cream per day. Little else seemed to satisfy her except for the cold, smooth taste of coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs. When her teaspoon hit the cardboard bottom, she’d walk out of her apartment and head down to the hallway garbage chute to toss the empty container so Ted wouldn’t see the evidence. He didn’t like her recent penchant for sweets.
“It’s nice, Ted. It’s good,” she said.
“Nice? Good?” Ted needed her to be more excited about this. It was a big fucking deal. As big a deal as when he’d made managing director the year before—the youngest in the history of Kearn Davis. They were going to own a house in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. Didn’t she get that? He rapped his black Waterman pen that she’d given him against the crystal deal toy from his last transaction.
“What’s the matter?” He attempted to keep his irritation in check.
“I just don’t know how I’ll be able to manage the baby and th
e renovation. You’re working so hard at the office. I know how busy you are. And you travel. I mean, you have to travel for work. I understand that. And I know you’re doing this for me. And the baby. For the family. I know how hard you’re working, Ted.” Ella felt stupid for sounding so ungrateful. “I’ve never been a mother before, and. . .” She glanced at her protruding belly. It was so huge, tight, and round—a skin-covered igloo. The thought of it made her grow cold inside. Ella put her hands over her stomach as if she were warming the daughter within her.
“We’ll get you a sitter. All my colleagues have nannies.”
“But they work. I’m not working anymore.” Ted had wanted her to stay home with the baby, and Ella thought that was right; but in the past month since she’d left work, she found herself missing the office, the sound of the boys running down the halls, her lunches with David. Some mornings, she didn’t feel like getting out of bed. These feelings, she figured, would pass after the baby came. “What would I do if we had a nanny? Your colleagues—”
“I meant my colleagues who have wives who stay at home with the kids. They use nannies. You’re going to need help, Ella. You can’t do this by yourself. You have to take care of the renovation. And you might want to have lunch out with your friends.” Ted shrugged, not knowing who that would be. “Or go to the gym. And we have to go to dinners. You can’t always take the baby—”
“I hadn’t intended on getting a nanny.”
“Well. . .” Ted shook his head, disappointed by her general ambivalence. Ella lacked passion. He’d never noticed that before, or at least not consciously. In bed, she could be shy but seemingly pleased. She liked cuddling. Lately, however, she didn’t appear enthusiastic about anything he cared about, including sex. But that made sense to him—how could she possibly feel like making love when she was as big as a house? It couldn’t be comfortable for her, he thought.
“I mean, maybe a night sitter here and there,” Ella offered. Her husband liked having a full schedule with parties and dinners and expected her to accompany him—to look nice and be sociable. Ted needed stimulation.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he answered. This would take a far longer discussion than he had time for. The lighted call buttons glared brightly.
Earlier that morning, after his broker had called with the news that the offer was accepted, Ted had phoned Ella right away, wishing only one thing from her: He wanted his wife to be impressed. He was going to buy her a house.
Ella was silent. She sipped her juice.
Ted put down his pen. “You’re headed to the doctor, right?”
“Yes.”
This was Ted’s cue: He was asking about her plans so he could get off the call. It was meant to seem that he was interested and thoughtful. As though he were thinking of her needs. Why did he do this? she wondered. Why did he think she didn’t know what he was up to?
“Okay, then. Gotta jump, baby. I’m backed up, too.”
“Okay.”
“Then, I’ll see you at home.” Ted waited for her to hang up first.
Sometimes he said, “Love ya,” as his final valediction, though she would’ve given anything for him to say “I love you” with some measured pause between each word as though he meant it, though surely he must have, since he had wanted to marry her so badly. But Ella didn’t know how to say any of this to Ted without angering him. If she asked him to change the way he said good-bye to her, then he’d be short with her or, worse, ignore her, giving her a kind of time-out as if she were a naughty child by working even later than he needed to or traveling for longer. Ted didn’t mean to punish her, but she felt that he often did. He couldn’t help it.
Ella stayed on the line, wanting some perfect wisdom to come. There must have been a better way to talk to her husband, whom she loved. She closed her eyes.
But, tired of waiting for her, Ted hung up the phone.
Later that morning in the examining room, the obstetrician confirmed that it was herpes. Dr. Reeson, a plump woman with a head of lustrous brown hair, told her that sometimes you can have herpes but not know it: “Practically everyone has it.” Her tone was as flat as plate glass. For some, it could feel like a minor cut with hardly any discomfort. The initial onset of symptoms for some could be severe, but for others it would be mild and never detected. She could’ve mistaken it for a tract infection. She could have had it for years—the virus could lie dormant—then it could be activated. It was better, the doctor said, that Ella knew now, since she’d be delivering in a few weeks. She could be monitored carefully prior to delivery, because if at the delivery Ella had an outbreak (which, in her case, came and went without her noticing any pain), it was possible that a child could be infected with the virus through a vaginal birth. The child could suffer blindness, Dr. Reeson said, but the chances were extremely remote. “Awareness and preparation are the greatest defenses,” she said, wishing Ella would stop with the waterworks. She liked Ella—there was nothing to dislike, really—but she had a number of other patients she had to see. “Ella, every single day, women who have genital herpes deliver perfectly healthy babies. You have absolutely nothing at all to worry about,” she said, lightly tapping her patient’s round shoulders. Ella quieted herself, took her feet out of the stirrups, and sat up. She pulled down the hospital dressing gown over her knees.
“How? How did I get this?” Ella asked. It was almost a rhetorical question.
Dr. Reeson hadn’t asked if Ella had slept with anyone besides her husband. She didn’t know her previous sexual history. She didn’t think Ella had affairs, although she had been wrong with a number of her patients. People surprised you with their sexual habits. She had practiced medicine for seventeen years—now and then, there was a shock, but Dr. Reeson tried to understand that life was complicated, and sometimes the bedroom was a lab for men and women to figure things out. And as in science, there were botched trials.
Ella looked at Dr. Reeson’s dark eyes, fringed with beautiful brown lashes. “How do you get herpes, exactly? Can I ask that, please?”
“Direct skin-to-skin contact with an area where the virus is active on the skin—usually sexual contact, genital-to-genital, oral-to-genital, or oral-to-oral.” She pointed to the dark blue pamphlet in the caddie near the institutional-size jug of Betadine and a tray full of rolled gauze. “It’ll explain a lot. Including how you should discuss it with your partner.”
“You mean Ted?” Ella couldn’t fully grasp the doctor’s implication. “I was a virgin. I’ve only slept with—”
Dr. Reeson nodded, unwilling to convey any expression except for a kind of gentle detachment. She crossed her arms to tuck her fists beneath her armpits.
“Ella, you’re quite fortunate to know. And I know it must be difficult for you to hear this now, but really, most Americans have some form of the virus. It’s just that no one talks about it, because it isn’t curable, but it’s perfectly manageable. Especially for you. And for anyone else who actually gets frequent outbreaks, there’s a great deal we can do to alleviate and almost eliminate the symptoms. You’re fine.”
It was tedious to give this lecture every day, but her job required it. No one took the diagnosis well, though herpes was hardly a big deal. She had it herself. Though she’d had only six lovers, there was no sure way of knowing how she’d been infected and by whom. It was easier to forget she had it at all because she had an outbreak maybe once every two years now. She was also the mother of three healthy children. Her husband, an epidemiologist from France, had a theory about the patient’s predictable hysteria: Americans are ashamed of all things relating to sex.
“I’m not worried about me so much,” Ella said, “but my baby. . .” She searched the doctor’s face for any further sign of bad news.
“The baby will be fine.” Normally, Dr. Reeson didn’t indulge the need for these kinds of blanket, unscientific assurances.
Ella nodded, sensing that she was being dismissed. The doctor had to see other patients, she told herse
lf.
“Now, I want you to rest at home, but come by to get your blood pressure checked whenever it’s necessary. The nurse will speak to you about that. Okay?” Dr. Reeson peered into Ella’s blurry eyes.
Without a word, the young woman nodded, and the doctor left.
When Ted let himself into the apartment, he was pleased to see Ella awake and reading. It was eleven o’clock, and he’d fully expected her to be asleep. His wife was focused on the papers inside a manila folder, likely the mortgage materials he’d faxed her that afternoon for her to review. Ella bolted upright at the jingle of the keys still in his hand. Ted smiled at his wife, then turned away to hang up his overcoat in the crammed hall closet. He’d been at her to organize it better; Ella couldn’t throw anything out. But to be fair, she was tired and had been feeling unwell—in addition to high blood pressure, a countless number of difficulties attended her pregnancy: dizziness, heartburn, migraines, tinnitus, diarrhea or constipation, and now hemorrhoids. Ella didn’t complain, but her suffering was obvious. Her father stopped by weekly with baskets of fresh fruit, mentioning to Ted without fail how delicate Ella was physically. Nevertheless, because she was a twenty-four-year-old in good health, Ted found it surprising that she’d have this much difficulty, in contrast to the forty-year-old investment bankers who came to work right up till their delivery without a murmur, had their babies without a glitch, and then returned to work six weeks later. Ella’s mother had had two miscarriages, then died in childbirth—these facts hovered about them. But the obstetrician said Ella was doing very well despite her temporary ailments. The baby was doing great, she’d said.
Ella looked up, but without saying hello to him, she returned to her papers. Usually, she was very happy to see him, and no matter what time of day or night, she’d ask if he wanted something to eat or drink. There was always something good in the refrigerator. She was seated with her legs outstretched across the length of the sofa, her head bent over, and he noticed that her hands were clutching the pile of papers in her lap. She wore his crimson-colored Dunster House T-shirt and a dark blue pair of maternity pants. Ted went to her, bowed down to kiss her forehead.
