The Missing Hours

by Julia Dahl

  The next morning, Claudia knocked on his door and offered a cup of coffee from the machine downstairs. Then she asked if she could hang out and study.

  “Sure,” he said. If his smile was too big she didn’t notice—or at least she didn’t seem to. She sat down on the sofa, pulled her legs beneath her, and unfolded the case on an iPad.

  “Did you text your sister?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  He waited but she offered nothing else. He tried again. “What are you working on?

  “Art history. They test you with slides. Like, when was this made, and by who, and what does it represent.”

  “You’re into art?”

  She sighed. “I am. But I’m shitty at it.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “No, it’s true. I mean, I’m competent. But I’ve never really had anything to say. Art’s about ideas.”

  “It is?”

  “Well, not just ideas. The combination of idea and execution. And then, something else. Something you can’t really name. Like a spirit, sort of. Or like umami.”

  “Ooh-what?”

  Claudia smiled. It was the first time she’d smiled since they met. Was it worth it, that he made her smile with his ignorance? “Umami. In food. It’s that extra thing that takes it from good to delicious.”

  “Okay.”

  “One of my drawings is in the library on Martha’s Vineyard, but nobody would put it in a real gallery. And nobody would, like, pay for it.”

  “The library’s pretty cool. And you’re young. I mean, isn’t part of making art having life experience?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “So, you know a little, too.”

  “I probably heard that in a movie.”

  Claudia laughed and Trevor’s chest warmed. They went back to studying and a few hours later, Trevor ran out to pick up dinner. They watched an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel while they ate and Claudia pointed out her former babysitter in one of the scenes. Around nine, Claudia said she was tired, and went back to her room. That was how they spent the rest of the week. Eating and studying and watching TV. It was hard to square the girl he’d found online with the girl he got to know over those quiet days. The girl still wearing his borrowed sunglasses and picking the cilantro out of the burrito bowls he brought up from Chipotle. He was attracted to her in a way he couldn’t articulate, and in a way that transcended the particulars of her objective beauty. She sat differently than girls he knew, reached for a fork differently, gathered her hair into a ponytail differently. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. She was so much more beautiful than the person in the makeup and dresses on the Internet. He wondered how many other people knew this Claudia Castro. He let himself feel special that she showed him this part of her; he let himself think that it meant something.

  They never talked about whatever happened the night before they bumped into each other, and as the physical evidence faded, so did the topic as an obvious point of conversation. Trevor wondered if, once she looked normal again, she would drop him. He had no claim on her. They’d never so much as held hands. Never even hugged. There was a certain energy when they were together, but Trevor knew what he felt was his own, and that while to him it might feel big enough to fill a room, that didn’t mean it existed inside her at all. He’d never been in this position before. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to ruin it. He’d seen peers push a “friend” to something more and have it blow up in their faces. Trevor would wait. And hope.

  EDIE

  Lydia was thirty-six hours old when Claudia finally called. Edie hadn’t slept since giving birth and when the phone rang, its trill muffled beneath a pile of jackets and tote bags, she didn’t hear it—or if she did, she mistook the noise for one of the constantly beeping machines in her hospital room. Various nurses had spent much of the day instructing her on how to squeeze her breast to “express” her milk—but so far, Edie’s body emitted nothing more than a trickle of a snot-like substance that the nurse called colostrum.

  “Keep trying,” said Oris, a tall woman with a thick Caribbean accent and Hello Kitty faces on her scrubs. She scraped the colostrum from the tip of Edie’s nipple into a tiny plastic cup, then drew it into a blunt-tipped syringe. “All the good stuff’s in there.”

  Edie’s feet itched inside the hospital-issue socks. She was wearing a hero-sized maxi pad and gauze underwear. Her eyes were dry and her brain felt both swollen and shriveled. All night long, while Nathan slept on the two-tone love seat beside her, she stared at the TV, watching couples hunt for houses by the beach, vaguely following their happy journeys through blurry closed captions. She kept her phone in her hand the whole time, waiting for Claudia to call. One minute she was livid, offended, disgusted that her sister would abandon her at the most intense moment of her life. The next minute, she was frantic, her body drowning in adrenaline as she searched her mind for where her sister could be. Claudia liked to walk by the water; could she have gotten drunk and slipped off a pier at South Street Seaport? Could she have been kidnapped by an Uber driver?

  Oris lifted Lydia from the bassinet and handed the baby and the syringe to Edie. As she slid the tip between Lydia’s lips, Nathan walked in carrying a bag from the Greek diner a block away. While pregnant, Edie wasn’t allowed to eat an astonishing number of the foods she loved, and in the bag was one she’d missed the most: a runny egg and cheese sandwich. Nathan kissed her on the head and watched as Lydia drank the gooey serum. Oris suggested she try, again, to get the baby to latch.

  “Tickle under baby’s chin,” said the nurse. “Tilt her. Yes. Now use your finger to open baby’s mouth.”

  Edie felt like she didn’t have enough hands to do what she was being told. Hold baby. Tilt baby. Tickle baby. Open baby’s mouth. Squeeze the breast. Keep baby upright. Support baby’s head. She fumbled, looking down at her enormous areola, trying to shove it all far enough back into Lydia’s mouth that it wouldn’t just drop right out. It dropped right out.

  “Fuck,” she hissed, tears burning her eyes.

  “Try to relax,” said Oris. “Try again.”

  Lydia started to squirm. She shook her head, screwed up her face, and let out a mewl. A mewl Edie was beginning to recognize as the harbinger of a wail.

  “Baby’s hungry,” said Oris. “Time to eat.”

  Edie had never felt more helpless. What did this woman expect her to do?

  “Baby needs to eat. Here we go. Use the nipple to tickle her bottom lip.”

  The wailing began. Nathan stood beside her, watching. Oris, watching.

  “Come on now,” said Oris.

  “You can do it,” said Nathan.

  “Obviously I can’t!”

  “Hold your breast,” said Oris. Edie could barely see through the tears. She could taste the runoff from her nose. “Hold your breast and I’ll hold baby. There. Yes. There. Now hold her head. Hold her head! Yes! Keep holding!”

  This was a triumph, apparently. Weeping, with Lydia’s head mashed into her chest. Oris made a note on the chart attached to Lydia’s plastic bassinet, then left the room. Nathan found a tissue somewhere and wiped Edie’s face.

  “Can I do anything?” he asked, stroking her back.

  Edie was afraid that if she moved, even to look up at him or shrug, Lydia would fall off her breast. She whispered, “No.”

  Nathan kissed her head again. He picked up the pile on the couch to make space to sit and saw the phone.

  “Your sister called.”

  “What?”

  He showed her: Missed call from Claudia. And below it, a text:

  i’m so sorry. i lost my phone.

  That’s it? I’m sorry?

  “Should I call her back?” asked Nathan.

  “She knows where we are. She should be here with flowers. She should…” Lydia slipped off her breast. “Fuck! Will you please get the nurse back?”

  Nathan pressed a button on the wall behind Edie’s bed. Edie bent forward, a canopy over the girl, tryin
g to drop her breast into her now-dozing daughter’s slack mouth, trying to reestablish the latch. The fucking latch. She felt her back exposed in her gown. The thin sheet beneath her had bunched up. Did it even have fitted corners? How many other bare thighs had rubbed against this awful mattress? There was a knock at the door.

  “Is this a good time?” asked her dad.

  Edie almost laughed.

  “I’m with your mom. Can we come in?”

  As usual, Edie’s mom was dressed all in black. Skinny jeans and chunky boots and a short leather jacket. Her bleached blond hair was pulled into a chic low ponytail. Michelle Whitehouse had been a relatively young mom, too; just twenty-three when she got pregnant with Edie while shacking up with Gabe in the London suite where he was recording with Oasis. Still, Edie had correctly suspected that her mother would be disappointed with her own early twenties pregnancy, so she’d waited until after the City Hall ceremony to break the news: Happy New Year, you’re going to be grandparents! It went over like a lead zeppelin, as her dad used to say.

  “You did it,” said Michelle, stepping toward the bed.

  Edie felt like she would never not be angry at her mother. If it weren’t for her, Edie would be at home, instead of in this cold, ugly room. Instead of the rotating nurses, she would be cared for by Marianne, the doula she’d hired months ago, who was also a certified lactation consultant and massage therapist. That had been the plan until six weeks ago, when Michelle issued her ultimatum.

  Edie took the train down from Poughkeepsie to meet with Jim Morgan, the man who managed the family’s finances, to discuss buying a house. Michelle was born rich. Her father was a prominent Connecticut attorney before becoming a senator, and her mother’s family had made a fortune in textiles for generations. They produced uniforms for the Union Army, outfitted the rangers at the National Parks system, kept the Boy Scouts in knee socks, and state prisoners around New England in stripes. The millions Edie’s dad earned in the music industry added to the enormous pile, but he never felt confident managing money and let Michelle handle it all, which meant, she always said, “hiring the best people.” Jim Morgan was the best. He invested for them and set Edie and Claudia up with trusts when they were babies. Jim’s firm was conservative, and the money was woven into all kinds of safety nets to keep everyone and their offspring taken care of. On the day Edie was supposed to meet with Jim, her mother invited her to lunch.

  It was February, but sunny, and Edie got to the Tribeca restaurant before her mother. She pointed the hostess to a table by the window in what was the back patio all summer, and transformed into a heated atrium in the winter. While she waited for her mother, Edie ordered chamomile tea and texted Nathan about the house they’d just toured. She sent him an image of a nursery she found on Pinterest and he responded with two emojis: a heart and a home. After a few minutes Michelle appeared.

  “I called and reserved a table inside,” she said. She was wearing four-inch-heeled ankle boots, military-style pants, and an oversized black wool coat with what Edie guessed was a fox-fur collar. As usual, her mother looked fierce. Her face just slightly flushed, her walk almost a march.

  “I didn’t know,” said Edie. “It’s nice out here.”

  “It’s more comfortable in there. I thought you’d want to be comfortable.”

  “I think you and I have different ideas of what it means to be comfortable, Mom,” said Edie.

  “Okay, Eden,” said Michelle. She sat down and when the waiter came, asked for a bottle of Pellegrino. “So, how are you?”

  “I can’t drink bubbles anymore.” Edie rubbed her belly. “Apparently, I have acid reflux. But the baby is healthy.”

  “I wonder if you’ll go early,” said Michelle. “Claudia was three weeks early. Which is why I wanted to meet. I gather you are still considering a home birth?”

  “What do you mean considering? It’s all planned.”

  Michelle pursed her lips and brushed her hair from her forehead with a finger. “I do not like having to do this, but if you’re going to be stubborn you don’t give us much choice.”

  “Us?”

  “Your father and me.”

  “You’re talking now?” Edie knew that her parents hadn’t lived together since the fall.

  “Of course we’re talking. We never stopped talking. Your father and I are grown-ups, Eden. And we agree that an at-home birth is insane. I’m sorry. You will thank me. I guarantee it. You’re ripped open during childbirth, for God’s sake. One little nick to the wrong place and you’ll bleed out before Nathan can even dial 911.”

  Edie cringed.

  “Exactly,” continued Michelle. “Everybody romanticizes having a child. But it’s a horror show that first month. You’re leaking everywhere. You can barely walk, and that’s if you’re lucky. What if the baby’s breech and you have to have a C-section? Have you even thought about that?”

  “Yes, we’ve thought of that. We see a doctor. I’m not in a cult. If the baby’s breech we’ll go to the hospital.”

  “In Poughkeepsie? Please. Why take the chance?”

  “It’s not Somalia,” Edie said. “Babies are born there perfectly fine every day. Anyway, you can’t force me to give birth where you want.”

  “That’s true,” said Michelle, “but I can make it less comfortable for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your father and I control your trust until you are thirty-five,” she said.

  “No, you don’t. I got it two years ago, when I turned twenty-one.”

  “You got access to it when you were twenty-one. There is a limit on what you can withdraw before you have to have one of us approve.”

  “What’s the limit?”

  “The limit is fifty thousand.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since always. I’ve tried to take some time to talk to you and Claudia both about all this, but neither of you seemed very interested. And now, I hear through Jim, that you are planning to put cash down on a house in Poughkeepsie?”

  “New Paltz.”

  “Half a million dollars?”

  “It’s my money.”

  “And we want to make sure it stays that way.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “There are a couple things you’re going to have to do before your father and I will even consider allowing you to take that much out.”

  “There’s, like, ten times that in there.”

  “Exactly. Jim has it in very smart investments. But you start whacking away at assets and the dividends go down. You girls really should learn a little more about your finances.”

  Edie looked at her mother. “You’re telling me that I can’t have my money to buy a house for my child, for my family, unless I give birth where you want me to give birth?”

  “That, and you and Nathan need to sign a postnuptial agreement. Jim will draw it up.”

  “I’m not going to ask him to do that.”

  “Then you can keep living on your allowance and whatever you two earn until you turn thirty-five.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that. Two weeks later, Edie and Nathan moved to Gramercy. She hadn’t lived there since leaving for Vassar almost five years earlier, and instead of staying in her childhood bedroom, they set up in the guest suite on the third floor. After two days of silence, Gabe found them in the kitchen and asked for forgiveness.

  “I don’t agree with your mother’s methods,” said her father, “but the only thing that matters to me is your safety.”

  It was hard for Edie to stay angry at her dad. He looked terrible. Her parents talked about the separation as mutual, but it seemed clear to Edie and Claudia that their mother was the driving force. For as long as Edie could remember, Michelle had preached the value of “moving on.” The girls learned quickly that, even if she was physically around to talk to, going to their mother for comfort was mostly useless. Michelle had no sympathy for those who dwelled. She’d moved past her parents’ death, her
youthful drug problem, and now, the father of her children. And yet, her mother managed to show up at the hospital—more, apparently, than her sister was willing to do.

  “Do you want to hold her?” Edie asked her mom.

  “I should wash my hands,” said Michelle, looking around. “I was in a cab.”

  A nurse with a butch, salt-and-pepper haircut knocked.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “I can’t keep her on,” said Edie.

  “There’s a breastfeeding class in an hour,” she said. “I’ll come back and bring you down.”

  “But the other nurse said she needed to eat now.”

  “Never wake a sleeping baby,” said the nurse.

  Michelle came out of the bathroom and Edie handed Lydia to her. She looked awkward holding the girl.

  “Claudia called,” said Edie.

  “Did you talk to her?” asked Gabe. “Where is she?”

  “I missed the call, but she texted she was ‘sorry.’”

  “Have you girls been fighting?” asked her mom. “What happened?”

  “I have no idea. She knows where we are.”

  “Did you call her back?” asked her dad.

  “I’ll send her a text,” said Edie.

  CLAUDIA

  we have to be careful about germs the first few days but if you want to meet her you know where we are. enjoy your #staycation

  Claudia supposed it was naive to have assumed Edie would forgive her for missing the birth. Should she leave a voice mail explaining what happened? I think I dropped my phone after I got raped. On campus there were little purple stickers in the bathrooms: Have you been a victim of sexual assault? Tell someone. The stickers had a phone number and a website. Confidential, they promised. And the nurse had said she trained the people on the other end of the phone. But Claudia wasn’t stupid. The “counselor” at the mandatory freshman orientation was a junior: not a professional, and definitely not above gossip. Did you hear Claudia Castro says somebody raped her? One of those disgusting reality TV blogs that called her “the other woman” last week would probably pay ten grand for that headline.