Magic Affinities
Book Excerpt:
Magic Affinities
In the fourth month of a blessedly uneventful pregnancy, she dreams she is being wheeled into the delivery room. The swinging doors close behind the gurney in a mad hollow flapping that signals something oddly final. Jason is shut off from her on the other side.
The antiseptic room is filled with steel equipment that makes unearthly whirring noises; green blips move silently across black monitor screens in an even rhythm. The combined smells of ether and sweat are nauseating. People mill around, waiting for her to finish. They urge her on. She screams and pushes. A thin thread of pain that connects her to life breaks. Then, either the pain is gone or she is gone - she is not sure which, so distant is she from this event. Jason appears then, his head in a halo of bright light; he is clapping. She can neither see his face nor hear the applause.
The obstetrician holds her baby up; the tiny blood-smeared body is a black silhouette against the great white domes of the OR. It opens its mouth, its face creased with effort, prepared to utter its first wail of protest. No sound comes out. The doctor presses his lips to hers; it is a perfectly healthy baby he reassures her, pushing the words into her mouth. She is trying to speak, but too weakly to be heard. It has no voice, she is trying to say. Is she the only one who cannot hear her child?
She wakens herself, sitting straight up in bed, throwing off the nightmare with the blankets. Jason sleeps peacefully next to her, in blissful ignorance of the horror she has lived through and survived. She does not know whether to hate him or love him at that moment.
In her universe, love wins out. She takes comfort from his warm presence. He is
tethered in bedrock. She can hold to him. She prods him gently until he rolls on his side, one eye open a crack. Only then does she permit herself great sobs. She is wracked by fear.
Jason shimmies sleepily over to her side of the bed and puts his arms around her. She cries pathetically into his naked shoulder. "There, there now," he croons softly, rocking her. "What's the matter?"
She recounts her dream in detail, stuttering, as if it is unspeakable.
"It's a bad dream," he soothes. "Nothing more. Just a bad dream," he murmurs incantations in her ear, her hair, against her neck, mantras of well-being.
But mothers have premonitions about their children; it's instinctual, she insists, weakly, as she feels the power seeping from her dream, drained by Jason like poison sucked from a viper's bite. She sleeps in his arms all night, reassured. Peace is restored in their bedroom. The quiet air, heavy and warm around them, is scented with their easy inhalations and exhalations. Their bodies, curled into each other, form parallel lines down the sheet, like a curved road traveled at night.
In her fifth month she undergoes amniocentesis. She is thirty-five that year. Even if her obstetrician had not suggested it, she would have insisted. For three weeks, she does not leave the house, awaiting the results. During this time the baby begins to walk around in her belly, like a hamster on a treadmill.
"You're not a worrier," Jason tells her, "but I'm afraid having this baby is going to kill you."
"This is my reign of terror," she tells him.
It is no longer a simple matter to be pregnant.
When the test results come back negative, they celebrate. It is a normal little girl she carries, not something monstrous. The world seems a less dangerous place. She exercises, eats well, takes vitamins and a small glass of sherry now and then. She rubs cream into her taut skin and preens, content. In August she suns herself, lying naked in the soft grass in their backyard. She is sleepy. The sun presses her into the earth; she is heavy and slow. Jason comes home from work early.
She lets go of her dream. Dreams don't foretell. She does not have precognition. She is consoled and able to go on. The world is filled with hope.
In the sixth month, defiantly pregnant, she accepts a dinner invitation in the city.
"I haven't seen the girls in a while. They feel abandoned because of the baby," she tells Jason. He does not feel particularly close to her friends, although she has taken great pains not to shut him out. He does not share their college memories with them.
"You mean the girls with the old faces," he teases.
The truth is that Emma needs to talk about her pregnancy, to anyone who will listen and even to those who won't.
"They haven't exactly been encouraging," Jason says.
When Emma first told them, her friends said she was making a mistake. That it would ruin her figure and her marriage and the rest of her life.
"There are two kinds of marriages," Grace said. She has never been married. Her certainties rule her life. "There are child-oriented marriages and sex-oriented marriages. You can't have it both ways. Which one do you want?"
Surely she contains enough love for both, Emma thinks; she had an abortion, many years earlier when Jason was in medical school and they could not afford a child. She never told Jason and she never made that mistake again.
She has made her decision. She is pregnant, radiant, and they go to the party. She wears a white knit dress. Her dark hair is pulled sleekly back. She has never felt better.
All the way from Glen Cove to New York, Jason regales her.
"Grace will get drunk and forget she's middle-aged," Jason says. "She will show off her little middle-aged titties. Alice is married for the fourth time and smug. She will be there with her latest husband and will talk about her latest abortion. She prides herself on her fertility, but doesn't have the guts to finish what she starts. She is a perpetual option holder. Zach is a failed poet and he will patronize his wife. Who does he think he is? I mean, he teaches at Bronx Community, not at Columbia."
Emma smiles, beginning to think she has made a mistake accepting this invitation.
Jason begins to whistle. Driving through the night on the long dark stretches of highway, Jason is relaxed and whistling. Emma recognizes the "Poet and Peasant Overture."
"Poet and Pedant Overture," Jason says and grins.
"Very amusing."
"See what I mean? That's just what Zach will do. He'll grade my humor. He won't laugh at it."
"I didn't realize you hated these people so much."
"I don't hate these people, Emma. I hate what they do to you. Sometimes I'm afraid you envy their uncommitted lives. Sometimes when we're with them, I don't recognize you."
Now Emma is crying, carefully, into a tissue, aware of her makeup. Her feelings are easily hurt. Jason apologizes and she feels better.
"You'll get a chance to meet John, Alice's new husband," Emma says; "he's a lawyer. Maybe you'll like him. You can talk malpractice." Jason laughs. By the time they arrive they are in the same good spirits as when they left their house.
The evening goes pretty much as Jason predicts. But Emma still feels she has had a chance to show herself off as they make their excuses at midnight. And Jason, low-key and substantial, seems to enjoy John. In spite of himself, he speaks at length and enthusiastically about Emma's pregnancy; he is excited by the coming birth of their daughter.
He has good instincts, Emma thinks on the ride home. They make love on the living room floor. They are high and in too much of a hurry to get out of their clothes and into bed. Then they laugh for several hours, going over what everyone said.
"I don't envy them," she tells him. "They don't have you." She is certain of this now.
*
"I guess there's something to be said for meaningless ritual," Jason says after Isabel is born. He is referring to the rampant superstition which has pervaded Emma's maternity and which has brought forth a perfect child.
Jason comes in the morning before rounds; his stethoscope dangles from his neck and he looks clean and professional. He comes after evening rounds, tired and stubbled. He visits with Emma for hours, sitting at her bedside.
Emma and Jason grin at each other, proud of themselves. Emma now permits her mother to purchase a crib, a high chair, a bathinette, a carriage, a layette, a bird mobile to hang over the crib. It is bad luck to buy these things beforehand.
The child is named after a dead grandparent on Emma's side of the family. To an Ashkenazi Jew it is bad luck to name the newborn after a living relative.
When Emma's mother looks at the newborn for the first time, she pronounces a kina-hura over it, to ward off the evil eye.
Emma's mother insists on keeping an eye on Jason while Emma is in the hospital.
Although she trusts him, it cannot hurt to be watchful, she tells Emma in a conspiratorial tone. Indeed Emma's mother was vigilant of her father up until the day he died.
Jason calls her Tyrannosaurus mother. Emma loses patience with her entirely, now that Isabel is born and healthy. All the compassion she denies her mother, she lavishes on her daughter.
Her hospital room is like an untended garden. It is filled with flowers, which she gives away to patients who are less fortunate. The room is painted a sunny yellow; although it is November, it is warm and safe. There are no shadows in it.
She keeps the tea roses Jason brings. The gift card reads: She is the best thing we've done.
Jason sits next to Emma on her last night in the hospital. He holds her in one arm and cradles the infant in the other. They are without breach. The moment of strangeness passes, the knowledge that when they go home the next day, they will be three. Jason touches the infant's fingers and toes, lightly strokes the silky fontanel in her skull. He takes pleasure in the feminine smells that surround him, the powdery baby, his musky wife. The baby falls asleep in his arms.
"I'm having impure thoughts," Jason whispers.
"Soon," Emma sighs. When she kisses him her lips remain on his. She is happy to feel physical desire, like a light tickle, in her thighs.
They sit together for a while.
No one, not even Emma, understands why she is relieved to hear the baby cry.
Emma's friends visit frequently that first year. They bring expensive gifts for Isabel, tiny blue velvet smocks and lace-trimmed blouses. They dress her up and play with her, as if she were a doll. She is a bright child, good-natured and anxious to please her mother and her Aunt Grace and Aunt Alice. She develops quickly. Her eyes focus, change from blue to brown. She grasps their fingers, leads them to her mouth. Soon she sports one, then two milk teeth that look silly in her otherwise empty gums. She rolls over in her crib, sits, half crawls, half walks - like a crustacean, Emma thinks. Isabel pulls herself up, stands, lets go and stumbles.
Jason and Emma sit on the floor with their arms outstretched to catch her. Isabel's arms are wide open to balance her first halting steps toward them. "She walks like she's straddling a horse," Emma says.
Isabel falls into Emma's lap. She seems about to cry, changes her mind. They all laugh instead. She rises, tumbles, does it again. This time she heads for Jason. "Daddy's girl," Jason says.
She will be tall and slim, like Emma, but her easy temperament is Jason's.
When Emma and Jason make love, he does not seem to mind that part of Emma is listening for the child's cries, that their bed is not the moist secret refuge it once was. He believes Emma when she speaks of maternal telepathy. Her breaths are Isabel's breaths. She anticipates Isabel's fevers, Isabel's hunger, her nightmares, her sorrows. Jason watches Emma flinch, her empathy so powerful that she feels when the child cannot have or do something it wants to have or do. Emma shares the frustration, the joy, the sadness that Isabel experiences in her young life.
When Isabel is one, they take her with them when Jason goes horseback riding. It has been years since Jason has ridden, since before his marriage to Emma, in fact. Isabel and Emma watch from the grass outside the corral.
It is summer. Jason is shirtless and tan, astride a chestnut mare that belongs to a friend. Jason has not forgotten his command over the giant beast. "It's like riding a motorcycle," he calls to his family, but his voice is lost in a hot dry breeze. He gallops fiercely through the field. Emma is stunned by the sight of her husband, so pagan and glorious above her, the sun behind him. He is suddenly a stranger and she does not belong. She is frightened by this dangerous masculine adventure. She would rather be at home, with Isabel, in her garden.
That summer she cultivates morning glories and snapdragons, marigolds and pansies, anything that is colorful, splendid to the eye. Honeysuckle grows wild in the yard. It is a disordered profusion of scent and color. She begins a vegetable garden which yields, surprisingly, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, radishes, carrots, and of which she is very proud.
The baby rides her hip while she works. It seems that her hips have been made wide to accommodate her child. They fit together perfectly, a blend of form and function.
In the privacy of their yard, she nurses the baby, lifting her embroidered blouse and tucking the baby's head under it, leading Isabel's mouth to her nipple. She watches Isabel suckling, smooths the fine wisps of hair from the baby’s damp forehead. Later she places the baby on a receiving blanket in the grass and stretches out next to her. The baby holds a bottle of red jello-water from which she sucks contentedly while she watches her mother.
The afternoon passes too swiftly for Emma. She makes dinner for Jason. She eats with the baby. Copper pots line the walls, in need of polish. She is growing sweet red peppers and basil in window pots and the kitchen is warmed by the slow movement of summer drafts.
Jason eats in silence, reads a novel later in the evening. The house is hot with the buildup of days of sun and humidity. They don't talk much; the summer heat is bleeding them.
"We have to put in air-conditioning," Jason mentions.
"At least it's still cool in the bedroom," Emma comments.
In bed they hold each other before they become too sticky, then fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed.
*
When Isabel is two, they take her to Montauk Point. It is midwinter and dreary in Glen Cove. Gray slush lines the streets. The neighborhood trees are bleak; the park is colorless. It seems that everything has been washed away by the season. So they go to the sea.
Jason is more handsome this year than last. He has grown a beard and put on ten pounds. Middle age becomes him. Emma is lovely. She is at her most beautiful that year, Jason tells her. They read Isabel fairy tales and believe in them. When Emma thinks of motherhood, she imagines herself as the warm center of her family. She is the hearth. Jason and Isabel gravitate to her. She loves them both with what is best in herself.
They stop at a diner for breakfast before continuing on to Montauk. Once there, they park the car and clamber down muddy paths, over rocks, across a field of rotted timber that has washed up from the sea, perhaps from a sunken galleon, Emma thinks.
And then they are on the beach, looking out at an ocean, tossed, white-capped, ominous, unsafe. There is no more land. It is just the three of them, alone, stranded in time and place, on this last stronghold of humanity. They are content, isolated on this devastated landscape.
They find unusual shells; Emma picks them up, gently dusts the sand from their delicate pink interiors - baby's ears, she calls them - and places them in a string bag she carries. Seaweed has washed up onto the clean white sand. It smells like spoiled fish. Isabel is fascinated by the plants. She jumps on them, popping the bubbles in their stems. She laughs gleefully at the gurgling noise this makes, the plop, squish. She is easy to please, indeed prefers such pastimes to other more expensive and complicated toys.
Jason points out the tidepools. They squat beside one and look for the beginnings of life somewhere in the murky water. "These are your humble origins," Jason says.
"Yuck," Emma says. "Is there no poetry in you?"
They look at each other over Isabel's head and laugh.
"Swing me, swing me," Isabel pipes up. Jason and Emma hold her hands and lift her between them, swinging her over the tidepool, over puddles, curbs, any and all obstacles that stand in Isabel's way.
"Wheee..." she screams, delighted and frightened at the same time.
"Over she goes..." Emma and Jason call out.
When Isabel tires of swinging down the beach, she sits in the sand and digs. She is bundled up in snowsuit, a bulky little figure with a red nose and chin exposed to the cold. She is absorbed by the deepening hole, the discovery of layers of damp sand, like layers of a dead civilization unearthed. She jabbers to herself incessantly.
"I'm going around the Point," Jason announces. He kisses Emma on the lips briefly, and Isabel on the cheek. The baby pays no attention.
"Be careful," she says, more to herself than to Jason. She wanders up and down this side of the island. She is reluctant to approach the Point. The tide will rise in an hour, she calculates, followed by an early dusk. It will be difficult to get back over the rocks and driftwood when the water begins to wash up. As soon as he disappears around the Point, she begins a nervous wait for Jason's return. A quarter of an hour passes, then a half hour. Isabel continues to dig. Emma wanders over to her protectively. "You'll be in China soon," she says.
"China, China, China, China," Isabel jabbers.
Three-quarters of an hour go by. The water is beginning to inch closer to Isabel's foot, up the beach. Mist clings to the sea. The last of the winter sun sails behind a cloud. The sky is a bleached diffuse white, darkening toward the horizon where the sea and sky mix. There is no line to mark where one ends and the other begins. It is the end of the earth and Emma is frightened that she will fall off into nothingness. She goes to Isabel and lifts her up. She starts to carry her back to the car, thinking she will call the Coast Guard and get help if Jason does not return before the tide comes up. She looks toward the Point; beyond it there is a wall of gray impenetrable mist. Far out at sea, a storm is navigating its way to shore. Emma cannot hear even the muffled undertones of a foghorn or the clanging of marker buoys.
Emma is running now; the baby is bouncing and heavy, at first laughing at this adventure and then silent. Emma does not feel Isabel's weight. She is panting and sweating. Sunset and the tide overtake her. Jason does not reappear. Emma imagines that he has been swept out to sea. Her fear is vivid and bright. She is convinced he is gone forever.
She places Isabel on a rock and begins to maneuver around it. Then she turns and looks behind her. The low flat sky presses darkness to the Point; a shadowy figure, tall, lumbering, is coming around it, emerging from the mists like a creature out of legend. It is covered in kelp; its arms, kelp-draped, are extended out in front of it. Emma begins to scream. She cannot stop. Isabel is crying, grabbing for her mother's neck. Emma stands in front of her, placing her body as a shield. The sea bubbles up to her ankles and recedes, sucks at her feet.
When Jason catches up to them, he is laughing.
"That's not funny," Emma yells at him. Then her voice cracks and she is crying. "Thank god you're alive," she whispers.
Jason holds her and Isabel to his chest. He cannot understand what he has done to cause his wife to be this upset.
He helps her over the rocks, carrying Isabel in one arm; he retrieves a piece of driftwood for Emma, because she likes to collect things. This goes in the trunk of the car.
Driving home, calm at last restored, Emma finally laughs at her foolishness. She removes her wet sneakers and socks. Isabel is quiet, sleeping in the back seat. Emma reaches over and covers her with a plaid wool throw. It begins to rain.
Nearing home, the red street lights are smeared by the rhythmic swing of the windshield wipers. Emma is lulled by the sound. Their shadowed faces are illuminated, rain-dappled, at each intersection, and are washed clean by the wipers. In the darkness of the car, these faces are composed, sleepy, satisfied. Emma is huddled into her parka. Jason drives with his hand on her thigh.
Emma's friends phone infrequently. Up until recently, Emma would recount Isabel's latest exploits, how intelligent and becoming the child was, how her teachers at school thought she had great potential. Now nothing is mentioned. She knows what they are thinking in that flat silence. They never ask, "How is Isabel?" and Emma does not volunteer any information. In some ways, she is grateful that they do not pursue it so she does not have to answer any painful questions.
When they invite her and Jason to dinner parties, she knows, without its being specified, that children are not welcome. Emma understands, but is reluctant to leave Isabel with a sitter, or even with her own mother.
Isabel is indeed a beautiful child. Her hair is thick, dark, glossy. She is slim, without the usual trace of pudginess common to children, and which Emma has always found unattractive. Isabel's fingers and toes are long, slender, white, tapered, like Jason's hands. They are graceful, giving Emma hope of musical aptitude, although Isabel has given Emma no sign of interest in either the records Emma plays for her or the songs she sings herself. Isabel's eyes are the focal point of her face, of her entire being. They are wide, sloe, black. They dominate her face, staring as they do into the middle distance. They are without expectation. She is five years old and quiet.
At home, Isabel stares out the window for long period of time. Emma wants to shake her awake, but stops herself. She does not want to disturb her as she dreams her way to adulthood. When Emma takes Isabel on an outing, she is always on the lookout for what will bring those eyes into focus, arouse a spark of interest.
Emma does not tell Jason that she has taken Isabel to a reader-advisor in Harlem. She knows what he will say - or will not say, but will think.
When Emma was four years old, her mother took her to a gypsy who had a storefront practice in their neighborhood. Emma was fascinated by the apothecary jars filled with exotic herbs, the incense burning in a small bowl on the gypsy's table, the darkened room, the Persian rugs and wall hangings. Surprisingly, she was unafraid of the gypsy herself.
"See for yourself," Emma's mother told the gypsy. Emma's mother removed Emma's bonnet. "She's four years old and she's still bald. The kids in the park want to know why I dress such a cute little boy in dresses. Can you do something?"
Emma recalls the episode vividly, although she had no concept at the time that the hairless state was something to be concerned about. The woman smelled of rancid cooking grease. Her face was dusty with powder and rouge and seamed by wrinkles, as if they held it together. Her hands were coarse and ropy over her own little fair ones. The gypsy was the color of clay - sienna. Emma loved the gypsy’s costume, bright red and green and blue silk trimmed with fake gold coins. She instructed her mother to cut Emma's hair at six PM under the light of the next full moon. Her mother was reluctant to cut what little dark fuzz Emma had on her head, but the gypsy reassured her that if she did as instructed, Emma would grow a luxuriant mass of hair within a half year. Emma's mother followed the gypsy's prescription and Emma did indeed grow a head of rich brown curls that was the envy of the block. She was the only girl in the neighborhood who did not require the permanent wave that was so fashionable that year.
The reader-advisor looks into Isabel's eyes, hold the child's cool hands. This woman also smells of rancid cooking grease. She has the same teas, crystal ball, tarot cards as that other gypsy. The woman then turns her attention to Emma. Isabel is a special child, she says hypnotically. Her future should be carefully guided; she must be watched over, because she is special. Emma listens carefully. The air is still and dreamlike, smoky. Emma gladly pays fifty dollars for her time.
Jason eats dinner in silence. In the family room Isabel has started rocking herself. The house is silent.
"Would you please put on the stereo?" Jason says.
"What would you like to hear?"
"Anything. I don't care."
Emma says, "I think she’s doing better."
Jason does not answer.
Later that night, Jason covers her body with his. It is dark. They make love only in darkness, never in daylight, nor as when they were first married, with small red votives burning on the nightstand. They touch without seeing, groping in the dead of night. He is particularly rough with her, almost violent when he comes.
When Emma makes occasional advances, tentatively reaching for him in a restaurant or at the movies or while he is reading, he gently removes her hand.
He becomes rigid about birth control. He withdraws before he comes. Over coffee one morning, Emma looks at him and knows he will falter.
Things do not fall away singly, sensibly, one at a time, but all at once.
*
There are times that spring when Emma prays for the silence of the past winter, the dreary freighted overcast days of November and January, when there was no sun, when life was a simple succession of centerless hours.
Emma's mother has had a stroke. Although it is mild and she recovers, there is damage - the kind you cannot see. It is not measurable, but something is gone. The woman does not want to hear anything terrible about the world, about Emma and Jason and Isabel. She wants to die knowing that everything is all right, settled, safe. She has taught Emma well. Emma cannot have an intelligent conversation with her.
Jason has moved out of their bedroom. The agreement is mutual and wordless. He is having an affair. Emma does not know the girl, nor does she care to. He wears a spicy new cologne. She will not let him touch her. She hates him, but she also understands. He still lives there; he eats and sleeps in the house.
After Jason goes to his room, Emma stays awake and takes Isabel into her lap. She puts her head near Isabel's and listens. She listens with an intensity, a hope which, if such things were possible, would raise the dead. At that time of night what she hears is silence and despair, that same silence that has haunted all her seasons for the last three years. As Isabel has grown in size, she has withdrawn to a place where it is not possible to reach her; her retreat is complete and irrevocable.
When Isabel was an infant and Emma held her this way, she could listen in on her thoughts, her infant's universe of hunger, wet, fear, pleasure. A mother knows when her child is in trouble. There is a magic affinity that binds them. Emma realizes that if Isabel were sitting in the yard and wandered off, tempted away by a stranger, in trouble, perhaps abused, Emma would not know.
She holds her close, presses the child to her, trying to show the measure, the strength of her allegiance, but it is as if all sound and feeling are drowned out by the rush of common blood in their veins.
Emma asks so little of the world, perhaps not enough. She wants her daughter's life to be easy. She wants her daughter's life restored.
In early April the silence that has seemed so firmly ensconced in their home ends. After the first assault on it, Emma knows that that silence was as fragile, as tender as the linings of the shells she once collected at Montauk Point. In early April Isabel begins banging her head into the walls and screeching. She growls and rolls across the floor toward Emma. Emma backs away in fear; her heart is pounding during the first episode; she is summoned from sleep to behold Isabel's madness. Isabel's long silence is ended. That is when Emma begins praying for the silence of winter.
She travels to the city, making the long drive without complaint, to escape the watchful eyes of the suburban neighborhood, to escape the tended for the less tended, the city, the zoo, a place where animals prowl.
Isabel has some relatively calm days, when the demons that beset her abate. Emma takes her in the car, where she stares placidly from the car window. Emma holds her hand as they wander through the Bronx Zoo. New generations are emerging from their snowsuits. The sky over the Bronx is a clear expanse of unstained blue. People appear out of nowhere, like migrating birds. A gorilla scratches and spits, peels a banana, opens an Oreo and licks the cream center before eating the cookie, things which delighted Emma when she was a child and still do. There is always a crowd around the monkey house. Emma walks on, pulling Isabel along. Families picnic or row, traveling together like ducks paddling on a lake.
Isabel's grip on Emma's hand is tight and strong, as if she senses her mother's thoughts. They stop at a cage in which a wolf is circling. Isabel stares at the empty white eyes of the pacing male. It stops and stares back at her.
It is Emma's nature to try to find something poetic in everything. She sees Isabel as a feral child, daughter of a wild beast. Isabel's madness exists only in a human universe. This other world, this is where Isabel belongs, among the killers, the wolves, the lions, the bears, the wild dogs, the inhospitable elements. It is not a comforting thought, but she wants to leave the child here, in the zoo, and walk away free.
Emma shakes herself awake from the dream. Isabel comes home with her.
She takes Isabel to Montauk Point. Perhaps the child will remember some past happiness. But in returning here, it is Emma who recollects a better time. Emma hopes, in a dark moment, that the child will be swept away, carried off to sea, along with all their sadness.
She cries as she drives home - for Jason, for Isabel, but mainly for herself, for a life that no longer feels like her own. Isabel seems unconcerned that her mother is upset. Emma denies the child. She resents its being a girl. This is Emma's daughter. Not Jason's son.
Late that night when the house is quiet, Jason appears. His hair is disheveled from sleep when he comes out of his room. He finds Emma on a stool at the breakfast bar, drinking a cup of cocoa. Isabel is asleep, curled in her lap. He stands there watching them.
Emma is conscious of her nightgown, of how she looks. The nightgown is freshly laundered, white, trimmed with lace, virginal. Her hair is combed, her face unmade-up. The kitchen is neat, things in their place, copper pots gleam, hanging suspended from hooks, plants watered. The house has always been gracious, although there were days when it seemed warmer. Still, Emma is grateful for small things.
Jason's face wavers, the assurance gone from it.
"You can't go on like this," he says. "You can't follow her into madness.”
Emma looks at him. The shadow that crossed his eyes is gone.
"Good night, Emma." He ruffles her hair, turns and leaves the room.
She listens for him from her bed that night. He is right, of course; madness is a very private place. She hears him get up, go to the bathroom. It is three in the morning. In that moment, she hopes he will come back to bed, to their bed.
*
Emma's life, which has been drifting and disembodied, is sharply focused and shattered one morning that spring.
Isabel is screaming and banging her head into the window wall of the family room. The room shakes from the pounding and Emma is certain the windows will shatter. In a single moment, Emma is transformed. She holds Isabel's head in her bloodless fingers. They are cold but resolute, the circulation gone from them, as if they disavow what she is about to do.
"You want to bang your head? Well, here, let me help you." Emma grabs the girl's head and slams it into the wall, hard. The wall resounds with the blow, empty and hollow. Emma pushes her head once, twice, a third time. "You want more?" She thrusts the child's head into closet doors. Cracks appear in the plaster. She throws her into walls, onto the floor. The child screams; she struggles against her mother's grip. She tears at the grasping fingers but cannot dislodge them, untangle them from her hair. Her head is cut and bleeding, her forehead bruised and lumpy. She tries to bite her mother with swollen cracked lips, then kicks at her, shrieking, in pain, Emma assumes, but does not really know or understand or much care. She cannot hear her child.
Emma stops herself. It is an act of will. Otherwise, she is afraid she will kill the child. She looks at its face. Isabel's eyes are startled. It is a sign, the first in years, and Emma dares to feel hope in the midst of her desperation. The blank wall is gone, if only for a moment. Then Emma is crying. She pays no more attention to Isabel that day.
Instead she works in her garden all afternoon. She needs the certainty of planting a strawberry and harvesting a strawberry. The sun is gathering strength. It beats into her back and hair. Her skin grows warm; her face is ruddy and intense with the season's show of new life. There are tiny buds on all the trees in the yard. She is surrounded by delicate colors and scents. There is urgency to her movements – she digs in the dirt like a dog buries a bone.
When Jason comes home for dinner that night, earlier than usual, she tells him what has happened that day. He nods. She neither seeks nor needs forgiveness for her act of violence and Jason does not offer any.
After he examines Isabel, tends her scrapes and contusions, and decides there is no concussion, he sits with Emma in the kitchen.
"If you want to work with her, I'll help you in any way I can. If you want to place her, I'll arrange for it. Whatever you decide."
"Thank you." Emma is grateful enough to love him again. “But I can’t – I don’t want – to make the decision alone.”
“Of course not. I didn’t mean,” he stopped. "She's like a terminal illness. Life without hope isn't possible. So we can't admit there isn't any.”
"Don't say that. Don't say there's no hope. We can try. If it doesn't work out, we'll discuss the other possibility."
“Nevermind. I’m just thinking out loud.”
The next day Emma buys a puppy for Isabel. Perhaps there will be that telepathy
between them that Emma used to share with her. The puppy sniffs suspiciously at Isabel and shies away; it does not recognize a playmate in her. Instead, it follows Emma around the house all day and at night it jumps into Jason's lap and falls asleep.
The puppy loves the garden. Whenever Emma works out back during the summer, he is beside her. When he ventures a few feet away, it is to romp in dirt and leaves and flower beds, wreaking havoc. He runs small fierce circles. Emma can only laugh. She sits on the lawn and plays with him. The air is hot and thick; pollen rides the damp breezes. Her limbs are leaden. By the end of summer, she is very brown and the puppy is too large to curl up in Jason's lap, although he continues to try.
Emma works with Isabel all summer. She does not think beyond that. She is healing from the wounds of beating her child. The days take their shape from how well her work with Isabel goes. On good days Emma is excited and sleepless. On bad days she thinks of having another baby. She does not tell Jason.
Some spell has been lifted from their house. It is no longer still but seems to rise from the earth, growing like her garden, elemental, filled with life. Emma's laughter, quiet at first, becomes more powerful and certain, as if it is a skill she must relearn. Plates clatter when she sets the table for dinner. She prepares a new dish; Jason compliments her cooking.
Jason takes out their old grill, cleans it, barbecues salmon steaks and new potatoes during a blazing August afternoon. They eat outside, on a blanket in the grass, grateful for a cool dusk.
Emma imagines Jason with his girlfriend, visualizing them together. She is glad of the darkness, her eyes overcast. She turns her head away from their picnic and swipes at her eyes, pretends she has hay fever.
She looks forward to autumn and its rituals, shorter days, raking the yard, the Jewish new year, colors of change. They have new neighbors; Emma invites them to dinner. She has her hair cut. She still does not need a permanent wave, but she has it dyed to cover the strands of gray that have begun to sprout like weeds in a garden. She continues to work with Isabel. During the broader days of summer she had more hope than in the narrower days of fall. Still, she goes on.
She has lunch in the city with Grace and Alice. They laugh a lot, get drunk, forget to eat their food. Grace is quiet and settled with her life. Alice is still married to John. She is forty years old and visibly pregnant. Her father and mother have died in the past year and she feels exposed; she wants this baby.
Emma feels festive and young with her friends.
She races her car when she hits the highway. The suburbs flash by. She raises the sunroof and wind rushes through her hair, between her fingers, up her skirt. At home, she sits on the porch and waits for Jason to come home. Isabel is at a special school. Emma has her afternoons to herself.
Jason takes her out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant. It is a restful meal. Although she drinks several glasses of wine, she is sober by the time coffee is served. Jason drives home slowly. They are quiet. When he stops for a red light, Emma asks him to pull over. He does as she says. They are parked on a dark, tree-lined street in an old established neighborhood.
"What?" Jason asks.
Emma does not answer for some time.
"What is it?"
"Jason, do you want a divorce?"
Now Jason is silent.
"No," he says finally.
"But you've thought about it?"
"Haven't you?"
"Are you still fucking her?" She feels small and mean and helpless.
"No. Not for a long time."
"Do you want to move back to the bedroom?"
"Yes. I'd like that."
For months she will not be able to accept more than his physical presence in bed. He is careful. He does not touch her. For the moment, nearness is enough.
He does not tell her that in her sleep she holds to him. She presses her fingernails into his flesh. He lies there silently, the flash of pain a relief.
***
Author Comment:
This story has received a great deal of attention, both from women who identified with the character of the mother, as well as in the literary/publishing community.
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Awards:
Best American Short Stories notable
Publishing Notes:
This story was originally published in Glimmer Train; it was chosen as a notable in Best American Short Stories and was anthologized in "Love You To Pieces," Beacon Press, May 2008.
Formats:
paperback journal
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