Gwen debated whether or not to tell Leigh more about her own recent insanity. She decided to do it because Leigh was likely to wave it off as no big deal.
“I’ve been having these weird, like, dreams about Angeni Luna,” Gwen said.
They’d kept happening in the wee morning hours, before her body was fully awake. They were more like visions than dreams. It was always the same scene—Gwen and Angeni Luna sitting at the kitchen table, Angeni holding Gwen’s hands and saying reassuring things that Gwen would then carry with her throughout the day.
“Like sex dreams?” Leigh said.
Gwen rolled her eyes. “No, not sex dreams. They’re just her talking to me, telling me things I need to hear.”
“Aww. That’s kind of sweet,” Leigh said.
In the latest one, she’d been helping Gwen talk through her feelings about going back to work.You’ve established such a wonderful bond with June in the past few months,she’d said.Nothing will weaken that.
“It’s weird,” Gwen said.
“I don’t think so. She’s like a fairy godmother or something.”
Gwen laughed. It was a bit like that.
“I’m just disappointed it’s not sexual. I would like to hear about that,” Leigh said.
“Sorry to disappoint.” Then, uncomfortable with her admission, Gwen shifted the conversation back to Leigh: “How are you and Nathan doing?”
Leigh shrugged. “We’re the same. We kind of hate each other, but in a lazy way that involves taking no meaningful action.”
“I think that’s called complacency.”
“Yeah. That,” Leigh said. “How are you and Jeff?”
“Meh.”
“Oh, that’s my new memoir title.Meh: A Memoir of Holy Matrimony.”
“I told him I don’t want to go back to work, and he shot me down.”
“Really? You’ve made him seem so nice.”
“Heisnice,” she said.
He was. He was just uncompromising in the face of potential financial catastrophe. It wasn’t a bad trait.
“He’s thinking of the big picture,” Gwen clarified. “We can’t, like, afford our life if I don’t go back to work.”
“Then create a different life,” Leigh said, as if it were that easy. This was, after all, the vague solution that Angeni Luna offered the world—if you can’t be the mother your child needs because of competing responsibilities, you need to abdicate those responsibilities. She’d posted something like that and gotten lots of clapping-hands emojis in the comments.
“But this is the life Jeff wants. This is the life I said I wanted.”
Leigh sighed. “That’s why I find marriage so stifling. We make these promises to each other, banking on the fact that one person or both people don’t change in some fundamental way. Seems wildly unrealistic.”
“It’s romantic, though. Staying together despite the changes.”
“Is it?”
“Ideally,” Gwen said, her voice getting small as she started to doubt what she was saying.
Leigh placed Belle on the play mat next to June. The babies seemed to enjoy each other’s company more and more, communicating in their own special way with gurgles and grunts.
“Anyway, I’m sorry it’s been hard, sweetie,” Leigh said.
