He sighed. “I always think it’s different this time.” Their train pulled into the station, and from there they’d catch the bus.
They walked down the platform and rode up two escalators in silence, and when they were outside, she said to him, “So?” She had no idea what kind of ground she was standing on.
He said, “So what?”
She said, “So you’re just going to leave that here? You’re supposed to reassure me. You’re the one who brought me to this moment. You’re the one who brought me halfway around the world—”
“I brought youhome,” he said.
“I thought you did.” She took a breath and looked up into his eyes. “I’m scared too.” She wanted him to reach out and touch her, to hold her, but he didn’t.
“It’s complicated,” he said. Sometimes she hated the way he always had to be so honest. If Nick lied, she might not be fooled, but maybe it would feel better than this.
She said, “I thought this was what you wanted.”
“It is,” he said, with no hesitation. That had to mean something. “I don’t know if you know what it’s like, to go over there and see your friend and her house and her life, and I really don’t know if I can do that. Be the kind of person who owns a set of those fancy orange pots. Everything is soshiny. I don’t know if we can be the kind of people who get together and watch their babies on TV.”
So that’s what this was all about. Clara said, “I don’t want you to be anything but you.” But notthis, she was thinking. Please let this moment be an aberration, because right now you are failing me. “I just want to know that we’re building something real here. That’s what I want. Not pots.” She paused. “Of course, we need some pots. Useful for boiling water.”
“But what’s a kettle for?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve got nothing against pots in general. But did you see that thing? It’s like a big orange cauldron. And everything matches in their kitchen.”
“It all cost a fortune,” said Clara. “And they hardly ever cook.” She wasn’t going to tell Nick that Jess was pregnant, not yet. He took her hand now and squeezed it. She said, “I think it’s normal to be scared about having a baby.”
“It’s just upped all the stakes.”
“But isn’t that what we signed up for?”
Nick put his arm around her, held her close. “Isn’t getting what you wanted sometimes the scariest thing?”
“We’re going to be fine,” she said. She needed him to promise that they were going to be fine.
He said, “I’m going to show you,” as their bus pulled in. He whispered in her ear, “I promise, I won’t let you down.”
—
Clara was at work when it started. She was directing the kids in sketching replicas of Roman water jugs and deciphering narratives from the images etched into their sides. These were the kinds of actual artifacts she’d once helped to unearth, working long days in the hot sun, the neck kerchief a necessary accessory to soak up all the sweat. She was so far away from that life now, and as she moved through her firsttrimester she was grateful for things such as flush toilets, air conditioning, and medical care in her first language.
“I’m getting soft,” she complained to Nick more than once, and he’d only agree, grabbing her bum, her swollen breasts. Her body was no longer her own, and Nick said he liked it, but Nick’s desires weren’t the problem; it was the disorientation of no longer recognizing herself or who she was becoming.
She’d come so far—twelve weeks, which was nearly home free. “There is absolutely no reason you can’t bring a healthy baby to term,” the midwife had told her, and by twelve weeks Clara even believed her.
She was in the room with the jugs and little kids were sprawled on the floor. Here there was none of the formality required by the quiet and austere UK museums. This museum was a fantasyland of unpeopled dioramas, woolly mammoth skeletons, Regency furniture and a terrarium of cockroaches. It was an extension of these children’s playrooms, a place for today as well as ancient times, which was the way things should be. This is what Clara was thinking when she first felt the rush.
Springing to her feet, she alerted a colleague and headed to the bathroom, hustling into a stall to reveal what she’d expected: blood. But it was dark brown, which was a good sign, at least according to all the pregnancy books. Spotting was normal, and brown blood was old blood, which was better, though Clara couldn’t remember why. She looked in the toilet. There was blood there too, but not so much. And she’d been having cramps, she realized, now that she was paying attention. She folded toilet paper into a makeshift pad, a temporary measure, and for the rest of the day she could only focus on twinges and pangs. By the end of hershift, the cramps were worse, her makeshift pad soaked through. She paged her midwife, Rachel, who called back as Clara was walking out of the museum and into the street.
“Did you bleed through a pad?” Rachel asked her.
“I don’t even have a pad,” said Clara. “It’s a wad of toilet paper.”
“We don’t worry until you’ve bled through a pad in an hour.”
Clara said, “That’s a lot of blood.”
“Go home,” said Rachel. “Lie down for a while and try to relax. Give me a call if things get worse.”
When she got home, Nick wasn’t there. She saw with irritation that his phone was on the counter. Clara set her shopping bag on the table—a pack of super-pads she hoped she wouldn’t have to crack open. She made a pot of ginger tea (she’d quit caffeine months ago) and sat down to watch TV. She didn’t like TV and would never have brought one into her home intentionally, but she was grateful for the distraction now. There was a reality show on, this one about real estate. She sent a text to Nick, only to feel immediately angry when she heard his phone vibrating on the table. By the time he walked in the door, she’d watched three episodes of the real estate show.
“What are you doing there?” he asked, taking her in, all curled up in a blanket in front of the TV. “Are you sick? You look terrible.”
