She went back to the pool. There were puddles on the tarps on the floor and a slight breeze blew in from the yard. It was dark by now, and she could see bats swooping outside. She remembered the night she and Clara slept outside on the balcony, the line between outside and in as blurry as it was right now. Moths were clustered around the lights and there were animal sounds all around her, Clara’s moans and growls and the hums and murmurs that encouraged her. It smelled like sweat, like bodies, and Jess didn’t know if it washers or everybody else’s, but such distinctions didn’t matter now. She noticed the raised moles dotting Nick’s arms and shoulders which now wrapped around his wife in the water, holding her steady. One of the midwives announced the time was getting closer. She said to Clara, “You are doing so great. Not much longer.”
When the time came, everything changed. The lights got brighter and the world outside drifted away as they all came together in this moment, which was centred on what was happening to Clara’s body now. None of this was remotely similar to Jess’s births. She’d stopped analogizing. This was a different experience altogether, and she didn’t know what she could offer here besides not letting the cake burn, and she’d done that.
And now the world was gone and it was only Clara and the midwife in the water, who had her hands all up inside Clara’s body, split open, and the baby was coming, she was coming, Clara delivering the most guttural growl, a noise that might have been the sound of the world being born. And then here was the baby, born in water like a fish. A frog. Amphibious. Blue, then purple, then bright pink, greeting life with a squall. A shock of black hair wet with water and vernix, a wide-open mouth. Everybody waiting for confirmation, the hearing that is believing. This tiny creature, a new life, opening her little mouth and unleashing a sound that birthed the world. A shock of breath and light and air, and then they brought her to her mother, her father. A bundle of baby, limbs so furled that they could hold her to themselves like a package they’d received. All those years of waiting and loss, so much longing, and now they were here, and she was too.
Everyone drifted away from Nick and Clara and their baby girl, leaving them alone in their little universe. Jess wentout to the porch to report to Adam on the night as the sun rose orange and rich in the east. She had never seen the sky this way. Day was breaking, an expression she finally understood now that she saw it: the sun shattering the night and all the darkness that had gone before.
“I don’t know how she did it—it was like she was possessed,” she told Adam. But not by anything evil, or alien, something fighting its way into the world; instead it was something more essential, ethereal. “And everything is okay,” she said. “Everything is fine.” Jess choked on her words, recalling all her fears, which she’d completely forgotten about while everything was happening. “The baby’s here, and she’s perfect.” Clara had delivered the placenta, but Jess hadn’t stuck around to watch that. “No name yet.” In fact, since the baby had taken her very first breath, neither of her parents had said a word.
Jess’s own family had got through the night just fine, Adam reported. Bella had joined him in bed. Althea, the nanny, would be arriving on schedule at eight o’clock, and everything would proceed from that point; the universe evidently had not received the memo that the whole world had changed. Jess stared at the extraordinary morning sky and wondered how anything could ever be the same again. While the arrival of her own children had been world-changing, certainly, shattering everything she thought she knew or had been expecting, watching the birth of Clara’s baby was the complete opposite, an exercise in the connectedness of all things. Now there was this tiny, furious life where there had been nothing before. Jess watched the sunlight spread across the world, trying to decipher the meaning in it all.
She’d been up all night, but her body was still so charged with adrenaline that it hadn’t yet occurred to her that she wastired. She went back inside and surveyed the room and its chaos. Clara was wrapped in a blanket sitting outside under the apple tree with her daughter (her daughter!), trying to get her to latch onto her breast. Nick was collapsed on another chair facing them, a cold beer in his hand, nearly naked, but past noticing.
So Jess started assisting with the cleanup, mopping up puddles with old towels, stuffing tarps into garbage bags, returning the room to its natural disorder. She cut the cake into slices and offered it around but there were no takers, and in this, at least, she was gratified. She knew that nobody would want any cake, but there were certain things, Jess was figuring out, you had to let people learn on their own.
The outside scene was a remarkable tableau—the bright blue sky, the tree a brilliant green, the newborn baby at Clara’s breast. It was the kind of image that would drive an artist to pick up a paintbrush. Jess snapped a photo instead, Nick and Clara oblivious. They’d forgotten about the world, and it was all right. This part Jess remembered well, although the setting had been different—a sterile hospital room under painful fluorescent lights, bells ringing, alarms sounding, and the rumble of trollies and stretchers going by. But she and Adam had scarcely noticed, because their baby had arrived. Maybe it didn’t matter where you were at the moment the world was made entirely new.
The baby was suckling, and Clara looked content, serene. Jess continued to reflect, remembering her own experience. It would be three days before the milk came in, three days in which the baby might just sleep and Clara rest, and they’d think they had a handle on it, they’d start thinking it was easy.
But then on Day Four, the milk would arrive. If being pregnant was like jumping off a cliff, Day Four was crashingdown to earth, made even more complicated by hormones. On Day Four, Jess had cried because she finally understood what they meant when they said having a child was like going out into the world with your heart outside your body. How that external heart felt just like a gaping wound, and Jess had also cried because she actuallyhada gaping wound, her vagina held together with crude stitches. Crying, too, because never had she done something so irrevocable, and she knew now that it was all a trap. But she also cried because love had bowled her over, the miracle of this person, this being whom she’d created out of nothing. What had she known about anything until she held her daughter, suddenly privy to the universe’s deepest secrets? What had ever mattered before?
It was all so complicated and fraught, the highest mountain she would ever climb, but Jess would not say a word to Clara. She would let her enjoy the high while it lasted, and this would be her gift.
THE TOMB
2016
They had made a date to go on a family outing to the museum, where, in another lifetime, Clara used to teach. It was across the street from where Jess and Clara had first lived together, several lives before that. This was hallowed ground, an area steeped in resonance, with ghosts around every corner and the past nipping at their heels, eager to trip somebody up. All of it was a little bit dangerous.
Adam and Jess were museum patrons, a distinction that meant their names were displayed on the Donor Wall, they received regular invitations to swanky galas in the atrium, and Clara and Nick could get free admission on their pass. Clara hadn’t been to the museum since she left her job, even though it would be an ideal place to wander while the baby slept in her carrier—more intellectually fulfilling than the mall, she meant, but then again, the mall was free. She had once worked at the museum, but now she couldn’t afford admission.
Nick and Clara had arrived early, seven-month-old Lucinda strapped to Clara’s chest, fast asleep. They waited outside for Jess and Adam in the falling snow, and they didn’trealize how wet it was until their friends were in front of them, exclaiming, “You’re drenched!” Jess hauled Clara in through the sliding doors, her children trailing behind her holding hands, like toy ducks on a string.
There was a scramble at the coat check; Clara wanted to keep her jacket as a layer of protection between Lucinda and the world, but Jess insisted. She had become so commanding these last few years, as managerial as her job required. Of course, wearing a wet coat around the museum was a stupid idea, Clara admitted, but it was two dollars for each coat, Jess scoffing as though dollars were pennies. She handed over everyone’s coats, giving the attendant a twenty.
They headed for the dinosaurs, naturally. The thing most people didn’t realize was that only a fraction of these skeletons were actual dinosaur bones. Most of them were plaster-cast, something that Clara wasn’t about to tell Miles and Bella, who could recite paleontological facts forever. Although Miles’ recitations were a challenge for him—he had a speech delay—he showed off his knowledge in other ways too, and had used a felt marker to carefully label the dinosaur species printed all over his backpack. Bella had been in paleontology summer camp at this very museum, where she learned shortcuts between the different wings and exhibits. The children essentially guided their tour that morning—final destination: the cafeteria. Bella confided to Clara that the chocolate tarts were delicious.
“I know,” said Clara. “I used to work here, remember?”
And Bella looked suitably impressed, which perhaps meant more to Clara than it should have.
When Clara and Jess finally got a moment alone, lingering at the back of the crowd before the stegosaurus, Jess asked her, “So, howareyou?” There was something in her emphasis.
Clara said, “What do you mean?”
Jess’s eyes were too wide. “Just asking.” She took a step back to stand directly under the wing of a pterosaur, an enormous terrifying bird that could have picked her up with a swoop. She ducked around to escape Clara’s scrutiny, but Clara wouldn’t let her go.
“I’m good,” Clara said carefully, following her. “What’s up?” It was more of a demand than a question. Jess had never been very hard to crack. She was already flushed. “Youknow,” Clara said. “Buthowdo you know?” She followed Jess’s glance across the room toward Nick. “He told you.”
Jess shrugged and gave an embarrassed smile, making corkscrew gestures with her arms and shoulders, as though if she twisted enough she might disappear, shimmy into a different realm. But she didn’t.
“What did Nick tell you?” Clara asked, turning back to look for her husband. Adam was struggling to keep track of the children in the crowd, and Nick was behind all of them, examining the carapace of a prehistoric sea turtle. “When were you talking to Nick?”
“He called me,” said Jess. She was anxious now. “Don’t tell him I told you. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”
“Nick calledyou?” Clara couldn’t imagine what could possess him to pick up the phone and dial Jess’s number, not even under duress.
“I thought it was weird too,” said Jess. They’d made their way to the edge of the room, out of range of the dino enthusiasts and to the fossilized fern display. Nobody ever got excited about fern fossils. “I thought there was something wrong. Like, life-and-death wrong. He was worried. And maybe he wanted someone to talk to? He wanted me to touch base and make sure you were okay.”
