“So here we are,” said Clara.
“Don’t be mad,” said Jess. “And seriously, I can’t believe it. When were you going to tell me? Are you really okay?”
“It’s not a death sentence,” said Clara.
“Well, what are you going to do?” Jess asked.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” Clara peered under the blanket to check on Lucinda.
Jess said, “But how, Clara?”
Clara stared back at her in disbelief. What kind of a question was that?
Nick, Adam, and the children came over to join them. They’d exhausted these dinosaurs and wanted to move on.
Clara looked at Nick. “You told her.”
Jess said, “I didn’t mean to—”
Clara said, “No. Stop now. The two of you with your collaborating. You’re both supposed to be on my side.” She could see by their expressions that she was scaring them.
“But of course we are,” said Jess, sounding desperate. “He was only trying to help.”
Clara turned to Nick. “This was youhelping?”
He looked sheepish, an expression Clara hated. It was the look he wore when he had given up responsibility for something he’d done. “You weren’t supposed to know,” he said.
“You think that makes a difference?” Adam was leading Bella and Miles away from the tension, and Clara wanted to get away too.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Nick confessed.
“You could have asked me,” said Clara.
“I did,” he told her. “Really. In all kinds of ways. I’ve been trying, you haven’t been answering.” He said it again. “I didn’t know what else to do.” Jess was beside him, looking concerned.
“Well, how about I leave you to figure something out,” she said, walking away so Nick and Jess could continue their speculations as to her mental health and capacity for good choices, because she didn’t want to hear it. They’d get to feel wise and superior, and she wouldn’t have to stutter so stupidly as she struggled to defend herself. Did they realize how hard it was to articulate anything on so little sleep? She couldn’t win this one. No matter what she said, they’d put it down to her condition. And now they were holding that against her too.
—
She disappeared into the old wing of the museum, which had been the way to her office back when she’d had one, although she shared it with seven other people. The baby was on her chest, and she realized that Nick had the backpack with the diapers, blankets, change of clothes. To be caught so unprepared with a baby was a kind of emergency, but Clara tried not to think about that. As long as she kept walking, Lucinda would sleep. Clara contemplated making her way down the old staircase with its century of grooves, all the way to the exit, but Jess had her coat-check tag. She had put herself in a precarious situation, as dependent as a child. She didn’t even carry a purse anymore; her wallet and keys were kept in the backpack that functioned as diaper bag. She had two free hands, for the moment, but nothing to hold.
So she went up to the third floor instead, away from the crowds, the dinosaurs, the families cruising for animal skulls and wolverine dioramas, brushing away sand to reveal dinosaur thigh bones. She crossed over to the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian rooms, where she taught back before she really knew how much she stood to lose. It was another life she could barely remember, supplanted by years of struggle andthen Lucinda and motherhood, a whole new civilization to discover.
In the Egyptian room, people were staring at the preserved body of a boy who’d died thousands of years ago as though they were waiting for something. There were mummified cats too, and birds, and other objects discovered in tombs. A small girl in a yellow dress was staring at the display, looking confused. She asked the adult holding her hand, “Whose mommy is that?” and Clara thought of the picture book by P. D. Eastman.
There was a tomb, a replica made of stone with symbols etched upon the walls. Clara ducked to get through the doorframe. She used to have children do crayon rubbings in here, all of them crowded inside, trying to carve out their bit of space and wall. The effect had been claustrophobic, but now the tomb was empty except for her and Lucinda. The stone walls filtered out the sounds of the museum and everything was quiet.
Was anybody—Nick, Jess—coming after her? And did she even want them to?
Clara knew that her behaviour wasn’t rational, that escaping to an Egyptian tomb would do nothing to lend credence to her insistence that she was of sound mind, but she had to get away, and she was tired after climbing the stairs and standing around for so long with the baby on her chest. Sinking down onto the cool stone floor, she leaned back and relaxed. This made the baby start fussing, but this was the idea; she wanted Lucinda unfurled, awake. The baby was hungry, and Clara could give her what she needed, and life could really be so simple.
—
Four months ago, when Clara began to understand what was happening, she ignored it, hoping the problem would just go away, which was not entirely delusional. The number of times the problem (even when it wasn’t a problem) had gone away made this a statistical likelihood. The situation felt surreal, but it would have anyway, because Lucinda was four months old and Clara was delirious from lack of sleep.
She was having trouble processing. She had fainted, and she was anemic, which didn’t make sense. Then the doctor called her back for an appointment. Was there a possibility she was pregnant? She said no way. She was breastfeeding, and Lucinda was just four months old. Not to mention that she had spent years completely barren and the odds of her conceiving on her own were next to nil.
But shewaspregnant. And when the doctor told her this, she started to cry, and he presumed she was upset, because what woman with a four-month-old baby wants to be pregnant?
