“Adam, it’s Monday,” she murmured. “Monday’s not a sex night.” He didn’t back away, though. “And I haven’t made the kids’ lunches yet.”
“I’ll do them in the morning,” he said. He had his hands up her shirt. “I like Mondays.” The effectiveness of his touch was decreasing her interest in talking him out of it. “Are you still thinking about whiteboards?”
“Whiteboards?” She was thinking of Clara now. Her body. Her life. Jess had sounded the alarms, but Clara refused to listen. Could she let this go? Somebody and Shadow. She was still thinking this as her husband pulled her top over her head, it catching on her earring. “Ow!” she said, and she was brought right into now, and there he was, Adam, so intent upon her body. She pulled away but only to tug off his shirt too, and to unfasten her bra and climb onto his lap. To put Clara out of her mind.
He said, “We’re going to do this here?”
And yes, they were going to. Because when you’re a woman with a whiteboard on the back of her eyelids who finds herself lucky enough to be in the moment, you just go, and that woman’s husband should know enough not to ask questions.
She tried to stay here, concentrating on Adam’s body, feeling what she was feeling with her fingertips—his soft skin, the hair on his chest, the compelling firmness of his stomach muscles, and down inside his pants, where he was always ready. He was right about the switch.
“I’m not thinking about the calendar,” she said, and it felt wondrous not to be thinking about the calendar. She tugged off Adam’s jeans, and the rest of her clothes, and climbed back onto his lap where he was sitting on the couch, more than ready, and she took him inside her.
And now she was here in this moment, but Adam had gone somewhere beyond it, his eyes closed and his mouth moving silently, slowly, as she moved up and down on top ofhim. He pulled her close, her breasts to his face, where he kissed and sucked them, and she reached down to touch herself, so they could come together, her other arm braced against the back of the couch, and when she turned her head she could see their reflection in the window. They hadn’t closed the curtains. They had a view straight through the backyard and across the laneway since they’d torn the garage down the summer before. If not for the reflection of them in the window right now—adding to her arousal; they looked pretty hot—she’d be able to see right into her neighbours’ kitchen, the same way they were able to see right through to hers. But no, she stopped this line of thinking. Although when she turned her head the other way, she only saw the whiteboard, so she stared straight ahead at the wall. The closest she’d ever get to Zen.
But that was weird, and she was glad when Adam looked up, his eyes on hers, and she could feel the pleasure building even though her hand was cramping, but she kept going, and he did too. She could tell by his breathing, the pressure of his grip on her shoulders, the pulsing muscles in his arms, that he was getting close. So she stopped holding back and let it happen, the orgasm moving through her and lasting as long as she could hold her breath and make it so, feeling him coming too.
Adam pulled her close, sweaty and shaking. “Not bad for a Monday,” he said, his voice still unsteady.
But she had already moved on to the next thing. “Bella’s slip for the field trip. You remembered to sign it, right?”
CONCURRENTLY
Clara had become comfortable living on the edge—which was, in some ways, a joke. Their life was so risk-free that all their household cleaners were edible, and she hadn’t had a drink in years. She was up all night most nights, but not for reasons that would make anyone’s hard-rock memoir. Lucinda’s sleep was still patchy, and the pressure of nearly full-term twins on Clara’s bladder meant a lot of getting up to pee, and then afterwards she’d lie in bed and wait for them to move, or for Lucinda to rouse again, and perhaps the sun would already be rising, making its way down the alley outside to arrive at their bedroom window.
They’d reorganized everything so Clara’s whole life could be conducted from her bed, snacks and diaper changes, games and puzzles. An entire life within arm’s reach, so she’d be okay with Lucinda while Nick was at work. He didn’t want to go, didn’t like to leave them, but he was taking six weeks off when the babies came and working overtime in the interim to help fill the gap. And while they’d considered having somebody come to help—Clara’s mother? One of her sisters?—Clara was sure it would be more trouble than it was worth, becausethe whole point of bedrest was to avoid stress and upset, so why would they go and invite these into their home?
No, it was easier to be on her own, making do, passing the time with games and stories, naps and cuddles, but still, the edge was close, along with the warnings from her OB-GYN about the risks of her pregnancy: she was geriatric now, all the trouble she’d been through already with miscarriages, and now twins, barely a year since her last birth. She had high blood pressure, the doctor had told her, but he was the reason why, Clara knew, which was why she’d quit going to him.
“He’s doing me no good,” she said, and it was true, she didn’t like him at all. Lucinda had been born in a dream of a birth, and there was no reason her twins should have to enter the world in different circumstances, fall into the hands of a man with a pointy chin-beard who didn’t even know that he should hide his eye-rolls when she talked to him. “I am not having it,” she said, and Nick didn’t argue.
Except then, her previous midwives wouldn’t take her on. “High-risk,” they kept saying. There were strict protocols, and their relationship with the hospital depended on taking those protocols seriously. “And this isn’t just red-tape bureaucracy,” explained Rachel, who’d been the one to catch Lucinda. “Sometimes the hospital really is the best place.” Clara felt as though she was being backed into a corner.
But there was another way, Clara learned as she scrolled on her ancient laptop, reading about the unassisted birth movement, the most empowering rabbit hole imaginable for a woman confined to her bed. She came at Nick when he got home with stats and anecdotes about the patriarchal conspiracy of medicalized birth, unleashing her inner goddess. “It’s doesn’t have to be like this,” she insisted to her husband.“No pregnant woman should have to submit to a man who rolls his eyes.”
To which Nick rolled his eyes, and she threw a stuffed cat at him, but he’d also just brought her dinner—fried chicken and coleslaw—so there was only so much she could do. He had drawn the line: she was not going to give birth to twins alone. “Unless you really want to be alone,” he said, “because I’m not sticking around for that.”
So they made a compromise. Searching online forums, she found a local group of renegade midwives who took on complex cases, women who listened when Clara told her story and whose eyes showed nothing but understanding. Women who made her aware of the risks, but also told her that these risks didn’t have to define her experience. Women who recognized that she was more than a pile of statistics. Finally, for the first time since her pregnancy became so complicated, Clara started to feel safe.
Though others were less assured. Rachel was no longer speaking to her, hadn’t even shown up to Lucinda’s party. Jess didn’t know the half of it and still disapproved, projecting all her own anxieties onto Clara. It was not helpful to hear everybody else’s fears and concerns, especially since it was only going to be Clara in the moment anyway. She’d learned the first time around that the only person she could really count on was herself. Even Nick, ever faithful, loving, and patient, would not be able to reach her in the eye of that storm. Nick, who was the one person who trusted her enough to give her the freedom to walk her own path, to listen to her heart.
—
But then it started to slip sometimes, Clara’s confidence, her certainty. Was it too much to ask that anything be so sure? When Lucinda was playing down on the floor and Clara felta twinge in her belly—what if it all went wrong and she couldn’t get to the phone? What if Lucinda was hurt and Clara couldn’t reach her? What if she had gambled their safety away, betting on too much, as delusional and stubborn as everybody told her she was? Could everybody be right?
Clara couldn’t share these fears with anyone. Not with Nick, who she’d had to persuade to join her here in the first place. She had to be unwavering. And certainly not with Jess, who’d predicted all along that she’d start feeling this way, that she’d change her mind.
Clara knew what the stakes were. She’d been shown the statistics, warned of the dangers. Rachel said she was being selfish. “They could lose you,” she wrote in the last text she ever sent. “Maybe you’re doing all this for the babies, but what are they going to do without you? Everything would fall apart.”
But it hadn’t. Not yet. The way the world keeps on turning was one thing Clara knew for a fact. The sun arrived at her window every morning, something to believe in, and so she would.
HERE AND NOW
TUESDAY, MAY10,2016
Adam had remembered to sign the permission slip for Bella’s trip, but he dropped the ball on the kids’ lunches, something Jess didn’t realize until she’d delivered Miles to school after speech therapy and discovered his backpack was empty. So she had to drive to the store to pick up cheese buns, apples, and a box of granola bars, splitting it all into two plastic bags, which she dropped off at school, finally arriving at work forty minutes later than the two hours late she already informed them she’d be. The Board meeting was in progress because they’d already waited as long as they could. All the seats around the table were occupied, including one taken by Elliott Lubbock, who didn’t even work there (at least not yet), and so Jess had to settle for a vacant chair by the door, which at least meant she could slip in less conspicuously.
Her phone buzzed. She’d sent an irate text to Adam and was waiting for his response, but this message wasn’t from him, instead from an unknown number: “Clara rushed to hospital early this morning. Massive hemorrhaging. No word yet. Her mom’s coming into the city to be with Lu. Will send details when I’ve got them. —Pam.” Clara’s neighbour. And while themessage should have sent Jess into a panic, instead it seemed impossibly abstract, almost absurd and just left her confused. How could this be real? And what was Jess supposed to do now? Surely not stay here listening to the men talk incoherently about blockchain and NFTs.
