The baby grows inside her. Carter brings home fruit and leafy greens and obscure whole grains Marin has never heard of. Before bed—when once he would have touched her—he leans down and speaks to her midsection. He insists on massaging her neck and feet, which do not bother her, and the knots running along either side of her spine, which do. Under his hands Marin cannot help but return to his mother’s pantry. Everycolor walls of foodstuff close in around her. White moths flit around the watty bulb dangling from the ceiling. How briefly her life was her own.
Then, when the child is born, something unexpected happens. Carter’s questions cease. Now the child has been here for eleven weeks and it is as though his points are moot. Or if not moot, then at least he does not raise them. She can tell he would like to—she can see their shadows traveling occasionally across his face—but he does not. Perhaps he finally loves her for who she is. Perhaps he sees that she is trying. Perhaps he is as tired as she is.
The weeks since the child was born have been exhausting but rewarding, too. The child lifts its head. He smiles. He sleeps on his father’s chest. Marin takes photos. The child will want to see this someday.
This weekend they are taking their first trip as a family, meeting up with married friends from the city to go camping at Lake Tahoe. On the plane the baby sleeps and Carter sleeps and in this peace Marin thinks for the first time how good it will feel to see these old friends from when they were young. She opens the in-flight magazine and there in the center spread are photos of the lake and captions which compare its waters to precious gems. Emerald. Sapphire. Aquamarine. She can see them there on the white ring of shore. Val. Jake. Old friends from before the child. How she’s looked forward to sitting beside them on the shore of the largest alpine lake in North America.
They meet their friends at the campsite. Val and Jake have children of their own. They also have a dog. The children are four and six. The dog is a reddish color, a copper retriever. The group goes down to the water: Carter and Marin, Val and Jake, the children, the infant and the dog.
The beach is rockier than Marin would have liked, but the water is clearer than she could have imagined. Val and Carter swim with the children. Carter makes a spirited effort to teach the boy the front crawl—It starts with a glide, he says. The glide is everything—but the boy loses interest. Marin sits with the baby on a blanket under an umbrella. The baby wears a hat.
The dog runs wild wild wild. Runs like it’s never run in its whole dog life. Jake throws a tennis ball and the dog brings it back. The dog wants so bad it doesn’t know what it wants, and each time it returns Jake must wrest the ball from the folds of its wet black lipflesh. Jake throws the ball out into the water. He wears a baseball cap with white sweat lines creeping up the band. Once, the dog jumps up and knocks the bill of the hat, and Jake lifts it slightly to reposition it. Marin is shocked to see he’s lost most of the hair on the top of his head. His thick, sandy blond hair, once hearty as dune grass. She cannot imagine when this would have happened.
Each time the dog emerges from the lake it shakes itself violently, spraying Marin and the baby with stinking dog water. Jake ought to do something about this but doesn’t. Marin tries to position the umbrella so as to protect the baby from both the dog and the sun, but the maneuver is impossible. She grows to hate the dog. The damn dog’s name is Mingus. In her head she calls it Dingus. In her head she says, Go away, Dingus. Dingus, go lay down. Bad Dingus. Down the beach, a young couple is lying wrapped together in a single towel, kissing. Dingus bounds up to them and begins to growl. Jake calls to the dog, ineffectually. Sorry, he calls down the beach.
Poor kids, says Marin.
They’re young, Jake says. Plenty of time for that.
Marin scoffs and Jake turns to her. He nods to the baby in its hat and says, Been a while?
Marin looks up at him, squinting. Too long, she says.
Carter and Jake had been on the diving team together in college. Of course, she ended up with Carter, years later. But it was Jake first. Marin can still remember the first time she saw him, in the backyard at a house party, standing barefoot in the moist grass, shifting his weight gently from one foot to the other. There was a crowd gathered around him. He rubbed his hands together and pursed his fine lips. His eyes met Marin’s for a moment; then he flung himself backward, landing sturdy and fantastic on his bare feet. His audience applauded, begging drunkenly for more as Jake slipped back into his shoes.
By sunset the gang returns to camp. Jake and Carter walk to the store to get beer and marshmallows. Despite their considerable protests, the children are forced to stay behind. Val and Marin start dinner. The baby sleeps faceup on a blanket in the shade. The children throw rocks and bark chips at Dingus. They scream at each other constantly. Val does not seem to hear them. A snaky twilight settles over the lake basin. There is a smell of wood smoke and the fires of adjacent campsites visible between the branchless trunks of pine.
The men return. Hatless now and rosy headed, Jake sets a twelve-pack of IPA on the picnic table, where Marin is shucking corn. Carter goes to the baby and lifts him from the blanket. Nearby, reddening charcoal biscuits throb in the campsite grill. Val sorts through the groceries the men brought. She turns to Jake, wagging a wet package of hot dogs at him. Why did you buy these?
You like them, Jake says. Remember? We had them in Mammoth. You were surprised how much flavor could fit into such a skinny frank.
But I have chicken, says Val, gesturing to a plastic bowl where breasts, legs, thighs and wings have been marinating in blood-colored barbecue sauce.
The boy says, Get over it, Mom. Chicken is old cabbage.
Yeah, says the girl. Old cabbage.
The boy says, She’s copying me.
Val is a sport. She looks at Marin and shrugs. Old cabbage, she says. I don’t know where he got that.
Marin has a beer with her frank. She catches Carter glancing at the beer from across the table. She has not had a drink in nearly a year. But she can tonight. Marin stopped breast-feeding a week ago. She was an underproducer. When the child was born she could pump just an ounce from the right breast, two from the left. Carter kept a chart. The pediatrician told her to drink more water. She did, constantly, but it was never enough. The baby had to get fifty-one percent of his milk from the breast, Carter said. Fifty-one at least. Marin tried Mother’s Milk herbal tea. She tried blessed thistle. One fenugreek capsule a day. Two. Three. A prescription for Reglan. Still, she was expressing only three ounces on the right and two on the left. His word, expressing. Finally, they went to formula entirely. Another disappointment her husband has endured silently.
Or silently until today. In the rental car on the drive up from Reno he asked whether she was experiencing any pain from stopping. Any pressure.
No, she said.
No, said Carter, thoughtfully. I guess you wouldn’t.
After dinner the troop roasts marshmallows. The boy inevitably pokes his sister with his roasting stick. She cries and pouts and is not satisfied until Val puts him in time-out in the cabin of the RV. In the commotion of discipline and fairness, Marin retrieves another beer from the cooler.
Carter fetches the diaper bag and mixes a bottle using the jug of distilled water he bought at the store. He feeds his son, burps him, and passes the child to Marin. She paces with him around the site, waiting for him to fall asleep. Val, Jake and Carter sit in camp chairs near the fire. Jake smokes a cigar.
The little girl—Sophie is her name—climbs into her mother’s lap and squirms there. She asks, What does that baby like?
Val strokes her hair. I don’t know, Bug. Why don’t you ask Marin?