Of course he’s resentful, he must be, he …
Susan took a deep breath. Alex had never expressed any such feelings to her, of course — everything he had said on the subject was quite to the contrary (“To tell you the truth, Sue, I think it’s a great idea!”)
But that wasn’t good enough for Susan, lying awake in the Brooklyn dark in the middle of the night, surrounded by a shadowy forest of wardrobe boxes and furniture in an unfamiliar room. Surely Alex thought terrible things of her, surely he seethed every time he looked at her. Why, otherwise, had the question of more children never been raised between them? Somehow the time to bring it up always seemed wrong. Somehow it always felt like if she did bring it up, he would launch into a list of reasons why a bigger family was impossible right now, would slam the door on the question, just as he had slammed the door shut on the artists’ loft with a harbor view in Red Hook …
… oh, hell, Susan, you don’t need that place anymore, you got this place, remember?
This thought, vaguely comforting though it was, led her back along her twisting maze of anxiety, to yet more things that needed to be done: find out when recycling goes out, find a nonfilthy Laundromat — no washer/dryer, remember? — look into preschool programs for Emma for January — she had secured a slot at a well-regarded place in the Flatiron District, but now Susan had wrenched up the family and moved them here, for no reason, for no good reason …
Susan sat up, panting, clutching a hand to her chest. “Shit,” she said to the darkness.
The bedside clock read 2:34. Susan rose, stepped into the bathroom, and took the other half of the Ambien.
Reluctant to return to bed, Susan turned the other way out of the bathroom, slipped past the linen closet, and creaked open the door of Emma’s new room. Looking down at the peaceful, sleeping figure of her daughter, Susan felt almost unbearably in love with her. Emma’s little chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She had her father’s thick dark hair and big brown eyes, but her small frame and sometimes-playful/sometimes-hesitant spirit were all Susan.
“Oh, sweet pea,” she murmured. Gingerly she eased the covers down from where Emma had tugged them up under her chin. She insisted on being tucked in so tightly, even in the late-summer heat.
Then Susan glanced at the window and gasped. “Oh God! Oh my God!” she said, loudly, scaring herself in the quiet dark of the bedroom.
Emma stirred but didn’t wake. Susan stepped closer to the window and gaped, wide-eyed, at where a person, or the shadow of a person, was standing in the backyard, leaning against the rickety back fence and staring up. The man was massive. In his hand was the long barrel of a gun, or some kind of club, or … something … in the darkness, from this distance, it was impossible to say.
“Alex!” Susan shouted, but he didn’t answer. Susan’s heart was knocking at her ribs, and she clutched at the windowsill. “Alex! God damn it, Alex!”
Emma shifted and moaned in her sleep. Susan opened her mouth to scream again — she would have to go in there and shake him awake. But then she looked again, and there was nothing — no one — in the yard.
Whatever Susan had seen, or thought she had seen, it was gone.
4
On Monday morning, exhausted from her nocturnal adventure and the fitful sleep that had followed, Susan sipped her coffee and scrolled through headlines on her iPhone while Emma toyed with her breakfast. When the nanny rang the bell at 8:50, a full twenty minutes late, Susan walked briskly down the hall to let her in, and a moment later Emma hopped down from the kitchen chair and flew into her arms.
“Marni! Marni! We live in this house now!”
“I know, buddy,” said Marni, and swept the little girl up, mouthing “I am so sorry” to Susan over Emma’s shoulder. Susan smiled forgivingly, boiling inside. Marni only worked from 8:30 until 2:30, and Susan counted on those hours, especially during a week like this one, when she had a million and a half things to do.
“The subways totally threw me for a loop,” Marni apologized. “The Internet said it’d take me twenty-three minutes to get here, but it was at least twice that.”
“That stinks,” said Susan evenly, thinking Wow, the Internet was wrong. Never could have been predicted.
“Hey, the new place looks great,” said Marni, and Emma dragged her by the hand to show her around.
Marni was a doctoral student in psychology at Fordham, finished with her coursework but still writing her dissertation, with mornings free and a need for extra cash. She had been working for them only about seven months — and had agreed, to Susan’s mild chagrin, to stay in the job after their move. Marni’s seeming inability to arrive on time was just one of several things that bothered Susan. She was, in general, a bit sloppy, leaving the lunch dishes in the sink and only occasionally bothering to clean the stroller and diaper bag before she left for the day.
There was also a collegiate looseness about Marni, an easy sexiness of tousled hair, multiple-pierced ears, and tight T-shirts that rubbed Susan the wrong way. She knew very little about Marni’s personal life, but the young woman had never mentioned any particular boyfriend, and Susan had at some point decided that this indicated not chasteness but rather the opposite: an active and unsettled romantic and sexual life. Susan frequently imagined (and reprimanded herself for doing so) that Marni was coming to her nannying job directly from her latest one-night stand.
Alex’s days started early, and he was usually gone before Marni arrived and home long after she left. He never paid any particular attention to her, which was just fine by Susan.
“So, Emma-roo,” said Marni, tossing her little H&M jean jacket casually on top of a packing box as they returned from their circuit of the apartment. “Were you aware that Brooklyn has its very own children’s museum?”
“It does? Let’s go there! Let’s go there!” Emma bounced around Marni in a loopy circle. “Mom! Mom! We’re going to a children’s museum!”
“Is that OK?” Marni asked Susan, who obviously couldn’t say no, not now.
Oh, stop being so annoyed, Susan told herself, digging her wallet from her pocketbook to pay for museum admission and lunch. She wondered in passing whether her occasional distaste for Marni came from her own annoyance at herself, mild but ever-present: you’re not going to work, and we’re still shelling out four hundred bucks a week for child care?
She gave Emma a shower of kisses, handed Marni a pair of twenties, and headed out the door.
Susan’s first stop was Trader Joe’s, at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street, so she could fill the fridge with milk and yogurt and stock the pantry with applesauce and juice boxes and cooking oil. Alex did most of the cooking, but Susan generally handled the shopping. She moved swiftly through the aisles, bopping her head to “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” and lingering briefly in the frozen meat section before adding FIND A BUTCHER to her to-do list and moving on. Next to Trader Joe’s was a spacious wine shop run by twenty-something hipsters, where she picked up two reds and two whites from a “ten-and-under” table. “This Montepulciano is the bomb,” said the girl behind the counter, who sported auburn pigtails, oversized plastic-framed glasses, and an arm sleeved with colorful tattoos. “Oh? Rad,” said Susan, thinking, I love Brooklyn.