I don’t remember her getting upset like this in Ann Arbor, Robert thinks. Not in the same way. Or maybe just not towards me?
Once I was famous for being level-headed among my friends. Conversations about me often mentioned my level-headedness in celebratory terms. But perhaps there is only so much upsetness that the organism can take, aimed at it, like it has a maximum amount that it can absorb before it is full. Full of upsetness.
At the North United Methodist Church he encounters his friend Luis, also outfitted in running gear.
“Didn’t know you ran,” says Luis.
“Just started back up,” says Robert, jogging in place.
“Those are some fancy-looking shoes, Guay.”
“Brand new,” Robert says. “How is Cynthia?”
“That place on her head is getting bigger. They’re still not sure what it is.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She’s a champ. She keeps her spirits up. How’s Viola?”
“Good,” Robert says. “Real good.”
“I heard you two were expecting?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
They part ways and Robert heads north on Meridian. Robert repeats the word “expecting” over and over in his head, until it loses all meaning and becomes a sort of melody, keeping time with his footfalls: ex-pec-ting, ex-pec-ting, ex-pec-ting. The blighted storefronts near 38th give way to tree-lined streets and large, beautiful houses set far back from the road.
~ ~ ~
“Have you thought about getting something?” Robert asks Viola. He’s still sweating from his run. He thinks about toxins, sweating them out. Do you sweat toxins out? Is that a real thing?
“Getting something?” Viola asks. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, reading. There’s a light breeze from the open kitchen window.
“Like to help you through this.”
“I feel really resistant to the idea of drugs, Robert. I’ve talked about it with my talk therapist.”
“What does she say?”
“She says that drugs can occasionally be helpful in situations like mine, but that the choice is ultimately up to me.”
“Well sure. Obviously.”
“This is grief, Robert. It’s a process.”
Robert takes a shower in the master bathroom upstairs, and looks for fresh clothes. They need to do laundry. There is no underwear left in his best underwear drawer, so he gets out a pair from his second-best underwear drawer. He sits on the bed in the master bedroom, thinking. Later, he returns to the kitchen, where Viola is emptying the dishwasher.
“That was probably not the best way to respond, the other night,” he says. “Getting angry the way I did. I’m sorry about that. It’s just that we hadn’t, I mean… ”
“What?” says Viola, placing a newly clean serving bowl on the counter.
“Like there was a while where you didn’t even want me to touch you. That felt horrible. And then, a couple of nights ago, I guess it came as a surprise.”
“Oh Robert,” Viola says.
Viola pushes back Robert’s still damp hair from his forehead. She thinks: This is my husband, for whom I care very much. She thinks at the same time: I could live without him.
The ways emotions are layered, Viola thinks, and how you often can’t tell which one is the real one and which one is the one you are playing at.
~ ~ ~
Robert and Viola go to a park near their house and wander around underneath the trees. The weather is suddenly beautiful. In the park Viola and Robert spend a long time watching a squirrel attempt to carry a plastic bag up a tree. “Maybe it’s stuck to him somehow?” Viola says. “Like, maybe he was eating something inside the bag and it got caught?” The squirrel keeps getting its legs tangled in the plastic bag. Viola feels a rising sense of panic. “Maybe we should help?” she says.
“How would we help?” asks Robert.
“I’m just afraid he’s going to fall,” says Viola, her voice suddenly too high.
That night she looks through websites about potential surrogate mothers. There’s no reason to assume that the problem is on my end, she thinks. But I do. Why do I just assume that? If after all they don’t know why the miscarriages are occurring…
For each of the surrogate mothers there’s information about her ethnic background, her education, her interests, whether she speaks any languages in addition to English, etcetera. In some cases, there is a short personal statement.
“I believe that the gift of life is the most important thing one human being can give to another. I am a graduate student studying Mathematics with a particular interest in Riemannian geometry. My other interests include hiking and the struggle of the people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.”
Viola goes into the next room, where Robert is working at his desk. “My interest in them feels prurient,” she says.
“In who?”
“The women on these websites. All of their eyes are blacked out, did you know that? With those little black bars. It’s for privacy, but it still comes across as dirty, you know?”
Robert follows Viola to the next room and looks at pictures of women on the surrogate mother website, with their eyes blacked out.
“I thought we weren’t going to worry about this right now,” Robert says.
“I’m not worried about it,” Viola says. “I was just looking.”
~ ~ ~
Robert and Viola watch a DVD of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. The room around them begins to thicken with ghosts. From the crowd of ghosts, Viola’s mother steps forward, her face a mask of white powder, dark lines drawn in kohl around her eyes and mouth.
“What are you looking for?” Viola’s ghost-mother asks, impatiently. Viola realizes, abruptly, that she had been scanning the crowd of ghosts.
“I guess,” Viola starts, then says, “Nothing. Never mind. It’s stupid.” Then: “There’s that one Gwendolyn Brooks poem? About how she feels the presence of the children she might have had? Not ghosts, exactly, but potential ghosts?”
“A Gwen what poem?”
“Never mind. I already said it was stupid.”
“Little baby potential ghosts,” Viola’s ghost-mother says, taking in the room, which is a much nicer room than any room she’d lived in. She passes her hand through this object and that. “Aren’t you precious.”
Viola’s ghost-mother passes her hand through a side lamp and ends her tour of the room facing Robert. Robert frowns at the screen, seemingly deep in thought. She gives him a long arch look before shaking her head. “This guy?”
“What, Robert? My husband, who you weren’t around to meet? He’s good,” Viola says. “He’s stable. Dependable. I know that sounds like faint praise, but it’s actually kind of rare, as it turns out.”
“Robert,” Viola’s ghost-mother says, drawling the name out. She makes a face. “Bob. Bobby.”
“It’s just Robert.”
“He’s boring,” Viola’s ghost mother says.
“He’s stable. Though I’m not one-hundred percent surprised you don’t know the difference. He’s been there for me. That’s something I figured out that I need.”
Viola’s ghost-mother passes her hand through the crotch of Robert’s pants. “Not terrible,” she says, after a moment. “Still, he doesn’t get you off.”