Alex proposed that they wander outside for some fresh air; it was the farthest he and Maya had gone together in a while. Maya felt soldered to the bedspread, its corners crowned with tasseled pads that looked like epaulettes. But seeing Alex awaiting her authorization, she swung forward, the bag of stones in her belly sliding into her feet. She watched herself throw water on her face, recinch her ponytail, consider and then decide against her bag. She felt like an apparition. How would that read on the adoption form? “Prospective mother occasionally feels a stonelike weight on the soul.”
In the dying summer light, the humidity of the day mostly gone, jowled parents wandered in a lobster-skinned daze as their children set off sparklers and shouted. Next to them, Maya and Alex were overclothed, pale, monastic, disturbed. Weaving between the natives, they crossed the boardwalk to the beach, by now empty. Maya slipped off her shoes: the sand was grainy and cool. The ocean pounded rocks with a throttled boom, then wiped out on the shore with a hiss. Maya’s blackness lifted slightly. She marveled morosely: the gray water was indifferent to her heartbreak, but was able to lift it. Alex was not, but couldn’t. To her surprise, she didn’t feel as frightened of the ocean’s loud darkness as she expected.
She imagined a dolphin sailing out of the ocean and becoming their son. She had not thought of the child’s gender in the two months since she and Alex had first driven to IAS. It was such an obvious thing to wonder about, in fact one of the few that could set an Infertile Parent to reverie. Perhaps because she didn’t actually believe she would receive a child, son or daughter. With each step — the home inspection, the orientation, the brochure — the prospect of obtaining a child receded rather than neared, and she felt as if she were merely checking boxes so she could always say to herself that she had tried everything.
She pulled her blouse over her head, shivering quickly as a phantom wind whipped her chest. Alex called out her name questioningly; she ignored him. Her breasts, two miniature pears, felt oddly engorged, as if her imagining of motherhood had expanded them in preparation; for an unfamiliar moment, she experienced what a full-chested woman might feel like, her breasts straining at her bra. How many men had held them before Alex Rubin closed them in his grasp? Alex was a cupper, gentle and tentative; there had been pluckers, pullers, snappers, flickers, and mashers. One had emptied a full bottle of juice on her breasts before lapping it up with his tongue; some had emptied themselves. She remembered Anton, a metalhead, interrupting his vigil of sullenness to announce that they looked and tasted like marzipan. There were many. There could have been many more. Of them all, she had chosen Alex Rubin. Perhaps because he had started out tentative, apologetic, and shy; frankly, she was startled by these qualities. Had ceased to expect them from men. With her greater experience, she had given him the gift of his sexuality, and loved giving it. He bloomed in her hand, her mouth, her legs.
Her fingers met below her shoulder blades and flicked the latch of her bra, which brought forth another concerned question from Alex. The bra popped from her chest and slid down her arms until it plonked to the sand, a violet crab. Her khakis were next. To Alex’s relief, her underwear stayed on, though his eyes remained nervously on the boardwalk; the burghers walking it would not look kindly on a striptease in front of their children, and the adoption authorities would not look kindly on an arrest for public exposure. (“We would make successful adoptive parents because we have known both sides of the law. .”) Was his wife having a nervous breakdown? In frazzled moments, Alex’s instinct was to lay hands on his wife; her skin, cool and marmoreal, seemed to contain an unguent that interacted exclusively with the trouble he felt. But now she was the trouble, and so he stood, blinking, as she walked toward the water, her feet kicking up sand like a pair of hooves. His wife had nice legs that always asked for attention, even now. “I won’t be long,” she called. He leaned down and scooped up the bra, at least a slight gesture in the direction of order.
Now the ocean took Maya’s breasts in its hands. Really, she could not remember the last time she’d swum, and without clothes. The water was soapy and warm, dreadfully gray if she lowered her head under the line, so she kept it above. With one hand, she pulled down her underwear; it floated up like a thread of spittle, then disappeared inside a whitecap. She lay back, stared at the pocked bowl of the sky, let the blackening water inside her.
Her shoulders flinched and she felt a furry cloud of warmth at her thighs. In her reverie, she had floated out, and off the arch of her back she could see Alex peering out worriedly on the tips of his toes. She raised her right hand, waved. Impatiently, he waved her back to the shore. Through the waves sloshing at her ears, she heard the long calclass="underline" “Maaaa-ya.” She flipped over and began to cover the distance to shore, her arms moving above the water in a downy fog. As she swam, she imagined a thread furling out of her into the ocean, a line she would reel in when their son arrived at their doorstep.
When she emerged from the water, Alex peeled off his T-shirt and held it out like a cape. As she wrapped herself in it, he fumbled to slide her sand-crusted feet into the loops of her khakis, as if she was incapacitated.
“We’re going to have a child, Alex,” Maya said, watching him work. She dropped the T-shirt and slid her hands into his hair.
“You need to lie down, Maya,” Alex said, working below. He reminded her of her father, tying her shoelaces as she sang songs above his head and slapped at its bald pate.
“I was lying down,” she said.
They walked back to the motel, Alex’s shirtlessness blending unobjectionably with the promenade walkers. Alex supported Maya at the arms, as if she had suffered some kind of attack. She enjoyed the feel of her husband’s arms.
Alex laid Maya into bed and ordered her not to move until he returned with dinner. She watched him step outside and obeyed for some minutes, then sat up, stared at the questionnaire, and took a pencil in hand.
1. How do you give love?
A: To love is to lose. If you love someone, it means: “You winning means more than me winning.”
2. How do you receive love?
A: I don’t know.
3. How do you discipline?
A: I don’t. I want to know why, and I ask, though sometimes there is no answer.
4. Describe a great personal disappointment.
A: I once wished to cook in a café.
In this way, she went down the list. When she arrived at the free essay, she wrote:
A child is a new expedition. The ocean refreshed by a new tributary. A child is strength — as three, we will be stronger than two. And a child is wisdom — he will teach us about ourselves as we will teach him. He will be the truth when we shy from it. Can it be, one day, that we will look on our inability to have children as a blessing, because it brought him into our lives? I don’t know. The birth of a child is one of the greatest joys a human being can receive. When it’s replaced by grief because it can’t happen, the grief is as large as the joy was. (Was supposed to be.) But I will not say no. I will hope. In the meantime. .
After finishing, Maya felt an enormous exhaustion — she could not even reread what she had written. She wondered if she had caught a chill in the ocean. She pulled the tasseled edges off the bed and climbed underneath. She would nap for a minute and wake up when Alex came in. She fell asleep quickly, only laughing once because she thought: What I wrote was so boring, it’s put me to sleep!