“It’s safe to drive a tiny baby all that way?” Alex said skeptically.
Of this liability, Maya had not even thought. There were so many, all of them unfamiliar, that this one had not even occurred to her. She wanted to give her husband a restraining look, but she was grateful for the question. Alex noticed things that she didn’t — by leaving unnoticed the many things that she couldn’t ignore. He allowed those to slide off him, leaving attention for those that mattered.
“It’s seven weeks,” Laurel said. “Their necks are ready by then. That’s why we waited to come here till now. We started the paperwork only once he came out, but we found you a good while before he was born.” Together, Maya and Alex looked at Mishkin behind them, but he only shook his head — he didn’t know that Laurel and Tim had been planning to drive. Maya didn’t know whether she should resent Laurel. She looked at Alex — his eyebrows were crossed with suspicion.
“Why did you pick us?” he said.
“Alex,” Maya said. “Let them come in, look around.”
“If they’ve graced us with a visit, they can tell us,” Alex said in a way that left clear that no one would be coming in or looking around until the question was answered.
“It was one thing the most,” Laurel said. “It was what you wrote about putting your roots down here for a long time. Here in New Jersey.”
Hearing his work praised, Alex softened. “And all the other things that go without saying,” Laurel went on. “You’re good people. Stable, and nice home. You have money. You know what’s a baby.”
Alex looked at Maya, asking with his face what he should do with the child.
“Please come in, won’t you?” she said to Laurel and Tim.
The guests moved down the hallway. The young man favored his right leg. In the presence of such foreign characters, the spread Maya had spent all of Saturday preparing suddenly appeared unacceptably foreign itself. With forced casualness, she took her guests through the dishes. They nodded politely.
“We really shouldn’t,” Tim said. “We’ve got a lot of driving ahead. They only gave us so much time at work.”
“But you’ll stay the night,” Maya said. “We have extra bedrooms. We want you to see the house.”
“And what is work?” Alex said, hoping to distract the guests from agreeing. He unburdened himself of the car seat on the tiled floor and quickly checked Maya to see if he shouldn’t have.
“Laurel’s at the front desk at the Ramada,” Timothy said. “And me—” He wanted to fidget with his cap but it was long off his head. He rasped his buzz cut with a nail.
“He does rodeo,” Laurel said.
“That’s with the bulls,” Alex said. “And that’s a living?”
Tim shrugged. Alex sensed that he was wearing a mask of discomfort for Laurel’s sake. “You have one out here too, once a year,” Tim said. “At Madison Square Garden. More of a show.”
“We haven’t been to that,” Alex said.
“But we will,” Maya reassured Tim. “We will go this year, absolutely.”
“No, you won’t,” Laurel said. From a pocket hiding among the pleats of her dress, she withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The other four stared at her.
“I didn’t start it till after,” she said, reading the togetherness of Maya’s brows. Also Mishkin’s — finally, Maya and Mishkin were concerned in the same way.
“Because we were told the child was healthy,” Alex said. Maya, who had been exhaling after Laurel’s comment, froze after Alex’s.
“The child is healthy,” Tim said curtly. His face unclenched, regretting his sharpness. “This process been stressful on Laurel.”
“Hooray, Tim, for your heart is twenty-twenty now,” she said.
“No one smokes in the house,” Alex observed.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Maya said, staring at her husband. She wished to reward Laurel for starting to smoke only after the birth of her — their? her Maya’s? her Laurel’s? — son.
“I’ll go outside,” Laurel said.
“I’ll join you,” Maya said.
“You don’t smoke,” Alex reminded her.
“I can stand with our guest,” she said.
Outside, a cobalt darkness had got hold of the evening. Maya loved this hour. The last light had crept out of the sky, but the full blackness had yet to take over.
“If you move around the corner with me,” Maya said to Laurel, “I’ll have one with you.”
They smoked in silence. Laurel folded one arm under the other.
“I’m sorry we did this,” Laurel said at last. “I want you to know I am.”
Maya looked at her with surprise. She had been thinking of herself as the one in error, and only now wondered why. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “My husband and I don’t have the same views.”
“Why his way, then?”
“His need is greater,” Maya said.
“I needed to see it for myself,” Laurel said. “You can understand that, can’t you?”
Maya nodded eagerly. “Of course I can.” She pulled on her cigarette without desire. “Are you married?” she said. “The forms didn’t say.” She added hastily: “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“We fight like married people, don’t we?” Laurel said. She seemed to enjoy the thought.
Maya watched Laurel out of the side of her eyes. This little body had brought forth a child. From where? It must have retracted immediately to its original shape: that was the meaning of youth. Maya surveyed with jealousy the pears of Laurel’s breasts, the slight knob of the nose. This body had brought forth a child. As hers never would.
Laurel was going to chuck the butt into the grass, then remembered where she was and crushed it against the heel of her boot. She dropped it into a pocket of her dress. It had many pockets.
“It’ll smell,” Maya said, watching Laurel light another. “Here, we’ll put it in the garbage. Oh, I must be so irritating, talking like your mother. You are half my age, but already a mother yourself.”
“Just because we’re here,” Laurel said, “you don’t have to worry about us trying to interfere with you. I just needed to see it.” Youthfully, she added: “I promise you.”
Maya felt relief — on Alex’s behalf. She thought that if ever she had been unfaithful to Alex, he would have wanted her to keep it a secret. And she would not have been able to.
“Some things you should know,” Laurel said. “I haven’t been breast-feeding him even though this milk wants to come out of me like the Yellowstone. And we haven’t named him even though a nameless baby is a pretty Friday-the-thirteenth kind of thing.” She dragged on her cigarette hungrily, then looked around her. “I’m just going to sit down in the grass here for one minute.”
Before Maya could object or offer a blanket, Laurel was sitting on the grass, her boots one under the other and the pleated sundress flared over her thighs. Maya had an impolite desire to touch her skin. Even in the near-bituminous darkness, she saw it was thick like rubber, just manufactured. Maya was hardly an old maid herself, thirty-four, in America that was just starting out, but Laurel was like a former version of herself come to shame her for waiting so long. Most girls in Kiev were mothers by twenty-one. Instead of a child, Maya had given birth to a new life in America. It was twelve years old now, and she was ready for another. She wanted for it a sibling.
“This grass is soft like hand cream,” Laurel said. “It’s luscious.”