“Are you OK?” she asks.
Sonia nods, she can’t speak. She’s suffered from panic attacks on and off in her life. She knows it will soon be over. This trip to New Jersey, this car ride with the broker.
“You looked awfully flushed,” says the Oprah-loving, churchgoing broker.
“I need to get back on the train. A train back to the City.”
“Do you want to see one more house?”
“No. I need to get back on a train, please.” Her voice comes out so calmly, but inside, she’s screaming.
Sonia nods again and starts doing the deep breathing exercises she learned long ago, when she saw Dr. Silver for the attacks. She also used to carry around a paper bag, to breathe into, so as to help her overoxygenated brain return to normal.
What if she has to start carrying a paper bag around all the time again? That was such a sad time in her life, having to go into bathrooms at parties or at work and inhale deeply into a paper bag. It worked, but it made her feel like a loser.
ON THE TRAIN RIDE back to the city, the baby inside her moves around, doing somersaults, no doubt. Sonia feels like her body is someone’s indoor swimming pool, not her own body anymore. How is Sonia going to find comfort in a house? Her body is somebody’s house and there is nothing comforting about that. The whole thing fills her with rage. The thought of a house! A big, needy thing that everyone knows you live in. The social presence of it! If Sonia bought a house, even in Kensington, she decides that it would eat her alive. No house! No comfort for her soul! No suburbs. No nothing. Just her nice two-bedroom apartment. Just some sameness during this time of more change. Another person arriving forever! And a daughter at that. The change of it fills Sonia with dread. It makes her miss her boys already. It will be even worse than when Mike was born. The anger she felt toward little needy Tom, as she tried to breastfeed. And Tom’s little disappointed face, as once again, his mother pushed him aside. “Not now! Tom. Can’t you see I’m busy with the baby?” And the minute the words came out of her mouth, the deep regret and shame. The complete lack of control. As Sonia remembers it, she barely made it through that time. Barely. She’d been so tired, she had no energy for her little, needy toddler. Babies had a way of sucking out her energy. The constant holding, the constant waking up at night. Waah! Waah! Oh, if only she had a wet nurse! But even then, even with tons of help, the real problems were emotional, like always. Because it was not like your heart immediately opened up and grew larger for the new child. No, it was a much more grueling process than that. It was a new, strong annoyance at the older child. It was stabbing, hateful guilt at those feelings. It was a falling in love with the new baby and becoming ever so slightly disappointed in the older child. With a baby, you see the faults of the older child more vividly. The baby is perfect! The child already has imperfections — the child is human. The baby is beyond human. It had been so hard! But she’d survived it, somehow made it so she loved and cared for two. But three? And a girl? Now she’ll have to be the role model, not just the mother. Now she’ll have to set an example. This horrifies her, to no end. Keeps her up at night. Keeps her dreaming of escape. She doesn’t want to try to make more room in her heart for another child. She feels full enough. She has two hands for her two boys. She has a lap big enough to hold both of them at the same time. And now, and now where would the stray one go? And who would that stray one be? Would it be Mike, the middle one, lost in the shuffle? Or Tom, the oldest, always being forced to be independent and behave well?
Dread starts to give Sonia weird rashes on her neck at night that go away by the morning. The fear of her future plants itself in her, spreading deep roots. She is in the grip of a huge change, the ushering of a new life into the world, and she’s not up to it. No, not at all.
SONIA BUYS A SMALL crib from Ikea and puts it next to their bed up in the loft. She’ll deal with moving later. Later, maybe, she’ll look for an apartment in Red Hook. Or in Tucson. Or in Madison, Wisconsin. Portland, Oregon. Now, when she has a moment during preschool hours, when she’s not at the midwife’s, when she’s not busy with some other chore, she goes to the bookstore and buys books on various places to live. Bayfield, Wisconsin! On the edge of Lake Superior, near Canada, surrounded by national parks. Gay men and artists abound! Or Birmingham, Alabama. A small rock music scene there, the band Verbena, for instance. Weird, southern hippies and beautiful old houses. South Bend? No, not South Bend. But, northern Michigan, on Lake Charlevoix! Where Hemingway once summered. Dick would listen politely to her tales of all these various places.
“What about Cuba? We could learn Spanish. The schools are great.”
“There is no food there. It’s poor. What a horrible idea.”
“The architecture is great. Prostitution is rampant. I would feel at home there. Secretaries are prostitutes.”
“You could make more money selling yourself here.”
And then, another night, Sonia says, “What about Jamaica? We could become potheads. And grow leathery skin from the sun.”
Dick sighs at his wife and puts his hand on one of her breasts. He strokes her, downward, his dry hand caressing her round stomach. “Let’s fuck,” he says his fingers heading south.
Sonia says, “I’m nearing the end of this time. The end of the having sex all the time time.” Dick’s fingers lay delicately inside her. He thumbs her clit.
“Ow! That was too rough. I’m just getting to be at the supersensitive stage. Or something.”
“I’ll be gentle,” he whispers in her face.
Sonia puts her hands over her face and the smell of her skin disturbs her. She smells yeasty, like sourdough bread. She sniffs her palms, the sides of her fingers. Did she touch something weird before she got in bed? No, she remembers washing her hands right before bed. This fermented smell is coming from her skin. She pulls her hands away and looks at them in the dark. They seem thick with veins and fluid. They will only get more so. They seem pulsing and generating some energy, and Sonia sits up, panicky, looking at the growing mound of her body.
“I smell weird.”
“No, you don’t, honey. Lie back. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if my body can do this again. Give birth. God, I feel like something is wrong.”
“You’re pregnant. You’re doing a great job. I know it’s hard.”
“You don’t know how hard it is. And I’m not doing a ‘great job.’ I haven’t done anything, except fuck you. This is happening to me, don’t you understand? I have nothing to do with it. It’s taking over me. It’s taking over my body and my soul, for God’s sake, like some parasite, like some alien virus.” Tears come to her eyes.
Dick becomes preternaturally calm. “I know I don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to belittle your experience. What I meant is that you’re being brave in the face of it, and I know, from your two other pregnancies, that it’s a hard time for you.”
“I don’t want to have sex.” Her voice is little, defeated.
“OK. Of course. If you don’t want to.”
ON THE WEEKENDS, DICK takes the car out of the garage and drives the family upstate. They stay in family resorts and watch the leaves turn every variation of orange. They drive to the Poconos without making any reservations and find a rambling place with a pond called O’Brien’s.
Sonia says, as the children run around, throwing sticks into the muddy water, “People live out here. They work and they live out here.”