And he’s right. She needs to steal his soul, as she’s lost her own. And she lunges at him, her hand, for a moment, on his wrist. He’s all teeth and silent laughter now, his head thrown back, and she reaches and reaches again, but he’s quicker. He moves his hand up and then to the left and then to the right. She’s frantically grabbing, but he moves too fast. She falls again, sinking, knee-deep in the snow. She reaches, but he’s taller and more able. And he’s not pregnant.
At last she stops herself. Grunting, she tries to stand, but can’t. She has fallen. The snow, the cold, her huge body. She lies there in the dark and the white. He looms above her, the man she most wanted to be.
She can barely make out his face. But it’s him.
20
February 8
“Were you here in this hospital the whole time? Why were you here?” Tom asks Sonia, a look of perplexed wonder on his beautiful face. She can’t believe how much she missed her boys. And how much he seems to have grown.
“No, sweetie,” Sonia says, “I wasn’t here the whole time. Do you want to hold your baby sister?”
“Ok!” Tom says. Sonia passes the baby to her older boy and she remembers doing the same thing when Mike was born and what a moment it was, one of those you take with you to your grave. He’s too little to do this on his own, really, and Dick supervises next to him on the couch, making sure he holds his sister’s head upright. She feels and sees the emotion brimming in Dick and it’s so different than when her sons were born, so much more complicated, his hurt mixed in with the rest of it. He looks exhausted and she’s the one who just gave birth. But he looks exhausted on some cellular level that a week of good night sleeps probably won’t help. And there she is staring at her husband, her son, her newborn daughter. The absolute richness of life floors her and she has to look away.
“She’s ugly, Mommy,” Tom says, apologetic, sort of whispering.
“She’s just brand new. She’ll get prettier, I promise.”
“Daddy said you were on a long vacation. It was too long, Mommy.”
“I know. I got lost on my way back. I’m sorry. But I’m back now,” Sonia says. She tries to make eye contact with Dick, looking for some support, some idea of what he’s thinking. She’s not even sure what she’s thinking, how much damage she’s done. She just wants to be all together, at home. The thought of another hotel room, even this hospital, she can’t bear it. And she can’t do this on her own. She needs Dick. Dick avoids her eyes and Sonia thinks that’s OK, that at least he’s here, he came to Philadelphia when she called. Regardless: shame, remorse, and a general confusion flood her, and she leans back on the hospital bed and closes her eyes.
“Don’t go to sleep, Mommy.” Mike says, who grew so much in just two months, crawling up in the bed with her. She can barely look at him. She trembles. Will they ever forgive her? Or will they barely remember the time their mother left them and came back with a baby? She hopes for the latter. Hell, she only remembers things like getting her finger slammed in the car door or the time her dad accidentally ran over a cat. Big events. Maybe her absence was a sort of a nonevent, maybe not. It wasn’t the bloody kind of painful. People used to leave their children all the time. If they had to. And they still do. Sonia thinks of all those Tibetan nannies she met once, whose children remained in India while they took care of white people’s children in Park Slope, not seeing their own children for years. Of course, they had few choices. Whereas Sonia’s whole life was one choice after another, some she knew to be bad at the time, some that felt good, but, looking back, were really bad. And then there were the good choices, she thinks, looking at her newborn daughter, feeling the warmth of Mike’s skin against her, his little bones poking into her still delicate, ripped-open body. He’s hurting her a bit, but she can’t push him away.
“I’m not sleeping, just closing my eyes for a minute. Soon Daddy’s going to take you two to get something to eat and then soon after that, we’ll drive back home. Won’t that be nice?”
Later, in the car, driving back to Brooklyn, the boys buckled up and falling asleep, not in car seats (which thankfully Dick hasn’t said anything about), their sister in a new infant car seat between them, Sonia reminding herself that for a million years no one used car seats, that Dick was a good, safe driver, and, trying not to think of the other bad drivers out in the world, she turns to Dick. She says, awkwardly — or forcing herself to put the awkwardness in her voice, because, in spite of her anxieties, she feels quite natural saying what she’s about to say, as though, somehow, everything is back as before—“Thanks for coming to get me.”
“I came to get my daughter, too.”
“I suppose you’re going to be an asshole too, for some time.”
Dick still doesn’t look at her. “I suppose.”
“Well, that probably can’t be helped.”
“Probably not.”
Then a silence. And her feeling of naturalness crumbles. What does she expect? A warm welcome? Hugs and kisses? She abandoned her family. She’s an idiot in so many ways but she’s not delusional. The warmth of other bodies. Intimacy. Life seems so meaningless without them.
Sonia says, “She’s beautiful, the little girl. We have to name her.” She thinks she sees tears in Dick’s eyes. They have a baby, a new baby and nothing in the entire world is more remarkable.
“Was it worth it, Sonia?” he says quietly. She checks that the boys are still sleeping. She says, “I have no fucking idea, Dick. No idea. But it’s over. And to me, that’s all that matters. I’m where I belong even if I don’t feel like I belong. But I’m done fighting it. Believe me.”
“I don’t believe you. I can’t trust you.”
“Well, we’ll just have to muddle through. I mean, do you want to move out, or have me move out?”
“I’m tired. I don’t know. No. I asked you to come home, remember. I’m”—he looks so hurt, Sonia has to look away—“just really angry at you.”
“I’m happy to see you,” Sonia says. And she is: his thinning hair, his narrow jaw, his broad shoulders. All of it. Everything about him warms her right now. He’s her husband, the father of her three children. They’re together now, as they should be. “I just lost it. I’m better now. Now that she’s outside of me. Or something. And I need you, Dick.”
“I hate you when you’re pregnant.”
“Well maybe you should be grateful I left you then!” Sonia is only sort of joking. “I hate me when I’m pregnant, too. Or at least, it changes me. And not all for the better. But it’s over now, Dick. And she’s so beautiful.” Sonia looks back at her baby girl. She couldn’t be any prouder, any more in awe, any more high with exhaustion.
Dick says nothing. And they drive home like that, silently, until the baby starts to cry.