The moment of bliss, of purpose, is broken. By her own stupidity. Because coffee on the couch is nothing, but being nasty to her four-year-old, a common occurrence, really, feels unforgivable, particularly first thing in the morning. The shame, the guilt, the desire to be away from herself, away from her flawed mothering, is now the current pulling her under. The speed with which her emotions turn upside down. The alarmingly fast exchange of happiness and gratitude for self-disgust and impatience. She tries to right things. “Don’t worry, Tom. I’m sorry I yelled. I’ll get a towel, it’s no big deal.”
“Shit is a bad word, mommy.”
Sonia ignores him and fetches a towel. Her day has begun. She can’t stand it. She can’t stand to be in her apartment, the children clawing at her. Out. She needs out.
“Let’s go, let’s get out of here, let’s go to the park,” she says, bending over to fruitlessly wipe at the brown stain on the couch. The boys stand, watching her. “We can get ice creams.”
“Ice cream!” Tom squeals and starts running randomly — to the TV set, to the kitchen, “Ice cream! Ice cream, yeah, yeah!” Mike, too, starts running in circles, saying, “Ice cream! Ice cream!”
It’s not yet eight in the morning and Sonia’s already promised them ice cream. What is wrong with her? Is she that desperate? She’s pregnant, she remembers, relieved that something besides herself is to blame. That’s why she’s behaving so badly! She consoles herself with this thought, but really, she often resorts to strange, needy bribes to get through the day.
After sticking them in front of the TV, she showers and dresses. She pulls on the same elastic waist, black-turning-greyish-green cotton pants from the Gap that she wears, quite literally, every day. Her bra has brown stains under the armpits. She fastens it hastily, pulling her loose-skinned, now small again, breasts around a bit to fit them in properly. Her breasts will grow again, as her pregnancy continues, and this excites her. She loves her breasts when she’s pregnant, even more when she’s nursing.
The phone rings. It’s Dick. “Hi, honey. I’m getting on a plane after the meeting this morning. I shouldn’t be home too late.”
“I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“You heard me, I’m pregnant.” Sonia shakes her foot anxiously. She hunches over the phone. “I’m fucking pregnant. I just took a test.” There’s a pause. “Well, say something, asshole.”
“Listen, I’m just a little shocked. Maybe it’s a mistake. I mean, we’ve been really careful …”
“It’s not a fucking mistake. Fuck you. It’s not my fault, either, Dick. What do you mean we’ve been really careful? And someone’s not been careful? I’m not fucking anyone else, for your information, and I resent—”
“My god! You are pregnant! I know it! Because you are already being a psychotic cunt!”
Sonia slams the phone down. “Let’s go, boys! Let’s go get ice cream,” she hollers, as she heads down the steps from her loft into the living room, where they sit glued to cartoons. “It’s beautiful out! Let’s go to the park!”
“Yeah, yeah, ice cream! The park! Yeah!” The boys follow her out the door and down the walk-up steps. She grabs her stroller, shoved in a closet in the entranceway, and she swiftly belts Mike into it. Tom grabs a hold of the stroller and out they go, the three of them, in search of fake milk products glittering with food coloring and a bench in a shady spot at one of the parks, where Sonia will plant her exhausted and already sickly self as her children pretend to be dinosaurs and other ungodly creatures, destroying all that is around them with their special powers.
3
One of the more strategic events of Sonia’s days involves picking the right park in the Cobble Hill area of Brooklyn. Her two main concerns are the crowd — who will be there? will it be too crowded? — and in the summer, whether or not there is shade. In the winter, of course, she searches out the sunny spots. But the last thing she needs today is to cook in some hot-as-hell, breeze-free, garbage-can-and-diaper-stink asphalt playground. She opts for Carroll Park, a long walk down Court Street, but worth it for shade and general anonymity. She carries her cell phone, thinking to call a friend, but rarely does. She is a cell phone hater for the most part. The closer parks, the parks on Henry Street built near the Long Island College Hospital, have become for Sonia unbearably full of women who know each other. Incestuous. They’re nice playgrounds and she feels lucky to have them just around the corner from her Atlantic Avenue apartment, but socially, they feel like high school. Sonia hated high school, for the most part. She liked her friends, and she liked certain classes, but the in-group, the out-group, the viciousness of it, repelled her. At Carroll Park she occasionally runs into women she knows, but mostly these are women she likes, and more often, there’s no one she knows.
Sometimes this is what she wants. Anonymity. No small talk. Or big talk. To be alone in a crowd, or just to be alone. To maybe chat briefly with some mother she doesn’t know, but to be able to sit and read, or sit and think, occasionally pushing Mike in the swing or cuddling and tussling her boys before they leap up to run around like the maniacs they are. Because they are maniacs, really. Just like every other boy she knows, and some little girls. Wanting never to sit still, not even at mealtime, thank you, turning everything into a gun: their little fingers, a stick, a carrot, a plastic spoon. (Sonia, on pressure from all the other Brooklyn mothers, doesn’t buy toy guns for her kids.) Tom even once pointed a tampon at her he’d fished out of her purse. Sonia loves all this boy energy, the mayhem, the straightforward aggression. Having grown up with one sister, a ladylike little girl who made Sonia feel clutzy and wild, and her domineering mother, she loves having her boys. She loves their lack of passivity, their lack of calculation.
When Sonia arrives at Carroll Park, it’s early in the day yet, and all but empty. The air is still clear and slightly cool and an abundance of shady benches lie outstretched before her. On a far bench, at the end of the playground, is one other person, a friend of Sonia’s, a woman named Clara. They wave at one another. Short, mousy hair; big, plain brown eyes; a ski-jump nose; a bow mouth; wearing a collared shirt always, Clara is the most conservative person Sonia knows, in both dress and politics. Right out of a prep-school, field-hockey-uniform catalogue. Living proof that Talbot’s still matters greatly to many. Clara runs in marathons, plays tennis (Sonia wants to learn now too), has a beige couch with a matching beige armchair and a beige rug.