* * *
We have to dress up and get a babysitter.
We can’t afford a babysitter, I say.
We can’t afford not to go, my husband says.
We also can’t afford this dinner if we have to pay our share. This man for whom my husband built six walls of bookshelves on the Upper West Side wants to talk to him about some other opportunities. We have seventy-two dollars in our bank account. Once we pay the babysitter we’ll have none. We have to go because my husband has begun to think that maybe he should opt back in to the systems we decided to opt out of, and this guy might offer him a job, might offer him a way back in.
* * *
I put on mascara and a dress, then take it off and put on a black turtleneck and black pants and wash my face. I’m warier of looking like I’ve tried too hard and failing than I am of seeming like I don’t care what they think. The children play in their room and I go in and read them books while my husband gets dressed.
The sitter comes and I hold the children’s faces, kiss them. The baby quickly nurses. They’re fresh from the bath and their hair’s wet and they pile overtop me. I don’t want to go, I say to no one. Come on, my husband says, from the hallway by the door. The building still smells like smoke. We walk down all the flights of stairs.
* * *
Who are these people again? I ask on the subway.
He has a start-up, says my husband. I think maybe it’s my fault for saying all those years ago that he should do the thing he wanted. I think the thing that he was proud of, we were, his not being like them, has begun to feel less like what he wanted. We’re both tired of being broke all of the time.
Right, I say.
Fuck start-ups, I say. After, we’re quiet for a while.
The ads on the train are for a freelance website that I’ve never been on. They espouse the power of working nonstop, entrepreneurship. Before I got this job at the high school, I had five jobs and my husband had two and that’s when we went a hundred thousand dollars in debt.
I hate this fucking ad campaign, I say to my husband.
I’ve said this before so he just nods.
Try not to swear this much at dinner, he says.
* * *
The people that we meet are our age. It takes me a minute to place her, but she sat next to me at the party on Long Island, held the baby’s foot while I nursed her, months ago.
The guy says my husband’s name but only part of it, like they’re buddies. It’s the same name my husband’s friends from college use when we have awkward dinners with them at our house so we don’t have to split the bill.
The woman goes in to kiss me, but I realize too late and pull away from her and she looks down. I’m sorry, I say. She’s pretty. She has long, dark hair and dark-red lipstick, large earrings, and her eyes are lined.
She’s a corporate lawyer, I remember.
That’s so wonderful, she says, when I tell her I teach at the high school.
I really love the kids, I say.
Of course, she says. As if it is so generous of me. Of course you do, she says.
I wonder if this is all we’ll say the whole night.
How are your little girls? she says.
Good, I say. Magic, I say. Relieved she brought them up.
We’re still trying, she says, leaning close to me. I like her better up close. I see her want in the way her eyes dip closer to her nose; I smell it, desperate and sour, on her breath and lips.
On the menu I see that there is not a single meal that costs less than all the money we have sitting in our bank account.
I get a gin martini and my husband gets a whiskey and I register that, if we have to pay for our half, we are already close to having spent too much.
I talk about our kids while our drinks are delivered. I love talking about our kids and I show her pictures of them on my phone. My face heats up as I drink more and I’m sorry for her as she leans close to me.
How long have you been trying? I ask.
She touches the rim of her martini glass with a manicured finger. Two years? she says.
I touch her elbow and then wonder if I shouldn’t.
I’m thirty-five, she says.
I’m younger than her but don’t say this.
My best mom friend had her first kid at forty, I say. This is true, and she smiles, holds her hand over her mouth.
We get a shared plate of hors d’oeuvres and now we officially cannot afford this dinner. I drink more quickly. My drink is empty and we all get another round. I’m drunk already because I never drink because I’m still nursing.
I watch her stare at my husband as he talks.
You live in Brooklyn? she says. I tell her the name of our neighborhood. Nice, she says, nods.
Someone was murdered in our building, I say without thinking. She looks confused, then shocked, then scared. I tell her the whole story, thrilled, somehow, to watch the shape of it on her face. I feel both more separate and closer to both her and Josslyn as I go on.
Did they catch him? she says. Will you stay there?
We can’t afford to move, I say, and shrug.
She drinks more and I tell her that they caught the guy within hours of his fleeing the building. They know now he was a stranger, not her son.
They think he’s schizophrenic, I say. His face and hands were burned.
How awful, she says.
* * *
I’m breathless by the end and flushed and then I’m very sorry. I stand up to go to the bathroom and spend five minutes in a stall so I don’t cry. I want to go home and lie down quiet in bed with our girls until they’re grown.
When I come back my food has been served and is wilting. Everyone looks anxious, waiting, their napkins spread across their laps, food untouched.
You okay? my husband whispers.
Yeah, I say. I touch my glass’s rim like she did.
We have a proposition, the guy says once I’ve sat and sliced into the steak but not yet chewed it. I look down at my food. I drop my fork, reach for my drink.
Okay, my husband says. Go on.
* * *
When we get home I’ve been crying and my husband’s angry and my phone’s dead in my pocket and both girls are deep asleep in bed. The babysitter is watching TV on her computer and my husband goes to pay her. I sit on the edge of one of the cribs we converted to beds and watch them sleep and cry a little more.
I grab hold of their feet; I kiss them; I find my husband in bed. They want, it turns out, not his skills or smarts or any of the kind of long-term employment that we had hoped for. They’ve offered us twenty thousand dollars for my husband’s sperm.
* * *
It’s raining the next morning, and I put on a long-sleeved shirt and shorts and wrap my phone inside a plastic bag so I can bring it with me. The rain’s torrential and I don’t see a single other person; it’s still dark out. Water sloshes in my shoes and I have to wipe it from my eyes so I can see. Sometimes, as my feet fall into puddles, I wonder if I’ve misjudged their depth and my calves and thighs clench, just before my feet meet ground again and they take off.
I take my clothes off in the hall of our apartment when I get home. I leave a wet pile outside our front door, socks and shoes and shirt and shorts, and I peel off my sports bra and my underwear inside the bathroom as it fills with steam from the shower and I get in.