SHE’S HER BUT not her: bloated, splotched skin, no makeup; her hair up and unkempt; still beautiful. I look down furtively to see if there’s a car seat that I somehow missed, if she brought the baby with her. I look at her abdomen, wondering if the baby was made up.
Hey, I say.
All that talking, years of reading: There was a time I thought that all language might contain something of value, but most of life is flat and boring and the things we say are too. Or maybe it’s that most of life is so much stranger than language is able to make room for, so we say the same dead things and hope maybe the who and how of what is said can make it into what we mean.
* * *
She looks like she might melt, she might disassemble in our hallway. I think I should pick her up, carry her into our room and hold her, rub her back until she falls asleep.
I almost hug her but I stay standing in the doorway.
I like the place, she says.
Come in, I say, backing away.
Is something burning? she says, having still not come in.
I look past her to Josslyn’s door.
My husband’s working. The girls are home but with the babysitter.
Who’s here, Mommy? they both yell. They come running out of their bedroom.
The four-year-old grabs Sasha’s hand and tries to pull her into her room. You want to play with us? she says.
Mariah, I say, to the babysitter.
Guys, I say.
Sasha’s started crying. Our four-year-old still holds her hand and tells her crying is how your body gets the sad out and it’s fine.
The babysitter scoops them back into their room.
You want coffee? I say. Water? I look through the pantry. Gin?
These are the only beverages I have on hand. She looks up at me from underneath a tent of hair; she says, Water would be great.
I hand her a glass, not meeting her eyes, not wanting to make her cry harder. I see stains popping on either side of her shirt and realize that her breasts are leaking. I nod toward her chest. You want to use my pump?
She looks down.
Fuck, she says.
I get the hand pump from the bathroom and the electric pump from our bedroom just to give her options. She nods toward the electric pump, which does both breasts at once, and I twist the bottles onto the horns for her while she sips her water and I plug the machine into the wall.
Such a fucking mess, she says.
She pulls her shirt up and I see she doesn’t have a bra on. Her belly has that wore-out, saggy look of having held a baby recently.
The pump starts its whir and I see her breathe. The milk drops into the bottles, filling slowly. I pour myself a glass of water and sit at the kitchen table while she sits on the couch so I don’t accidentally rub her back.
How was the trip? I say.
Long.
I don’t want to ask about the baby, but we can hear my babies, playing, laughing; the four-year-old yells at her sister and both Sasha and I smile and then she starts to cry again.
They’re so big, she says.
I know, I say, shaking my head.
They look like you, she says.
I stand up and walk over to the couch and I take the horns from her so I can screw the caps onto the bottles as she wipes herself. I bring the apparatus over to the sink to wash it while she pulls her shirt down, sips more water, sits back on the couch. I put the bottles in the fridge.
It’s cold, she says. She did not have a coat when she got here.
I wasn’t really thinking, she says. When I left.
What were you … I say.
Are you okay? I ask.
She looks at me. This was a stupid question.
I hear the babysitter yell out the name of our two-year-old as she opens up their bedroom door and waddles, quickly, toward me. Milk? she says, reaching underneath my shirt.
Not now, baby, I say.
Please, mama, she says.
I don’t mind, says Sasha.
The two-year-old takes this as assent enough and climbs up onto my lap as Sasha watches. I unhook my bra and let her latch on, calling to the babysitter that it’s fine.
I watch Sasha seem to reach for the baby’s foot, then stop.
It’s so mammalian, she says.
I laugh. I say: It is.
How old is she?
Two, I say.
And the other one? she says. She knows her name, I think, and I wonder why she doesn’t name her.
She’s four.
What’s four like? she says.
Magic, I say, without thinking. So much language. She’s such a person, I say.
I think both our brains think briefly about the baby who would now be ten.
Yeah, she says. Eyes still on the baby’s feet.
I want to shift the conversation to her. I want to make sure, while knowing there’s no way that this is possible, that she’s okay.
Your … I start. “Baby,” “marriage,” “life” are all the words that flit through my head as awful stand-ins for the part of her right now that I am most concerned about. Did you …
Can we just sit a while? she says.
* * *
My husband comes home and makes all of us dinner.
He hugs her and I’m so grateful for him, this man who’s good and kind and sees clearly she’s been crying.
How are you? she says to him, more earnest than I would have thought.
I’m fine, he says, gesturing toward the squealing children and the mess of our apartment. Chaos.
She laughs and I love him in a million different ways from how I did when he hugged her, in a million different ways from how I loved him when she met him that first time, years ago.
* * *
At dinner, the four-year-old gives us a ten-minute tutorial on chinchillas and then performs, with her sister, how high they jump in the Andes Mountains, where, she says, they live. The two-year-old tells Sasha about playing on the swings at recess with her friends. My husband talks about the house he’s working on that has a cave and waterfall attached to the backyard pool. She stays mostly quiet, asking the girls questions, smiling at me as I cut their food, clean up spilled water, share my seltzer with the baby when she asks.
I watch her watch them and think how obscenely lucky I am. I am touching, the whole time, the baby, then her sister, then my husband, as I walk past him to get the four-year-old more food.
My husband bathes them and she and I sit together on the couch and she asks more questions about our lives now. I tell her, briefly, about work.
* * *
I make up a bed for her on the couch in the back room close to the girls’ room. I have nowhere else, I start to say, but think it might be worse, apologizing for putting her so close to our kids. I wonder if I should call her husband. I think I have her sister’s number. I could send him a message on Instagram, or post a picture of her, tag her in it, let him know she’s safe.
I climb up into our bed, where my husband reads.
Is she okay? he says.
I’m not sure.
He kisses me and I kiss him back in the way that tells him I’m not just saying good night. I lean toward him. We have sex with me on top for the first time in months and he falls asleep and I stare up at the ceiling, trying to listen for her breathing, until I finally drift off. At 2:00 am I wake him up and we have sex again. I run my hands up his back and chest and reposition myself and tell him to slow down and crawl off of him and push my back into his chest until he slips inside of me again. He holds his hands against my stomach and I rock into him and he comes and I do too. He kisses my forehead, and I laugh a minute later when I come back from the bathroom and he’s already passed out.