He pulls up to my building. I fumble with my purse as he smiles at me, telling me to take my time. The car smells like fake trees. “I’m a little short today, sorry,” I tell him. “No problem,” he says, and waves his hand magnanimously.
And just like that I’m free.
* * *
…
It used to be simple to put up flyers at the library, but now they’re all in a glass case. There’s a key to open it and people have to ask us for it at the desk. My boss did that after someone started putting up hateful screeds.
There is a theory that new hate has been unleashed. Another that the amount of hate is exactly the same as it’s always been. Lorraine subscribes to the latter one. The only difference is that more people are noticing it, she says.
Someone returns a book called The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. I flip through it while I eat my lunch.
A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.”
* * *
…
Henry keeps sterilizing the bottles then resterilizing them. I want to explain to him that it’s overkill, but my guess is he’s following strict directives. I hold Iris and play with her for a while, then put her smack in the middle of their king-size bed and go to the kitchen to see what’s keeping him. He’s sterilizing the metal tongs that he uses to put the plastic bottles in the boiling water. It’s cool in the apartment, but he’s sweating buckets.
“Why don’t you take a nap?” I say. “I’ll watch her.” He whirls around to look at me. “Where is she?” I tell him I put her in the middle of the bed. He drops the tongs to go in there. She is fast asleep. “She could have fallen off,” he says. “Henry, she can’t even roll over yet.” His hands are shaking. “She could have gotten hurt,” he insists.
I make him lie down on the couch, put a blanket on him. Thirty seconds of protest and he’s out. He’s not doing well with this sleep deprivation. There’s a reason it’s used as a tool of torture. But still, everyone I know is trying to sleep less. Insomnia as a badge of honor. Proof that you are paying attention.
* * *
…
There was a bomb threat yesterday at Eli’s school. And there are rumors that a woman had her hijab pulled off on Coney Island Avenue. All the EAGLE mothers cluster together before pickup to discuss the situation. “For starters, they need to stop calling this area Little Pakistan,” one says.
When I get to work, I look up some articles on Disaster Psychology in hopes of better assisting all the people wandering around here lately.
Much of the population was in a mild stupor, depressed, congregating in small unstable groups, and prone to rumors of doom.
But I don’t know. That’s pretty much every day here.
* * *
…
Margot’s class is too crowded lately so I’ve been skipping it. “Are you sure that’s the best chant for you?” Ben asks me. He must have heard me in the shower.
Sentient creatures are numberless. I vow to save them.
Now I’m rummaging around in a drawer, trying to find some pants that fit. These new dryers are too hot. Most of our clothes shrank before I realized it. Ben still wears these shirts that are too short at the sleeves, that strain at the buttons. He’s got that old ancestral guilt. Maybe it’s me, he said. Maybe I got too big.
* * *
…
When I arrive, Henry is standing in the doorway with his coat on, keys in hand. I give him a hug. “The baby’s asleep,” he says. “I’m going to go get some groceries.” I go in to look at her. Yes, she is sleeping the right way. I turn on their computer. YouTube videos about babyproofing your house. She can’t even crawl, people!
I can’t even believe I’m here before work. I need to put my foot down, that’s what everybody says. We are in his kitchen. That clever devil Catherine went to work at six a.m. to get a head start on her meeting prep.
“Do you ever think it’s weird that we even have families?” Henry says.
I take Iris out in her stroller. It is a misty gray morning. I pull the plastic down over her. The Buddha once described how his father protected him from the elements.
A white sunshade was held over me day and night so that no cold or heat or dust or grit or dew might inconvenience me.
(Onward we go, inconvenienced by dew!)
* * *
…
When I get home, there’s a postcard from Sylvia. On the front, a spindly tree surrounded by a wire fence. “Miracle Tree” is the caption. She’s at a conference about Fukushima. I said I couldn’t go, that I had to watch the baby.
I will caution you against choosing Japan as your next foreign travel destination unless you enjoy strict behavior rules, massive industrial skyscrapers, and paying ten dollars for a weird pastry and coffee in a can. If these things entice you, then hurry right over, my friend, you can’t even laugh loudly here in public without drawing a stare, and Tokyo is hell on earth.
On the way back, she meets me in the city for dinner. I tell her that I’ve been thinking that we should buy some land somewhere colder. That if climate departure happens in New York when predicted, Eli and Iris could—
“Do you really think you can protect them? In 2047?” Sylvia asks. I look at her. Because until this moment, I did, I did somehow think this. She orders another drink. “Then become rich, very, very rich,” she says in a tight voice.
* * *
…
Henry wants to confess something. We walk a long circle around the neighborhood before he manages it. He says he’s having bad thoughts about the baby, that he keeps imagining terrible things. It’s normal, I assure him. I tell him how I used to worry all the time that Eli would choke on a grape. “No, not like that, Lizzie,” he says. “It’s not her. It’s me.”
Later, I keep thinking about those people you read about in the paper, the ones who are discovered by animal protection services. They live in a studio apartment, go to work every day—their neighbors don’t notice a thing—but when they break down the door, there’s an alligator or a boa constrictor in there. Something that could kill them.
FOUR
It’s afternoon, but the sky is already dark with rain. We wait on the platform for the express. The old man beside us starts to cough violently. Henry freezes. To a man with a hammer…