She knows. She knows before she takes the test, before the faint pink line anchors her irrevocably to the present along with every other choice she made that brought her to it. She presses one hand against her womb, the other to her heart.
Who is this? she wonders.
FEBRUARY 2018
It starts raining on my way back to my apartment. I’m almost there when I realize I don’t want to be there, that I don’t want its silence, its emptiness, to be the culmination of everything I’ve been through today. I claim the busyness of the streets, pretending it’s mine until I can’t pretend anymore and then, when I pass SVO, I notice the lights in the office are on and I decide I’m going to cash in on Paul’s apology now because if there’s anything I need out of today, it’s for someone to say they’re sorry to me.
I cross the road and head up, shivering in the aftermath of the downpour, water trailing behind me. I stop outside the door, staring at the main floor through its window.
I don’t see Paul.
I slip inside, tiptoeing my way across the room. Halfway to my desk, I hear the low murmur of voices from his open office, and it’s only now I realize I could be walking in on something relating to whatever secret thing Paul’s been working on. But if he didn’t want anyone here to witness it, he would’ve sent out a memo. I round the edge of my desk and what remains of my world falls away from me.
Paul and Lauren.
Lauren, pressed against the wall of his office, Paul pressed against her. Her arms wrapped around him, her fingers death-gripping his back, dug into his shirt, his shirt loose around his waist, his belt open, her leg hitched around him as he thrusts into her, her eyes closed as they fuck. The view of the river, the pouring rain outside.
Witnessing this strips me of any sense of dignity I had or felt I had working here. The place and my place in it shifting before my eyes. What kind of fool was I, thinking my determination to be made real in this world by uncovering its truth would be more than Paul could ever deny. I don’t even know if I’m relieved now, that all he ever saw when he looked at me was his assistant—or mortified that all he ever saw when he looked at me was his assistant.
My hand is on my scar without my realizing it.
I take a clumsy step back and Lauren’s eyes fly open, meeting mine, and she exclaims, “Oh, shit,” and starts extricating herself from our boss and when I see Paul fumble off of her, clearly knowing he’s been caught, if not by who, I turn away. I head to my desk and start opening drawers. I don’t keep a lot here, but I grab what I don’t want to leave behind because I am more certain of this than I’ve been of anything lately: I am not coming back.
“Denham,” Paul says as I’m shoving things into my bag, and hearing his voice turns my stomach. I can’t make myself look him in the eyes. “Denham, it’s not—” I slam one of the drawers shut, beyond words, shaking with rage. “Christ, Denham, will you look at me—”
I look at him and he stares at me, his shirt hanging around him, pants buttoned at least, belt still undone. Lauren is a blurry form in the background.
A little advice from a former assistant.
“I quit,” I say and Lauren says, Lo, come on.
The shame permeating the room feels disproportionately mine. I hate that I saw them like this. I hate them seeing me like this. I never want to see them again.
“Denham,” Paul says at my back as I leave.
* * *
At my apartment, I take off my shoes and jacket, leaving them in a wet pile on the floor. I keep the light off, stripping out of my clothes as I make my way into the bathroom, where I study the silhouette in the mirror over the sink. The face and scar kept to shadow, the tangled outline of rain-soaked hair. If she’s no sister, no daughter, no writer—no more than her accident—who is she? What’s left? I press both of my palms flat against the glass and I wait and I wait, but she never tells me who she is.
2013
Bea misses her mother.
There are so many questions she never thought to ask her. Everything that’s happening to her now was supposed to happen to her years from now, and in that vision of the future her mother was alive, the wisdom of two children behind her to assure Bea that, yes, this is how it’s supposed to feel. This is all how it’s supposed to feel.
There’s nothing Bea has been through that compares to being pregnant. Time marches forward and she measures it in symptoms of life. The exhaustion that comes with the making of it. She sleeps and sleeps just to have enough energy to open her eyes in the morning. She crawls from her bed and moves through the day, awake, by sheer force of will alone. And then there’s the morning sickness that doesn’t just occur in the morning, and doesn’t always end in the relief of vomiting, but follows her throughout the day, keeping her on the brink of tears because she can’t remember what it feels like to feel well.
There’s a grief she didn’t expect and doesn’t know how to put to words. She never got a chance to say good-bye to herself. She stares at her body, naked in the mirror, and she’s sorry she never made note of it before it belonged to anyone else. She can feel all the ways this child has claimed her even if not all of it is visible yet. She knows it’s there and that’s enough. She wants to go back in time and really see herself before its conception. The flatness of her stomach, the soft curve of her breasts, all of her only, gloriously, her own. Her breasts hurt all the time and she finds herself obsessing over their future function.
She heard a heartbeat. Lev was there, his hand wrapped around hers. She thought that was the part that would make it real, but staring at the ultrasound screen, watching the soundwaves jump as the hectic rhythm filled the room—it sounded strange, like a message from some far-off planet, distorted by the space it had traveled through to reach her.
Lev comes in when she’s studying herself in the mirror. As soon as she sees his reflection join hers, she moves to cover herself up.
Don’t, he says, and she stands still as he walks to her and they witness her body and the miracle forming within it, together. She breathes slowly in and out, willing her heart to be calm. He reaches forward, putting his hands on her shoulders, then traces his fingertips over her collarbone. She shivers. He leans forward, bringing his mouth to her neck and he kisses her neck, whispers against her neck: You’re beautiful.
He rounds her, lowering himself slowly to his knees and rests his head against her stomach and she brings her hands to his head, running her fingers through those curls that she loves so much, feeling a guilty knot in her throat.
Thank you, Lev whispers, for what you have so fearfully and wonderfully made with me.
* * *
Casey takes care of the details of Bea’s pregnancy with such efficiency, Bea wonders if, in another life, she’s been through this before. She schedules and drives Bea to all of her appointments—Lev only has time for the milestones, but Bea thinks she prefers it that way—sits in the office with her, offers her hand when Bea needs something to hold. At some of her checkups, the doctors think the two of them are a couple. Bea doesn’t bother to correct them.
She runs into Foster at Chapman once. He’s leaving the Reflection Room at the same time she turns the corner, both stopping short at the sight of the other. He’d asked her, as soon as word was out, if the baby was his.