“I think I should go.”
I didn’t say anything. He would have to step over my dead body to get off the phone.
“Goodbye,” he said, and then, after a pause, he hung up.
I put the phone in my purse. If the red was already working then my nose and eyes would now be pierced with that beautiful stinging sensation, a million tiny pins, culminating in a giant salty rush, the shame moving through my tears and out to the gutter. The cry climbed to my throat, swelling it, but instead of surging upward it hunkered down right there, in a belligerent ball. Globus hystericus.
Something hit my car and I jumped. It was the door of the car next to mine; a woman was maneuvering her baby into its car seat. I held my throat and leaned forward to get a look, but her hair blocked its face so there was no way to tell if it was one of the babies I think of as mine. Not mine biologically, just . . . familiar. I call those ones Kubelko Bondy. It only takes a second to check; half the time I don’t even know I’m doing it until I’m already done.
The Bondys were briefly friends with my parents in the early seventies. Mr. and Mrs. Bondy and their little boy, Kubelko. Later, when I asked my mom about him, she said she was sure that wasn’t his name, but what was his name? Kevin? Marco? She couldn’t remember. The parents drank wine in the living room and I was instructed to play with Kubelko. Show him your toys. He sat silently by my bedroom door holding a wooden spoon, sometimes hitting it against the floor. Wide black eyes, fat pink jowls. He was a young boy, very young. Barely more than a year old. After a while he threw his spoon and began to wail. I watched him crying and waited for someone to come but no one came so I heaved him onto my small lap and rocked his chubby body. He calmed almost immediately. I kept my arms around him and he looked at me and I looked at him and he looked at me and I knew that he loved me more than his mother and father and that in some very real and permanent way he belonged to me. Because I was only nine it wasn’t clear if he belonged to me as a child or as a spouse, but it didn’t matter, I felt myself rising up to the challenge of heartache. I pressed my cheek against his cheek and held him for what I hoped would be eternity. He fell asleep and I drifted in and out of consciousness myself, unmoored from time and scale, his warm body huge then tiny—then abruptly seized from my arms by the woman who thought of herself as his mother. As the adults made their way to the door saying tired too-loud thank-yous, Kubelko Bondy looked at me with panicked eyes.
Do something. They’re taking me away.
I will, don’t worry, I’ll do something.
Of course I wouldn’t just let him sail out into the night, not my own dear boy. Halt! Unhand him!
But my voice was too quiet, it didn’t leave my head. Seconds later he sailed out into the night, my own dear boy. Never to be seen again.
Except I did see him again—again and again. Sometimes he’s a newborn, sometimes he’s already toddling along. As I pulled out of my parking spot I got a better look at the baby in the car next to mine. Just some kid.
CHAPTER TWO
I was woken early by the sound of limbs falling in the backyard. I took thirty milliliters of red and listened to the labored sawing. It was Rick, the homeless gardener who came with the house. I would never hire someone to lurk around on my property and invade my privacy, but I didn’t fire him when I moved in, because I didn’t want him to think I was less open-minded than the previous owners, the Goldfarbs. They gave him a key; sometimes he uses the bathroom or leaves lemons in the kitchen. I try to find a reason to leave before he arrives, which is not so easy at seven A.M. Sometimes I just drive around for the whole three hours until he’s gone. Or I drive a few blocks away, park, and sleep in my car. Once he spotted me, on his way back to his tent or box, and pressed his smiling, stubbly face against the window. It had been hard to think of an explanation while still half-asleep.
Today I just went to Open Palm early and got everything ready for the meeting of the board. My plan was to behave so gracefully that the clumsy woman Phillip had spoken with yesterday would be impossible to recall. I wouldn’t use a British accent out loud, but I’d be using one in my head and it would carry over.
Jim and Michelle were already in the office, and so was Sarah the intern. She had her new baby with her; she was trying to keep it under her desk, but obviously we could all hear it. I wiped down the boardroom table and laid out pads of paper and pens. As a manager this is beneath me, but I like to make it nice for Phillip. Jim yelled, “Incoming!” which meant Carl and Suzanne were about to make their entrance. I grabbed a pair of giant vases full of dead flowers and hurried to the staff kitchen.
“I’ll do that!” said Michelle. She was a new employee—not my pick.
“Too late now,” I said. “I’m already holding them.”
She ran alongside me and pried a vase out of my hand, too ignorant to understand the system of counter balances I was using. One was slipping now, thanks to her help, and I let her catch it, which she did not. Carl and Suzanne walked in the door the moment the vase hit the carpet. Phillip was with them.
“Greetings,” said Carl. Phillip was wearing a gorgeous wine-colored sweater. My breath thinned. I always had to resist the urge to go to him like a wife, as if we’d already been a couple for a hundred thousand lifetimes. Caveman and cavewoman. King and queen. Nuns.
“Meet Michelle, our new media coordinator,” I said, gesturing downward in a funny way. She was on her hands and knees gathering up slimy brown flowers; now she struggled to stand.
“I’m Phillip.” Michelle shook his hand from a confused kneeling position, her face a hot circle of tears. I had accidentally been cruel; this only ever happens at times of great stress and my regret is always tremendous. I would bring her something tomorrow, a gift certificate or a Ninja five-cup smoothie maker. I should have already given her a gift, preemptively; I like to do that with new employees. They come home and say, “This new job is so great, I can’t even believe it—look at what my manager gave me!” Then if they ever come home in tears their spouse will say, “But, hon, the smoothie maker? Are you sure?” And the new employee will second-guess or perhaps even blame themselves.
Suzanne and Carl ambled away with Phillip, and Sarah the intern hurried over to help clean up the mess. Her baby’s gurgling was insistent and aggressive. Finally I walked over to her desk and peeked under it. He cooed like a mournful dove and smiled up at me with the warmth of total recognition.
I keep getting born to the wrong people, he said.
I nodded regretfully. I know.
What could I do? I wanted to lift him out of his carrier and finally encircle him in my arms again, but this wasn’t an option. I mimed an apology and he accepted it with a slow, wise-eyed blink that made my chest ache with sorrow and my globus swell. I kept getting older while he stayed young, my tiny husband. Or, more likely at this point: my son. Sarah hurried over and swung his baby carrier to the other side of the desk. His foot went wild with kicking.
Don’t give up, don’t give up.
I won’t, I said. Never.
It would be much too painful to see him on a regular basis. I cleared my throat sternly.
“I think you know it isn’t appropriate to bring your baby to work.”
“Suzanne said it was fine. She said she brought Clee to work all the time when she was little.”
It was true. Carl and Suzanne’s daughter used to come to the old studio after school and hang out in the classes, running around screaming and distracting everyone. I told Sarah she could finish the day but that this couldn’t become a routine thing. She gave me a betrayed look, because she’s a working mom, feminism, etc. I gave her the same look back, because I’m a woman in a senior position, she’s taking advantage, feminism, etc. She bowed her head slightly. The interns are always women Carl and Suzanne feel sorry for. I was one, twenty-five years ago. Back then Open Palm was