The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel (6 page)

“Hi. Where
are
you guys? I’m assuming you went for a walk this morning. Maybe you turned off the ringer while she napped.… Anyway, please call me. I won’t be straight home after work, if that’s all right with you. I haven’t seen Ines in ages. They’re pregnant again, so we’re sort of celebrating. Kiss Clara for me.” The phone felt hollow in her palm, eerily light; it had been too easy to free herself.

She pictured Clara rolling on the fleece rug. The baby had just started giggling too, real belly laughs that seemed to arrive at the right instant.

She examined her reflection in the mirror of a small compact she kept in her desk. From the other room, Alex saw her and quickly looked away. Her eyes were bright and clear, her lips dark even without lipstick. She dabbed a little Orgasm on her cheeks. She looked okay, and it was a shame John wouldn’t see her this way. She and Ines had always thought that if you looked all right you needed to seize the moment. (Without notice, you could look pale and ancient and rush online to research symptoms of rare illnesses.)

Looking up from her desk, she saw Alex hesitating in the vestibule, holding the elevator open for her. Everyone else had left for the day. “Are you walking to the train?” he asked with undeniable hope. She left her office and joined him. In the elevator he ventured, “You seem distracted—the cheese farmer?”

“Oh yeah! Whatever. Can you imagine being that flaky? Not calling back all day when this could be a big opportunity for him?” She wasn’t thinking of Mendelsohn but of John. They pushed through the doors to a street so dark it looked like it had never been day.

“He’s got to ditch the wife,” Alex said, trying to bond with Veronica but merely exhibiting his youth: Mendelsohn and his wife had three blond children under age four. He couldn’t simply excise his wife. She felt an affectionate impulse to shield Alex from these complications.

“Heading home?” he asked as they headed underground to the subway.

“Yup,” she lied. It would mean she could get on a different train from Alex, whose overfamiliarity was starting to feel awkward. “Clara’s waiting for me,” she added, and to make her goodbye final she reached up to him on tiptoe—he was quite gangly—and gave him a peck on his cheek. She felt him freeze beneath her touch and then stare at her in mute wonder as she turned and walked toward her own platform.

What was
that
? Something new, an aura, seemed to surround her. It went beyond the extra sleep—perhaps it was the new cocktail of pills—a blast of nerve endings opening. On the ride up to 72nd Street, she felt men stare at her and glance away. It was Friday night and the trains were packed. She could smell bodies. The tang of sweat through wool. Where was everyone going? She and John went out seldom now, and it was exciting to be alone on the train.

Walking up West End Avenue, Veronica laughed at the sudden majesty of the homey street. She’d never noticed the glamour of the art deco buildings. She was free, yet a sharp longing lingered; she hadn’t seen Clara for nearly twenty-four hours. She’d derided John for getting up to check on her, when it was actually kind of sweet. Why had she not wanted to stare at her sleeping child? Now just a glimpse of the baby would settle the fluttering in her gut.

Her phone vibrated and a message light appeared. John had called while she was on the train. She stopped walking to listen to his message.

“Hey, Veronica, hope you had a good day. We missed you this afternoon, but I thought it would be good for you to get over your cold. My mom was hot to see the baby, so we’re in Irvington.”

She paused it and replayed it from the beginning; he’d taken Clara to his mother’s a few times when she’d been recovering but never without consulting her. She listened as one would to a film in a foreign language studied long ago. He hesitated after he said the word
Irvington.
Then—and this was sort of unbelievable—he told her not to come.

She had to come. They were always offering each other breaks from child care, which neither person accepted. It was an unofficial rule of conduct between them. But an unplanned trip was unprecedented—he’d never done
anything
with the baby without first asking Veronica. “
Feel better—Clara, want to say hi to Mama?
” Clara panted a bit, which made Veronica smile broadly and for the moment made everything seem ordinary. “
Okay, we’ll talk to you tomorrow when we figure out our train thing.
”

Odd. But perhaps it was also ideal. Her own guilt was absolved. The baby was in love with her grandmother. If they were gone, they wouldn’t miss her at home for one evening.

The wind picked up as she leaned against the building to call Irvington. A loathsome busy signal greeted her. John’s mother, Muriel, had never adapted to call-waiting. Veronica hung up and punched the call in again. She kept calling until her fingers were numb. Tears of frustration stung her eyes. A block away, she saw Ines’s warm awning. Muriel remained enchanted by a conversation with someone.

*   *   *

Ines answered the door, wearing a tight cobalt-blue dress. Her black hair was thicker, frizzier around her face, and the whites of her eyes shone. She looked striking but older. That was how it was these days seeing Ines, the barometer of Veronica’s own life. Ines, who had once been a teenager in a vintage dress with a creaseless marble face. They were changing.

“I thought you were Art,” Ines said, her disappointment obvious. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Are you okay?”

Ines held a piece of blue carbon paper in her hand and waved it at Veronica. “I got this weird test result. I just had it done, for the nuchal translucency, and there was something off, a number that was close to the border, they said.”

Veronica took off her black wool coat and laid it on a chair. “The border of what?”

Ines paced, her bare feet clenching the parquet floor. “The number they’re looking for. The number that’s normal. They want a two-point-oh at eleven weeks and I have a two-point-six. Art doesn’t know yet. He’s flying. He should be home any minute, though.”

Veronica followed Ines into the kitchen. “Where’d he go?” she asked.

“He’s in Des Moines, Iowa, for a happiness-studies conference.” Art, an unpublished academic, was an adjunct lecturer of anthropology for the tenth year in a row. He was not ambitious, but he was happy, and he was studying happiness.

“Des Moines? How could you be happy there?”

“Exactly. Anyway, I’m supposed to get retested on Monday. I have to wait all weekend. It’s agony.”

“It’ll be fine.” She believed it. With someone else’s trouble it was easier to believe it would be fine. “I’m so thrilled for you. Here.” Veronica unveiled a bouquet of wind-beaten red tulips, and Ines took them and started to search for a vase.

“If the result still isn’t what they want, they’ll retest again next week, just to see—” She stopped speaking and started to cry quietly into a cupped hand.

“Oh dear.” They hugged, the full length of their bodies pressed together.

“This is all really stressful,” Ines said, “it finally happening and then not knowing—” Ines was a believer in unambiguous answers, clear test results. She was the salve, the one with finite answers for Veronica’s constant wavering. Ines pulled away to gain composure. She blew her nose heartily on a dish towel. “I wish I could drink with you. Here,” she said, handing Veronica a bottle of red to open. Veronica poured a small glass and toasted Ines.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. I’m cautiously optimistic, but we’ll see.” Ines turned and began peeling a clove of garlic.

“Two-point-six doesn’t sound far off at all.” But Veronica knew it could be. The numbers could be dreadfully wrong. Veronica’s amniotic fluid had been too low: four-point-something when it was supposed to be at least five. Two-point-six, whatever that meant, could be
terrible
. “How’s Art doing? He must be ecstatic.”

Ines sat down at the table across from her. “He is—my God, he’s so happy he’s speaking with a Long Island accent! You know how he does that when he’s excited?”

“I do.” Outside, it had started to snow again. The lights of the avenue blurred in the purple evening. She wanted to fly right out into it, link arms with Ines, and go drink hot sake around the corner. “You shouldn’t cook. Let’s go out instead. It’ll be easier. What do you think?”

“It’s just that Arthur … He should be here any second, then we could leave. I need to talk to him first.”

“Call him.”

“He’s in transit. Anyway, where’s John?”

“In Irvington,
with Clara,
actually. He let me sleep in this morning and then left this cryptic note—I haven’t heard from them all day. I may have to go up there tomorrow.”

“How will you get Muriel to stop?” Ines said. John’s mother was a lanky former kindergarten teacher in her sixties, who “loved” public radio and always spoke to Veronica in a hushed voice of her many miscarriages between her two children. Muriel was trying to connect with Veronica, but Veronica, raised to keep her chin up, was embarrassed by her frankness.

“Usually Muriel stops talking about
the trials of women of reproductive age
when we focus on Clara. She’ll be so involved with the baby, it will be
fine
. But what’s weird is that John didn’t even talk to me about this.” Veronica pulled open the fridge and peered into it. She lifted a jar of giant capers and examined the label. For a moment she wished she’d called Adele, who was childless and always going out.

“Huh? You all right?”

“Yes. No. I’ve had this amazing energy today. I’m taking these new meds, which might be starting to work.” A new energy presided, but it was shaky, shifting. “Maybe it’s hormonal, I don’t know.… Sometimes I wish we could just disappear in the dark auditorium, watching slides of Giottos.… I just want—”

Ines smiled at the memory. Art history their freshman year. With Ines next to her in that dark room, Veronica had savored Giotto’s blues. The pigments made with egg yolk and their incredible longevity, a revolutionary nuance in expression and gesture. Ines, too, understood the miracle of those colors. They’d become art lovers together. Now they were mothers.

She felt Ines’s steady gaze, the clear, direct vision of her friend who never looked away. Damon! Adele! These undeniably exciting people who had nothing to do with her current life were populating her mind; they came like djinnis, smiling, offering.
Here’s a message from the outside world,
they seemed to say. There was Adele’s gallery on 25th Street and Damon in war-torn places, photographing Taliban. The world was big and affecting. Where had she been? Inside a cocoon. “See, I wish I missed John, but I don’t.” Instead, she thought of the true hurt in Damon’s gray eyes as she’d run from the café.

“You do miss him. Go to Irvington. Muriel can watch the baby, and you and John can go out on a date.”

“A date!” When she was alone with John, he often looked into her eyes with some unspoken question that she never had the answer to. She wasn’t even sure what the question was. She imagined his curly light-brown hair—cut like a benevolent Caesar—with a pang of nostalgia.

“Come, my love,” Ines said. “We’ll eat.” Ines was tossing a salad and had put on water for the pasta.

“Really, with your partner a day is not long, but with your child, you’ll see, it’s an eternity. You sort of shore yourself up when you have to be apart, steel yourself, and just get busy, but you still miss her.” How could she go on to the newly pregnant Ines about missing her child?

“Go, then,” Ines said, with a note of impatience.

“You’re probably right,” Veronica said, disturbed by John’s seeming indifference to her. At one point in their lives, each parting had been fraught. He used to run uptown to reunite with her after basketball games and would arrive panting, sweat falling in fat drops to the floor. She’d embraced him, inhaling every wet, salty pore. That desperation to connect was gone.

“Where the hell is Art? His plane was supposed to have landed by now.”

The small galley kitchen grew unbearably hot. Veronica peeled off her thin black sweater and sat down, holding the edge of the table. Her heart rate seemed to catapult ahead of her, some lone
part
galloping on the loose. “At the same time, while John’s gone, I want to do everything I can’t do when he’s here, like—” She paused. Whole chunks of vocabulary had been engulfed by months of exhaustion. “Like not always reading in bed. Like saying I don’t want to read my book, I want to sleep.”

“Like fucking?” Ines said. A pan sizzled on the stove. A smell like sautéed earth filled the room. Ines’s eyes danced with mischief. She moved to get the pasta. She was a goddess with steam from the colander enveloping her in her blue dress and electric hair. Once, when they were drunk, she and Veronica had kissed. They’d been seeing these pompous men from Harvard, and it had been the most comforting and affirming kiss. A real French kiss in the bathroom of a bar in Cambridge. They’d never spoken about it, but Veronica was immune all evening as her date flirted with other women.

Sweat beaded above her lip. John’s distance pierced her.

“Well, you can’t sleep with John when he’s not here,” Ines added.

“No, I suppose that’s true,” Veronica said gravely.

“Fine, go to Irvington. Or
don’t
go to Irvington. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Stay in the city with me and Art.”

“Whose heart will grow fonder?” she asked.

“Well, both of your hearts, V.” In the hush of steam, high up on the seventeenth floor with the slim window view of the alleyway, they were just two women standing in a kitchen, about to eat pasta. Veronica was a tiny speck in a vast universe; she was nothing, but in a good way she had learned in college, in a class called Philosophy of Religion. You were everything to yourself, but then, when seen from a certain, non-disparaging angle, you were of equal value as an armrest, a carpet, or a plant. She was composed only of matter.

As she sat down to eat, the speck-in-the-universe feeling evaporated. She thought of Clara and the goat milk she needed to pick up on her way to Irvington. There was no way he’d brought enough. Everything was important again. Ines would know this soon, the ever-present vigilance. “So, what’s happened so far? The seven-week sono, right, and yesterday’s test…”