In Every Way (14 page)

Bonacieux has no real difficulties of note. She is healthy. She has no allergies. She has no colic. Empirically she is adorable. Maria's early fears of the world around her child have abated and been replaced by a burgeoning confidence. She is surprised to discover of herself that she is a disciplinarian. She establishes a rigid schedule for the child's naps and meals. Straying from this timetable by even a quarter of an hour can throw off the schedule for days.

Philip and Nina trust Maria's instincts with Bonacieux more than their own. The guidelines she establishes are immediately sacred. Philip and Nina respect them with a religious awe. They do not wonder from where Maria's knowledge has come. They only strive to follow.

Maria makes Bonacieux's baby food by grinding cooked vegetables in a small food mill, then freezing it in serving sizes ready to be thawed for each meal. In a spiral-bound notebook, she maintains a record of the time and consistency of each of the child's bowel movements. She reports to Nina about this and has begun to get frustrated with Nina, who does not maintain the records well herself.

It is not motherhood of the child that has given Maria her skills. It is something else. An aptitude, innate. She is astonished by it and proud. It surges up inside of her, confident and aggressive. The neighborhood, the house, the weather—they all seem to allow it free range. Why not become sharp, hard, and loving all at once? She is in the home of Blackbeard, she is in the home of her daughter, she is on the edge of the continent. She imagines the strictest disciplinarians are those who do not foresee a long life for themselves. They must ensure the safety of the next. She is glad her mother was not sick until after she, Maria, had grown. Her own childhood was so lax. She feels she thrived in its flexibility and questions why, if that is the case, she does not strive to re-create it. She does not know, but trusts in the instinct to control.

Each afternoon, Maria wheels Bonacieux to Karen's house. She wants her mother to be in contact at every opportunity. It seems like, if her mother willed herself to live long enough to see Bonacieux be born, as Maria still believes, then the child's presence might just stretch her mother's remaining time further. After the initial shock of discovery, her mother has been only thrilled with all ensuing contact with her
granddaughter. Maria wonders at any concerns her mother might harbor about the situation, but for now her mother is only enjoying each day.

And there is this: it cannot be doubted; her mother has begun to improve. To Maria the correlation seems direct: the chance to see her grandchild has given her another reason to live. Maria feels justified in her superstitions. It is as if the trajectory of her mother's life were that of a ball thrown high into the air. It has reached that magical point where the ball floats for a split second at its apex, but Maria is not sure this arc will now turn downward. She feels like it might just as well take off again and rise anew. She is trying to allow herself to believe this is a possibility. And why shouldn't she?

Her mother walks to the water every day. Her hair has begun to regrow. Some days she goes out without a hat. Some days she smokes a cigarette with Karen on the porch, telling life to go fuck itself. But the pinnacle of each day for Maria's mother is Bonacieux. Sometimes her mother will even come to Philip and Nina's house on her own, stopping to visit during a walk. Philip in particular enjoys her company. They talk academic shop. They share many mutual friends. Around her mother now, Maria feels the short arcs of time connecting. Life is stretching forward in small growths past where it should have already ended.

EVENING, EARLY DECEMBER
. The day is dull and biting, filled with a damp chill that cuts through Maria's wool coat. The magnolia in Karen's yard glitters with cold white Christmas lights, hung two days prior by Christopherson and his lawn care partner. The cloud cover clears late in the day, and the last of the sun's light, fading and red, suddenly fills the sky. It's postcard material, so beautiful Maria feels it's too easy to enjoy. That she should resist it. But she cannot. Her
heart, it seems, has expanded with pseudo-motherhood. In her art history class once, Maria's professor said that Diane Arbus's photographs of mentally disabled children in Halloween costumes wrought beauty from the grotesque. He said standard beauty in today's world had been rendered powerless. At the time it seemed profound. Now Maria wonders if the professor ever had children.

Her phone rings.

“I'm so sorry,” Nina says. Bonacieux is crying in the background. “I know you're busy.”

“I'm not busy,” Maria says. She tosses Karen's
Architectural Digest
into a wicker basket beside the couch.

“I just can't get her to sleep,” Nina says.

“OK,” Maria says, her heart racing on the thrill of Nina's dependence. “You want me to come over?”

“Could you?”

Already Nina has found motherhood impossible without Maria. It is not that she is a bad mother at all; it is only that she is perhaps too willing to allow Maria to be the one to handle difficulties such as these. And Maria is only too eager to help. Without her, Nina would rise to the challenge, but Maria enjoys the cultivation of dependence. Together, the three of them—Nina, Maria, and Philip—seem to be building a house dependent on one trick joist, but Maria has decided to not think about structural integrity. She has chosen to ignore the future. Her prognostications have already turned out to be so wrong so often that she is now ceasing to make them. She is weaving a patchwork only of the smallest pieces of time here. Days, hours. Scenes.

Through the cold evening Maria drives the five blocks to Philip and Nina's house. It appears alit through a frame of trees as if it too were
posing for a postcard, and in fact, Maria has seen several postcards for sale in town featuring an image of this house at this very time of day, in this very light.

Inside, Nina paces the kitchen, Bonacieux held tight to her chest. The child is wailing, whipping her head from side to side. Nina's eyes are red. Her face is wet. Paul Simon plays low on the stereo in the dimly lit living room.

“I'm losing it,” Nina says. “I'm totally losing it.”

“Sweetie,” Maria says, touching Bonacieux's head. “When did you start bedtime?”

“Six thirty,” Nina says, guilt bending the note in her voice.

“That's too late. You've got to start early, crazy early. Give it
hours
. She's overtired.”

Maria takes Bonacieux. The child continues to cry, rising in volume as Maria takes her.

“My God,” Nina says.

“It's fine,” Maria says. The crying doesn't bother her like it does Nina. “Go for a walk.”

The screen door bangs shut as Maria carries Bonacieux into the nursery. Within stands an antique wooden crib, once Philip's. One ornate red velvet loveseat. A marble-topped dresser. An old dry sink now filled with books buttressing one stuffed flamingo. Two original Albers prints, different colored rectangles, hang on the eastern wall. A tall rocking chair. Maria loves this room. She aspires to it.

She swaddles Bonacieux, still crying, then calmly kisses her daughter's forehead. Bonacieux strains against the blanket as Maria places her into the crib.

As Maria closes the door behind her, Bonacieux's cries continue to fill the house. Framed in the front hall window, Nina sits on the porch with her hands over her ears. She too is crying. A glass of wine stands untouched on the wicker table beside her.

Maria opens the door. “Go,” she says. “Walk. This will end in . . .” Maria looks at her mother's Cartier wristwatch. “Six minutes. Maybe seven.”

Nina flits across the freshly mown lawn, happy to take Maria's advice. She wears a sheepskin blanket over her shoulders like an elegant squab. With each step that she approaches the darkness at the edge of the lawn, it gradually erases her form.

In the kitchen, Maria watches the second hand. She believes in this process, certain that her daughter needs these private moments to learn how to work through the emotional turmoil of another day of learning how to live. But tonight Bonacieux will not stop crying. Things carry on long past when Maria expected them to cease. Like an addict, Nina returns to the lawn, only for Maria to wave her back into the darkness. Maria finds herself in new parental territory. She reenters Bonacieux's room, afraid something has truly gone wrong. The child is red-faced and lying at a strange angle in her crib, the swaddling blanket loose and kicked into one corner. Maria lifts her, checking the diaper. It is clean. Bonacieux sobs against Maria's breast. Sudden and alien and urgent, Maria feels her milk let down.

She tries to ignore it, hoping it will not stain her shirt. Bonacieux will not be consoled. Maria begins to feel panicky. She understands how babies are shaken. She kisses Bonacieux, whispers to her, rocks her, bounces from foot to foot, but nothing works. Finally, at a loss,
feeling like she has reached some emotional valley, Maria sits on the loveseat and lifts her shirt.

Directed by an innate compass, Bonacieux attaches herself to Maria's glistening nipple. Tears well up from the pain as Bonacieux begins to suckle. Maria does not know what exactly is being produced. This long after childbirth, it doesn't seem possible that this is real breastfeeding, but maybe it is. Something is exiting her body and entering Bonacieux's. The child is now silent, consumed with the process of suckling. Dust wavers in the nightlight, making the air around it appear almost solid. The boundaries between things—people, air, light—seem to meld. Maria grits her teeth until the child finally rolls off. In her sleep, Bonacieux turns her face to Maria. A sacrament has been made and inner grace here bestowed, yet Maria is not its recipient. She swoons on the rush of transgression.

CHAPTER 12

F
OUR SMALL WOODEN
sailboats, each painted dark green, float down Taylor's Creek with their canvas sails aloft. Six men row a long wooden canoe behind them, in the center of which sits Santa Claus. Children line Front Street, most screaming “Santa!” some simply watching in silent awe. Bonacieux views it all high above the heads of the others, held aloft by Philip.

Nina shoots photos of her husband and daughter. The frames click off in such rapid succession that the camera ticks along like a clock. Sometimes she shoots hundreds in a day. Maria considers the promise made by the Children's Home Society of North Carolina, that her daughter's adoptive parents would supply her with a photo album once a year. Perhaps some of these very photos will be collected for delivery to her. She wonders if the images are screened by the employees of the adoption service, if Anne Vanstory will recognize Maria if she appears in any, which she is sure she will. It is foolish, she thinks. They have more than enough to keep them busy. Still, it is a reminder of the risks she is taking and the consequences she is unsure of.

Nina uses a gunmetal Leica with a huge lens that Maria covets. Maria looked into the model, desiring one for herself. The camera costs more than two thousand dollars. It is yet another confirmation for Maria that she has chosen the right family for her daughter,
one that amasses the effects of life with precision. She is not afraid of extrapolating meaning from material. These items are proof of care, of taste, of an unabashed respect for elegance.

Maria retrieves candy from the pavement and hands it to a boy who crams it into his pocket. She is disappointed that he does not say thank you. She is uncomfortable in crowds and cannot remember ever having even been to a parade before. Her mother would never even consider doing anything other than avoiding civic celebration. But, Maria thinks, this is lovely. The cries of the children erase anything but thrill.

BACK AT THE
house, Philip pours three glasses of brandy, which, like the parade, are a mystery to Maria. She does not even know exactly what brandy is. Is it wine, or is it liquor? To her it smells of both. She does not let on that she is unsure, though. She tries to exude confidence. With glass in hand, she takes Bonacieux to the nursery for a diaper change. There, while her child lies half naked atop the marble-top dresser, kicking the air with quiet and calm abandon, Maria hears Philip and Nina in the kitchen.

“Well, I had her all morning,” Nina says.

“When?”

“That's not fair,” Nina says. “Don't make me explain it.”

“All I'm saying is that this is why we have help,” Philip says.

“OK,” Nina says. “But I have plans.”

“By all means, go,” he says.

Maria has heard these arguments before. Nina seems to have some built-in clock, marking all time spent with or away from the child. If there is any imbalance, she lets Philip know. Maria does not get the
feeling Nina in fact cares so much about spending equal time with or away from the child—there is so much quality time to be had, what with their incredibly open schedules—it seems more like just a chance for her to fill an insatiable need to cry foul. By the time Maria returns, Nina has left. Already Philip's mood has lifted.

“Can I ask you a favor?” Philip says, taking Bonacieux into his arms.

“That's one of those lines,” Maria says, and Philip laughs. She has told him about her list of distasteful conversation starters. Already he seems to know her as well as anyone. She sips the brandy. Drinking with adults in daylight is intoxicating on its own merits, and though Maria does not dislike Nina, she too feels a rise in mood at her absence. The day is quickly filling with simple pleasures. Brandy. A parade. She feels lifted, like Bonacieux above the heads of others.