The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel (7 page)

“It still seems distant, you know, that this will actually continue and I’ll have a baby.”

Veronica squeezed Ines’s hand, wishing she could banish her friend’s fear.

“The next test is the triple screen, then CVS or amnio,” Ines said.

“It’s a nightmare.”

“It’s not a nightmare for me. I love it. It’s like collecting peace of mind, insurance with each test. I only need the result of this one.…” Ines had become an underwriter for an insurance company. She had given up editing independent film forever for something dependable.

“And you like your OB, right?” Veronica asked. “That’s really important too.”

“I do.”

“Are you going to consider the birthing center instead of the hospital? There are so many interventions, so many unnecessary things they do to you in the hospital.”

“
Unnecessary?
Veronica, they saved your life. And Clara’s too. Thank God you weren’t stuck at the birthing center.”

“It’s just that at the birthing center they don’t induce.” On Veronica’s due date, nothing had happened. Her cervical dilation was zero. “There’s this chain reaction. The low amniotic fluid led to the induction with Pitocin, which led to the bleeding—” She was blathering to ecstatic Ines about her difficult labor. She had to stop herself.

“I
want
the epidural,” Ines snapped.

“I want you to have a better experience than I did.” She sipped her wine. “And chances are you will.” Veronica had signed and faxed all the right forms, but the doctor’s office still wouldn’t send her a copy of Clara’s birth record. There was a sequence of events she was trying to understand. She was sliding back into that story.

“It was modern medicine. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“I keep wondering if the fluid was really
that
low, if some variable had changed…” She looked into her wineglass and drained it.

“You had nothing to do with what happened, and you have Clara,” Ines assured her. “I
want
interventions. The more medicated, the better. We’re different,” Ines said, wiping the corners of her mouth. “What’s one thing for you is another for me, and I can handle it.”

Veronica put down her fork. “You can handle it? Do you think I haven’t handled it?”

“No—only that you obsess. And you’re
fine
.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, choked. “I know I’ve been very preoccupied.” She had been too preoccupied to know early on about Ines’s pregnancy, too selfish to have been a confidante.

“Let’s let it go,” Ines said. They ate silently. Ines paused to check her computer. “He landed.”

“They should’ve had the conference someplace actually hedonic—just for fun. If they’re going to study happiness, they should know what it feels like.”

“They should’ve met in Barbados,” Ines said.

“Yes! I remember seeing this orchid cave there when I was ten—the most amazing
natural
colors. And the
air.
The tactile air.” She smiled, remembering John there too, on her annual family trip when they were just twenty-five, sneaking into her room with a red hibiscus, cracking open some aloe stems, and cooling her sunburned shoulders.

“At ten, did you rhapsodize about the air?”

“You know I did.” She poured herself an inch more of wine. What was life about if not pleasure? She picked an errant strand of linguine off her place mat and ate it.

“Look at you,” Ines said, gesturing to Veronica’s empty plate. It was as if they were both reminded of the sensual Veronica of
before
. Fleetingly, with linguine and the very word
Barbados
, she’d returned.

“I could murder him,” Ines said. “Look, he leaves his crackberry here on the counter. He hasn’t even been getting my emails. He lives in another century, I swear.”

*   *   *

In the lobby, Veronica bumped into Art coming home. Lost in thought, he brightened when he saw her.

“Art! How was the conference? Are you happy?”

“Hey!” He hugged her firmly, a liberty he took with his wife’s best friend. “I
am
happy, even though commuting is the opposite of sex—in terms of reported happiness levels.”

“It’s not like you have to
commute
to Des Moines and back.”

“Where’s John?”

“In Irvington with the baby.”

“And you’re at my house, drinking my Barolo with my pregnant wife. Is there any left?”

“I didn’t polish it off by myself! Congratulations, by the way.”

“I’m a stud, I know.” Arthur was just five foot seven and had a large mop of black hair, a slight paunch, and an overall troll-like look. She adored him. They stood there appraising each other.

“We need to have dinner with you guys, the four of us,
soon
,” she said. John had told her ages ago that Art found her regal and intimidating, and she liked it, standing there feeling statuesque in his gaze.

“Definitely. Your husband has been hard to pin down lately.”

“I’ve been trying to reach him all day.” Beneath her smile, a shadow flapped vigorously. Pain gripped her abdomen tightly, then released. Yes, a whole day had passed.

“Ah, the elusive John Reed.”

Veronica and Art parted with another tight hug. She felt as if he’d dusted her with something, replaced apprehension with joy.

Outside she huddled under a Gray’s Papaya awning to check her phone before getting on the train. Nothing. She called John’s cell and it went immediately to voice mail. She ducked down into the ground, to the roar and heat of the trains, tempted to throw the phone beneath one.

So he had gone. The fast ride was liberating, the smooth seat of the new train carrying her effortlessly on a silky ribbon of track. Through the inky dark and intermittent flashes of light she flew.

At home, there were no messages. Not even Damon’s ludicrous bubbles appeared. She considered calling Irvington again, but it was late; she didn’t want to wake Muriel. She sighed at the medicinal whiteness of the kitchen, the spare lines of a reclaimed-wood dining table anchored with a bowl of untouched French sea salt. In the master bedroom, the huge wall of built-in closets seemed excessive.

She ran a hot bath and submerged herself all the way, feeling the water trickle onto her scalp. Surfacing, she squeezed and released Clara’s purple rubber duck. He could at least call to say good night.

When she got out, she found herself sweating in her robe, staring at Clara’s empty crib. She sat down in the suede glider, the fleece rug plush between her toes, and stared at a framed poster of Celeste, the elephant queen, which hung above the changing table. A Calder mobile made its slow turn above the crib. It was an ideal nursery. Still warm from the bath, she wandered into the kitchen and opened the freezer, where she found John’s ice cream, two-thirds of a pint of Chubby Hubby. Digging in, she felt the fat and sugar coat her tongue and settle warmly in her belly as she read the label, checking it for artificial gums and fillers. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even had ice cream. She summoned Ines’s words—
it’s one night
—and ate some more. John really was kind to go away with the baby and give her this break.

Nude in bed, she touched herself. She was never alone anymore. Her own wetness came as a surprise, as if she lay there with a double. But, no, it was
her.
Something was recalibrating. Maybe it had begun that morning, the extra sleep seeping through her like flour through a sieve. All at once she was thinking he’d be faceless, whoever he was, but with massive hands and a tight ass, grinding into her. All at once, she was coming. She lay in the center of the bed and smiled as she fell happily away into Saturday.

5

Saturday

John

What blooms in the dark? John forgot the name of it, but all night long he dreamed of the white flower. Its heady scent was reminiscent of April in New York, when all the trees are budding with popcorn and all the people are in love. He didn’t know when he’d last felt this giddy, this free of heartbreak; he’d been heartbroken since the birth, living with this Veronica of
after
, almost mourning. He remembered the name of that flower—
frangipani
. On the way back to the room, he’d overheard the concierge in the mint-green slacks talking about it to a shy, uninterested teenage girl. When he’d finally cleared the bits of okra stew off the bed and began to doze, he thought he smelled it coming in the window like a ghost of honey.

John woke feeling sticky. He sat up to check on Clara. She looked as if a vanilla milk shake had been spilled over her chin and chest. The once-fragrant air smelled sour. He watched helplessly as her tiny body heaved and more of the white substance oozed out of her mouth. A sickening doom filled his chest. She could not be ill. He could not fail. He sat the wobbly baby upright and tried to wipe her off with the sheets. Her sweet head lolled to one side with exhaustion. Her head seemed so large on her neck, like a cantaloupe on a thread.

It must have been the cow milk from last night. He remembered Ines and Veronica speaking with authority about the horrors of cow milk, how it was the hardest milk to digest. Formula, they decreed, was even worse. It was an idea that implied that what they—all four of them—had consumed as infants was not good enough. Arthur and John had merely glanced at each other to note their shared resignation.

Now John was alone with Clara and she was sick from cow milk. He picked up her small, lightly trembling body. He’d never seen her this sick. Her limbs were frail as kindling in his arms. He undressed her, placed a thick towel in the sink, and laid her in it. He rinsed her skin with handfuls of warm water. “Dada,” she said mournfully. Her skin was silken, and she looked up at him with a tight line of energy that implored him to stay with her, to help her. When Clara was clean, he wrapped her in a fresh towel and held her close to stop her trembling. Her cheek was fiery against his. In the diaper bag, he found the pink liquid medicine, filled the dropper, and gave her a dose. Veronica had insisted they keep some Tylenol in the diaper bag. Alone, he could see that she often knew best.

Frangipani was Veronica’s flower. The one time they’d been here together, she snapped a blossom from the tree and tucked it into her bun. Later, when she left his bed—for they were unmarried, guests of her parents, and not permitted to share one—he’d found the flower bruised and damp against the white sheet.

At the breakfast buffet, he wore his dark glasses and stepped into line. They had to have goat milk; there were goats surrounding this place. He gave Clara some papaya, which Veronica had told him was good for digestion, and she ate it off his fingers hungrily. A good sign, he thought. Then he went to the cereal buffet with Clara on his hip. “Do you have goat milk, by any chance?” he asked a server.

The man smiled at John and said, “Cow milk here, sir.”

“I know, but do you also have any goat milk? Or do you know where I can get some?” A beam of sun cast prisms on the glass pitchers between them.

“We don’t have goat milk, sir.” In that bright surreal moment, two goats walked by just behind the breakfast pavilion and brayed.

“You’ve got to. I mean, look!” John laughed, pointing, but the server remained impassive. Clara was batting at the light, trying to lean over and out of her father’s arms to touch it or some other evanescent but fascinating thing.

“I understand your request, sir, but we don’t have goat milk.”

“Someone has to have it, somewhere. It’s for the baby.” Clara lunged almost out of his arms, and he let her grab a piece of butter in golden fail, stacked in a bowl of ice.

“Let me get the manager for you, sir. Maybe she can be of assistance.” The server walked off very slowly, leaving the cow milk sweating in an iced pitcher, where a fly darted around the rim. Clara’s fever seemed to be lifting, and she kicked her legs with delight when John pointed at the goats. She squeezed the pat of butter and it began to melt in her fist.

“Dadoodoo dadooo daddooo da!” she said.

John was thrilled. She didn’t know what she was saying, but one day—and they were getting nearer to it—she would call him Daddy. “Did you say Daddy?”

“Dadooooooo!” she said, while a long string of spit stretched from her chin.

He took her back to their table, and they spoke and smiled at each other.

“Dadooo,” she said.

“Daddy.”

“Dadooo.”

“Say
Daddy.
”

“Dadoooooooo.”

“Close enough.”

The drug had worked. Within twenty minutes she’d recovered. Her babbling restored his confidence. When the manager finally arrived, it felt like an interruption. She stood before him, very erect, with a regal forehead and a scent of talcum powder.

“Hello, Mr. Reed?” she said.

“Dadoo,” he finished saying to Clara, and then addressed the manager. “Oh, hello.”

“How may I help you today?”

“I was looking for goat milk for my daughter. That’s what she drinks.”

“I’m sorry we don’t provide that, Mr. Reed, but we do provide cow milk. May I go get some for you, put it in her bottle?” She reached for the bottle with elegant brown fingers.

“I think cow milk makes her sick. But there are goats—I mean, if you could tell me how to get to the town, to a store, a grocery store.”

She looked amused and folded her arms over her chest as if that were an impossible proposition. “That is a very uncommon request. We strive to give you all you need here at the hotel, all the best foods that we have flown in.”

It was absurd to fly food in to a place where you could grow anything. “Okay, but if I needed to get some—”

“We don’t get everything here in our stores. We
import
. I will get the concierge for you, sir. Maybe he can help you with your shopping.”

“I don’t want to shop,” he said to Clara once the manager left. She looked at him with total understanding and cooed. He watched as the manager stopped at the cereal bar. She poured some milk into a small glass and sniffed it.

Clara seemed to have completely recovered. Maybe it wasn’t the milk. Maybe it was something in that okra stew. He did not want Ines and Veronica to be right, and because Clara needed a bottle—she was grabbing the empty thing and tilting it to her lips—he went to the cereal bar and poured cow milk in her bottle. She dove at it and consumed it all quickly. He didn’t want to believe it was not simple. The baby is hungry; you feed her.