The Break(3)

“It went okay,” I say to Elena, wanting to give her a little more but too exhausted to get into it. “I just can’t believe I did that to June,” I say, more to myself than Elena. “She was only trying to help us.”

“Maybe you don’t need a young woman here, complicating things,” Elena says, knuckles white against the leather strap of her pocketbook.

“Elena, please,” I say, hoisting Lila higher. “You can’t really think any of this is June’s fault.” Elena’s been cold to June since she started her part-time evening hours here, which I felt bad about; it was probably obvious to Elena that we were replacing her overbearing presence with someone we were paying.

Elena opens her mouth to say something, but just then Gabe returns from walking out Sylvie. “Ready?” he asks his mom.

Elena gives me a peck on the cheek, and then they go. I glance around our apartment in their absence, and I hardly recognize it. We have too many versions of all the baby stuff. There’s a swing for Lila in the kitchen so we can eat while she sleeps with a fist curled above her head, and another in the living room next to the bay window where I write my novels. There are two matching play mats beneath a half-moon of dangling cloth animals, two turquoise pacifiers, and two bassinets for different rooms in our apartment. When we ease Lila into one of those bassinets, we pray she stays sleeping. Then, when she doesn’t, desperation descends on us, a cold breath pleading with her to rest, the visceral urge to get under the covers with her and not wake up so strong it could swallow me whole. Gabe tells me I shouldn’t spoil her by bringing her into our bed, and that’s when I realize he knows nothing about Lila and me. That scares me, but not as much as it should.

She’s here. She’s okay.

That’s what I tell myself over and over when I hold Lila close—too close; I have to be careful, she’s so delicate. I can’t take my eyes off her; too afraid if I look away, she’ll disappear like dust. When I fall asleep, I dream she’s gone. I dream of unspeakable accidents, of doctors and nurses bringing me different babies one after the other and setting them too roughly into my arms, and then pulling back the blanket to reveal a newborn who isn’t Lila. In my dreams the police come. They tell me the doctors are so terribly sorry but the knife went too deep, it got Lila where it shouldn’t have. I wake screaming for her.

Steady, Rowan. I have to get better, I do.

I try to breathe, to focus on the baby-holding contraptions called saucers, but their neon yellows and greens blur. Lila’s only three weeks old and not even close to ready for the saucers, so the plastic animals stare at us from the corners of her nursery with beady eyes and deranged grins. Yesterday Gabe caught his foot against one of the saucers. Rowan, for God’s sake, we don’t need people’s charity, he said, swearing beneath his breath, annoyed that I’d accepted the saucers from my friend and that they were taking up so much space, and annoyed at me, in general, for falling apart.



I can see it in his deep brown eyes, the distaste for me. Gabe likes things to be beautiful and serene. Even back when we were young, he’d turn his face away from anything unsavory, and I used to think it was because he was a writer, too, and we’re oversensitive, surely. But now I’m not as certain. Now I wonder if it isn’t just a tiny bit cruel to be so unwilling to look into dark corners.

Of course we don’t need charity, I repeated back to him, even though I’ve spent a lifetime gathering old things, saying thank you when my college friends went on to big jobs and passed along hand-me-down clothing and gently used handbags while I was trying to make it as a novelist.

At least Gabe and I only bought one stroller; at least we haven’t been wasteful about everything. While I was still at the hospital, Gabe returned the bulky one we’d originally picked and found a trimmer version that would fit in our apartment’s foyer. I think he realized our neighbors weren’t going to be okay with a stroller lolling about in the hallway, blocking the fire exit and leaking Cheerios. Our neighbors are fancier than us. At least, fancier than me.

Elena’s saying something to Gabe in the doorway, but I can’t make it out.

I miss June. I miss what our apartment felt like when she was in it, and that’s what I’m thinking about when the idea comes to me: I need to go to June, to find her, to apologize. Why didn’t I think of this before?

I move to my bedroom, straight to my bed. I cradle Lila in one arm and push aside the blankets and I get in with her. Then I lay my girl down on the sheets, and she looks so tiny in her white onesie, her skinny limbs startling, fists unfurling. Gabe comes to the door of our bedroom and waits, his shape dark against the warm rectangle of light, his big hand resting lazily on the wooden frame. “Rowan,” he says softly, the word heavy with something I can’t make out. I wish I knew what he was thinking; I’m sure he can’t believe we’ve gotten to this place: a psychologist making sure I’m okay enough to take care of our newborn. But you never really know with Gabe. Sometimes his gaze crackles with judgment. I didn’t used to be so much on the end of that gaze, and maybe it’s just that now the person he sees is so very changed: the circles beneath my eyes, hair matted, skin sagging. Red-and-white stretch marks etch me like a bear attack from my lower belly to my breasts. My stomach is still so swollen and I’m still bleeding. I think about my friends who haven’t been able to get pregnant, and I’m so grateful to have Lila, I really am. But is this normal three weeks postbirth?