The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel (3 page)

But where was he? She filled the electric kettle and flicked it on. Before Clara, she’d adored John’s spontaneity, but after the birth, his frenetic energy level, his impulsivity, seemed incommensurate with the demands of a new baby. They’d discovered the idea of
before
and
after
together, when they were still in the hospital, but now the notion only divided them.

After, he refused to see that Clara had subsumed their lives; after, he suggested ridiculous outings, that they dance capoeira—they never had before—or buy a tent and go camping. He didn’t seem to realize that they weren’t going anywhere.

Before, John had incorporated the prevailing, confused ethos for men of his generation—he was supposed to sometimes make dinner, he was to care about a choice of appliances, he was to transfer clothes from washer to dryer without having to be asked and even, sometimes, to vacuum—all the while focusing on the larger destiny, his career. After, it was as if—with the exception of his obsessive nightly visits to check on the baby—he’d forgotten what generation he was born in. He’d become consumed by his own appetites; he touched her not with sensitivity but with the impatient ardor of a teenage boy.

This morning he was giving her a break. She looked out the open kitchen, past the two pretentious Roman pillars, into the stark living room, as she poured coffee beans into the grinder. She could see that the red stroller was parked near the elevator, but the backpack, marketed as a special
men’s
diaper bag, was gone. Being alone was an unsettling gift. She enjoyed the sudden release of tension in her neck and shoulders, the new lightness in her arms, even as she missed the warm weight and the improbably soft skin of her daughter. A bunch of spotted bananas rested on the counter. Two days ago Clara had celebrated her six-month birthday by tasting one.

Within the whirring sound of the coffee grinder, she shuddered; six months ago Veronica had been taken apart and put back together again. Her reproductive life had begun and ended in the same night. How could that have happened? Despite her great good fortune—she’d had a healthy baby; she had survived—she was left alone circling the question. The proof of her fertility existed, a separate being with growing energy. She had made a person. All day long, even at work, she was dogged by Clara’s existence; the baby amazed her, with her transparent fingernails as tiny and round as lentils, the swell of her torso that contained a perfect set of organs, the way she had just begun, when excited, to twirl her fat wrists like a flamenco dancer.

Veronica couldn’t stop herself from calling John. When she got his voice mail, she spoke quickly. “Hi. I guess you’re going in late. Thanks for letting me sleep in. Give me a call and let me know where you guys are, okay?” The kettle whistled briefly before she turned it off and poured it onto the dark grounds. Through the water’s steam she looked out the window; the sky was a troubled charcoal gray. Fine needles of hail rattled the panes. Disintegrate. How did one
integrate
? She played the words over and over in her mind. There was the night, the literal bodily rupture, and the rupture in time; everything since—the feel of water on her hands at the sink, the sweet, nutty breath of her daughter, food that had become mere sustenance—came to her in broken pieces. Twenty minutes here. Four minutes there. Experience was chopped and disconnected. She shook her head to dispel the tumble of thoughts, the vast effort of connecting it all. Suddenly she was very tired again. She peered into the bedroom: The soothing blue walls beckoned; the sheets had a satiny sheen. She would just go rest for another minute, as the coffee steeped, no more.

She lay down, wrapping her arms around her shoulders like a girl pretending to be kissed. How long had it been since she’d been kissed that deeply, in the way that children parody? Chilly, she put a pillow over her shoulders: A blanket would be an acknowledged commitment to nap. Still, she fell.

*   *   *

Veronica was floating and contained, a flute in a velvet case: lithe and strong and capable of beauty. Slowly, the velvet fell away. Noise perforated a vanishing dream. A distant car alarm sounded. Somewhere a clothes dryer shook endlessly. She opened her eyes and for a moment had no idea where she was.

The dry cactus dying on a windowsill, the smear of shark-oil eye cream on the pillowcase: She recognized those first. (She and Ines had succumbed to the whole skin-care line one Saturday morning at Barneys.) She checked the time. A decadent nine-fifteen! She laughed at her unlikely delinquency. Ordinarily by this time she’d have combed through the market’s produce section, selected something green for dinner, found the herbs for Clara’s formula, and sussed out possible organic vendors for the revamp of Jasper School lunches. Busy-ness. Yes, business was the antidote to her loop of obsessive discourse, to the thoughts about the parts. Clara was her reward, a perfect, healthy girl.

Nine-fifteen
. The prospect of their nanny, Rosemary’s, mild scolding got her out of bed. Veronica showered carefully, for once not rushing, taking time to condition her hair, then moisturize her ashy knees and floss her teeth. By the time she remade the coffee, which had become cold, and finished her oatmeal, Rosemary still hadn’t appeared. Clara’s nap was in fifteen minutes. Veronica dialed Rosemary’s cell, her heart galloping.

“Hi. Good morning, Rosemary.”

“Hello, missus!”

“I’m just wondering if you met up with them or—”

“It seems your husband is taking the day off with the baby, and he told me to head home,” Rosemary said.

Veronica let her bowl clatter to the sink. “You didn’t go, did you?” A shadow of pain flickered across her abdomen, like a running insect.

“I’m afraid I did.”

“Well, where are they? Did he say where they were going?” She worried a damp finger over a spot of red wine that had stained the counter.

“I assume they’re back home,” Rosemary said, “for the nap.” Veronica gave up on the stain and bit a cuticle. She twirled her engagement ring around her finger. A pretty diamond with twin baguettes. Sometimes when she glanced at it, all that platinum looked like a cavity flashing inside a molar. “Missus?”

“No,
I’m
here at home and they’re not.”

“He’s gone off taking your baby, eh? American fathers are wonderful. They try to help, but they don’t understand the importance of naptime. The
value
of the nap. There’s a window of time to get her down and that’s it. Men don’t understand timing, is all, the importance of timing.”

“So true.” Veronica laughed, comforted by Rosemary’s platitude. Irish Catholic, fiftyish Rosemary, who could soothe Clara instantly with her soft, powdery hands. Utterly capable Rosemary, with her attitude of deference and also mild superiority.

“I suppose I’ll see you Monday, then?” Rosemary said.

“See you then.”

As she hung up, Veronica was surprised by a longing for Rosemary. As a child in the seventies, she’d spent long afternoons watching her nanny, Kay, polish silver teapots or convincing Kay to play one more game of Parcheesi. Did Kay love her? She ordered Veronica’s day. She fed her and bathed her, providing all the crucial acts of daily sustenance.

Rosemary, too, had been constant witness and succor for the past few months. Rosemary had even helped her shower during those early weeks after the birth, as Veronica, on heavy pain meds, stood unsteadily in her shattered body. When Veronica had tried to nurse, despite an acute double mastitis, and failed, Rosemary had been there, a bridge to the tiny, curled infant girl with her raw stub of umbilical cord and her ceaseless hunger.

When would John and Clara appear? She sprayed the counters and began to load the dishwasher, packing it with a new fastidiousness. You could be disintegrated, you could suddenly feel like you were a hundred years old, but there were these small consolations.

An easy birth, from the reports of her friends, was an oxymoron. And although a cesarean hysterectomy was fairly rare, she knew stories far worse than her own. The problem wasn’t what had happened, wasn’t merely the clinical facts of the night; it was their mysterious and private—for no one else thought about them—reverberation. The blue sheet had been in front of her face, too close, and the radio (
the radio!
) had been playing “Stairway to Heaven.” As John left the operating room, her eyes fell to his blue shoe covers, the cloth over the toes darkened with blood.

After Clara, no wisdom bloomed with motherhood, despite her mother-in-law’s prediction. After, she was dumber, puffier, her concentration more transient. Where there had been intelligence now resided a massive cloud, a precipitous fuzzy thing that wouldn’t just go ahead and fucking rain.

The kitchen was clean. The wind had died down. A fragile sun ascended, glowing across the floor, over the small colorful Tibetan rug, to the kitchen counter. Sunlight illuminated and barely warmed her hands as she leaned there, the days beginning to lengthen, the darkest part of winter gone. She had slept in and the world was altered.

She went into the bedroom and fastened the top button of her dress, an embroidered black kimono, then put a black leather belt over it. She applied mascara and picked up the hair dryer, but it felt too heavy, like a weapon in her hand. Before, she would have been quite interested in what the children at the Jasper School had for lunch. In a few months, she’d banished their vending machines. She’d siphoned iceberg lettuce off the menu and introduced the nutritious sprigs of watercress. Before, she had cared. She had cared about many things—Expressionist paintings and community gardens and slow food. What had been the meaning of her previous adult life, her two master’s degrees (the second in public health), when nothing but the baby now truly captured her attention? Who was she if she was not interested? She was just this mammal, this warm mama.

“A
mammal
?” John had said, when Clara was a newborn. “You’re a Botticelli.” Her hair was center-parted, light brown with natural waves at the ends, like the nymphs’. But she hardly looked like a Botticelli. She was much tawnier, her skin less pink and more apricot. Lately she liked to recall the compliment, the feeling of being adored. Did he still notice her hair?

Out of habit, she pressed a button on her phone to call Ines, who was always reachable on her cell lately, always staring at her phone, waiting for the fertility clinic to call and tell her when to sleep with Art. Veronica couldn’t ramble about disintegration to poor Ines, who remained trapped in a painful epic baby quest.

“Good news!” Ines said as she answered. “I’m eleven weeks!”

“Really?” Veronica sat down on the edge of her bed to absorb the news and bounced a little. Ines must have known for a long time without saying a word. They’d told each other everything since they’d met as Barnard freshmen more than fifteen years earlier. “When did you find out? Is Arthur excited?” Ines would now know this uncontainable, blowsy love.

“He’s ecstatic.”

“Amazing! My God, our kids will grow up together!” Clara might feel as if she had a sibling.

“Anyway, how are
you
?” Ines asked. Veronica hesitated. Maybe, just this morning, with Ines’s good news and the extra sleep, she was
integrating;
Ines’s lie was one of omission only. It would be childish to complain.

“Strange but good, I think. John let me sleep in this morning. That hasn’t happened in so long and, for once, he didn’t wake up Clara last night.”

“That would drive me nuts. Can’t you stop him?”

“I can’t! He goes in sometimes when I’m already asleep.” How Veronica wished she possessed Ines’s force of personality. Ines would never let Arthur get away with this. “Listen, this is the best news, but I should probably get going. Clara’s not back for her nap, and I need to find out where they are.”

“No you don’t. They’re fine.” Ines could be clipped and sharp, but Veronica appreciated this; Ines brought her onto a single plane devoid of ambivalence.

“You’re right,” she said, wanting to see Ines, to feel that solidity. “Do you want to meet tonight, to celebrate? I’m going to ask John to stay in with Clara.” She was so refreshed by the extra sleep, by the unexpected gift of that nap.

“I’ll cook you dinner,” Ines said.

“Or we could go out.” Veronica didn’t want dinner at Ines’s apartment; every time away from Clara was burdened with having to be a peak experience. But Ines remained free within her own home. And she had that blue ashtray and those neat joints she rolled expertly. Veronica wondered if she could smoke one, even though Ines couldn’t. Ines told her to come over at seven. “I can’t wait to see you … and congratulations.”

When she left the building, the thin air sparkled with cold, wending its way into the hollows behind her knees, her scalp, and even her teeth. Her breath steamed. She paused when she saw a man pushing a stroller up the block. She wanted desperately for it to be Clara and John, and she fervently hoped it wouldn’t be. If she saw Clara now, she would have to pick her up and hug her. She would press her face onto those sublime smooth cheeks, inhale, and not want to let her go. But no; the man that passed was Asian, the stroller was black. She turned at the end of the block, a little worried, but with each step she was freer and freer.

Soon she sat alone in the backseat of a cab speeding up Sixth Avenue. The driver wore a maroon turban and turned off the radio when she spoke. The prospect of the peaceful ten-minute ride with the sooty breeze blowing in her face soothed her. She lounged in the backseat. An ambulance startled her briefly with its foreboding blare. But when she looked out the window, the magic of sleep had applied a glimmer to the dirty snow, a sheen to the formerly gray sky, as if a window were opening within high walls.

3

Friday

John

The air was soft and warm and smelled of coconuts. John could feel it rolling down the aisle of the airplane when the doors were finally opened. Women exchanged their shoes for sandals. People peeled off their sweaters and put on their sunglasses. The winter dryness in his nasal passages, in his bones, melted away. Was it possible? John couldn’t quite believe it. Holding the sleeping, sticky baby to his chest, he stepped out the door and stood for a moment at the top of the landing. The largest sky hung above him, heavy with puffy white clouds. He could see the airport and beyond that a group of cows munching on grass beneath trees permanently bent by the trade winds. Around the edges of the airport there was cotton, white down growing out of scrappy brown thorns. He walked down the stairs and across the glare of the tarmac. Inside the open building, humid breezes caressed his face and arms. The customs officers were languid. Relaxation, or perhaps malaise, permeated the atmosphere. How could anyone
work
here, where it smelled like sugar, where standing in the breeze was so sensational that it felt like actually
doing
something?