An exhaustion in February they all felt. No apparent end to winter: it took a leap of faith and the awareness of the increasing light to keep going. Each morning Katy lumbered down the outside stairs—sand and snow blowing, the ice formidable—and clownishly maneuvered herself into the neighbor’s Ford Escort, her ride to the T. Of late, months did not cohere as months; though this was the ninth month, by the calendar. It was difficult to sleep, and now the daily slog downtown from the South Shore was a feat whether she drove or caught an early train.
The discomfort and her own absurdity astounded her: in the office she squeezed past the file cabinets, a giant beach ball. Outdoors, the snowbanks, the ice, the near tumbles finally defeated her. Ten days before the due date, she stayed in Blue Rock. At breakfast, Delia eyed her from the kitchen doorway. Katy was in her rolled-up XXL sweatpants, rolled-up XXL Patriots sweatshirt, a pink headband Delia had given her.
“Has it started?” Delia said.
“No.” Her swollen feet lay in the seat cushion of a second chair, like big, rag-wool sausages. Sad sausages. “Would you mind getting me a piece of toast?”
Sara appeared in the doorway and nudged Delia. “He,” Sara said, and slipped past Delia to the kettle.
“He,” Delia said.
“There’s not a lot of room to move,” Katy said.
“You’re kidding,” Delia said.
“You’re huge. How can there be no room?”
“There just isn’t,” Katy said. Her lips were pressed together as she blinked.
“Delia,” Sara said.
“What?”
“Make some toast.”
“Well, you look like you’re going to rugby practice,” Delia said.
She’d never been as slender or lithe as her sisters, both of them small and sandy-blond and fine-featured, like poster girls for high school gymnastics. There was something bitter for Katy about the sweatpants. In another life, she’d worn jeans. Leggings. Running shorts.
Tim did not let her pout. He sometimes rubbed her swollen feet and sang to them. But now Tim was sleeping; he was still chefing nights, this season at a high-end place in Cohasset. The owners liked him, and the money was better. It seemed he’d forever work nights.
Here was her toast. “You’ll call when it starts,” Delia said. “Right? Jam?”
“Mom will call,” Katy said. “Someone will call.”
Why was it she felt as if she’d been tricked into something? Though she couldn’t say what, or who had tricked her. Here was her mother, pouring coffee; Katy could not say that Nora had tricked her, at least not in a way she could name. To the contrary: Nora had always been frank about sex, its consequences. In high school, after Katy’s first dates with Tim, Nora took her to get a diaphragm and gave her condoms. Yet Nora still seemed part of a deception.
“Not too much longer, love,” Nora said.
Her father wasn’t off the hook, was he? It seemed the residue from old deceptions stuck to him. He’d never said, “Do this,” his influence less direct. She thought of road closings: you detour and detour again, until you discover a surprise destination, or drive off the map. Yet now that she was pregnant, James called twice a week; now he’d ask, “How was your morning?
From his own new planet—California—Theo had sent a congratulatory postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge and a baby hat resembling an eggplant.
She deserved to have a baby—she and Tim—yes, that’s what she’d said, that’s what she’d told Tim. Her baby: she felt him press into her side, talked to him and hummed to him. Another world spun inside her while she buttered the toast. But something else had blurred, and in odd attenuated moments it was unclear why she was pregnant and Nora was not; why Nora moved as easily around the house as the girls did, and Katy did not. As if this part, too, Nora should have shared, the palpable wave carried over from before, from the girls as babies, and before that. They were in something together—she did not think Rome, but there was a sensation, a strand of thought that trailed back to Rome, to the moment of Nora and Katy and Molly instantly shifting to Nora and Katy, the space that had been Molly a thick seal between them. Katy had protected Sara and Delia, hadn’t she? Then and now. She and Nora had collaborated. Yet now all of this heaviness in Katy. This loneliness. She knew, apparently, nothing.
She wanted, she deserved.
“Sweet pea,” Tim had said, “of course you do.” September then: they’d come down from Cambridge with a truck.
“I get that’s what you want,” Nora had said.
“You should,” Katy said.
A warm late summer day, the sea almost cobalt. Nora tilted her head and turned toward the window, as if speaking to the bay. “You’ll be a beautiful mother.”
“Beautiful,” Tim said. “Fantastic.”