Chapter 9: Horses

 

It was the least Tom and Serena had talked to each other in their whole lives. Serena hadn’t even told him about or showed him Dorothy’s birth certificate. She had never felt so far away from him. Even when they were younger and had midterms and were stressed, they’d still find time to talk. Serena tried to run her life as if Tom didn’t exist. She didn’t know what he was doing with this Kara person, but she saw her name in his email and on his phone too much not to be suspicious. When they did have infrequent conversations, it was common that Tom would drop Kara’s name openly. Serena thought he did this to piss her off or to wound her.

“Kara told me there’s a new yogurt shop opening in town.”

“Oh, yeah. Just what we need. Another ice cream place.”

“No. It’s yogurt.”

“Who cares? I’d rather it be a Thai place or Indian. Or maybe Mexican.”

“It’s the suburbs, Serena. Not much ethnic variety around here.”

“The restaurants here are so depressing it kills me.” Serena grimaced and felt her chest tighten. She felt trapped every time they needed to go somewhere to eat. Their choices were pathetic. There were some dark, not-well-cleaned generic restaurants where other generic suburban families went, with their too-casual clothes and ever-fattening waistbands.

“Everything depresses you.” Tom rolled his eyes and smiled down at Maggie, who was coloring away furiously with her big, purple crayon.

Maggie looked up and smiled. “It’s a neigh-neigh.”

“It’s a great horse!” said Tom.

“I’m sure Kara is never depressed. I’m sure she’s super perky,” Serena said, staring at Tom directly.

“You guys should meet. You would like her. You don’t have many female friends. Maybe I’ll invite her over to dinner sometime?” Tom said, with his eyes suddenly looking boyishly excited.

“Oh, I’m sure you’d love that. I’m not cooking for your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my friend. And with the way you’ve been acting lately, I need one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Serena’s face went hot.

“Look. I don’t want to argue in front of Maggie.”

“We’re not arguing; we’re having a discussion.”

“Well, I don’t want to.” Tom proceeded to ignore Serena in the way only he was capable of. As if nothing had just happened and life was perfectly fine while he was watching his perfectly cute daughter draw two very imperfect horses.

“Horses don’t mate for life. That’s probably why they always look so wild and free,” said Serena with a sarcastic smile. She looked at Tom and wondered how humans ever thought it was possible to mate forever. Few mammals do it, she recalled. And tried to think back to that biology paper she once read on gibbons having low sexual dimorphism so the males and females are about equal size. Research had shown they were monogamous, a rare trait for primates, and then someone had debunked the idea when mates were shown to be philandering on the side. Even gibbons cheat, thought Serena.

Maggie looked at her mom and said, “Hurt,” which meant “heart.” But Maggie couldn’t always get the r right. She loved it when Serena drew hearts. So, for good measure, Serena drew a little purple heart about the two horses. Even though it felt like a big scientific lie.

That night, Maggie woke up and cried out while she was sleeping. It woke Serena up, but of course, Tom slept through it.

I wonder at what age you stop crying out in the middle of the night, thought Serena. Is it because you realize there’s no one there to rescue you? Do you give up? Serena felt like screaming herself. She wondered who would come to her aid. Would Tom console her? Would he even wake up? Barbara had cried out in her final days a lot. It always scared Serena, but when she would go to her, Barbara would be fast asleep.

Deep in the darkness, she put her arms around Maggie and tried to comfort her. With the help of the moon, she tried to take in Maggie’s smallness. Her little curls. Her soft skin. The way her eyelids closed just so. And in that cloak of night, Serena could see it all before her. The days of Maggie’s smallness falling away. The joy of her first steps. The happiness from coloring and blowing dandelions. The small moments of childhood that would get further and further away until one day she would be leaving for college. Serena could feel it all in the darkness between them—a whole lifetime of distance that would continue to grow with every day Maggie grew.

Serena waited a while and watched Maggie’s lungs go up and down. Once she was sure she fell back into a deep sleep, Serena slowly walked out of the room—making sure not to hit any of the creaks in the floorboards. As she climbed back in bed, the darkness in her room did not comfort her. All Serena could see in the blackness was her mother’s face after she died. It scared her when she thought about it. She had always thought of death as some abstract thing. She had killed hundreds of mice in her research. Read countless details on cancer and death. But as she lay there staring at the ceiling, the thought of herself dying and not knowing what happens next terrified her. She believed in God enough to appreciate the Earth and all the wondrous things in it. She sometimes saw him in all the intricacies of science. But it had been a long time since she had spoken to him. She realized at that moment how far she had grown apart from the comfort of believing in him. Now her comfort was in the things she could touch, in the facts of science, in the things she could prove.

When she was little, she used to talk to him all the time, as if God were her fairy godmother. She’d tell him—because for her, he was a man, and for some reason, she pictured God to look like Moses—when she was upset or scared. She felt comforted by knowing that he was up there, so large and powerful, looking down on her, so small in the world. But in the darkness of her bedroom, between the soft cries of Maggie in the night, she felt no comfort. The blackness encompassed her like a coffin and Serena felt scared and alone. Like the whole world was going on around her and she was just a small unnoticeable speck on a pillow. Serena closed her eyes and felt herself succumbing to the blackness, and she let her body fall toward sleep.

The next day, Maggie really wanted to pet a horse. So, like good parents, Serena and Tom decided to take Maggie to a farm where she could pet the animals. On the way, Tom held Serena’s hand in the car. It was always instinct that his hand fell over to hers and held it while they drove. Serena wondered if he even realized he still did it. It seemed so tender, so sweet, when their relationship these days didn’t seem like either one. Serena left her hand there, and she wondered if this was how her mother felt when she held her hand in those final days. Stiff and unmoved and doubtful of the love behind the gesture.

At the farm, Serena and Tom looked like normal parents. Smiling at Maggie, who squealed in delight at all the animals.

“Horsey!” Maggie ran down the pebble road and climbed up the fence with her little outstretched hand trying to get a pet of the horse’s mane. “Mane,” she declared proudly.

“Very good, Maggie. It is his mane,” Serena offered. “There’s sheep down there if you want to see them.”

“Sheep!” And off Maggie scrambled, her thin legs trying hard to move fast with her head bobbling as if her whole body couldn’t quite keep up with itself.

“So, do you think it’s over?” Serena asked matter-of-factly, as if she had just asked about the weather.

“What?” Tom asked as he watched Maggie run to a chubby brown sheep who had no interest in giving up his nap to the intrusion of being petted.

“Us. Do you think we’re over? Things are bad. I don’t like living like this.” Serena looked down at her sneakers and kicked a pebble down the path.

“Like what?” Tom’s face looked like a combination of overwhelmed and confused. His eyes couldn’t decide if they wanted to glare at her or open wide in shock.

“Unloved. I don’t like living where I feel unloved and that everything I do annoys you.”

“You? Do you have any idea how much you tell me I’m doing something wrong, or not how you like it? You paralyze me. I can’t do anything for fear you’re going to get mad that I’m not doing it your way.”

Maggie bent down and found a piece of hay and tried to shove it in the old sheep’s mouth to no avail. The sturdy cotton creature was not going to wake up for her or for an old piece of hay.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You paint me in the worst light. I paralyze you? Why would I want to stay with someone who describes me like that?”

“I don’t want to talk about this here.”

“Of course. You never want to talk about anything, anywhere.” Serena left Tom and made her way to an old cow. Its big brown snout greeted her. Serena petted it rhythmically, trying to get control of her anger.

Maggie scampered up next to her and pointed to the bottom of the cow. “Udders!” her little voice said confidently.

“Very good, Maggie. Mommy thinks you are so smart. You know how much I love you?”

“Yes,” Maggie answered definitively.

“Good,” Serena said and kissed the top of her sweet head. Serena watched Maggie’s happy curls, thinking of all that those curls would have to endure in their lifetime. Mean kids, broken friendships, love, loss, job failure. Maggie was Serena’s little ripple of DNA in the world, making its way in what seemed like a never-ending scary challenge. How did people create more kids without worrying about all the struggles these tiny people would face? In this moment of absolute happy skies, the odds seemed so much against them. The skies would not always be blue like today. The sun was not perfect. No beams of light are guaranteed for long.

Yet every parent goes into parenthood thinking they’ll be different than how their own parents were. That their kid will escape the odds, be kinder, and love their siblings. Their child will never fight with them or give them an eye-roll. Their kid’s childhood will be different than their childhood. Brighter. More loving. And yet every parent finds themselves in a moment of anger. Maybe it’s over the third stupid spill of the day. Maybe it’s during the exhaustion of a sleepless night. But even the best parent, even Serena, had done it. Lost herself in the moment to anger. And every time, it shocked and scared her when she was faced with the boil of inner rage. Every time she wondered, Am I that different from my mother?

That night, the normal bath ritual felt anything but normal. The smallness of their bathroom had never been so evident. Tom washed Maggie down with her frog washcloth while Serena soaped up her hair. Their knees and elbows would awkwardly hit each other like two strangers who were crammed together.

“Turn off the water. We’re killing fish.” Serena heard herself say the words and all at once she realized how much she sounded like her mother.

“I’ll put her to bed,” said Tom.

“No, I want to,” said Serena.

“I was just trying to help.”

“It makes me feel happy when I do it.”

“Fine.”

Tom walked out of the bathroom and grabbed Maggie’s towel. He threw it to Serena and said, “You finish up. I’m going to go for a bike ride.”

“Fine,” said Serena without looking up.

She wrapped up Maggie’s soft body in the towel, hugging her gently and using the ends of the towel to catch any drips off her nose and chin. Her sweet little body, innocent to the demands that would come to it one day. As Serena dressed Maggie in her snuggly pink pajamas, she couldn’t help but remember her own struggles with her budding body. She was uncomfortable talking to her mother and would try to ask her about things. Serena had noticed everyone else had started to wear bras, but her mother had never broached the subject. In gym class, Serena would make up lies when the other girls teased her about still being a baby. She would tell them she had rashes that made her unable to wear brassieres.

Finally, one day, she went into Abigail’s room when she wasn’t home and looked in her drawers and found some old training bras stuffed in the back. She pulled them out and hid them under her bed. Every day, she’d sneakily put them on, making sure to go to the bathroom at school first thing to put one on and go to the bathroom at the end of the day to take it off. Somehow afraid she might get in trouble with Barbara for wearing something she had never asked for. She hid a small bowl with soap and water under her bed where she would secretly wash them and dry them. This went on for a year before she had the nerve to ask her mom for bras of her own. Serena looked down at Maggie’s precious skin and kissed her belly. I will talk to you, she thought. You won’t have to be scared of me or your body. I will try harder tomorrow to see you. To delight in you. To not let the stress of the day make me forget how sweet you are.

The next morning when Serena came downstairs, she could tell by Tom’s shoulders he was not happy. His lips looked unwelcoming.

“She’s not eating,” he said and rolled his eyes at Maggie.

“You didn’t rip her pancakes in half. She doesn’t like them whole anymore.”

“When did that start?” said Tom.

“Last week. That’s a kid. They have silly rules.”

“It’s because of you. She takes after you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Serena was mad and tore Maggie’s pancakes quickly. Maggie picked one up happily and began chomping.

“Syrup?” Maggie asked. Tom opened the fridge.

“No syrup,” said Serena and glared at Tom.

“Mommy says no syrup,” Tom said.

“Why do you say it like that? You know we don’t give her syrup.”

“No. I know you don’t give her syrup. I would. Who the hell cares about a little sugar?”

“Sorry that I care to have our daughter eat healthy.”

Tom took out the syrup and put a huge dollop on Maggie’s plate.

“You’re an ass,” Serena said.

“Syrup!” shouted Maggie, forgoing the pancake and dipping her little fingers directly into it and then sliding her gooey fingers into her mouth.

“Come on, Maggie, hurry up and eat, and Mommy will take you to daycare.”

“No, Daddy take.”

“Of course, you want that. Daddy gives you syrup. Of course, without Mommy, you wouldn’t even be eating your pancakes. But Daddy is so great, isn’t he?”

Tom and Serena glared at each other.

“Just go to work,” said Tom. “That’s what you really care about anyway.”

“Thanks a lot.” Serena left and slammed the door. Her heart hurt that she didn’t say goodbye or kiss Maggie.

On her way to work, Serena stopped by her favorite coffee shop. The barista smiled and was ready with her favorite drink, a café au lait. Sometimes Serena even put on lipstick before getting coffee because she thought he—the coffee man named Jackson—was cute. Today, she didn’t care about cute. She wanted to hide and make her way through the glum world until she got to the lab and could disappear in a world of science and routine.

As she waited for her coffee, Jackson commented, “You look nice today. Big day?”

“What? No.” Serena looked down at her clothes and wondered if they were communicating something she didn’t understand.

“Aw, another pretty girl who can’t take a compliment.” Jackson smiled and Serena wasn’t in the mood to see it.

“I’m just logical. I’m not pretty. I’m athletic and smart.” And before she could stop herself, she said, “And I have a symmetrical face. Research shows people prefer symmetrical faces and label them as more attractive. It’s proven.”

“I’ve heard it’s a fact that people find horses more beautiful than most people.” Jackson smiled, not dissuaded by her attitude.

“Horses, huh. I’d believe that. They don’t talk.” And with that, she took her coffee and headed out to face the world.

When she got to the lab, she pinged her friend Nina. Could she meet today? Serena was agitated and ready for answers. Serena often got tumor cells from her, so they had gotten close over the years. Nina’s wife worked in the pediatric NICU, and Serena was hoping she could help her understand more about the birth certificate date or at least verify records for her.

But first, Serena wanted to check on one of her experiments. She was testing whether a drug could be effective against tumors with the mutation she found. She also needed to set up breast cancer cell lines that didn’t have this mutation as her negative control. She got lost in the sequencing of cells—searching for the gene in those cell lines that had the mutation or didn’t. Growing these cells would take some time before she treated them with the drug. But within each petri dish, Serena was sure she was growing hope and answers. When her cell phone buzzed, it was Nina, ready to meet. Serena cleaned up and washed her hands diligently. She took out the birth certificate and made a copy to bring to her friend. Serena felt connected to the original copy; she didn’t want to lose it. It was like a piece of Dorothy was near her. Now, it was time for some other answers.

“Hey there, Nina.” Serena smiled at her friend. Brown hair, tight bun, and warm nurse’s smile.

“Hey there, Doctor,” Nina teased. Serena was not one to flaunt her Ph.D., which is why Nina could so casually do it.

“Hi. No muffin today?” Serena had grown accustomed to a coffee and muffin date with Nina.

“No. Jen’s on a no-sugar diet, and I, for some stupid reason, told her I would do it, too.”

“Good for you.” Serena smiled, even though she wanted a muffin but now felt like she shouldn’t eat one either. And the cafeteria had decent chocolate chip muffins.

“I have a weird question for you. It’s actually for Jen.”

“Everything okay with Maggie?” Nina was used to fielding questions for her friends with kids. She was proud of the wealth of knowledge her partner had about pediatric health.

“Yeah, not a Maggie question. It’s about this.” Serena opened up the copy of the birth certificate.

Nina peered down at it, not sure what she was supposed to be noticing.

“The date is wrong,” Serena said. Her heart skipped fast, even though Serena was trying to will her body to be calm.

“Huh, really? I suppose it happens.”

“Does it? I mean, could you talk with Jen? Any chance she could look up the record of birth at the hospital? I mean, I’m sure they did at least a blood test, right? They do that on all babies.”

“Hmmm. I know the hospital moved a lot of the old records to digital. This one is pretty old, though. I’ll see what she can do.”

“Thanks. It means a lot.”

“This was your . . .” Nina got quiet.

“She was my sister. She died before I was born. That’s why I know the date can’t be right.” But even as Serena said that, she knew she wasn’t as sure as she sounded. She went back to the lab to distract herself. She looked up if people really do find horses more beautiful than most people.