21

Sarabeth wanted, she needed, to find out what was happening with Liz and her family, and several times a day she reached for the phone, only to draw her hand back, terrified that she’d burst into tears at the sound of Liz’s voice. She hated herself for her cowardice, but what if Liz sounded cold again? How would she bear it? And wasn’t it the case that if Liz wanted to talk, she’d call Sarabeth?

One thought chasing another, catching it, swallowing it.

She lay on her couch when she was not in bed. For a while, she had books and magazines with her, but she didn’t read much, and a low point came when she realized it was not the book or magazine but herself—she couldn’t concentrate. This had never happened before, not for days, and she wept about it, then stopped, then wept again. You couldn’t die of this, but if it got worse you could decide you couldn’t bear it, and then what?

This. At times it was loud, at others quiet. When it was loud, it used her own voice to snarl out her failings one by one. There was her failing as a friend. There was her failing as an income earner. Her failing as a housekeeper, a homeowner. These days she failed at personal hygiene, at the small job of feeding and watering herself so that as she lay in bed she became light-headed at times and thirsty beyond tolerance. She was a failure at coping with failure, because what she felt was that most disgusting of things, self-pity. She was a failed lover, many times over. She had failed, in fact, at being an adult.

The quiet was different. It was more like being ill.

Saturday, almost a full week since the terrible, brief conversation with Liz, Sarabeth mustered all the courage she had and called Liz’s parents.

Robert answered. “Sarabeth!” he said. “Now there’s a voice I like to hear. No, no, you’re not disturbing me at all.”

And then, “Gosh, you haven’t heard from her? She’s pretty overwhelmed, but it’s really fine to call her.”

And then, “They brought her home yesterday, actually. I’m surprised you didn’t—Listen, call Liz, really. My gosh. Hey, I’d put Marguerite on, but she’s out Christmas shopping.”

She thanked him and hung up. Lauren was home. That was what mattered: she was home.

Nina had reported that the Murphys were back from China, and a couple days later, on a cold afternoon, Sarabeth drove to Mark’s shop with a new lampshade. Nina had said they were exhausted, but even so Sarabeth was surprised by the deep hollows in Mark’s cheeks, the slight hoarseness she heard in his voice.

“Look,” he said, and he led her to a picture of the baby, who had silky black hair and a round face and dark, lively eyes.

“She’s so cute,” Sarabeth said. “What’s her name?”

“Maud. Maud Li-Wei Murphy.”

She looked up at him, tried to read his expression. His eyelids had a dark cast. “How are you?” she said. “How is it?”

“Intense.”

“Intense as in…”

“Intense as in intense.”

She hesitated and then knelt in front of the box she’d brought; she didn’t want to pry. She pulled out her new piece. It was steep sided and gray-green, with long narrow slices cut out on the diagonal. “Silvered with Rain” was how she’d been thinking of it. She tried to remember if it had been before or after the weekend of Miranda’s play, of Brody’s phone call, that she’d made it. She recalled being in her workroom; she recalled the sound of rain.

“Wow,” Mark said, sucking air into his mouth. “That is beautiful.”

The slices were as narrow as she’d been able to make them: slivers, hairs. At the time, she’d especially liked the way it looked when it was illuminated, the paper a cool, silvery green, warmer where the slices of lining lightened the light.

Before. She’d started it the night of her dinner with Liz. Up late in her workroom, thinking about Mrs. Nudelman, about Cowper Street, while rain drummed the roof.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“Not as busy as you.”

He took a deep breath and sighed. She wondered if he’d say more now, if she asked again. Intense in a good way?

She licked her lips. “Is she sleeping?”

“She is sleeping. And waking. And sleeping. She has not, to quote our pediatrician, established an age-appropriate sleep pattern yet.”

“She’s how old?”

“About eleven months. She is believed to have been born last January fifth.”

Believed to have been born. Sarabeth thought about this, the enormous unknown of this child’s life. How that unknown would be part of her life—and part of Mark’s and Mary’s lives—forever.

She wondered if Mark had had to negotiate with Mary for time here today. There were two kinds of new mothers, Liz had once said: the kind who saw her husband’s work as a gift to her, and the kind who saw it as a crime against her. Liz was firmly in the first category, of course.

“Hang on,” she said, and she went back to her car for the other thing she’d brought, her baby gift.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Just a little present.”

He opened the box, and color rose slowly into his cheeks. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“What? It’s nothing.”

“Please. It’s not even close to nothing. Thank you so much.”

With the remains of the dusty-rose paper, she’d made a little lampshade for the baby, using the razoring technique but making hearts instead of thin diagonals.

Mark was staring at her, and all at once she was embarrassed: it was too forward, to have brought him something, especially something she’d made. She should’ve bought a little wooden rattle. She said, “The sleep thing’s normal, right? I mean, given everything? The changes, the travel—”

“Sarabeth, stop. This is so kind of you. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Well, I had some paper left over from those ‘Welcome to Our Bordello’ shades.”

He put his hands on his hips. “You’re not one of those people, are you? Just say ‘You’re welcome.’”

“You’re welcome.”

“Now say, ‘I give it with love and from the fullness of my heart.’”

“You’re going too far, Mark.”

“You’re right.” He put the lampshade on a base and turned the lamp on: glowing hearts in the dim winter light. “Ever wonder who you’d be,” he said, stepping away for a better look, “if you were you but raised somewhere else?”

“Like China?”

“Or next door. Or Italy, or an orphanage, or a hut. How much of yourself would remain?”

“There’d be no one to observe it—to compare.”

“But if there were.”

“Environment is everything.”

“Biology is.”

“Two things can’t be everything.”

“Maybe together they can,” he said, and he touched her hip as he moved past her to turn the lamp off.

But, no: that hadn’t happened. Had it? No, she thought, and then yes, and then no. Something had happened, though; heading for her car a little later, she felt stirred, as if she were a bowl of soup and he a spoon. This was a feeling she knew well, from Billy and a couple of guys before that, and especially from reading about people—about women mostly—to whom such things happened. About Anna, poor soul. Anna had been whisked. Beaten.

Stop, she commanded herself. Mark had not touched her, at least not intentionally. She was conjuring things to make herself feel good, wanted. Because she wasn’t.

By seven-forty that evening she was in bed. The winter solstice wasn’t for a couple of weeks, but if she hadn’t known better she’d easily have believed tonight was going to be the longest night of the year. How many more hours of darkness? How much sleep could she manage? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d masturbated, but the idea was boring, even repugnant. The last time she had sex: a year ago November 2. Since then sex had been a gaping hole in her life, and in all likelihood so it would remain. She recalled a period when Nina didn’t date for years and someone asked how she tolerated the celibacy. “I take Zoloft,” she said, not untruthfully.

Was Lauren taking an antidepressant? Sarabeth knew what she needed to do: she needed to muster the courage to call Liz. No matter what might happen, she needed to call. Robert had said to! But what did Robert know.

Her mother had had all kinds of prescriptions, but from what she knew they weren’t so effective. Obviously they weren’t. The same therapist who’d called her father’s move preemptive had told her that she hadn’t metabolized her mother’s death—as if it were some food she had yet to digest. But she had, she knew what had happened: Lorelei had been unhappy her whole life, and she had taken the step of putting herself out of her own misery. She had euthanized herself. What was unmetabolized about that?

She had been a pretty girl, Lorelei—her father’s prize. She had spoken of him frequently, and with reverence. “Papa,” she’d called him; not even “my papa,” just “Papa,” as if, in some strange way, he’d been Sarabeth’s father as well. “Papa loved me in burgundy.” “Papa took me to Central Park every Sunday afternoon.” “Papa liked me to sit at his feet while he was reading.” About Lorelei’s mother, on the other hand, Sarabeth knew almost nothing. She’d had some illness, the nature of which was a mystery. Sarabeth had an impression of a woman in a bed, but it was very vague. Who, after all, had Lorelei been but a woman in a bed? And who, these days, was Sarabeth?