HELEN STOOD in front of the gas stove and watched the pasta as it danced around in the boiling water. The golden drops of olive oil swirled around like fish darting in a pond. She was mesmerized by the common occurrence—the physical fact—as if she was seeing something new and rare, as if she was observing some kind of miracle. She combed her hair out of her face and smelted her hands. Garlic. She sliced a lemon sitting in the fruit bowl, squeezed the juice into her palm, and rubbed it into her hands as if it were lotion. She liked the tingling, slightly burning sensation on her skin. She put her hands over the steam of boiling pasta, and smelled her hands again. Lately, she had taken to smelling herself—but not only herself—everything. It seemed that the world smelled so close, so intimate, so green like a freshly cut lawn or freshly picked cilantro. She breathed in the steam coming from the boiling water and held it in her lungs. She looked down at her large belly, and touched it. She ran her hand over the smooth, well-worn cotton fabric that pressed against her stomach as if she were rubbing a crystal ball, as if that ball were telling her the future would be as good and as warm as the evening sun that was filling her house with light.
She whispered to her baby, only half-aware she was speaking: “Does baby like pasta?” she asked. “Daddy loves it; Mama loves it; does baby love it, too?” She smiled as she rubbed herself. Her friend Elizabeth had told her she would never have a firm stomach again. “I never had one to begin with.” She laughed softly, then slowly her laughter filled the air until there were more echoes of her voice in the room than there were rays of light. She stood glowing in the kitchen. She felt like one of the haloed madonnas in the paintings she’d seen in her husband’s art books—well-framed, well-kept, protected from all harm. So this is joy, she thought, so this is what it’s like. And though she knew this rush of pure adrenaline would melt as fast as snow on the desert, she felt complete and happy. When the sharp feeling passed, she did not feel sad and disappointed. She felt as if she had just had sex with Eddie, his warmth still inside her. She bit into the pasta. “Perfect,” she said. Just as she walked over to the sink to rinse the strands of thin pasta, she heard her husband walk through the front door. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen and stared at her. He did not say anything, but she saw the look on his face. Neither of them spoke. She looked at him and tilted her head: She became a camera photographing his face, swallowing him into her lens. She was drawn in by his fair skin, dark hazel eyes, the slight wrinkles around his eyes, his thick dark hair he could never tame. She knew everything about his face, every detail, how it was warm and soft when he laughed, how it could look like unbreakable glass when he was distant or sad, almost turning his eyes to blue, or how his mouth stretched to distortion when he was silent and angry. She could read every change of mood. “Te adoro,” she wanted to say, but she could not bring herself to speak to him in that language. She looked up at him from where she was standing. He said nothing. They studied each other for a few moments. “Pasta,” he finally said. “Pasta,” she repeated. So this is joy.