I don’t know what to say and so stay quiet. A car from here to where she lives would be close to a hundred dollars.
You sure? says Kayla.
My husband looks at her brother, chewing on his cookie, our four-year-old close to him still, asking if he wants to come again to play with her. I know as soon as they leave she will cry on the floor because he’s gone and it will be hours before we get her to sleep.
Of course, says my husband. You have school.
We don’t have a hundred dollars that we won’t miss. I’m grateful to him for not caring. I hug Kayla and her brother goodbye and we all sit out on our stoop together, quiet, as we wait for the car.
I can’t do it, says the text from Sasha when I find my phone and bring it into bed to scroll through, after the hour and a half we spent convincing the children it was time for sleeping, after I lay in bed with the two-year-old and then her sister, after we read six books each and they cried and we rubbed their backs and sang them songs.
I don’t know how, she says.
I stare at her text, thinking maybe I should ask my husband. I don’t either, I think.
You can, I type back, then delete it. I think I should call her, but then I take the phone back from my ear and try to type the perfect text. I delete all of them, and my husband’s passed out beside me and the two-year-old has woken up and cries again, asking to come sleep with us, so I go get her and I nurse her and once she’s asleep again and exhaling hot breath against my side as she sleeps, I text back: You can.
I can’t stay here, she says, immediately.
What’s wrong? I ask.
I’m bad at it, she says. The dots pop up, then disappear, then pop up, then disappear. I sit up in the bed and accidentally knock the baby. She starts and murmurs, then grabs hold of my arm and settles back again.
No one’s good at it, I say.
I can’t lose her too, she says.
What can I do? I say.
7
I THOUGHT MAYBE she would ask for me to come and I could help her. I could hold the baby and we could take care of her together. We could do what we should have done before. I wasn’t up for it then, maybe we both weren’t, but I think I know how now; I could make all of it better, if only I still believed that there was such a thing as making it better after all. I want to go to her and meet her husband, hug her, hug the baby, hold her while she takes a shower, do her laundry; I could bring her dinner, to be friends just like I’m friends with other people, where no one expects more than whatever you can give. Two days later, I get a text as her plane lands at JFK and she gets in a cab to our apartment. Five minutes away. I don’t know who she tells before she comes, who she’s left with the baby. I’m by myself, she texts. I’m sweating and I keep looking at my face in the mirror of our tiny bathroom. I keep running my hands through my hair and wondering if I will hug her without realizing I’ve hugged her, wondering if I might finally be able to give her what she needed all those years ago.
SHE’S HER BUT not her: bloated, splotched skin, no makeup; her hair up and unkempt; still beautiful. I look down furtively to see if there’s a car seat that I somehow missed, if she brought the baby with her. I look at her abdomen, wondering if the baby was made up.
Hey, I say.
All that talking, years of reading: There was a time I thought that all language might contain something of value, but most of life is flat and boring and the things we say are too. Or maybe it’s that most of life is so much stranger than language is able to make room for, so we say the same dead things and hope maybe the who and how of what is said can make it into what we mean.
She looks like she might melt, she might disassemble in our hallway. I think I should pick her up, carry her into our room and hold her, rub her back until she falls asleep.
I almost hug her but I stay standing in the doorway.
I like the place, she says.
Come in, I say, backing away.
Is something burning? she says, having still not come in.
I look past her to Josslyn’s door.
My husband’s working. The girls are home but with the babysitter.
Who’s here, Mommy? they both yell. They come running out of their bedroom.
The four-year-old grabs Sasha’s hand and tries to pull her into her room. You want to play with us? she says.
Mariah, I say, to the babysitter.
Guys, I say.
Sasha’s started crying. Our four-year-old still holds her hand and tells her crying is how your body gets the sad out and it’s fine.
The babysitter scoops them back into their room.
You want coffee? I say. Water? I look through the pantry. Gin?
These are the only beverages I have on hand. She looks up at me from underneath a tent of hair; she says, Water would be great.
I hand her a glass, not meeting her eyes, not wanting to make her cry harder. I see stains popping on either side of her shirt and realize that her breasts are leaking. I nod toward her chest. You want to use my pump?
She looks down.
Fuck, she says.
I get the hand pump from the bathroom and the electric pump from our bedroom just to give her options. She nods toward the electric pump, which does
