I hold briefly onto my stomach.
It’s still early, she says.
Of course, I say. Good luck.
Were you— she starts.
Just seeing how you were.
My husband’s parents keep a small farm in Maine and have very little money, but they have gotten us a rental car. We’re meant to drive up to Maine to get our girls and spend the next week with them and my husband’s parents. We stop in Boston to see my friend Leah, who has brand-new twins and a new house; they live up high on a hill, across the street from a small natural preserve with lots of large, dark trees in the back. They have a dog they’ve had since the year that they got married and she’s huge now, an English bulldog, and she has bad hips and is sometimes incontinent and has to be lifted in and out of the house every hour so she doesn’t pee or shit on the floor too much.
We have nothing in common, Leah and I. We met our third year of college, before we were formed enough to know who we might one day be. We like each other. We’ve liked each other for long enough that it feels worth it to keep being friends.
I hug her and I grab a baby from her arms when we get there. I dip my face into the top of his head and breathe him in; he squirms and is warm on my chest and I breathe out long after a week without our children. Most of the time when she’s not up and moving through the house and doing something—cleaning, cooking—Leah has a baby latched on one of her breasts.
The first day and a half is all catching up and small talk. Leah’s husband is extraordinarily calm and kind and my husband helps him install IKEA shelves that they bought months ago for the babies’ room. They ask us about the girls and about New York, and when I say I quit the high school job Leah and her husband get quiet and look at each other.
What’s the plan, then? Leah says, trying to stay neutral.
I’m not sure, I say. I have four jobs for the fall, I say.
I’ve got some things lined up, my husband says.
I want to tell her we will at least be able to care for our kids but I don’t know that.
We might be without a place to live in two weeks, I don’t say.
Leah puts the twins to bed and we open a third bottle of wine and sit outside looking at the trees until we all begin to fall asleep and Leah says, We should go inside, and we go into our separate rooms.
My husband falls asleep as soon as we get under the covers. I read for a while. I scroll through my own Instagram account, all the pictures and the videos of our daughters, years of them: babies, bigger, laughing, crawling, the last summer we were up in Maine. I go briefly to Sasha’s, where there is nothing new except a single picture of the baby, red-faced, big-eyed, hairless. I like it, then plug in my phone and try to fall asleep.
I’m not sure if I’ve slept at all, but I hear one of the babies crying and I come out of the guest room. I feel my left breast begin to leak. Leah is there already. They’ve set up a small bed in the room where the babies sleep and she still stays there every night. I stand in the doorway as she goes to the crying baby. The other wakes as well and I ask if Leah wants me to get her. She nods and I scoop her up, pressing her against my chest and rocking back and forth and shushing.
Leah sits in the large stuffed rocking chair her husband’s parents bought them when she was in her third trimester and they were finally not afraid to receive gifts. She unbuttons her nightshirt and places the baby to her breast. The girl I hold has settled, and I offer her my finger to gnaw until she falls back asleep in my arms.
How’s it going? I say.
Leah laughs and shakes her head, still staring at the nursing baby. They’re tiny; I’m sitting now and the girl feels weightless, still smaller than our girls were when they were born.
Dude, she says.
I laugh and watch her watch him: his bright-red feet, his hand held tight around her thumb.
You okay? I say.
Sort of.
The baby I hold squirms again and chirps and her cheek is hot against my chest. I offer her my knuckle, which she gnaws on, and she settles down again.
It gets better, I say.
Leah winces as the baby tries to relatch and must have pinched her. I hear him choke and sputter and I motion toward her breast.
May I? I ask.
She nods down toward the baby.
I take her breast and place my thumb into the baby’s mouth until it opens fully; I place her nipple far back in his mouth and he latches on and Leah breathes out.
It’s up to you, says my husband.
We’ve been in the car for two hours and we’ve just now gotten up the courage to talk about asking my parents for a loan.
What are our other options? I say.
We could move in with my parents, he says.
His parents have a one-bedroom house so far north in Maine that they’re often snowed in for weeks or months.
We could do the things that people do when they don’t have rich parents to call.
Our neighbor Luis is moving in with his kids upstate. Another two are going to elder-care facilities that horrify them. The gentrifiers, the people in our building who look most like us, mostly are either buying in or finding apartments south of the park.
We could leave New York, but we’d need to rent a van and get jobs. We’d need first and last month’s rent and a security deposit. We don’t
