“I didn’t say that.”
“You did not have to,” Harish said.
His father had come to the United States for college on a student visa, completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of South Dakota, and stayed on as a member of the faculty. There were no Indian women in Vermillion, though, except for a couple professors’ wives and a handful of students—or, if there were, he had little time to search for them after his lectures and research. Harish didn’t scour advertisements or pay some finder’s fee to an arranged marriage company; he simply sent word to his relatives back in Maharashtra that he wanted a wife. And he found one—or, one found him. Sangita Mehta wrote a letter to him in early 1980, saying she would come cook and clean, and bear him a child, if possible. Well past marrying age at nearly forty, her first two husbands in the grave, she was ready to escape her rural home and the religious tensions in a country where Christians comprised less than one percent of the population.
Benjamin had been born two years later.
It was true; he had discounted his father’s words. He thought his parents knew nothing of the foolishness of love. They respected and honored and served one another—but if they felt more than that, Benjamin hadn’t seen it. He’d never even seen them kiss.
Harish hadn’t been the only person with concerns about the match, though. Stephen came to him two nights before the wedding and said, “Are you sure?”
In retrospect, Benjamin understood where his friend was coming from. The young loved more easily, without looking ahead or behind, without considering those pesky nuisances that sprout up when two people shared space—she squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle and let the excess gel crust up until the top wouldn’t screw on; he didn’t turn off the lights when he left the room, and ran the shower while he read on the toilet, forgetting how long he’d been sitting there. They became less pesky and more nuisance as time passed.
But there were bigger things between him and Abbi than toothpaste and wasted water, things defining them as people, wound so tightly around bone and blood vessel, which no surgeon would ever dare remove. These were the things Stephen meant him to consider, although Benjamin wondered if Stephen had the slightest notion of real differences. He and Lauren seemed perfectly matched in every way, like when God made them male and female, he took them apart from each other knowing full well one day they’d come back together.
Benjamin’s blindness had been love-induced, yes. He loved Abbi for who she was. And he loved her because she was everything his family wasn’t, which God knows was never good for a relationship. But there was a bit more truth hidden behind his shame.
They had dated a year before going to bed together, an accident, a moment of weakness, they told each other. But it happened every month or so—always unintentional—and one or the other would sneak away in the night and they’d ignore it, ashamed, not knowing quite how to deal with the aftermath of it, not quite wanting to give it up. And when he asked Abbi to marry him, he did it because he loved her, and because he’d slept with her. He couldn’t imagine telling another woman he’d been with someone else.
Stephen knew him well enough to figure it out, Benjamin was fairly certain. Now he wished his friend had come out and said something directly, confronted him, peeled Benjamin’s hands from his eyes and told him that guilt made bad glue. It wouldn’t hold him and Abbi together. It wouldn’t have stopped Benjamin from marrying her, but at least he wouldn’t have been as surprised—as desperate—when the problems began.
Two tinfoiled pans sat on the kitchen table. He lifted the corner of one to find a tray of egg noodles congealed in condensed soup, gray mushroom pieces stuck to them. People had been dropping meals by all week, casseroles loaded with cheese and eggs and cream sauces; Abbi wouldn’t eat them. He’d taken them to work to feed Roubideau and the deputies.
He found her at the computer in the spare room, Silvia limp across her knees. Abbi touched her finger to her lips.
“How long has she been out?” he whispered.
She clicked the Internet window closed. “Not long enough.”
The infant stirred, rubbed her face against Abbi’s denim-clad thigh. “I talked to my mother today,” Benjamin said. “She wants to visit.”
“You didn’t tell her yes, did you?”
“No.”
“Good. That’s the last thing I need, her showing up here with her suitcase, ready to move in for six months.” When they had first married, Sangita had grabbed—not patted—a handful of Abbi’s stomach and shook it, saying, “Hurry with the baby, and I come stay to help.” Abbi stood there, not knowing how to react. Benjamin explained to her that, traditionally, Indian mothers went to their married daughters’ homes when a baby was born, and lived there for up to a year while the new parents adjusted. If the mother wasn’t available—and Abbi’s mother was not the live-in Mary Poppins type—the mother-in-law often took her place. He hadn’t known about the infertility then. His mother still didn’t know.
Abbi had a more difficult time adjusting to the role of daughter-in-law. Some of it was cultural. But a larger reason—though Abbi always denied it when he confronted her with the idea—was because she didn’t know how to be a daughter. She and her mother had never had that kind of relationship.
“They don’t have to come here,” he said.
“So, what are you saying? You want to go see them, at their house?”
“I’m leaving it up to you.”
“Are seeing them here and seeing them there my only two options, or can I pick door number three?”
“Look, see them, don’t see them. Whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want,” she mumbled, squeezed her tangled ponytail through her hand and sighed. “Fine, have them come.”
He rubbed the top of his head. They’d been at this for several days, since not long after Silvia came, sleeplessness not only dragging up their worst selves but making them more difficult to hide. “No, never mind. It’s a long trip for them, and we’re both exhausted. I’ll tell Mom another time.”
“I said to invite them.”
“I can’t win,” he said.
“If you’d just listen to me, there wouldn’t be an issue. You said pick. I picked.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want them here. I’m trying to be considerate.”
“Considerate?” Abbi pushed the chair back from the keyboard. “Tell me, how is ignoring what I’m saying considerate?”
“You want them to come? Fine. I’ll call them tomorrow and invite them for next weekend.”
She yawned into the shoulder of her wrinkled shirt. “Wait. No. Have them come next month. I think we both need time to . . . settle in. But just, you know, make sure your mother knows this is only for the weekend.”
“I will.” He looked at her, suddenly ashamed of his outburst. “Abbi—”
“Here, take her,” she said. “I’m going for a run. There’s plenty of food out there, if you’re hungry.”
Silvia woke as Abbi lifted her into Benjamin’s arms. She reached up toward his face, and he traced her chin, her miniature ears. Her eyebrows, one thin and straight as a fine-pointed marker line, the other feathering over the bridge of her nose. “Hello, beautiful,” he said. “Are you ready for dinner? We’ll go eat in just a minute. I promise.” She stared at him with her murky blue eyes. He couldn’t see himself in them.
He maneuvered the computer mouse, opened a Google window and scrolled through the browser history, clicking on Abbi’s last site. A collection of soldiers’ stories, told in their own words—about Iraq and Afghanistan, about coming home.
She was trying to understand him.
He could barely understand himself.
She couldn’t work with the baby around.
When Benjamin told her she could quit the grocery, Abbi had thought she’d have time for her pottery again. She found she had no spare minutes, after feedings and diaper changes and simply comforting the fussy baby. And Silvia fussed for hours at a time, as if she thought, eventually, her cries would bring the voice she expected to find after her birth, the voice she’d heard for nine months, the one that became warm and familiar as she sloshed around in the dark. Or maybe she just knew she wasn’t wanted—not by her mother, not by her foster mother.
With all their time together, Abbi had begun to decipher Silvia’s cries—terse and low-pitched when hungry, spastic whimpering when bored, and a continuous, droning whine when uncomfortable or overtired. She felt almost competent when she was able to tell Benjamin, “She just wants to be held,” and Silvia quieted after he nestled her in his arms. And Benjamin almost noticed Abbi then, too, as if he thought she might be good for something other than reflecting all he didn’t want to see.
She slid open the door into the backyard. Silvia napped in the sling Abbi wore over her shoulder and across her chest. Abbi paced off a three-foot square in the center of the grass, took a shovel from the shed, and stabbed the dry grass. She stood on the blade, stomping on it like a pogo stick, Silvia bouncing against her belly. When she tried to scoop the dirt from the hole, she knocked the baby in the head with the handle.
Dropping the shovel, Abbi went into the house, found an umbrella in the hall closet, and tucked a bedsheet under her arm. Back outside, she spread the sheet on the ground, wriggled the still-sleeping baby from the sling and shifted her to the sheet. Abbi opened the umbrella to shade Silvia and then continued to hack at the ground until the wailing began again.
“Oh, Silvie,” she said, grabbing the shovel with both hands and plunging it into the dirt. She gathered the baby and folded her back into the sling. Inside, she filled a bowl with hot water from the tap, dropped a bottle of soy formula into it for several minutes, then fed Silvia, cradling her in the corner of the sofa. The baby sucked and grunted—like a piglet, Abbi thought. She picked a flaky scab from Silvia’s black hair, another. Cradle cap.
A heavy pounding came at the door.
Great, more food
. Must be a husband; the women knocked much more politely. The banging started again, and Abbi called, “One minute,” as she struggled off the couch with the baby. She held the bottle upright with her chin and reached for the doorknob, opening to see a scarecrow of a boy standing on the patio, his wind-whipped hair the color of straw and long over his ears. He offered a sheet of creased paper to her. She tucked the bottle into the waistband of her shorts and read,
I’m deaf, but I read lips.
Then, beneath that,
Looking for bottles or cans to return, or any odd jobs.
“We don’t drink soda,” she said, giving the flyer back to him. “I’ve seen you, in Food Mart. You’re Jaylyn’s brother?”
Smiling, he took a pad and pen from his back pocket and wrote,
Cousin.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
Me too.
A hot wetness gushed over Abbi’s arm. She looked, saw regurgitated formula seeping beneath Silvia’s pimpled chin, felt it dripping down her pants, between the toes of her left foot. She groaned, moved the baby to the other arm, and Silvia spit up again. “Lovely.”
The boy snapped his fingers, pointed to the baby and held out his arms. Abbi hesitated, then unlocked the screen door. “Thanks. If you don’t mind. It will just take a minute for me to clean up.”
She gave Silvia to him, watched as he cupped the back of her head with one hand. Abbi stretched to the sofa without uprooting her feet, grabbed a burp cloth and dropped it on her toes, stepped on it. She got another from the kitchen and smoothed it around the boy’s shoulder, under Silvia’s face. “Just in case,” she said.
In the bathroom, Abbi wiped her arm and stomach with a washcloth and changed, keeping the door half ajar so she could hear the baby, or the front door, should it open. Nothing. She came back to the living room with a clean T-shirt and diaper for Silvia. The boy hadn’t moved. She took the baby and asked, “What’s your name again?” moved. She took the baby and asked, “What’s
He pulled his pad out.
Matthew.
“I’ll give you fifty dollars to dig me a hole.”
Matthew nodded eagerly.
“It might take a couple days.”
He shrugged and nodded again.
“Okay, let me show you.”
She led him to the backyard. “I need a hole three feet square. Or round. Whatever’s easier. It just can’t be any less than three feet deep. Shovel’s there. And there’s a pitchfork thingy in the shed.”
Matthew picked up the shovel and dug. Abbi watched him from the kitchen as she massaged olive oil into Silvia’s scalp, combed her hair with a soft brush. Then she bathed the infant in the sink, and Silvia cried, her mouth pulled in small, her lower lip in a pout. After drying, Abbi twisted an unbleached cloth prefold diaper and pinned it around the baby, tugged a recycled wool soaker—one she’d made from an old sweater after felting it in the washer—and gently bent her into a T-shirt. Then she settled Silvia in the sling again and carried a glass of water to Matthew. He took a sip.
“You okay out here? It’s not too hot today.”
He nodded.
“Is that a yes to you’re okay, or a yes, it’s hot?”
He laughed and nodded again.
“Well, let me know if you need anything.”
Matthew flashed a thumbs-up, poured the remaining water over his head, and went back to work.
Abbi didn’t intend to nap, but the nighttime feedings hadn’t lessened, and even though Benjamin was the one who got up, she couldn’t sleep while he paced and sang and shook the mattress as he pounded each air bubble out of Silvia. After swaddling the baby into the Moses basket, she dropped onto the sofa and dozed until she heard the sliding glass door slam. She jumped up, slapped her cheeks, and told Matthew, “You can wash in the bathroom.”
He shook his head and showed her his pad.
I have to go.
I can finish Thursday.
“That’s fine. Hey, wait. What are you saving for?”
A trip to NY.
“Like a class trip?”
Yeah
, he wrote.
“Cool,” Abbi said. “You’re hitting the city?”
He hesitated, wrinkled his forehead. Nodded.