Hold Still (18 page)

“Hi,” Caitlin says, a little breathless, Charles's arms still around her waist.

Maya averts her eyes, her whole head turning toward the window, as Charles frees himself from Caitlin and catches sight of her.

“Hi.” his voice is very close, and when she looks back he's right in front of her. Alana and Bryant have slipped past her to the bed.

Charles looks back at Caitlin. “You didn't tell me . . .”

Caitlin shrugs, blushing slightly. “It's not your party.”

They're friends, Maya sees, of course. They're close. Perhaps what might be inside of Caitlin belongs to Charles. He stands a minute, quiet. He finally leans in close to her, his arms stick straight, and brushes her cheek with his.

“It's really wonderful to see you,” he says. He smells exactly like he tasted when they kissed.

“You too,” Maya says.

Charles's eyes stay on her a moment longer.

“Hey, you.” It's Alana behind her. “Come meet her.”

Charles looks at Maya one last time.

“Baby,” whispers Charles, taking three big steps, then leaning in to see the child. He's awkward with Bryant. He shakes his hand brusquely, his eyes already stuck on the infant. He sidles up close to Alana on the bed and peers in at the baby. “She's wonderful,” he says.

Alana grabs hold of his arm. “I know,” she says.

Charles grins and leans in once more and nuzzles the top of the baby's head.

Maya wants to stand next to him and do the same. She can nearly conjure it standing here: that baby feel and smell, the weight of it against her. She wonders if later she could ask to hold her. She wants to settle her, feet curled up underneath, breathing quickly, onto her chest.

Maya has no idea why she's so sure. The proximity of this other just-formed baby, the sheen of Caitlin's skin. Her hair is thick like it gets in those months when the body's so slow to let go of things, keeping everything just in case. She wonders again who the father
is, but only briefly. Perhaps Caitlin's gotten one of those procedures where the father is never a person. In many ways this would be easiest. Or he was a one-night stand. She looks around the room. She can't imagine Bryant has offered his sperm so freely. That leaves only Charles. She breathes in quickly, then thinks it couldn't possibly be. Charles catches her eye and she feels her face get warm.

They all settle in their chairs. Caitlin's just finished grilling the steaks and the air's still filled with the smell and smoke of it as she comes to pass around the salad. Pomegranates and large chunks of avocado, crumbled walnuts, a homemade vinaigrette. Maya cuts her lettuce into tiny pieces. She has a small mouth, a tendency to get food stuck around its edges. She's self-conscious like she hasn't been in years. She feels Caitlin's eyes on her and looks up, smiling. She drops her fork, picks up her wine glass, and nods at Caitlin, who grins, shoveling a large piece of avocado into her mouth.

Bryant holds the baby, who has begun to stir again but seems content once repositioned, and Alana sits back, weightless suddenly. Maya watches Alana watching Charles. She's very still and seems to be willing him to look at her again as her husband caters to their baby. She twists her hair around her hand and knots it on top of her head. It stays that way only a few seconds, then slowly, over the next few minutes, loosens and unfurls itself, finally falling down her back in heavy clumps.

Maya turns toward Bryant. He's settled into the chair next to her and he's still careful, a little awkward, cradling the girl.

“How is it so far?” Maya asks. She nods toward the child.

She realizes she's whispering. “You know,” he says. The baby squirms and she watches Bryant try to keep her steady. Her eyes are open, big and blue, long lashes. For a moment Maya doesn't
envy them the years ahead. “All the adjectives are shit in trying to describe it,” he says. “My wife has become this other person. I sleep a little and she doesn't sleep at all.” He's old, Maya thinks, older than Maya, and he's starting this. He looks as if he's lived as much life as his years suggest, if not more. But he has somehow just now discovered there's something to be made here. He's like a person who's been trapped inside a darkened room and not allowed to interact with others, now suddenly trying to live in the world, to help to teach someone else. “Every second,” he says, “is consumed by this thing that really contributes nothing to the conversation. And yet, when I really look at her, I think, how did I live so long without her? And I mind much less how long the days feel.”

Maya nods. She's not sure how to hold it, this rush of honesty. Slowly, having to look down at her plate a moment, she takes a bite of food and grabs hold of her glass. She'd expected him to say,
Wonderful, amazing
. She says: “That sounds about right.”

Maya nods toward Alana. “She seems wonderful with her.”

He's emphatic now, comes outside himself. “Unquestionably,” he says.

“Have you two been married long?”

He shakes his head. “Four months,” he says.

Maya watches the baby's eyes as cars pass by the window: her gaze follows the shadows they make along the wall.

“I was a mess before I met her,” Bryant says. “I know I'm too old for such things, but I've always been a mess. It took me this long. Or maybe it took all of this happening.” He looks, careful, down at the baby as he whispers this. “It's cleared me up, I guess,” he says. “Lana.” He's talking to himself now. Maya watches Charles in the corner, where he's followed Alana. They talk quietly. She's tying her hair up again; he's wiping his glasses with his shirt. Caitlin
lays out the steaks on a fresh plate and sets them on the table. “All this,” Bryant says.

She and Caitlin could be like these two: this new life, this new baby, it could clear her up. But then the baby would get older. She would resent them, hate them. She would have too many questions about what happened to her dad. There would be hell to pay for all the thousand million things that they did wrong as she grew and formed before them. But, Maya thinks, even with all of it coming out terribly, she'd be willing to do it over. Maybe so things would turn out differently. But also, only for the in-between time, the brilliant promise of incompleteness, that smell, that warmth, that soft, soft skin up close.

They pass around the steaks and the quinoa. Alana and Charles sit down again. Caitlin stands up. Charles tings his wine glass. Whatever is about to be announced, he already knows. Maya feels briefly nauseous. She might be losing him as well.

Maya only realizes it seconds before Caitlin starts speaking—Caitlin's had a glass of wine now, she's yet to place her hand on her abdomen again—how wrong she's been. And she feels her body fold in on itself as if she's been exposed. As if all of them see and know the fantasy she's been quietly entertaining as they've talked and eaten: Caitlin isn't pregnant. There will be no starting over here.

“Book,” Maya hears, and she has to play back in her head what's just happened. She registers through the reactions of those around her: Charles is standing. Alana keeps her eyes toward her plate. Bryant offers his hand awkwardly to Caitlin, his back tall and firm, brushing past his wife as he stands. Maya realizes Caitlin's the only woman Bryant has failed all night to address. A book. Maya listens intently to the murmurings, the exclamations; Charles catches Maya's eye again and says, while still holding her,
“Caitlin, this is wonderful!” Caitlin demurs, then reaches toward Charles before seeming to forget what she meant to do once she had hold of him; she sits back down in her chair instead.

“It really isn't much money,” Caitlin says. “And, you know, it could turn out to be nothing.”

Alana has not stopped staring at her hands in too long. Bryant shakes his head, his shoulder turned toward his wife. “This is an accomplishment,” he says steadily. His words are whole objects that he's handing carefully to Caitlin. He's not seemed such a sturdy presence all night. Caitlin flattens her napkin back across her lap.

“Thank you,” she says. Just as sturdy, just as firm.

Maya feels small and impossibly matronly. She gets up to hug Caitlin. She's tearing up, though she can't tell why. “Oh, honey,” she says. “Honey, this is wonderful.” She buries her head a moment too long in the soft warmth and curve of Caitlin's shoulder, the embroidery of Caitlin's dress rough against Maya's skin. She thinks of the baby they have lost one more time, then pulls away, puts a knuckle to the corner of each of her eyes, and sits.

Summer 2011

“T
he kid hates me,” she says. It was another twenty minutes getting him strapped into the car and back to Annie's. Ellie's not sure how she made it back without driving into another car. She'd tensed up, hunched over the steering wheel. He'd screamed the whole way until they were back in the house and he very quietly and smugly crawled into his mother's lap. The rest of the night she couldn't look at him. His eyes were red and swollen and each time she got too close to him she felt chastened, wrong.

“He's a kid, El.” She wishes her brother were here instead of at his stupid college. Jack would love Ben. Jack might love anyone but her.

“He's not, though. He's smarter than me and he hates me. And all he wants is for me to take him back to his mom and dad.”

“You just have to give him things they can't give him. Take him out. Have fun with him.”

“Oh, please, Benny. He's not fun. He's a spoiled little brat.”

“Does he like to swim?”

“It's been raining. We've been trapped inside.”

“That's not his fault. He's a kid, El. He's probably going nuts.”

“I'm going nuts.”

She listens to her brother's drawn-out sigh. He sounds like her mom when he does this. “Just be good, El. You need to make this work, okay? Somehow. Okay. Just make this work.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing, El. She's just exhausted, I think.”

“Just tired of me.”

“Tired of worrying about you.”

“Right.”

Four years before: Ellie walked from the Lower East Side over the Brooklyn Bridge and to the park to watch her brother play soccer. Dylan was pissed. She'd taken both the pills he'd bought, when they'd agreed that they would share.

“Selfish bitch,” he'd called her.

She'd flipped him off. Her arm felt heavy and she'd only lifted it halfway as her middle finger rose toward him. “Fuck you,” she'd mumbled back. She left her backpack and her phone and walked the six miles, three hours, to her brother's game.

She saw Ben light up when he saw her. She thought he did, then wondered if it was the drugs mixed up with her joy in seeing him. “Benny,” she said, suddenly breathless. Though he was across the field and only smiled and waved.

Her mom was there as well, right by the benches where the team sat. She'd supplied the snacks that week and was collecting granola wrappers as the boys tightened the laces of their cleats, their backs all rounded in a row. Ellie waved to her mom, but
stayed far away. She lay down on the grass and felt the prickle of it and the dampness. A couple people turned from the game to watch. The high was drifting slowly from her, but she held tight to it and breathed in and out, marveling at the sweetness of the air.

She turned over on her stomach. She placed her elbows deep into the dirt and kicked up her feet. A whistle blew. It screeched between her ears and she buried her head more deeply in the grass. She got soil, rich, dark-smelling, on her lips and in her nose. And then her brother, running up closer, on the right side of the field. The whistle blew again. The ball was kicked from center field. There was a thwack. And then Ben ran toward it, feet pounding against dirt and grass, legs like long, sinewed sculptures, still-twiggy stretched-out graceful arms.

He came upon the ball, no one close to him, and made easy careful contact. Black white black white black white. She wished that she could hold tight to her brother's ankle and ride along with him as he ran.

“Benny,” she said again.

She looked over at her mother, who was trying to focus on the game, but her eyes kept wandering to Ellie across the packs of boys in white and blue. Ellie waved to her, smiling. She turned over on her back again and listened to the cheering of the smattering of parents as her brother scored.

Her whole body felt heavy. The walk had been exhausting. She usually liked to lie and stare, walk slowly, watching lights, when she was stoned. And now she was paying for the extreme exertion of her walk. She thought she'd sleep forever, settle slowly into the damp grass.

There was a blank then. She heard pounding, feet against grass and ground, whistles blowing, boys yelling to one another,
her brother's name, she thought, more than once. She held the grass and smelled it. She slept and drifted in and out.

“El,” she heard. The game was over; she saw feet walk past her, sandals, sneakers, a pair of large black steel toes with matching heels. She saw her brother's cleats and the socks that reached up high to cover his shin guards. They were royal blue with a bright white stripe around the top. She wanted to touch the hairs popping up over the socks with the bottom of her chin and then her cheeks and then her forehead. She wanted to burrow her head back in the grass and go to sleep.

She felt a little nauseous, bleary. “Yeah,” she said.

“Elinor,” said her mother. She leaned over and pulled Ellie up by her arm.

Ellie stared at her. She felt a blank space where the words to answer might have come from.

“Hey,” she said.

“What's wrong with you?” her mother hissed, half worried, half angry, all not sure what to do.

“Nothing,” Ellie said. She turned to Ben. “You win?”

“Yeah,” he said. His voice was quiet.