The Mother Garden (6 page)

After the third round of drinks, Blithe leans close. She tells him her apartment is just around the corner, he should come see the watercolor her father sent for her birthday.

He shouldn't go. It's obvious where this is headed. He looks at his watch. It's eight. If he swings by, gets her home safely, he can make it back to Berkeley before India's class gets out. They leave the restaurant and he's careful to hold his bag over the bulge in his pocket. As they walk, her hand brushes his forearm twice and lingers. He breathes in sharply, getting a dizzying whiff of that pear shampoo.

Blithe's studio is IKEA tidy. Everything has a little red cabinet of its own. Her bed sits stately in the middle of the room, heaped with throw pillows in rich, dark colors. She has a little lamp with a beaded shade that throws gold light all over the covers. There's no other place to sit. Blithe goes to the little kitchenette, takes out an open bottle of bourbon, and pours them each a glass. Her squat, square tumblers have little Georgia peaches etched into them. She gestures to the painting on her bookshelf.

“I like the red in it,” he says.

She faces him. They haven't had dinner and they're both sufficiently drunk. Uri takes a big swallow. The bourbon's terrible—cheap with a sharp burn—but there's a nice numb heat spreading over his chin.

“I've had so much fun with you tonight,” Blithe says. Her mouth is open slightly; her teeth look strong and clean. “You've made my birthday.”

Blithe waits, but Uri doesn't say anything. And then she smiles slyly, reaches for the tie at her hip, and undoes it. The dress falls open. Only the lace on her bra is black. The rest is a rich, silken cream. Uri takes her by the waist and pulls her toward him, sliding the dress off her arms with his palms. Then it's like watching a tree fall in slow motion: she barely bends, just falls on top of him, willingly, sloppily, and as she lands Uri feels a crunch against his thigh; wetness starts to ooze.

“Oh for Christ's sake,” he says, pushing Blithe off him. All the gold shards of light on the sheets are just India's intelligent eyes, watching him silently as the egg makes its way into his pubic hair.

Blithe gets another egg from the refrigerator, but she doesn't have a Sharpie so he can't draw the face. And what's more, there's a wet, sticky mess in his pants pocket and all over the sock the egg was wrapped in. He rinses both things out in the sink—but how will he explain to India that the egg is now faceless, when she clearly saw that he'd drawn on it, and that the sock is sopping wet?

“I don't understand,” Blithe says. “What's it for?” Blithe's breath smells like Lysol.

“It's a competition,” Uri says. He wants to say
with my wife,
but he's too much of a coward. Blithe must know he's married, though he's managed never to bring it up. He doesn't wear a ring. Neither does India. When they got married, India begged that they each tattoo a circle on their big toe. She thought it was more binding, not to mention more interesting. At that point in her life she was really caught up with being interesting.

Blithe's standing in the kitchen in only her bra and panties, the replacement egg held up like she's about to sing a jingle. She looks confused and he feels doubly guilty—for being with Blithe in the first place, and then for letting her down.

“I need another sock,” Uri says. Blithe sets the egg on the counter and goes to find one.

It's not that late, only eight-forty, when he leaves Blithe's apartment, the new egg wrapped in Blithe's nicest sock. He left the pink one there, drying on the faucet. Down the street he finds a drugstore and buys a Sharpie. Carefully, on the way home, he re-creates the face he drew. The little eyes, the horseshoe nose. He does a reasonable job.

“Where were you?” India says when he walks in.

“I went out for drinks,” Uri says. He bangs his leg on the trunk by the front door and when he leans down to rub it, he stumbles and catches himself on the molding.

“Are you drunk?” India asks.

“I guess, a little.”

“Who were you with?”

“Just Tom. And this new investigator.” He rubs his leg until he can feel a heat there, then takes the egg out from his bag and sets it on top of the trunk. His jacket covers the wet spot on his pants.

“I got the egg a new outfit,” he says before she can notice. The sock he took from Blithe is cashmere—she made sure to tell him this as she dangled it in front of him—light cream with little blobs of blue in it.

“Where'd you get a sock?” India asks, coming over to take a look.

“I bought it at lunch.”

“What happened to the pink sock?”

“The egg didn't like it.”

“The egg didn't like it?” India says, lowering one eyebrow. She looks like she's about to push the issue, but decides to let it go. She runs her thumb and forefinger around the edge.

“It's cashmere,” Uri says.

“I don't have any socks this nice,” India says. “Lucky egg.”

In the morning, India brings him coffee and toast in bed. “Why the special treatment?” he asks.

“I want to talk to you,” she says, and immediately, her eyes tear. Uri feels his gut flip. How could she know? He reaches for her hand; her bones are thin under her warm skin. He has an urge to take this hand and squeeze, feel the bones bend and snap. His hangover threatens to drag his tongue back down inside of his body and disintegrate it. India stares out the window by the bed and Uri looks out too. Two squirrels squabble on the fence.

“I was trying to figure out what my deal is,” she says. “And I think I'm just really afraid that I won't be a good enough parent.”

Uri relaxes. It's nothing he hasn't heard before. India's mother is an alcoholic. When India was thirteen, her mother, in the middle of a rant about how India would soon be off “participating” with men, put on an Aerosmith record and cut off her own ponytail. The next day, instead of apologizing for the theatrics, she volunteered to show India how to make paintbrushes out of it. He pulls India toward him.

“You'll be fine,” he says because it's true, but also because that's his script; there's nothing else he can say.

“I just called the doctor. If you're sure it's what you want,” she says into his shoulder, “I'll get the IUD removed today. They can fit me into a cancellation at four.” Uri nods and they make a quick plan: he'll get off at three and meet her there. His heart beats in his chin and wrists and groin and he takes India's hair, lifts it up so that her head rises with it and she starts to object, then presses her down beside him on the bed. He studies her face. She's striking, not just pretty like Blithe. Her hair is black and her eyes are a pale, frigid gray. She broke her front tooth in a car accident when she was twenty and the dentist smoothed the jagged edge. When they first began living together he would look at her offhandedly when he was watching television and the sight of her, all weird angles and paint-smeared jeans, would send a watery rush through him. He rests his head on her chest for a while, then gets up to take a shower.

He comes back to the bedroom to pick up the egg.

“You don't have to do that anymore,” she says. But he finds that he wants the egg with him.

On the train, Uri shuts his eyes and focuses on a shape. It's something India does that he thinks is dopey, but it seems to work for her. He picks a circle. Once it's lodged in his mind, he tries to let his thoughts fall away. Then he asks himself how he's feeling. The circle is black, then it slowly turns silver. It bends into a sperm shape, then bends back. The train's crowded; Uri's holding onto the rail. He's bad at meditating. At the next stop, a very pregnant woman gets on and a young man stands to let her sit. The woman glances at Uri and gives him a bland smile. He turns away and imagines her standing up, a big puddle of water forming beneath her. The nasal sound of her bleating in pain. He imagines the way she will smell as her insides start to come out—blood, mucus, chains of membrane—and the coffee he drank on an empty stomach sloshes miserably.

Blithe is wearing a dark pantsuit and somber barrettes; Uri takes this as a sign that she has an investigation out of the office. He's right. She comes by at nine-thirty to tell him she's going to Fairfield to look into a race complaint at the city's sanitation facility.

“Did you work out the egg thing?” she asks.

“Yeah, it's all fine,” he says. She bites her top lip and taps a finger on his door frame.

“Can I come in for a sec?” she asks. She closes the door behind her. “I just wanted to check in with you about last night. I mean, it seemed like you left in a rush, and—well, I guess I like you and I just—I didn't mean to freak you out.”

It's absurd to see her in a suit now that he's seen her almost naked. It's a little like her satin bra and panty set are etched on top of the blazer and trousers. A panty phantasm. And what's more, the older she tries to dress, the younger she looks.

“Blithe, I'm married,” he says. She looks briefly stunned.

“Oh God,” she says slowly. “I'm a horrendous idiot.”

“No,” he says. “No one's an idiot.” Blithe puts her hand on the doorknob. “Can we be friends?” he says, giving her the hangdog, boyish look he hasn't given anyone in years. The words linger around the office like a fart and Blithe looks at him coolly. She opens the door and leaves.

The miserable attorney calls again to screech about money. Uri says he's sorry, but he thinks he's coming down with the flu and needs to reschedule.

Three o'clock comes slowly. It has taken all his energy not to call India's cell phone to tell her to forgo the appointment. He tells himself that they still have a ways to go; she's not pregnant yet and if it's not meant to be then she won't get pregnant and they can maybe get another egg or a dog or just volunteer at a preschool.

The trains are delayed and India is already in the examining room when he gets there. The receptionist, a pear-shaped woman with thinning hair, takes him to her. India's got a piece of waxy paper draped over her lower half. She's on her back on the table with her feet in stirrups. He has the egg box with him and he sets it down on top of India's folded clothes. Before he can say anything, the nurse raps on the door and enters. She's tiny with a severe hairdo.

“I'm Nurse Practitioner Wu,” she says to India. “I just need you to relax and scoot up on the table a little bit.” Nurse Practitioner Wu snaps on latex gloves, gets out a tube of KY, and smears some on the metal speculum.

It's a quick procedure—a tug and a yelp.

“That's that,” India says. Her face is pale. Uri smooths back her hair.

It's all happening a little fast, this bright road to fertility. Uri still feels fragile from drinking too much last night, but he buys a six-pack of beer on the way home. Sitting at the kitchen table, he opens one and gazes at the egg in its box. It smiles stiffly. India comes in and grabs a beer. She straddles a chair and sits on it backward, resting her chin on the high wooden back. She tosses the bottle cap onto the table, then reaches out and touches Uri's cheek. She's going to try to seduce him. She's pursing her lips. How can she not have noticed that the egg is different? When Uri looks at it, he can tell. He can see that the nose is way bigger than the nose he originally drew. The smile is wiggly, too. And what's more, the old egg was a small egg and Blithe's eggs were jumbo. This is a jumbo egg with a crooked smile and India is not noticing. She gets up off the chair and tilts her head back to take a swig of beer. She hiccups and then tosses herself in his lap, pressing her cold nose against his jaw. He slides his hand under her shirt for a minute, lets her start to kiss the side of his head.

“I'm not into it right now,” he says, moving his legs so she's not as close to him. India stops.

“All right,” she says, but it's a hurt all right.

He stays in the kitchen, working his way through the six-pack. He rolls the egg over. No little red mouth. That egg is gone. He's tired from drinking, from Blithe's rebuff, from the knowledge that he will have to go to work every day now in a state of semi-shame. And that's not all. From the lawyer's screaming, from the sight of India in stirrups, from the hurt way she walked out on him a half hour ago.

There's no way he can go through with it. She was right; he's ruined the barbecue and he's ruined the egg and he's basically ruined his whole goddamned life.

He goes out to the back deck and looks at the sky. It's late fall and the days have gotten shorter. The backyard is becoming shadow and silhouette, navy and gray. The long leaves of the eucalyptus tree shudder. He brings the egg to his nose; it smells like Freon and plastic, like the inside of a refrigerator. He aims it at the eucalyptus and misses. The egg falls to the ground and cracks.

Uri thinks of a farm out where his family used to vacation. The angry, cold eyes of the chickens kept there, the dank smell of bird shit in soil. He and Alvin used to swim in a nearby quarry. When they were old enough, they'd borrow his dad's truck and speed down dirt roads. The dust streaked Uri's skin and made his hair coarse. He thinks of Alvin running and plunging into bottomless gunmetal water. The way he would cry out, the splash and then the silence.