• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 488 0

” she’d said. “I’m not that old.” This was true—she wasn’t that old, but her husband was. I’d met him after my first doctor’s appointment in the city. “Look at me,” he’d said, escorting us down the sidewalk, “taking two beautiful ladies to lunch.” We’d gone to a French restaurant near the doctor’s office, a place with white tablecloths and a long, skinny loaf of bread in a paper bag in the center of the table, along with a crock of unsalted butter. Marcus, who I knew was a very big deal, had been friendly, asking questions about my house and my boys and if I followed the Phillies, but he’d been distracted when the food came, tapping at his BlackBerry, and excused himself after downing his steak frites (I’d ordered the same thing; India had sea bass en papillote). He was nice-enough-looking for a man his age, with thick hair and big white teeth. I could feel the energy of the room change when we arrived, and I noticed people looking at him, the hostess’s respectful manner as she took his coat. Marcus was polite to her, and interested in me in the same way, but most of his attention he reserved for his wife. He clearly adored India, but I couldn’t imagine him having sex. I couldn’t even picture him without a suit and tie. That must have shown on my face, because India started to laugh.

“Oh, look at you!” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “You’re making me feel like a dirty old lady!”

I turned down the volume on the computer, angling the screen so it faced away from the bedroom, where Frank was still asleep.

“I’m just jealous,” I confessed.

“So you guys aren’t, um, active?”

I didn’t want to say, but my face must have given her an answer. “Men get weird about it,” she said. “Get him drunk! Buy some scented candles! Wear something fitted! I just saw the most gorgeous cashmere sweaters in these scrumptious colors...”

I nodded politely. India lowered her voice. “Do you think the baby’s listening?”

“I don’t think the baby has ears.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure what the baby had and didn’t have. With Frank Junior and Spencer I’d signed up for e-mail updates telling me what the fetus was doing or growing at that very moment. I’d been tuned in to every change in my body, every flutter and kick, but now, with two boys to care for and a husband who wasn’t inclined to help, plus the knowledge that this baby wasn’t mine to keep, I wasn’t paying the same kind of attention.

“So what’s the problem?” India asked.

“Everything’s fine. We’re going at it night and day. Right on top of Mount Laundry, while the boys are kicking a soccer ball at the bedroom door.”

India sighed. “I feel bad.”

“Oh, no,” I said, worried, again, that she thought I was hitting her up for more money. “It’s no big deal!”

“I’d be happy to hire a cleaning lady...”

“I don’t work,” I said. “I can clean.”

“But you’re tired.”

“I’m fine,” I said firmly. My mother had hated housework, heaving epic sighs every time she fetched the vacuum out of the closet or the bucket out from underneath the sink, but I’d always liked it. There were few things I found more peaceful than carrying a basket full of warm, clean clothes into the empty TV room and folding them while I watched one of my shows.

“You’re so cute,” India had said fondly when I’d told her how I liked doing the laundry, and I’d smiled, but in the back of my mind I was thinking of another book, The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel Gabe had recommended after I’d asked him, half teasing, if all the books he read were by men. The book was set in the future, where fertile women were given to powerful men and their old wives to have babies for them. I remembered the way the old commander’s wife had hated Offred, the handmaid, the one who was supposed to bear her children, and I wondered sometimes whether, behind all the smiles and the friendliness and the gift cards for Whole Foods, India secretly hated me, too.

Then it was Christmas. We were hosting Frank’s mother, Corrinne, and my parents, plus Nancy and Dr. Scott. On Christmas Day, I tried to take our usual picture in front of the tree. Frank Junior and Spencer looked adorable