And instantly I want to speak to your mother. To tell her how peaceful you look, and how your face seems dream-like and content, as though you'd known you'd done the right thing. Just as suddenly I want to grab you and shake you and scream at you for what you'd just done to her.
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Rock salt crunches under her high-heeled boots. Bob must have thrown it there on his way in, knowing she'd be heading out. Kind of sweet. She hears a knock behind her. Julianna pauses on the last step, turns. The girls wave from the window seat. Julianna blows two kisses. Ooh, they are so sweet sometimes, and this is so noticeable when they are being left behind, that she has to tell herself: Keep going!
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This morning, it had been worse than ever, and as she sat in her black swivel chair, going over endless stacks of financial records (mere numbers that weighed and measured the futures of strangers), Baby somersaulted and stretched. Baby pushed her fingers and toes and shoulders all along Heather's body, mapping out the parameters of her small existence. Is it loud inside the uterus? Heather wondered, as she typed out letters to customers, people who could lose their houses, their businesses, their lives. Is it like being at the ocean, sleeping with the windows open, listening to the waves, imagining an expanse of water. . . .Suddenly, sitting in her chair, her feet planted wide as she typed, she wanted to climb in too, opening her own womb, squeezing in her weary body, curling up beside the baby, eyes open in that warm swoosh, thumb in mouth.
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He loves the shape-word crescent, another Montessori-ism, like 'peaceful hands', and 'work'. You explain how the moon is still whole but we can't see it, we have to suspend our belief you hear yourself saying to a four year-old. Like when I know there is a bottom of the bathtub under all the bubbles? Yes, exactly.
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She needed a different way to soften. For a week or so, she had even prayed for a solution. God, make me a soft wife. Of course, nothing had changed. She wasn't the kind of person who had prayers answered. Or maybe the god she prayed to wasn't the kind that gave gifts. Either way, time was still passing, and she still had to get things done.
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Elsa shielded her eyes from the harsh sunlight as it broke across the horizon. Its rays set off clusters of crystalline reflections as they touched the solid expanse of white flakes and drift that were draped over the landscape. She peered into the shifting planes of blizzard and light to see her husband emerge from the whiteness of the landscape with a small child in his arms. She dropped the pail of ashes she had been scattering on the icy path and uttered a cry of joy. She fell against the gate and raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a low moan.
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