Helen Phillips - The Need

The morning bright and quiet.

When her feet touched the floor beside the bed, an intense vitality surged through her legs.

This superhuman strength carried her down the hallway to the place where they slept. She opened the door and every single bit of love she had accumulated for them over the months and years was present in the room, or was the room.

After watching them sleep for some minutes, she went to the hall closet to get the backpack. She filled it with the necessary things: the diapers, the wipes, the apples, the string cheese, the crackers, the nuts, the water bottle, the sunscreen, the hats, the charger, the tablets, the first-aid kit, the Coca-Cola bottle, the toy soldier, the Altoids tin, the potsherd, the penny. The Bible.

On her phone, there was a text from him, a cheeky tender pair of sentences sent just before dawn, and, abundant with love, she replied in kind.

The moment had arrived to awaken them into the renewed happiness of the home. Recognizing it, they were happy too, and ate well, drank well, were amenable to the application of sunscreen. The baby took the milk he needed from her, rich, dripping white as he laughed.

When she went to the bathroom, leaving them alone together on the rug for a moment, she overheard the girl saying to the boy: “How could you be such cuter?”

She donned the backpack and opened the front door, the children pressing behind her. Holding the girl’s hand, carrying the boy effortlessly on her hip, she walked up and down the blocks in the surprising heat, searching for the car.

But she could not find it anywhere. She had no memory of parking it. All the blocks blurred into one.

They went back home and got the stroller, the baby carrier. She strapped the baby to her. She snapped the girl into the stroller. The children were agreeable, curious.

She could do the miles, even in this heat. She was in awe of her vigor, her rigor.

That familiar old slog of marching somewhere with both, pushing the kid in the stroller while the baby grows ever sweatier, ever heavier, against your chest, the diaper full. Today, though, her energies doubled, she could more than handle it. She did not ache. She moved quickly, despite her burdens. She was hyperaware of her thighs, her calves, the power with which they propelled her and the children across the pavement.

To any passerby she would have looked like any mother out for a walk with her kids.

The sun warned of the summer to come. She had forgotten her sunglasses. But her eyes were tougher now.

Every so often her hands searched for their wrists, their pulses at first evading her fingertips, then found.

There was a moment when a fire truck came down the frontage road, heading straight toward them, wailing and flashing, before turning left.

But the children were not alarmed, for they were with her, safe, and she bore them onward.

It brings me joy to acknowledge:

Sarah E. Allen, for her awe-inspiring expertise in paleobotany. Vanessa Monson, for sharing her knowledge of archaeology. Lisa Schwebel, for consultation about Biblical matters. Nora Lisman Zimbler, for our conversations about psychology and loss.

My agent, Faye Bender, whose steady heart and hand have guided me for so many years now. Jenny Meyer and Jason Richman, for supporting this book.

My editor, Marysue Rucci, whose exceptional passion and brilliance have enabled this book to become more fully itself. Zachary Knoll, for his acumen and attention to detail. Jonathan Karp, for his powerful advocacy. The rest of the Simon & Schuster team, especially Elizabeth Breeden, Toi Crockett, Erica Ferguson, Alison Forner, Christine Foye, Cary Goldstein, Kayley Hoffman, Amanda Lang, David Litman, Heidi Meier, Tracy Nelson, Lewelin Polanco, Carolyn Reidy, Richard Rhorer, Wendy Sheanin, and Gary Urda. My editor Poppy Hampson at Chatto & Windus, for her keen and caring eye.

All of those many friends who have provided insight along the way, literary and otherwise, with special thanks to my generous early readers: Sarah Baron, Amelia Kahaney, Elizabeth Logan Harris, and Maisie Tivnan. And to Laura Perciasepe for the sound advice.

My colleagues and teachers, current and former, in the Brooklyn College Department of English, with special thanks to Joshua Henkin, Jenny Offill, Ellen Tremper, and Mac Wellman.

My students, who have graced my classrooms and my life with their curiosity and energy.

The CUNY Office of Research for the CUNY Book Completion Award.

David Barry, for the photographs.

The editors of my previous books: Sarah Bowlin, Lisa Graziano, and Krista Marino.

My wonderful family, with special thanks to my mother-in-law, Gail Thompson, for plot advice and for excelling at grandparent duty, along with my father-in-law, Doug Thompson. My grandparents, Paul Phillips, Sr., and Mary Jane Zimmermann. My brother, Mark Phillips, for talking science-fiction portals with me. My sister Alice Light, always my earliest reader. My father, Paul Phillips, Jr., for his lifelong encouragement.

My husband, Adam Douglas Thompson, my collaborator in all things great and small.

My beloved daughter and my beloved son.

My mother, Susan Zimmermann, and my sister Katherine Rose Phillips, to whom this book is dedicated.

HELEN PHILLIPSis the author of five books, including the collection Some Possible Solutions , which received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat , a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. Her collection And Yet They Were Happy was named a notable collection by The Story Prize. Helen has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the Calvino Prize in fabulist fiction. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic , the New York Times , and Tin House , and on Selected Shorts . She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Douglas Thompson, and their children. Visit HelenCPhillips.com.

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Some Possible Solutions

The Beautiful Bureaucrat

Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green

And Yet They Were Happy

“A profound meditation on the nature of reality… An extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers.”

“Phillips is, as always, doing something at once wildly her own and utterly primal. Maybe it doesn't surprise me that the strangest book I've read about motherhood is also the best, but it does thrill me.”