Alexandra Kleeman - Intimations - Stories

As for Karen, what she was dealing with right now was completely natural. Linda pounded her fist on the table in a fun way, to make the point: “It’s easy to lose yourself in a kid, even easier if you love them. Your husband comes back, he’s tired, you’re tired, in the end all you have time for is a little kiss on the mouth and a conversation about what the little baby ate that day. Nobody sees you as yourself anymore, only as the walking mouthpiece for that cute bud of flesh. But let me tell you, it gets easier. I know it.” Karen tried to think of what her identity-restoring ritual might be. Her feet ached, her shoes were sweaty. At her side, Lila reached out a small hand for the soiled napkin on the table, grasped it vaguely, let it slip back.

“But you can’t let yourself get down about not feeling one hundred percent of the time like the new person you’re supposed to be,” Linda added with a concerned tone to her voice, her bangs bobbing up and down as she spoke. “It’s those expectations, honey. They’ll drive you insane.”

Karen nodded. Then she remembered the stroller. She had been sitting in the café for more than an hour. Linda’s salad was long gone.

“Oh god,” Karen said. “I have to go back.”

“Go back where?” Linda asked, distracted.

“For the stroller. Part of it broke, the wheel’s off, I can’t put the baby back in it. Someone’s going to take it if I leave it there too long.” Karen didn’t trust the people of this city, the city in which she lived. In her last city, she had smiled or waved when she saw strangers looking at her.

“Oh, don’t worry about it! I’ll watch the baby,” Linda said, waving her hands in the air to show it was no big deal.

Karen hesitated.

“Look, honey,” Linda said, “you haven’t got a choice. Life’s like that sometimes — you gotta take care of business. You’re going to go do your business and come right back, and I’ll be right here with the little one, reading my magazine. It’s the only way.”

“You’re sure?” Karen asked.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Linda warmly. “Just go, I’ll tend to her every need.”

“I’ll just be fifteen minutes,” said Karen, embarrassed.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Linda. “Get out of here.”

Karen picked up her tote and looked down at Lila, still reaching for the napkin, still failing. Karen took the napkin and folded it into a small square, which she slipped into the bag. “I’ll be gone for a moment,” she said to the infant in an upbeat, gentle voice, “and then I’ll be back.” She thought. “It means nothing,” she added, tenderly. As she stepped out the door, she looked back. She expected to see Linda smiling toothily, holding Lila’s little hand and waving it around in a semblance of good-bye. Instead, Linda was rooting around in her handbag for something. Linda and Lila: those names sounded better together than Karen and Lila. What would it signify if Lila chose to unfurl her first words in front of a kind stranger, rather than her own mother?

Outdoors the sun made her squint, and the air smelled of cars. In a similar situation, her husband would have found a way to reclaim the stroller without losing sight of the baby. He had always been good with logistics, one of those people who behave as though they have the instruction manual for the world. Since they had the baby, this quality in him had been exaggerated. Her husband seemed crisper and clearer as he took on his new role: his jaw was better defined, and when he moved around the kitchen, putting towel and coffee mugs back in their places, his gestures had mimelike precision. She was amazed to see him come into focus. These were days full of details to be cataloged, remembered. But sometimes she had the feeling that she had come into focus for her husband too, and what he saw puzzled him.

The night they brought Lila home, Karen had folded a soft striped blanket in half and then in half again, making a soft bed for Lila so she could sleep between their bodies at night. As she placed it on the mattress and pressed into it a baby-shaped depression, her husband walked in. He lunged toward the bed and grabbed the blanket from her as if it were a burning thing. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his voice rough. “Babies die that way,” he said, and hurled the blanket at the wall to make his point. After they had turned out the lights, he rolled over and covered her in a slew of silent kisses before falling asleep. That night Lila woke from a dream that had made her cry. She wished that she had given birth to something that was impossible to injure, a stone or a stomachful of water. In the dark of the room, the striped blanket lay balled on the floor, its rounded shape full of inner folds and shadows.

As Karen walked back toward the corner where she had abandoned the stroller, she realized that, for all Linda’s talk on mothering and its pressures, she had never said explicitly that she had children of her own. For all Karen knew, Linda was as bad at it as she was.

The stroller was intact, its wheel still lying in a patch of marigolds several feet back. Nothing was missing from it except for a few energy bars and a handkerchief from the side pouch, which showed that somebody willing to steal had decided that the bulky vehicle was not worth the trouble. The blisters on Karen’s feet had spread to the thick skin of the sole, and she knew she wouldn’t make it back to the café unless she wrapped her foot up. Even so, she felt oddly good as she dragged the stroller behind her: a stranger watching from across the street might have described her as “full of purpose.” She felt as if Linda had said something that she herself had wished to say for some time. She had to find herself, inside herself, if she was ever going to feel connected again to the things she did all day. She thought about a friend she once had, who she no longer knew, and the long e-mails they used to write each other during their freshman year, describing at weekly intervals precisely how they felt college was changing them, as though logging this data meticulously could keep it all within their control. “I’m leaving you this trail of crumbs so you can find me and return me to myself if I wander too far away.” She couldn’t remember which one of them had written that junk line. Now her friend was living in Hollywood, a recovering heroin addict who never returned anybody’s calls. Last year she had stolen a mutual acquaintance’s car and tried to drive it out across state lines into Nevada to do who knows what. From the police station in the desert town she had used her one phone call to leave a message on Karen’s voice mail. It said: Hi, honey. Something wonderful’s happened. I finally figured out who I’m supposed to be. I’m beautiful and wise, when I say something it opens people’s hearts. The bad news is, I messed up, now I’m the wrong person. But still, I wish you could see me now! Peace and light! Karen hadn’t heard from her since.

She left the stroller outside, leaning on its empty titanium hub outside a drugstore, and limped inside. At the sound of the doors sliding open, the cashier at the counter looked up at her, then dismissed her immediately. The cashier was carving little marks into the checkout counter with a small, pointy pair of scissors in her hand. Karen limped past light-bulbs and window cleaner, full of possibility. Even here, in these boring and overlit aisles, her new good mood made it feel as though anything could happen: she could run into a friend or an ex-lover, she could receive an important phone call, she could have an important thought that would make her whole situation apparent to herself. She stood in front of the bandages and Band-Aids, taking in all their myriad shapes and colors — clear, nude, cloth-covered, breathably plastic, patterned with race cars and cartoon dolphins. She read the backs of the boxes: all the energy and force she would next use to find herself she directed toward this first decision, a practice decision. To her right, a man watched her, his hands in his pockets. He had a nice face with big teeth and ears. When you looked at his face, you could see right through it to the one he had as a little boy. It was easy to imagine him hanging upside down on a swing or standing in front of a rosebush, swatting at it with a broken-off stick. Karen saw him staring at her. She thrust forward a package of Band-Aids.