Deborah Shapiro - The Sun in Your Eyes

Snow steadily accumulated into the night as Andy and I talked. It grew late and the storm gave him a good excuse to stay at my place, but I expected we would go to sleep and wake up in the morning and nothing else would happen. Only I didn’t really expect that. Because of the way he was looking at me, the way I looked at myself for more than a moment in the bathroom mirror. How many times had I hugged Andy? How many times had he put his arm around me? Now, with him next to me by the window, watching the snow float down below the streetlight, all I could think about was how close could we possibly stand without touching?

I went into the bathroom again and got into a T-shirt and sweats (not Sunday-paper-and-a-latte loungewear, but thick, gray, elasticized-ankle Rocky pants. Gonna fly now! ) and Andy took off his sweater but kept on the rest of his clothes. We both got into my double bed. I lay uncomfortably still, daring myself to do something— you could make it look accidental —and then backing down. Why do you have to make it look accidental? Why can’t you just be honest and unafraid? Ten minutes passed on the nightstand clock. Fifteen. Nineteen.

“I’m not sleeping,” he said.

“Me neither.”

On our sides, facing each other, he slowly moved his hand beneath the waistband of the sweats and my underwear, touching my ass, brushing my upper thigh and then making circles along my lower back. I didn’t know where to put my hand so I brought it to his face and I wondered why we weren’t kissing yet and it made me think of a movie with a prostitute whose services included everything but kissing, too intimate, too personal, and why did I have to be thinking about that right now? Stop it. Stop finding ways to distract yourself. Kiss him. Take your fucking sweatpants off.

He pulled me on top of him. There were smiles, some maneuvering, but no discussion.

That came later. Questions like: Had you ever thought about that? But when had you thought about it? When we first met? In that way that whenever you meet someone new you think about it? He had thought about it then, in that way. Later, he thought about it in a different way. He thought about it out in California. He thought a lot about it on the way over to my place that night. We didn’t talk about what was next. Because we didn’t want to pressure each other? Because we both already knew.

In the insulated, snowy whiteness of the morning, I crouched down to look beneath the bed for Andy’s wallet, which was no longer in the back pocket of his pants.

“It’s not under here. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I get to see you on all fours.”

Who was this? It was Andy. And me: a big, gleeful grin for the dust bunnies.

If Andy had been any other guy, I would have called Lee soon after he left. Eventually I told her what had happened, but only in the broadest strokes. And surrounded it with a false air of disbelief and casualness.

“I’M PREGNANT,” Isaid to the ceiling and Rodgers. Now one more person who wasn’t Andy knew.

“Good morning to you, too.” Rodgers propped himself up. With the sheet wrapped around his legs he looked like a merman.

“No, really. I am.”

I could see Rodgers actively thinking before he finally came out with: “I’m excited for you.”

“You don’t think it’s weird that I slept with you knowing I’m pregnant? Or that I slept with you at all ?”

“It’s kind of fucked up. But a lot of good things are.”

“Thank you for saying that. It is fucked up. Not just this”—taking in the bed, the whole of our night with my hands—“but it’s fucked up that you seem to be more excited for me than I am for myself.”

“I kind of envy you.”

“Like you wish you had a uterus?”

“When you have a kid doesn’t it relieve you, in a way, of all that self-absorption and striving to do something with your life because there, you’ve done it?”

“I don’t know. You’ve already done something with your life, though, so I don’t know why you’re even talking like that.”

“And you haven’t?”

Without a child, I was another no-longer-young person whose youth fueled her ambition until it stalled out over a lack of drive or talent or money. As a mother, wouldn’t I have a clearer purpose? My THATH wages wouldn’t be cause for existential questioning or a reminder of some abandoned dream; they would be, say, a college fund. So that one day my child would have the opportunity to be overeducated and underemployed. “You’ve achieved what you wanted. And you wanted big things.”

“It’s not as satisfying as you think.”

“But it must be satisfying just to be able to say that.”

“I guess it is. But a kid! Literally, that may be the most creative thing you can do. You’re creating a fucking person. ”

True, but it also sounded like a sop. My fear was that it was one of the most distracting, preoccupying things I could do. The biggest excuse for not doing anything else. And what kind of person lays that on their child? What if a baby didn’t relieve you of self-absorption and didn’t relieve you of your dreams? What if your self-absorption remained and your dreams remained just that — dreams — and you were left angry, frustrated, and resentful? For the rest of your life.

“Maybe you’ll have new dreams,” said Rodgers.

“I never realized you were such an optimist.”

“Me neither.”

He got up to make us coffee. Already I wondered what I would say to Rodgers if I ever saw him again, the assumption being that I wouldn’t. Not any time soon. Would I include him in the mass-email birth announcement Andy and I would no doubt send around to friends and family? (That is, if Andy and I continued to be “Andy and I” and everything turned out okay with the pregnancy.) The bulk email slip-in for Rodgers. Was that wholly inappropriate or actually the perfect vehicle of communication in this instance? I had about thirty-six weeks to figure that out. To hope that questions like this might be put to rest by the arrival of an overwhelmingly strong and calm mother-knowledge that would make my inner voice sound less like mine and more like that of a midwife full of folk wisdom.

As Rodgers drove me back to the motel later that morning, I thought, This is why people think they can carry on affairs. His truck wasn’t crashing, swerving off the road, running out of gas. The pitch of awkwardness wasn’t even all that high. I accepted that this is what happens between people, and people are large enough to absorb it without shattering. Not until we pulled into the lot and I saw Lee standing on the cement parking strip in front our room did it occur to me that I had been wrong. The unit, the twosome of the previous night wasn’t Rodgers and me. It was — my stomach sank — Lee and Rodgers. That little dance the night before that left Lee subtly insulted, that gave her a reason to go. Maybe they hadn’t sat down and choreographed it beforehand, but still, they were co-conspirators. But for what? My satisfaction? My degradation? A spasm of need reverberated through me and I hastily attached it to Andy.

“Hey,” said Lee. “Thanks for bringing her back to me.”

Rodgers nodded. Then he walked around to the passenger side. The paranoia bloomed and, if anything, Lee and Rodgers now seemed like parents. Not mine, but strange, shadow parents. I was a child in the grips of learning that what she knows about the world is small, and dictated by other people, and that she sees only what they choose to let her see.

Still, when Rodgers held me to him, despite everything, my body seemed both to sink into and draw a taut energy from his. I didn’t move until he did, tilting his head and smiling his crooked, almost embarrassed smile. “See y’round?”