Rumaan Alam - Rich and Pretty

Lauren is not Sarah, and Rob is not Dan. There’s not going to be a fairy-tale wedding at a mansion; there’s not going to be a happy, healthy heir to the throne, or the family fortune, anyway. She’s a different person, they are different people. She knows what she wants to do, after all. There’s a movie theater on Sixty-Sixth Street, an artsy one, but there’s a stupid-enough movie playing, so she goes inside, takes her seat, turns her phone off, and watches the movie.

The baby eats, dozes, complains, burps,a little of the milk, undigested, spilling out of his soft, gummy mouth and onto Sarah’s shirt. There’s a washcloth somewhere around, but she ignores the wet spit-up, hushes him, calms him, and he’s asleep. She places him in the bassinet, carefully, then sighs with relief. The apartment is mostly tidy. She dumps the cold coffee from Lauren’s mug, runs the dishwasher. The steady thrum of the dishwasher is so reassuring. She takes a shower, stripping out of her milk-scented clothes, running the water lukewarm, gingerly soaping her tits, which were bloody only a week ago, horrifyingly. Women are raised to be comfortable with blood, but you never expect to see the stuff on your breasts.

Sarah considers her naked body in the mirror, after the shower. One of the disadvantages of this particular bathroom, a note she’d pass on to the developers if ever she met them: Few people want a huge mirror to confront them as they step out of the shower. Her breasts are enormous, even though Henry’s only just done the hard work of depleting the supply of milk therein. Her hips are wider than they were before, than they were a year ago, and what she knows but doesn’t quite want to admit is that they’re this way forever; she can stick to whole grains and lean meat for the next ten years but nothing will make her very bones shift. At least her vagina looks less swollen, less purple, and the discharge has stopped altogether. Her physician recommended some exercises, starting to urinate, then stopping; it’s meant to forestall future incontinence. She’s horrified but also mystified; did Lulu go through this? She can never ask her, of course.

Her hair looks good. It’s always been thick, but the pregnancy seems to have tamed it somehow, and of course, it’s always looked its best right out of the shower, or while in the pool, wet, as one mass, tucked demurely behind her ears. She’s always felt her ears were nice, and overlooked. Not everyone has nice ears. This body. This body Dan wanted to possess, and together they made a baby, asleep right now in the very next room. She tells herself that he’s alive, that he’s well, though some instinct in her tells her, every so often, that the baby is dead, that she needs to rush to his side. Either this will pass, or it never will. This is motherhood.

Dan is home. She steps out of the bathroom, her body hidden in the robe, her hair hidden in the towel. This always makes her feel terribly old, when her hair is wrapped up in terrycloth; she hates for Dan to see her this way.

“Hi there.” Dan’s mouth is full of baby carrots.

“Hi yourself.” She kisses him on the lips, gently. “How was work?”

“Work was work,” he says. “How were the festivities?”

“Festive.”

“I see you had a good haul there. Presents galore.”

“I should write the thank-you notes tonight, while I’m thinking about it.” She has some, stashed in the desk drawer. It won’t take too long.

“Society won’t collapse if you wait a night,” Dan says. “How’s the little man?”

“He’s good.” She smiles, an involuntary response at even the thought of Henry. “He was the hit of the party.”

“Naturally. Those good looks. How could he not be?”

“You should have seen it, though.” She tries to paint the picture for him, but knows she’s failing. “Amina held him, Mom held him, and he was just so chill and happy. He’s a people person.”

“Your dad, I think.” Dan pops another baby carrot into his mouth. “It’s in his blood.”

“Still, he’s the best, right? Our baby is the best.”

“Our baby is the best. Can I go look at him?” Dan knows to ask permission.

“As long as you tiptoe. Seriously, wake him and I’m sending you to the pharmacist for estrogen shots. You can feed him yourself.” She unwinds the towel from her hair, which flops down unhappily. The hummus is drying and cracking like mud in the blue enameled bowl. There’s a stack of napkins, unused, and a bowl of chocolates, wrapped in gold foil, from a box sent by the staff at the store, a box of chocolates to celebrate a new baby, how incongruous, though it’s the thought that counts. She should clean up. She should dry her hair, put on some comfortable clothes, make them something for dinner, nothing elaborate; there’s a box of baby spinach that could easily become a salad, there’s half of a rotisserie chicken inside the fridge that could easily become two sandwiches. Dinner, on plates, with napkins, at the table, or on the coffee table, a glass of water for her, a glass of wine for Dan, this should be easy. She has the wherewithal. He worked all day, he works every day; this is her work.

Dan creeps back into the living room, leaving the bedroom door open the barest crack. “That is one good-looking kid,” he says.

“It can’t be denied.” She’s in the kitchen. She’ll dress later. She pulls the spinach from the box, using her hands; it’s been rinsed, right? She drops it into a big wooden bowl, douses it with olive oil, looks for the half lemon she knows is around there somewhere. She’s forever cutting new lemons when there’s already a cut half rolling around in the fridge. She unearths one, from behind the jar of mustard; gets both, and the mayonnaise, and the chicken. She rips the skin from the carcass, tosses it into the sink, pulls off fistfuls of the flesh.

“How was Lulu?”

“She’s herself. A very pleased grandmother. I’m not sure I would have predicted that.”

“You wouldn’t have?” Dan’s typing on his phone.

She slides a bottle of wine across the counter toward Dan, then the wine key, then a glass, one of the set they received as a wedding gift, from her cousin Tatiana, she thinks. They’re massive, these glasses, you could keep goldfish in them, and though they’re quite expensive, Sarah believes in using their best things in their everyday life. It makes things seem more special.

“Thanks.” Dan pries the foil off the top of the bottle. “I think doting grandmother — excuse me, Mamina — is the role Lulu was born to play, frankly.” He sits on the stool on the other side of the counter, sighing as he does.

“Tired?”

“We’re prepping Topoforimax for the final round of tests. We’ve been back and forth about a million times with the ethicists about the test, and of course, we’re getting a lot of pressure to rush this one.”

“This one is diabetes?” She can barely remember.

“Topical insulin.” Dan pours the wine into the glass, peers down into the bowl of it suspiciously.

“The patch.” She nods. She runs the knife roughly over the chicken, dumps it into a bowl, scoops in mayonnaise, studies it, tosses in more. A few flakes of sea salt, some pepper, some mustard, a stir. There’s dill, she remembers, pulls some of the fragrant fluff from the stalk, doesn’t bother chopping, just drops it into the mix. There’s two-thirds of a baguette, and she finds the serrated knife, slices a segment of the bread, halves that, then splits it. She spoons the chicken salad into the bread, replaces the top on the bottom half, pushes down on it, forcing out the air. It’s still resilient, the bread, so she takes a clean kitchen towel from the drawer by the stove, drapes it over the two sandwiches, balances the heaviest cast-iron casserole on top of it.