Lynn Strong - Hold Still

Alana grabs hold of his arm. “I know,” she says.

Charles grins and leans in once more and nuzzles the top of the baby’s head.

Maya wants to stand next to him and do the same. She can nearly conjure it standing here: that baby feel and smell, the weight of it against her. She wonders if later she could ask to hold her. She wants to settle her, feet curled up underneath, breathing quickly, onto her chest.

Maya has no idea why she’s so sure. The proximity of this other just-formed baby, the sheen of Caitlin’s skin. Her hair is thick like it gets in those months when the body’s so slow to let go of things, keeping everything just in case. She wonders again who the father is, but only briefly. Perhaps Caitlin’s gotten one of those procedures where the father is never a person. In many ways this would be easiest. Or he was a one-night stand. She looks around the room. She can’t imagine Bryant has offered his sperm so freely. That leaves only Charles. She breathes in quickly, then thinks it couldn’t possibly be. Charles catches her eye and she feels her face get warm.

They all settle in their chairs. Caitlin’s just finished grilling the steaks and the air’s still filled with the smell and smoke of it as she comes to pass around the salad. Pomegranates and large chunks of avocado, crumbled walnuts, a homemade vinaigrette. Maya cuts her lettuce into tiny pieces. She has a small mouth, a tendency to get food stuck around its edges. She’s self-conscious like she hasn’t been in years. She feels Caitlin’s eyes on her and looks up, smiling. She drops her fork, picks up her wine glass, and nods at Caitlin, who grins, shoveling a large piece of avocado into her mouth.

Bryant holds the baby, who has begun to stir again but seems content once repositioned, and Alana sits back, weightless suddenly. Maya watches Alana watching Charles. She’s very still and seems to be willing him to look at her again as her husband caters to their baby. She twists her hair around her hand and knots it on top of her head. It stays that way only a few seconds, then slowly, over the next few minutes, loosens and unfurls itself, finally falling down her back in heavy clumps.

Maya turns toward Bryant. He’s settled into the chair next to her and he’s still careful, a little awkward, cradling the girl.

“How is it so far?” Maya asks. She nods toward the child.

She realizes she’s whispering. “You know,” he says. The baby squirms and she watches Bryant try to keep her steady. Her eyes are open, big and blue, long lashes. For a moment Maya doesn’t envy them the years ahead. “All the adjectives are shit in trying to describe it,” he says. “My wife has become this other person. I sleep a little and she doesn’t sleep at all.” He’s old, Maya thinks, older than Maya, and he’s starting this. He looks as if he’s lived as much life as his years suggest, if not more. But he has somehow just now discovered there’s something to be made here. He’s like a person who’s been trapped inside a darkened room and not allowed to interact with others, now suddenly trying to live in the world, to help to teach someone else. “Every second,” he says, “is consumed by this thing that really contributes nothing to the conversation. And yet, when I really look at her, I think, how did I live so long without her? And I mind much less how long the days feel.”

Maya nods. She’s not sure how to hold it, this rush of honesty. Slowly, having to look down at her plate a moment, she takes a bite of food and grabs hold of her glass. She’d expected him to say, Wonderful, amazing . She says: “That sounds about right.”

Maya nods toward Alana. “She seems wonderful with her.”

He’s emphatic now, comes outside himself. “Unquestionably,” he says.

“Have you two been married long?”

He shakes his head. “Four months,” he says.

Maya watches the baby’s eyes as cars pass by the window: her gaze follows the shadows they make along the wall.

“I was a mess before I met her,” Bryant says. “I know I’m too old for such things, but I’ve always been a mess. It took me this long. Or maybe it took all of this happening.” He looks, careful, down at the baby as he whispers this. “It’s cleared me up, I guess,” he says. “Lana.” He’s talking to himself now. Maya watches Charles in the corner, where he’s followed Alana. They talk quietly. She’s tying her hair up again; he’s wiping his glasses with his shirt. Caitlin lays out the steaks on a fresh plate and sets them on the table. “All this,” Bryant says.

She and Caitlin could be like these two: this new life, this new baby, it could clear her up. But then the baby would get older. She would resent them, hate them. She would have too many questions about what happened to her dad. There would be hell to pay for all the thousand million things that they did wrong as she grew and formed before them. But, Maya thinks, even with all of it coming out terribly, she’d be willing to do it over. Maybe so things would turn out differently. But also, only for the in-between time, the brilliant promise of incompleteness, that smell, that warmth, that soft, soft skin up close.

They pass around the steaks and the quinoa. Alana and Charles sit down again. Caitlin stands up. Charles tings his wine glass. Whatever is about to be announced, he already knows. Maya feels briefly nauseous. She might be losing him as well.

Maya only realizes it seconds before Caitlin starts speaking — Caitlin’s had a glass of wine now, she’s yet to place her hand on her abdomen again — how wrong she’s been. And she feels her body fold in on itself as if she’s been exposed. As if all of them see and know the fantasy she’s been quietly entertaining as they’ve talked and eaten: Caitlin isn’t pregnant. There will be no starting over here.

“Book,” Maya hears, and she has to play back in her head what’s just happened. She registers through the reactions of those around her: Charles is standing. Alana keeps her eyes toward her plate. Bryant offers his hand awkwardly to Caitlin, his back tall and firm, brushing past his wife as he stands. Maya realizes Caitlin’s the only woman Bryant has failed all night to address. A book. Maya listens intently to the murmurings, the exclamations; Charles catches Maya’s eye again and says, while still holding her, “Caitlin, this is wonderful!” Caitlin demurs, then reaches toward Charles before seeming to forget what she meant to do once she had hold of him; she sits back down in her chair instead.

“It really isn’t much money,” Caitlin says. “And, you know, it could turn out to be nothing.”

Alana has not stopped staring at her hands in too long. Bryant shakes his head, his shoulder turned toward his wife. “This is an accomplishment,” he says steadily. His words are whole objects that he’s handing carefully to Caitlin. He’s not seemed such a sturdy presence all night. Caitlin flattens her napkin back across her lap.

“Thank you,” she says. Just as sturdy, just as firm.

Maya feels small and impossibly matronly. She gets up to hug Caitlin. She’s tearing up, though she can’t tell why. “Oh, honey,” she says. “Honey, this is wonderful.” She buries her head a moment too long in the soft warmth and curve of Caitlin’s shoulder, the embroidery of Caitlin’s dress rough against Maya’s skin. She thinks of the baby they have lost one more time, then pulls away, puts a knuckle to the corner of each of her eyes, and sits.

“The kid hates me,” she says. It was another twenty minutes getting him strapped into the car and back to Annie’s. Ellie’s not sure how she made it back without driving into another car. She’d tensed up, hunched over the steering wheel. He’d screamed the whole way until they were back in the house and he very quietly and smugly crawled into his mother’s lap. The rest of the night she couldn’t look at him. His eyes were red and swollen and each time she got too close to him she felt chastened, wrong.