The Arrivals: A Novel Read online

  Jane worked as a managing director in midtown, in an office so sleek and so quietly stylish that each time he visited it Stephen came away with the feeling that he had been to a foreign country. The muted gray letters on the glossy black front of the building, the expensive art hanging on the walls, Jane’s pale, graceful assistant with the emerald eyes: all of these spoke to Stephen of a world so immaculate and precise, so tidily prosperous, that he, with his overflowing desk and piles of books stamped with Post-it notes, could never hope to join it.

  “So wonderful,” his mother had said during a recent phone conversation, “that Jane enjoys her work so much. It will be a real adjustment for her when the baby comes.” He had not, at that moment, or in any moment since then, corrected his mother. He had not told her that Jane was planning to return to work three weeks after the baby’s birth. He had not told her that he himself, Stephen, with a master’s degree (in English Literature, to be sure, but a master’s degree nonetheless), was going to take a hiatus from working to care for the baby full-time.

  He and Jane had talked about it ad nauseam (literally, it seemed to Stephen, because even into the middle of her second trimester Jane had suffered from bouts of morning sickness). They had agreed on the plan, they were both completely on board with it, and really it was a financial no-brainer, but even so Stephen found that he carried the plan around with him like a burden—like a terrible secret, which he had so far been able to divulge to nobody. Not to his friend Gareth, with whom he ran six miles every Saturday morning, not to either of his sisters, and certainly not to his mother.

  Jane’s mother was an altogether different story. Robin, a divorced psychologist with her own practice in midtown, was all for the arrangement in a way that Ginny certainly would never be.

  “That’s it,” Robin said approvingly, as the three of them sat over dinner in a restaurant near her office one Thursday evening not long ago. “Enough of this rubbish with gender roles. You two do what’s best for you, and never mind what the rest of the world says about it.” Robin had blondish hair cut in a stylish manner, all angles and points, and she had, in the way that seemed unique to women of a certain age in Manhattan, failed to age a minute since Stephen had first met her, seven years ago.

  “Though,” she’d added patiently, laying a soothing hand on top of Stephen’s, “you’ll have to stop referring to the poor thing as it.”

  “I’ll try,” he had said.

  Stephen, for all the time he spent waiting for and preparing for the baby’s arrival, had not managed to develop an actual picture of what his days would entail once the baby turned from an it to a he or a she and acquired a name, a personality, clothes.

  Sometimes, at lunch, he walked to a small, fenced-in playground near their building and sat with his wax-paper-wrapped sandwich to observe the children and caregivers he saw there. Mainly he saw foreign nannies of indeterminate origin, but occasionally the children were accompanied by their own mothers: smart-looking women in their midthirties, drinking from stainless-steel Starbucks mugs and comparing the features and faults of their strollers. Rarely did he see a father, and when he did it was typically a harried, expensively dressed bag of stress, typing frantically into a BlackBerry and glancing up intermittently to survey the action on the playground—clearly a stand-in for the regular caregiver.

  Stephen had read all the requisite books about parenting that seemed to him to offer useful advice. He had learned—as much as one can learn from a book—all about diapering and feeding and burping, about the Back to Sleep campaign and the Ferber method and Dr. Spock’s advice on soothing a teething baby. He was ready for the tremendous change that was going to come into their lives.

  He was not, he was realizing, quite so ready for the changes in Jane. She had entered pregnancy as if entering a cocoon, protecting herself from the newly perceived dangers in the outside world. Caffeine. Mercury in fish. Bacteria lurking in seemingly benign slices of lunch meat or rounds of Brie. He watched her sometimes, when they were sitting in front of the television or when they went out to dinner, and on her small sharp features he could see evidence that she was pulling herself inward, girding herself for the battle she and the baby were going to wage against the world.

  Now, in her seventh month, she had emerged from the cocoon into something altogether more brittle and unknowable, despite the new roundness in her breasts, the swell of her belly underneath the smart maternity pantsuits she wore to work.

  They were on the New York State Thruway now. Jane opened her eyes and said, without turning her head toward him, “You should call them.”

  “I will, when we get a bit closer.”

  “But—”

  “I will, when we get closer.”

  “We just don’t want to show up there without any notice.”

  “Why? Who needs notice? They’re always asking us to come up for a weekend. Every week I get an invitation. It will be good for you, you’ll see. We’ll do the sights of Burlington.”

  Jane, a lifelong New Yorker, snorted. “Such as they are.”

  “Such as they are!” he said ebulliently. “I’ll take you to a cheese farm or something. Give you a taste of country life. We’ll eat samples!”

  “I can’t eat soft cheeses.”

  “Well, then, the Ben and Jerry’s factory. Free samples there too.”

  She laughed, reluctantly. “Still. I don’t think they mean for us to show up without telling them first. Anyone wants notice before having overnight guests. Just call them. Please? Stephen? I don’t want to just… arrive. I already feel conspicuous, dragging this belly around. I look awful. I don’t want to show up uninvited on top of it. You know how your mother makes me feel—”

  “We’re always invited. A standing invitation. And I think you look beautiful,” he said loyally. (He did think so.) “And my mother loves you to pieces.” (She didn’t.) But he relented, and said, just before Jane closed her eyes to fall properly asleep, “Fine. I’ll call them. In just a few minutes. Promise.”

  But they hit a dead zone and his phone first lost reception, and then it lost its charge altogether, and they were making such good time that the act of stopping to find a pay phone seemed, in this day and age, anachronistic to the point of being foolish. So he just drove on and beside him Jane slept, her lips parted, a slight wheezing sound coming from her nose, both hands laid protectively over her belly.

  “Hello,” Stephen said softly to the baby inside her, the baby he couldn’t quite picture but whom he already loved deeply, devotedly. “Hello, you little life-changer. Hello, thunderstorm.”

  They had to put the extra leaf in the dining room table for dinner that night to accommodate the lot of them. Ginny made lasagna and a green salad and sent William out at the last minute to Shaw’s for a loaf of bread. He returned with two, having been unable to choose. William stepped out of the den when Lillian began to nurse Philip. “It’s okay, Dad,” Lillian said. “It’s not a big deal. People do it in public all the time these days.” But to him it was strange and inappropriate, this glimpse of the intimate, almost animal exchange of milk to mouth, the naked display of need and satiety. The slurping sounds! No, he would rather hover over Ginny in the kitchen, watching her slice the carrots, attack the cucumbers.

  “I’m hungry,” said Olivia from the den. “When’s dinner?”

  “Don’t whine, Olivia. Just talk in your regular voice,” said Lillian.

  “But I’m hungry.”

  “That’s still a whine.” William could hear the sharp edge in Lillian’s voice.

  “I’m moving as fast as I can,” said Ginny to the salad bowl. “William, will you set the table?”

  But Stephen was already setting the table. Jane sat in one of the dining room chairs, tapping away at her BlackBerry.

  “What’s that?” asked Olivia, sidling up to her.

  “I’m just doing some work,” said Jane. She looked up briefly and considered Olivia with a combination of indulgence and anxiety.


  “No, what’s that thing?”

  “It’s called a BlackBerry.”

  Olivia thought about this. “No, it’s not,” she said finally, authoritatively. “A blackberry is a fruit. Like a blueberry.”

  Jane was already looking back at the screen. “I know. It’s funny, right? But this is also a BlackBerry.”

  “Olivia!” called Lillian from the den. “Stop bothering people.”

  “I’m not bothering! I’m helping.”

  Jane, frowning at the BlackBerry, said nothing.

  At last they were all seated, the lasagna parceled out, the salad served, milk poured into Olivia’s cup, wine into William’s and Ginny’s and Stephen’s, water into Lillian’s and Jane’s.

  “Grace?” said Ginny, and Jane, who had begun eating, put down her fork and folded her hands in her lap.

  “Bless us, O Lord,” began William. Only Ginny and William said the grace. Surely, thought William, this was an unnecessary rudeness on the part of his children, who had grown up saying that prayer nightly. Surely they had not forgotten each and every word.

  Olivia ate her lasagna in typical three-year-old fashion, picking it apart and sorting the different types of food into disparate piles: a tiny mound of sauce, ribbons of noodles, a heap of ground beef.

  “Oh, just eat it, Liv,” said Lillian.

  “In groups,” said Olivia. “Not all together.”

  Philip, in his car seat next to Lillian’s chair, squawked.

  “Not you again,” she said tenderly. “You wait. I’m eating.” And then to Jane, and partly to Stephen, “Eat all you can now. You’ll never sit down to a full meal again, I can promise you that.”

  “Oh, now,” said Stephen. “Never?”

  “Maybe when they’re off to college,” said Lillian.

  Jane had set her BlackBerry on her lap before the meal began, under her napkin. Every now and then it vibrated, and she lifted the napkin to look at it.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude. But there’s an incredible amount going on right now.”

  “It’s a Saturday evening,” said Ginny. “Surely there’s nothing going on now?”

  “There’s always something going on,” said Stephen. “You know what they say: the markets are always open somewhere.”

  “Really?” said Lillian. She had taken Philip out of his seat and was holding him awkwardly with one arm while she attempted to eat with the other hand. “Do they say that?”

  “Or about to open,” added Jane.

  “In Japan,” whispered Stephen, “it’s already tomorrow.”

  William studied Jane. She was not beautiful. She was, in fact, perhaps the least beautiful of the girls and women Stephen had brought home over the years; her eyes were too small, her forehead too low, for true beauty. But William could see how there might be something lovely about her when she was working, something engaging and winsome about her utter certainty.

  “How’s your work going, Stephen?” asked William.

  Stephen turned his head away from the baby to cough. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a living, I guess. Well, sort of. Part of a living.” He glanced at Jane.

  “You have a baby in your belly,” said Olivia to Jane.

  “That’s right,” said Jane. “And soon I will have a little baby, just like your baby brother there. Except it might be a girl. We don’t know.” She rubbed a hand in a circular motion on her stomach.

  “And your work, Jane?” said William.

  “Fine,” she said. “Busy, always busy. But that’s how I like it.” She smiled; she had flawless teeth, very white and straight. William knew from his own children’s orthodontist bills that this was an expensive smile.

  “You love it, right?” said Lillian. She put down her fork and lifted Philip over her shoulder.

  “Lillian,” said Ginny. “You’ve eaten nothing. Give him to me.”

  “He’s fine.” Lillian kept her eyes on Jane, who was nodding eagerly.

  “I do! I really do. I feel like—like every day I’m accomplishing something.”

  “Wow,” said Lillian, steering Olivia’s hands toward her fork. “I can’t imagine feeling that way. Like I’m accomplishing something.”

  “Lillian!” said Ginny. “Look at your children. Of course you’re accomplishing something.” To Jane she said, “Will it be difficult to cut back your hours, Jane, once the baby is born?” Ginny reached over William for the salad bowl.

  Jane looked hastily at Stephen. “The thing is,” she began.

  “It’s not like that anymore,” said Stephen. “With technology. You don’t have to take any time off, really, not if you don’t want to.”

  Ginny put the salad bowl down and stared at Stephen. “But why would you not want to?”

  “Well—”

  “I mean, surely you get a maternity leave?”

  “Of course,” said Jane.

  “And then?”

  “Ginny,” said William. “We don’t have to talk about all this now.”

  “But I want to talk about it,” said Ginny. “I’m curious. I’m a curious and concerned grandmother-to-be.”

  “Cloth!” said Lillian suddenly. “Somebody get me a cloth!” Philip had unloaded his last meal onto her shirt.

  “I will,” said Stephen. “Tell me where.”

  “Bag,” said Lillian. “Diaper bag, in the den. Yellow cloth. Hurry.”

  “For heaven’s sake, use your napkin,” said William.

  “No!” said Ginny. “Don’t use the napkin. Those came straight out of the dryer.”

  Stephen returned with the cloth, and Philip, reacting to the commotion, began to cry.

  The BlackBerry buzzed again. Jane looked at it and laid it on top of the table.

  “Jane,” said Ginny, with exaggerated politeness. “I wonder if we couldn’t turn that off, just for dinner. And finish this conversation.”

  “Mom!” said Stephen. “Easy.”

  “What? It’s not a lot to ask.”

  “I want bread,” said Olivia, reaching over her cup toward the basket.

  “Careful!” said William and Ginny together. But it was too late: Olivia’s arm hit the cup and knocked it over. For an instant they all watched as a pool of milk spread along the table and underneath Jane’s BlackBerry.

  “Shit,” Jane said softly, then snatched it from the table and examined it for possible damage.

  “I’ll get paper towels,” said William.

  “I’m sorry,” said Olivia, looking first to her mother, then to Ginny. Her mouth quivered.

  “That’s okay, sweetie,” said Lillian. She looked pointedly at her mother. “It was an accident. And you should have had a sippy cup.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Olivia again, this time in a whisper. Her shoulders bent toward each other, and her neck stuck forward. She looked to William like a little bird who was about to start pecking at something.

  “She’s three!” said Ginny. “She perfectly capable of using a regular cup.” To Olivia she said, “It’s okay, really.” Olivia nodded.

  William returned with the paper towels. “You know what they say about the spilled milk and the crying.”

  “Dad,” said Lillian, shifting Philip. “Not now.”

  “It’s not working,” Jane whispered to Stephen. “I think maybe—”

  “Heaven forbid,” said Ginny quietly, watching her, mopping at the spill.

  “No, really, it’s not working—”

  “It’s okay,” said Stephen. “Maybe it needs to dry out.”

  “It’s not okay!” Jane stood abruptly, but it was clear that she had misjudged the size of her belly; she knocked against the table and the wineglasses shuddered. She stopped for a second, as if waiting for them to fall. When they didn’t, she pushed her chair in deliberately, gathered her plate of lasagna in one hand and her BlackBerry in the other, and, leaving her water glass, leaving her salad, leaving her husband, and leaving the astonished audience, the mass of wet paper towels, and the now-qu
iet Philip, who had nuzzled into Lillian’s neck and gone to sleep, she stomped off toward the den.

  “Mom,” said Stephen plaintively.

  “What?” Ginny had returned from the kitchen with a full sippy cup of milk for Olivia, who accepted it and drank it, eyes wide, taking in the scene before her.

  “You could go easier. She’s my wife. She’s stressed out. She’s pregnant. And she’s a guest.”

  “I know all that,” said Ginny. “But—”

  “But nothing,” said Stephen. “We’re only going to be here for two days. Can’t we just have an easy visit?”

  Lillian found Jane later on the deck, staring out into the dark yard. The deck lights were on, casting shadows on the table and on Jane’s face and, beyond, on the woods that backed up against their yard.

  “Here,” Lillian said, offering a bottle of bug spray. “It can get pretty bad out here. I don’t want you to get mauled.”

  “Thanks,” said Jane. She took the bottle and peered at it in the darkness.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Lillian. “I didn’t even check it out. Is there some kind of special spray you’re supposed to use when you’re pregnant? I mean, I never did, but—”

  “I don’t know,” said Jane. “But I’ll use this. The mosquitoes love me.”