The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,47

going to be ourselves. Isn’t that what we agreed? It’s the only way I can do this.”

“Let me explain something to you.” I turned toward Ramon, whose hand rested on the gearshift, waiting for traffic to abate. “This?” I pointed from myself to him and back to me again. “Not therapy. We are not here to explain everything. To understand ourselves. We are here to present ourselves in the best possible light.”

Ramon grunted. “We said we were going to be honest.”

“To each other!” I curled my hands around an invisible giant bowl, playing to an invisible audience. “And yes, in the letter, we didn’t want to misrepresent ourselves, absolutely. We want to be natural—and this is hard because there seems to be a format for it all—but not so that people question us. As parents!”

Ramon stared ahead. More traffic.

“You know what?” I sat back in the seat. “I’ll just try not to talk too much.”

“That would really be best, because sometimes you’re exhausting,” Ramon said.

We were silent. I had lost it then, the memory of Ramon, beautiful Ramon, coming toward me in that café in Rome; his whole body silvery and smooth and filled with light in the dark cave of the Grotto; seated across from him in the restaurant in Brighton Beach, his cheeks red with steam and winter. How susceptible I was to the way good memories can slide away.

I turned up the radio. Today’s news: a woman had recently been incarcerated for throwing her baby into a Dumpster. She’d given birth in a bathroom, unaided and alone, and had then thrown her baby out the bathroom window.

We wondered—I know Ramon did, too, because we were for just one moment not cruel to each other—why that couldn’t have been our baby. Why couldn’t the baby in the Dumpster have been our Grace? Perhaps, we thought, that infant, thrown into the air and landing in a cushion of New York City garbage, had been the baby meant for us.

_______

When we arrived in White Plains, we parked in a mall, in front of a blazing Bed Bath and Beyond.

“Hurry up, Ramon.”

He fretted. Tonight, leaving the car involved a series of inspections. Were the windows secured? The sunroof shut? (It had not, as I reminded him, been opened since September.) Was the moon roof that covered the sunroof also closed tightly, its shroud pulled over the smoked glass like an eyelid? Was the heat set to off? The radio? Best to turn it on and then off again and then on and then off, and the lights too. There are countless dials and knobs and switches to check before leaving an automobile, should you be the obsessive-compulsive person Ramon had become.

“Look,” he said.

I sighed loudly.

“The car has to be left correctly.” In order to enrage me and prove his point that I did everything in a negligent and cavalier fashion, his inspection was more drawn out than usual.

“Seriously?” I could feel my jaw clenching, my hands curling into fists. “Why are you doing this?” Again we would be late and all the babies would be taken by the sane and the prompt.

“Hmmm.” Carefully he rose from his seat, looked again inside the car, running his hands along the driver’s seat—feeling for what? A time bomb? Did he not know he was looking at one right here?—before he straightened and then leaned over the top of the car toward me. “Jesse,” he said. “You really have to be more patient.”

I was like sound. I was faster than sound; I was light. I was not aware that I was at his side of the car until I was there, and once I arrived, I pushed him by the shoulders, hard, slipping on black ice and then catching myself. “Are you kidding me?” I screamed. “We’re going to be late. Again!” Already I felt our possibilities diminishing, candles on a birthday cake, burning out.

Ramon looked up at the nameless, faceless office tower we were headed toward. The building was dark except for a large room about six floors up, bathed in warm light. Several people moved around inside, pouring coffee and greeting one another.

“Nice.” Ramon shook me off. “I hope you realize that everyone can see you. Everyone just saw you.” He smiled.

I closed my eyes. Then I turned away from my husband and made my way to the building. I pulled open the door and stepped into the cold, sterile, and empty lobby, where I waited for him so that we could take