The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,75

had good news.

“Don’t ask.” I rolled my eyes. “We’re up with our profile and now it’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait-a-while. Anyway.” Hers was the magic pot. Mine had been taken by the king after the peasants had all been slaughtered.

I still could not see Ramon, but I could hear the splashing and yelling and crying at the pool. I realized that, aside from Jacob’s assistant, who was single and in her twenties, and the older couples here for Mr. and Mrs. Sanders, Ramon and I were the only childless or unexpectant people here.

I went to stand up, groaning. “I’m going to find Ramon,” I said. “I’m hoping he’s not already passed out in the barn.”

I scanned the lawn and saw him holding a beer by its neck, chatting with Jacob at the barbecue. Seeing my husband there, from this far away, I could detect his unhappiness. It was physical. He slouched. His hair was too long. His eyes looked tired, and a little sad. He had lost weight—I could not wait for the next time Paola saw him, for her to shriek that he needed to be in Terracina at all times or he would die from starvation.

Ramon and I first had come here ten years ago. We all were here then, Michelle and Jacob, Ramon and me, and Belinda too, before she’d ever had to terminate her pregnancy. She had a different boyfriend then, and the six of us would grill and drink margaritas and roll joints, and Belinda and I would sneak away to smoke cigarettes and talk about presidential biographies and British novels by the pool in the pitch-dark, our feet dragging in the cool water. Someone would always streak naked into the pond and pretend to be bitten by the massive koi that somehow stayed alive in there. Harriet was the only child then, and in the mornings, hungover, we’d all drink coffee on the dock and languidly throw her sticks in the early sun.

Now Fishkill was a place I couldn’t get airlifted out of soon enough. After Harriet dried off, and after I ate my weight in chili and sausages, and held enough babies to make me pregnant—by Helen’s calculations anyway—for a lifetime, I’d had enough. I could feel the weight bearing down, but I had lost sight of Ramon.

“Where is he?” I said to Harriet as we went by the pool, encountering a battalion of children and the accoutrements of their attempts to swim—flippers and life vests and inflatable water wings and swim rings, kickboards—and the few adults drinking spiked punch and ignoring them. We looked in all the bedrooms and bathrooms. We went to the tennis court, also ruled by an army of children, and then around the back and into the woods.

The earth changed, and I felt my sandals sinking into the deep moss and dead leaves. We walked a few feet to the gazebo nestled at the edge of the property, in the woods.

“Hey,” Ramon said. He sat in the gazebo beneath a canopy of spiderwebs.

“Ramon!” I said. “We’ve been looking all over for you.” Harriet, always the underminer, ran inside and placed her paws on Ramon’s lap.

“Awww,” he said as she licked his face.

“Are you crying?” I asked.

Ramon cleared his throat and leaned back.

The gazebo was musty, coupled with the yeasty scent of beer, and it was hot and moist and dark, like the inside of a tropical cave. I sat down on the bench across from him.

“What’s up?” I asked. My voice was strained.

Ramon wiped his bloodshot eyes. “Nothing.”

“Come on, Ramon. You’re being positively misanthropic.”

“Who cares?” Ramon kicked at the soft planks of wood.

“I know.” I sighed.

We were silent for a moment, just sitting there, listening to faraway joy.

He shooed me away with one hand. “Go ahead.” His eyes glistened.

“No,” I said. “What’s up?”

“You know I don’t even know my father’s birthday?” His words were slurred.

“Really? Is that true?”

“His parents never told him the day of his birthday. His parents were Franco supporters, did you know that? That’s why he left Spain. For Italy.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “But that’s quite a trade-off.”

“Seriously!” he said. “This is not an American story.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And now I don’t know his birthday.” I saw the tears streaming down his face get caught in his stubble, shining, on his dimpled chin. “Now I’ll never know it either,” he said.

I sat down next to him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you never know. He might be back, like your mother says. It might be black