It was August and I was 22, in that strange limbo of young adulthood, still following childhood’s rhythms. Every night, I dreamt sordid, feverish dreams. One has stayed with me for all these years: dark closet, shattered breath, ripped hole, calloused thumb. I woke up sweating, disappointed to be where I was—our familiar Block Island beach rental—but mostly I was mortified to see my parents, each morning at breakfast.
On our last morning of vacation, my dream was distinctly not erotic. A tiny hand had encircled my finger; I woke up shouting.
“Gabrielle,” my mother said, grabbing hold of my foot. “Sweetheart,” she whispered, using a rare endearment.
“There’s a baby,” I cried, through the scrim of sleep. “There’s a baby but it’s not my baby. But it is, somehow. Like I’m responsible for this baby.”
She said Sweetheart again and touched her hand to my forehead. “You were dreaming.”
I looked around the living room, flooded with sun. Here was my mother, sitting primly on the edge of my mattress on the rental’s pull-out couch. Her forehead was etched with wrinkles, like lines drawn in the sand. Here I was, sweating through sheets. It took me a second to come back to myself, to know where and who I was.
My mother was now standing in the doorway, clearly unsettled, redoing one of her tortoise combs.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You’re the one with the crazy dreams.”
Later, when the tide was out, my father put his book down. He said: “Let’s take a walk.”
We ambled along the shoreline, I remember thinking my mother’s legs were in step with mine, and my father was somehow hesitating. We walked for the length of a wave’s full set, surf breaking clean and perfect for riding. “We want to talk to you,” my father said.
I was still young enough that my first thought was: what did he find out? What did I do? I began to scroll through my mental catalogue of petty offenses: potential sordid sleep-talking, occasional social smoking, a rager I’d thrown at our house a couple of summers ago, despite their explicit and repeated instructions not to throw parties while they were away; pearl and diamond earrings from my grandmother sold at a pawn shop in order to finance a spring break trip to Berlin.
“So, your mother is fifty-two,” my father said, slowing his gait even further.
Did I forget her birthday? I panicked. No! I called, I thought to myself. I’d made sure to call.
“So, you know, this is really quite a shock,” he ran his hand through his hair, still damp from his swim.
“What’s a shock?” I blurted: “Oh my god. Are you sick?”
“No,” my mother said, sharply. She stopped walking and so my father and I did too. She rolled out her neck and took an audible breath. “I’m pregnant.”
“You’re what?”
“Pregnant,” she said. And she sputtered a laugh. “I’m sorry,” she shook her head, “I know it’s not funny. But it kind of is. I mean, look at us.”
I looked. They were beautiful, my parents. My father put his hand on her neck. They were both better looking than me. They were in their fifties, sure—too old to have a baby—but they looked great. And maybe they weren’t too old? Maybe this would be a huge, bizarre twist in all our lives.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
He shot me an incredulous look.
“No, I mean, I understand. Jesus. But don’t you use… protection?”
We were walking again, my father in front this time, with a seemingly new determination. The sun was shining brightly; I wished for an onslaught of clouds. “Condoms,” my mother nearly hissed. She was wearing a big straw hat, and I couldn’t quite see her face.
“Condoms?” I squawked. “Are you teenagers?”
My father stopped again and planted his hands on his hips. “We wanted to tell you she’s pregnant,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, “okay.” My chest started to itch. I really hated all this sun. “Are you going to keep it?” I asked in a way that I only realized—at the exact moment the words left my mouth—was hopeful.
“We wanted to tell you,” he said, “because she’ll likely miscarry and the last thing she’ll need is the added pressure of having to hide from you what she’s dealing with.” My father sounded angry; he often did when he was scared. “There could be a lot of blood.”
“I can’t believe I haven’t miscarried yet,” my mother insisted. “I mean, I really can’t.” Her voice was light and brittle. It was as if she, my mother, 52-years-old, was the one prankster left on the lawn, after all her friends had scattered. It was up to her to explain now to someone else’s parents just exactly what had happened here.
And there was something else. Something I was forgetting or about to remember. I couldn’t tell—
My mother held my hand, almost shyly. “Your dream,” she said.
For a moment, I really had forgotten.
“This morning.”
The wind picked up and the sun wouldn’t’t go away. My eyes were tearing as it all came back.
“The baby,” I nodded.
“Yes. But I’m only eleven weeks. So not really a baby,” she shook her head. “It’s not,” she said. “Not yet.”
Emilia had ridden topless on a white horse to her wedding ceremony. Cal and I had stood together, watching her entrance, our feet in the sand, our hands entwined, half smirking and half awestruck.
About 25 years later, I’m in Tulum with my son. We’ve come to this resort since Graham was a toddler, and now we’re here celebrating his high school graduation, which took place last month on a muggy day in May. His father did not show up. The resort is one of the first that was built here, with the kind of spare desert landscape we all love. Cal and I had planned this two years ago and, as the departure date drew closer, I did think about going somewhere else with Graham, somewhere neither of us had ever been, but then I thought: no way is Cal ruining our favorite spot. So, here we were—same spot, no Cal, just Graham and me. I’d actually come here once without Cal, during the time I was trying to get pregnant. I came with two friends for a yoga retreat, and I thought: one day I’ll bring my daughter here. While I was in the yoga classes, I pictured this imaginary daughter. I pictured us sipping mango juice. I pictured her talking and I pictured myself listening and I swore I’d always listen to whatever she had to say. I knew that I’d be thrilled with a son or a daughter, but in my harmless visualizations, it was always a girl. When I came here with my friends, we walked the meditation labyrinth at dusk, and we did not meditate. We whispered and giggled as we walked, and we were chided by a staff member to keep our voices down. Just days ago, at sunset, I took my son to the labyrinth, and we walked through, not speaking, not one word. At the resort there’s a Temazcal, where you sweat profusely and, amidst all this sweating, it’s not unusual—or so I was kindly told this morning—to cry. There’s a healing temple for various ceremonies and a curated store and clean rooms with white sheets and a swan sculpture to greet us each afternoon, made of white cloth hand towels. There was nothing on the nightstands, not even a clock. The guests who walk the raked-sand paths have the low-key, blissed-out energy of having recently discovered Mayan clay massages. My son doesn’t like massages. He’s content to sleep until one, then scarf down huevos a la Mexicana, sip coffee and listen to music or meditation podcasts or—who knew what he was listening to— with his sunglasses on and his Airpods in.
“This place,” my son said. “I always forget.”
“What do you forget?” my heart started speeding as I braced myself for a mention of his father.
“What a refuge it is.” He leaned back in his chair and took in scattering of guests under the dining palapa. “Such an absolute hippie holdout.”
“I can’t tell if you think that’s a good thing.” I smiled, sipping my juice. “I mean, maybe it has become too quiet for you.”
He ran his hand through his thick, swoopy hair. His fingers were the same fingers I remember from his infancy: long and thin, poetic, somehow. He drummed those fingers on the table.
“Graham?”
“I dig quiet.”
“I mean,” I plowed on, “you know there are hordes of people outside this property, zooming on scooters and tripping on psychedelics and dancing to techno music in the jungle.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “Believe me.”
“Speaking of,” I said, “I texted Emilia and Rob. We’ll see them tonight.”
He shrugged. “Might as well.”
The first morning, I’d tiptoed around his bed—our room had two twins— then finally woke him when I returned from a beach walk, yoga and breakfast. I suggested he try a treatment or maybe the Temazcal. He said, “I’m good,” before rolling over and going back to sleep. As each day began, I couldn’t tell if he was amused or depressed, but every afternoon we ventured off the property together; he never said no to an outing. We biked to ruins and swam in cenotes and waded past the horrific red seaweed that was plaguing Tulum, shrieking together until we were past it, until we were panting, lying on our backs, laughing at not only our shared squeamishness but also Graham shrieking (a sound I’d never heard) and our stubborn insistence at going in the ocean no matter how revolting the seaweed. At the end of every day, I vowed not to worry if he was having fun, no matter how late he slept or for however long he put in his Airpods, but by the following morning, when he looked pale and distressed or maybe just cool, I’d be back to my unhelpful mantra: is he going to be ok?
In September he’d be gone, living across the country from me. Other people’s children left home every second. I knew this, and I knew I was lucky that he’d gotten into a school he wanted to go to and lucky that I could send him there without loans, thanks to Cal’s parents. I knew I was lucky to have a job at an arts foundation that not only paid me a semi-decent salary but kept me very busy, so I wouldn’t be wandering around in some hobby-seeking, empty-nest stupor the minute he wasn’t around. But his leaving seemed frankly inconceivable, and I didn’t understand why no one I knew was talking about his leaving as if it was the precise calamity that it suddenly seemed to be.
Graham was eyeing the water. No one was swimming. “We’re going in today,” he said.
“You bet we are.”
I’d heard, before we’d arrived, that the seaweed was an existential problem. Climate change was an obvious theory but not the only one. Changing wind patterns, sewage from the Amazon River—whatever the reason, it was the world’s largest algae blossom. I’d assumed people were exaggerating, which probably says a great deal about me and my general outlook, but, as it happened, no one was exaggerating. The seaweed was called Sargassum, and it bloomed in a thick deep belt, a scratchy barrier that extended about ten feet below the water’s surface. It was composed of little blobs that resembled berries but—when washed up in huge decomposing piles on the shore—smelled something like rotten eggs. The tide vomited up vast quantities each morning, in shades of dried blood. There were employees of the various resorts lining the coast who did nothing but pitchfork and rake and shove the ominous seaweed away.
As the sky began its stunning display of cruising through pink into nightfall, we wove our way through the familiar low-lit jungle. We stopped at every cosmically hand-painted signpost and admired the galaxy of planet lanterns. Emilia and Rob had created this installation, and we’d seen it come together, visit after visit. I noticed they’d removed the Moroccan tent but had added chimes—not the common porch variety but something more orchestral—large pipes hanging from a fairy-lit archway. The wind was up, and we walked through the sound of chimes toward the sound of waves.
If Cal were here, he’d have already asked about the Mezcal, wanting to know the details of where it had been produced. He’d be interested in the minutiae, which was his form of flattery, and it worked. He made people feel interesting. Even if he insulted you, there was never any doubt over Cal’s full attention.
“Guapa!” Emilia cried, with her low and raspy voice, rushing to embrace me, one hand holding a joint, one hand pulling me close. Her childlike fingers were laden with rings, and, spanning her nose and eyebrows and the ridges of her elfin ears, were piercings both delicate and bold. She was inked with copious tattoos and donned her typical getup—leopard print leggings and a cropped textured tank that looked to be made of animal skin. I always forgot how small she was, as I’d never met someone with a larger presence. Emilia had ridden topless on a white horse to her wedding ceremony. Cal and I had stood together, watching her entrance, our feet in the sand, our hands entwined, half smirking and half awestruck. She clutched me now, extra tight, and she smelled like the backroom of a flower shop. When she finally released me, she still held my shoulder, as if I might need steadying. Then she pivoted to take in my son, who they hadn’t seen since he was fourteen, the last time we were here as a family of three.
She reached up for him and they hugged, and I noticed Graham hugged the way he always did, with a part of himself forever held back, and she didn’t push it, the way I knew she would have with me. She let go quickly but she did place her small hand on his stubbled cheek, shaking her head for a spell. “So come,” she said, brightly, waving us over to a table laid with bright fabrics, rustic plates. It was a windy night, and the ocean was churning. I hung back for a moment, taking in the hills of dark seaweed, the white surf in a distant tumble.
“Mom,” Graham called to me, and there was Rob, looking sheepish, or maybe I was only projecting. He hugged Graham and tousled his hair. He put his hands on my shoulders, and there was a moment, when he lifted me up off the ground with his hug, when I felt a sudden catch in my throat and I worried about crying, but I swallowed hard and forced a smile. Like Cal and me, Emilia and Rob had met during college, dated and broken up, but when, about five years later, Cal and I re-met and married, Emilia and Rob danced at our wedding and started up again. The fact that they were together, and that Cal and I were not, was still—still!—unimaginable. We’d never said it, at least not explicitly, but there was an understanding between Cal and me that Rob and Emilia were delightful but superficial people.
“What are we drinking?” Rob asked. “What can I get you? We have some nice Mezcal.”
“Mezcal?” Emilia asked us, “Si? I want you to be happy.”
“We are,” I said, wanly, then felt a burst of affection for both of them as they went off towards the bar, as Rob put his hand on the small of Emilia’s back, in what struck me as a particularly tender gesture. I felt my stomach drop.
“Has it been five years?” Graham asked.
“Four,” I said.
“Rob’s looking good,” he said.
I shrugged. Rob looked the same as he always had: handsome. Clean cut. If Rob had married someone else, he would have been your basic Cali dad: cute blue eyes and a normal job, a guy who surfed on the weekends. If Rob had married someone else, he would have had a bunch of kids, and I bet he would have been equally as happy. Instead, preposterously, he married Emilia, who—in her mid-forties—still looked like an actual teenager and devoted her life to attending music festivals all over the world. She had nearly fifty thousand followers on Instagram and took various forms of plant medicine in the jungle for weeks at a time, and Rob was always waiting, whenever she returned.
If Cal were here, he’d have already made a snarky comment about Rob’s linen suit and Emilia’s lip ring, which would have both relaxed me and made me more inclined to be even nicer to them. If Cal were here, he’d have already asked about the Mezcal, wanting to know the details of where it had been produced. He’d be interested in the minutiae, which was his form of flattery, and it worked. He made people feel interesting. Even if he insulted you, there was never any doubt over Cal’s full attention.
Emilia appeared now with another server—a striking young woman with long black hair—setting bowls down on our table. I could immediately see how—though Emilia was clearly in charge—their rapport was an easy one and that Emilia was likely an older sister type to not only her but to many. I could sense Graham watching the young woman, being deliberate with his gracias. Rob returned with bowls of fried grasshoppers with chili and lime, someone turned up the music, and we ate their food and drank their mezcal and no one mentioned Cal, not even Graham.
To my son, Emilia and Rob were probably nothing too special, just two people roughly his parents’ age who lived by the beach. Graham was a sophisticated kid, had been riding the New York subway alone since age eleven and DJing parties since sixteen, and he was accustomed to seeing grown women with tattoos on their necks. I watched Graham talk to Rob about surfing, which Graham was pretty good at but hadn’t done since Cal had left. I couldn’t hear them well enough to know if either of them had mentioned Cal, and I couldn’t stop straining to eavesdrop.
I watched Emilia flit from table to table, greeting hotel guests, and as I did, I finished my mezcal. The ice clinked in the glass. When Emilia returned, she patted my head and my face went hot because I knew that she pitied me, and as I felt this surge of anger, I also felt a troubling wetness between by legs. But it was nothing like being turned on.
“Gabby?” she cocked her cute little head with all that wild hair piled on top. “Estas bien?”
I realized, with horror, that I was bleeding. My period always arrived like clockwork, and it had only ended four days ago. I’d been relieved not to have to pack tampons; I wasn’t due for another three and a half weeks! There was a time in life that my first reaction to so much unexpected bleeding would have been cancer. I would have thought about my Facebook feed, lousy with #fuckcancer, and several friends who’d gone too soon. But I knew better. I knew. I’d been prepared by my gynecologist about what to expect as I approached an unfathomable decade. I also knew, as I smiled at Emilia—why was I smiling?—that I could get myself to calm the fuck down, but I also knew I wouldn’t explain anything to her. “Sí, sí,” I told her. “Estoy bien.” I accepted more mezcal.
During my last annual sonogram, my gynecologist said, with something like bemusement: well, look at that—you just ovulated; both sides! Like my mother, I’d remained fertile. Though I’d never admit to feeling this way, I did think it was a waste that I’d only had Graham. Cal had wanted another, and I should have listened. Although, if we’d gone ahead and had another and maybe a third, I would now be in the position of having more savvy children to whom I’d be forced to explain their father’s break with not only me but also possibly with them and possibly—probably?—reality. All of which to say, I was disoriented and, as I could feel the blood coursing out of my body now, I felt afraid to rise from the thin white cushion that lay between me and the woven leather equipale chair.
I didn’t want to tell her I was bleeding because I didn’t want to hear her explain how the Temazcal represents the womb of Mother Earth and that I should embrace this physical response to my feminine divinity.
Rob took Graham to meet the DJ and I watched Graham’s gait as he walked with Rob, not Cal’s exactly, but close enough. I closed my eyes. Why wasn’t I telling my friend I was bleeding? How hard was it to say: do you have any tampons or pads? I opened my eyes and looked into hers, shining with good intention. I didn’t want to tell her I was bleeding because I didn’t want to hear her explain how the Temazcal represents the womb of Mother Earth and that I should embrace this physical response to my feminine divinity.
No.
I didn’t want to tell her because I knew she’d be kind.
“Cal is an asshole,” she said.
I laughed, nearly spitting out my drink. “Lo siento,” I said, “I was not expecting that. You’re always so positive.”
“I am a positive person, it is true,” she nodded. “But I am also not a liar. And I cannot accept what he did to you.”
She was saying exactly what I thought I wanted to hear; so why did every part of me want her to be quiet? “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I would think you’d understand him better than most.”
“Cal? Why?” She shook her head, sort of laughing. “Because I fuck other people sometimes? Because Rob does too?”
“I mean, yeah,” I said, “I guess that’s exactly what I mean.”
“Ah,” she said, her voice unexpectedly tight. “Okay.”
“You think Cal is an asshole?” I asked. Because, of course, I really did want to know.
She looked straight at me, her eyes imploring. “I had not thought so before.”
“Actually,” I said, as the mezcal hit me hard in one dizzying moment. “I don’t want to talk about Cal.”
“Oh.” Emilia sat up straighter. She didn’t turn away. “Okay.”
“I’m really thirsty,” I almost whispered. “Do you mind asking for a bottle of water?”
When she left the table, I quickly stood and examined the cushion: blood stain as big as a grapefruit. I turned it over. I checked the back of my yellow dress, which was also stained, and the red-on-yellow looked brown, which was, of course, much worse. I saw Emilia talk to my son, offering him a warm and tender smile. She began to make her way back to me, carrying the bottle of water, stopping to greet guests, waving and blowing her kisses. I tried to gather myself and walk nonchalantly towards the bathroom but then I took a swerve and continued walking. I was walking away from Emilia and Rob, and I was walking away from Graham. Back in the dark jungle, the scattered planet globes lit a haphazard pathway to reception. I could feel blood dripping down one of my thighs, and when I asked the young woman at the front desk where I might be able to buy tampons, she spoke Spanish loudly and rapidly, which I understood but nonetheless couldn’t follow as she gave detailed directions. I did my best to head toward a part of the main drag where I thought I remembered buying Advil once, in the middle of the night, a lifetime ago.
I called Graham from a bodega, where I found maxi pads but no tampons. Graham didn’t pick up and I texted him that my stomach was off and told him to have fun; I’d see him back at the room. The blood was sticky now between my thighs. I knew there was no reason to panic. If I was lucky—and there was nothing to suggest I wouldn’t be—this erratic heavy bleeding was nothing but a natural step towards—okay fine—death, but a very gradual one. A daily one. It’s not like I didn’t know how old I was. Emilia was younger than me, but not by much, and of course it would come for her, too. The bodega smelled like bleach and like someone had been vaping strawberry flavored weed, and I was shuffling down the aisle. I paid and stood outside and tried to flag a taxi, but the cars kept speeding by, and my Uber app wasn’t working, and the air was heavy with gasoline and cooking oil, and I sat down on the pavement.
That summer on Block Island, my mother miscarried on the ferry. It was a windy day, and the bobbing of the waves made me nauseous. While my mother was bleeding in the bathroom, I was vomiting in the next stall, so, unfortunately, I wasn’t much help to her at all. There was a putty-colored industrial barrier between us with the words suck cock in addition to a drawing of two interlocking hearts etched into the metal. My father bought us cans of ginger ale, which we drank together at the ferry terminal while he was getting the car.
I knew I wasn’t miscarrying like my mother; I hadn’t had sex since Cal.
Sex. I’d had plenty of it, I’d taken it for granted, and though I’d loved being with this one person for many many years, this private pleasurable part of my life now seemed like a shameful farce. And so, no, I knew I wasn’t miscarrying, but this seemed like a lot of blood. What if I started bleeding more, and what if this was not, in fact, a normal sign of perimenopause but, in fact, a hemorrhage? About a year ago, my husband had sat me down and explained that he was going to go traveling in a matter of weeks with a woman he’d met on the subway. He’d explained his plans as if they were some kind of foretold prophesy, with a tone that suggested this was less of a choice and more like a form of enchantment. And, what’s more, he’d imparted the information in a manner that said: I know you’ll understand.
I was taking a break. I was sitting on the pavement in a ruined dress, my mascara smudged, my lipstick gone, my face and chest freckled and lined from a lifetime of enjoying the sun. I prepared, in a disconnected sort of way, to bleed right out in this distinctly not-picturesque corner of Tulum.
But when I drank the bottle of water that I’d purchased along with the pads, when the mezcal wore off and I realized that I was still wholly conscious, I finally flagged down a taxi. After I made my way through the raked-sand resort and into our hut where magnificent white sheets awaited me, I took off my yellow sundress and threw it in the trash. Then I showered and watched the blood go down the drain. I dried off and took out my phone.
“Hello,” my mother answered, too loudly.
“Hi Mom,” I said.
“Is everything all right?”
“Oh fine,” I said, pulling on clean underwear and stuffing clean tissues on top of a fresh maxi pad. “How’re you doing?”
“Well, I mean, you know. This is a very busy time.”
I opened the curtain to let the moon shine in. “Do you remember that song that Dad used to sing, the one about the moon?”
“Sweetheart. Your father never sang a day in his life.”
“He did though. He sang to me at bedtime.”
“How are your handsome husband and son?”
“Great,” I said, laying a towel over the sheet and finally reclining. “They’re great.”
“Is Graham still wetting the bed?”
“Nope,” I said. “No. Not for a very long time.”
“Well, bravo. Bravo! What a delicious child.”
“He’s doing great.”
“Are those other kids being nice to him?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Is he practicing his violin?”
“That’s me,” I said. “I played the violin.”
“No,” she said. “Graham.” I stretched my arms overhead. I took a breath and counted to five. “Do you remember when you miscarried?” I asked. “When you were 52?”
“Gabrielle. Please. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “It does sound ridiculous.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I know,” I repeated. “But it’s true.”
“What’s true?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
“You got pregnant at 52,” I said. The ceiling fan swirled above me. The ocean crashed.
She started to laugh. “I most certainly did not.”
“I had that dream,” I continued, “in the beach house.” Why was I pursuing this? Even fifteen years ago—even when she was mentally sound—she hadn’t remembered the dream, and we had argued about it then, for real. But I suppose I thought that maybe now the memory might have resurfaced, the way certain details of her childhood had emerged.
“I really must get going, sweetheart. I did tell you that I’m busy. They’re expecting me in court.”
“Ok then,” I said, picturing her room in the facility, the carefully framed photographs I’d hung on the walls. “Knock ‘em dead,” I added, right before she hung up.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke up to the sound of an incoming text.
Almost back, wrote Graham. It was four AM.
Fun? I typed.
U ok? He replied.
I dropped a heart emoji and let the phone fall to the nightstand.
When I woke, it was still dark, and Graham was asleep in his bed. I went to the bathroom and noticed blood speckling the floor. Had he noticed? I reminded myself I could clean it up later. This was no one’s crime scene but my own. And I knew that if I tried to get back to sleep, I would just keep on waking, so I disposed of my bloody pad and wadded up tissues and when I was about to start over with new ones, I realized the bleeding had slowed. I took off my underwear and pulled on my robe. Then I left the hut and walked toward the beach, all the while thinking about the very first week after Graham was born. Is this normal? I remembered asking about the bleeding, then. Is this? And how about this?
And how about walking to the beach in the dark, letting the blood trickle down? There was, thankfully, no one out at this hour. But how about taking off my robe and climbing a mountain of seaweed? How about lying down in its stench? How about taking the seaweed in my hands and gripping it like a lover’s hair, pulling until it was slime? The dried seaweed smelled putrid, but so did I, and eventually I’d go in the water. I’d swim past the Sargassum before sunrise, and I would shed the smell. And back in the room I would wash off the sand and the salt and the blood, all before my son was awake. Eventually my bewildered, still-confident mother would die. My mother would die and so would I. But not from bleeding all over Tulum.
When I woke again, the sun was brilliant, and Graham was still asleep. I rushed to the bathroom and for the first time since the blood had started, the pads and the tissues I’d put in place were not even close to soaked through. I had a feeling the blood had stopped entirely, and for some reason, my relief morphed into a sudden panic. I searched under the sink for something to clean with—a sponge, a cleaning brush—which of course was nowhere to be found. I didn’t want the cleaning staff finding this mess. I also didn’t want to get blood on the bright white towels, so I ran the water until it was hot and wadded up plenty of toilet paper. I got down on my knees and scrubbed. The toilet paper disintegrated, and I had to clean that too. I scoured the floor for more droplets, cleaning until the tiles were covered with a light sepia wash. Then, continuing my crimes against the environment, I crumpled yet more toilet paper and scrubbed until the floor could pass for clean. I finally turned off the water.
“Mom,” Graham said, and I shrieked.
I gave him a smile that could have only been described as insane. “Buenos dias!”
“What are you doing?”
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror: cotton shorts, ancient NYU tee, hair wild and long. Without my contacts in, I could pass for a girl in her twenties, a girl who lived very hard. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Did I wake you?”
“What are you doing?”
“It’s fine,” I muttered, “I spilled something.”
He ran his hand over his face. He was wearing boxers, and his chest was no longer a boy’s skinny chest: his biceps were prominent; he had a spattering of chest hair. “What’s the deal with all the toilet paper?”
“I spilled something,” I repeated. “It’s okay.”
He looked at the overflowing wastebasket.
“Do you want to go back to sleep?” I offered, or sort of demanded.
“Whoa,” he said. “You still get your period?”
I felt my face go hot. “Yep,” I said. “Sure do.”
“Oh no,” he tried, in a kindly backtracking attempt, “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, brightly. “Okay?”
“Mom, I didn’t—”
“Then I’ll go get us a table.”
He ate his eggs and we both drank smoothies; we looked at the turquoise water with its dark band of seaweed.
“What?” he asked.
I realized that he smelled. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell—not exactly—but the smell didn’t wholly belong to him. I pointed to my eyes, then his. We’re watching you, we used to tell him, only half-joking, when he started going out at night in the city with friends.
“Mom.”
“You’re happy,” I said.
He tamped down a grin.
“Well, would you look at that?” I smiled. “Someone had actual fun.”
“Why did you leave?” he asked. “Emilia thought you were mad at her.”
“Is that what she said?”
He twisted up his face a bit. “Well, she actually said, your mother is suffering.”
“Did she?”
He nodded.
“You know what?” I asked, leaning back in my chair, “Emilia’s generous.”
“True,” he said. “Also—”
“Yes?”
“Do you think she’s kind of self-centered?”
On the beach, toward the water, there was a man on all fours. A toddler, clearly his son, was riding him like a horse. “I think I’m jealous,” I said. I felt instantly lighter but also older. I felt older.
“You’re jealous of Emilia?”
“Yeah,” I said, quietly. He was—I realized, with a sudden jolt of gladness— surprised by this. “I think I am.”
Graham shook his head.
“To be so free of embarrassment!” I laughed. “Riding that ridiculous horse to her wedding. To say: this is me. Can you imagine?”
“Soy yo.” He said, wryly.
“Really though.”
“No,” he said, “no, I hear you. I get it.”
“And,” I said, urgently. “They love each other.” I knew I sounded too serious. “I guess I always doubted that too. But look, I mean, here they are.” I heard my voice shaking and I hated the sound of it. “Here they are, together.”
“Jesus, Mom. What happened to you last night?”
I shook my head.
“Mom,” he said, softer now. And I pictured myself sitting on the sidewalk, bleeding all over my yellow dress. I’d been rattled, but it felt sort of funny now, although I really couldn’t say why. “Mom,” Graham repeated, more insistent now, and I had to meet his gaze. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses. His eyes were hazel and beautiful and just like his father’s.
“Yes?”
His mouth attempted the shape of a smile. He said, “Mom, why are we here?”
I looked past him, past the man and his toddler son, towards the seaweed in the ocean. My eyes were tearing. “I wanted it to be the same.”
Graham was nodding and he didn’t put his sunglasses on. He kept nodding as he watched me cry. “It’s not.”
I coughed and cleared my throat. “I can hear if you’re in touch with him,” I finally said. “I know I made it clear that I didn’t want to know, but I do.”
“Mom.” He touched my wrist. “Give yourself a break.”
“Alright, well, okay.”
“Okay, what.”
“Okay, you can tell me.”
Graham nodded, and I forced myself to pretend we were in that meditation labyrinth. I refused to fill the silence.
“I’m in touch with him,” he finally said. “It’s fucking recent.”
I was the one nodding now, and I couldn’t stop so I sucked down my smoothie too quickly. “Good,” I finally said.
“Good?”
I looked at my son and I thought of my father, who died only five years after my mother’s miscarriage, who never knew Cal or Graham or even my mother in the scrambled state she’d been in for far too long. He never knew any of it.
“Good,” I said.
Joanna Hershon is the author of five novels: St. Ivo, Swimming, The Outside of August, The German Bride and A Dual Inheritance. Her writing has appeared in The Yale Review, Granta, The New York Times, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, the literary anthologies Brooklyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot, and was shortlisted for the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories. She teaches in the Creative Writing department at Columbia University.
