Chương 12
David started to speak.
Richard lifted a hand.
“No. You can have your share after I finish mine.”
Maya waited.
“I told myself David would not come if things were truly serious,” Richard continued. “That allowed me not to ask whether he was making a good decision. It was convenient.”
“Thank you,” Maya said.
Richard nodded, visibly relieved and embarrassed.
He turned to David.
“The board approved twelve weeks of paid family leave.”
“I didn’t ask for twelve.”
“I know. HR says you were entitled to it regardless.”
David felt the shame of discovering another option he had not looked for.
Richard glanced at the baby again.
“The acquisition survived forty-eight hours without you,” he said. “I thought you should know.”
After he left, Maya opened the fruit basket.
“There are six pears,” she said.
“Richard thinks pears are respectful.”
“Is that a rich-person rule?”
“I think it’s a divorced-man rule.”
She laughed, then pressed a hand to her incision.
David moved toward her.
“I’m okay,” she said.
He stopped before touching her.
“Do you need anything?”
“Cut one of the pears.”
He found a plastic knife. The pear was hard enough to resist it.
For five minutes, nothing in the room mattered except the ridiculous difficulty of cutting fruit with hospital utensils. The knife bent. Juice ran onto the napkin. Maya criticized his technique. He told her he had negotiated international shipping contracts with less resistance.
She ate three slices.
It was the first ordinary thing they had shared since he came home.
A week after New Year’s, Maya and Liam were discharged on the same morning. The hospital would not release them to the apartment until the social worker confirmed the heat, food, infant supplies, and support plan. Samir and Owen stocked the kitchen. Mrs. Rosen left a bag of groceries outside the door without knocking. The building installed a tamper-resistant thermostat cover.
David hired a postpartum nurse, but only after Maya interviewed her privately.
Her name was Denise. She was fifty-three, from Queens, and unimpressed by David’s color-coded schedule.
“Babies don’t use spreadsheets,” she said.
“This isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a feeding and medication tracker.”
“It has conditional formatting.”
“That improves visibility.”
“It makes me feel judged by a cell.”
Maya hired her.
The first night home, Liam began crying at 2:17. David woke before the monitor alert, lifted him from the bassinet, and carried him to the kitchen. He warmed a bottle while Liam rooted against his shirt.
Maya appeared in the doorway, one hand on the frame.
“You should be in bed.”
“So should you.”
“I’m feeding him.”
“I can sit with you.”
David almost said there was no need.
Instead he pulled out the folding chair.
The nursing chair had not been recovered. The buyer, a pregnant woman in Carroll Gardens, had purchased it in good faith and already assembled it in her nursery. Priya said they could demand its return, but Maya refused.
“Let her keep it,” she said. “I don’t want it back after Chloe sat online describing it as unused.”
So David sat on the plastic chair with Liam in his arms. Maya lowered herself onto a kitchen stool, moving carefully.
The refrigerator was full now. Too full. Samir had purchased four kinds of yogurt because he could not remember which Maya liked. Owen labeled containers with dates. Denise had arranged bottles in exact rows.
David fed Liam slowly.
After an ounce, the baby stopped sucking.
“He needs a break,” Maya said.
“I know.”
“You keep moving the bottle.”
“I’m stimulating the suck reflex.”
“You’re annoying him.”
“He’s eleven days old.”
“Eighteen.”
David looked at her.
“Right.”
The week had disappeared inside hospitals and forms.
He lowered the bottle.
Liam burped with surprising force.
Maya smiled.
The smile vanished when someone knocked.
Both of them froze.
David checked the camera feed.
Mrs. Rosen stood outside with a paper bag.
He opened the door but kept the security chain fastened.
“I made soup,” she said. “No pressure. I can leave it.”
David looked at the bag.
“What kind?”
“Chicken. Low salt. My daughter says everyone uses too much salt.”
He unfastened the chain.
Mrs. Rosen stepped inside only after he moved back. She looked toward Maya.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Maya’s hand tightened around the edge of the stool.
Mrs. Rosen continued. “I should have called for help. I believed someone who sounded certain instead of someone who looked frightened.”
Maya said nothing.
The refrigerator hummed.
Liam made a soft clicking sound against the bottle nipple.
Mrs. Rosen set the soup on the counter.
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” she said. “I only wanted to tell you without hiding behind the door.”
Maya looked at David, then back at her.
“Thank you for the water,” she said.
Mrs. Rosen nodded.
It was not forgiveness. It was not nothing.
She left after less than a minute.
Two days later, a process server delivered papers showing that Eleanor had petitioned through counsel for access to retrieve personal belongings from the apartment and challenged the temporary no-contact restrictions. Her attorney’s letter described Eleanor as a devoted grandmother falsely accused during a postpartum crisis.
Attached was a statement from Mark claiming Maya had threatened to harm herself and the baby.
David read the page twice.
Maya read it once and went into the bathroom.
He heard the lock turn.
He stood outside the door.
“Maya?”
“I’m fine.”
He almost asked for proof.
Instead he sat on the floor in the hallway.
After several minutes, the toilet flushed. Water ran. The door remained closed.
“They’re going to say I was crazy,” she said through it.
“They already are.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“I’m sorry.”
Silence.
David leaned his head against the wall.
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can stay here.”
Another silence.
“Okay.”
May you like
He sat there for twenty-three minutes. Liam slept in the bassinet. The heat clicked on and off. Denise passed once, saw him on the floor, and went into the kitchen without comment.
When Maya opened the door, her face was washed and pale.
