Astonish Me. Maggie Shipstead

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      “It was too cold.”

      Jacob eases down on his back, bringing Harry with him to lie on his chest. “Mommy thinks because she can live on bananas, so can everyone else,” he tells the baby. Harry grasps his shirt with both hands and squints drowsily, coming down from the thrill of standing. The old chestnut is true: Jacob has always liked babies, but the love he feels for his own is an epiphany, shocking in its irreversibility. Even so, as he watches Harry’s tiny fingers crab at his shirt, he can’t help but wistfully consider, again, the early end to his bachelorhood. When Joan had come to see him the previous summer and hopped so briskly into his bed, it had seemed to vindicate his long-held conviction that his stock would rise steadily the further he got from high school. Finally holding Joan’s naked body, he had felt tenderness and love, but he had also, distinctly, felt the primal triumph of the sower of wild oats.

      “Guess who I ran into?” Jacob says in a low voice, not wanting to interfere with Harry’s wind-down.

      “Who?”

      “Liesel.”

      Joan appears from the kitchen, dribbling formula from a baby bottle onto the inside of her wrist and licking it off. “Really?”

      “Yeah.”

      She picks Harry up, uncovering a baby-sized patch of sweat on Jacob’s shirt. “It’s a thousand degrees in here,” he says.

      “Mmm.” She settles cross-legged on the couch with a towel over her shoulder and the baby reclining against her arm. Idly, Jacob turns a rattle over in his fingers, watching her, wanting her to look at him. Her contentment is wrapped so tightly around Harry that he can never be certain it extends to him, too.

      He gets up and goes, without much optimism, to search for dinner. As he does most nights, he pours out a bowl of cornflakes. The last of the milk is not quite enough to cover them. “Do you think you’d be able to make a grocery run tomorrow?” he says, sitting beside her on the couch and wiping a dirty spoon on his shirt. “I’m not asking for a steak dinner. Just soup or something. Something I can heat up.”

      “Sure.” She raises her eyebrows at Harry and makes her lips into an O, mirroring his face as he suckles the bottle.

      “You know, never mind. I’ll go myself.”

      “Suit yourself.”

      He wants to pinch her, to hide Harry behind his back, to say something that will amaze her. Instead, he says, casually, “I think Liesel still has a thing for me.”

      “Really? Why?”

      “Is it such a mystery? I’m a catch. Was a catch.”

      “No, I meant why do you think that?”

      “Oh. I don’t know—I could just tell.”

      Finally she looks at him, perplexed. “Jacob, are you trying to make me jealous?”

      He watches Harry work at the bottle, his small hands coming up to caress it as Joan holds it. “Yes. I am. I’m sorry. It’s stupid.”

      “It’s not stupid,” she says. “It’s just not necessary.”

      “Here, give him to me.”

      She passes Harry and the bottle to him without disconnecting one from the other and drapes the towel over his shoulder. He wants her to watch the two of them at the same time, to see that they are part of the same picture. “Maybe,” he says, “it’s just that when you want someone for so long, and then you get that person magically out of nowhere, you have trouble believing it’s for real.”

      She smiles at him, brightly, the way she does when she is nervous, and the creeping in of her old skittishness reassures him more than anything she could say. “I think you miss the crush,” she says. “I’m probably a letdown because life is still life. Just with less suspense, and a baby.”

      “You’re not a letdown,” he says, brushing Harry’s powdery cheek with a finger. “I’d rather have you than wish for you.”

      The exact mechanism by which Joan became pregnant is something that bothers him from time to time. She had said she was on the pill, and then, later, when he’d asked how this could have happened, she said something about having had a stomach flu right before she came to see him, and maybe the pill doesn’t work when you throw it up. He can’t think of a reason why she would have done it on purpose.

      He says, “But I worry that you’re not happy. Sometimes it feels like you’re a fugitive hiding out here, like you’re in the witness protection program. I keep thinking I’m going to come home and find a note. That’s the new suspense.”

      Her feet burrow under his thigh, always seeking warmth. “I’m happy.”

      He is not sure he believes her. “Good,” he says, patting the tops of her feet. “I’m glad.”

      December 10, 1970

       Dear Joan,

       Well, I’ve been drinking. I should say that right away. I was at a party with the girl I’ve been seeing (yes, I’ve been seeing a girl), and we walked along the river, and then I told her I was feeling sick, which is true but really I wanted to come back here to my room and write you a letter. I wonder if I’ll see you when I’m home for Christmas. Where are you? I’m sending this to your mom’s house, but I don’t even know if you’re there. I hope you’re dancing, wherever you are. If you’re taking a typing class, please quit immediately.

       Joan. About the day at the beach. I’m sorry. I was a jackass. I’m sorry for what I said and for acting like I had earned some sort of right to kiss you. My friendship isn’t contingent on kissing, I promise. But I’m not sorry for the actual kiss. I have always wanted to kiss you. Maybe you knew that. Maybe I should have told you sooner and not let it build up.

       I think we might end up together, Joan. Do you think I’m insane? Does the idea horrify you? You kissed me back at first, for a second. You didn’t say why you stopped. Then I was a jackass. That day, before, I said you were lucky because you’d decided for yourself what you wanted out of life and I hadn’t. But that wasn’t true. I realized later I’d decided for myself that I want you. Will you please just consider that I’m the right one? Just consider it. Don’t decide now. Consider it, I don’t know, forever. Or at least until it happens.

       I am going to have one more little bit of whiskey, and then I am going to mail this. And in the morning I’ll probably regret everything, but it’ll be too late.

       Love,

       Jacob

       January 20, 1971

       Dear Jacob,

       I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. As you probably realized, I didn’t go home for Christmas. I’ve been in San Francisco—did my mother tell you? Madame Tchishkoff helped me get a spot as an apprentice here. I’m so relieved. My foot is basically better, and the СКАЧАТЬ