the habit of being

When I arrived at the country escape of my lover, I was about six months along, and no one knew it. His wife and her friends sat outside at black metal tables on brick patios, drinking cocktails in the afternoon sun. I stayed mostly in my room, which had a window overlooking the back patio and the yards beyond it. The women knew I was up there, but they did not seem to know or care who I was, or why I was there. I knew all of their names, Sandrine and Belinda and so on, were because he told me, when he visited me upstairs. We would also talk about the baby’s name. It took a long time, but we decided on one.

When she was born, I could not think of the name we had chosen. I was too ashamed to admit that I did not know my daughter’s name, so I waited for my lover to use it. He did not. So I called her the baby, and waited.

Her name was not the only thing I didn’t know. In fact, I knew nothing at all. She had come very early, almost as soon as I arrived in the country, before I was ready. I thought I would break her. I was most afraid of her neck breaking from the weight of her head. My lover was much older than I was, and had had other children long ago. He showed me how to support her head when I held her. When I tried to copy him, I pressed too hard on the back of her neck and one of the bones of her skull, which had not yet fused, moved out of place. She had a protrusion on her forehead like a reptile, and I was horrified, thinking that I had ruined her. Her father was able to move the bone back into its correct position, to my great relief, and I did not make the mistake again.

After I could hold her confidently, all I wanted to do was to hold her, and to look at her. She was incredibly beautiful, even though she looked very much like me, and I never believed anyone who told me I was beautiful. I could also see how she resembled the photographs he had shown me of his other children. She was more obviously ours than I had expected, and I was happy with her. When she cried and woke me, I was excited to see her, no matter how little sleep I’d had. I was very happy. The only problem was that I could not remember her name, though I remembered very clearly that we had discussed it long and hard and had come to a decision. I knew that having forgotten meant something was the matter with me.

One first morning I took the baby downstairs, he came along and took her from me. There was an infant seat set out on the breakfast table, and he took her over to lay her down in it. I went to pour myself some tea, and presently all the women were up and about. Sandrine asked me whose cousin I was, and I said I didn’t know.

While I drank my tea, I forgot all about the baby. When I remembered her again, I couldn’t believe I could have ever stopped thinking about her for an instant, and I felt guilty for it. I walked back over to pick her up, but there was not an infant seat on the table at all. Why would there have been an infant seat there?

The only thing on the table was a brown cardboard box. The top of the box was open, and the baby was in the bottom. She was limp when I lifted her, and I stood there screaming and screaming. I ran around the house looking for him but he wasn’t there. I ran out on the porch and found his wife and demanded that she call him, that it was an emergency, that the baby was dead. I waited while she left him a voicemail.

All the women went inside and I waited out on the porch in one of the black chairs until he came back. Now everyone knew everything and no one came near me. At first I’d been sure it was me forgetting about her that had made it happen, but then I wasn’t so certain. He was the one who put her in the box. He was the one who didn’t want people to know. It was hours until I heard the car.

He walked up to me from behind and knelt down next my chair and said he was sorry. I asked if he was sure nothing bad had happened when he put her down, and he said he was sure, she was fine, and he gathered me up in his arms. I needed to hug someone, so I hugged him, but I did not believe it.

My window looks out over the Hudson River and the West Side Highway. I have thick drapes to keep out the traffic noise and the light from the streetlamp. It isn’t perfect but I still manage to sleep until late morning or afternoon. My bed has collapsed but the mattress is on the floor and that’s all I really need. Or so I tell myself to avoid calling that antique repair place in Chelsea I found online a week ago. Anything not to have to talk to anyone.

I haven’t left the apartment today. Silvia is back with stories of baracades in Mexico City and political drama I had no idea was happening. Someone gave her friend a sandwich with money hidden inside, a bribe to join the rally for a candidate who lost but refuses to accept that and has taken to blocking traffic. And then there were photos of the All Saints altar for her father, and the story of his death, and then the stories of the deaths of the two cats she had previous to Ally, who is still hanging out with me a fair amount even though Silvia is back.

Tuesday I stayed up until 2 watching the election returns. M had said that we’d lost Virginia for sure and I said that we hadn’t and by Wednesday I was just as excited about having been right about something as about the turnout itself.

On Thursday I panicked in the middle of a neuroscience exam, and it was so surreal, even in the midst of the panic I kept thinking about how it was really the exam and I was really freaking out and how could that be happening? The normal thing is that I panic right up until the exam begins and then I am focussed and fine. But this time I was so nervous I couldn’t collect my thoughts enough to write my essays coherently. I didn’t even feel like there was any material I didn’t know, only that I couldn’t get the words out, my head was so muddled. It is still hard to believe that I actually choked on a test. Choking on tests just isn’t something I do.

But Friday I found out I got into the writing workshop I wanted and it is an enormous relief to know that, at the very least, by January I will be working. As long as I can start writing again I know everything will be alright.

Today I read “Envy” by Kathryn Chetkovich. I was supposed to be doing other things, like studying, writing, laundry, but I haven’t gotten around to those things yet.

Last night I dreamt I went to hear Jonathan Franzen read and wound up sleeping with him. It turned out he had some sort of deformity, but in the end I was still begging him to autograph my copy of The Corrections. I’m sure this means something.

Before that, I was in a black livery cab on the way back to Manhattan from Westport, Connecticut, talking about Joan Didion with an older woman who is more successful that I can ever imagine being. Before that, I was at a birthday party, for another woman who is more successful than I can ever imagine being, considering whether I should make lobster an honorary vegetable for the night, considering that I don’t get invited to lobster bakes at yacht clubs all that often.

The previous night, I was at a dance performance about “girlishness” that was billed as “erotic and grotesque.” It was sortof an interesting concept, but it didn’t come together at all. The best part about it was a survey slipped into the program. One of the questions required me to check off which out of a long list of venues in the City I’d attended performances at over the last 12 months, and I checked off about ten different places, which made me feel great about my life, temporarily.

I feel like there is something seriously wrong with me. I’ve felt this way my entire life. I’ve come to realize it’s a common element of the so-called “artistic temperament,” but I’m left wondering if I would still act the way I sometimes do if I didn’t have this sinking suspicion that I’m innately crazy or immoral or otherwise fucked up. Or is it the fact that my behavior sometimes fails to fall in line with my better judgment that causes the feeling in the first place. Is it really not worth pondering since there’s nothing I can do about it, or is that way of thinking just another symptom?

I’m whitening my teeth at home. You squeeze this sticky bleachy stuff out of a little syringe into these trays that your dentist makes and wear them a couple hours a night. It seems to actually work, though I don’t have that celebrity smile just yet.