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Show Motherlunge a novel 165 "Errands. Grocery shopping. Dry cleaning," she said. "Sometimes drinks with the girls." I had no idea who the girls might be; maybe her assistant? All her life, Pavia had had boyfriends, not real friends. She had never seemed to need them. Pavia had rinsed out the clear tubes that came with the pump, and now she whipped them around her head to centrifuge out the drops of water still inside them. She was like Wonder Woman with her lasso, dark-haired and chesty, a superheroically grim expression on her face as she determinedly whirred. And as I watched her she suddenly whipped me in the face with those tubes. "Jesus Christ, watch out!" I slapped my hand over my cheek, leaned away from her. She was tense, my sister, keyed-up and keen. The postpartum transition back to work is a difficult passage for many working women, as is marital ambiguity-I knew this; nevertheless, naturally, I blamed her. "I can't believe you just got me!" My cheek felt hot and shameful, Biblical, and was already raised up in a line-shaped welt. I started to cry. Pavia opened the refrigerator door and reached into the freezer compartment. She held out a blue ice pack and stared at me as solidly as a blue ice pack. "Sorry." When I didn't take the ice from her or stop crying after a moment-in fact, I was genuinely having trouble stopping crying-she slammed it down on the counter, flung the tubes next to the espresso machine, and walked out of the kitchen. I recognized that I was being a baby, going on and on like that. But my cheek hurt. My boyfriend wasn't adequately attentive. My uterus was out of order. And |
