Chapter 14: The Ball and the Breakdown
Astrid woke before the alarm and knew, before she opened her eyes, that the day would be a bad one. Her back ached in the low, dull way it had ached for weeks, but there was something else riding under it, something chemical and stupid and enormous, a pressure behind her eyes that had nothing to do with sleep. She lay still and catalogued it: the heat under her skin, the tenderness in her breasts, the way her whole body felt like a bruise wrapped in too much flesh. The baby rolled. A hard heel dragged along the inside of her ribs like someone drawing a line under a sentence.
"Morning," Shane murmured, half asleep, his hand finding the slope of her belly the way it always did now, automatic, like a man checking the stove before bed.
"I don't want to be touched," she said, and then, immediately, horribly, began to cry.
Shane didn't panic. He had learned not to. He took his hand back and lay it palm up between them, an offering she could refuse. "Okay," he said. "Okay."
"I don't know why I said that." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "I do want to be touched. I don't know what I want."
"You want to be left alone and held at the same time. That's allowed."
She laughed, wetly, and rolled onto her side away from him, which was its own kind of answer. He got up and made her tea and toast and set it on the nightstand, and by the time he came back with his own coffee she had eaten half the toast and was glaring at the ceiling fan.
"I hate this body," she said.
"All right."
"Don't agree with me."
"I'm not agreeing. I'm listening."
"That's worse."
He sat on the edge of the bed and drank his coffee and did not take the bait, and eventually she stopped talking and he kissed her forehead and went to the kitchen, where she heard, a little later, Leo's voice and the low mutter of men being careful. She dragged herself into the shower, stood under water that was too hot until it went cool, and looked at nothing in particular.
Downstairs, or rather across the wide archway that was no longer a wall, Dina was having the same day and did not know it.
She had cried twice before eleven. Once because the deli's rye delivery had come short and once because she had opened a drawer and found a onesie she had forgotten she bought, a small grey thing with a bear on the chest, and it had undone her so completely that she had to sit down on the kitchen floor with it against her cheek. Leo had crouched beside her and asked what was wrong, and she had said, "Nothing. Everything. It's a bear," and he had nodded as if that were a sentence that made sense, which, God love him, it had been.
By two in the afternoon she had stopped crying and started aching. Her hips felt loose in the wrong way, wobbly, like a chair with two screws out. Rosa's voice lived in her head: ball, twice daily, you two are going to do this together or you're going to do it alone and I know which one I'd pick.
She found the grey exercise ball in the corner of the nursery and walked it, bumping her thighs, out through the archway into the living room. The afternoon light came in low and warm across the hardwood, and the room smelled of the eucalyptus oil Astrid burned and the cinnamon Leo had simmered that morning, and for a moment, standing there with one hand on the back of the couch, Dina felt the day let go of her a little.
Astrid came in from the kitchen with her own ball under her arm, and stopped.
They looked at each other.
"Oh," Astrid said. "You look terrible."
"You look worse," Dina said, and meant it fondly, and they both laughed, the thin laugh of people who had been crying all day and had run out of dignity hours ago.
Astrid was in yoga pants that had given up on being yoga pants and one of Shane's undershirts, the hem stretched over the curve of her belly, her hair knotted up off her neck because the nape of it had gone damp and hot by noon. Dina was in a worn grey dress that had fit her in the second trimester the way it was meant to and now clung to her like something she was wearing under protest, her dark hair down and stuck to her temple, her skin flushed and shining. They were both enormous. They were both glistening.
"You have your ball," Dina said.
"I have my ball."
"Rosa's going to know if we skip."
"Rosa knows everything," Astrid said. "Rosa probably already knows."
They set the balls on the rug, a few feet apart, and knelt, and Astrid put her forearms over hers first, her knees wide, and let her belly hang down toward the floor, and Dina watched her do it and felt her throat close.
It was not desire yet. It was something closer to grief. Astrid's body from behind, the long line of her back curving down over the ball, the wide soft weight of her hips, the swell of her pregnancy hanging heavy and full, and the sweat already beading at the small of her back and running in two thin lines down into the waistband of her pants. Dina had never seen anything so loaded, so final, so visibly at the end of a thing.
Dina got down on her own ball and the relief was immediate and mean and good, her spine unfolding, her hips opening, the pressure moving off the front of her like a hand taken away. She groaned.
"Don't," Astrid said, muffled.
"Don't what?"
"Don't make that noise. I can't take it."
Dina laughed, or started to, and the laugh turned sideways in her chest, and then she was crying, face down over the ball, and she couldn't even tell Astrid why. The whole day was rushing out of her in one long wet breath. "I bought a bear onesie," she said. "In June. I forgot."
Astrid, over her own ball, began to cry too.
They rocked there, four feet apart, two women the size of small planets, weeping over a rug in a shared living room, and at some point the crying turned, as it will, into laughing, and the laughing turned back into crying, and neither of them could hold either one for more than a few seconds.
"Look at you," Dina said, wiping her face with the back of her wrist. "God. Look at you, Astrid. Look at your hips."
"They're not hips anymore. They're an address."
"They're beautiful." Dina said it like a fact she was annoyed to be saying. "You're the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I am so jealous of you I could scream."
"Jealous. Of me."
"Your skin. Your shoulders. You look like a painting."
"I look," Astrid said, "like a waterbed with legs."
"That too."
They laughed again, and this time Dina lifted her head and looked at her and didn't look away, and Astrid looked back, up off the ball, her cheeks blotched and wet, breathing through her mouth, and the laughing drained out of the room all at once and left something behind it, quiet and hot.
Astrid got up off her ball. Not gracefully, with a hand on her belly and a grunt, but she got up, and she crossed the small distance of rug, and Dina stood to meet her, and they came together with a soft heavy impact, belly against belly, and kissed.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was the kiss of two people who had been crying all day and had found, finally, the only thing that helped. Dina's hands went into Astrid's hair and pulled it down out of its knot; Astrid's hands spread low on Dina's back and dragged her in and held her there. They stood in the warm light and kissed wetly, breathing through their noses, mouths opening, and the baby between them kicked at the pressure and kicked again, and Dina laughed against Astrid's mouth at the feel of it and Astrid said, low, "She does that every time I want you," and that was the end of the laughing.
Astrid walked her backward until Dina's legs met the arm of the couch, and Dina sat onto it, and Astrid came down over her with her knees on either side of Dina's thighs, straddling her, heavy and warm, and gathered the hem of the grey dress and pulled it up over Dina's belly, and Dina lifted her arms and let her take it off entirely and drop it on the floor. Astrid pulled her own shirt off over her head. Her skin was hot and slick and smelled of salt and eucalyptus and her own milk coming in, and Dina leaned forward and put her mouth on Astrid's breast, and Astrid made a sound that went up through the open rafters of the shared home, and neither of them remembered, after that, why either of them had been sad.
Dina pulled off Astrid's breast with a wet sound, her lips shining, and Astrid made a small broken noise and pushed her down against the arm of the couch, following her, catching her mouth again. The couch was too narrow for two women in their third trimester and neither of them cared. Astrid got a knee wedged between Dina's thighs and pressed up, and Dina's hips rolled to meet the pressure with a groan that came up from somewhere under her ribs.
"God, yes," Dina breathed. "There. Just there."
Astrid ground against her, slow, and dipped her head to Dina's ear. Her voice came out low and frayed.
"I have to tell you something," she whispered.
"Tell me."
"I've been waking up at night and I touch myself thinking about you."
Dina's breath caught. Her hand slid down Astrid's back and under the waistband of the stretched yoga pants, and Astrid arched.
"Three, four in the morning," Astrid went on, her lips moving against the shell of Dina's ear. "Shane's asleep. The baby's asleep. And I lie there with my hand between my legs and I think about your mouth and I have to be quiet so I don't wake him."
"You don't have to be quiet."
"I do. I have to be quiet and it makes it worse."
Dina turned her head and caught Astrid's jaw and kissed her hard, and Astrid panted into it and kept talking, because now that she had started she could not stop.
"I leak. At night. If I don't squeeze it out first, I wake up soaked through my shirt. Two months ago it started. It happens again every time I come and it's happening right now."
"You're leaking right now," Dina said, and looked down at the shine at Astrid's nipples, and it was true, a bead of pale milk gathered at each one, and she leaned up and took a nipple in her mouth and drew, and Astrid cried out and clenched her hand in Dina's hair, and milk came onto Dina's tongue, thin and sweet and warm, and Dina moaned around her and drank until Astrid pulled her off.
"Stop, stop, or I'll come from that alone and I don't want to come yet."
Dina let her go. Astrid bent over her and kissed her own milk off Dina's lips and whispered, "I taste like a cow."
"You taste like mine."
"Say that again."
"Mine."
Astrid shuddered and pushed Dina flat and worked the grey dress the rest of the way down her legs, and Dina kicked it off onto the floor and lay back naked on the couch with her belly rising and huge between them, and Astrid looked at her and had to put a hand over her own mouth.
"What," Dina said.
"Nothing. You." Astrid's eyes were wet again. "I've never wanted to be inside anyone the way I want to be inside you. And I can't be, so I keep trying."
"Then keep trying."
Astrid slid down and spread Dina's knees with both hands and settled between them, her own belly resting against the inside of Dina's thighs, and put her mouth where it mattered. Dina's whole body lifted off the cushions. Astrid licked into her, slow and flat and steady, and Dina reached down and put her hand on the back of Astrid's head and held her there and shook.
"Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop."
Astrid didn't stop. She got a hand up and pushed two fingers into Dina, and Dina gasped and clenched around her, and Astrid found the rhythm, mouth and hand together, and whispered against her, her mouth wet, "I have a confession."
"What."
"When Rosa did the counter-pressure on me. The first time, when Leo's hands were on my back and Shane was counting."
"Yes."
"I came. On the ball. I didn't tell anyone. I just lay there over it with my face down and my hips moving and I came in front of all of you and nobody knew."
Dina's laugh cracked into a moan. "You didn't."
"I did. I had to bite the ball."
"Astrid."
"I want it to happen again. I want to be counted and pressed on and come with your husband's hands on my back and yours watching."
"Jesus," Dina said, and put both hands on Astrid's head, and Astrid finished her with her fingers and her mouth, three hard strokes, feeling the wave break, holding her hips down while Dina came with a long throttled cry that went up through the archway and probably out the door and up the whole building.
For a moment Dina lay still, one arm over her eyes, breathing like she had run stairs. Then she moved, and it was slow and deliberate, and Astrid knew what she was doing before she did it. Dina got out from under her and turned her around and pushed Astrid down onto the couch on her side, facing the back of it, and got behind her, belly to Astrid's back, and pulled the ruined yoga pants down over her hips.
"Well," Dina said, low at her ear. "My turn."
She worked her arm around and her hand between Astrid's thighs from behind, and Astrid opened to her, and she found her wet through and swollen and hot, and she began to work her slowly, fingers moving in small circles, and Astrid's hips pushed back into her.
"Now you," Dina said. "Now you whisper."
Astrid's eyes were closed. Her voice came thin and unguarded, nothing like a lawyer's.
"I'm afraid of the labor," she said. "When I said it before it was one of the tidy fears. I said the words and they sounded fine. But now it's close and I dream about it. I dream the room is full of people who know what they're doing and I'm the only one who doesn't. And the fear makes me so wet, Dina. That's the part I can't say to him. I wake up from the dream and I'm dripping and I put my hand down and I'm so close that one touch does it."
"One touch," Dina said, and licked the sweat off the back of Astrid's neck.
"One touch. And I've stopped fighting it. That's the real confession." Her hips worked against Dina's hand. "I like being this. I like being soft and slow and carried. I spent thirty years learning to open every door myself and now I can't get off the floor without help and it makes me come harder than anything I ever did alone."
Dina pressed her palm flat and held it still while Astrid rode it.
"Anything else."
"I want to be looked at," Astrid said. "Like this. Enormous, leaking, out of my mind. I want to walk through the house with your eyes on me and I want to be so far along I can barely do anything and still wanted."
"You are."
"Say it."
"You are," Dina said. "You are so big I can feel your daughter punched against my ribs when you're this close, and I have never wanted anyone like this in my life, and if you go into labor in this room right now I will hold you through all of it and want you the entire time."
Astrid came at that, both hands fisted in the couch cushion, thighs clamped over Dina's hand, and Dina held her through it, mouth on the back of her shoulder, until the shaking stopped.
They lay tangled on the too-small couch in the warm afternoon light, both of them wide, both of them sore and slick, and from the kitchen came the sound of the screen door and Leo's voice and then Shane's, and then both of them went quiet in a way that meant they had looked over and seen what was on the couch.
Dina put her mouth to Astrid's ear. "Should we go lie down properly?"
Astrid opened one eye and looked at the rug and the two balls sitting forgotten on it, and started to laugh, and Dina laughed with her, and the four of them stayed there in the long light while the day finally decided to be kind.
Shane came through the archway first, a dish towel still over his shoulder, and stopped and looked at the two of them on the couch. He did not say anything clever. He just looked, and his mouth went a little slack, and behind him Leo leaned against the frame of the arch with his arms folded and his eyes moving over Dina's bare back the way a man checks the weather.
"So," Shane said finally. "Rosa's ball work."
"Twice daily," Dina said, without lifting her head off Astrid's shoulder.
Leo laughed, a low sound from the chest. "Twice daily is the assignment."
They got up. It took a while, unfolding, hands helping, Astrid steadying herself on Shane's forearm and Dina on Leo's, and nobody bothered with clothes. Shane pulled his undershirt off Dina's floor and set it on the arm of the couch for later, and Leo took Astrid's yoga pants off the rug and folded them once, absently, the way he did at the deli counter with a cloth, and laid them beside the shirt. Then the four of them went down the hall.
The bedroom was the one they had kept for themselves, the largest one, the one that had been Astrid and Shane's and now had a bed none of the mattress salesmen would have believed, ordered special, low and wide, with a bench at the foot and the windows facing west. The light in there was the best light in the house, all afternoon gold, and it caught the fine dust in the air and the shine on four sets of shoulders.
Dina got on the bed first and sat back against the headboard, knees apart, unembarrassed, rubbing the underside of her belly with both hands. Astrid climbed up on her side, which was the side with the fan, and lay back against the pillows and let her legs fall open, which was not an invitation so much as a fact she was tired of hiding.
Shane and Leo stood at the foot of the bed.
"You want to tell me what the two of you were doing across the house that I could hear from the kitchen," Shane said.
"Ball work," Astrid said.
"You were crying."
"Rosa says crying is release."
"Rosa says a lot of things," Shane said, and climbed onto the bed on his knees and crawled up between his wife's legs, and kissed her, and the kissing went on long enough that Leo stopped watching them and started watching Dina instead, and Dina watched him back, and held out her hand.
He took his clothes off and came to her, and she pulled him down by the wrist with a strength that surprised both of them and kissed him with her palm flat on his cheek, and Leo made a sound into her mouth like a man coming in from a long day.
Astrid had the taste of herself still on Shane's lips and did not care. She reached past him and found Dina across the gap of the mattress, and Dina turned her head off Leo and caught Astrid's eye and smiled like the two of them shared a string that nobody else could see, and then Leo moved down Dina's body and Shane moved down Astrid's, and the room got very quiet except for breath.
Shane's mouth was patient. He knew her body now the way he knew his own tape job, every strap and edge, and he worked down her throat and her breasts and licked the dried milk off her nipples, and Astrid gripped the sheet and turned her face to the side and watched Dina having the same treatment from the same kind of man. Leo's shoulders bunched between Dina's knees; Dina's hand was in his hair, her other hand reaching out across the bed, and Astrid put her own hand out to meet it and they held on while their husbands worked.
When Dina came the first time she did it with her eyes locked on Astrid's, mouth open, hips lifting off the mattress, and Leo rode her through it with his mouth and did not come up until she pushed his head away.
"Enough," Dina said, hoarse. "Get up here."
He crawled up her and sheathed himself and pushed in slowly, and Dina's belly and Astrid's belly were close enough that they could touch hands on top of each other. Astrid watched Dina's face change through each stroke, watched the way her mouth made a shape on the exhale, and Shane pushed into her at the same time, and for a while the room was only that, two bodies and two bodies, breath and slapping and low noises, the bed swaying under all of it.
"Turn me," Astrid said.
Shane pulled out and helped her onto her hands and knees, which was the only position her back would tolerate any more, and came into her from behind with one hand spread under her belly to hold the weight, and Astrid dropped her head and let the sound come out of her, long and mindless.
Dina saw it and wanted it. "Do that to me," she said to Leo, and he pulled out and turned her, and then the two of them were on their hands and knees side by side on the wide bed, four hands planted in the sheets, two round bellies hanging low, and Shane and Leo behind them with their hands carefully spread beneath, and the light coming in gold across the four of them.
"Look at us," Astrid said, and laughed, and the laugh shook through her and through Shane and he groaned.
"Don't," he said.
"Look at us," she said again, and Dina turned her head and looked, and what she saw was two women at the absolute end of their pregnancies, enormous and sweat-slick and shining, on their hands and knees in a big bed with their husbands behind them and their faces wet and laughing, and she laughed too, and the laughing squeezed her around Leo so hard he had to stop moving and breathe.
Then there was no more laughing.
Shane moved slowly, deep and steady, both hands on the underside of Astrid's belly, his mouth on the knobs of her spine, and Astrid rocked back into him and reached sideways and found Dina's hand again in the sheets, and they held on while both men moved inside them in a rough, uneven rhythm that found each other's beat. Astrid's hips were aching and her back was aching and her breasts hung heavy and dripped onto the sheets, and none of it mattered, and she came with her forehead pressed to the mattress and her hand squeezing Dina's so hard it would hurt later, and Shane held her belly up the whole way through.
Leo was close behind Dina, breathing through his teeth; Dina was saying his name. Astrid turned her head, still trembling, and watched, and Dina came a second time with Leo's hand flattened over her belly and her mouth in the sheet and her hips jerking back against him, and Leo finished with a long shudder and stayed bent over her, forehead between her shoulder blades, both of them panting.
Shane pulled out carefully and eased Astrid down onto her side, and she lay with her knees drawn up, and Dina came down from her own position and lay facing her, and the two men lay down in the warm wreck of the bed with them, Shane at Astrid's back and Leo at Dina's, and for a while nobody said anything.
"Twice daily," Leo said eventually, into Dina's hair.
"Shut up," Dina said, and smiled, eyes closed.
Astrid reached over and put her hand flat on the top of Dina's belly, where the skin was stretched tight and warm and moving, and felt the baby shift under her palm.
"Mine's asleep," Astrid said. "Yours is showing off."
Dina put her hand over Astrid's. The light went from gold to a paler, softer gold at the window, and down the hall in the kitchen the kettle Shane had filled before they came in started, eventually, to cool.