Izzy worked with Kenny to prepare dinner while Jeffrey and Nikisha portioned out the baby food that the complex’s chef, who handled breakfast and lunch, had left to supplement the babies’ breast-feeding. Chef Nicole, prior to the complex, had been the executive chef for the day care center at a start-up company in San Francisco before it went belly-up, probably because it had devoted quite a bit of money toward things like executive chefs for the day care center.
While salsa music played loudly through the speakers, Kenny grilled burgers and Izzy quickly chopped sweet potatoes into perfect fries before seasoning them and sliding them into the oven. Izzy had become one of the best cooks in the family, and Chef Nicole often commented on her natural skill in the kitchen. Izzy owed this to her work, of course, at the Whole Hog, but she was now working beyond pork and the occasional fried food. She had learned sous-vide, pickling, and coddling eggs, each time figuring out the process with almost no help from anyone else. It was thrilling, as if acquiring through gamma radiation a new superpower. If the fanciness of the food made her uncomfortable, she would master the means of preparing it, until it no longer had any power over her. She had done this often in her life to deal with uncertainty, to become so adept and so skilled that people assumed it must not be that difficult and left her alone. Now she delicately sliced a bowl of beets into thin circles, before topping them with some fresh herbs and goat cheese. Kenny leaned over from his work at the grill and placed a beet in his mouth before making a face of pure happiness. He nodded in appreciation and Izzy smiled.
Once dinner was ready, the adults gathered around the long oak table and placed the babies in their high chairs. Izzy set out the bowls of vegetables and a few loaves of bread while Kenny handed each made-to-order burger to the intended eater. Benjamin, who had been a car salesman in Knoxville, told a fairly long and complicated story about a difficult customer who, after finally buying a car, drove it into a ditch less than thirty yards from the dealership. Jill told the family about forgetting to put her car into reverse when leaving a drive-in hamburger stand, and smashing into a set of unoccupied picnic tables. It seemed that everyone had a ridiculous car crash story and that took up most of dinner, while the babies made their own strange sounds, occasionally demanding to be picked up and walked around the room or placed on the floor. Izzy fed the softest cubes of carrots to Marnie, Harris and Ellen’s baby, the orange of the carrots so bright that they seemed to be rare gems. Izzy couldn’t help but look down the table to where Cap was being fed by Callie, who cooed and smiled as Cap fixed his gaze on Callie’s smile. There was the sharpest, smallest pain in Izzy’s heart, and then she recovered and returned her attention to Marnie, who had managed to put her fingers in some mashed avocado and had rubbed it into her hair.
She had come to understand that her past life, all those years of living without, of removing emotion from her makeup, had prepared her for this new situation. She tried so hard to dismiss her desire to be Cap’s entire world, telling herself again and again, with increasing forcefulness, that it would not change anything. Instead, she would open her heart to the world and hope that good came from it, even if there was the recurring stab of regret. She kissed Marnie on the cheek and the baby squinted and smiled, her hands reaching for Izzy, who pulled her close, the muck of the baby’s dinner rubbing into Izzy’s own clothes. Good enough, she told herself, almost as good.
After all the babies were washed and freshly clothed, a seemingly endless process that left Izzy wrung out and tired, she took Cap in her arms and fed him, then handed him to Carmen, one of the three parents who would take over night duties with the children. Truthfully, though she barely got any sleep, she preferred night duty, the chance to be near the children, the odd sensation of hearing them breathe in unison, the feeling that your mere presence was protecting them. Izzy kissed a few of the other babies and then bid farewell to the parents who were staying behind.
Back outside, she thought of the endless pool, but opted instead to return to her own home. When she opened the front door, she was startled by the emptiness of it, not a single sound of occupancy. She went up to her bedroom on the second floor and fell onto the bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. Another day had passed, she had seen her way clear to another morning, and now she waited for the sleep she had fought off for hours to overtake her. As the complex shifted and expanded around her, she hugged herself and let everything inside her own body become still and perfect.
Finally alone, she allowed herself to uncoil, to become ragged, and she cried without effort, almost without any emotion powering it. She cried and cried, and she pictured every single person in the Infinite Family surrounding her, watching her, telling her it would be okay. And she tried, sleep still not coming, to believe that this was good, that this was the right thing for her.