“I’m going to stay in here awhile,” Kersti tells her. “I’ll be fine.”
When the nausea begins to subside in the late morning, Kersti manages to scrape herself off the floor and go downstairs to the kitchen. “At last,” her mother says, looking up from a pot on the stove, with a strand of white hair falling over her face. She’s been here almost every morning for the last two months, feeding Kersti toast and soup and preparing meals for Jay. “Try this,” she says, placing a bowl of soup in front of her, with two pieces of toasted black rye on the side. “Tell me if it’s too sweet.”
Kersti dunks the toast in the soup and realizes she’s starving. “It’s good,” she says, and finishes everything.
“Let’s hope it stays down,” her mother says, scooping sour cream into a pot.
Feeling better, Kersti heads up to her office to write.
Hello again, Gunnar and Imbi. She types Chapter Three, and stares at her screen, uninspired. It doesn’t take long before an email pops up on her screen.
Congratulations on twins! How are you feeling? Will you know the sex by June?? My hotel is booked. I arrive the 12th. I’m staying at the Angleterre. I think Raf is staying there too. Where are you staying? It will be like old times . . . without the smoking! (You’d better not be smoking!!) Have you heard from Alison? I can’t wait to see you. Bisous. Noa
Kersti types back a short note. We’re booked at the Chateau. Can’t wait to catch up in person. I guess I’d better start working on my speech! No word from Alison yet. I’ll keep you posted. KK
She smiles to herself as she hits send. Now that it’s decided, she can’t wait for the reunion in Lausanne. It will be eighteen years since she last saw Noa and Rafaella in person, or set foot in Switzerland. She’s still waiting to hear back from Alison, whom she found living in Whistler and working as a buyer for a ski apparel company, but she’s not very optimistic about making contact. Deirdre is also going to meet her there, so they can speak to Bueche together.
“Kersti?” her mother calls out.
“In here!”
Anni sticks her head in the room and says, “I’m going now. I left the leivasupp on the stove and there’s supper in the fridge for Jay. Don’t eat it. It’s pirukad. The herring will make you sick. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Love you.”
“Yup.”
Anni disappears, leaving behind a trail of Opium perfume, the same one she’s been wearing for as long as Kersti can remember. For the first time ever, Kersti can actually appreciate how set in their ways her parents are without being offended or taking it personally. Maybe it’s hormones.
Kersti stares at her notes for the novel and realizes The Jewel of Reval is just not happening. The other book is calling to her—loudly. No matter how many times she sits down in this chair and turns on the computer with the very best of intentions of finishing this one, she just can’t bring herself to write it. She keeps telling herself, Maybe tomorrow. But the truth is she has no inclination.
She leaves it aside for the moment and settles cross-legged on the floor with her box of mementos from the Lycée. She had Jay bring it upstairs so she could sort through it. She’s going to bring some photographs with her to Lausanne, to share with Raf and Noa. She imagines them in the bathroom of Huber House, exactly as it was back then, their adult selves reminiscing about old times. They’ll surely feel the void of Lille and Cressida—they were very much the nucleus of the group—but they’ll celebrate stoically in their honor anyway.
She pulls out her yearbook with its faded yellow cover and looks through it with an overwhelming sentiment of nostalgia. There’s a picture of Kersti and Cressida, part of a collage of random snapshots, where they’re arm in arm in the Lycée’s garden. Cressida’s hair is pulled back in dozens of tight, intricate cornrow braids—she must have just gotten back from a trip—and her skin is golden brown, luminescent. She’s wearing a white sundress with the strap slipping off her shoulder, smiling at the camera, statuesque and resplendent.
And there’s Kersti beside her, eclipsed as usual by that astounding beauty. Paler, shorter, unremarkable in a generic, adolescent way. A bad eighties haircut, the ends crimped and overlightened, a loose gray sweatshirt to hide whatever is beneath it, an apologetic half smile, itself an acknowledgment of her inadequacy. In essence, an average teenager who is achingly unsure of herself, with blackheads and social awkwardness and a painful self-consciousness that leaps off the page.
Kersti touches her stomach where Cressida’s eggs are transforming themselves into what she’s come to think of as her chance for redemption. She never could compete with Cressida, but now she’s got a part of Cressida inside her.
Hopefully Kersti’s children will be exceptional, inherently right. Something Kersti never was, or at least never felt.
There’s nothing like a pregnancy to mark the plodding passage of time. Kersti tracks the babies’ development week to week. Your baby at thirteen weeks is the size of a pea pod. Your baby at sixteen weeks is the size of an avocado. He even has toenails!
As her mother predicted, the morning sickness disappeared in her twelfth week, just as she entered her second trimester. Her tummy still hasn’t popped, so it just looks like she’s gained about twenty pounds, evenly spread. She can already tell she does not have the sort of body that will stay thin everywhere except for a hard basketball at the front. In another month, she’ll find out the sex. She’s secretly hoping for at least one girl. No names have been decided; Jay wants to wait until they know what they’re having. Kersti’s parents are pushing for Estonian names, but Jay isn’t sold. “I’m not having my kids named Jaagup or Ivar or Nuut,” he said, all names of her uncles.
Kersti snips the stems off a handful of cherry blossoms and drops them into one of the crystal vases she got for her wedding. She sets it on the Venetian mirrored table in the foyer and admires her first flowers of the season. It’s the nesting instinct, her mother says.
Her phone vibrates with an incoming text while she’s crouched in the dirt. She wipes her hands on her jeans and sees it’s a Vancouver number. She knows immediately that it’s Alison Rumsky.
Sorry for the late reply. I’m in T.O on biz. I can meet you for coffee/lunch?
Kersti texts back: Yes!! Where & when?