Daniel twisted around in his stroller and called out, “Mommy already read me that story.”
They made rights and lefts through the neighborhood and all the while Martin was telling her his thoughts about the stories, the emotions he experienced while reading her work, then asking her questions. “How do you develop these characters? How does your brain hit upon these creations? What makes you think as you do? Are the stories based at all on Daniel, on the things he does? Are you imagining the new baby inside of you when you write?”
It was perhaps the hundredth time Martin quizzed her this way, wanting to dive into the depths of her mind, to know exactly how she put things into place, now asking specifically how she came up with the traits of her rare babies, their names, their family configurations, the outrageous things they did and said. This obsession he had to expose her processes, to aerate the pure elements of her work, he seemed to want her fully oxidized. She did not bask in his interest, as genuine and real as it was. Instead, she felt as if she were standing back at the abyss, and if he did not stop, if she could not stop him, she would fall into the darkness for good.
In the kitchen, after their walk, Joan told Martin he was in charge of dinner and closed herself up in her study. She sat at her desk and wished she were configured like other women who welcomed such keen attention, or at least like other writer-mothers who seemed to connect everything together, who handled with relish the confusion of it all, combining writing with motherhood, everything out in the open. There was a heroic disorder to their lives, but she could not abide it. This coalescing amalgamation of the disparate parts of her life—writer, wife, mother, pregnant woman again—was not what she had ever wanted. She had a baby, was going to have another, was writing about babies, had a husband who wanted to know everything about what their baby did in his absences, about how the baby inside was treating her, what her rare babies were up to, and how they had come to be. She was consumed by domesticity: the normality of her flesh-and-blood family juxtaposed against her manifested world, which was mystical, numinous, sometimes supernaturally odd, filled with erudite babies illuminating what others could not see.
She put her shaking hands on her typewriter, watched them settle, all the while feeling the impulse to walk out, to disappear, as she had considered doing when she told Martin she was pregnant the first time, their incongruent stances about the life she was carrying rocking her entirely, an earthquake upending the life she had anticipated for herself.
Her soul, she realized, was in disarray, and this second pregnancy was not helping. It was not at all like the first. She had morning sickness day and night. She was not miraculously glowing. A second baby would intensify the disorder she needed, somehow, to compartmentalize.
Over the next several days, she read through all fifty of her Rare Baby stories. They were beautiful, the writing strong and densely molded, but she did not want to publish such a collection, did not want to be yoked forever to these creatures who had been intended only to help her maneuver through that first vital metamorphosis.
She would not read them aloud to the new baby, when it finally arrived. She could not indulge in this exercise any longer. If she did, she would slip entirely away, become irreal, an outline when she was made more solidly than that. It was the first Joan Ashby, the realest Joan Ashby, the one who was neither wife nor mother, that she was in immediate danger of losing. She had to eliminate the concentric circles that dominated her life, otherwise she would not be able to carry on building the family they were building, would want only to cut the bonds that tied her down.
With Daniel, she had imagined herself as a character who would hang on to the love she had been given and love her unwanted baby, and she had done that exceedingly well. She would do it again when the new baby arrived. But before that happened, she needed to reframe her existence, fracture her life, bifurcate Joan Manning, wife and mother, from Joan Ashby, the writer, erect boundaries to prevent any accidental bleeding between the two.
Volkmann called only twice a year now to confirm Joan had received her royalty statements and checks. She no longer asked about Joan’s plans for her first novel, assumed Joan had ceased writing entirely, consumed with something like the joys of motherhood, and Joan allowed her that belief. The same was true with Annabelle Iger, who called every couple of months, saying, “Haven’t you had enough of this pastoral existence, all this mothering and wifedom? Aren’t you sick of love and diapers? Start writing again before it’s too late.” She and Iger talked of so many things, their editing days together, the men Iger was toying with, the plays Iger saw, the dance clubs Iger still frequented, but Joan never mentioned The Sympathetic Executioners or the Rare Baby stories to her either.
She was again at a critical juncture, and this time, she needed to maintain the divide, husband and children out in the real world, but on her own, the writing she did would be truly private, consecrated, known only to her. No more reading her work to Daniel and Fancy. The new baby’s arrival would eliminate her study, soon to be transformed into another nursery.
She watched the reddened sun pale and set, and she pictured a castle with a tower that soared into the sky, a moat that rendered it inviolable, an imaginary place where she would write for the next years, without Martin knowing. She would throw him off her scent, lie and tell him she was taking a break, void entirely his inquisitions. She did not want to hear him talking about her work, suggesting, pontificating, analyzing. On the walk, the names of her characters had been far too familiar in his mouth. He had her and Daniel and the child to come; that would have to be sufficient.
In that high tower, that place of pure self, she might find her way to that first novel, at last write a book worthy of the reputation she had developed. She only wanted what belonged to her—what she created, her characters, her people, those with whom she spent the clearest hours of her days. It was, she thought, the way to make that truest part of herself whole once again. And if she protected her most essential qualities, the core of Joan Ashby, she could continue to give the rest of her heart to Martin, to Daniel, to the baby inside.
She thought about Fancy. She could trust Fancy to keep her secret when Joan returned to her work, after the early months with the new one.
She looked at Martin’s father’s clock on her desk. It had taken only thirty minutes to arrive at her plans for the future. Joan opened the study door and headed toward the living room, where her family was gathered. She could hear the roll of dice, the movement of plastic pieces, Martin and Daniel laughing, accusing each other of cheating, and she was aware how those voices both attracted and repelled her.