Harvest

Harvest

Riding home from work on the N train, Marsha tries to channel her yoga teacher. Stay in the moment, she thinks to herself. Notice your feelings. Sit with them. She homes in on the bitter cluster lodged in her stomach, a nesting doll of grievances, and studies it layer by layer: anger, then sadness, then guilt, until she uncovers the hard knot of exhaustion at the core.

She’s tired. Of the urine-soaked subways, of the smell of salted cod that wafts into her windows from the Jamaican restaurant down the street, of her job. Every day, four or five shiny young women with short skirts and sculpted calves try to persuade her they were born to be editorial assistants. (When asked to name their biggest weakness, they all say, “I’m a workaholic” or “I’m too hard on myself.” Most find a way to use the term “110%.”) Above all, she’s tired of injecting herself with hormones and not getting pregnant.

She gets off in Astoria and walks the four blocks to her apartment building. She’s wearing sneakers: like most of the women in her office, she keeps two pairs of pumps, one black, one brown, in the bottom drawer of her desk. It’s drizzling, and there are gasoline rainbows in the puddles. When she steps into the lobby and sees that the elevator is there, waiting for her, she turns around and pretends to shake the drops off her umbrella. She checks the time. She bends down to retie her shoelace. When she can’t put it off any longer, she rides up to the third floor and unlocks the door.

Marsha’s plan was to say a quick hello to Jack, run into the bedroom, peel off her clothes, and slide into a hot bath, but when she walks in, she smells a chicken roasting in the oven. The breakfast dishes have been washed and put away, and there’s a pile of folded laundry on the couch. Jack is sitting at the kitchen table going through the mail. He’s trying, she thinks. I should thank him. Instead, she says, “Did you make a salad?”

“All we have is a rusty head of lettuce. I’ll go out when the rain stops.”

“Any word from the lawyer?”

“They set a date for the trial. And guess when it is.”

She doesn’t guess.

“December 29th. Happy birthday to me, right?”

“That still gives them two months to settle.”

Jack puts his head on his arms, like a first grader during rest hour.

When there’s a lull in the rain, he stands up and puts on his raincoat. Ever since he was put on paid leave, Marsha has rarely had the house to herself, and the prospect of sitting on the couch flipping through TV channels and resting her feet on the coffee table is appealing, but she doesn’t want to be alone in the gray, funereal light. “I’ll come with you,” she says.

She changes into jeans and puts her sneakers back on, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Is she too old to wear jeans and sneakers? She works on Lexington Avenue, has her own secretary. Her bottom half looks dumpy; she must have put on a few pounds over the last few weeks. Mom jeans, she thinks. How ironic.

Nobody’s accusing Jack of anything, but nobody’s defending him, either. Sometimes Marsha wants to open the window and scream, “He’s one of the good guys, for heaven’s sake!” Jack had turned down a job at Ellis Academy in Greenwich in order to work at McGinnis. He could have had an airy office overlooking a lush soccer field, not to mention a much better salary, but he decided the kids at McGinnis, poor kids from bad neighborhoods, needed him more. Kids whose parents begged them to stay inside so they wouldn’t get caught in crossfire. He has a good heart, Jack. He just made a bad call.

It wasn’t fair, holding him responsible. Yes, he saw the best in all his students, but until the attack, everyone considered that a strength. He believed his students truly wanted to be bettter, even the ones who only saw him under threat of expulsion, like Carl Kingsbridge, who had shoved a teacher against the wall.

Several weeks ago, Jack had called Marsha at work, elated. He’d had a breakthrough, he said. Carl had finally opened up to him – about how his girlfriend had cheated on him, how he’d punched a hole in the kitchen wall and made his little sister cry. Jack sounded like a schoolboy who’d earned a gold star. Marsha wondered what it was like, spending your day trying to help people, seeing the good in everyone, taking so much pleasure in someone else’s accomplishments.

Jack’s selflessness was one of the things Marsha had fallen in love with fifteen years ago, when they met volunteering at a soup kitchen. He had warned her, apologetically, that he was never going to make “the big bucks,” and she’d trilled back that she didn’t care. They got married under her grandfather’s tallit at her parents’ synagogue in Brooklyn. That was the happiest she’d ever been. She had a job lined up at a publishing house – a sales assistant, nothing glamorous, but still, a foot in the door. He’d won a generous scholarship to one of the city’s best MSW programs. They would save up, buy an apartment in one of the outer boroughs, have a bunch of kids. They’d work hard during the day, and at night they’d fall into a deep peaceful sleep wrapped in each other’s arms. She didn’t need fancy vacations or an extravagant wardrobe, just a fulfilling job and a loving family. As dreams go, she thought it was a modest one.

But instead of the apartment she’d envisioned – light flooding through windows, neighbors who would turn into friends, a playground within walking distance – they’re living in a one-bedroom in Queens, with a noisy radiator and mouse droppings in the cabinets. The edges of the wallpaper curl away from the walls, and no matter how many times she wipes down the backsplash, it always feels greasy. Her rise in publishing stalled in the HR department, and now all she’s good for is hiring younger, prettier editors, all of whom claim that their biggest flaw is perfectionism.

And then, of course, there are the babies. That’s how she thinks of them – babies who could have been hers but declined. Babies who were punishing her for her hubris, for thinking she could summon them whenever it suited her. After she and Jack got married, they’d waited five years before trying to conceive. She tells herself they made this decision for financial reasons, but she knows that isn’t true. They waited because life was so abundant, so saturated with laughter and friendship. Manhattan was generous with its riches. There were shop windows in the winter and Shakespeare in the Park in the summer, and even people on a tight budget could afford coffee and subway fare. Sitting at a café in Chelsea, sipping a mochaccino and looking at the boats, was enough to make her feel like royalty. Joy rained down on them, and she wanted to lap up every drop.

It was only later, after their vision for the future had to be overhauled, that Marsha started second-guessing herself. She hadn’t been ready to have kids right away, but what about Jack? Had he endorsed her decision to wait or just put up with it? He was an only child, born to older parents, and he flirted with every baby he saw. No, it wasn’t about the money, and it wasn’t mutual. She’d been selfish.

And by the time her mind was ready, her body had lost interest. After a barrage of humiliating tests, they were given a non-diagnosis of “unexplained infertility.” It was a relief, that neither of them could be held responsible. Now she sticks a needle into her belly every day, feeling more and more broken with each jab. Jack won’t give up hope, and neither will the doctor. Lots of women get pregnant in their thirties, he tells them. They could look into adoption if they want to, but he thinks they should give it more time. They just have to be patient.

In the streetlamp light, everything looks yellow and hazy, like an old photograph. The streets are slick, and Marsha clutches Jack’s arm to keep from falling. She forces a smile, and sees that his cheeks are glistening.

“Oh, Jack,” she says. “Don’t cry.” Her voice sounds a little cold to her, a little exasperated. “It’s not your fault.”

“I’m sorry, Marsha. I’m so sorry. I ruined everything.”

“No, Jack.” Marsha digs a tissue out of her purse and wipes away his tears. “You’re not the one who attacked her. That’s on Carl, not you.”

When she hears these words coming out of her mouth, she realizes they’re true. The fact that this comes as a realization is troubling. In some dark cavity of her mind, she hadn’t been sure who was to blame.

“I should have seen it coming,” he says. “All the signs were there.”

“But what could you have done? Locked him in your office?”

“I could have called his girlfriend, Marsh. I could have warned her, told her to file a restraining order, I don’t know.”

Marsha takes his face between her hands. When she looks into his eyes, she sees shame, and she knows that for the last three weeks, he’s seen shame in her eyes, too. When she parsed her feelings on the train ride home, she was lying to herself. She wasn’t unhappy because she was tired, she was unhappy because she was ashamed – of Jack for sitting home all day while other men were taking the subway to work, and of herself for failing at something that other women found effortless.

“Listen to me, Jack. You’re great at your job, and you’ve helped a lot of kids. But nobody succeeds all the time. You can do everything right and still have a bad outcome.”

“But what if I didn’t do everything right?”

Marsha isn’t sure what to say. That was the question: was trying enough? It had to be. What more could anyone do?

The fruit stand, two blocks away, is owned by a Korean couple. They’re always there together, the two of them, working side by side. The husband is usually in the front, interacting with the customers, replenishing the bananas or tidying up the pyramid of apples. The wife stands at the cash register and makes change. They rarely speak, but she has seen them exchanging smiles at work and walking together to the subway hand in hand after closing up. Once, on her way to buy a pineapple for Jack, Marsha saw the woman facing away, back turned, shoulders heaving. Her flustered husband was manning the register, but he kept glancing over at his weeping wife. Marsha had turned around and gone home.

Now, the husband and wife are at their usual posts. Marsha picks out a fresh head of lettuce and a cucumber, and Jack bags some cherry tomatoes. When they go up to pay, the wife takes the money with one hand and rests the other on her belly. Marsha looks down at the woman’s rounded stomach; when she looks up, the woman smiles. Marsha smiles back.

The sky crackles, and all four of them look up. “Here,” the man says, blinking raindrops off his lashes. He hands Marsha a paper bag with two oranges and a box of blueberries. “I don’t want to throw them out.”

They thank him and turn toward home. Jack takes his wife’s free arm and tucks it into his. He lifts her face, tilts it back, brushes the drops from her cheeks. She burrows into his coat, and he presses his lips to her hair. She smells like the apple-scented shampoo she’s been using since they’d met.

“It’s going to be OK,” Jack says. “You know that, right?”

Marsha nods into the damp collar of his raincoat. “It’s going to be better than OK,” she mumbles into his collar.

“Wait!” The Korean woman comes out from behind the register, her hand still on her belly. “Take this, too,” she says, dropping a mango into the bag “For good luck.” She runs back to her husband, who is already starting to pack up.

Then, amid honking cars and cloying smells, holding each other in hope and terror and love, Jack and Marsha go back home.