Any Minute I Can Split by Judith Rossner

expenses and to buy for her some of the things she needed from town, asking him also to find out if David needed anything. He would also send a telegram to Roger for her, saying that the girls had been born and she was staying at the farm for a while. Mira went with De Witt. Mira was De Witt’s wife. The woman at the door. Margaret wasprofoundly disconcerted by Mira although she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the contrast between the unchanging, haunted eyes and the serene smiling mouth. (Roger’s mother was like that, her eyes never changed no matter what the rest of her face was doing, although the basic expression in that case was different; however weak, frightened or agonized Roger’s mother might become, her eyes were always watchful. ) Perhaps it was the seductive voice combined with the cropped hair and the convent-like, floor-length, osnaburg smock. Or maybe it was just her manner, a Mother Superior already on her way to the better place. She called Margaret dear. She called everybody dear, including De Witt, something in her manner suggesting that she was Maria Montessori and the rest of the world was her Italian slum. What had a man like De Witt seen in her?
    â€œYes, of course,” Mira said, glancing over De Witt’s shoulder at Margaret’s list.
    When they’d left, she lay in bed, tired but comfortable. She had deflated substantially—whatever the twins had weighed, she must have lost another twenty or thirty pounds of water and other stuff so that she again looked like a human being, albeit a soft, fat and somewhat asexual one. Her breasts were swelling and hardening with the new milk, or colostrum, or whatever, and since the twins’ appetites were not yet keeping pace with the supply, Margaret frequently overflowed onto the sheet, which by afternoon had acquired a mildly sour smell which she actually found pleasant but which she suspected other people would not.
    David came in to see her, a little shyer than he’d been that first time she found him in her lap.
    â€œHi,” he said with that endearing grin he had that was really half a grimace and half a question mark. “That was great timing.”
    She smiled.
    â€œI mean it,” he said. “They wouldn’t have let us in. They didn’t mean to take any more people, they don’t have that much space now.”
    â€œGood,” she said. I’m glad it worked out.”
    He wandered aimlessly around the little room, seeming to look at nearly everything but the twins—Rosemary asleep in her crate, Rue asleep on Margaret’s breast after a feeding.
    â€œDid you see the babies?” she asked.
    â€œSure I saw them,” he said. “They’re right there.”
    â€œDo you think they’re pretty?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t know.” He came closer, sat down on the side of the bed, stared at Rue, whose head nested against the underside of Margaret’s breast as she slept. Then he looked briefly at Rosemary in the box.
    â€œThis one’s prettier,” he said, head gesturing to Rue.
    â€œHow can you say that?” Margaret asked. “They’re practically the same and if there’s any difference . . . anyhow, you’re just saying it because she has more hair.”
    â€œMm,” David said without interest.
    Margaret shifted the baby to the sheet so she could lie on her side, but as she did so, the pressure on her unmilked breast made it squirt milk.
    â€œOh, Christ, I’m leaking,” she said. “It’s just as well. I’m so full it hurts.” David stared at the wet breast “Mother’s milk,” she said playfully. “Want some?”
    With utter seriousness he reached out a finger, touched her nipple, licked the finger.
    â€œIt doesn’t have any taste,” he said.
    â€œCocoa Marsh hadn’t been invented yet,” she said. “Anyway, it’s probably not the real milk.