Page 37 of The Immortalists

Klara wants Raj to meet her family, but they can’t afford two tickets to New York. Soon, though, he says, they’ll have the cash to go anywhere. On Rosh Hashanah, Klara pulls Varya into the bunk room. It feels like her body’s all helium, like she could rise to the ceiling if she just took off her shoes.

She says, “I think we might get married.”

“You started dating in March,” says Varya. “It’s been six months.”

“February,” says Klara. “Seven.”

“But Daniel hasn’t even proposed to Mira.”

Mira is Daniel’s girlfriend. They met one year ago, when Mira was studying for an art history degree, and she’s already come to meet Varya and Gertie. As soon as Daniel gets a job, he plans to propose with a ruby ring Saul gave Gertie.

Klara tucks a lock of Varya’s hair behind her ear. “You’re jealous.”

She’s observing Varya, not accusing her, and it is this—the tenderness in Klara’s voice—that makes Varya wince.

“Of course not,” she says. “I’m happy for you.”

Varya must think it’s another one of Klara’s acts, something she’ll quit in a month or two. She doesn’t know they’ve all but done it, that Klara has her dress and Raj has his suit, that they plan to go to City Hall as soon as Klara returns from New York. She certainly doesn’t know about the baby.

It was an unsurprising surprise. Klara knows what happens when you’re careless, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t. And it was more than that, it was the surge of it, dancing on the brink of causality—if this, then—with the man she loves. What is growing a baby if not making a flower appear from thin air, turning one scarf into two?

She’s stopped drinking. By the third trimester, her mind is clear, never better—but that’s the problem, it’s too empty, miles and miles of space in which Klara sits and thinks. She distracts herself by imagining the baby. When he kicks, Klara sees his little boy feet. She’s told Raj they have to name him Simon. During the last month, when she’s so swollen her shoes don’t fit, when she can’t sleep more than thirty minutes at a time, she pictures Simon’s face and doesn’t resent the baby anymore. And so, when a doctor pulls the child from Klara’s body on a stormy night in May and Raj cries, “It’s a girl!” Klara knows that he must be mistaken.

“That’s not right.” She is delirious with pain; it feels as though a bomb exploded in her body, and she—the empty structure—is on the verge of collapse.

“Oh, Klara,” Raj says. “It is.”

They swaddle the child and bring her to Klara. The baby’s face is florid, startled alive. Her eyes are dark as olive pits.

“You were so sure,” Raj says. He’s laughing.

• • •

They call the girl Ruby. Klara remembers a friend of Varya’s by that name, a girl who lived above them at 72 Clinton. Rubina. It’s Hindi, which Raj’s mother would have appreciated. He moves into Klara’s apartment and coos to Ruby, sings lullabies in rusty Hindi. Soja baba Soja. Mackhan roti cheene.

In June, Klara’s family comes to visit. She shows them the Castro, Gertie clutching her pocketbook as they pass a gaggle of drag queens, and takes them to a Corps performance. Klara sits beside Daniel with her stomach flipping—she doesn’t know how he’ll respond to seeing men do ballet—but when the dancers bow, he claps louder than anyone else. That night, while Gertie’s meat loaf is in the oven, Daniel tells Klara about Mira. They met in the university dining hall and have since spent long nights in Hyde Park’s dive bars and all-night diners, debating Gorbachev and the NASA explosion and the merits of E.T.

“She challenges you,” Klara observes. Ruby is sleeping, her warm cheek stuck to Klara’s chest, and for once, Klara feels as though nothing is wrong in the world. “That’s good.”

In the past, Daniel would have made some retort—Challenges me? What makes you think I need that?—but now, he nods.

“That she does,” he says, with a sigh so contented that Klara is almost embarrassed to have heard it.

Gertie adores the baby. She holds Ruby constantly, staring at her raspberry-sized nose, nibbling her miniature fingers. Klara searches for a resemblance between them and finds one: their ears! Petite and delicate, curling in like seashells. But when Gertie met Raj, she opened her mouth and closed it, silent as a fish. Klara watched her mother take inventory of Raj’s dark skin and work boots, his secular slouch. She pulled Gertie into the bathroom.

“Ma,” Klara hissed. “Don’t be a bigot.”

“A bigot?” asked Gertie, flushing. “Is it too much to ask for the child to be raised Jewish?”

“Yes,” Klara said. “It is.”

Varya is full of advice. “Have you tried warm milk?” she asks, when Ruby cries. “What about a walk in the stroller? Do you have an infant swing? Is she colicky? Where’s her binky?”

Klara’s brain spirals. “What’s a binky?”

“What’s a binky?” repeats Gertie.

“You can’t be serious,” Varya says. “She doesn’t have a binky?”