“You wouldn’t have?” Dan’s typing on his phone.
She slides a bottle of wine across the counter toward Dan, then the wine key, then a glass, one of the set they received as a wedding gift, from her cousin Tatiana, she thinks. They’re massive, these glasses, you could keep goldfish in them, and though they’re quite expensive, Sarah believes in using their best things in their everyday life. It makes things seem more special.
“Thanks.” Dan pries the foil off the top of the bottle. “I think doting grandmother—excuse me, Mamina—is the role Lulu was born to play, frankly.” He sits on the stool on the other side of the counter, sighing as he does.
“Tired?”
“We’re prepping Topoforimax for the final round of tests. We’ve been back and forth about a million times with the ethicists about the test, and of course, we’re getting a lot of pressure to rush this one.”
“This one is diabetes?” She can barely remember.
“Topical insulin.” Dan pours the wine into the glass, peers down into the bowl of it suspiciously.
“The patch.” She nods. She runs the knife roughly over the chicken, dumps it into a bowl, scoops in mayonnaise, studies it, tosses in more. A few flakes of sea salt, some pepper, some mustard, a stir. There’s dill, she remembers, pulls some of the fragrant fluff from the stalk, doesn’t bother chopping, just drops it into the mix. There’s two-thirds of a baguette, and she finds the serrated knife, slices a segment of the bread, halves that, then splits it. She spoons the chicken salad into the bread, replaces the top on the bottom half, pushes down on it, forcing out the air. It’s still resilient, the bread, so she takes a clean kitchen towel from the drawer by the stove, drapes it over the two sandwiches, balances the heaviest cast-iron casserole on top of it.
“I have some news, though,” Dan says.
“Oh?”
“I have to go to Minneapolis for the final phase of the test,” he says. “It won’t be until November, but Doctor Inglis had to drop out, and there’s no one else.”
“Well, if you have to go, you have to go.” She squeezes the half lemon into the palm of her hand, catching the seeds in the crevices between fingers, tossing the sticky pips in the general direction of the sink. Since Henry, Botswana has been forgotten. Even Minneapolis now sounds to her as far away as the moon. She dips her lemony hands into the spinach, tosses it, working her fingers over the oily leaves. She shakes them clean, washes them quickly, pauses, listening: Is that the baby? No, nothing.
“I’ll fly back, weekends, of course.”
“So much flying,” she says. “Back and forth. If you need to stay, you should. You should get some downtime. Find a nice hotel, order room service, the whole thing. You don’t want to spend every weekend at the airport.”
“We’ll see. November in Minneapolis.” Dan yawns. “I’m not exactly thrilled about it.”
Pecans. She remembers there are pecans. She breaks the seal on the airtight canister, snaps pecans in half and tosses them on top of the spinach. “What about Thanksgiving? Mom mentioned maybe doing it in the country this year.”
“In the country?”
“A new tradition,” she says. “Grandchild playing in the leaves while Huck bastes.”
“I’m all for new traditions,” he says. “Though I don’t know that he’ll be up for frolicking in the leaves this year. We’ll be lucky if he can hold his head up by then.”
Sarah loosens and then reties the sash around the robe. She doesn’t want to go into the bedroom, wake Henry, so she’ll dress later, or just slip into bed naked, the sheets cool against her skin, and she’ll pull Henry close to her when he cries; it’ll be easier for his little mouth to find her breast. She won’t even need to wake up. It’s weirdly second nature already, and she knows she’s lucky that it hasn’t been too hard, or too painful. She lifts the dish off the sandwich. It needs a good forty minutes to really compress, but never mind. There’s a traditional sandwich made this way, tuna, lots of olives, oil, and bread—something she had in France, once, as a child, on vacation with her parents. She’s forgotten it until now. You wrap the sandwich in plastic, compress it for hours, eat it at the seaside. She’ll do that, before the summer’s out—they can pack a picnic, drive to Long Island; Amina’s mother has a place in Quogue. Sarah puts the sandwiches on plates, divides the salad in half. Forks; no need for knives. She should have put capers in the chicken, but never mind. She carries the plates out of the kitchen and into the living room, places them on the coffee table, a twinge as she bends, still some soreness there, right at the hip.
“Dinner and a movie,” Dan says. He stands, picks up the glass, walks to the sofa. “Thanks, babe.”