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joint decision. I had stopped using my diaphragm because we both wanted a child. But when my pregnancy became a fact instead of a desire, I was suddenly seized with fear. What if I wasn’t up to the job of motherhood? What if I miscarried again like I had that time when I was seventeen? I had never told Orion about my first pregnancy, and I held off for a week or more before I told him about this one. The night I finally did tell him, Orion promised me that he was going to be the best father he could—the opposite of his own absentee father. We cried together, and I let him assume that mine were happy tears, the same as his. They weren’t. But little by little my fear subsided, and I began to feel happy. Excited. Until I had that ultrasound. When I learned we were having twins, I got scared all over again. And when, in the delivery room, it looked like we might lose Andrew, I was terrified. . . .
    Still, I loved being a mother. Loved them both as soon as I laid eyes on them, and more and more in the weeks that followed. Until then, I hadn’t understood how profound love could be.
    Not that having two of them wasn’t challenging. Demanding of everything I had to give and then some. While Orion was away at work all day, I was home changing diapers, feeding them, grabbing ten-minute naps whenever—miraculously, rarely—their sleeping schedules coincided. And true to his word, Orion was a devoted father. When he’d get home from the college and see them, his face would light up. He’d bathe them, walk with one of them in each of his arms, rock them until they’d both gone down for the night. Part of the night, anyway. Andrew was a colicky baby, and it would drive me crazy when he’d cry and wake up his sister. And then Ariane would start crying, too. Our marriage suffered for that first year or so. Orion would come home tired from dealing with his patients and give whatever energy he had left to the twins. I resented that he didn’t have much left for me. But I didn’t have much left for him, either. Double the work, double the mess. Carting both of them to the pediatrician’s when one of them was sick. And then going back there the following week when Andrew came down with what Ariane was just getting over. Sitting in that waiting room with those other mothers—the ones with singletons who were always making lunch dates. Playdates. They’d ooh and ah over my two but never invite me to join them . Not that I even wanted to, but why hadn’t they ever asked? They always acted so confident, those moms. It was as if everyone but me had read some book about how to be a good mother. . . .
    But I had read the books. Consulted Dr. Spock so often that the binding cracked in half and the pages started falling out. But I had no mother of my own to rely on the way those other women did. Those grandmothers who could spell their daughters. Babysit for them, advise them. . . .
    Still, I could have had that kind of help. How many times had Orion’s mother volunteered to drive up from Pennsylvania and help out? Maria was retired by then, available. She kept offering. It’s just that she acted so goddamned superior! Made me feel even more insecure. When I got that breast infection? Said I was thinking of bottle-feeding the babies because I was in such pain? She just looked at me— stared at me like how could I be so selfish? And then, without even asking me, she had that woman from the La Leche League call and talk me out of it.
    Because she wanted what was best for her grandchildren. . . .
    And she always knew what was best. Right? Not me, their own mother. She never said as much, but I got the message. Her son had made a mistake, had married beneath himself. He should have stayed with what’s-her-name.
    You remember her name, Annie. How could you forget when Maria was always bringing her up to him? “Thea’s gotten a fellowship, Thea’s gotten her book taken.” Thea this, Thea that, like I wasn’t even standing