The Delivery

Chapter 1

A deliveryman stands on the porch, rubbing his hands against the cold, facing Rebecca and Mark through the open front door. He looks so ordinary for what he is delivering: hipster beard, gauge earrings, knit cap. Rebecca silently names him Delivery Joe and decides he likes craft beer, grunge rock, and smokes indica on weekends. She has no idea whether he realizes what he is carrying. Mark is at her back, and she eases into him; he puts his arms around her.

The forms she must sign are elaborate, pages of legalese on an electronic pad that she pretends to read. They have already gone over the terms with their euphemistically named Experience Facilitator, a severely pretty woman with scraped-back ice-blond hair and bloodred lipstick, straight out of Hitchcock. Her name is Luca, and the whole process has felt bespoke and vaguely contrived.

Rebecca’s gaze lifts to the object she and Mark have invited into their house. It rests on a futuristic dolly, coffin-large and crated in wood, like something shipped over in the 1800s. Delivery Joe’s breath huffs in the cold air. His van is sleek, windowless, logo-free. As Rebecca stiffens in Mark’s arms, Delivery Joe asks, “Something wrong, Mrs. Higgins?” She doesn’t understand at first, until he chins at the electronic pad. The stylus hovers above the screen. They can still refuse delivery. This is their last chance.

But then what? Back to their routine, life bled dry of unpredictability, the gray smog of caretaker fatigue and unresolved grief. They are in their early forties, and it already feels like they know the shape of everything to come.

Behind them, Maddy wanders through the foyer, singing absentmindedly to herself in the ballet tights and tutu she has refused to take off since her recital last week. She hugs Bao-Bao, their six-pound Mini Lop bunny, with one of her aggressive bouts of love. The sight of Maddy breaks Rebecca from her trance. She signs.

Mark snaps into motion, unlatching the flush bolts on the fixed half of the front doors and swinging both wide to accommodate the load. Maddy pauses, staring through the gaping doors at the thing they are about to let inside. “What's that, Mommy?” Her face is twisted in an adorable display of curiosity. Rebecca thinks how pure emotions are in seven-year-olds, especially when they are “on the spectrum,” a phrase she hates for its overuse and lack of human specificity. How long has it been since she felt anything with that much purity? She tells Maddy to take Bao-Bao to her room, and Maddy withdraws like the good, good girl she is.

Delivery Joe takes back the pad, scrolling through it, making sure every box is initialed. He is chewing nicotine gum. The tobacco tang brings Rebecca back to undergraduate nights in Boston with Mark, social-smoking in pubs by Fenway, making out on the T heading back to campus. It had felt so free, every night a seed for a different future.

“M’kay,” Delivery Joe says, still checking. “M’kay, m’kay. We're good. You ordered the white-glove delivery but—” He holds up his black-gloved hands and emits a chunk of a mirthless laugh. “Try not to read into it.” Mark says they won’t take it personally.

The setup will require a Level 2 setup, a 240-volt power source, a dedicated charging point. Luca had covered this too. Once the shipping update made the enterprise concrete last month, they had a Tesla Supercharger installed. Delivery Joe recites, with a practiced, theatrical lilt, “Remember, you're in charge.” Then he presses a button on the dolly, an elaborate modern contraption that raises itself and adjusts its wheels like tank treads, preparing to crawl across the threshold. Those tiny hard wheels remind Rebecca of shark teeth, infinitely layered.

The dolly and its load hover, poised to enter. Delivery Joe asks where they want it. Rebecca hears Maddy’s bedroom door click shut. The autumn breeze blows roughly across her face, bringing blood to her cheeks. She looks to Mark. He hesitates too.

“The nursery,” he says.

It is still painted a beautiful blue, though the crib is gone, along with the optimistic blue teddy bear and the changing table. It has been eleven months since the miscarriage, but it feels like minutes. There had been fertility issues before, and the doctor said no more trying now. But that’s okay, because they have Maddy, and Maddy is perfect.

The dolly gives a mechanical whir and progresses toward the laid-open front doors. They have to step aside to make way.

Chapter 2

It is their first night out since the horror-movie nightmare in the bathroom, the red-brown spatter, Rebecca curled against the tub, Mark at a loss, Maddy in the doorway stimming, the whole house off its axis. Rebecca wears a little black dress and heels, and the unfamiliar weight of makeup on her face feels mournful, but this is what she must do as a woman and a wife and a mother and a person who is still alive. Mark looks sharp in his Ralph Lauren pants and tailored blazer. They are new to real money: his e-news content optimization company went public last year, and they now remember how much everything costs, including their overpriced 2,500-square-foot Brentwood house.

At the Polo Lounge, they order the fancy cocktails they can suddenly afford, and then the lull arrives, the lonely black space of their loss amid all the laughter and piano keys. Confidence is on peacock display everywhere: dagger-slit sequined dresses, agent types machine-gunning talk, well-padded European men slurping oysters with second wives. The heat comes beneath Rebecca's nose, a quiver in her throat, and she cries quietly. Mark rubs the back of her neck. He looks far wearier than his forty-two years, and she feels that is her fault too.

The Weight of Grief

Mark suggests getting the check. Rebecca wants to check on Maddy, though her daughter is fine with the favorite babysitter. She knows the urge is for herself, knows she is transferring her grief over the miscarriage into concern for her living child, but understanding does not alleviate compulsion. She wonders if she is becoming the Devouring Mother from her college anthropology studies. She opens the nanny-cam app anyway: Maddy frog-sits on the foam tiles in her noise-canceling headphones, finishing a Lego giraffe, while babysitter June hangs her head off the bed watching her phone. All quiet.

The spiraling continues. Rebecca asks what if she had watched Maddy's food better, gone organic or farm to table, made homemade baby food, spaced out vaccines. Forever chemicals, hormones in meat, her daughter's many meds and the meds for the side effects of those meds. Mark gently insists none of it is her fault. She slides her hand to her stomach and whispers: "What if I did something to cause this too?" Mark pulls her close, and she nuzzles into his neck, smelling the sage and cedar soap she bought him in Ojai. They toast, one sip, and they'll call it a night. Her gin and tonic looks like a witch's cauldron. Two tables over, a woman brays laughter, and Rebecca feels frumpy, a child playing dress-up, unable to wait to be home in bed on Mark's chest.

The de Grasses Descend

Then the woman calls over: "Mark and Rebecca?" Alexa de Grasse, and her husband Derek, Mark's big boss. At last year's holiday party, Alexa drunkenly tried to make out with Mark on a rooftop, and Derek, though he brushed it off, has never forgiven him. Now the de Grasses pull up chairs. Derek signals the waiter, proclaims a second round, insists on covering the tab. Alexa's eyes pick over Rebecca, noting that her dress was worn to the holiday party. Derek remarks on Mark's Purple Label pants, and Mark says he is still amortizing them.

The conversation turns to children. The de Grasses sent all four or five of theirs to boarding school in New Hampshire. Alexa shows "proof of life" photos. Derek brags about outbidding Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno on a Porsche. They get the kids for Thanksgiving, Christmas, ski week, all summer. Rebecca and Mark don't fight or fuck much anymore; their schedule is hard work, parenting, recovery.

Alexa and Derek have something to share. Derek produces a stubby metal wallet contraption, pushes a button, and a titanium business card pops free like toast. NORM LLC. A website, an email, a 1-800 number. Started by a South African technocrat Derek met at a thought-leader summit in Sun Valley. Beta stage, extremely limited availability, and the de Grasses are allowed to pass the offer to one other party. Stamped on the back: YOU'RE IN CHARGE. It knows everything about you, Derek says, everything you want, and gets it for you while staying totally under your control. Alexa's voice turns seductive: designed for gratification, for your darkest heart of hearts. She slides the card to Mark, tells Rebecca this will change everything.

The Lifeline

Rebecca closes her eyes. She feels the phantom pulse of pain in her abdomen, sees the crimson handprint she left on the bathtub. She thinks of school drop-offs, the nurse visits, the occupational therapist, the psychiatrist for Maddy. The sorrow sits like lead in her bone marrow. She is much too young to feel so exhausted, so leached of optimism. More than anything she feels stuck, wheels churning in ever-deepening ruts, the lead apron of torpor heavier than grief. She hates to admit how much Maddy's special needs take out of her: the chunky applesauce, the too-bright bank lobby lights, the stuffies out of order. One sweet, lovely kid, and yet her nervous system is shorted out from hypervigilance.

She does not like to see herself as desperate, but here she is, barely treading water, and here are Derek and Alexa tossing her a lifeline. She thinks of control, of change, of gift horses and beggars and choosers. A thunderstorm of metaphors for the bare naked fact that she would give anything, anything, just to feel different.

She opens her eyes. Mark is looking back, his gaze shiny with interest, a hint of a one-shoulder shrug. Rebecca picks the card up again. And says, "Tell me more."

Chapter 3

Rebecca lies burrowed into the sheets on Mark's chest, exactly where she thought she wanted to be, but now she realizes she doesn't want to be here at all. She doesn't want to be anywhere.

Maddy's nigh-night routine has just run its elaborate course, an hour-long ritual: bath, soap, shampoo, dry, lotion, brush hair, brush teeth, pee, princess nightgown, goodnight kisses to Bao-Bao in his crate in the kitchen, sleep tight hugs to all the stuffies on the shelf, Mr. Elephant, Mr. Pig, Mr. Caterpillar, et cetera, fluff pillows, tuck blankets to the chin, Horton Hears a Who!, Good Night, Gorilla, Goodnight Moon, sleep-inducing nose pets, Sleeptime Pillow Pet casting stars on the ceiling, counting stars, making wishes, nighttime affirmations: My voice matters. I tried my best today. I am still growing and learning. I have what it takes, forehead kiss, sneak out of the room, two minutes of peace, glass-of-water request, repeat process from affirmations onward.

The NORM LLC business card beckons from Mark's nightstand, glinting in the light of the alarm. Had the Polo Lounge discussion with Alexa and Derek actually happened? Could something like that possibly be real? The de Grasses had been vague and coy with their answers about what precisely to expect, which felt manipulative and on brand for them. But the mysteriousness also made the opportunity, though this is hard for Rebecca to admit, enticing. Her iPhone is turned off, but the silence is not blissful. It shouts that she is missing things, falling desperately behind.

Snippets of the evening's conversation with Alexa and Derek rush to fill the quiet of her mind. The surprise is part of it. The sense of adventure. You'll see. Pricey but well worth it. Two hundred twenty-five K all in. An investment! Think of it this way: What's money for, if not this?

It is insane. Insane and out of the question for her and Mark and their normal life. She is too tired to sleep. Her stomach roils, a match for her mind.

She can feel Mark humming beside her as well, electricity moving through the warm skin of his chest into her cheek.

"What's with his jawline?" she says.

Mark will know she means Derek. They have it like that, shorthand and shared jokes, swimming inside a shared stream of consciousness.

"I believe he had it surgically enhanced," Mark says. "Augmented with panda bone."

"At a very exclusive medical facility in Dubai."

"The Buzz Lightyear Special."

It feels good to smile. He runs his fingertips across her shoulders. Even through her stretched-out Tufts T-shirt, it feels good.

A thought niggles at the base of her brain.

"Do you find her attractive?"

Her face rises and falls with Mark's breaths. He is taking longer to answer than she would like.

"In an ice-queen way, I suppose," he says.

The answer is a needle jab to her heart. She knows that her reaction is petty. But she also feels... How does she feel? Washed out? Less than?

She is silent. Mark breathes some more. She lifts her head and looks up at his shadowed face. The titanium business card winks at her from the nightstand.

A dozen insecure responses rise in her throat, and she sets them down one after another.

"Good night," she says.

"Night, Beccs."

She slides off him, rolls over, nerves jangling inside her. And hormones. The doctor told her that her progesterone and estrogen would take weeks to stabilize, and here she is two months later, filled with typhoons and tornadoes, bobbing like a cork on a tidal wave. How easy it is to forget that we are all just mammals.

She wants to weep. She wants to scream. She wants to be herself again, her stable, adult self. She does not want to cry. Mark will feel awful, and he doesn't need to carry any more than he is already gracefully carrying.

A feeling beckons, dark and yet delicious, that he deserves more than this. That they deserve more than this. Which is precisely what NORM LLC claims to offer.

Mark's breathing is steady. He is asleep already, and she is alone.

But then he says, "I can't imagine sleeping next to her. So, no, I can't imagine sleeping with her. She doesn't have your heart, Beccs. No one does."

Warmth moves through her entire body, a surge of oxytocin. She wriggles backward toward him, shoves her hind quarters into his side. He loops his arm beneath her neck, and they fall asleep together in the shared heat of their bodies.

Chapter 4

Rebecca stands in the doorway of the nursery at the edge of midnight, arms crossed against the cold, staring at the object centered on its base within the baby blue walls. It looks incongruous there, a rectangular prism with rounded corners, recessed lights, and a clamshell lid, like a closed tanning bed. NORM LLC is laser-etched into its side, the sensor light above it glows red, and the power cable rests connected to the charging point. The inset touch screen has been given full access to their wireless network, to their computers, search histories, calendars, online shopping patterns, cell phones, vehicular GPSs, smart appliances, wearable devices, and the far-field microphones embedded in all their technologies for hands-free voice recognition. Soon, the text promises, it will know them better than they know themselves, and that is the point. Because then it can see to their wishes. It is a relief to know that relief is coming.

And yet something has prompted Rebecca to rise now, at the edge of midnight, to lean against the doorjamb and observe this contraption they have invited into their home. She shudders. The rectangular prism vibrates and hums gently. Something is growing within, and what precisely it is, they have no idea. That uncertainty is part of the fun, part of the adventure, part of the torment.

Mark joins her

“Beccs?” Mark’s voice cuts through the quiet. Rebecca starts and yelps. He puts his arms around her, pulls her in, and reassures her: it is just him. She mumbles into his chest that he has scared the bejesus out of her, and he muses about what a bejesus precisely is, noting that folks rarely remark that they are walking around contently filled with one. “Either way,” she says, “it’s out of me, the bejesus, and you are to blame.”

They rock a bit in each other’s arms. She senses that, like her, he is equal parts excited and apprehensive. They know some of what to expect, but a thing like this cannot be fully anticipated any more than a child can. Or a miscarriage. It simply has to get here, and then they will try to make sense of what they paid so much for.

“This’ll be good, right?” she says. Mark is quiet for a moment, and then she feels him nodding. Past his shoulder she sees the rectangular prism glowing, right there in the spot where the crib used to be.