Free Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman

hyperventilating.
    Off we went to the hospital, with Ivan's best wishes to Mr. and Mrs. Woolf, and a fond reminder to dress the little one warm on the way home, because November is always colder than it feels. On the cab ride through the park I put my head in Jack's lap. He tapped his fingertips gently around my eyes, the way he does when I have a headache.
    â€œKiss me,” I said.
    He leaned over and pressed his lips against mine. They were a little bit chapped; he had gone skiing once because he knew he wouldn't get to go much for the rest of the season. I licked the rough skin on his lower lip. He kissed me again. Just then a contraction started, and I tried to pull away, but Jack didn't let me. He kissed me through the contraction, moving his tongue against mine, probing and licking my mouth until I could not tell if the ache swirling around my belly was pleasure or pain.
    Our baby was born at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on York Avenue, even though if I'd had my way she would have been born at Mount Sinai. The obstetrician who delivered her was named Dr. Fletcher Brewster (not Dr. Brewster Fletcher, as it erroneously says on UrbanBaby.com) and he is the first non-Jewish doctor who has ever touched any part of my body, intimate or otherwise, except for a Nepalese dentist who fixed a tooth I broke tripping over a severed cow foot on a street in Kathmandu. While I am neither biased against non-Jewish physicians nor a Jewish chauvinist like my father, I am convinced, superstitiously, and surely erroneously, that if my doctor had been named Abramowitz or Cohen, if I had given birth at Mount Sinai, if I had not been touched by those goyish hands in that goyish hospital, my daughter would be alive today.
    Dr. Carolyn Soule, however, has her obstetrical practice at Mount Sinai Hospital.
    Now, lying in bed next to Jack, I say the baby's name, silently. I mouth it, but without breath so Jack will not hear.
    Isabel.
    Jack sighs. “William is sad, too,” he says again.
    â€œI know.”
    Jack folds his hands behind his head and stares up at the ceiling. I count the gray hairs over his left ear. Sometimes I do this out loud and while he pretends only to be pretending to get angry; I don't think he likes it very much. It reminds him that he is nine years older than I am.
    â€œEm,” Jack says, his voice soft and husky.
    â€œI know,” I say.
    â€œYou know what?”
    â€œI know we have to clean out her room.”
    Jack doesn't say anything. He long ago stopped wondering how it is that I sometimes appear to be reading his mind, how I know what he is thinking or feeling even before he knows it himself. I have explained to him that it is because he is my
bashert
, my intended. I knew it from the first moment I saw him. There is a Jewish legend, a Midrash, that before you are born an angel takes you on a tour of your life and shows you the person whom you are meant to marry. Then the angel strikes you on your philtrum, leaving that subtle channel in the skin between the nose and mouth, and makes you forget what you have seen. But not entirely. There remains a vestige, enough to evoke a jolt of recognition if you are lucky enough to stumble across your
bashert
during the course of your life. When I saw Jack kneeling on the carpet with Frances Defarge's foot in his hand, I knew he was my
bashert.
I recognized him.
    â€œI can't pack it away yet,” I say.
    â€œThat's all right,” Jack says.
    He slips his arm underneath my neck and I rub my cheek against the smooth cotton of his pajama sleeve. Jack only wears pajamas when William is sleeping at our house. I don't. I tried to, at first, but during the night I would twist and turn, tied up in the knots of my nightclothes. I would always end up shucking them off in my sleep. Now I drape a nightgown over the end of the bed, and when William calls out in his sleep or comes into our room, I grab it and slip it over my head.
    â€œI'm not making a shrine