8

8

I 've been thinking about my mom a lot lately," Flora tells Connor during their video chat the next day. Iris lies awake in the lounger beside her on the couch while she pumps. Her laptop is perched on the coffee table, angled in such a way that the bottles and flanges are out of view. She doesn't need Connor's military mates watching her nipples get sucked to death by a wheezing machine.

"You have?" he asks. Then, raising an eyebrow, he adds, "I mean, I guess that makes sense."

"It does?"

"Sure. You just had a baby. You're a mom now. It's gotta be natural to think about your own parents."

Flora reaches over to Iris and rubs her belly. Connor's assessment is logical but oversimplified. Flora's sudden dwelling on memories of her mom feels more complicated. Loaded, somehow. But she can't say this to Connor. He's not a man of nuance; he struggles to see the grays in his world of black and white.

"I guess I've been wishing she was here," Flora says.

"Really?" he asks, surprised. Then he catches himself. "I mean, I don't mean to—it's just—you guys never really got along. I wouldn't have thought…"

"I know," Flora says, "me either, honestly. But it's my mom, you know?"

"Yeah, I do know," Connor says. "Sorry, Flo. I wish things were different."

Flora fills her chest with air. "Me, too."

Connor tells her as much as he can about his own life these days: the wind that whistles and howls all night long, the bunkmate who cries in his sleep, the water that tastes like sulfur. Every detail widens her awareness and reminds her that the world is still turning beyond the confines of her endlessly repetitive routine. It's so easy to forget that anything else exists.

When they hang up, Flora unhooks herself from the machine and pauses. She flutters her fingers in front of Iris's face and strokes her head. Like Connor, Flora is surprised that she wants to connect with her mom after all this time. It's probably some deeply ingrained evolutionary desire. After all, society seems to promise this maternal connection will finally bond her with Jodi. Or maybe it's just the chemicals in her brain or her hormones or some psychologically embedded drive or—whatever the reason, Flora hates herself for wanting that connection with Jodi, but she does. She does want it.

She reaches for her phone and navigates to the settings, where she finds the long list of blocked contacts. Most of them are random robocall numbers, but she scrolls to the bottom and sees "MOM." When she blocked the number four years ago, she told herself she was setting the boundary she needed in their toxic relationship. But maybe she had been protecting herself in a different way; maybe she knew, after her wedding, that her mother would never reach out again. If the number was blocked, Flora would never know whether or not her mom had tried calling. This way, she could assume the narrative that she was the one in control. That this was her choice.

Her thumb hovers over "MOM" and then delicately swipes until a bright red button appears that reads "unblock." She hesitates but presses it. Her mother disappears from the list of blocked callers.

She has no intention of calling Jodi. No way. Maybe a text? But what would she say? Her thumbs bring up a new, blank text chat. The cursor blinks in the top bar, willing her to type the recipient's name. She types "M-O" before abandoning the task and pressing "cancel."

Flora shakes her head and replaces the phone on the coffee table. She grabs Iris and the freshly pumped bottles, heads to the kitchen, and sets the milk in the fridge. As she walks back toward the stairs—

"IT'S A BARNYARD SINGALONG!"

ouch shit shit shit

Her toe throbs where she rammed it into the brightly colored activity cube.

Her breath catches. Didn't she put that in the closet? She must have unknowingly knocked it out when retrieving her coat earlier today.

Flora squats at the knees, careful to keep Iris level in her football hold, and fumbles around for the off switch with her fingers. This time, she finds it on the underside of the cube and slides it to the left. The music abruptly stops, returning the house to its typical quiet, which feels even more silent in the absence of the singing cube.

Once upstairs, Flora places a swaddled Iris in the crib. The late afternoon light slants in and illuminates the floral art prints she ordered for the nursery. The room is admittedly large; one of the corners is essentially bare. But she has done her best to make it feel as cozy as possible with artwork, an elephant-shaped hamper, and hand-painted drawer pulls. She takes one more look at Iris, who has turned her head so she's sleeping on her left ear. A favorite position, apparently. Then Flora closes the curtains and walks out, leaving the door open just a crack.

Downstairs, the singing activity cube turns on.