“Here,” she says to Sofia, who silently takes the glass. Antonia sits next to her and feels bulbous and huge. Sofia’s normally captivating gravitational field has shrunk to almost nothing; Antonia, used to ascertaining her own size and shape compared to Sofia, feels as though she might swell until she pops.

“I don’t think I can do it,” says Sofia, her voice small and wavering. There, of course: she feels better, she feels worse. She has not succeeded in keeping this small dark part of herself hidden.

“Do what?”

Sofia gestures at the globe of her belly. “I don’t think I can do this.”

Antonia is silent, but she wants to laugh. The two of them are swollen, rounded, peeing every three minutes, woken in the night by the incessant stretching and turning of their babies. Another reality is inconceivable. “I see,” she says, so as to respond but not giggle, because the absurdity threatens to overwhelm her.

“No lecture?” asks Sofia.

“What do you mean?”

Sofia gulps at her drink. “No speech about how I can do it, how women have been doing it forever, how I’m strong and capable and loving and have the support of generations of nice Italian ladies who will, you know, swoop in and wash diapers and induct me into the eternal coalition of motherhood?”

Antonia raises her eyebrows. “You said it,” she says.

Sofia rolls her eyes. “Look at me,” she says, “I’m ridiculous.” And she is, and she is exhausted. She is tired of fighting. She is tired of worrying.

“I’m in no position to judge,” says Antonia, and wiggles her stockinged toes. “We look like popcorn, don’t we.”

Sofia snorts. “We’re balloons in the Thanksgiving parade.”

“We’re the Hindenburg!” They laugh, and cannot catch their breath. They consider the improbability of growing other humans inside their bodies: that there is not room to laugh anymore, or to breathe deeply. There are four of them in the room.

“You can do it, you know,” says Antonia. A small flame of fear singes the inside of her chest. If Sofia is afraid, Antonia is afraid.

“Tonia, I’m not sure—I’m not sure I want to.” How astounding, Sofia thinks. To hear it echo in the room, like a gunshot.