Olivia nodded. “It’s true. They’re better than my grandma’s even. But don’t tell her that.”
Olivia’s mom laughed, an infectious giggle with echoes of Olivia in it. “So, anytime you want, come on over.”
“Thanks, Ms. Lee,” Audrey said. “That’s so nice of you. We’d love to come. Wouldn’t we, Rose?”
Rose finally focused on Olivia’s mom, giving a tight smile. “Yeah, we’d love to come.”
”Great! And please, call me Rachael,” Olivia’s mom said. She leaned in, conspiratorial. “Anything else makes me feel so old. I’m not ready to turn into my mother yet.” She straightened up and released Olivia’s arm. “Well, I’m going to go check out the shoes. Come find me when you’re done, Liv.”
Audrey raised her eyebrows at Olivia as her mom walked away. “Okay, your mom is so cool. Like, for real.”
Olivia shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess.”
Okay? First name and dinner invite already? In contrast, on the rare occasions Audrey saw Rose’s mom, she always insisted on being called Mrs. Vacarello and came off as supremely icy. (Clearly where Rose got it from.)
“So,” Audrey said. “Did you have a good time last night? Sorry I wasn’t there.”
“Oh, yeah.” Olivia tucked a piece of silky aqua hair behind her ear as she nodded. “Mostly I was happy that I didn’t have to spend Friday night holed up in my room alone.” She looked away from Audrey to Rose. “So you got home okay?”
Rose played with one of the lacy bras in her hand and nodded, her entire demeanor relaxing. “Yeah. Did you—did you have a good time?”
“Yeah,” Olivia said with a smile directed only at Rose. “It was fun.” Now she looked at Audrey. “Sorry you weren’t feeling well. I hope you weren’t outrageously sick.”
Audrey swallowed and managed a wan smile. “Thanks,” she said, shuffling through the lies in her head to pick the right story. “Must have been something I ate.”
However see-through that excuse was, Olivia didn’t seem to notice, smiling again, and then Rose spoke. “Well, we should probably—”
Olivia jumped in at the same moment, words blurring together. “I like the—”
Audrey’s head spun with the back-and-forth voices. “What?”
“The pink,” Olivia said with a little lilt to her voice, and Audrey watched as she reached out to pluck at one of the delicate contraptions that Rose was holding. “You should get that one. It’s pretty.”
A flush bloomed across Rose’s cheeks, and Audrey pushed a smile down. Olivia dropped her hand and hitched her messenger bag higher on her shoulder. “Anyway, I should probably go find my mom before she buys up half the store. I’ll see you guys Monday.”
“Bye,” Audrey said, raising one hand in a wave as Olivia began walking away.
As soon as Olivia was out of sight, Audrey pinched Rose’s arm. “Was it me, or was she flirting with you?”
“It’s you.” Rose turned toward the escalators, stalking along in her heels so fast that Audrey almost had to run to keep up.
“Come on, Rose—the bra thing? The look she was giving you?” Maybe something happened at the party, Audrey thought—something involving Olivia? That would be fun. She pressed on, needling Rose. “And the other day, she only said she would go to Cooper’s party once you said you were going. I may not speak the Sapphic language as well as you, but I know flirting when I—”
“Audrey!” Rose whipped around, glaring with such intensity that Audrey took a step back. “Would you leave it? Jesus.”
Whoa. Audrey took another step back. And then there were the times when her needling did nothing but push Rose closer to eruption.
“What’s your problem?” Audrey said. “I was only—”
Rose dumped her armful of bras onto one of the thong-covered tables. “You know what, I don’t want these. Come on, let’s go.”
Audrey held up her tame sports bras. “I still need to pay.”
“Fine,” Rose said. “I’ll meet you at the car.” With that she turned and stepped onto the escalator, shoulders hunched.
Seriously? How had their fun, no-thinking-about-problems day turned from so good to so not good in such a short time?
Audrey stood there for an uncertain second, fiddling with the tag hanging from her bras. “Rose,” she called. “Do you want the car keys?”
But the question bounced off Rose’s back, and Audrey bit her lip. This was supposed to be making-up time, not yelling-at-each-other-in-a-department-store time. What’s her damage?
FOURTEEN
There was a soft knock on Audrey’s door, and then her mom’s voice: “Sweetie? Can I come in?”
Audrey looked up from her laptop and did a quick scan of her room to check for any incriminating matter: no magazines flipped to pertinent articles or any of her multiple pro/con lists.
All clear.
“Come in.”
Her mom entered on quiet feet. “Hey,” Laura said. “How was shopping?”
With Jekyll-and-Hyde Rose? Super-duper! “Okay” was what she said. “Fine.”
“Good. What are you up to now? Are you busy?”
Audrey shut her laptop, feigning innocence. “Editing some photos.” Actually, she did need to do that, or at the very least take some pictures for class. They had a crit session coming up, and she needed something to turn in that wasn’t a picture of Julian asleep halfway through a movie at his house, or Rose’s angry expression as Audrey aimed the lens at her for the hundredth time, trying to perfect her framing and focus and the million other things that might finally make the picture she took match the image in her head.
“Good, good . . .” Her mom sat on the edge of the bed, and Audrey looked up. She was wearing one of Adam’s sweatshirts that had BROWN printed across the chest. Adam had offered to take Audrey up to Rhode Island one day so she could look at RISD and he could show her the best places to hang out if she ended up going there. They’d probably never go now—what would be the point, when Audrey’s chances of getting in were sliding ever closer to zero?
“I wanted to catch you before Julian got here,” her mom said. “He’s eating with us tonight, right?”
“If that’s okay.” It was such a bonus having her parents like her boyfriend, and his parents like her. They rarely went to his house, but Audrey loved going over on Jewish holidays, getting to eat his mom’s cooking, hearing his music-teacher dad sing, and seeing his brothers, Nate and Ezra, forced to act like grown-ups.
They should hold on to that while they had it, Audrey realized. All that niceness was probably going to disappear once the mess came out.
She focused on her mom again, the way she was gazing around Audrey’s room, the shiny peach of her cheeks. “Mom, did you want something? Or did you come to sit on my bed and not speak?”
“Hmm?” Laura looked at Audrey, a strange smile on her face. “Oh, yeah. There is something I need to talk to you about.”
Audrey took in the serious tone of her mom’s words and put it with the weird smile.
Did she know?
No, no way. If her mom knew, she wouldn’t have said, I need to talk to you. She’d have said, Is there anything you need to tell me? You know you can talk to me about anything and I won’t get mad. I just wanted you to know that.
“Okay.” Her mom took a deep breath then. “I have something to give you.”
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out an envelope. It was blank—no name marking the thick cream paper and no postage anywhere on it.
“For me?” Audrey pushed her laptop aside. “What is it?”
“It’s a letter.” Her mom paused for a long moment. “From your birth mother.”
Audrey snapped back like those four words had physically caught her, snaked their way inside her body, and twisted themselves around her spine. “What?”
Her mom laid the envelope on the bed. “I thought—”
“She can do that?” Audrey stared at the envelope as if it were a live grenade
, or a venomous creature ready to sink its teeth into her. “I thought the agreement was that things like this wouldn’t happen. This isn’t supposed to happen, right?” A sudden curiosity struck her. “Does she know where we live?”
“Audrey, calm down,” her mom said. “No, she doesn’t know where we live. And yes, we agreed on no communication. That was her choice. But she got in contact with the adoption agency, wanting to get in touch, and they let me know what happened. And I said that if she wanted to send a letter or an email or something, that was fine with me.”
“You did?” Audrey spoke steadily now, her heart slowing back to a normal, steady pulse. “Oh.”
She’d never expected this. They’d had an agreement, her mom had always told her, that meant no visitation. No letters; no pictures of Audrey at three with two puffy pigtails on the sides of her head, or at seven with her front teeth missing. That was what her birth mother had wanted.
So what does she want now? Audrey wondered. Has she changed her mind?
A wave of sickness rolled in her stomach, and Audrey clamped her lips tight shut. Or is she psychic? She must be, to send me a letter right when I find out I’m knocked up. Jesus, talk about perfect timing.
Her mom peered at her, concern flooding her eyes. “Sweetie?”
“I’m . . .” Audrey shook her head. She really didn’t know much about the woman whose body she’d come from. She’d been young, Audrey knew that much. Sixteen, with a name to match her age: Mandy. She—Mandy—had, according to Laura, been very pretty in a hippie-ish sort of way, with long blond hair and wearing dresses that flowed to the floor over Audrey inside her belly. Over the years Audrey had added her own, fictional details to the picture: a flannel shirt worn over those dresses maybe, and perhaps a scattering of freckles on her cheeks. Like me, Audrey thought. Like my mom—my here mom, my Laura mom.
“But she said she didn’t want contact,” Audrey said. “That’s what you told me. You were happy for her to be in my life, but she was the one who didn’t want it.” A clean break. The ability for this girl to move on with her life, go back to school and graduate and think of her baby growing up with a mom who loved her. She wished she could keep you, her mom would say. But she wanted a life for you that was different from her own, and this was the best way she could think of to do that. And I’m so grateful that she chose me to have you.
“I guess she’s changed her mind now.” Her mom toyed with a loose thread on Audrey’s bedcover, looping it around her finger. “It’s understandable. It has been seventeen years.”
“Okay, but . . .” Audrey almost couldn’t understand how this letter had gotten to her, managed to slip its way from California to New York, through the agency gatekeepers, to end up in the hands of her mom and now, on her bed. “No contact was what she asked for.”
Her mom nodded, patient. “Yes. But, like I said, the agency got in touch with me, and then I thought—you’re seventeen. Almost an adult. Old enough to make your own decisions, don’t you think?” She carried on without pausing for Audrey to answer. “I think so anyway. I had to tell you. I couldn’t know she’d reached out and keep it from you. That’s as good as lying. Imagine twenty years from now, if I’d done that and you’d found out—God, you’d be so mad. I’d be so mad at myself. You’re not a little kid, and I don’t get to decide what’s right for you all the time anymore. Something like this . . . I think you should be able to decide.”
Audrey heard her mom say that she’d told the agency the same thing, and they’d told the girl Mandy, and the letter had passed from hand to hand until finally it was here.
The girl Mandy. She wasn’t a girl anymore, was she? She’d been sixteen then, so she’d be . . . thirty-three now. Thirty-three. A real grown-up, Audrey thought; maybe married, maybe not. Maybe with kids now, or maybe not. If she was married, did her husband—or wife, perhaps—know that once upon a time she’d had a baby? If she wasn’t married, did she date a lot, go drinking and dancing? Did she like to cook, or run, or read?
“Audrey, are you listening?”
“Hmm?” Audrey looked up to meet her mom’s eyes, their ocean blue the opposite of Audrey’s deep, almost black, brown. “Yeah, I’m listening. I hear you.”
“Good. Okay. So . . .” Her mom stood, leaving wrinkles in the sheets. “I’ll leave that with you, then. If you want to talk, you know I’m always listening. But this is your decision,” she said again. “Your choice.”
“Okay.” Audrey drummed her fingers on her closed laptop, her short nails clicking against the plastic. “Thanks. I don’t mean for saying that,” she clarified. “For trusting me. Thank you.”
“Of course.” Her mom leaned in to kiss Audrey’s cheek, and Audrey thought she saw a flicker of something pass over her face: anxiety? Regret? But then her mom’s dark perfume filled her nose, and Laura was pulling away, her face back to its usual caring-Mom look. “Come down in a bit, okay?”
Audrey nodded. “I’ll be down soon. Need to finish this editing.”
The excuse must have been satisfactory, because her mom nodded and left, the door closing with a soft click. Audrey inhaled deeply, letting the breath out again in a slow sigh. She fingered one corner of the envelope. Do I open it now, or do I wait?
She picked up the envelope: thick, creamy paper. Expensive. And also warm—no, hot, burning hot on her skin. Audrey launched herself from the bed and gripped the envelope with the very tips of her fingers, making as little contact as possible while she looked for someplace to put it. Not forever, she told herself. Because I am going to read it. But . . . not right now. Soon.
The bottom of her closet was the best place. She opened the door and pushed aside the clothes covering the bottom of the space, reaching past her well-loved camera collection: a Polaroid, her first ever point-and-shoot, an old film camera that used to belong to her mom. Behind them was a stack of repurposed shoe boxes, filled with birthday and valentine’s cards, folded notes, ticket stubs from concerts, and empty Metro cards from birthday trips to the city.
Audrey pried open one of the boxes and slipped the envelope to the bottom; it could live there for now, out of sight and way out of mind.
Audrey’s stomach clenched again, but she couldn’t tell if it was from being pregnant or from the reality of her birth mother’s words in an envelope intended for her. Probably both.
Yeah, she needed that letter to stay in the bottom of her closet and out of her head, because she had more important things to deal with, and right now, if she added another problem to the list? She’d probably have a nervous breakdown.
Audrey stared at her shaking hands, breathing slowly until they steadied and she could relax. “No breakdowns,” she told herself. “Not today.”
FIFTEEN
Audrey hung over the toilet in the graffitied stall, waiting for the spasm in her gut that would bring up her breakfast. This whole morning sickness thing was majorly pissing her off.
You wouldn’t have to do this if you had an abortion, a little voice inside her said. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Yes, it would be nice to have a break from the sore knees and raw throat. (She’d looked up cures for it, and so far nothing had worked—not saltines, not seltzer, not ginger ale. Next to try: sunflower seeds.) Yes, she’d love to be able to eat again. Yes, an abortion would be the easier option—in some ways. She wouldn’t have a baby. Julian wouldn’t have a baby. They could go on with their lives and not be those two assholes who got knocked up at seventeen, which would be how most of their classmates would remember them in years to come.
But would it be easy? It would be painful, probably, and scary, and maybe she’d be told all kinds of things about her baby that she didn’t want to know. Like if it had eyelashes, fingernails yet; how much pain it could feel; whether it was a boy or a girl. Bullshit, most of it, but that wouldn’t make it any easier. Audrey knew—she’d watched the news; she’d read the articles. That was what they made girls go through now, in so many places, no matter the circumstance
s.
Would it be easy, when she had that letter from her birth mother buried in her closet? When there was a woman out there thinking of her, seventeen years after the fact? It made Audrey wonder whether, if she did get rid of it, in another seventeen years’ time she’d be thinking of her own baby, too.
And it wouldn’t be easy because there was that stupid part of her that kept doing stupid stuff like referring to the thing as “her baby.” Not a baby, the little voice said. Cells. Goop. Floaty little nothing hanging out in your uterus and making you sick. Doesn’t sound like a baby, does it? Babies are cute and chubby and smell good. This? Not so much.
She heaved suddenly, emptying her stomach. A flush sounded from another stall, and as the acrid smell of her own vomit hit her, Audrey froze in place. She hadn’t realized there was anyone else in here. Shit.
She grabbed a handful of toilet paper and wiped around her mouth, wiped the sweat from her forehead. Keep it together.
She flushed and exited the stall, walking over to the sinks like there was absolutely nothing wrong. It wasn’t until she got there and focused her eyes on the mirror that she realized who the other occupant was.
Olivia nodded at her. “Hey.”
Audrey stuck her hands under the water and began scrubbing. “Hey.” Okay, she didn’t need to worry. She considered Olivia a friend now, yeah, but Olivia didn’t know her, not really. Not enough that she’d find it weird, alarming, that Audrey was on her knees barfing in the middle of the day.
They stood next to each other in silence for a minute, rinsing disinfectant-scented bubbles down the drains. Audrey had an awful taste in her mouth, metallic and sharp. She should have brought gum with her. She’d have to bum some from someone back in—
“So,” Olivia said. “How far along are you?”
Audrey’s hands stilled, reddening under the scalding water. “What?”
“How far along are you?” Olivia repeated softly, gently. “You know. . . .” She gestured at her stomach.
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