I think about Simon, who killed himself while we slept. I think about my mother and how she quietly stole away. I think about Tea Rose, who fell in love across the ocean. I think about Joan, the particular intimacy we shared that wordlessly reached the end of its road, no outlet, like a cul-de-sac. I think about Surprise, the girl who became like a wife in one semester, her trophy virginity recycled into jewelry and roses.
“That’s funny. I feel like I don’t know anything.” I don’t know why people keep disappearing on me. Do they know something about me that I don’t know? Or about the world? What’s the difference between it being my fault and it being not my fault? The result is the same. My sense about Alicia is that we both feel alone, but we feel alone in very different ways. There is the feeling alone that can be solved by others. And there is the feeling alone that can’t. Alicia is rummaging around in her bag. “Here. Read this. It’s fascinating. And I found it really comforting.”
She hands me a book called The Pregnancy and Postpartum Survival Guide.
“It’s a library book, so I need it back in a week. But you’ll probably finish it in a couple of days.” She sits back in her lounge chair and resumes reading her own book, Newborn Nights: Healthy Sleep Habits for Parent and Child.
It’s intriguing, I realize, being around a pregnant Alicia. I can’t imagine what she must have been like before. What did she do with her time? Was she as zealous about her homework, her hobbies? She is the same age that I am and a lot more goal-oriented. I am beginning to firmly disagree with Socrates and that business about unexamined lives. How can you live if you’re examining your life all day long? Look at Alicia. She is marching calmly and dutifully to the next permutation of her existence. She is examining what it will take to get her there. She is not examining her examination. Only I seem to do that, and it’s definitely not getting me anywhere.
I read a few pages of the book but I feel cut off from it, locked out. The tone is meant to comfort—written in second person, liberally sprinkled with phrases like believe me and I’ve been there. But I haven’t been worrying about the things she is talking about, which makes me realize that my nebulous anxiety will soon have precise targets, and if it doesn’t, I will probably need a whole different section of the library. I glance over at Alicia, calmly turning a page. Her belly is rounder than mine; even it looks more sure of itself.
I close my eyes against the white of the book, the glare of the sun, the shrieking of children. I recall the feel of Tea Rose’s back, his working shoulder blades as he moved on top of me. For the millionth time I wonder what we were thinking—when, of course, we weren’t thinking. Not thinking was precisely the point. All the birth control education in the world can’t stop the freight train of that singular frenzied oblivion. I must have dozed a little because when I open my eyes, Alicia is standing over me, not totally approvingly. “You’re going to burn if you don’t reapply,” she says, handing me the tube.
“What time is it?”
“Time to get in the water!”
She helps me to a seated position and once more briskly rubs lotion on my back, even though the sun hasn’t yet touched it. I follow her to the edge of the pool. I’m aware of eyes on us as we walk together, eyes that make the short distance seem very long. It’s not the children who pay attention but their mothers, mothers who are scornful or merely curious, mothers who share the same unspoken wish—Please don’t let my daughter wind up like that.
Alicia surprises me by jumping in the water, like a child, even holding her nose. Her breasts bounce almost clear of her bikini top, and her belly, for a split second, seems to catch all the light of the day, glistening with sunscreen, reflecting the surface of the pool and the thousands of droplets being splashed all around it. She lands without going under but then quickly bobs her head down and does that thing every girl knows how to do, dipping her head backward, her face skyward, the underwater bubbles frozen at the entrance to her nose, and then up, slicking her hair back. “Wow, it feels great!” she says as she comes up, smiling.
I’m sitting on the side of the pool, dangling my legs. The water does feel good. I lift myself down and feel goose bumps spread over my entire body. Alicia’s nipples are standing on end, impossible not to notice, and I look down and see that mine are too. I am unused to being this conspicuous on this many levels.
Alicia seems calm, happy, in her element. She bounces in and out of the water, diving down and wriggling her legs up in a move we used to call the mermaid. I count to three and go under, the chlorine sharp in my eyes, the sounds from above beautifully muted. If I could just stay here, I think to myself.
“That was at least a minute,” Alicia says admiringly when I surface.
I resist the urge to do a backward somersault, knowing how my belly would rear out of the water like a humpback whale, and instead take off for the far wall, swimming first breaststroke and then freestyle. I’m amazed by my weightlessness and speed, two things that elude me on dry land. I reach the wall, take a deep breath, and swim back to Alicia. Maybe it’s the water, diffusing our shyness or sense of appropriateness, but it doesn’t feel strange when she puts her arms around my neck from behind and leapfrogs onto my back. I spin in circles. We are both laughing.
“Your turn!”
We switch spots and Alicia spins us around, our laughter now shrieky and carrying across the pool. When we finally stop, I see that Alicia’s top has gotten pushed to the side, almost fully revealing one breast. This starts us laughing again. Our laughter is a kind of freedom, to be in the water, temporarily disembodied, and a relief, to be with one another and not alone. Our laughter is also incantatory, protection against the eyes, one pair and then two and then three, until everyone at the pool is staring at us, our noise drawing their attention while also repelling it.
Fuck everyone, Simon used to say, after fighting with our parents, his girlfriend, his homework. Fuck everyone.
I am reproducing. All I see around me now is reproduction. The pollinating bees. The mating birds. Spores of sex in the air, all around us. We echo and are echoes. Everyone has this one thing in common: we were born. Some of us are parents; all of us are children. This fact is blowing my mind.
I keep wishing I were back with Joan, at her house. She shimmers before me like some baffling mirage of home and safety while my own home closes around me, while my body cages me in more tightly. Meanwhile, Alicia and I hang out regularly, and I regularly feel excluded from her brand of preparedness. There is an inverse relationship to how we cope: Alicia is nesting; I am trying to fly the coop.
“Agnes,” she says to me one day at the pool. “Have you gotten any of your stuff yet? For the baby I mean?”
I am lying under my towel, cold from the water. “Not yet, no.”
“I can give you the checklist my mom made. She handed it out at the last meeting.”
“Sure, yeah, that’d be great.”
“Also,” she said, rolling to one side and shielding her eyes, “I’m having a baby shower. My mom’s kind of insisting. I think she wants to deal with all my relatives at once.”
“That’s nice,” I say. “Right?”
She ignores my question. “I mean, I’d be happy to take you shopping, if it’s, like, too awkward with your dad.”
“Thanks.” I don’t know what else to say. I sense there is something she wants me to commit to.
“I mean, sooner or later…,” she starts, then trails off. “Just know that I’m here…if you need help.” There is an edge to her voice. I decide to ignore it.
A couple of days later, I get the invitation, pink and frothy, in the mail.
Sugar & Spice & All That’s Nice
That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of!
Please Join Us For A Baby Shower Honoring
Alicia
Saturday August 13
10:30 a.m.
It takes me a moment to realize that the nursery rhyme is meant to announce the baby, and not Alicia herself. She did tell me s
he had found out she was having a girl, but for some reason I forgot until just now, until I held this evidence in my hand. She told me she would be naming the baby Hillary. Or was it Ellery? Diana for the middle name, after the princess, whom she adored, and the “Greek goddess of the moon.”
“Actually,” I’d said, “the Greek goddess of the moon is Artemis, I think. Diana is the, you know, Roman version.”
“Oh.” Alicia’s face had clouded over.
I felt the need to console her. “But it works even better! Diana was associated with fertility and childbirth, too, which is, like, perfect.”
Alicia still looked gloomy. “I guess. I just feel like, I don’t know…it sounds so much better to say you named your daughter after a Greek goddess, not a Roman one.”
“Diana is a beautiful name. A beautiful middle name. The story behind it really isn’t important.”
“Have you thought of any names yet? You need to think of four: boy first and middle and girl first and middle. That’s a lot!”
I hadn’t. I still haven’t. “No. I’m hoping they’ll just come to me in a dream.”
* * *
That evening, Dad and I automatically bring our plates to the living room. Eating in front of Jeopardy! has given us a shared conversation. The kitchen table, especially in the evening, has become untenable, the empty chairs too distracting.
One of tonight’s categories is Call the Doctor! and the question, a Daily Double, is “Doctor whose book Baby and Child Care was, for fifty-two years, outsold only by the Bible.”
“Dr. Benjamin Spock. Who is Dr. Benjamin Spock?” Dad says. He is, as usual, correct. A car commercial begins, my least favorite kind of commercial, as Dad turns to me with a vaguely eureka expression and says, “You know how I knew that? Your mother has that book around here somewhere.” He stands up and puts his empty plate back on the tray. The car commercial says something about “peak performance” and “pioneer precision” and I wonder if alliteration is the mother of marketing. Dad is standing at the bookshelf, the one with the encyclopedias and other various reference books bought at garage sales or mail ordered decades ago. “Here it is,” he says, pleased, pulling it out from between Famous Gardens Around the World and The Vietnam War, volume I. He hands it to me.
I fight the tears that spring to my eyes, that are constantly springing to my eyes. They keep trying to fall and I keep clenching them back. The book is paperback with a laminated cover depicting a soft drawing of a Madonna-looking mother—long dark hair swirling around her shoulders—and her cherubic infant. The binding is uncreased, its pages crisp and unmarked. I can’t imagine my mother possessing a book like this, let alone reading it. My father stands above me, watching me, the air between us cringing with hope.
Hope, that most violent softness, like a maw with no teeth.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He sits back down, more energized now, leaning forward in his seat, ready for Final Jeopardy. The category: First Families.
* * *
Several mornings later, Dad surprises me with another gesture.
“One of the girls at the office quit. Just like that,” he says, stirring another spoonful of sugar into his coffee.
I pour a glass of milk and sit at the table, my bathrobe hanging open like two hands thrown up, like it has given up trying to contain me. Alicia told me that milk can relieve heartburn and is healthier than the Tums I’ve been downing. There is a packet of Tums in the pocket of my bathrobe. Underneath my robe I’m wearing old shorts and a T-shirt that I found at the back of one of my drawers that says ROYAL CITY ALL-STARS. I have no recollection of it whatsoever.
“She was only part-time—part-part-time, really—but we’ll definitely need to find a replacement.” My dad sits down across from me. I haven’t been listening fully but now he is looking at me intently.
“Okay,” I say.
He takes a noisy sip. “I don’t know if you’ve given any thought to—” He stops, clears his throat. “If you want to make some money, you know, or just, if you think it might be a good idea to keep yourself busy, while you’re still…”
We’re making lots of eye contact, his eyes trying to reassure me of his good intentions, my eyes reassuring him that I am reassured. Now he is assiduously straightening his tie. “Why don’t you give it some thought?” He is talking downward, as if to the tie. “You don’t have to decide anything right now. I think it’s just good to consider all the options.”
“Sure, yeah,” I say. “I mean, am I even qualified? What did she do?”
“Filed, mostly. Occasionally took phone calls, when Nancy was out. You could do it in your sleep, I bet. It doesn’t pay a lot, but it’s something. Not that you need—” He stops abruptly again, clears his throat. “Not that I won’t support you, financially I mean, but just, it’s good to work. A job can be a good, you know, distraction.” I can practically see the commas in his speech, little hooks of silence he keeps getting snagged on.
“I’ll definitely think about it, Dad. Thanks.”
“Sure, sure.” He puts his coffee cup in the sink. “See you later, Agnes. Have a good day.”
After he leaves, I get dressed and decide to walk into town. By the time I reach the top of our street, I am badly winded and already sweating. The day is overcast and humid. My dress clings to me uncomfortably and, I know, unflatteringly. I sit on the curb right next to the lip of the storm drain, into which we threw sticks and rocks and the occasional piece of trash as kids. My understanding of it was that it was some outdoor garbage system; nobody had explained that it was really for rain. I grin a little, remembering this now—I really had no idea where trash went. Underground? Deep enough down so that the molten center of the earth could incinerate it? All I knew was that it was really not ideal to ride a bike with one hand and hold a banana peel with the other.
The front door across the street from where I’m sitting opens and Jeremy, whom I hadn’t seen in years, steps out. He is two years older than me and had what they called “behavioral problems” when he was younger. I have no idea if he still has them. When I was seven, I wandered up to this same spot one day when Simon and Dad were yelling at each other and Mom was in bed, and I saw Jeremy peeing in his yard. I watched him do it and when he turned around, I stared hard at the ground, in an effort to convince him that I’d seen nothing. I remembered his eyes on me from across the street and across the lawn, and when I finally looked up, he was still staring, unblinkingly, shaking his penis vigorously with one hand and then the other. I stood, offered an awkward wave, and ran home. Truthfully the penis-shaking bothered me less than the yelling at home, but my shame for him propelled me away, as if to protect him. I stayed in my room with the door closed for the rest of the day, aware that Mom was doing the same, and I never told anyone what I’d seen.
Jeremy squints behind thick glasses and waves. He runs a hand through his straw-colored hair and then takes his time stretching, as if he’d just woken up or as if auditioning to play the part of a young man who’d just woken up. “Is that Agnes?” he calls.
“Hey! Hi, Jeremy.”
He saunters over. He is lanky and looks unwashed. He stands at the edge of his yard and takes his time looking both ways before crossing, despite the fact that cars are scarce on our street. I feel vulnerable sitting down but I remain seated anyway. Jeremy stands directly in front of me.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I was going to walk into town, but…I guess I changed my mind.” I let out a weird laugh. “Got a little tired.”
Jeremy is making me nervous. I can’t stop wondering if he is going to pull out his penis. I’m trying to remember the actual last time I saw him. Always from a distance, driving past as he checked the mail.
“How have you been?” I ask.
“I head upstate tomorrow. For the entire rest of the summer.” He says it as if I should be impressed. “You look different.”
“Yes, well.” I hunch forward, trying to show as li
ttle of myself as possible. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.”
Jeremy still stands directly in front of me, unmoving. If there were sun, he would be blocking it. “Second year in a row I’ll be a counselor at Camp Lenape. It’s all boys. The girls are across the lake.”
“That sounds like fun,” I say.
“It’s a lot of responsibility. A lot. So much extra stuff falls on me because I’m naturally a good leader. Last year a kid was so homesick he was just freaking out, inconsolable, and I was the only one who could calm him down. Shit like that, you know?”
“What did you do?” I ask, in spite of myself.
He looks me dead in the eyes, his own eyes curiously dead. “I did what I had to. The senior counselors and director were all like, ‘We don’t know what we’d do without you. We’d probably have to close down the camp.’”
“Wow,” I manage to say. “That’s intense.”
“Well, you can’t have kids freaking out. It looks bad. It can start a chain reaction and then parents will stop sending their kids. It’s a huge liability. I didn’t really want to go this year because I’ve gotten really into the stock market and wanted to do stuff with that, but they pretty much begged me and I couldn’t say no.”
“No,” I say. “Of course.”
“I could take you to town,” he says, “if you still want to go.”
I do not like the idea of sitting in Jeremy’s car, even for a few minutes. “Oh, thank you, a lot, but that’s okay. I think I’m going to just head home. I have a few things I should probably do instead anyway.”
“That’s cool. I have to pack. I just came out here to see what the weather was doing. And then I saw you so I came over to be polite.”
Carefully, I stand up. His eyes don’t move from my face. “Well, it was nice to see you. Have a good time at camp.”
He makes a noise like a snort and a cough. “Well, it’s not exactly a ‘good time.’ It’s a ton of work.”
“Right, yes. It does seem like a lot of work.” I turn to walk back down the street. “Good luck, Jeremy.”
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