Adam dropped Mia off at her apartment and only after she insisted did he let the cab drive away without walking her up to the fourth floor. She assured him she was fine, just tired.
“But your eyes are all red and swollen,” he said. It occurred to her that he might have thought this a compliment, he said it so gently. “What if you slip and fall? I’d never forgive myself.”
“I’m fine, really,” she said. She patted his cheek with one hand. “You’re a very nice boy, Adam Malouf. I’m lucky to have a friend like you.”
He blushed and waved at the cab driver, who was getting impatient. “Friends don’t let pregnant friends with swollen eyes from crying walk to their apartments alone.”
“Adam, it’s one flight of stairs and an elevator.” Mia opened the car door and tried her best to look nimble as she got out. “Thanks. I’ll call you sometime soon.” She smiled and shut the car door, knowing his eyes followed her up the stairs to the building and as she opened the outside door to the lobby. Still hearing the car idling in the street, she turned to wave. The taxi began to crawl forward, irritation all over the driver’s face.
She shook her head as she entered the building. Babs must have employed her maternally gifted supersonic hearing, for the minute the door opened to the lobby, she threw the one to her apartment open as well.
“How is she?” she asked, moving toward Mia with rapid clicks on the tile. Mia looked down at the silver bedroom slippers topped with bouncing feather poms.
“Honey, tell me! Hurry! I could barely concentrate on my cucumber mask, I’ve been so worried.” She patted the large curlers wound through her hair. “I did this just as a distraction. I don’t even like my hair curly.”
Through the theatrics Mia thought she glimpsed genuine concern in her mother’s eyes. “She’s doing all right, I guess. The baby is tiny but the doctors say she’ll be fine after a few weeks in the hospital.”
“It’s a girl? Oh, that’s wonderful,” Babs said. She pulled a silk black robe more tightly around herself. Mia glimpsed a cotton nightshirt underneath but feared nothing dwelt below thigh level. Her mother had never been one for a full set of pajamas. John, in particular, had cited this as the principal reason he would forever be a guest at the Highlands Cove Inn rather than wake up in his childhood home and be subjected to a view of his mother’s morning apparel.
“When will Flor be able to go home? Will the baby have to join her later?” Babs tucked an errant spike of blonde into a curler.
“The baby won’t be going home with Flor,” Mia said. “She’s been put up for adoption.” Mia felt tears threaten again, remembering the way Flor had watched the ceiling as she told them her decision.
“Oh, that poor girl,” Babs said. She shook her head sadly. “I can’t imagine how she feels.” The lines around her mouth deepened. Without a full face of makeup, Babs aged ten years. Circles under her eyes gave her a defeated air, the punishments of the world seeming to catch up to her perpetual enthusiasm for conquering it.
“I’m going upstairs,” Mia said.
Her mother pulled her into a fierce hug. “I’m not one to squawk about the glories of motherhood,” Babs said into Mia’s ear. “But there’s nothing like it on earth. Even a sixteen-year-old child knows that. I’ll be praying for her.” She released from the hug and hurried to her apartment, closing the door quietly behind her.
Mia pulled her tired body through the space left between her and her bed. She dropped her purse on the kitchen counter, kicked off her shoes on her way to the bedroom, and disrobed without turning on a single light. She lay on her side, cocooned under the covers of her bed. Her cell phone rested in her hand and she dialed his number without allowing herself the indulgence of analysis.
“Mia?” he said upon answering.
“Hi,” she said, tears streaming down her face. She heard one drop onto the sheets.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Lars spoke quickly.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m crying.”
“Why? Is it your mom?”
Mia sniffed into her comforter. “No. It’s just that—” she stopped, her mind crowded with images of Flor, the cavernous hospital room, the isolation of a single mother, even after the most intimate act of giving birth. “I need you to be here. Now. I need you to come here and be with me and help me and not leave me alone.” The words tumbled out and she made no effort to rein them in. Her pillow was wet with salty tears.
“Oh,” Lars said. His pause was brief. “Okay.”
Mia sniffed. “Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll talk with my editor at the paper and ask for an extended leave. Maybe I can be there by the weekend.”
Mia blotted her eyes with the corner of the sheet. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?”
“Yes,” she said.
The phone remained cradled and warm in her hand even after she fell asleep.
26
Socialite
Mia let the line go dead and held the office phone between her cheek and shoulder while she made a notation in the file. Maybelle Anderson, age seventy-five, had called to request a window air conditioner for her subsidized apartment in Florrisant Estates. She said she’d waited until the beginning of September with the hopes that the government could get a better deal. Mia shuddered to think of how the woman had survived August, one of the hottest on record and a time in which she herself had been brought to swollen knees when outdoors for more than ten minutes at a time. Though never one for roughing it, pregnancy had made an official priss out of Mia. She’d walked each morning for exercise, but only if she got moving before seven-thirty. Anytime after that she could be found cuddling her window AC unit.
“Ms. Anderson,” she’d said a moment before, “you should feel free to call us with your concerns when they occur. Don’t worry about getting us the sale price, particularly when it comes to your health.” You’ll do us a bigger favor by not croaking during a heat wave and getting our negligence splashed all over the papers, Mia thought as she pulled up a number on her computer for the heating and cooling contractor used by Urban Hope.
“Oh, honey, you’re sweet. I didn’t want to bother. And besides, summers when I was a girl were much worse than they are now. I remember my grandma heating up a kettle of tea on the front porch in five minutes, and that was before noon.” Maybelle laughed into the phone, raspy and barking. Mia heard her take a deep breath and then sigh happily, “Ah, shoot.”
“We’ll get someone out to your apartment as soon as we can,” Mia said.
“I know you will.” She lowered her voice. “And you and I both know that may or may not be before next summer.” Another cackle and then a parting command: “Now don’t forget to tell your people about that sale at Sam’s Club. It’s only good through next week and it will save you a nice little bit. Lord knows we can all stand to save in this economy. Tell the Sam’s Club folks that Maybelle Anderson sent you. Maybe they’ll knock a few more dollars off!”
Mia smiled as she e-mailed the request to the contractor, making sure to CC a copy to Carl. She clicked “send” just as the big man himself rapped two hairy knuckles at the edge of her cubicle.
“Hi, Carl,” she said. “Nice shirt.”
“Oh, this?” he said in a way that told her it was a brand-new purchase and that he’d strutted in front of his mirror before work, checking out the goods. It was dark blue with bright orange splashes of jungle animals. The collar was too big for his neck and the lapels splayed out nearly to the edge of the shoulder seams. “It’s all right, I guess. I’m going to a little get-together after work. You know, poker party.” He shrugged to betray his complete inexperience with poker and parties.
“That’s great,” Mia said, nodding with all seriousness. “Maybe that will become your lucky shirt.”
“Totally,” Carl said, absorbing fully the greatness of her idea. “My lucky shirt.” He looked past her, lost in thought, plotting, she supposed, the breathtaking and illicit adventures to be had in orange monkeys and pleated Dockers.
She waited a beat and then cleared her throat to remind Carl he was in her cubicle and not at a table in Vegas.
“Oh. Um, here.” He produced a small gift bag from behind his back. “Sorry I can’t make it to your shower.”
“Carl, this is very kind of you,” Mia said. She reached out to take the bag. Babs and Frankie, against her feeble protests, had planned a baby shower for that weekend, hosted in Babs’s apartment and attended by a handful of friends. That Babs had even invited Carl was a bit sketchy, but the list had looked anemic. Ever the ship hostess, Babs was conditioned to believe bigger was always better, even if it meant rummaging around the periphery to drum up revelers. “You certainly didn’t need to get a gift.”
“I wanted to,” Carl said. He placed both hands on his braided leather belt. Mia was fairly sure they were clammy.
She reached into the bag and pulled out a teddy bear adorned with a fussy yellow and purple ribbon. “Adorable,” she said and smiled up at him. “This is very sweet. I’ll put it right in the nursery when I get home.” She started to fold the tissue paper but Carl stopped her.
“There’s something else. Actually the bear isn’t really the important part. But my mom said I should add something babyish to the gift I picked out.” He gestured to the bag.
Mia retrieved a letter-sized envelope and looked up at Carl.
“It’s a savings bond. Guaranteed investment, safe and predictable, good for the government.” He nodded quickly. “Win-win for everyone. I also printed off information regarding college tuition savings plans for single parents.” He blushed. “If you’re interested. And if you’re still single.”
“I am interested and I am single,” Mia said. She stood up and circled Carl in an uncomfortable side embrace, intuiting that the press of her belly would make him curl up in his lucky shirt and seek the comfort of his mother. “Thank you, Carl. This was very thoughtful. I’m touched.”
“You’re welcome.” He pulled back and patted his product-laden hair. “I hope you have a good time at the shower. Tell your mom I said hello.” He turned and scurried back to his desk and an oasis of computer solitaire.
Mia tucked the bear and the envelope into her purse and decided not to dwell on what else her mother had planned for the weekend. She could only hope that Frankie’s influence tempered her mother’s tendencies toward the limbo and strip shuffleboard.
“I sent a gift to Mom’s address. It’s very chi-chi. You and Courteney Cox will be hot mama twins.” John sounded very pleased with himself.
“Thanks, brother dear. I hope it’s a breast pump. I really need a breast pump.” Mia stirred in a cup of couscous and covered the pot to steam.
“Oh, please, no.” John made a shivering sound. “I never want to hear another word about your breasts or what you do to them, all right? I can barely imagine my little sister large with child, much less what happens when the child exits. So, no. My shopping was a success due to the very hip and very rich people I serve. Breasts never entered the conversation, thank God.”
Mia giggled. “Okay, then I won’t worry you with how enormous they’ve gotten.”
“Stop it.”
“Like, we’re talking way bigger than that girl you dated in high school. What was her name? Jill? Julie?”
“Please stop.”
“Jenni! Jenni Holland. My boobs are bigger than Jenni Holland’s.”
“I can’t believe I’m still on the phone.”
“And we also don’t need to talk about the pelvic floor exercises I’ve been doing—”
“That’s it. I’m hanging up now. Good-bye, dear sister.”
“Hey! Great news. I think I lost my mucous plug last night!”
“Have a great shower. La la la la, I’m hanging up now and can’t hear anything else you say.”
Mia laughed. “Love you. Thanks for the gift. I just hope it’s a dual-side because I’ll need to be efficient when I’m pumping.”
Click.
Mia hooted into the empty kitchen. “Boys are so not made for baby bearing,” she said aloud. The pronouncement made her think of Lars, so she scrolled through her recent calls and clicked on his number.
Voice mail. “Hey, this is Lars. I’d love to talk with you and learn from you, but I’m unavailable in this moment. Which is not to say I’m not present in this moment. Heh, heh. So leave a message, all right? I’ll call you back and we’ll connect.”
Mia waited for the beep. “Hi. It’s me. Just calling to see how you are and to tell you I’m really excited to see you this weekend. I know Mother said she was going to call you about the shower, which will be Saturday morning at ten. Don’t worry—I made them promise no gross games like sniffing out chocolate in diapers or eating Gerber peas and carrots. Just come. It will be fun. A very daddylike thing to do.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, well, I’ll talk with you later. Call me when you get a chance.”
She hung up and wondered immediately if she should have used the word daddy in her message. Surely the noun had crossed Lars’s mind in the past few months. And the shoe fit, as it were. Still, she wanted so badly for Lars to make his own strides in his own time, not to be the catalyst for his commitment to making things work with her and their baby.
The timer on the microwave started to beep and she removed a pot from the burner, opening the lid and seeing a pile of steamed vegetables waiting to top the couscous, along with a drizzle of olive oil, a dash of fresh pepper, and a sprinkle of salt. Mia wished there were cameras to capture the depth of domesticity she displayed in that moment, sitting down to a healthy, home-cooked dinner that didn’t send her unfaithful pregnant thoughts and her palette wandering into the meat department for solace and something substantial. She bit into a stem of broccoli, grateful for Adam’s guidance with this concoction a few days prior. He’d seen her in the store and had, through the course of his wandering alongside her cart, pulled everything off the shelves needed to make the couscous recipe. As she crunched into a red pepper, Mia smiled to remember his enthusiasm as he picked through Gerry’s produce section. He’d muttered through sixteen heads of cauliflower before settling on the perfect specimen allowed into her cart. She didn’t have the heart to tell him the first fifteen had looked remarkably identical to the winner. A girl knew when not to argue with a man in his element.
She was pushing the tines of her fork into the remaining freckles of couscous when her mother called from outside her apartment door.
“Hello! Anybody home? It’s your mother and I know when you’re lying, so think carefully before you answer.” Babs called her instructions through the wood and laughed at her own joke.
Mia waddled to the door and unlocked the chain. “Hi,” she said and made way for Babs to enter.
“Wassup, girlfriend?” Babs asked as she strode into the kitchen wearing a flouncy bohemian skirt topped with an oversized top she’d cinched at the waist with a gold belt. “Oh, are you eating dinner? Sorry to bother.” Babs poked in the pots still sitting on the stove. “Eww. Veggies, veggies, and more veggies. And what’s this?”
“Couscous. Kind of a mix between pasta and rice. It’s Middle Eastern.”
“Well, that explains it,” Babs said, replacing the lid to the pot. “I’ve never been there. Too much violence.” Babs stabbed a fork into a carrot stick and bit down loudly. “I’ve heard the Mediterranean is lovely but I’ll take the political neutrality of the Caribbean any day of the week.” She made a face and put her fork down on the counter. “I’ll never understand how you can survive on rabbit food.”
Mia shrugged as she rinsed her plate. “To each her own, Mother. Not e
veryone likes a big, bloody cow flank for dinner.”
Babs guffawed. “You sure used to. When you were in junior high, before all this vegetarian nonsense, you could eat us under the table at Amarillo Steakhouse. Remember that place over on Meridian Drive?”
“Of course,” Mia said. She pulled out a clean dish towel and dried her dripping plate. “In college I read all about their horrendous employee treatment, their refusal to allow unionization, the unusually high occurrence of salmonella incidences at their restaurants.” She grimaced. “I couldn’t feel better about my decision to swear off eating there and everywhere like it.”
Babs’s heels clicked over to the table, calling breezily over her shoulder, “Suit yourself. But I know you’ll be hungry again in an hour. And I hope you don’t infect my grandbaby with your food neuroses.”
Mia took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the progress she’d made with her mother in the last few months. For Babs’s part she’d only picked at the vegetarian “problem” a handful of times since her arrival, which was a huge index of growth in Mia’s opinion. Her mother had largely ignored Mia’s piercings and the tattoos on her back and ankles after her initial uproar and grief, a period which lasted most of the first month. When Babs moved into her own place, most of the comments about Mia’s membership in PETA, the Sierra Club, Rainforest4Ever, and the Democratic party had fallen by the wayside. In return Mia had forsworn her tirades against talk radio, she’d stopped cringing outwardly each time Babs showed up in spandex and any number of sweatshop-birthed ensembles, and she’d refrained from lecturing when Babs referred to people groups in antiquated terminology. All in all, they had made great strides in agreeing to disagree. No longer did Mia fear a call from the Dr. Phil show, asking her to appear on-air for an intervention set up by her mother.
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