by Emma Straub
Elliot’s construction company, Strick Brick, was housed in a building of their design, which was just outside downtown, and therefore out of the landmarked zone. The building was bright blue and hideous, with the upside-down proportions of a North Carolina beach house, spindly stilts lifting the structure twenty feet in the air, with an open-air carport underneath. A small house had been there for decades, but Elliot had bought it, torn it down, and replaced it with a gleaming new building, built to the very edges of the property line. Some people had complained, and Astrid admitted, in unguarded moments, that if it had been someone else’s son, she would have been very put off by the building’s incongruousness to its neighbors, but because Elliot was her son, and the project meant so much to him, she was proud, or at least said so in public.
After college, Elliot had badly wanted to go to law school, but his LSAT scores had been low, and he hadn’t gotten in anywhere he wanted to go, and it had taken him a while to figure out what he wanted to do. Russell had been a lawyer, and that was part of it, of course—Astrid could see it, the direct line that Elliot had always imagined, and that line breaking into pieces. He’d worked construction during summers in college; all his Clapham friends did. It was outdoors and sweaty and they got paid in cash and their muscles got bigger, everyone won. And when he took a job in construction after graduation, it was supposed to be temporary, until it wasn’t. Seven years later, Elliot had his own company. Most people would see that as success, but not Elliot.
Astrid parked her car outside his building. “I’m here,” she said. “Come out, it’s lunchtime.” Five minutes later, Elliot jerked open the front door of the office and barreled out onto the flagstone sidewalk.
“I don’t have much time,” he said.
“Good,” said Astrid. “Neither do I. Just give me directions, anywhere is fine.”
He pointed to the right, and they walked quickly up the sidewalk, occasionally ducking under low branches. Elliot was half a foot taller than she was, but Astrid moved double time and kept up.
“Lunch with the boss!” Astrid said as she hurried alongside him. It was warm and sticky out, the air nearly humid enough to see. Her voice always got a little bit higher around Elliot, compensating for his often sour baseline mood. Perkiness was not her natural habitat, and she could hear how odd she sounded, but she could never quite figure out how to fix it.
“I have eight employees, Mom, not eight hundred. You don’t have to act like that.”
“Plus the construction crews! You don’t have to be modest for me, El, that’s a lot of people.” Astrid grabbed Elliot’s arm, rubbing it briskly. Nicky had been an affectionate boy and was an affectionate man, kissing her on the cheek to say hello and goodbye when he was around, sometimes even for no reason. Elliot didn’t touch his mother more than he would touch a kind old woman he met at an acquaintance’s wedding. It was different, being a mother to different children. Not just the gender lines, trucks versus dolls, though the pink aisle conundrum had driven Astrid to madness as a young mother. There were also the varied ways that adolescent creatures either cried or hid, and those differences followed along when the children became adults too. When Nicky got married, he’d sent out postcards with the announcement, which meant that Astrid found out just after their mail lady. When Elliot got married, Astrid, who had always been best at performing tasks, had been forced to sit back and watch—a spectator! She’d always thought that Porter would be different, that there would be a way into her adulthood that she hadn’t found with the boys, but now even that ship seemed to have sailed clear across an ocean. Where was the door that she’d missed? Astrid believed in giving people space, in giving her children space. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? Two of Astrid’s friends had been in the delivery room with their daughters, watching as they pushed through the ring of fire and became mothers themselves, that ultimate magic act. Astrid wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she knew that wasn’t it, watching blood collect in a plastic bag under her daughter’s bottom as she pushed. When she got home, Astrid was going to ask Cecelia more questions about her day. She was going to sit closer, to follow her up the stairs to her bedroom, sit on the floor, even.
* * *
—
Elliot nudged her up the sidewalk in the direction of The Spot, a restaurant Astrid hadn’t been to for a decade, following an unsatisfying tuna melt. It had a dingy awning and plastic tablecloths in addition to the mediocre food, but Astrid wouldn’t complain.
“Let’s go here, they have sandwiches,” Elliot said, opening the door and holding it ajar for his mother.
They sat at a table by the window. The menus were enormous and laminated, and Elliot took a quick look and then put it down on the table, turning expectantly to look for the server.
“Hmm, tomato soup, that sounds good. I wonder if it’s warm or cold. A cold tomato soup sounds delicious, doesn’t it? I wonder if it’s pureed. Or cream based. I’m not really in the mood for a creamy soup, though.” Astrid folded the menu closed to look at the back. “Or they have specials! Did you see? Maybe I’ll have a soup and a half sandwich. I think I’ll do that. Did you see the lunch specials?”
“We’re ready to order,” Elliot said, waving to a woman in an apron walking toward them. “I’ll have the turkey club and an iced tea. Thanks.”
“Sure, hang on, just give me a minute,” the woman said, drawing a pad out of her apron pocket.
“What’s your tomato soup like?” Astrid asked. “Too heavy for a warm day?”
“Jesus, Mom, it’s just soup!” Elliot put his head in his hands.
The server raised her eyebrows. “It’s a little chunky, cold. Really good.”
“I’ll have that, please, and half a grilled cheese. Thank you.” Astrid handed over the menu and then knit her fingers together on the table.
“Sorry, I’m just a little stressed,” Elliot said.
“I can see that,” Astrid said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Work stuff. The boys are fucking terrors.” The server came over with Elliot’s iced tea, and he nodded a thank-you.
“They’re just little boys,” Astrid said. “You were a little boy once.”
“I wasn’t like this. They tell me they hate me. Aidan told me he was going to kill me in my sleep. And then he laughed, like an actual psychopath. I want to send them to military school, where they can channel their anger into discipline. I don’t know.” Elliot shook his head. He removed the straw from the iced tea and put the wide glass to his lips, sending ice sloshing against his skin. “They are ruining my life.”
“It’s just a phase,” Astrid said.
“Yeah, well, it’s a bad one,” Elliot said. “Anyway, why did you want to have lunch? Do you have cancer? Anything else I should prepare for?”
“El,” Astrid said, shaking her head. She spread her hands flat on the table, no cards hidden. “Do you want to talk about Birdie?”
“No, I don’t want to talk about Birdie, Mom. It’s just weird, don’t you understand that? I’m allowed to think it’s weird.”
“It’s not that weird. It’s just a relationship, like any other. Between two adults.” Astrid leaned back against the hard back of her chair. Elliot looked red and sweaty, and his neck, thicker now than in his youth, strained against his shirt collar. It wasn’t middle-aged spread; it was the gym, his muscles getting bigger, not everything else getting bigger when muscles were ignored. But Astrid thought that too much of anything was probably a sign that something was amiss. If Porter had some of Elliot’s workout regime, if Elliot had some of his siblings’ ease in their own bodies, if Nicky had some of Elliot’s inertia, and if Porter had some of Nicky’s charisma, then she might have one perfect child. They were all perfect, of course, in their own ways, insomuch that they were each perfectly their own tangle of positives and negatives, but together, if plucked just so, they could have made one flawless human
. Astrid knew it wasn’t a fair way to think about her children, but there it was.
“Yeah, but the other adult is your female hairdresser, which is what makes it weird. I mean, god, don’t you see how that could be awkward? For all of us?” Elliot waved his now empty glass at the server.
“I’m sorry that it makes you feel that way,” Astrid said.
The server swanned to their table holding a wide tray against her shoulder. She put down their plates with an elegant knee bend and took Elliot’s glass. “Be right back,” she said. Elliot and Astrid both waited silently for her to go before they spoke. Elliot pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped out an email with his thumbs.
“Whatever,” Elliot said. “It’s your life. It’s just that it affects my life too. I guess I’m surprised that you’re not more aware of how it could matter to me, and to your family, how people view your actions.”
Astrid sat still and stared into her soup. It wasn’t actually the kind of gazpacho she liked at all. Astrid hated dishonesty in restaurant workers, in the “specials” that were really just to use up ingredients that were about to spoil, and people who said that every dish you mentioned was one of their favorites. The soup would be edible. It would be fine. But it wouldn’t be any good. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t come back to this place. It was just a meal. “Okay,” Astrid said. “I understand.”
“Things are just kind of fucked right now, Mom,” Elliot said. “The office is busy, the house is a mess, Wendy is mad at me, it all just kind of sucks.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, honey.” Astrid picked up her spoon and tasted the soup. It was better than it looked. She watched Elliot tear his sandwich apart with his teeth. He ate as if he’d missed his last several meals, the way he had after swim lessons as a kid, his body needing the calories instantly. She had wanted to talk to him, to really talk to him, but it was so hard to know where to start. All of a sudden—forty years of parenting in!—she felt like she was on shaky ground. If her son felt this way about his children, if they were making mistakes, how many other mistakes must she have made without admitting them to herself? Her children were the way they were because of all the things she had done and all the things she had not done.
“I love you,” Astrid said. She reached out and touched the tip of Elliot’s finger. He moved his hand back on top of his phone and flipped it over.
“I have to get back to work, Mom,” he said.
Astrid patted the sides of her mouth with her napkin and then laid cash down on the table. There was no precedent in their relationship for what she needed to say, just like telling him about Birdie, which had not gone well. Astrid decided that she would try again another time; today was not the day.
Chapter 16
FOGELMAN
It was not accidental, the way Porter found herself standing on the sidewalk in front of Jeremy Fogelman’s place of work. Porter didn’t want to admit that her mother’s falling in love had tweaked her, but it had. If Astrid Strick could find love again, against all odds and personality deficits, then maybe Porter could too.
After their first official breakup at age sixteen, Jeremy had continued on a clear, well-lit path for lo these many years. He had been the Homecoming King, paired with Jordan Rothman, their classmate whom Porter had detested since preschool for her toxic combination of beauty, athleticism, and healthy self-confidence. Jeremy had then stayed close to home and gone to SUNY New Paltz, where he had studied veterinary medicine, and then he had become a vet, like his father, in order to save ancient cats and tumorous dogs and pet turtles and the occasional wild thing found in someone’s backyard. Jeremy had married Kristen when they were twenty-three years old, and his children were now coltish humans who could be found wearing jerseys that read FOGELMAN on the back, forever running back and forth across soccer fields. Porter went to the other vet in town, in part because she was closer but mostly because it would have seemed too obvious to have a reason to see Jeremy so often. It didn’t make sense, but Porter had always liked the subterfuge.
The East Clapham Veterinary Clinic had once been white and was now somewhat less than that, a dirty snow-colored building with a wide ramp to the side door and a squeaky screen door banging in front. Porter stood outside and wished that she still smoked cigarettes, the way she had when she and Jeremy had first been paramours. It was so funny, looking at a grown man and knowing what his body had looked like as a teenager, how smooth his hairless chest had been, when just a few brave curls had started to announce themselves. No matter how well his wife thought she knew him, no matter what friends he had now, and how many times they went out to dinner and talked about the boring details of their daily lives, Porter would always know him better. It was almost maternal, knowing a body for so long, and watching it change. Or no—not maternal, Porter thought, shaking her head. Almost marital. His body belonged to her; Jeremy belonged to her. But maybe she only thought that because she’d never been married.
“Porter Strick, as I live and breathe.” Jeremy was walking up the sidewalk, coming around from the parking lot behind the building. He grinned. Living in the small town you grew up in meant sometimes politely ignoring people you’d known for decades, because otherwise you’d never be able to finish your grocery shopping. Over the last two years, Porter and Jeremy had looked past each other in public successfully hundreds of times, always keeping their bodies from touching, a planetary ballet.
“I have goats,” Porter said. “Do you do goats?”
Jeremy laughed, which was generous. Once you decided someone was funny, you were likely to laugh at any old thing they said. “Sure. You see Dr. Gordon, over at Clapham Animal, right?” He knew where she went, of course. He was agreeing to be an actor in her play, curious about where she was going with it. Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest. He was wearing a button-down shirt tucked into his jeans. Rachel was right—he looked like an ice-cream cone, a hundred percent lickable, just as he always had been. She felt everything at once: the way his breath had always smelled like scrambled eggs on the school bus; the way he held her hand while walking down the hall; the way he’d tried to finger her for the first time, nearly slipping his hand in the wrong hole entirely; the way he’d looked at her during his wedding reception and on their last night at the hotel.
Jeremy’s college and Porter’s college hadn’t been so far apart, and in those early days, when they were both still clinging to their youths, when anyone who had known you before seemed preferable to a stranger, they had stayed in touch. There had been brief visits facilitated by Greyhound buses, visits that ended with UTIs from too much sex and hickeys to be covered with makeup. Their encounters were irregular, which is to say at irregular intervals, but they were always mutually satisfying. It was almost better, not being exclusive, not being “together,” because it meant that every time they saw each other, in whatever months had passed between, both Jeremy and Porter had picked up a few new tricks from other people.
“Yeah, I see Dr. Gordon, but I thought, hey, might be time for a change.” Porter wondered if she looked different to him than she had before. “And I was just in the neighborhood, thought I’d say hi.” She could have been saying anything, she could have been speaking gibberish. Right now, Jeremy was trying to figure out why she had come, and what she wanted. Once he did, he would know what to do.
“I was going to get a coffee before I went in; want some coffee?” Jeremy pointed down the block. In the morning sunlight, Jeremy’s brown eyes looked golden. His wife was a blond stay-at-home mom who designed her own art projects with Popsicle sticks and felt. Porter had seen them together too many times to count, but she and Kristen had met only a handful of times: at their five-year high school reunion, before Kristen and Jeremy were married; at their wedding, at which Porter had gotten supremely drunk and danced with all the small children; and only once by accident, when she wasn’t expecting it, at the mall in New Paltz, when they were trying on
clothes in neighboring changing rooms at the Gap. Kristen was the kind of woman who murmured sweetly to strangers’ screaming children in elevators, when everyone else turned their eyes toward the ceiling and prayed to be sucked up by a tractor beam from outer space.
“One cup,” Porter said, not meaning it, never meaning it, not with Jeremy, with whom there were no limits. She followed him back around the building, to his car, and when he opened the door to the passenger’s seat, she got in.
“I need to pick something up at home first, is that okay?” Jeremy waited, his hand on the shifter knob.
“Yes,” Porter said, and they were off. She’d never minded a little white lie.
* * *
—
There were several distinct neighborhoods in Clapham: Clapham Village, which contained the commercial stretches and all the homes within a two-mile radius of the roundabout; Clapham Heights, where her mother and Elliot lived, up the hill; Clapham Valley, where she lived, at the bottom of the hill; and then there was Clapham Road, which led out of the valley and into towns south. Jeremy lived halfway between Porter’s house and the farm, and though she had driven by a number of times, and occasionally been invited to large parties there, Porter had never so much as parked in front.
She was pregnant. He was married. It was not a date. Jeremy pulled the car into the garage and shut the door behind them.
“Where is everybody?” Porter asked. She didn’t budge.
“Nobody’s here,” Jeremy said. “Come inside.” He waited for her to get out of the car, and then he walked around to her side of the car and gave her a small, friendly shove toward the door into the house.
She’d seen the inside of his house thousands of times, in photos on Facebook and Instagram, in videos from when his children started walking or when the cat did something funny. She knew what his kitchen island looked like, what color the paint was in the living room, his outdoor furniture. Walking into it felt like walking into a children’s book she’d loved, shocking to have things suddenly three-dimensional.