by Emma Straub
Chapter 22
Lady Date
Porter picked up Rachel before dinner—there was no reason for them both to drive.
“You be the designated driver on the way there, and I’ll be the designated driver on the way back,” Rachel said, as she slid into Porter’s passenger seat. “Or maybe we can find someone drunk and drive them home, too, instead of just wasting our sobriety on each other. Like the Guardian Angels of Dutchess County.”
Porter wanted to take Rachel to The Yellow Owl, a farm-to-table restaurant in Tivoli that was a few years old. It was one of a dozen or so places that catered to the Brooklyn escapees and the food photographers, meaning it had kale and crudo and expensive bowls of ragout. The inside of the restaurant was so dark and the space in between the tables so narrow that Rachel and Porter bumped into nearly every table on their way to their own, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
“That was harrowing,” Rachel said, once they were seated. A trio of tea lights sat in the middle of the small table. She picked up the menu and scanned it quickly. “I’m having the pasta. All I want is pasta, three meals a day.”
“It’s good. They use my cheese for their ravioli.” Porter gnawed on a breadstick. She watched Rachel rub her belly in time to the song playing on the stereo. “Raviolo. It’s just one giant ravioli. It’s kind of weird, I don’t know.”
“Have you heard from your husband?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yes. I was going to text you, but then it just seemed too pathetic and sad. He keeps calling me. Writing me these huge, long emails. It’s like he was addicted to sex and now he’s addicted to apologizing. He showed up the other day too.”
“Showed up where?”
“At my house. It was like something out of a Julia Roberts movie from the nineties. You know the one I mean, where she has to learn how to swim in order to get away from her abusive husband? Like he’s following me. Which he is. I mean, he knew where to find me, obviously, but also obviously, I wasn’t responding to him and had no interest in seeing him.” Rachel took one of the breadsticks and crunched it between her back teeth. “This is good.”
“Did you talk to him?” At the next table, a couple was on a date. They looked maybe twenty-five and were holding hands over the middle of the table, tea lights be damned. Porter wondered what they had done right that she and Rachel had so clearly done wrong.
“No, I wasn’t home, thank god. He got my mother, which is, like, his worst nightmare. Even when he and I were on good terms, she was his kryptonite. Now, forget it. You have never seen a more satisfied angry person than a woman who’s been waiting her whole life to be a grandmother.” Rachel laughed. “She told him to take a long walk off a short pier. I don’t know, he cried. If I was there, I would have felt bad. But my mom did not feel bad. It’s kind of awesome.”
Porter nodded. “Do you think you’ll change your mind? And want him to be around?”
“When the baby’s born, you mean?”
“Yeah, or after. I mean, I’m on your side, obviously, but I just wondered if you ever considered his behavior being, like, a temporary insanity. Some men are really afraid of it. It being us, looking like this, and whatever comes after. Stretched-out vaginas, breast milk. You know, the perks.” Porter put her hands on her belly.
Rachel thought about it. “Maybe. I don’t know. The idea of it being my mom and me in the delivery room does kind of kill me—like, he got me into this, and he’s not there for the screaming and the pain? For my hemorrhoids? To tell me that my stretch marks are beautiful? That’s fucked up. He should have to suffer. This way, it’s like he gets a prize. Like, you don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night, congratulations, motherfucker! I don’t know, man. I think I will talk to him eventually. He’s my husband, you know? Like, he might be a total assface, but legally, he’s my assface. But then I feel like I want him around just to punish him, as if having the baby is a punishment, which it isn’t. I just know that it’s going to be hard and I want help, but I’m still so, so fucking mad. Fuck!” The couple at the next table turned to look at her. “Sorry,” Rachel said. “Hormones.”
“I had sex with Jeremy,” Porter said. She blurted it out and then made a face. The waiter came over and asked them if they’d like anything to drink, and Rachel stared him down until he left. “I’ve been having sex with Jeremy. For a long time, and then not for a while, but again, now. Not right now, obviously. But we did. Sorry! I’m kind of nervous to tell you, I feel like this is coming out weird.”
“Are you joking right now?”
Porter hadn’t thought this through, she realized, as she watched Rachel’s facial expressions cycle through surprise, anger, and hurt. She’d been looking forward to telling Rachel about the sex itself, which was sort of hilarious and new, but also about her current fantasy. It was a fantasy, mostly—Porter knew that—but she also couldn’t help herself from daydreaming: Jeremy would finally split up with Kristen, move into a new house with Porter, and be a doting, sleep-deprived parent with her. The timing wasn’t great, but life wasn’t perfect. He would get on board, she could see it all now. Jeremy’s whole job was to care for small creatures! He wasn’t grossed out by anything. He had two kids already. The man was practically a doula. Porter hadn’t said this out loud, but she wanted to try, to see if it sounded completely delusional or if it sounded like a New York Times Vows column. She wasn’t sure.
“No,” Porter said. “It just happened.”
“What does that mean, it just happened? Were you hypnotized? Roofied? What, I’d really love to know.” Rachel crossed her arms on the table, her mouth clenched. She put down her breadstick cigar.
“I ran into him, and we had lunch, and then we had sex. It was like riding a bike? Sort of? I know that sounds very rushed, but really, it just happened, and because it had happened before, it didn’t seem like such a big deal.” It did not sound great, it turned out. In fact, the whole situation all sounded much worse when Porter said it aloud, more premeditated, which she supposed it had been. She had pictured him naked when they were standing in front of the vet clinic, she had run her tongue over her upper lip. She had wanted to get into his car, to have him drive her somewhere. She had wanted every minute of it. “What we had was serious. For a long time. I think it still is. I think he’s the love of my life. I know that sounds weird and cheesy, but I think it’s true.”
“I don’t care if it sounds cheesy, Porter. Cheesy is fine! We’re pregnant! You don’t think it’s cheesy that strangers call me ‘Mommy’ on the street? That my relatives have started to send me onesies with baby ducklings on them? What I care about is that he’s married, Porter. With kids, right? Which makes you, pretty much, the same as the woman whose asshole my husband was so interested in.” The couple at the next table may as well have been Mormon missionaries, they looked so aghast over their small-batch cocktails and chicken with preserved lemon and spiced lentils.
“It’s not the same thing,” Porter said, arguing because she didn’t want it to be true. “They’re not happy. And he was mine first.” This was a bad argument, she knew, but it was how she felt.
“How do you know if they’re happy? All you know is that they’re married, and have a family, and that he had sex with you anyway, which, no offense, is not a great sign. You’re about to be somebody’s mother. And if I remember correctly, didn’t you already do this with him?” Rachel stood up with an oof. She scraped her chair aside and worked her way out from behind the table. “This is fucked up. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. This was always your problem, you know that? Like, you’re not still the Harvest Queen, riding on a float. You’re a grown-up.”
The restaurant hummed. Only the couple next to them noticed, and the waiter, when he returned. “Oh, just one?” he asked, meaning nothing but the number of menus needed. Porter nodded. “Just one.” She looked at the menu. Everything and nothing looked good. She wanted chicken soup, or pas
ta with meatballs. She wanted pancakes at Spiro’s. Rachel didn’t know what she was talking about—just because her husband had slept with someone else didn’t mean that Porter and Jeremy couldn’t have something real—the fallacy of moral superiority was embarrassing. Porter was a grown-up! She was. If anyone wasn’t a grown-up, it was Rachel, for thinking everything and everyone could fit into neat little parking spaces. It was entirely possible that Jeremy was finally going to leave his wife. Leave her. Even that language was regressive, and 1950s, as if Jeremy was going to pick up a suitcase and never see her again. This was Clapham, in the twenty-first century. No one left their children anymore, or their spouses. People hosted their exes for Christmas and posted pictures on Instagram. #Blended, #consciousuncoupling. It was like Prince Charles and Camilla—Diana had the beauty and the charm, but deep down, everyone knew that Camilla was the right choice. Porter didn’t want to be Camilla, and she didn’t want Kristen to die in a horrible car accident, but she would be lying if she said that the scenario had never occurred to her, midshower. She would be a doting stepmother. It could happen. Everyone else could fuck off.
“I’ll have the pasta,” Porter said, when the waiter came back. “And the steak.” The baby needed food. She was going to be a good mother, she hoped. And if the couple next to her was alarmed that she was crying while eating, well, that was too bad for them.
Chapter 23
Elizabeth Taylor
August wasn’t sure about the Parade Crew. “It’s just, not, I don’t know . . . ,” he started, saying plenty.
“You can be honest,” Cecelia said. “You think it’s lame.”
It was study hall, and they were sitting at the very last table in the library, with August’s phone propped up behind their American History textbook. August had taken it upon himself to educate Cecelia about Elizabeth Taylor, his favorite actress. They had already watched several clips from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cleopatra and had moved on to clips from Giant, which was August’s favorite. They were sharing one pair of headphones, with one tiny bud in August’s right ear and the other in Cecelia’s left.
“Don’t get me wrong—I love to build things and to decorate things,” August said. He was so wonderfully careful with his words. “It’s more that the Harvest Festival Parade is always full of girls like Sidney and her posse, who always wear the same strappy dresses and strappy shoes with dumb beauty-queen curls, like they’ve never even seen a magazine. I think it would be way more fun to build, like, an alternative parade that happened on the same day on the other side of town.”
“As my one friend, don’t you think you should be encouraging?” Cecelia snuck a gummy bear out of her pocket and passed one to August. “And you could probably make the float like a hundred times better! Why don’t you do it with me? It’s easier to change things from the inside out, right? And what if I was a Harvest Queen? You know what they say—if you can dream it, you can do it.” Elizabeth Taylor made Texas look about as sultry as Wisconsin, but Cecelia was into it anyway.
“What about me? I could be the Harvest Queen too! At least I’d wear something interesting. Fine, fine. Join. Don’t let me keep you from your dreams.”
Nicky and Juliette weren’t big on holidays—there were usually flowers and chocolates on Valentine’s Day, and celebratory pancakes on birthday mornings, but Christmas and Thanksgiving they usually spent at other, more organized people’s houses. No tree of their own, no turkey of their own. The one holiday thing they had always done, though, since the year that Cecelia was born, was take the subway to the Museum of Natural History the night before Thanksgiving and watch all the balloons get puffed up. That it happened at night made it always feel half secret, even though there were hundreds or thousands of other people there too. Cecelia never cared about the crowds. It was like a giant version of being in your school after dark, a little bit sneaky, even if nothing sneaky was going on. She would hold hands with both of her parents—why would anyone want to be anything other than an only child? She was in the middle, clutching them both, at the very center of the world. That was why she wanted to build a float. Maybe if the float was big enough, or glittery enough, she could make her parents wake up, get on a train, come to the Big House, pick her up, and take her home. It was a humiliating, childish desire, and she would rather die than admit it out loud, but there it was. It was as if she had proven just too challenging, after twelve years of perfect, normal, easy behavior and then several months of a handful of confused calls from the guidance counselor’s office and tears and conversations with other parents that weren’t just about playdates. Her parents needed a time-out from being parents. That was how she saw it—betrayal masked as concern. Katherine’s parents, in their leather shoes and buttoned-up clothes, had forced the school to apologize, had threatened to sue, had kept their daughter home for a week’s suspension and then had started tidying their private school applications. It was nothing.
“I just want to learn how to do things,” Cecelia said.
“Fair enough,” August said. “Now, look at her blouse.”
“You’re the only person under fifty who uses the word blouse, August,” Cecelia said.
“Yes, well, you can learn from me too.” He bowed.
The library was quiet—only a third of the eighth grade had study hall, and it was still nice enough that they were allowed to sit outside, on the lawn, which was what almost everyone else had decided to do. A few studious girls were doing math homework at the next table toward the door, and then there were a few kids sitting alone, reading. Cecelia felt flushed with appreciation for August, for her aunt Porter, for the universe. Having friends was not something to take for granted.
Liesel appeared in the open doorway of the library, and even though Cecelia couldn’t see who she was talking to in the hallway, she could guess. She nudged August’s elbow and then they both watched Liesel make her way down the low bookshelves until she’d reached their table. She held out a folded square of paper, and Cecelia took it slowly, as though it might bite. When she’d taken it, Liesel turned quickly and hurried back into the hall.
“Let me see that,” August said. He took the note out of her hand and carefully unfolded it until it was a creased but mostly flat piece of paper.
A WITCH IS BETTER THAN A SNITCH, BITCH.
Cecelia gasped. “How the hell does she know?”
“I don’t know, the internet? How does anyone know anything? Wait, there’s more,” August said, dragging his finger down the page until the whole sheet was unfolded. It was also possible, August supposed, that he had told his mother and that his mother had told Sidney’s mother, because they took yoga classes together, but he didn’t want to admit that he might very well be the source of the leak. Better to blame it on Sidney’s Insta-stalking, which she was no doubt doing. At the very bottom, in smaller letters, it read:
AND YOUR DAD USED TO BE SUPER HOT, WTF
“Oh, god!” August said. “This is, like, bad, even for them! This is the kind of note someone gives you on your prison lunch tray right before they stab you with a pointy toothbrush!”
Cecelia let her head fall into her hands.
“What exactly happened, anyway?” They hadn’t talked about the details, just the really broad strokes, because the details didn’t make sense, and it was easier to keep things neat with new friends.
On the tiny rectangular screen in front of them, Elizabeth Taylor was getting older in three-minute increments. Someone had taken the trouble to put the whole three-hour movie on YouTube, and they were watching, skipping every few minutes so they could get through as much as they could in forty-five minutes. Cecelia just wanted to see everything at once, to know how things would turn out. Everything took too long—school, her parents’ fights, puberty, summer camp, the line at the bagel store on weekday mornings. Cecelia wanted the Hollywood version of her own life—fast-forward, with wrinkles made out of papier-mâché. It was to
o hard to wait and see.
When Cecelia was small, and her mother was dancing more than she was teaching, Juliette was often away in the evenings at bedtime. Nicky was always around, his job being more or less make-believe, and her dad would fill the tub with bubbles and tell her stories about mermaids until her eyelids began to flutter closed. She didn’t object, because it was nice to have time with her father, too, but Cecelia remembered the day she finally understood: Her mother was gone because her mother was somewhere else. She hadn’t just evaporated for the night, she had gone somewhere else, to do things with other people. It was heartbreaking. Her father didn’t understand why Cecelia would cry so much, because she couldn’t quite explain—it had to do with the unfairness of being a child in a family of adults, of being left out, of being left behind. Juliette was always there in the morning, but in the morning, Cecelia would be tired, and still clutching on to her anger like a security blanket. No kid wanted their parent to belong to the outside world, not really. No one wanted an independent mother. Those nights when she was small, Cecelia had often put herself to sleep by saying, fast-forward, fast-forward, fast-forward, because the sooner she went to sleep, the sooner she would wake up, the sooner time would pass. She didn’t want to get older, she just wanted to be on the other side of whatever it was. Whatever her mother was doing, she wanted it to be over.