by Emma Straub
“Wow,” Porter said. It was not a thought that had ever crossed her mind. When her father died, Porter remembered Astrid sitting them down and telling them that they all belonged to one another, that if she were to die, Elliot and Porter would both be Nicky’s legal guardians, and their finances would be handled by Mr. Chang, at the bank, Astrid’s favorite co-worker. Porter had sometimes had dreams that her mother was dead and that the three siblings would have to move in with Mr. Chang, even though they were adults and could theoretically take care of themselves, and that Mr. Chang and his wife would teach them things that their parents never did, like how to play the piano and make pasta from scratch, and when Porter woke up, she would feel guilty about enjoying her new parallel life.
“So, if you both died, the boys would live with me.”
Wendy nodded. “And the baby. So you’d have three. Which is a lot of kids. Especially for a single parent. If it’s too much, please, say so.” She was still crying, silently except for a few errant hiccups here and there. Porter had never understood her sister-in-law, but she could imagine a world in the not-too-distant future where they could actually be friends, like how in postapocalyptic worlds ruined by plagues and zombies, you could be best friends with someone you’d otherwise never encounter. Maybe this was motherhood, a feeling of benevolence for all human beings.
Porter took her hand off her belly and reached across the table. “Of course,” she said. “Just in case you get hit by a school bus. Out of curiosity, is there a reason that my brother isn’t the one asking me this?”
Wendy wiped her cheeks with a finger. “Let’s hope it never happens, but yes. And your brother is a man, that’s why. Do you think any man has ever been the one to take care of things like this? No man I’ve ever met. We talked about it years ago and he said he’d ask and here I am.”
“Fair. But you’d trust me? With your kids?” Porter asked. “I’m sorry, that’s not what you want to hear. I’m saying yes, I’m not saying no. It just means a lot to me. That you think I can do it.”
“Of course you can do it,” Wendy said, snapping back into her more familiar mode, as crisp as a carrot stick. “Women can do anything. All the things that men are useful for—think about it, what are those things? Lifting something heavy? Taking out the garbage? Grilling steaks? Please. Elliot has never properly cooked a steak in his life. And I have to tell him when it’s garbage day. And I can pay someone to move a couch.”
“I guess you’re right,” Porter said. “I think I like you, Wendy.”
“Well, thanks,” Wendy said. “I’ll draw up the paperwork.” She took a long, slow drink of water. “If you ever need someone, you know, like an extra pair of hands, you can call me. I don’t want to sound like your mother, but it is a lot. A friend of mine from law school who had a kid on her own hired a night nurse for the first three months. This lovely woman came over every night, and my friend got to sleep, unless she was feeding the baby. There are ways to make it easier.”
It didn’t seem fair, after spending so much time thinking about wanting to get pregnant, figuring out how to get pregnant, and being pregnant, that you would so soon also have to think about the reality of having a child on the outside of your body too. Yes, one thing led to the other, of course—Porter understood human reproduction—but to reduce the physical and mental state of pregnancy to a way station, like waiting for a bus, seemed suddenly so deeply misogynistic that Porter felt offended on her own behalf, at no one. At people. At men.
“Okay, so what was the other thing?” Porter asked. Inside, the baby did a somersault. Outside, Clapham was enjoying the afternoon. The gazebo in the small grassy center of the roundabout was a makeshift jungle gym for a couple of kids with long, tan arms and legs.
“It’s about that, actually,” Wendy said, pointing.
“The gazebo?” Porter watched the kids climb all over it like she and her brothers had done when they were kids, taking turns jumping off the handrail into the center, zooming toy cars around the wooden plank seats. Her brain had just started to picture Aidan and Zachary and her nameless daughter, some years in the future, all siblings of a sort, when she realized that she recognized the children.
“Elliot bought it. Not the gazebo, the building across the way. The empty one.”
“Fogelmans!” she said, not quite hearing what Wendy had said.
“Excuse me?” Wendy said, following Porter’s gaze.
“Those kids,” Porter said. “I know their father.” The girl, Jeremy’s daughter, was the elder of the two, and had long blond hair like her mother. It swayed back and forth as she clung to the top of the gazebo. She had never seen the children this close up—they were older than she thought, probably close to Cecelia’s age. Why weren’t they in school? And then Jeremy strode up, camera in hand—a real one, the kind people bought to take on safari, not just his telephone held sideways. He crouched down to take her picture.
“Are you okay?” Wendy raised an eyebrow.
“I’m fine. So, wait, what? Elliot bought that building? What’s he doing with it? Astrid is going to flip. I’m sure he knows that. You should have heard her when there was a rumor that Urban Outfitters was going to take over the Boutique Etc? shop. It was like when crazy moms in the eighties thought that Judas Priest records were trying to make their kids worship Satan.”
Olympia came back with an extra-tall stack of pancakes. This was something a mother was supposed to know how to do—Porter’s were never that good, not half as good as Astrid’s. Not enough baking soda, maybe? She’d never tried to figure it out.
“I know. He’s really worried about it.” Wendy spooned a tiny amount of cottage cheese into her mouth.
“Why doesn’t he just build something himself? Or move his office there, I don’t know.” Porter sometimes thought about her brother like an alien creature who had crash-landed into the Big House during puberty. He looked the same, but he didn’t act the same. Everyone Porter knew would have benefited from whole-family therapy for their entire lives, but who did that? Sibling relationships were as complicated as any marriage, without the possibility of divorce. What would estrangement do, when your parents died, and you were sitting across from each other, sorting through decades of photographs and mismatched cutlery?
“I mentioned the idea of him asking your mom what she thought,” Wendy said, and then turned to look out the window. “And he kind of freaked out. I don’t know if it’s Birdie, you know, and your mom’s whole new thing, but it was really weird. I think she would have good input—no one cares about Clapham more than she does. Do you know that she knows every UPS guy’s name?”
“You don’t know your UPS guy’s name?” Porter asked. “Elliot’s a grown man. He should build what he wants. What’s the big deal?”
“I know our UPS guy’s name. Astrid knows them all.” Wendy shook her head. “I’m not sure Elliot knows what he wants.”
Porter looked at her sister-in-law. “Huh,” she said.
“What?” Wendy said.
“It’s just funny. You know him. I mean, of course you know him, you’re married to him, but it’s funny that you know the same person I know. That sounds strange. Do you know what I mean?” Porter felt the baby do a flip. It felt like the split second without gravity on a roller coaster, the moment before the drop.
“Yes,” Wendy said. “I do. Would you talk to him about it? He wouldn’t ever ask me to ask you, but I think Elliot likes being told things, don’t you? He likes having permission.”
“Listen, my brother does not give an F what I think,” Porter said. “I’m the mess, haven’t you heard? At least El and Nicky gave mom weddings and babies. I’m just giving her a solo geriatric pregnancy. I don’t think he’d want my advice.” She folded an enormous piece of pancake into her mouth, leaving a trail of maple syrup drops across the table, her napkin, and then, yes, her T-shirt.
Wendy leaned her
elbows on the table. “I hope you know that’s not true. I don’t want to be disloyal, Porter, but I’ll just tell you right now, that’s not true.”
It was hard to respond to sincerity, and so Porter just chewed. When she had swallowed, she took a long sip of water. “Well. I suppose I could try.”
“Thank you,” Wendy said. She scooted out of the booth and dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “It’s on me.”
* * *
—
When Porter left Spiro’s, she could see Jeremy and his kids still taking pictures in the gazebo. She wouldn’t have said hello otherwise, but now that they were all outside, and it was more or less on her path to her car, it seemed silly to avoid them. Jeremy was crouched down in the grass, his camera lens pointed skyward.
Jeremy’s daughter was in her Clapham Junior High School sweatshirt, and the expression on her face said something between drop dead and go away, both possibilities that made Porter immediately appreciate Cecelia even more than she had before.
“Hi,” Porter said, tapping Jeremy on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Jeremy said. He turned awkwardly, then dropped to his knees and pushed himself back upright. He gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, nothing more or less than anyone would give an old friend. “Sweetie, want to say hi?” His daughter offered an eye roll to end all eye rolls, but then slumped toward them as if being pulled by an invisible chain. Porter stood still, a polite smile plastered on her face.
“Sidney, this is my friend Porter, the one who makes the cheese you like.”
“Nice to meet you,” Porter said. She stuck out her hand, but Sidney crossed her arms. “Do you go to CJH? My niece, Cecelia, just started there, in the eighth grade. Cecelia Raskin-Strick, do you know her?”
“Um, yeah,” Sidney said. “We have homeroom and English and math together.”
“Oh wow! Are you friends? That is so awesome!”
“Um, no,” Sidney said, and then ran back to the gazebo, where her younger brother was waiting. Porter wondered what kind of siblings they were, if they held hands when they were frightened, if Jeremy yelled, if they punched each other when their parents weren’t looking.
“Sorry,” Jeremy said, his voice low. “She’s pretty much a total asshole right now.”
“That’s okay,” Porter said. It had somehow never occurred to her that her child might also be an asshole. That seemed like a stage of parenthood she hadn’t imagined yet—being far enough in to think they were being a dick. There were always more levels, like the Super Mario Bros. ascending to higher and higher clouds.
“It’ll pass,” Jeremy said. “That’s my one parenting truth that I can give you. Everything passes. The good stuff, the bad stuff, everything. Nothing lasts.” He shrugged.
Sidney was jumping up and down in the middle of the gazebo. “Dad!” she said. “Come onnn!”
“What are you doing, anyway?” Porter asked. She put her hand on his arm lightly, the way you might before you asked a stranger for directions. She and Jeremy had made their thing work for such a long time, and no one had gotten hurt. They’d made each other happy, and everyone wanted to see their parents happy. That’s what children of divorce always said—no matter how bad or ugly the actual divorce, it was better than living inside a sad marriage, or worse. Of course, Jeremy hadn’t gotten a divorce.
“She’s running for Junior Harvest Queen,” he said. “Weren’t you Harvest Queen once?” The vote seemed entirely due to her brothers’ popularity, but Porter had won, a prize that involved a short ride on a pickup truck filled with hay, and a sash, and a scepter made out of corn on the cob. She’d been sixteen, a junior in high school, and both her parents had been tearfully proud, as if she’d actually done something, which made her feel both dopily happy and totally furious. If she’d known that in three years, her father would be dead, she would have enjoyed it more. Porter’s biggest pet peeve was when people complained about having to do things with their families—Thanksgiving at their in-laws’, a birthday party, a formal baby shower for their mother’s friends. Did those people not understand that death was marching toward everyone, every single day? Porter thought about making a line of greeting cards that just said, “Surprise! You’re dying and so is everyone else! Get over yourself!” They’d be good for any occasion.
“I should go,” Jeremy said. “But it’s good to see you. Can I see you? Again?” He raised an eyebrow, as if such a cue were necessary.
“Always,” Porter said. “Call me. Or just come by, whatever.” She tried to be casual. “If you want.”
Jeremy winked and then jogged over to the gazebo, where Sidney was tapping her flip-flop on the wooden floor and staring into the small screen of her telephone. When her father approached with the camera, she widened her mouth into a plastic smile and flipped her hair over one shoulder. She was beautiful, after a fashion, like a catalog model, with all the parts in the right place but nothing extraordinary that would distract you from the shorts she was selling. Jeremy crouched down to take her photo, and Sidney changed positions every few seconds. The littlest Fogelman, a towheaded boy with earphones in and an iPhone, slouched against the opposite wall of the gazebo, his head nestled in a peony bush. Porter waved like a pageant queen, elbow to wrist.
Chapter 28
August Tells the Truth, Part Two
Painting a million three-inch-long pieces of wood white gave Cecelia a lot of time to think. Parade Crew turned out to be lots of tiny art projects put together, like preschool parallel play, where you were mostly doing your own thing but near other people, and Ms. Skolnick played good music, and it was fun. Cecelia’s hands had white flecks, her jeans had white flecks, her hair too. But she didn’t mind. She liked sitting in the drafty woodshop and making things.
“I think this is why adults are into coloring books,” August said. “I feel like my brain is in a jar on the table.”
“I know what you mean,” Cecelia said. And she did, sort of. But more than that, she understood that that’s how August felt. How she felt, with her busy hands and quiet mouth and all the extra oxygen that the Hudson Valley had to offer, was that her main problem was trying to be agreeable. A good girl, whatever the situation. Flexible with her parents, flexible with her friends. She didn’t ask questions if she thought the answers would lead to conversations she wasn’t ready to have. The goal of life, Cecelia thought, was to be conflict-free, to get along well with everyone. That was what her father spent years learning to do by meditating. Her mother couldn’t have cared less about getting along well with people, or about being agreeable, but Nicky was so agreeable that Juliette didn’t have to be. And since Cecelia knew she couldn’t change anyone else, she tried her best to be open to whatever someone else had in mind.
That was why, when Katherine first told Cecelia about the guy she’d been talking to online, Cecelia hadn’t said anything. Yes, the internet was full of dark, scary corners, but it was also full of kids just like her, and Cecelia chose to believe Katherine, or at least she chose to believe what Katherine had chosen to believe. The guy’s name was Jesse, @jdogg99 on Insta, and he only posted pictures of graffiti and sunsets and dogs. Cecelia pointed out that if Jesse was born in 1999, that made him eighteen years old, which wasn’t super gross, but still, not the best. An eighteen-year-old who wanted to talk to a girl going into the eighth grade was weird. Even the ninth graders she knew, like Katherine’s older brother, Lucas, and his friends, called them babies and wanted at least ten feet between them when they walked down the street together. But Katherine had insisted that Jesse was cool. And so Cecelia hadn’t said anything else.
It got to the point where Jesse and Katherine were texting all the time. She put him in her phone under the name Jessica, just in case her mom looked. Before school, after school, all night long. Cecelia got used to sitting across a tiny Starbucks table, just watching Katherine smile and chuckle, her fingers moving at the spee
d of light. Every now and then, Katherine would lower her phone to the table and say, you have to hear this, and would then read off a string of messages. She never actually took her hands off the device, though, as if by doing so, she might lose contact forever. Cecelia had known it wasn’t going to end well—she had seen it. He kept asking her how old she was and saying how she couldn’t tell anyone about them. Would an eighteen-year-old say that? Maybe. But deep down, Cecelia knew it was worse than that. But she didn’t want to upset Katherine. And so she just watched it all unfold, even though she could see it in slo-mo.
“Are you okay?” August asked.
Cecelia looked up at him. “Yeah, why?”
“Because you’ve been painting the same Popsicle stick over and over again. I think that one’s good.” He pointed with his paintbrush. Sure enough, the piece of wood that Cecelia had been painting was permanently shellacked to the newspaper underneath it.
The first time that Jesse and Katherine were supposed to meet up, Cecelia went too. Katherine—admitting some form of weakness, or maybe just because she’d watched Dateline—asked her to go along, and to just stand in the background, so that if Jesse was watching, he would think that she was alone, as they’d agreed. They were supposed to meet at Grand Army Plaza, on the stone benches right in front of the entrance to Prospect Park, where the farmers’ market was on Saturday mornings. On Saturday nights, it was empty, with a few smushed tomatoes on the ground. People everywhere. That was the idea.