by Emma Straub
“Yes?” Birdie kept working, snipping away. August held the pizza in front of her mouth and let her take a bite before moving it away, so that it wouldn’t get covered with hair.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the space on the corner,” Elliot said. “I’m not sure if my mother knows yet, but I bought it.”
“Did you?” Birdie stopped what she was doing. “Do you know that Astrid is obsessed? You must know that. Do you? All she wants is for something to open there, and I keep telling her, something will. But it’s you!”
“Yes,” Elliot said. “It’s true.”
“That’s exciting,” Birdie said. “So what’s your plan? You know, Susan’s Bookshop and I have had the same landlord for eighteen years. Predating my time in Clapham. Spiro’s has been there since the dawn of time. Frank too. It’s a big responsibility, thinking about the community. Especially because you live here. Most landlords want to stay as far away as they can.” She turned her attention back to Cecelia’s head and gently pointed it toward the ground.
“Yes,” Elliot said.
“What do you actually want to put there?” August asked. “I mean, when you bought it, what was your plan?”
“It’s not that simple,” Elliot said. “It’s about real estate, not services.”
“But you live here,” Cecelia said.
“And you must want stuff,” August said.
“These are some smart kids,” Birdie said.
“I want one of those Instagram museums,” Cecelia said. “You know, those places that just exist so people will take pictures and post them on the internet.”
“That’s not real,” Birdie said. “Is it?”
“It is,” Cecelia said.
“Do you think that’s what people would want?” Elliot asked, his voice searching.
Cecelia and August made eye contact in the mirror and burst into laughter.
“No, I knew you were kidding,” Elliot said. He looked miserable. He knew this feeling—the feeling that he was getting it wrong. His brother, Nicky, had never done anything wrong, not really. Even when Nicky did something royally stupid, it slid off his back. Porter too. Both of his siblings could have tried to water-ski with cement blocks, and they somehow would have skidded along the surface. Confidence. That was what they had. Enough confidence to not care about making money, or having a big house, or living a normal life, the kind of life everyone wanted. When Elliot looked at his brother’s weird marriage and tiny apartment, or his sister’s refusal to just marry someone already, he felt embarrassed for them, but also, he felt embarrassed for himself, that they clearly didn’t need what he needed, that they were powered by some internal engine that he did not possess, to move to their own beat, when he’d always been happy with the usual rhythm. Only in his family could Elliot feel like the weirdo for getting married before having children, for having a baby on purpose, for registering for kitchen appliances.
It couldn’t all be blamed on one conversation, of course. Or could it? Elliot didn’t know how brains worked. One conversation could change the course of a life, though—what about people whose spouses had to tell them they were getting a divorce, or every parent or wife or son who got a call saying that someone had been killed in an accident? Bob Baker’s life had changed with a conversation, hadn’t it? And so why not Elliot’s too?
* * *
—
It was right after his college graduation. Elliot had wanted to take the LSATs right away, as quickly as possible before all the information from all his classes slipped out his ears at night while he slept. After being away at school, it felt good to be back in his room in the Big House. Some of Elliot’s friends had real jobs already, either with their family businesses or with consulting firms in Manhattan and Boston. Elliot had asked his father for a job at his law firm, but Russell didn’t think it was a good idea, for slightly foggy reasons. He wanted Elliot to get a job somewhere else first. He could work for him down the road, he said. After law school. After working for someone else. As if those things were easier to do than to work for your father.
His scores were just south of mediocre. They weren’t so bad that Elliot seemed illiterate, or to have filled something out incorrectly, but bad enough that he wouldn’t be able to get into a reputable program. And if you could only get into a fourth-tier law school, who would hire you, anyway? Elliot had a summer job lined up at Valley Construction. He could take the test again in the fall.
The days were hot and long, and Elliot slept like the dead, his tired body crashing into bed, sometimes still in his clothes, and not moving for ten hours. Twelve on the weekends. By the time he stumbled down the stairs in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, his parents were already on lunch.
When there was a breeze, Astrid and Russell ate outside at the small wrought iron table. Russell didn’t wear suits on the weekend, but he still never looked quite relaxed, the way that other dads did. He wore collared shirts and ironed his pants. Russell thought denim was made for children and cowboys. Even though he was warmer than his wife, far more likely to crack a joke, or to give a quick bicep squeeze, in some ways he was just like Astrid—precise and clear. Elliot opened the fridge, and the cold air felt good, so good that he leaned forward, pressing his nose against a carton of orange juice. He felt like he had a hangover, but from physical labor instead of alcohol. The house was completely silent—no Wesley Drewes, none of the Steely Dan that Russell played when Astrid wasn’t home. Elliot took the orange juice out of the fridge, shut the door and leaned against it. He tipped the triangular spout into his mouth and drank straight from the carton, long, slow glugs. Outside, his father laughed.
Later, that laugh would hurt more and more, once he knew what would follow, but in the moment, on that one, sunny afternoon, Elliot laughed to himself in response. His father’s laugh was goofy; higher pitched than his speaking voice, a genuine giggle. Elliot held the carton against his chest and moved closer to the open door to the garden. He stayed out of sight. Porter was somewhere else—if she’d been home, she would have been making a racket, talking on the phone, or eating handfuls of potato chips, sitting in between her parents, egging them both on. He was the only child home, and he wanted to know what his parents were saying.
“Oh, come on,” Russell said. “You don’t mean that.”
“I’m sorry to say that I do!” Astrid said. “I don’t want to believe it. But I do. I think he’s skated by. He skated through school, barely graduated from college. And now he thinks he’s going to be a lawyer, just because you are? I’m sorry. We aren’t doing him any favors by flattering him into believing that’s going to happen.” Her fork clinked against her plate. Elliot turned his face away, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the kitchen. His mother went on. “I just think he’s not cut out for the business world. He should open a yogurt shop, I don’t know.”
“Yogurt!” Russell boomed back. Elliot’s breath started to move around his body again—his father was going to defend him, of course he was. “Yogurt’s passé. Maybe he’ll stay in construction! Build some glittering mansions on the hill!”
“Hmm. We’ll see. Maybe if someone else tells him where to put the beams. Not everyone can be the boss, Rusty.”
Elliot heard the sound of one of their chairs scraping against the stone patio, and he set the orange juice on the counter and padded quickly out of the kitchen and back up the stairs, where he stayed for the rest of the day.
* * *
—
“Who were you meeting over there now?” Birdie asked.
The corners of Elliot’s mouth turned south. “He makes ice cream. He lives in New Paltz. I don’t know. He could only pay half as much as some of the other people who’ve approached me. I don’t know. His wife does spin class with Wendy. I don’t know how he found out that I owned the building.”
“So he’s a local and has community ties and a
lso makes ice cream,” August said.
“Listen, it’s a business decision,” Elliot said. “It has to be about business.”
“You just said business like sixteen times,” Cecelia said. “No offense.” She thought about the glossy folder and felt more like a local than she ever had before. Astrid was not going to like this, and Elliot knew it. Cecelia willed herself to be brave, but no one liked tattletales. “I’m sure it’ll be beautiful.”
Elliot looked at her, his eyes wide. Cecelia turned her face back toward her lap.
Elliot took two giant bites of pizza and then leaned against the wall. He exhaled. “Well, Birdie, I should tell you. I did get approached by Beauty Bar. I don’t think they cut hair, but they do blow-drying. And sell makeup.”
“Keep Local, Shop Small!” August said, repeating his parents’ mantra.
“Gross,” Cecelia said, pretending that she didn’t know, that her words had been a coincidence.
“You two behave,” Birdie said, and kissed Cecelia on the top of her head. “It’s up to you, Elliot. If I may?” He nodded. “It’s got to feel good. My parents wanted me to be a teacher. But I never liked teaching. My two sisters live in Texas, in the same town as my parents, and they’re both teachers. I’m not saying they’re unhappy. I’m just saying, you need to make decisions you’re proud of, and not worry about what other people will say. That includes your mother.”
“I think you see a very different side of my mother than I do,” Elliot said. “I mean, obviously. But not just that. I’m used to my mother telling me that I didn’t do something right. I’m the firstborn, you know?”
Birdie pointed her scissors in the air. “Me too. In solidarity.”
“Me too,” said Cecelia.
“And me,” said August.
“No, no, you two are onlies,” Birdie said. “That’s different. Only children are, all problems aside, treated like porcelain. Eldest children are treated like glass and then promptly ignored for the cuter, newer model. Only children are the prize. Eldest children are the tests. I understand.”
Elliot slid another piece of pizza out of the box and sat in the third salon chair. Beauty Bar would make him rich, an actual success, if the people in town didn’t boycott. And not saying yes to Beauty Bar, walking away from the most money, would make him a bad businessman. He let his legs dangle beneath him, just like the kids. It wasn’t fair, to still need your parents’ approval. Nicky definitely didn’t need it. Porter didn’t seem to need it. Elliot closed his eyes and tried to imagine what that felt like. Wendy said that it was time for him to think about his children more than he thought about his mother, and he did, in terms of the percentage of his thoughts on any given day, but that wasn’t what she meant. Wendy thought that one’s actions should be driven by the future, which Elliot knew was a brand of optimism he did not possess. He knew that the only thing that really drove anyone—drove him—was the past.
Chapter 34
Verbal Confirmation
Farms were good for staying busy: there were always things to do, tasks to complete. Even at nighttime. Something always needed to be cleaned or tended. When Jeremy knocked at ten past the hour, Porter was organizing the mountain of paperwork on her desk, a task she delayed until the stack threatened to topple and cover the floor of the office like a blanket of fresh snow. It had taken a couple more days for him to make his way for the fake sick pet emergency, but what was a few days? Porter called out that the door was open, and Jeremy wandered in.
“Do you not have lights in here?” he asked, which was the only reason Porter realized it had gotten dark, and the only light in the room was the small lamp on her desk.
“Goats don’t need lights,” Porter said. “They have excellent vision, even in the dark. Did you know that their pupils are horizontal, and that they can see in almost all directions at once? It’s like a fish-eye lens.”
“So you’re saying goats have fish eyes,” Jeremy said. He walked behind Porter’s desk and scooped her into his arms.
“Ooh, you went to a good veterinary school.” Porter let him kiss her, his tongue on hers, her tongue on his, both of them slipping in and out like invitations. There was a ratty old couch, for necessary naps, and the occasional night spent, and Porter pushed them toward it. Everything about Jeremy made her feel like she was still a teenager, with only the present moment at stake, only whatever they would do to each other’s bodies next. Is this what people meant when they talked about being in love? She thought it was, the rush to connect with another human, above all others. Jeremy peeled the underwear off from under her dress and flicked them across the room and then buried his face where the underwear had been.
“You make me feel like a teenager,” Porter said. Jeremy’s mouth was busy, and he didn’t respond. He made her feel, in fact, exactly like herself as a teenager. Porter didn’t want to go back in time, not at all, but she did think of that period of her relationship with Jeremy as the last time she was really, truly, just a kid. She wanted her baby, she wanted to have all the sex she wanted with whomever she wanted to have sex with: Was that too much to ask, for every part of her life to exist in a vacuum? She pushed him backward and climbed on top, slipping him into her body. He didn’t care how big her belly was, he loved her, and she loved him, and what they were doing was okay.
* * *
—
Half an hour later, Jeremy was getting dressed. Porter watched him kick out the legs of his pants before pulling them on.
“Hey,” she said. “Should we talk about it?”
Jeremy ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, we’ll have to sooner or later, right? I know my wife will want me to.”
“Yeah,” Porter said. “Of course. What do you want to tell her?”
Jeremy buttoned his jeans and then searched through the couch cushions for his long-sleeved T-shirt. “I guess I’ll tell her that we talked about it, and Cecelia’s going to stay away from her? Because the school isn’t going to do anything. They told me that. Apparently Sidney said some things that aren’t PC enough, even though it didn’t sound that bad to me.”
“No,” Porter said. “I mean, about us. Do you want to tell her about us? What do you think she knows? She must know something, right? We never talked about it. But she’s not a moron, obviously she must have known something was going on. And I feel shitty lying about it, too, it’s not just you.” The baby kicked, as if in solidarity.
“Huh,” Jeremy said. He sat down on the couch, forcing Porter’s legs in the crack at the back of the foldout. “That is not what I was talking about.” He put his hands on her knees. “I meant about Sidney and your niece. I told her that I would talk to you and get some reassurance that she wouldn’t do it again, and we wouldn’t press charges or whatever, you know, not like anything big really happened, just that there could be a formal apology and then we’d all move on. I think that’s what Kristen was thinking.” He leaned back, using her legs as a human lumbar support pillow. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Porter said. “I think that Cecelia and Sidney and the school can probably work out whatever apologies need to be made. No one should get hit, obviously, and no one should say something that would make someone else hit them. I don’t know what Sidney said, for the record. Cecelia is actually very discreet.” She grunted a little, trying to maneuver her legs from out behind Jeremy’s back, and swung them heavily back down to the floor. “What about the rest?”
Jeremy pulled on his chin. “The rest?”
“Yeah. Like us. I don’t want to feel like Molly Ringwald here, asking you about prom, but what’s the deal?” Whenever she’d had the conversation in her head, Jeremy was smiling. He was crawling across the floor to her, he was holding a ring, he was filling a bathtub with rose petals. That was dumb, of course, and Porter didn’t want a grand gesture anyway. She just wanted an audible confirmation, like a flight attendant tal
king to the people sitting in the exit row.
“Come on, Port,” Jeremy said, his head zigzagging like a snake. “You know it’s more complicated than that. You know I love you—I have always loved you. Do I love you more than I love my wife? Maybe. Yeah, shit, you know what? I do. I fucking do. Being with you makes me feel like I’m sixteen years old, and totally invincible, like I’m fucking Superman. The way you look at me, Porter? When you look at me, I don’t feel like a middle-aged loser who sticks his finger up dog butts all day, who has to put cats to sleep just like his father did, you know? I feel like a kid who is going to screw his brains out all night long and maybe all day the next day too. Do you know how often I sleep with my wife? Never. I never, ever sleep with my wife. Maybe on my birthday, or our anniversary, if she doesn’t have her period. She wouldn’t care if my dick fell off when I was taking a shit and I flushed it away by accident.” He leaned over and embraced her. “You mean everything to me. You are amazing, and I love you. Is that confirmation? I want to figure this out. Do you know how happy it would make me to come home every day and have you there?”
Porter wrapped her arms around him. Jeremy was warm and smelled like sweat. She thought she’d wanted to hear it, but she hadn’t expected it to sound so sad. When Astrid had cleared her throat and told the noisy kitchen about Birdie, her face had been as full of joy as her face could be without breaking. She was nervous but happy, Porter had seen it. But now that Jeremy had said what she’d asked him to, more or less, Porter felt like she needed to go home and take a shower, like she’d eaten an entire cake, and it would all have to come out, one way or another. “I have to go,” Porter said. “We both have to go.”