by Emma Straub
When her period still hadn’t come that weekend, Porter told Jeremy to get a pregnancy test and bring it to school. The two pink lines didn’t even wait the full minute that the test said they might. Jeremy had thought she was being dramatic—he said he was good at pulling out. When they’d driven to the clinic in New Paltz, Porter had been too stunned to cry. No part of her had wanted a baby. That was never on the table. The way she’d seen it, the rest of her life was on the table—her entire future. This or that, this or that. She couldn’t have both. Every year there was at least one girl in school who got pregnant and got bigger and bigger as the year progressed, until one day she vanished, like a puff of smoke. Sometimes the girls came back and finished, but mostly they didn’t. You’d see them around town, pushing strollers, or playing with their babies on playgrounds, sometimes the same playgrounds where the high schoolers would meet at night to smoke joints and drink wine coolers.
“I think we should take a break,” she had said, looking out the window. “When this is done, I mean.” This was what she’d thought: that her parents were more likely to find out if she and Jeremy stayed together. She was giving him a present. Had he realized that? She’d given him the present of not thinking about it, of putting it out of his mind forever. It had just been an afternoon. That was how good her body was—she could hold it all, even the memory of the tiny cells she would get rid of. When Jeremy drove her home after, her parents had been out. Nicky had been in her room, smoking a joint out her window, and he was the only person she told. Next year, the Harvest would have a new queen. That was the way it went for girls.
* * *
—
“There they are, there they are,” Nicky said. He pointed to the float that was coming slowly down the street. Cecelia was wearing a long dress, and she walked awkwardly in it, her legs not able to go as far as they usually did in a stride. Instead of looking at the crowd and waving as the rest of the kids walking alongside the float were, she was staring up. Porter followed Cecelia’s gaze and saw Jeremy’s daughter, sullen and blue with cold, standing next to a radiant girl in yellow. Was that August? It was. Porter tried to think about the bravest thing she’d ever done, and after a few seconds of searching her brain, she put her hands on her belly.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Porter said to Nicky and Juliette, who were so transfixed by the sight of their daughter willingly participating in the town’s ritual that they both responded with barely audible grunts. The twins were the happiest Porter had ever seen, waving at everyone, and Wendy and Elliot both beamed, at each other and the world. It took so little, truly, to turn a parent’s frown upside down.
The municipal hall’s bathroom was in the same place as it always had been, and Porter squeaked her way down the hall. There were parents with children everywhere—dads unapologetically on their telephones, as if whatever they had to talk about couldn’t wait an hour, and moms chased smaller siblings up and down the hallway, backs hunched over and fingers reaching. There was a short line for the bathroom, and everyone amiably smiled and then ignored one another.
The stall door swung open. The belly came out first—a massive pregnant bump that put Porter’s to shame, nearly a full circle. The dress surrounding the bump was skintight, with vertical red and white stripes, a gigantic human peppermint, like something out of Willy Wonka. Porter’s eyes traveled up the woman’s body until they got to her head. Kristen Fogelman caught Porter’s eyes and smiled.
“Oh, hey,” Kristen said. She pointed to Porter’s belly. “Congratulations. Jeremy told me that you were expecting.”
“Yes,” Porter said, her mind shouting a host of expletives that she was trying hard to keep on the inside of her body. Her mouth felt as if someone had patted her tongue dry with a paper towel. She sifted through all the words in her brain until she finally spat out a complete sentence. She pointed to Kristen’s beach ball. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t?” Kristen shook the excess water off her hands. “That’s weird. But I guess that’s how it is with your third baby. The bloom is off the rose.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though I don’t feel like a rose so much as a watermelon at the moment.”
“That’s quite an age difference you’ve got,” Porter said, trying to think if it was possible that Jeremy actually was the father of her baby, even though she knew it wasn’t true. They hadn’t used condoms, she and Jeremy, on four different occasions now, and Porter imagined all his thousands of tiny little sperm hiding away inside her body, finding new eggs that weren’t yet spoken for, and taking up residence, waiting for this baby to be born before really taking root. Had she learned nothing? “Is he here? Jeremy?”
“Oh, sure, of course. Sidney and her friends are the little queens today, so cute. But yeah, I know,” Kristen said. “Built-in babysitters!” She straightened up and stepped toward Porter. Kristen came within an inch of Porter and then stopped, her mouth so close to Porter’s ear that they were almost touching. “Just so we’re clear,” she said. “He was never going to choose you. Everyone knows, Porter. You’re the only one who thinks you’ve got a secret. Kind of makes it even sadder, doesn’t it?” Kristen put her hands under her enormous belly. “It’s fine. You’re going to grow up someday. Or you’re not.” She walked away, hips swinging like a majestic elephant who knew its rightful place in the animal kingdom.
“Right,” Porter said. There was a line of women behind her now, all waiting patiently for their turn. When Porter didn’t immediately head into the stall, the woman behind her—Porter recognized her, she worked at Croissant City—piped up. “Aren’t you going in?” Porter shook her head, and the woman ducked inside the bathroom. He’d come back for more because she’d let him, not because he was unhappy with his marriage. Porter shuffled into the bathroom the next time it opened and sat down. She could hear the sounds of the parade outside, the merriment, the people. Vasectomies were reversible, another win for the male ego. He hadn’t told her, of course. Porter made herself a wad of toilet paper and tried to breathe into it, a makeshift paper bag, but tiny fibers flew off and into her throat. She coughed and coughed, forgetting that she was in public, forgetting that she would ever have to get up and move, and see her family. See anyone’s family. See August’s parents, who were clearly doing the right thing, and her brothers, who were trying. See Astrid, who was in love. Porter didn’t know how, after everything, she’d managed to be the biggest failure of all.
“Porter?” a voice called from the other side of the stall door. Astrid’s firm knock was unmistakable. “Porter, what’s going on? Are you all right?”
“Hi, Mom,” Porter said. She leaned forward and unlocked the door. Her mother stared down at her and then took a tentative step into the stall, squeezing to the side until she could close the door behind herself.
“Okay,” Astrid said, crouching low, their foreheads now level, their knees knocking against each other. “It’s going to be okay. You are strong, and you are brave, and you are going to be a great mother.”
That made Porter sob harder. “Those are the three nicest things you’ve ever said to me. You can space them out, you know.”
“I’ll try,” Astrid said, and put her arms around Porter’s shoulders, letting Porter’s weight fall against her like she had as a baby.
Chapter 41
Team Kids, Part Two
After the parade was done and everyone disembarked the floats, it was as if Robin had won Harvest Queen. Sidney Fogelman kept her distance, but her henchmen were among those crowding around to congratulate Robin on her bravery. Liesel took a selfie. Almost all the seventh-grade girls huddled around Robin and told her that she looked beautiful in her dress, because she did. Nicky saw Robin’s parents—noses running, eyes gleaming—a few yards away and went to say hello. Porter and Astrid came back from the bathroom and huddled together in front of Shear Beauty. So many people were talking that it took Porter’s family a minute to realize that some
thing else was going on when she staggered back into the clump of her family.
Elliot leaned over to whisper in his sister’s ear. It was noisy, and Porter was having a hard time talking, and so Elliot crouched next to her and waited. Nicky came back up from talking to Robin’s parents and then quickly sank down next to his brother. Astrid watched their three heads—from above it was easier to see how they all looked alike, their hair the same shade of brown, their backs all curving the same way—and she felt that surely she hadn’t done every single thing wrong. Small victories carried the day, didn’t they?
Nicky and Elliot rocketed back up to standing and looked around—past Astrid—and then Nicky pointed toward the other side of the street, which was still mostly closed off to cars and therefore full of people. They jogged across, toward Jeremy Fogelman. He was leaning against the window of Elliot’s building, smiling at nothing. Sidney and her mother were receiving guests on the corner like a deposed dictator and her second-in-command, but Jeremy didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything. Nicky and Elliot appeared in front of him. The street was noisy, and they all had to shout in order to be heard.
Porter watched them and said, “No no no no! No! Guys! No,” but her brothers were too far away to hear her. She watched as Jeremy stuck out his hand, and Elliot knocked it away. Jeremy raised his hands in fake surrender. Kristen and Sidney were watching now, and pretending not to. All Porter could think about was all the therapy that Sidney Fogelman was going to need someday, and how much of it she herself was responsible for. Wendy and the twins had wandered closer to a float to examine its mechanics, thank god. Porter didn’t want to feel responsible for ruining everything.
It wasn’t as if she’d never thought about it—of course she had. That’s why Porter had broken up with Jeremy in the first place. Or in the second place, the second time. As adults. She’d broken up with Jeremy because she wanted to be someone who made good decisions, and who felt valued for more than her willingness to play pretend. She’d made the choice to have a baby, she’d been doing great, and now this? What was it that made her fall back? Porter felt that if she fell any further back, she’d be dinosaur food. It was Cecelia’s being in the house, and seeing Rachel, all these things that made her feel like she had time traveled back to her youth, when in reality those years were gone, gone, gone. And she knew she didn’t miss them.
“Everyone makes mistakes, Porter,” Astrid had said in the bathroom. “You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t even have to pretend to be perfect.” But she wasn’t watching the boys.
Elliot’s finger was pointed at Jeremy’s face, only an inch of air between them.
“Oh, god,” Porter said. She pushed herself up and hustled across the street just as Elliot was drawing his arm back. She dodged a large, friendly golden retriever in the middle of the sidewalk and made it to her brother just in time to see Elliot let his fist fly directly into Jeremy Fogelman’s nose. Or rather, it would have flown directly into Jeremy Fogelman’s nose if Jeremy hadn’t ducked out of the way. Elliot’s fist, instead, connected with the part of the Plateglass window where Jeremy’s face had been.
“You idiot!” Porter shouted. “That is not what is happening here! What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m protecting you,” Elliot said, clearly stunned, as a tiny crack formed in the window, and quickly spidered out. Jeremy stepped out of the way, in case the wall of glass was about to come crashing down. Elliot was breathing hard, his fists balled at his sides, unsure what to do next. “Fuck, man, that’s my window!” he decided to say. “Damn!”
“I don’t need to be protected,” Porter said, gently. “And I definitely don’t need to be protected from that loser.” Jeremy shrugged and hurried away before the Stricks could change their minds.
“I tried to tell him,” Nicky said.
“You said he dumped her! And that he didn’t tell Porter that his wife was pregnant, which is such a dick move!”
“That is not what I said,” Nicky said. “I don’t think that’s what I said.”
“You guys,” Porter said to her brothers. “Thank you for trying to stick up for me, but I do not need it. I mean, I do need it, and I will need it, a lot, but not like that. This is not about Jeremy, okay? This is about me.”
“All Stricks across the street, right now,” Astrid said. She had hurried behind Porter and was hovering, but enough was enough. If they were still her children, then she was still their mother. She clapped sharply and then hurried into the middle of the street, holding a hand in front of her like a stop sign. She waited as her three children and Juliette and Cecelia all crossed, safe from the handful of cautious drivers who had returned to the road, which was still thick with bodies. Wendy and the twins looked up and followed, confused about the family procession, but getting it quickly: The Stricks were on the move, and they were doing it together. It was right here, Astrid realized, that Barbara had been standing. If she could go back in time and escort Barbara back onto the sidewalk, if they could have had a real conversation, standing next to the mailbox, would Elliot’s hand be flecked with shards of glass? Would Porter be carrying on like a teenager, would she and Birdie be carrying on like teenagers? Astrid hurried into Shear Beauty and riffled around under the counter until she found the plastic bin full of Band-Aids and antiseptic ointment. Everyone else sat on the bench. The boys went loose in the salon, and Wendy held Elliot’s wounded fist and then kissed his knuckles.
“Let me see if I get this right,” Cecelia said. “I try to make sure my friend doesn’t get, like, raped and murdered, and I get shipped out of town. I punch someone, and somehow I’m the family role model?”
Astrid jostled back into the narrow hall and handed Wendy the box. “What in the world, truly.”
“Can we just focus on me for a second?” Porter asked. “I didn’t ask you to hit him. It was my mistake, not his. I wasn’t crying because I was mad at him, I was mad at myself.” She had stopped crying and was holding her belly.
“I didn’t even want to hit him!” Elliot said. “I don’t want to hit anybody! I feel like I was just trying to overcorrect in the protectiveness department.”
Nicky reached out to Cecelia. “Honey, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. We totally fucked it up. I know you didn’t do anything. Before you hit the girl in the face, I mean. You should never hit anyone in the face.” Here he glared at his brother, with only a slight twinkle of amusement. “I know you didn’t do what Katherine said. I just wanted to get you out of harm’s way. But I know how it seemed, like we weren’t behind you. We are always behind you, my love. Okay? Always.”
Cecelia’s eyes stung. She looked up from her father and stared at the wall behind him. She examined a corner of the wallpaper she hadn’t noticed before, a line where two sheets met and didn’t quite line up, a hiccup in the repeating image. A stuttering bouquet of flowers. When her father had been her age, what had he imagined his life would be? Did boys dream about marriage and children? Did girls? Cecelia didn’t. She dreamed about city buses passing beneath her window, and garbage trucks. She dreamed about her friends. She didn’t want to be happy or sad, she wanted to be normal, and to have normal parents, whatever that meant. Robin had given her a copy of a book about Elizabeth Taylor and one of her husbands, about their tempestuous love affair, and throughout the book, which was full of airplanes and hotel rooms and fancy cars, there were always her children and pets in the background, wildly ignored while she was busy throwing flowerpots at her lover’s head. Cecelia had to stop reading. She preferred Richard Scarry books, where parents of all species were always helping their children brush their teeth or escape a runaway truck full of ketchup.
“Robin invited me over for dinner tonight,” she said. “Can I go?”
“Of course,” Nicky said. He held up his hand until Cecelia took it in hers, and then he gave a squeeze. “Who’s Robin?”
The bell tinkled, and everyone tu
rned to look. Birdie pushed open the door with her hip, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. Astrid and Birdie hadn’t been hiding all these years, but it felt good to do better than not hide. Everything seemed more unseemly the longer it was kept out of the light, and there was nothing unseemly about Birdie—she was hardworking and kind and funny and beautiful.
“Bird,” Astrid said.
Elliot was tapping his foot next to Wendy on the bench, bobbing his head like he was listening to music that no one else could hear. They were all in such close quarters, like rush-hour commuters, only with nowhere to go. He clenched his teeth, a habit he’d developed as an angry teenager. Why had he been so angry? Why hadn’t his mother helped? It was so easy to look backward and see the way through the maze, and so much harder when the way out was still in front of you.
“About what you said,” Elliot said to Astrid, still bobbing in place. “I’ve been thinking. About what you said when you came over. I do remember. Jack. And what you said. I’m just not, you know. It wasn’t anything. I mean it wasn’t anything serious, it was just . . .” Elliot got a funny look on his face. “It’s embarrassing to talk about it with your mother, you know, but whatever. I think it meant more to Jack than it did to me, if you know what I mean. But that’s not what you have to apologize for.”
Now Astrid was paying attention. “Okay?”
Elliot nodded, clearly chewing on something inside. “You told Dad that I wasn’t smart enough to be a lawyer. Or good enough. You guys were outside laughing, talking about me being an idiot.”
Astrid put her fingers to her lips. “I said what? When was this? I don’t think I said that.”
“You definitely said it. I don’t know, it was the summer I started working at Valley. And you and Dad were outside, and I was in the kitchen, and I heard you. Dad laughed. But he felt bad about it, I could tell. But you weren’t laughing. That’s what I want an apology for, not for when some kid tried to kiss me when I was fourteen or whatever.”