“You and Tyler talk about names for the baby?” Katy asks.
I keep staring at the ceiling. Two summers ago, Mom and Sean and I painted the room. Dad was supposed to help us, but he ended up working late or taking an extra shift or something. Typical Dad. The ceiling is eggshell white, the walls celery green. I helped Gran pick out the color.
“Tyler wants to name him T.J. Like Tyler Junior.”
“Eww.” Katy takes her hand off my belly. She looks like she just bit into something nasty. “You didn’t agree to that, did you?”
I shake my head. “I like Charles for a boy.”
“Charles?” Katy makes a face.
“I want a classic name. Not something stupid that teenagers name their kids like . . . like Brayden.”
Katy laughs. “Brayden is a pretty stupid name.”
“Right. I like Charles Leonard after Dad. Dad’s middle name is Leonard. Or maybe Charles Edward after Granddad. We can call him Charlie.”
“I like Charlie. What if it’s a girl, though?”
“It’s a boy.”
Katy gets up, goes to the blanket chest on the end of the bed, and starts taking the dirty pillowcases off the pillows we stacked there. “You think it’s a boy, but you don’t know it’s a boy? You didn’t get a test?”
“I could have had an ultrasound yesterday that would have shown his penis, but I opted not to.” I sit up, leaning on my hands behind me. “It’s supposed to be safe, but . . .” I make a face. “How do you know if it’s really safe? Doctors gave pregnant women thalidomide for nausea and their babies were born with flippers instead of hands and feet.”
Katy screws up her face. “What is wrong with you? How do you even know this stuff?”
“Google it,” I tell her. “It’s true. Late fifties, early sixties.”
She closes her eyes, shaking her head. “We’re talking about ultrasounds. It’s just sound waves. How can that not be safe?” She adds the two pillowcases to the dirty linen pile near the door. “Tyler think it’s a boy?”
I flop back on the bed, staring at the ceiling again. “I don’t know what Tyler thinks.”
Katy is quiet and just waits for me to say something else. It’s one of the reasons she and I have been friends for so long. Because she doesn’t feel like she has to talk every minute of every day. And also because she puts up with my weird obsessions with health and safety and doesn’t make fun of me about it. Too much.
“Tyler’s being weird,” I tell her. I look at her. “Don’t you think he’s acting weird?”
“Like weirder than normal?” Katy picks up the fitted sheet from a pile on a chair near the door. “Get up, fatty.”
“That’s not funny.” I climb out of the bed. “I got on the scale this morning. I’ve gained, like, eleven pounds since the end of school last year.”
Katy moves to the opposite side of the bed and flaps the sheet open. The sheets are white. Gran only uses white sheets, which I always thought was cool when I was little. The sheets are colored at our house. Mostly whatever was on sale at L.L.Bean the last time we went to Freeport.
“Eleven pounds? How big is the baby?” Katy shakes the sheet again. “I thought it was, like, the size of a cupcake.”
“Banana.” I catch the end of the sheet. “The weight gain isn’t from the baby. He only weighs, like, two pounds. The weight’s from increased blood volume and stuff.”
“And all the red licorice you’ve been eating.”
I stick out my tongue at her and pull the sheet down over the mattress. “I’m serious about Tyler.” I keep my eyes on the sheet. “You think he’s . . .” I exhale. “He’s busy after school all the time. Working and stuff. The last three days he hasn’t wanted to hang out. And now since I’m not working at the drugstore anymore, I could actually hang out with him more.”
She doesn’t look at me, either. “You told him he had to work more hours. Save money for the baby.”
“I don’t think he’s working so he can save money for the baby. He’s talking about buying a truck from his cousin. He says he’s got half the down payment.” I move to the end of the bed to stretch the sheet over the last corner. “You think he doesn’t like me anymore because I’m getting fat?”
Katy’s hands fall to her sides and the way she looks at me worries me.
“Marissa said she saw him talking to Amanda.” I chew on the cuticle on my thumb, watching her. I’m taking psychology and we’ve been talking about body language. Marissa’s body language was weird when she was telling me she saw Amanda and Tyler together. “You think he likes Amanda? Because you know he used to. Before we started talking.”
“He’s going to have a baby with you.” Katy grabs the top sheet and comes back to the bed.
She shakes it out, and I grab an edge. “You didn’t answer the question,” I say.
She exhales loudly. “No, I don’t think he likes Amanda. She’s got a big nose.”
My phone in my back pocket vibrates. Mom bought me yoga pants with a back pocket because she knows I like to carry my phone that way. The pocket’s kind of small and my phone falls out sometimes. But it works. I pull my phone out, hoping it’s Tyler. I texted him right after school. Then again when Katy and I got here. He still hasn’t texted me back.
What time will you be home?
It’s Mom.
I groan. My fingers fly. Later
The bubbles pop up. Mom’s getting good at texting. She finally uses both her thumbs to type. She was trying to hold it with one hand and text with one thumb or hold it in one hand and text with one finger.
Can you stop at the grocery store on your way home and get fresh basil? And milk and TP????
I thought it was a good deal, getting Sean’s car, but now I see that the only reason Mom agreed to let me drive it was because she wanted me to buy groceries every day.
Running late, she adds. Be home by 6:30
7:00
I groan and text sure.
“Tyler?” Katy asks me as I push my phone back into my mini pocket.
“Mom.” I pick up the sheet and smooth it over the bed. “She wants me to go to Hannaford.”
“You girls want a snack?” Gran asks from the doorway, startling me. She’s so quiet in her wheelchair. She sneaks up on me.
I glance at her in the doorway. She looks tired today, and she doesn’t look like she brushed her hair. It’s really short so if she doesn’t brush it, it stands up weird on her head. I think she’s tired because Granddad kept her up most of the night talking to people in his room. People who weren’t there. I wonder if we can sue the neurologist he’s seeing. “What have you got?” I ask.
“Apples and almond butter and those cookies you like from the bakery in Rockland.”
I look at Katy because I’m starving. “Hungry?”
“Yup.”
“Be there in a minute,” I tell Gran. “We’re almost done in here.”
Gran wheels back down the hall.
“You don’t think he likes Amanda?” I ask Katy.
“I don’t think he likes Amanda. Tuck that in.” She points and goes back for the duvet.
“Mom’s still going on about how he’s not going to help.” I bite the cuticle on my thumb again, this time ripping off a chunk. It starts to bleed and I suck on it.
Katy doesn’t say anything. She just starts spreading out the duvet, also white, on the bed.
“She’s so mean.” I look at Katy, who’s busy with the bed. “I mean, she’s not mean, but she . . . she brought up adoption again at the dinner table last night. Dad got up and took his plate into the living room.”
Katy’s still listening, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t understand why she won’t just shut up about it. I’m not giving up my baby.”
“I’m not talking about this with you,” Katy says finally. “I told you. I’d have been at Planned Parenthood fixing it the first time I missed my period. I’m not having a baby before I finish high school. I’m p
robably not having a baby ever.”
I grab the edge of the duvet, pull on it, and then smooth it out. “I know you don’t want me to have the baby, but . . . you haven’t been mean about it. You’re . . . you know . . . supporting me. Supporting my decision.”
My phone vibrates again. This time it is Tyler and I smile. He’s finally answering me. To say he can’t meet me after school. Or tonight. But he adds a banana emoji. A stupid joke when we first started talking. I smile.
“Tyler coming over?”
“Here?” I look up at Katy. “He’ll never come here again. Not after Granddad told him he needed to wash his face so he doesn’t have so many zits.” Not that Tyler came here much before the zit confrontation. A few weeks ago, Tyler stopped by and Granddad gave him shit about “giving me a baby,” which was interesting because Granddad hasn’t said a word to me about being pregnant.
Katy tosses the pillows on the bed. “He meeting you at your house?”
I make a face at her as I arrange the pillows the way Gran likes them. “You kidding? Tyler didn’t come to my house before, except to pick me up. Now he won’t come at all. He says it’s because Mom ‘looks at him mean.’ ”
“Does she?” The bed made, Katy picks up the dirty sheets. I’ll throw them in the washer before we go.
“Yeah, I guess.” I make a face. “But she did that before she knew I was pregnant. And why does he care how she looks at him? She’s always nice to him. She still invites him to dinner. When he used to come, he’d eat, like, three helpings of everything. He couldn’t believe Mom cooked dinner every night.”
“Ayuh. You said they don’t eat dinner at Tyler’s.”
“Yes, they eat dinner,” I say, getting snippy with her. Everyone’s always criticizing Tyler and his family. “They just eat a lot of takeout and frozen fish sticks and Tater Tots. I think it’s because Cricket works so much at the grocery store and she’s too tired to cook when she gets home. And I like Tater Tots,” I add. “And so does my dad. If Mom’s going to be gone, that’s what my dad makes us for dinner.”
Katy’s eyebrows practically touch in the middle, but she doesn’t say anything. A couple of times in the last weeks she’s told me I’m being hormonal. She thinks I overreact. I told her maybe she’d overreact if she had a kid sitting on her bladder. I have to pee every five minutes. That could make a person overreact.
She walks out of the bedroom with the sheets in her arms. She knows the routine. She’s been coming here for years with me.
“I don’t know why you’re making faces,” I call after her. “My mom’s been working so much lately, the next time you come over, she’s not going to make you that homemade tortellini you like. The fish sticks are coming out of the freezer!”
15
Liv
When my phone rings, I debate whether or not to answer it; I don’t recognize the number on the screen on my dashboard. I’m headed east, a circa-1840 pine fireplace mantel in the bed of my truck. It needs to be stripped and painted, but it was a great online find, authentic to the mid-nineteenth-century date of the Anselin house. The only drawback was that I had to drive almost three hours to pick it up, all the way on the eastern edge of the New Hampshire state line near White Mountain National Forest. I also picked up a couple of ladder-back chairs, which with some repairs I can do myself will be gorgeous, and an amazing picture frame that if I don’t use in their house, I’ll use it on another project.
The minute I signed the contract with the Anselins and realized I really was going into business for myself restoring old homes, I started worrying about whether there would be a second contract. Or a third. So, I’m flying pretty high this afternoon because a woman I’ve been talking on and off with for weeks called to say she and her partner had decided they had chosen me, out of two other contenders, to restore their eighteenth-century Cape Cod.
The house is north of Judith, near Lincolnville, so it will be a little longer drive than the Anselin house is, but I can make it to Terri and Louise’s in thirty-five minutes. Completely doable. And honestly, the way things have been at home, I don’t think I’ll even mind the drive. These days, I find myself postponing going home. When I’m working, when I’m standing in the middle of the room directing my demolition guys, I feel like I know what I’m doing. I feel like I know who I am. When I walk into my house, when I sit beside Oscar at the dinner table, across from Hazel, I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m feeling like a complete failure as a mother and as a wife. But I’m discovering I really do have a knack for the restoration of old houses. A passion.
The phone continues to ring, and I realize it’s a local cell exchange. Local to home. Afraid it’s my mom calling from a stranger’s cell phone to tell me Dad lost her in the grocery store again, I touch a button on the steering wheel to answer. It only takes me two tries to connect. I’m still becoming familiar with my new vehicle. “Liv Ridgely speaking.”
“Liv, hi, er . . . this is Maureen Gray?” She says it as if she’s not quite sure. “I live down the street from your parents. On the corner. Cape, cedar shakes, red trim.”
When she says her name I vaguely recognize it, but I’m relieved she offers the additional clue. I immediately get a picture of her in my mind: short, round, a little older than me, with the typical forty-plus New England woman’s haircut and striking green eyes. “Right, hi, Maureen,” I say, wondering why on earth she’s calling me. She has a son younger than Sean but older than Hazel, so we’ve bumped into each other on occasion at school functions, but mostly I know her from waving to her as I turn the corner onto my parents’ street.
“I hate to bother you, but . . . I was wondering. Er . . . is your dad by any chance er . . . missing?”
“Is he missing?”
“Yes, I . . . Liv, I think I just saw him turning onto Bluebird.” She sounds flustered. “I hate to bother you but . . . Liv, he . . . er, he wasn’t wearing pants.”
Of all the things I was anticipating she might say, that wasn’t one of them. “He’s naked?” I’m unable to keep the shock out of my voice. My father is usually a very modest man. Always has been. A white crewneck T-shirt, oxford shirt buttoned up to the collar, robe over a full set of pajamas.
“No,” she says sweetly. “He was . . . er . . . wearing boxer shorts. Red plaid?”
She says it in a way that suggests I would know what pair of my dad’s underwear she’s referring to. I frown, knitting my brows. “You sure it was my dad?”
“Yes.” Again, the sweet, now almost apologetic tone. “It was Dr. Cosset all right, ayuh.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No.” She sounds whiffy to me now. “I just saw him through my bedroom window; it looks out onto Wren Street. I was putting laundry away. Wednesday I do towels and sheets.”
A detail I’m not sure why I need, considering the circumstances.
I push the heel of my hand to my forehead, squinting behind my Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. A gift from Amelia when I got my business license. She said every contractor needed a pair. “How long ago was this?”
“Er . . . fifteen minutes ago, maybe?”
I want to ask her why it took her so long to call me, but then it occurs to me that maybe she called Mom first. “Did you speak with my mom?”
“No answer.”
Great, I think. I’m two and a half hours from home and my father is walking through town half naked. The only bright side to this is that at least it’s not too cold out, though it’s certainly cold enough to be wearing pants and a jacket. “Was he wearing a coat?” I ask.
“Sorry?”
I shake my head, realizing it’s a silly question. Whether he’s wearing a coat or not doesn’t matter. The lack of pants is the critical bit of information here. And the fact that he’s gone for a walk alone. After he retired, he used to walk all the time: into town to get something at the grocery, to buy a newspaper, or have a cup of coffee. He used to sit in a coffee shop and talk with retired men his own age, but he go
t frustrated with them and stopped going two or three years ago. He said they never wanted to talk about anything except their prostate, or what they’d seen on Fox News.
“Thank you so much for calling me, Maureen,” I say. “It was kind of you.”
“You’re certainly welcome. Dr. Cosset was always such a gentleman. Have a good day,” she sings.
The moment she disconnects, I dial Mom and Dad’s house. It rings until I hear my voice on the answering system. I hang up and dial again. Three times is the charm. This time, Mom answers.
She sounds half asleep. “Hello?”
“Mom, where’s Dad?”
“Liv?”
I glance at the speedometer and bump my speed up five miles an hour. “Maureen from down the street on the corner just called me to say that she saw a man, who she thought was Dad, walking down the street.”
“He’s not supposed to go out without me. I was lying down.”
“Mom, Maureen said he wasn’t wearing pants.”
She’s silent for a moment, then I hear, “Oh, dear.”
It’s not funny but I can’t help myself. I crack a smile. “Yeah, that’s a problem.”
My mother sighs heavily. “He’ll come back. He always does.”
“He’s left the house without his pants before?” I ask. It’s the first time I’ve heard about it. Most times Dad tells on himself when he does something like this. I don’t even have to wait for Mom to tell me.
“Usually he wears his pants,” she quips.
I shake my head. Now my eighty-one-year-old mother has become a smartass. “Mom, could you check and see if he’s home? Maybe the neighbor was mistaken? Maybe it wasn’t Dad?”
“You want me to see if he’s here?” She sounds annoyed with me.
I hate to ask, but I don’t see any other choice here. “I think you better.”
She groans as if it’s a great imposition. “It will take me a minute to get out of bed and into my chair. I’ll call you back,” she tells me.
Our New Normal (ARC) Page 13