All Adults Here(14)
“Mom, you sound like an insane person.”
“Yes, well”—Astrid adjusted her hair—“I’m a curious person.”
“There was actually something I wanted to talk to you about, Mom,” Porter said. She opened the fridge and felt her arms begin to pimple with goose bumps. She closed her eyes and pretended she was just talking to the eggs. If her father had been there, he would have rubbed his hands together, excited for whatever she had to say. If her father had been there, she would have been too young to have a baby.
“Porter! Hi!” Cecelia slid into the kitchen in her socked feet.
Porter turned around and spread her arms wide, letting Cecelia crash into her. Elliot’s kids were actual monsters, creatures who would no doubt go on to commit duplicitous and mean-spirited white-collar crimes, but Cecelia was probably the number one reason that Porter wanted to have a baby—to have someone this smart, this funny, this thoughtful in your life, and have them be obligated to love you forever. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to clone her, adopt her, or be her. Maybe all three.
“How was the train? How’s my stupid brother?” Porter kissed Cecelia’s cheeks, one at a time, the way Juliette did.
“He’s okay. The train was fine. I got up to Harry and Hermione going to his parents’ house, where the woman turns into the snake. I had a turkey sandwich with a slimy piece of lettuce and a gross tomato and now probably have food poisoning.” Cecelia shrugged and then leaned against the counter, collapsing her torso so that it lay flat against the granite. In the months since Porter had seen her last, Cecelia had become a teenager and was slumping toward indifference to most things, right on schedule. The last time she’d been in town—only eight months ago, at Christmas—she hadn’t been like this, and seeing a sulking teenager in the kitchen where she herself had been a sulking teenager set Porter’s heart aflame.
“Mom, let me take this child to lunch.” Porter grabbed Cecelia by the hand. “I am so happy to see you, Chicken.”
“Please don’t call me Chicken,” Cecelia said, but she was smiling.
“Porter,” Astrid said, now back to her stern self. “The house is full of food! But fine. I have something I wanted to talk to you about too.” Birdie wouldn’t mind—Birdie would be thrilled.
“It’s nothing,” Porter said. Cecelia cocked her head to the side, like a dog. It was exactly like when her parents tried not to fight in front of her, just opening and closing their mouths like fish on land.
Cecelia plucked one of the apple turnovers out of the box and took a bite. “Do you need some privacy? I can wait in my room.” She looked to Astrid and then to Porter.
“You are a magnificent person,” Porter said. “Seriously. How did you get this wonderful and mature? Yes, great. Want to go have a snack in town? In a few minutes?” Both pregnant women and teenagers could eat an unlimited number of meals in any given day, their bodies working so hard to transform into something new.
“Sure,” Cecelia said. Astrid stuck a plate under the turnover and Cecelia hustled back up the stairs. Porter and Astrid both waited for her to vanish, and then for the clunk of her door—Porter’s childhood bedroom door—before speaking again.
“I think we should invite Elliot and the family over this weekend for brunch,” Astrid said. “Would you come? I’m going to invite Birdie. You know Birdie, don’t you? And Cecelia, of course.”
“I’m pregnant, Mom, and of course I know Birdie, she’s been cutting your hair for years and you have lunch with her every Monday,” Porter said.
“What?” Astrid said.
“I’m pregnant,” Porter said. “Or did you mean about you and Birdie having lunch?”
“Sorry, Porter,” Astrid said. “Last I checked, there wasn’t really a danger of that happening. We had the talk, I remember it well, and Nurse Johnson always had the bowl of condoms in her office. That was a whole debacle with the town council, god, those fools! I know that was a long time ago, but surely you remember the basics. What happened? Tell me.” Astrid smoothed the front of her zip-up sweatshirt. She pushed her hair up, patting it like a show dog. Her hair had always been dark, and now it was a shiny silver instead, a polished bell. This wasn’t what she imagined—she thought of Barbara Baker again, who had floated for so long at the edge of her vision. It could all be over in an instant. She could be different; there was still time. Astrid thought about Birdie, about how she felt when they were alone together. She wanted to be a different kind of mother than she had been; was that so hard to say? “Lots of women go through this.”
“I’m pregnant by choice, actually. I’m having a baby. By myself.” Porter felt her body begin to heat up, starting in her chest and moving outward, a swift-moving forest fire. She kept her feet planted in the kitchen, with her hands flat against the cool granite counter, and said what she had practiced in the bathroom mirror. “I thought about this for a long time, and it’s the right decision for me. I know it’s not something you would have done, but this is my choice, and I hope you can support it. You’re going to have another grandchild.”
She sounded like an after-school special, but there wasn’t really any other way to say it. There was a baby in her body, and she’d put it there. This was another by-product of staying in one’s hometown: Parents weren’t frozen in amber, fixed at the moment you left, providing a tidy dividing line between parent and child. Porter couldn’t distinguish the person Astrid was now from the person she’d been in Porter’s childhood. Maybe Nicky could see differences, like she could see differences in Cecelia—absence made contrast plain. Not that it mattered now—Porter and her mother were both adults. Starting the conversation had been scary, but now the train was on the tracks and it was moving and she couldn’t jump off. Porter exhaled through her mouth.