All Adults Here(17)
“What kind of texts?” Porter asked.
“Not the good kind. Not, like, oh, you’re a woman and also my friend, so what should I buy my wife for her birthday? The bad kind. Like, I want to lick your asshole while you sit on my face.”
“Noooooooooooo,” Porter said, crinkling her nose.
Rachel shoved a handful of potato chips into her mouth. “Oh,” she said, chewing. “Yes. And he couldn’t lie about it, because what was he going to do, rip the phone out of my hand and give me the amnesia drug they give you before a colonoscopy? I don’t think so.”
“So what now?” Rachel swiveled the bag of chips around on the table to make it easier for Porter to take some. She was going to be a good mom. Porter put two of the sweet and salty chips on her tongue and closed her teeth, crunching down like a monster with someone in its trap. There was a tiny part of her that was excited about this story. It was an ugly part of her, a shameful part of her, but it was beginning to glow and dance just the same.
“I kicked him out. He’s staying at his idiot friend’s house in Kingston. My mom came and helped me settle in, and she’ll be here when the baby’s born. Stay for six months, maybe, I don’t know. It’s just too much to deal with. I want to feel protected and happy and ready. I am not fucking around. Doing this alone is not exactly what I imagined. No offense. So, can I ask?”
Porter slapped the crumbs off her hands. “Ask away.” She couldn’t imagine Astrid moving in with her in a million years. She could imagine Astrid giving her the telephone number of a reputable nanny agency, or a woman who helped babies learn how to sleep, but not actually moving in herself, no, not that. And if she did move in, in some alternate universe, what would she do? Would she point out all the things Porter was doing wrong, all the empty teacups scattered around the room like clues to a child’s scavenger hunt? The way that Porter should be eating while the baby ate or sleeping while the baby slept? Astrid always knew the best way to do everything and it was exhausting.
“Who’s the father? Or did you go to a sperm bank? Is that a very rude thing to ask?” Rachel looked at her with wide-open eyes, curious both specifically and in general. Porter could see the future so clearly: Rachel was going to make things out of construction paper and cardboard boxes, she was going to make pancakes shaped like elephants. Whoever her jerk of a husband was, he didn’t matter. Rachel was going to be great.
Porter hadn’t told anyone except her mother. Her OB knew. Her RE knew. The nurses knew. But no one else. In a funny way, being pregnant meant exposing one’s private parts and information to an enormous number of people, all of whom happened to be strangers. It was harder to tell someone who knew about other parts of her life in addition to her uterus. “It’s not rude, you asked first. I went to a sperm bank.”
“You know, I can honestly say that that has never sounded more appealing to me than right at this exact moment. Like, my husband’s genes are fine; he’s handsome, I love his parents, whatever. But the idea that I could have those things without ever having to speak to him again is, like, wow, yes.” Rachel lifted her can of seltzer water.
Porter blushed, more relieved than she realized to have told someone she cared about and for them to have had a positive reaction, and clinked her can against Rachel’s. “Thank you. I mean, we’ll see. I’m sure it’ll mean some serious conversations with my child down the road, but everyone has those—adopted kids, kids whose parents split up, parents who have to tell their kids that their grandmother was run over by their school bus. It was the right thing for me, and it was the right time. You know what’s funny? Because I’m one of three, I always thought that I’d have three, but I can’t imagine I’ll have another. I guess it could happen, but the odds seem against it.”
“Wow,” Rachel said. “Yeah. I always assumed that we’d have a few, but now, I don’t know. Man, I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Don’t mention it, though, okay? Obviously you wouldn’t. Just please don’t. Okay? I haven’t told anyone about the baby. Or the donor.” Porter worried that she sounded ashamed, or embarrassed. She wasn’t either of those things, she was just thinking ahead. For the moment, the baby still felt like a secret hidden inside her body, and she wanted to protect both of them from the outside world, whatever the weather.
“To sisters doing it for themselves,” Rachel said, and then took a long swallow of her water, letting out a demure little burp. “Next time, with booze. Oh, you know who I saw the other day, in the grocery store? Jeremy. Your boyfriend.”
“When we were in high school.” Porter’s cheeks burned.
“Yes, but still. I don’t know if it’s my hormones or what, because I mostly hate all men at the moment, but he looked like an ice-cream cone. He was always a dick, but he’s a cute dick.”
“Yep,” Porter said. “He’s cute all right. Always was. He has a cute wife and cute kids too. Cute dog. Probably cute mice in the floorboards.” An image of a half-naked Jeremy appeared in her mind’s eye. She had heard that pregnancy made women horny, but until this moment, it had seemed unreasonable, as she had heretofore been horny only for antacids and Saltines. But there he was in her brain, Jeremy Fogelman, her first love, as sexually formative as Phoebe Cates coming out of the swimming pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, or a Judy Blume novel. So much of becoming an adult was distancing yourself from your childhood experiences and pretending they didn’t matter, then growing to realize they were all that mattered and composed 90 percent of your entire being. If you didn’t remember how you felt during that one game of Truth or Dare when you were a sophomore in high school, who were you? It was nice to know that those twangy feelings, deep inside her body, hadn’t vanished for good. And part of the truth of staying close to home was that you were never very far from other people who remembered everything you’d ever done. It was like being surrounded by an army of terra-cotta soldiers, only they all looked like you—the time you threw up at Homecoming, the time you bled through your pants in math class, the time you got caught stealing condoms at the pharmacy.