All Adults Here(28)

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A male nurse wielding a large garbage can on wheels came down the hall and greeted Astrid. She moved out of his way and hurried down the hall to the front door, which was heavy and solid, designed to keep people in. Astrid pushed and stumbled out into the bright sunshine. She’d forgotten how hot it was outside, but it was too late, she was already there, and couldn’t actually make her legs take her anywhere else. She sat down on the nearest bench, next to a woman with a portable oxygen tank.



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Barbara had waited, politely, for Astrid to respond. Nicky had always piled on top of his friends like they were all puppy dogs, but Elliot never had. She—Astrid, his mother—had never noticed anything like what Barbara was describing. He was her eldest—she had spent the last fourteen years paying more attention to him than his two siblings. She could name every teacher he’d ever had, every friend he’d ever made. But this—she hadn’t seen this.

There wasn’t a moment of conscious decision making. There was just a wall, erected in an instant, that hadn’t been there before. That was the truth about parenting, at least as Astrid had done it—most decisions weren’t plans, they were tourniquets, immediate responses to whatever problem was at hand. Astrid said—she had said this—No, Barbara, you are mistaken. Thank you. And then Astrid had hung up the phone. It was the second most shameful moment of her life. She didn’t tell anyone—not Russell, not Porter or Nicky, nobody. And when Elliot came home from school that day, Astrid told him that she’d had a phone call, without saying who from, but that someone had seen him, and that he needed to be careful. Did she say careful? She told him not to. She told him not to do it in public. It, she’d said. She told him that she was embarrassed. And that was the most shameful moment of her life. At the end of the year, Jack’s mother got a teaching job in Berkeley and they moved to the West Coast, and then he was just gone, and you know how it is, when you’re a kid. Especially boys. She didn’t think Elliot even tried to keep in touch—and why would he have? And so then Jack was just gone, and Astrid was relieved. She’d thought about that call from Barbara every time she’d seen Barbara since. Sometimes she was angry at herself, sometimes she was angry at Barbara—what a cow! Who did that? Who tattled on a teenage boy who wasn’t hurting anyone? But they were both cows, of course, she and Barbara: Astrid could try to blame it on her generation, but that didn’t hold much water. There was no excuse, except for the excuse that perfection was impossible, and failure inevitable.



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People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside-down, day-is-night twilight zone of feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing twenty-four hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed. Astrid felt like she had cursed her own child, like she had set the marble on the track with that one conversation, and that Elliot had just rolled. She could imagine the life that Elliot would have had, if she had said something else. If she had said nothing, even that would have been better. In a parallel universe, she and Elliot had something in common, they would be close, but in this one, she had missed her chance. People always said that life was long, but really they meant their own memories. Barbara’s death meant that Astrid had missed her window at a full recovery, at ever really righting that particular wrong. There were probably other wrongs, too, not just for Elliot but for each of her children. Astrid didn’t know what they were, but they were there, undoubtedly, places she’d greased the track for other marbles without even realizing what she was doing.

The woman with the oxygen tank pointed across the green lawn to a heron tiptoeing toward the oversized birdbath. Astrid tried to paint a polite expression on her face.

When Barbara was hit, this was what Astrid had realized, somewhere in the murky depths of her brain—she would have to have only one of the two conversations. She would have to apologize only to Elliot, and not to Barbara too. It was such a sad, pathetic excuse of a feeling, and Astrid felt ashamed again—ashamed thrice!—admitting it to herself.

The heavy front door creaked open, and Birdie stuck her head out.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m taking a break, and they pointed me this way. God, it is hot out here. Want to get some ice cream?” Birdie’s apron had small hairs clinging to it, whole galaxies on the thick blue cotton. Astrid wanted so badly to deserve her.





Chapter 13





Clap Happy



Porter was excited to introduce Rachel to her goats. Clap Happy’s twenty-five Nubian and Alpine does lived in a large red barn, with a fenced-in pasture full of grass to eat and bins of alfalfa hay set off the ground. They had piles of rocks to climb—what Porter referred to as “the jungle gyms”—and climb they did. The goats were amusing, rambunctious, and affectionate. Astrid had never allowed furry pets—Nicky had had a lizard for a few years, and Elliot had asked for, received, and then returned a snake—and Porter sometimes thought that if she had grown up with dogs or cats, she would be a happier adult.

Kids were born starting in the late summer. Clap Happy wasn’t big enough to keep all the kids, but Porter loved watching them being born, watching their skinny legs and knobby knees straighten and bear weight. She had two human employees—Grace and Hugh—and they were inside turning the enormous vats of milk into cheese. Rachel wanted to see where the magic happened. It was a field trip. Porter leaned against the fence and stuck a straw of hay in her teeth when she saw Rachel’s car pull up.