All Adults Here(35)
“I have eight employees, Mom, not eight hundred. You don’t have to act like that.”
“Plus the construction crews! You don’t have to be modest for me, El, that’s a lot of people.” Astrid grabbed Elliot’s arm, rubbing it briskly. Nicky had been an affectionate boy and was an affectionate man, kissing her on the cheek to say hello and goodbye when he was around, sometimes even for no reason. Elliot didn’t touch his mother more than he would touch a kind old woman he met at an acquaintance’s wedding. It was different, being a mother to different children. Not just the gender lines, trucks versus dolls, though the pink aisle conundrum had driven Astrid to madness as a young mother. There were also the varied ways that adolescent creatures either cried or hid, and those differences followed along when the children became adults too. When Nicky got married, he’d sent out postcards with the announcement, which meant that Astrid found out just after their mail lady. When Elliot got married, Astrid, who had always been best at performing tasks, had been forced to sit back and watch—a spectator! She’d always thought that Porter would be different, that there would be a way into her adulthood that she hadn’t found with the boys, but now even that ship seemed to have sailed clear across an ocean. Where was the door that she’d missed? Astrid believed in giving people space, in giving her children space. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? Two of Astrid’s friends had been in the delivery room with their daughters, watching as they pushed through the ring of fire and became mothers themselves, that ultimate magic act. Astrid wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she knew that wasn’t it, watching blood collect in a plastic bag under her daughter’s bottom as she pushed. When she got home, Astrid was going to ask Cecelia more questions about her day. She was going to sit closer, to follow her up the stairs to her bedroom, sit on the floor, even.
* * *
—
Elliot nudged her up the sidewalk in the direction of The Spot, a restaurant Astrid hadn’t been to for a decade, following an unsatisfying tuna melt. It had a dingy awning and plastic tablecloths in addition to the mediocre food, but Astrid wouldn’t complain.
“Let’s go here, they have sandwiches,” Elliot said, opening the door and holding it ajar for his mother.
They sat at a table by the window. The menus were enormous and laminated, and Elliot took a quick look and then put it down on the table, turning expectantly to look for the server.
“Hmm, tomato soup, that sounds good. I wonder if it’s warm or cold. A cold tomato soup sounds delicious, doesn’t it? I wonder if it’s pureed. Or cream based. I’m not really in the mood for a creamy soup, though.” Astrid folded the menu closed to look at the back. “Or they have specials! Did you see? Maybe I’ll have a soup and a half sandwich. I think I’ll do that. Did you see the lunch specials?”
“We’re ready to order,” Elliot said, waving to a woman in an apron walking toward them. “I’ll have the turkey club and an iced tea. Thanks.”
“Sure, hang on, just give me a minute,” the woman said, drawing a pad out of her apron pocket.
“What’s your tomato soup like?” Astrid asked. “Too heavy for a warm day?”
“Jesus, Mom, it’s just soup!” Elliot put his head in his hands.
The server raised her eyebrows. “It’s a little chunky, cold. Really good.”
“I’ll have that, please, and half a grilled cheese. Thank you.” Astrid handed over the menu and then knit her fingers together on the table.
“Sorry, I’m just a little stressed,” Elliot said.
“I can see that,” Astrid said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Work stuff. The boys are fucking terrors.” The server came over with Elliot’s iced tea, and he nodded a thank-you.
“They’re just little boys,” Astrid said. “You were a little boy once.”
“I wasn’t like this. They tell me they hate me. Aidan told me he was going to kill me in my sleep. And then he laughed, like an actual psychopath. I want to send them to military school, where they can channel their anger into discipline. I don’t know.” Elliot shook his head. He removed the straw from the iced tea and put the wide glass to his lips, sending ice sloshing against his skin. “They are ruining my life.”
“It’s just a phase,” Astrid said.
“Yeah, well, it’s a bad one,” Elliot said. “Anyway, why did you want to have lunch? Do you have cancer? Anything else I should prepare for?”
“El,” Astrid said, shaking her head. She spread her hands flat on the table, no cards hidden. “Do you want to talk about Birdie?”
“No, I don’t want to talk about Birdie, Mom. It’s just weird, don’t you understand that? I’m allowed to think it’s weird.”
“It’s not that weird. It’s just a relationship, like any other. Between two adults.” Astrid leaned back against the hard back of her chair. Elliot looked red and sweaty, and his neck, thicker now than in his youth, strained against his shirt collar. It wasn’t middle-aged spread; it was the gym, his muscles getting bigger, not everything else getting bigger when muscles were ignored. But Astrid thought that too much of anything was probably a sign that something was amiss. If Porter had some of Elliot’s workout regime, if Elliot had some of his siblings’ ease in their own bodies, if Nicky had some of Elliot’s inertia, and if Porter had some of Nicky’s charisma, then she might have one perfect child. They were all perfect, of course, in their own ways, insomuch that they were each perfectly their own tangle of positives and negatives, but together, if plucked just so, they could have made one flawless human. Astrid knew it wasn’t a fair way to think about her children, but there it was.