All Adults Here(36)

“Yeah, but the other adult is your female hairdresser, which is what makes it weird. I mean, god, don’t you see how that could be awkward? For all of us?” Elliot waved his now empty glass at the server.

“I’m sorry that it makes you feel that way,” Astrid said.

The server swanned to their table holding a wide tray against her shoulder. She put down their plates with an elegant knee bend and took Elliot’s glass. “Be right back,” she said. Elliot and Astrid both waited silently for her to go before they spoke. Elliot pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped out an email with his thumbs.

“Whatever,” Elliot said. “It’s your life. It’s just that it affects my life too. I guess I’m surprised that you’re not more aware of how it could matter to me, and to your family, how people view your actions.”

Astrid sat still and stared into her soup. It wasn’t actually the kind of gazpacho she liked at all. Astrid hated dishonesty in restaurant workers, in the “specials” that were really just to use up ingredients that were about to spoil, and people who said that every dish you mentioned was one of their favorites. The soup would be edible. It would be fine. But it wouldn’t be any good. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t come back to this place. It was just a meal. “Okay,” Astrid said. “I understand.”

“Things are just kind of fucked right now, Mom,” Elliot said. “The office is busy, the house is a mess, Wendy is mad at me, it all just kind of sucks.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, honey.” Astrid picked up her spoon and tasted the soup. It was better than it looked. She watched Elliot tear his sandwich apart with his teeth. He ate as if he’d missed his last several meals, the way he had after swim lessons as a kid, his body needing the calories instantly. She had wanted to talk to him, to really talk to him, but it was so hard to know where to start. All of a sudden—forty years of parenting in!—she felt like she was on shaky ground. If her son felt this way about his children, if they were making mistakes, how many other mistakes must she have made without admitting them to herself? Her children were the way they were because of all the things she had done and all the things she had not done.

“I love you,” Astrid said. She reached out and touched the tip of Elliot’s finger. He moved his hand back on top of his phone and flipped it over.

“I have to get back to work, Mom,” he said.

Astrid patted the sides of her mouth with her napkin and then laid cash down on the table. There was no precedent in their relationship for what she needed to say, just like telling him about Birdie, which had not gone well. Astrid decided that she would try again another time; today was not the day.





Chapter 16





FOGELMAN



It was not accidental, the way Porter found herself standing on the sidewalk in front of Jeremy Fogelman’s place of work. Porter didn’t want to admit that her mother’s falling in love had tweaked her, but it had. If Astrid Strick could find love again, against all odds and personality deficits, then maybe Porter could too.

After their first official breakup at age sixteen, Jeremy had continued on a clear, well-lit path for lo these many years. He had been the Homecoming King, paired with Jordan Rothman, their classmate whom Porter had detested since preschool for her toxic combination of beauty, athleticism, and healthy self-confidence. Jeremy had then stayed close to home and gone to SUNY New Paltz, where he had studied veterinary medicine, and then he had become a vet, like his father, in order to save ancient cats and tumorous dogs and pet turtles and the occasional wild thing found in someone’s backyard. Jeremy had married Kristen when they were twenty-three years old, and his children were now coltish humans who could be found wearing jerseys that read FOGELMAN on the back, forever running back and forth across soccer fields. Porter went to the other vet in town, in part because she was closer but mostly because it would have seemed too obvious to have a reason to see Jeremy so often. It didn’t make sense, but Porter had always liked the subterfuge.

The East Clapham Veterinary Clinic had once been white and was now somewhat less than that, a dirty snow-colored building with a wide ramp to the side door and a squeaky screen door banging in front. Porter stood outside and wished that she still smoked cigarettes, the way she had when she and Jeremy had first been paramours. It was so funny, looking at a grown man and knowing what his body had looked like as a teenager, how smooth his hairless chest had been, when just a few brave curls had started to announce themselves. No matter how well his wife thought she knew him, no matter what friends he had now, and how many times they went out to dinner and talked about the boring details of their daily lives, Porter would always know him better. It was almost maternal, knowing a body for so long, and watching it change. Or no—not maternal, Porter thought, shaking her head. Almost marital. His body belonged to her; Jeremy belonged to her. But maybe she only thought that because she’d never been married.

“Porter Strick, as I live and breathe.” Jeremy was walking up the sidewalk, coming around from the parking lot behind the building. He grinned. Living in the small town you grew up in meant sometimes politely ignoring people you’d known for decades, because otherwise you’d never be able to finish your grocery shopping. Over the last two years, Porter and Jeremy had looked past each other in public successfully hundreds of times, always keeping their bodies from touching, a planetary ballet.