All Adults Here(45)

“Well, let’s take a closer look, then. I’m sure you want to see her.” She scooted her wheeled stool over to the wall and flicked off the lights. By the time Dr. McConnell had zoomed in on the first body part—the spine—Porter was already crying.

“I’m sorry,” Porter said. The baby’s heartbeat flickered on the screen like an airplane moving across the night sky, strong and steady.

“I’m not,” Dr. McConnell said. “She’s gorgeous.”

Porter sniffled through the rest of the exam, dabbing her eyes with a tissue every thirty seconds. The baby was curled up like a shrimp, her legs kicking gently, her bent arms pointed toward her face.

“You could always bring someone, you know,” Dr. McConnell said. “Your mother? A sibling?”

Porter pictured Astrid sitting next to her, holding her hand. Would she be crying? Would Porter be crying, if her mother was there? She pictured Elliot, checking his phone in the corner, nodding every so often in a fake show of support. Nicky might have cried. Cecelia too. She could have invited Rachel—why didn’t she? They could be each other’s plus ones! Rachel’s mother was her plus one already. Maybe Jeremy would come? She’d seen him three times now, at the barn, at her house, and once in the back of the vet clinic in the middle of the night. They didn’t talk about the baby, not really, though he did put his hand against her belly, much like the doctor had just done. Of course—he knew what he was feeling for. Dr. McConnell moved the wand, and the baby’s face came into full view. She pushed a button on the machine, and the image changed into a 3-D landscape. The picture was muddy brown, pixelated like the information had to travel a great distance, which, Porter supposed, it had—all the way through her skin, from the inside out. Porter thought about all the men in the world who got to pretend that they had done the work just because they were now losing some hours of sleep. They hadn’t done this. Women were always alone, alone with their babies. There were some burdens—some experiences—that couldn’t be shared. Porter stopped crying and watched the baby hiccup, her little body floating inside her but already having a life of her own.



* * *



—

Porter went back to work and then called her brother from the middle of the pen. It usually took six tries to get Nicky on the phone—Porter always assumed she’d have to leave a few messages before actually reaching him—and so she was surprised when he picked up after three rings.

“Puerto,” he said. “Mom told me about the baby. It’s great.”

Porter shooed a goat away from her shin. “She told you? I was going to tell you! So why didn’t you fucking call me, you freak?”

“It’s great, I said! It’s been busy! I love you!” Nicky coughed. He was always, always smoking weed. Porter assumed it was something he would grow out of, but he was thirty-six now, her baby brother, and marijuana was as much a part of his life as when he was a teenager. If he were a different kind of guy, he’d be planning a CBD oil empire or a field of marijuana plants as high as an elephant’s eye. But not Nicky—he was just enjoying it. Not many people could walk away from being a Famous Actor, but that was her brother. Weed, yes. Fame, no. There were so many things that other people enjoyed that Nicky had turned away from—Hollywood parties, being famous enough to have his picture in magazines, casual sex—but never marijuana.

“It’s a girl.”

“Girls are the best. How’s mine?” He inhaled.

“She’s great, no thanks to you.” It wasn’t a nice thing to say, but Nicky was her brother, and that’s what siblings were for, target practice. And she knew he wouldn’t take the bait.

“She is, it’s true. Always has been. Took me a while to understand that—they are who they are, from the second they’re born. She and Astrid getting along?”

“They seem to be. I don’t think Mom is driving her crazy yet.” It was a glorious day—inching toward fall, but warm and light. If there was a place like Clapham in mid-September year-round, Porter would have moved there. And Northern California didn’t count, it was too far away.

“That’s good. I keep calling, but it’s hard to get her on the phone. Don’t laugh,” he said, but Porter was already laughing.

“Pot, kettle,” she said. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. I really wish I could see you pregnant. It’s crazy, Puerto. You’re gonna be great. And don’t listen to Astrid, you don’t need anybody. I mean, you don’t need a husband. You need a community, you need friends who can come over with food and wash dishes and do the laundry. But you don’t need a husband. Trust me. We’re not that great.”

“You’re not so bad.” Porter reached into her pocket and found a chocolate bar she didn’t remember buying.

“And you’re feeling okay? No morning sickness? Juliette threw up, like, four times a day for months. God, I haven’t thought about that in years. She used to carry mints in her pocket, in every bag. For years, whenever we used a bag, there was a little package of barf mints in the bottom. That’s what she called them, barf mints.”

Porter was quiet. She could tell her brother wasn’t done, not quite.

“It’s so weird, having Cecelia not be with one of us. It’s like being in a constellation. You can’t see the whole picture when you’re one of the stars, you know? That’s what I feel like right now. The point of an arrow. The bottom corner of a spoon. Nothing. Juliette and I are doing our thing, you know, here and there, together, alone, whatever. But without Cecelia here, it feels like pretend, like we could both just spin off into our orbit and no one would notice or care. There’s no weight holding us together.”