All Adults Here(78)

“Keep Local, Shop Small!” August said, repeating his parents’ mantra.

“Gross,” Cecelia said, pretending that she didn’t know, that her words had been a coincidence.

“You two behave,” Birdie said, and kissed Cecelia on the top of her head. “It’s up to you, Elliot. If I may?” He nodded. “It’s got to feel good. My parents wanted me to be a teacher. But I never liked teaching. My two sisters live in Texas, in the same town as my parents, and they’re both teachers. I’m not saying they’re unhappy. I’m just saying, you need to make decisions you’re proud of, and not worry about what other people will say. That includes your mother.”

“I think you see a very different side of my mother than I do,” Elliot said. “I mean, obviously. But not just that. I’m used to my mother telling me that I didn’t do something right. I’m the firstborn, you know?”

Birdie pointed her scissors in the air. “Me too. In solidarity.”

“Me too,” said Cecelia.

“And me,” said August.

“No, no, you two are onlies,” Birdie said. “That’s different. Only children are, all problems aside, treated like porcelain. Eldest children are treated like glass and then promptly ignored for the cuter, newer model. Only children are the prize. Eldest children are the tests. I understand.”

Elliot slid another piece of pizza out of the box and sat in the third salon chair. Beauty Bar would make him rich, an actual success, if the people in town didn’t boycott. And not saying yes to Beauty Bar, walking away from the most money, would make him a bad businessman. He let his legs dangle beneath him, just like the kids. It wasn’t fair, to still need your parents’ approval. Nicky definitely didn’t need it. Porter didn’t seem to need it. Elliot closed his eyes and tried to imagine what that felt like. Wendy said that it was time for him to think about his children more than he thought about his mother, and he did, in terms of the percentage of his thoughts on any given day, but that wasn’t what she meant. Wendy thought that one’s actions should be driven by the future, which Elliot knew was a brand of optimism he did not possess. He knew that the only thing that really drove anyone—drove him—was the past.





Chapter 34





Verbal Confirmation



Farms were good for staying busy: there were always things to do, tasks to complete. Even at nighttime. Something always needed to be cleaned or tended. When Jeremy knocked at ten past the hour, Porter was organizing the mountain of paperwork on her desk, a task she delayed until the stack threatened to topple and cover the floor of the office like a blanket of fresh snow. It had taken a couple more days for him to make his way for the fake sick pet emergency, but what was a few days? Porter called out that the door was open, and Jeremy wandered in.

“Do you not have lights in here?” he asked, which was the only reason Porter realized it had gotten dark, and the only light in the room was the small lamp on her desk.

“Goats don’t need lights,” Porter said. “They have excellent vision, even in the dark. Did you know that their pupils are horizontal, and that they can see in almost all directions at once? It’s like a fish-eye lens.”

“So you’re saying goats have fish eyes,” Jeremy said. He walked behind Porter’s desk and scooped her into his arms.

“Ooh, you went to a good veterinary school.” Porter let him kiss her, his tongue on hers, her tongue on his, both of them slipping in and out like invitations. There was a ratty old couch, for necessary naps, and the occasional night spent, and Porter pushed them toward it. Everything about Jeremy made her feel like she was still a teenager, with only the present moment at stake, only whatever they would do to each other’s bodies next. Is this what people meant when they talked about being in love? She thought it was, the rush to connect with another human, above all others. Jeremy peeled the underwear off from under her dress and flicked them across the room and then buried his face where the underwear had been.

“You make me feel like a teenager,” Porter said. Jeremy’s mouth was busy, and he didn’t respond. He made her feel, in fact, exactly like herself as a teenager. Porter didn’t want to go back in time, not at all, but she did think of that period of her relationship with Jeremy as the last time she was really, truly, just a kid. She wanted her baby, she wanted to have all the sex she wanted with whomever she wanted to have sex with: Was that too much to ask, for every part of her life to exist in a vacuum? She pushed him backward and climbed on top, slipping him into her body. He didn’t care how big her belly was, he loved her, and she loved him, and what they were doing was okay.



* * *



—

Half an hour later, Jeremy was getting dressed. Porter watched him kick out the legs of his pants before pulling them on.

“Hey,” she said. “Should we talk about it?”

Jeremy ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, we’ll have to sooner or later, right? I know my wife will want me to.”

“Yeah,” Porter said. “Of course. What do you want to tell her?”

Jeremy buttoned his jeans and then searched through the couch cushions for his long-sleeved T-shirt. “I guess I’ll tell her that we talked about it, and Cecelia’s going to stay away from her? Because the school isn’t going to do anything. They told me that. Apparently Sidney said some things that aren’t PC enough, even though it didn’t sound that bad to me.”