All Adults Here(96)

“I was wrong,” Astrid said. She didn’t remember the day he mentioned, but they’d had a hundred conversations like that, about their children. About each of them. That’s what happened in marriages, and with children—you talked about the good things and the bad things and one was usually up and another was down. That’s how it was with her and Russell—she was the bad cop and he was the good one. But it was all just a way of sorting out all the things that made up life. It was too much, otherwise, too enormous a feat to wrap your head around. Sometimes Astrid thought that they’d had a third baby because the first two seemed a bit cracked, and they wanted a fresh start. A fresh start at parenting. But the children should never know. They should always have perfect confidence in themselves and their adults. The words came easily now. “You’ve never disappointed me,” Astrid said. “And it’s not up to me, Elliot. Your life? Your choices? They don’t belong to me. Neither does this town—not any more than it belongs to any of you.” She looked into her son’s eyes and thought about the moment he was born, about how he came out of her body and Russell had cried and that they had both looked at this brand-new baby, who was as beautiful a thing as they’d ever seen, and how the nurse had passed Elliot—still bloody, still screaming—to Russell, who handed him to Astrid. She hadn’t ever really been naked before that moment, Astrid thought—that was the very bottom layer of her person, giving birth to a child and then holding that child against her body; inside, then outside. What kind of parents had they been? The poor children expected love without context, but context always existed—Astrid had not liked breastfeeding, Elliot had been fussy, he was born in winter and so they were all trapped indoors, unlike Porter and Nicky, who were lucky and had birthdays in April and June. Who ever did something right the first try? Astrid knew that she had failed, maybe not in the ways that she thought she had, but in so many ways she had never even noticed. This was the job of a parent: to fuck up, over and over again. This was the job of a child: to grow up anyway.

Elliot stood in front of her, holding his elbows.

“Your father was so proud of you,” Astrid said. “He would be so proud of you. Do you know that he couldn’t sleep after you were born, and so he took the night shifts? He would sit in the rocking chair in your bedroom and watch you sleep. Sometimes I would come in in the morning and he’d be asleep in the chair and you’d be awake, and babbling, like you were the one who’d been watching over him.” She reached out and held on to his wrist. “Without you, we wouldn’t have been parents. We would have just been two people, spinning in their own orbits. You were what made us a family. I love you.”

Elliot didn’t want to cry and so he didn’t. “Whatever. Okay. I love you too.” That was as good a reaction as she could expect. There they were, both standing on the same ever-shifting ground.

Birdie had made her way closer and was now standing just over Elliot’s shoulder. “Hi,” she said, peeking over, as if his body were a hedge. “Hi,” Astrid said back.

Elliot walked around Astrid, toward the back of the salon, where he stood still for a few seconds before turning to his brother and putting his arm around his shoulder. The twins were at the sink in the back, spraying each other. There would be water to clean up later, but no one hurried to stop them. Astrid heard Nicky and Elliot begin to talk about the 1994 Knicks, and who’d been a more important part of the team, John Starks or Patrick Ewing, and Astrid put her hands on Birdie’s cheeks and kissed her on the lips and thought, I want to marry you, and then she opened her mouth and said, into Birdie’s ear, “I want to marry you.” If she hadn’t learned anything else, she had learned this—say it. Say it now, while you have the chance.





Chapter 42





Barbara Goes Wild



Barbara always bought orange juice with no pulp, because that’s what Bob preferred. He had narrowly spaced teeth, and if she bought the extra-pulpy kind, which she liked because it tasted the most like orange juice and the least like water, then it would get caught in his teeth like a lobster in a trap, unable to get loose without manual assistance. And so Barbara bought orange juice meant for picky children, and she didn’t complain. She had time during the day, to do what she liked, and so she could compromise when it came to things that weren’t important.

When Bob retired and was home all day, Barbara realized it wasn’t just the juice. He needed help, always. Help making lunch, help figuring out whether he wanted to go for a walk, help deciding on the route and whether to wear a jacket. Bob followed her to the bathroom and would keep talking to her through the door as she did her business. Some of her friends had warned her about this phenomenon, that husbands needed hobbies, but Bob didn’t want a hobby unless it was attached to Barbara, and so Barbara decided to get herself a hobby instead, somewhere Bob couldn’t follow.

“What do you mean, braces?” Bob asked. “For your teeth?”

“Yes, for my teeth,” Barbara said. “What other kinds of braces are there?”

There were other kinds, though, she knew, because she had done research. There were so many kinds that she’d never heard of! There were the metal kind, of course, but then there were plastic ones, and ceramic ones, and braces that ran along the inside of your teeth, and invisible ones, like condoms, that fit over your teeth! The brightly colored rubber bands were available for anyone who desired more self-expression. There were so many choices, and so many visits necessary. Barbara was excited.