French Braid(21)

Today she took with her a choice selection of skirts. She had never been a pants person. She wore skirts or dresses. But dresses required hangers and the studio had no closet, whereas skirts could lie flat if necessary. She had given this some thought. She had deliberately left room for them in the long bottom drawer of the bureau.

The studio had developed a different smell since yesterday. It had a slightly floral scent that she identified as her smell. Or her brand of laundry detergent, at least.

While she was there, she tried calling Lily again on the phone in the kitchen. This time, Lily answered. “Hello?” she said. There was something wary in her voice, as if she feared bad news.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy said brightly. “How you doing?”

There was a silence. Then, “I’m just going to say this straight out, Mom,” Lily said. “I’m expecting.”

“Oh!” Mercy paused. “Expecting…a baby?”

She heard a snort of something like laughter.

“Well, that’s wonderful, honey!” she said. Lily had always claimed that she and B.J. had no interest in children, but of course people could change their minds.

“I was planning to bring it up at David’s goodbye supper,” Lily said, “except then I chickened out.”

“I bet B.J. is excited,” Mercy said, testing.

“It isn’t his,” Lily said.

Mercy took this in.

Lily said, “I knew you would react this way.”

“What! I’m not reacting! I’m just adjusting, is all. What are you going to do?”

“What can I do?”

“Does he know?” Mercy asked.

“No.”

“He doesn’t know you’re expecting, or he doesn’t know it’s not his?”

“Neither one,” Lily said.

“Well,” Mercy said drily, “that would certainly explain why you didn’t want to tell us in front of him.”

“That was why I did want to tell you. So you-all could be, you know. A buffer zone.”

“Are you saying he might get violent?” Mercy asked.

“B.J.? Not a chance.”

Mercy wondered how she could be so sure. B.J. was a motorcycle mechanic, and he favored black leather jackets and leather boots with chains around the ankles. But she said, “Well, that’s some comfort.”

“Why on earth is it,” Lily said, “that you always, always manage to miss the point.”

“Miss the point! What point? You tell me you’re having a baby, and I would naturally wonder about the father’s reaction.” She paused. She said, “Father figure’s, I mean.”

“Well, B.J. is not the father or the father figure, either one.”

“Okay,” Mercy said. “Who is?”

She felt pleased with herself for sounding so unshockable. However, Lily didn’t seem impressed. “Oh, just a guy from Dodd,” she said offhandedly.

“From…the real-estate place?” Mercy asked. That was the latest job Lily had quit, or maybe been fired from—a receptionist position at Dodd, Goldman.

Lily said, “Right. He’s an agent there.”

“Ah,” Mercy said, but she was taken aback. A real-estate agent didn’t sound like Lily’s type at all. She said, “What’s his name?”

“Mom!”

“What? He’s the father of my grandchild! I need to know his name!”

“Oh, God,” Lily said, and then she started crying.

Mercy said, “Lily, honey. Lily. Stop. We need to think this through. We need to think calmly and collectedly. Have you told him about the baby?”

“He’s married,” Lily said.

“Buried” was how it came out through her tears.

It was Mercy’s turn to say, “Oh, God.”

“Of course you’d have to act all scandalized,” Lily said.

Mercy let this pass. She waited while Lily blew her nose. Then, “So,” she said finally. “Just to consider this from every angle…Does B.J. really need to know that he is not the father?”

“What! You mean I should lie to him?”

Mercy felt herself flush. She said, “Not lie, exactly. Just fail to tell the truth. It might be a…kindness to him.”

“But that’s just wrong!” Lily said.

“Oh. Yes, sorry, I—”

“Besides which,” Lily said, “it would have to be immaculate conception, if B.J. was the father.”

“Oh.”

“We’ve kind of gone off each other.”

Mercy wondered why she hadn’t noticed that. The family saw very little of them—they’d eloped during Lily’s sophomore year at community college, where B.J. was not even a student, and they lived in a little apartment downtown—but she had always thought they seemed happy.

However: “If I could just get away from here,” Lily was saying now. “Get away somewhere and think for a while. Go on a cruise or something.”

“A cruise!” Mercy said. It was such a bizarre notion that she wondered if she had misheard, for a second.

“Or at least get away from them, from B.J. and Morris both, until my head is clear.”