Such a Fun Age(51)
“Mama’s talking, Bri, I still see carrots on your plate.” Mrs. Chamberlain turned back to Catherine and said, “Come on, sweetheart. Can you say hi?”
Tamra leaned over even closer to Emira. “I don’t know if you know this, but Alix has a lot of pull. So does Peter, in fact.” She reached over with long fingers and laid them on Emira’s arm. “They love you,” she said. “I’m sure they would help you get into any program you wanted, or change up your schedule to fit in an internship or classes, or whatever you were looking to get into. How old are you, honey?”
Briar hiccuped again. Emira said, “I’m twenty-five.”
“Okay. We gotta hustle, don’t we? What’s the big goal for you?”
“Umm . . .” Emira readjusted in her seat. She took the clasp of her necklace from the space above her sternum and returned it to its place behind her neck. “I’m not really sure.”
“Come on, now,” Tamra pressed. Across the table, Briar’s face looked like she was both falling asleep and ready to panic. “If you could wake up tomorrow,” Tamra said, “and do anything you wanted, what would that something be?”
Next to Emira, Walter said, “He’s gonna have to do better than that for a championship.” Rachel looked at Catherine and said, “Hi, mini Alix.” Jodi shushed Prudence and said, “Prudence? That’s two,” and Emira realized that if she’d answered Tamra’s question truthfully, no one would have heard her. She could have placed a sweet hand underneath her chin and said, If I had a “big goal,” do you really think I’d be sitting at this fucking table right now? But just then Briar started to gag. And when Emira grabbed what she knew was a very expensive napkin and dove across the table to cover the toddler’s mouth, Jodi was the first to notice and scream.
Seventeen
Years ago, in Alex Murphy’s teenage bedroom, with the door closed, Kelley did all of these things he’d clearly been told to do by an older brother or a more experienced friend, but this obvious instruction didn’t take away from the wildly flattering fact that he was doing these things to her. Kelley made a grand presentation of a recently purchased condom. He asked her if it hurt and if she was okay. He even asked if they should put down a towel since her bedspread was so nice. The whole thing lasted about two songs (“A Long December” and “Colorblind”), but Alex had been so taken with Kelley that she breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude. No matter what happens, she told herself, I’ll never mind remembering this. It wasn’t like she thought they’d marry, but the infatuation was dangerous and heavy.
Now, in the comfort of her adult home, it seemed that the infatuation had never really ended. Alix couldn’t tell if it had started up again, or if it had only become dormant by means of time and space.
Alix watched Jodi put her hands to her mouth. Emira’s body was soaring across the table both in slow motion and also with a quickness that made Alix jump in her seat. Even slower was Kelley’s rise as he stood up from the table and swung his arm around Emira’s waist, inches above pots of almost-gone butternut squash and a platter of lukewarm dark meat. In the shuffle, Alix couldn’t properly collect the fact that her child was throwing up at the dinner table. She could only stare at the same hand that used to hold the underside of her jaw after varsity games and coed scrimmages. It had only been a few months, but at one time in her life, Kelley made Alix so wonderfully nervous, and he used his hands to steady her. “Hey hey hey.” He’d once said this outside the girls’ locker room. “You gotta be still and let me like you a little bit.”
And now his hands were wrapped around Emira in Alix’s house on Thanksgiving Day. Alix had the sudden urge to remove Kelley’s hands from Emira’s hips, and not just because of the sexual familiarity that they displayed. In the same funny muscle memory that makes you take out your metro card to open your front door, or call your third-grade teacher Mom, Alix found herself ready to slap Kelley’s wrists away from her sitter. In the same voice and motion she used almost every day, she felt herself almost say, No no no. Don’t touch. That’s Mama’s.
Jodi squeezed Alix’s arm so hard that it was clear that it wasn’t the first time. Alix was suddenly back in the room as Briar started to cry. For a moment, when Jodi said, “Alix-honey, grab your girl,” Alix thought she was referring to Emira.
Eighteen
Briar’s face pinched together underneath the vomit-filled napkin, and it reminded Emira that the little girl rarely cried. Emira’s heart raced from diving over the table, from almost falling on top of it until Kelley caught her in his massive hands, and then from seeing a tiny face at the other side begin to moan in shock and discomfiture. Emira cupped the vomit in the napkin and brought it from Briar’s chin upward past her nose. With nothing in front of her face, the three-year-old began to scream.
Tamra said, “Oh no,” and Peter ran to get a towel and Prudence said, “Eww!” and Rachel laughed. “Party foul.”
Mrs. Chamberlain finally blinked. “Oh God.”
She went to pick Briar up, but Emira stopped her. “Actually, can you just unbuckle her? I’ll grab her.” Emira said this with such urgency that Mrs. Chamberlain obeyed. Emira said, “B, stand up for me,” and she swung the toddler into her arms, Briar’s face dripping with snot and tears.