What's Mine and Yours(13)

Noelle was taken aback that her friend would call her white—she knew about her family, her father, Robbie. She decided to let it slide. “Because we don’t have children.”

Inéz seemed unmoved.

“Please, I’d have much more fun if you came with me. We can get drunk and eat all their catered food, and then you can spend the night. I’ll drive you back in the morning.”

“The booze better be good, expensive.”

“It will be,” Noelle assured her.

“Fine, but only because I love you. I’ll consider it a kind of social experiment.”

“It’s my life.” Noelle leaned across the table to kiss her friend.

“I know,” Inéz said as she swatted her away and drained the last of her coffee.



Noelle spent the day in the city, waiting for Inéz to teach her last class. She parked in their old neighborhood. She and Nelson used to go for walks by the row houses, the rosebushes and hydrangeas in the front yards. Instead of going to church on Sundays like good Southerners, they went to the farmers’ market, made elaborate breakfasts at home while listening to podcasts. They drank coffee, then had sex in the living room, took turns pleasing one another. Then Noelle left for the theater to work, and Nelson to the arboretum for one of his long runs. He couldn’t go without ten or twelve miles on the weekend; it kept him calm, steady. So did the sex. She never made fun of his rituals, never let him go without the things he needed day to day.

Now Noelle had no place to go, no apartment, no office at the theater, so she stopped into shops. She bought herself tea, then a cheap necklace made of plated gold, then a clip for her hair. She didn’t call Nelson because she was embarrassed at her small, dreary life. She filled the time with buying things, waiting out the day until there was someone to be with her again.

Being a wife, it seemed, was mostly waiting. Waiting for a phone call, waiting to be thanked, waiting for a delivery, the plumber, her husband to come home, to ask whether she was all right, to slip a hand in her underwear. Waiting with her legs up. Waiting because it seemed a way to love him. It hadn’t bothered her as much when she was working, in the city. If he was remote, she knew it wasn’t because he didn’t love her. It was just his way. But now, without the theater, she felt that all she did was unnecessary; Nelson could fend for himself if he had to. If one shirt was wrinkled, he could wear another. If dinner never appeared, he’d make a sandwich. He could survive, handle his own needs; he was doing so in Paris. Perhaps that was why she had wanted the baby. To be needed, indispensable, at least for a time. Nelson gave the impression, always, of absolute independence. She was used to it, the off-and-on loneliness of feeling like an appendage to a man. She knew that becoming a mother was only a temporary respite. Any child would one day leave her; she could count on that. But wouldn’t it be worth it for those delicious years? A soft skull nuzzled into her neck, the tug of gums at her breast, that precious infant smell of powder, crusted milk? She knew it wasn’t modern. It was the kind of convention that her college degree and her years in the city were meant to cure, and they hadn’t.



On the drive north, they got caught in traffic. Inéz rolled down the window to smoke, offered Noelle a cigarette.

Noelle shook her head. “I’ve quit. Remember?”

“Yeah, but you’re not pregnant yet. Come on. I saw you down that wine at lunch. How long have you been trying now?”

“I’ve lost track.” Noelle fixed her eyes on the road.

“There’s no shame in that, Nells. Is that why you haven’t been coming around as much? You don’t want to talk about it?”

“It’s the distance. I’m far away now.”

They sat for a while through the discord of honks and running engines.

“I’m not going to let you off the hook that easily. It’s not right—the way you disappeared.” Inéz was staring straight at her now, her tongue pressed against her lower lip in annoyance, her head titled into her hand.

“Have you even been back to the Electric House? They just did Orlando. An all women and femmes cast, beautiful costumes—a few of the nights were even sold out.”

“I outgrew that place, Inéz. You know that.”

“And grew right into Golden River?”

Noelle pumped on the brakes a bit harder than she needed to. “I know you all find it backwards that I’m doing just what our mothers did when we could be doing anything.”

“Speak for yourself,” Inéz interjected. “My mother always worked.”

Noelle saw no point in defending Lacey May. She had worked, too, but she had taken no pride in it. She had gone about her life as if it were put upon her. Noelle refused to do the same.

“I want a baby. What’s so wrong with that? Isn’t feminism all about getting to decide what you want?”

“Not exactly.”

“You could have visited me, too. Or is the center of all life Atlanta?”

“Well, the idea of the suburbs is repulsive. And pregnancy—” Inéz shuddered. “Breastfeeding has always struck me as…bovine. What’s the big deal with motherhood anyway? I feel like I’ve got everything I need.”

“I want the experience of mothering. I can’t explain it.”