All the Rage(60)

“Sure.”

“Great. You know, I can tell you one thing after all this—I definitely don’t want to move in and babysit. I have gotten nothing done with the online stuff. I mean, I’ll help them out when they need it but I feel too … not for this.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, I’ve got to go. Caro and Adam are trying to catch some sleep and Ava’s getting fussy. I’ll pick you up in the morning though, around ten?”

“Sounds good,” I lie. I hang up and stare at the phone and worry how it’s going to end up, visiting Caro a second time. If I’ll make a fool of myself again. I try to think of what I’ll say when I see Ava. And I probably can’t go empty-handed.

I go to the bathroom, and discover a rusty brown stain in my underwear, and on top of it, fresh blood. Not even a warning, this time. I don’t know if it’s a couple days early or late, but I don’t want it, regardless. I put a tampon in and change my underwear and when I’m done, I head downstairs where Mom is curled up with Todd on the couch. They’re watching television and the warm glow of the screen on their faces makes them look so settled. Mom asks me what I need.

“Can you drive me to the Barn? Leon invited me to see the baby tomorrow and I think I should probably bring something. Toys, I don’t know.”

Mom smiles. “That’s sweet, honey, but I don’t think you’re going to find anything worth giving at the Barn.”

I prickle a little, wonder if she’s trying to tell me in so many words it’s too cheap a place to buy something nice. She’d be right, but the last thing I want to do is buy anything in town. God knows what Dan Conway would get going if he saw me with baby stuff.

“Why not?”

“The baby’s how old?”

“Like a week?”

“At this point, the baby probably has everything she needs,” Mom says. “So think about Caro. What does Caro need?”

“I don’t know.”

Mom carefully unfolds herself from Todd. It’s a slow process; he always seems reluctant to let her go and I think she likes to savor that as much as possible.

“Time. That’s what she needs. Time and one less thing to worry about.”

“Well, tell me where I can buy them and I’m set.”

“Food,” Mom says, giving me a look. “Take her some freezable homemade meals. That’s time Caro won’t have to spend making dinner and it means it’s one less thing she’ll worry about. The first month after you were born, anytime anyone showed up with a casserole, I cried, I was so happy.” She nudges me to the kitchen. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

We figure out a menu that demands more food than we have in the fridge. I make a long grocery list and hand it and some money to Todd, who salutes us both on his way out.

“I get a dinner out of this too, right?” he asks.

“If you’re good,” Mom tells him. He leaves and she starts pulling what we do have out of the cupboards and fridge. She gives me a bag of carrots to chop, because we’re starting with her famous carrot soup. We settle in at the kitchen counter, shoulder to shoulder.

“How are you?” she asks after a minute.

“They kept the sex a secret,” I say, which isn’t even an answer. “Caro and her husband. They didn’t want to know what they were having until they had it.”

Mom smashes some garlic with the side of her knife. “Your father and I did that.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“As soon as we found out I was pregnant, I wanted to keep it a secret. Your father didn’t, but since I was the one giving birth, that got to be my call.”

“Did you want a girl?” I ask.

“I wanted a baby.”

“Did Dad want a girl?”

I ask it before realizing it’s nothing I really want to know. She pauses and answers too carefully.

“He was happy when you were born, Romy. It was different then.”

“I didn’t ask if he was sorry he had me. I wanted to know if he wanted a girl.”

“Okay. Well … at first, he wanted a boy because he was nervous about having a girl. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to understand you or relate to you if you were a girl but when you were born—he cried harder than I did. He was thrilled.”

It’s too hard to picture, so I don’t.

“How often do you talk to him?”

I don’t know why that’s the next question inside me.

“I don’t,” she says. It surprises me. I thought they were still in touch. I always imagined her hiding up in the bedroom, whispering furiously at him over the phone. That’s what they did when I was really young. Stood behind closed doors and whispered, like I would never be able to tell things were bad if they were whispered.

“Even when I was missing?”

She hesitates. “Do you want me to—if there’s ever an emergency—”

“No. I’m just—I just thought you would have.”

“Maybe once,” she says and I know we’re both thinking of a time she made excuse after excuse for him until finally, there were none. “Your father loves you, Romy—”