The Most Fun We Ever Had (23 page)

When class ended, Wendy was waiting for him in the hallway. She didn’t normally pick him up; the studio was just a few blocks from her building.

“I had to run to Whole Foods,” she said. “Figured I’d stop in. Who’s that horrible Judd Nelson boy who was sitting in the back row? He looks like a school shooter.”

“Wendy,”
he hissed.

“Oh,
God,
” she said, handing over her grocery bag. “That’s the first time you’ve done the moody teen voice to me.”

“Can we go?” he said. “This is heavy.” He wondered if she’d bought more wine. Wendy had a special wine fridge, and a full rack on the wall in the dining room, but she seemed to always be coming home with new bottles.

“Someone’s in a snit,” she said.

“No I’m not.” He was suddenly annoyed with everything, with the weight of the bag in his arms, bottles of wine for his degenerate aunt, who didn’t respect her own body, who was too old for him to be worrying about.

“Whoa, whoa,” Wendy said. She held the door for him on their way out. “Sorry, dude. Jeez. I got stuff so we could have a cookout, but maybe you want some alone time.”

He looked down into the bag, past the length of receipt at the top, and saw a sack of little purple potatoes, paper-wrapped meat, stalks of asparagus like a bouquet of flowers. He felt his face getting red, guilt seeping into his cheeks. “Sorry. Thanks. I didn’t— Sorry.”

“No worries,” Wendy said. She ruffled his hair and he ducked away instinctively, making her laugh. “I was a total asshole when I was your age. This is my comeuppance.”

—

D
espite all the time she’d spent thinking about Gillian Levin, Liza could not specifically remember what the woman looked like, so she was surprised by how familiar she seemed when she came bustling into the exam room, dark brown ponytail and delicate features.

“Liza,” she said. “The last time I saw you, you were
tiny
.”

“No longer,” she said, trying to smile.

“Gosh, you look just like your mom,” Gillian said. “How’s she doing?”

Of course it was suspect that her father wanted to be the one to tell her mother about Gillian, that he’d given any thought at all to who would tell her.

“She’s well,” Liza said. “Really well.”

Gillian nodded, flipping through the paperwork Liza had just filled out. “And your dad?”

Liza couldn’t decide if it was suspicious or not that she wasn’t making eye contact as she asked it. “Great,” she said. “He just retired, actually.”

“Mm. Good for him. Tell him I said hello.” She uncapped her pen. “All right. Nineteen weeks, is that right? And is Dad going to be joining you?”

She thought for a second that the woman was referring to her father again. “Oh. No, I—he’s—he had a conflict. But he’s—around, yes. In the picture.”

“You didn’t say much on the phone about why you’ve decided to switch providers.”

“I just—wanted someone familiar, I guess? I’m having a lot of—anxiety. And I know how wonderful you were with my mom, when my little sister was born. I never— I mean, I thought she was going to die.” She was surprised to hear her voice crack. “It was a scary time for all of us. You saved her life.”

“I was doing my job,” Gillian said, smiling at her. “What happened to your mom isn’t something inheritable, though, if that eases any of your anxiety. It’s actually likelier for people who’ve had multiple pregnancies. Do you have concerns about your health?”

“No, I— It’s not specifically…I just know you—you know our family already. Our family history. And the—familiarity of that appeals to me, I guess; I know I’m being irrational…” She felt herself starting to cry. “I’m—scared. I’m terrified of everything. Of all of this.”

“About bringing a new life into the world?” Gillian handed her a tissue, smiling still, calm and unruffled. “Why on earth would you be nervous about that?”

“I’m sorry,” Liza said.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Gillian said. “This is a scary thing, Liza. You’re about to become a mother.”

She realized—tears falling more quickly, rendering the tissue inadequate—that this was the first time anyone had so candidly spoken the sentence to her.
A mother.
Nothing had struck her in quite this way, until now.

“Oh, dear,” Gillian said. “Here, come on. A couple deep breaths.”

She noted, dimly, that her mother would never omit the preposition. She inhaled.

“It’s never my intention to frighten a woman into motherhood,” Gillian said. “But I know it’s awfully easy to pretend that pregnancy is just something that’s happening
to
you. It can be empowering to recognize your role in the process.” She paused. She rose from her stool to retrieve the entire box of tissues, and Liza admired her for it, because she’d always hated doctors who rolled around the office like lords.

“How many kids do you have?” Liza asked.

Gillian handed over the tissues, not meeting her eyes. “None, actually.”

“Oh. Did you—I mean, you didn’t want them, or you— Sorry. Not my—business. Sorry.”

“I thought I wanted them,” Gillian said. “But time—got away from me. You’ll be surprised how that starts to happen.”

“Great,” she murmured. “So much to look forward to.”

“I assure you, Liza: your body, and your baby’s body, will be in good hands.”

“No, I’m sure you— That’s—exactly why I wanted you.”

“We’re going to take good care of you, okay? But it’s also perfectly fine to be scared.” Gillian reached out and squeezed her hand. “Why don’t you lie back and we’ll take a look at the little one?”

“I’m really—grateful,” she said haltingly, tensing at the chill of the gel on her belly.

“I am currently being introduced to a brand-new human being,” Gillian said, and Liza understood why her father had liked her. “The gratitude’s all mine.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Grace decided to venture across town for her midday coffee because it seemed like an easy way to shake things up. The plight of the youngest child: growing up. Grace had long been regarded as a twelve-year-old by some of her family and as wildly mature by the rest. Liza reminded her to lock her doors and asked for relationship advice in the same breath. Wendy introduced her as her “baby sister.” Her sisters had the comparative luxury of growing up in the eighties and had subsequently been successful in pursuit of their Life Plans: law, psychology, and gold digging. She was less certain of her own.

“Well, hey,” the barista said. “Look who it is.”

It was the bike messenger who frequented her office, minus his red bandanna so she almost didn’t recognize him, but of course she recognized him because he was an exquisitely constructed specimen, long-limbed and carob-haired with eyes that were more arresting than eyes had a right to be, oyster gray with flecks of green. He smiled at her. She returned the expression with a horrifyingly uninhibited grin, the kind you couldn’t help but make when someone came to pick you up at the airport and you saw them there, in the sea of transient strangers, a familiar face that had arrived at that particular spot on the earth just for you.

“You don’t remember me?” he asked.

“You remember
me
?” she replied without thinking. Boys never remembered her. She accepted this on principle, that she would always have to reintroduce herself, at least twice but usually three or four times. Something in her face didn’t register with them; perhaps her eyes were too dark for them to clock the dilated pupils that indicated arousal; perhaps she simply looked too much like a potato.

“Grace Sorenson, keeping the world’s oboists insured,” he said, and she entertained the possibility that she could die there, in that moment. Not only did he remember her, but he knew her
name.
“How could I forget?”

“It’s a pretty weird job,” she said.

“Normally I would say, like, aren’t they all,” he said, smiling. “But yeah, yours seems unusually weird. No offense.”

“None taken.” Orion was the kind of affected hipster coffee shop where you could sit at the counter on a barstool. It was the first time in five years that she felt grateful to live in such an annoying city; she perched before him on one of the stools. “Did you—quit? Your messenger job?”

“Nope. I moonlight as a roasting artist.”

“You—what?”

“I’m joking. Messenger work’s my side job. Coffee’s full-time. What can I make you?”

“I’m not very good at making decisions.” She swallowed. “Could you surprise me?”

The crinkling at the corners of his eyes should have been illegal. “I could make you a pour over. We just got this killer Arabica sample from our vendor.”

“I am unfamiliar with most of the words you just said.”

He laughed—a loud, open, barking sound—and she was flooded with a pleasure that she wasn’t used to feeling.

“I just realized I don’t know your name,” she said.

He extended his hand. “Ben Barnes.” Then he asked her questions while he made her coffee; it took an elaborately long time and involved a space-age conical filter. “Chicago, huh?”

“I miss it sometimes. Are you from here?”

“Born and raised.” He set a mug before her. “You’ll have to tell me what you think.”

She unthinkingly took a sip, burning her tongue in the process. “Jesus
fuck.
”

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you.”

“That a steaming mug of coffee was going to be hot? God, I’m such an idiot.”

He grabbed a clean towel from the stack on the bar, ran it under the faucet, and handed it over to her. “Here. Stick out your tongue. I promise it’ll feel good.”

She was reasonably certain that you were not supposed to openly display the least attractive parts of your body when trying to entice the opposite sex, but he was insistent and she was in pain. She stuck out her tongue, and he pressed the cool towel to it. She moaned a little without meaning to.

“Told you.” Ben smiled. “Milk helps too. When you get home. Cold milk.”

“Thank you. You seem to know a lot about tongues.” And at this, of course, she wanted to die, because she was so radically ill-equipped for this type of conversation, so disastrously unlearned.

“Occupational hazard. Speaking of which. What’s your deal?”

“My
deal
?”

“What’s a Chicago girl doing all the way out here?”

“I’m in sort of a—transitional state.” She worried it would sound like she was undergoing a sex change. “Like, just between— I graduated last year and I’m just trying to—you know.”

“Figure it out,” he said. “I hear ya.”

“When did you graduate?”

“High school? A while ago.”

“You didn’t go to college?” She didn’t mean to sound so incredulous.

“The horror,” he said, but there was an edge to his voice.

“Oh—Jesus. I’m sorry I said it like that. I was never really offered an alternative, is all.”

“Strict parents?”

Her parents erroneously thought she was enrolled in law school, and they were proud of her for it, but she knew it wasn’t the end-all for them, college, grad school, whatever. They just wanted her to be happy. Thinking of this on her barstool gutted her. “No, actually,” she said. She would tell them soon, when the perfect moment arose, which of course, of course, of course it would. “It was more—the culture. You know, the
path.
Just what you were supposed to do.”

“Sounds kind of nice, actually,” he said. “Expectations.” He smiled enigmatically and went to help a customer. When he returned, he nodded at her mug. “Cool enough to taste yet?”

“It’s really good,” she said, gratefully seizing his change of subject. “Almost good enough to make me ask you to define
killer Arabica.
”

They spoke briefly about the weather—she had never known fog could be so arousing—and when she finished the dregs of her coffee she rose to leave.

“How much do I owe you?”

“On the house. I’ll tell our vendor that it knocked you on your ass.”

“Well, thanks. And thanks for the—towel.” She shouldered her bag and steeled her resolve. “I’ll see you around?”

He smiled at her. “Here’s hoping.”

She thought about him during her walk home, and again as she washed her single fork so she could eat scrambled eggs for dinner. She thought about him, and she thought about what it meant that she was thinking about him.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t grown up around love. Rather, love was constant, a nearly assaulting presence that confronted her each morning when she came downstairs and her parents were huddled together in front of the coffeepot; in the evenings when her dad was in his office and her mom would yell out, “Darling, the gas bill!” and her dad would reply, “Paid it on Monday, kid.” This wasn’t the norm, she knew. But her sisters were pretty normal, relatively speaking, and they had each had at least a couple of quasi-healthy longish-term relationships in their history. Grace was growing more and more anomalous by the day, a twenty-three-year-old non-Amish virgin who had never had a real boyfriend. Wendy had Oak Park’s high school elite and then Miles, and she was still sexually active, Grace thought, judging by the amount she drank and how often she critiqued the construction of the butts of various strangers she saw on the street. Violet had Matt, and the guy who had come before him, the scientist guy who’d fathered her newfound nephew. Liza had been with Ryan at least since she was Grace’s age.

And her parents: her father had loved her mother for decades, and vice versa, but it wasn’t like all of those years had been sheer perfection. Her mother was beautiful—she knew this even objectively—but she’d had four children and smoked for the better part of her adulthood and spent much of her twenties and thirties (and forties, thanks to Grace herself) in a state of frenetic exhaustion, things that cumulatively amounted to a sort of protruding belly and veins on her hands and lines around her eyes. None of these things had ever seemed to bother her father, whose own decades of sleeplessness rendered him perpetually heavy-eyed and occasionally bedheaded. And still her mother would rub his shoulder at the kitchen sink or kiss his ear on the front porch and say things like
You missed a spot, handsome,
or
Gosh, do I like you, mister.
All of her memories of her parents’ affection consisted of a particular look that her dad often gave her mom, one that said, baldly and inarticulately,
You’re the best person ever.