The Stud Book (46 page)

“When were you planning to tell me, Mom?”

“Further along. Not all pregnancies work out. Look at Sarah.” And they all did—they all looked at Sarah, who seemed to visibly shrink under their gaze.

Sarah said, quietly, “Leave me out of this, Nyla.”

“I’m sorry,” Nyla said. “I’m trying to explain—”

“You’re all guppies,” Arena said. She handed Georgie’s picture off to the air, to the first hand that’d take it. “I’m going to throw up.”

D
rinks?” Dulcet purred with the contented voice of the medicated.

Nyla had gone to chip paint or arrange dried flowers or place orders for carbon-neutral products that had yet to be invented.

Arena swore she’d vomit if she had to ride with her pregnant mother. She rode with Ben instead, who said he’d take her home. Sarah, Georgie, and Dulcet stood outside the high school.

Sarah said, “I thought you had somewhere to be.”

“I’ve got a gap.” Dulcet wrapped her coat tighter. She had an hour before her date with Mr. Latex. She’d expected to stay at the art show longer. Latex wanted her to arrive dressed. That was part of the deal. Bitchy Bitch danced at her feet, wildly happy about being let out of Dulcet’s old Fairlane, the dog always in motion. Dulcet only said, “God, Nyla is a wreck.”

“She needs sleep,” Georgie said. Georgie herself looked exhausted.

Dulcet said, “She’s a walking corpse.”

“Too much yoga,” Georgie said, then looked around cautiously. Yes, she was postpartum fat and hadn’t touched Nyla’s Blast the Flab cardio DVD offer. She hadn’t lifted one finger, done one roundhouse,
or even lowered into a single downward dog in a weak warm-up. Who was she to talk?

Georgie said, “If she makes another fat comment, I’ll scream.”

Dulcet murmured, “She doesn’t hear herself. Nyla doesn’t mean any harm. But she’s the whore with the store. I don’t judge her, but I could offer her a sex ed class.” She found a pre-rolled joint in a baggie in her jacket pocket, and a pack of matches. “Medicinal,” she said, justifying her habit out of habit as she lit up.

Georgie said, “And, Sarah, that comment of hers was out of line.”

Sarah waved away the sympathy. “No, she’s right. I’m a living reality check on pregnancies. They don’t all last. Let me be your goddamn cautionary tale!” Sarah half-yelled it.

Dulcet cut in, “Where’s a brewpub? They let babies in.” She fanned smoke away from her face.

Georgie made a note for her hypochondriac’s guide to motherhood: Don’t worry about not being able to party after you have a baby. There are brewpubs and backyards for drinking with kids.

That was for the alcoholic’s guide to parenting, which she could totally write, too.

So they’d drink and use plastic stir sticks and wad up napkins and forget about the rain forest and the petroleum industry and all the other global destruction, without Nyla there to remind them.

Dear Nyla. They loved her. They did. But this was a welcome break.

Mrs. Cherryholmes came out of the school and crossed the gravel to where they stood, smokers in the smokers’ corner, stoners in the cone zone, Slow Children of all ages. Dulcet palmed the joint. The principal held out a canvas bag.

“This came with one of you?” She practically held her nose.

It was Nyla’s bag. the new rules, it said. Dulcet held out a hand, and the principal handed the sad, sagging bag over.

They piled in Georgie’s car because the baby seat was secured there and Georgie wasn’t high. She tucked Bella in. “Who wants to ride in back with the baby?”

Ride with the baby? Sarah twisted her hands, then knocked on her own head for luck. It was body language for a conflicted
no thanks
.

Dulcet wedged her long, thin self in beside the baby seat. The
seat sat in the middle of the backseat, turned around backward, with the baby left to gaze out the rear window. Somehow that infant carrier dominated the whole backseat, with its hard plastic contours. Dulcet snapped her fingers. Bitchy Bitch jumped in the car.

Sarah reached back to pet the dog. They’d all been sorry to hear about Shadow.

Bella was warm, quiet, and sleeping. They sailed down Portland’s winter weeknight streets. For once, it wasn’t raining. It wasn’t even cold. Georgie said, “Nyla gave me that mother bread starter. I’m fat—like I need bread? Endless bread that keeps doubling itself. She’s the enabler.” They cut onto Burnside and drove toward Sandy. The car smelled like dog breath and baby spit. The dog was a white ball of wild fluff barking at the windows. Georgie said, “Endless carbs that keep on multiplying. Amish friendship bread that needs tending every day.” Sarah rolled down her window.

Dulcet asked, “What bread?”

“It’s like having another baby,” Georgie said. “I put it in the freezer.”

“You’ll kill the yeast,” Sarah said. Wind through the open window battered her words.

Dulcet said, “Oh, shit. I might have stepped on mine. There was something in the hallway outside my apartment.”

“I killed it?” Georgie asked.

“I killed mine, too.” Sarah spit her gum out the window even though she knew better. A wad of gum on the ground could choke a bird who mistook it for food. But Sarah was being reckless, and regretted it immediately. The dog whipped her head around, as though to snap at the gum, as though the gum were food.

They were in six lanes of traffic, where Sandy Boulevard crossed Burnside Street, when Bitchy Bitch, Dulcet’s big-eyed baby, bent, lunged, and gave a leap. She went after Sarah’s gum and turned herself into a white flag flying against the rush of oncoming cars in the dark night.

Dulcet screamed. Georgie slammed on the brakes and her tires squealed. The car fishtailed and slid into oncoming traffic. Bella woke up and started to cry.

In the back corner of her store, by the small sink, Nyla peeled off her dress and changed into yoga wear.

She vowed to be patient with Arena.

She sat at her desk and booted up the computer to check her bank account. The machine was slow. Then it read fatal error, and shut itself down.

Dead.

This was Humble’s area of expertise. When she called and got his answering service, she left a message. “It says fatal error.”

Maybe he’d come.

She wrote out small checks. Writing checks to environmental groups always helped lift her spirits, and sometimes it was all she could do.

She wrote a check to the Rainforest Alliance and one to the League of Conservation Voters. She doubled her contribution to the NAACP and to a group out to save coral reefs, then more to Save the Children. She gave money to stop the slaughter of the friendly, smiling, innocent pink river dolphin of the Amazon.

What can you do with a humanity that kills a smiling pink dolphin?

She wrote checks for a foster child in Sri Lanka, and another for earthquake victims in Haiti. She slid them into envelopes. Should a person have to pay to keep the world intact?

Ben, awkward behind his forced optimism and the mask of makeup, sat on a tall stool at a gelato shop where he tried to celebrate with Arena, because he was willing to go out and he thought somebody should throw her a party. It was the grown-up version of that Klondike bar he’d bought her once upon a time.

Sarah threw herself into the street after Dulcet, who had run into traffic after Bitchy. Dulcet’s coat flapped open, her latex organs exposed. She yelled, “Get back here, Bitchy Bitch!” She waved her hands. A second car slammed on its breaks, then drove around all of them.

Sarah said, “Dulcet, get out of the road! Dulcet!”

“Bitchy!”

“Dulcet!”

“Bitchy!”

It was a duet of women raised on the duets of Peaches and Herb.

Dulcet wobbled on her high heels, fell, and hit her knee, turning her leg into a streak of skin and blood, and still got up and kept going, back into traffic, yelling, “Bitchy!” The dog danced in traffic, another car squealed its brakes, and the air filled with the smell of burned rubber.

Nyla was dizzy. Was that from sitting for too long? There was nothing yoga couldn’t cure, along with water and clean air. Her hip was a knot and her stomach was sad.

She put a DVD in.

But when she tried to do her first sun salutations and almost fell over, she called Dulcet. Nobody answered, and then she called Sarah. She left a message, and called Georgie.