kind of a weird patch of …weird, so.” I nod.
“Renovations are stressful. All the millions of little decisions—”
“It’s not really …he wants to start a family, like, yesterday. And I don’t know . . .” My voice faintly echoes back to me as the motion sensor lights clank off in the adjacent aisle. “Being back here—I’m suddenly confronting the enormity of that kind of commitment. And just how much you can fuck someone up if you half-ass it.” Her head nods slowly up and down, her expression blank. “It’s just, Ryan and I’ve done so much together, been the only two English-speaking, non-blowfish-eating people on so many adventures that the fact that I’m afraid to talk to him about this is just really kind of alarming, you know?”
“I’m pregnant.” She stares at me.
“W-wow,” I stutter. “Citrine, that’s . . .” But she’s so still, her face so masked, that I can’t read which direction I’m supposed to go—congratulations or I’ll be by your side at Planned Parenthood.
“A surprise,” she finishes for me dryly.
“How are you feeling?”
“Shocked. Sick.”
“What does Clark say?”
“I haven’t told him yet. I haven’t told anyone.”
“Thank you.” I reach out to touch her hand, as I’m out of neutral questions and her voice is only getting flatter. “For telling me.”
“Of course I’m going to keep it.”
“Of course.”
“I mean, I was always irregular so I thought the nausea was just bad hangovers. By the time I figured this out—I’m already three months. I have a group show in Stuttgart in September and two pieces due to the Japanese. I have to keep working.”
“You will.”
“I’m not Tatiana.” She stares out at the other unmoored basins. “I can’t lounge around shoe departments all day.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You think?”
I look down the stretch of alabaster at her, sprawled across from me in all this dust, holding her potential art in her lap with her paint-spattered fingers, her hair a tousled mess. She’s beautiful.
And she’s in it.
“I really do, Citrine. No one’s in charge of you but you. It can be however you want it to be.” As I hear myself say this, I see through a sliver of open door, behind which I could just jump in and do it, this mother thing.
“Yeah …yeah. I need a drink.”
“Me, too.”
“How about chessy pasta for two and you drink for both of us.”
“Deal. I’m treating myself to this mortis set.” I hoist it over my head.
She smiles. “And I’m treating myself to this tub.”
Heavily buzzed from drinking a three-course dinner’s worth of Pinot Noir for two, I sit on my spectacularly new sanded steps and flip through the mail, blessing Steve for finally showing up and getting something done in a timely manner. One cannot be heavily buzzed on the only stretch of her home that is not a deathtrap, glazing over a J.Crew catalog and thinking of maybe sleeping right here until morning—and be a mother. One cannot.
Perhaps someone who charged an eighteen-thousand-dollar bathtub that came from the presidential suite at the Plaza with her husband’s American Express Black card—she can. Someone who has her career established and already read multiple oeuvres—she can do it. But this one, debating using her coat as a blanket and shoes for a pillow—cannot.
“Eighteen thousand. For a bathtub,” I say to a disinterested Grace, racked out along the length of the doorjamb.
An envelope flitters out from the stack of catalogs and I have to steady myself with the edge of the stair before reaching down to focus in on it, the familiar scrawl making me instantly, sweatily sober. I swipe it up and tear into the heavy paper.
Dear Nan ,
Please join me at my apartment at three o’clock Thursday, May 1st, for tea as a thank-you for your help .
Best, Mrs. X
Well . . .
Fuck.
Me.
6
Thursday afternoon, on the lookout for Steve’s minivan, I lift a flap of the yellowed Times off the
“Renovations are stressful. All the millions of little decisions—”
“It’s not really …he wants to start a family, like, yesterday. And I don’t know . . .” My voice faintly echoes back to me as the motion sensor lights clank off in the adjacent aisle. “Being back here—I’m suddenly confronting the enormity of that kind of commitment. And just how much you can fuck someone up if you half-ass it.” Her head nods slowly up and down, her expression blank. “It’s just, Ryan and I’ve done so much together, been the only two English-speaking, non-blowfish-eating people on so many adventures that the fact that I’m afraid to talk to him about this is just really kind of alarming, you know?”
“I’m pregnant.” She stares at me.
“W-wow,” I stutter. “Citrine, that’s . . .” But she’s so still, her face so masked, that I can’t read which direction I’m supposed to go—congratulations or I’ll be by your side at Planned Parenthood.
“A surprise,” she finishes for me dryly.
“How are you feeling?”
“Shocked. Sick.”
“What does Clark say?”
“I haven’t told him yet. I haven’t told anyone.”
“Thank you.” I reach out to touch her hand, as I’m out of neutral questions and her voice is only getting flatter. “For telling me.”
“Of course I’m going to keep it.”
“Of course.”
“I mean, I was always irregular so I thought the nausea was just bad hangovers. By the time I figured this out—I’m already three months. I have a group show in Stuttgart in September and two pieces due to the Japanese. I have to keep working.”
“You will.”
“I’m not Tatiana.” She stares out at the other unmoored basins. “I can’t lounge around shoe departments all day.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You think?”
I look down the stretch of alabaster at her, sprawled across from me in all this dust, holding her potential art in her lap with her paint-spattered fingers, her hair a tousled mess. She’s beautiful.
And she’s in it.
“I really do, Citrine. No one’s in charge of you but you. It can be however you want it to be.” As I hear myself say this, I see through a sliver of open door, behind which I could just jump in and do it, this mother thing.
“Yeah …yeah. I need a drink.”
“Me, too.”
“How about chessy pasta for two and you drink for both of us.”
“Deal. I’m treating myself to this mortis set.” I hoist it over my head.
She smiles. “And I’m treating myself to this tub.”
Heavily buzzed from drinking a three-course dinner’s worth of Pinot Noir for two, I sit on my spectacularly new sanded steps and flip through the mail, blessing Steve for finally showing up and getting something done in a timely manner. One cannot be heavily buzzed on the only stretch of her home that is not a deathtrap, glazing over a J.Crew catalog and thinking of maybe sleeping right here until morning—and be a mother. One cannot.
Perhaps someone who charged an eighteen-thousand-dollar bathtub that came from the presidential suite at the Plaza with her husband’s American Express Black card—she can. Someone who has her career established and already read multiple oeuvres—she can do it. But this one, debating using her coat as a blanket and shoes for a pillow—cannot.
“Eighteen thousand. For a bathtub,” I say to a disinterested Grace, racked out along the length of the doorjamb.
An envelope flitters out from the stack of catalogs and I have to steady myself with the edge of the stair before reaching down to focus in on it, the familiar scrawl making me instantly, sweatily sober. I swipe it up and tear into the heavy paper.
Dear Nan ,
Please join me at my apartment at three o’clock Thursday, May 1st, for tea as a thank-you for your help .
Best, Mrs. X
Well . . .
Fuck.
Me.
6
Thursday afternoon, on the lookout for Steve’s minivan, I lift a flap of the yellowed Times off the
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