“Whatever.” Jill was tired of this conversation. She got up to leave the room, not mad, just bored of the petty direction Katie was about to take this. Or maybe going to get Atlas. I don’t know.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Katie. “We weren’t talking about you, were we? Because you get what you want, ready or not. You don’t even have to try for it. You just think about having a baby, and boom—you’ve got it. And you don’t have to be ready for the responsibility because everyone around you ruins their lives to pick up the miles and miles and miles of your slack.”
“Oh fuck you, Katie,” snapped Jill. Atlas was screaming. I was glued in place. Katie looked like she’d been slapped so seldom did anyone curse in her presence. “I didn’t mean to ruin your life. I made do with a less than perfect situation. I picked the least bad of a bunch of bad options . . .”
“Gee, I’m so sorry I couldn’t be a better father for you.”
“. . . whereas you want to sit in this living room and plan out your whole perfect life without any sense at all of what the world is like out there. It’s a pathetic fantasy. You’re not ready for real life—you wouldn’t even recognize it. You’re that idiot walking across the heath in the rain hoping you’ll faint and someone handsome will come rescue you when really you’re just going to catch cold and die.”
“Yeah, it’s too bad I don’t have your sense of the real world. I see how as a young, single mother you’re working two jobs and spending a fortune on daycare and barely making ends meet. I see how you were so ready for the responsibility of the world that your baby’s father wanted to stay with you.”
“Daniel wanted to stay with me,” Jill whispered, practically ice.
“Oh yes, I see him right here.” Katie was yelling. So was Atlas.
“Daniel left Atlas, not me,” Jill spat.
Katie shrugged. “If that’s what you have to tell yourself. I don’t see him around though. Haven’t heard from him. Doesn’t seem to be missing either one of you a whole lot.”
“You are a bitch, Katie,” Jill told her bitterly. “If it makes you feel better, you can knock me about Atlas. You can knock me about Daniel. But at least I’ve loved. And been loved. Maybe I haven’t handled this perfectly, but I’ve handled it. Maybe I haven’t done it by myself, but who ever said you were supposed handle all the shit by yourself? Isn’t that why you want a husband so badly? This is what you have friends for. I wouldn’t even hesitate—I wouldn’t even have thought twice had it been you asking me. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. But I think it’s you who’s disappointed you.” She stormed upstairs, but then we heard her cooing to Atlas, heard his sobs subside.
Katie paced around the room seething and muttering. “Where does she get off telling me about marriage and family and children? She is the last person qualified to give advice about love and relationships. I do everything for her, and she never does anything for me. Fantasy? She’s the one living a fantasy.” Et cetera. Finally, she turned to me. “What’s your problem?” she snapped. “You think you just get to sit there and not say anything? You think you’re so much better than we are?”
During all of it, I’d been pressing myself deeper and deeper into the corner of the sofa. Uncle Claude was curled into a tight ball in the corner too, head tucked under her tail. We do not do conflict, the dog and I. I don’t yell. At anyone. Ever. It has literally driven people to drink so frustrated are they that, no matter what, I will not rise to yelling. And I don’t like other people yelling either. When they do it on TV, I turn it off. When they do it in my presence, I leave the room. And when I can’t leave the room, I try to disappear into the sofa. “I don’t have anything to say,” I stammered quietly.
“Fine,” said Katie. “Me neither.” And left the room too. So it was just me, sitting in the dark. Upstairs, Jill and Katie cooled off, felt better. Downstairs, I felt hot and much, much worse.
In the morning, Katie came downstairs early with a puffy-eyed Atlas and turned on the TV, plopping down onto the sofa and waking me up.
“You didn’t sleep here?” she asked despite a good deal of evidence to the contrary.
“Apparently,” I said, groggy and untrusting, wondering about her mood this morning, resentful that I had to live with such mean, spiteful people. She was puffy eyed too, so I supposed I had to cut her some slack.
“I’ve decided it’s okay,” she announced, not sorry for waking me up, not sorry for yelling all night. “I will stay friends with Ethan. I don’t have to date him to be friends with him. He doesn’t have to convert to be friends with me. That way I get all the benefits of hanging out with a guy I like who’s smart and funny and interested in the things I’m interested in, and so if I have to date guys who lack some of those things, I still have a complete set. I just have to split it up between a few different people. Like Jill. She couldn’t find all things daddy in one person. So she had Daniel for sex and sperm and you and me for childcare and support.”
She sounded unconvinced. But not half as much as I was. “What makes you think Ethan’s going to consent to being half a boyfriend?” I said.
“He was the one who said let’s be friends.”
“That’s just something people say, Katie. They don’t mean it.”
“Who wouldn’t want to be friends with me? With all of us?”
“Lot of work,” I said.
“I already e-mailed him to invite him for dinner over here tomorrow night. Sort of a peace offering.”
“Who’s going to make dinner?” I asked as dryly as I could manage, not because I wondered—I knew—but because, you know, it’s nice to be asked.
“You’re the cook,” she said because it was true and because she didn’t get it. And, in fairness, because I discourage other people from cooking. Which, also in fairness, is because they aren’t very good at it.
Twenty
I thought Ethan might feel outnumbered by girls and English majors. I thought emotions and tensions were running a little high. So I invited Jason and Lucas too. Once you’re doing it, it’s just as easy to cook for four or five or seven. I made lentil soup, squash crepes, and couscous. I made three-pea salad for vitamins and corn bread for grounding. I made apple cake for sweetness and life and new beginnings where one didn’t want to kill one’s roommates. And I made sangria—a triple batch—for practicality. The only way to get through a dinner where Katie and Ethan were trying to be friends, and Katie and Jill and I were at least pretending to do the same, was going to involve alcohol. If Katie didn’t like it, she should try to give me less stress.
Ultimately, squash crepes are a last-minute prep, which is both a blessing and an enormous pain in the ass. It is stressful at a dinner party to leave so much to the last minute and hard to get everything done and hot all at once. On the other hand, it is nice to have no choice but to leave someone else in charge of entertaining, conversation, and the baby. Ethan and Katie showed remarkable calm and grace though both seemed a little sad and defeated. And it seemed like forever since we’d seen Lucas or even Jason though obviously that wasn’t true. Still, class together and studying together and library time together and showing up to babysit and crashing on our couch are none of them the same as dinner and alcohol and conversation about real and varied topics (not just books, not just babies). And peeking out of the kitchen at all of them, I felt something like forgiveness for the first time in two days. Jason and Lucas helped—if they could be a family in defiance of all society’s proscriptions, surely so could we. Ethan helped too because if he didn’t think we were total freaks, maybe we weren’t. Mostly, a house full of people sounds like love. In the kitchen, Uncle Claude at my side awaiting what I dropped, I chopped and sliced, sipped sangria, listened to my friends laughing in my living room. For the first time in a while, I felt fine.