“Actually, we have an announcement too,” Jason began just as I thought we were about to escape. Everyone sat down again. He was holding Lucas’s hand and smiling. “We’re pregnant.”
“Actually, my sous chef’s sixteen-year-old daughter is pregnant,” Lucas explained. “She doesn’t want to end it, but she’s not ready to be a mother either.”
“They’re Mormon too,” Jason added helpfully. Katie cringed.
“Anyway, she liked the idea of two dads and of being able to keep in touch.”
“And we liked the idea of knowing the mother and her family.”
“She’s due on Halloween.”
They were beaming like proud parents-to-be.
“And the best part is,” said Jason, drunk and giggly, “we aren’t carrying the baby ourselves, so we can still drink lots of wine.”
“Well, no, that’s not the best part,” said Lucas. “The best part is we’re going to be daddies.” They gazed into each other’s eyes, thinking deep and profound parental thoughts, and for the second time in ten minutes, I positively longed to be doing dishes.
We asked a lot of questions. The usual. What’s she like and who’s the dad and do you know the sex and what about childcare and have you thought about names. Really, it was too soon for all of that yet, and I knew from experience that it takes nine months, not just to grow a baby, but also to get used to the idea of having one. This one, clearly, would be more complicated than most though I also knew from experience that even when the circumstances are more strange than a-married-man-and-woman-make-a-baby-together, at its heart, it’s still a new family, sleepless, turned upside down, sometimes despairing, and often overjoyed. Suddenly, getting engaged to someone you’d known only for a week didn’t seem nearly so weird—we all do family a little differently. And raising my best friend’s baby, just like that, lost any sense at all for me of being anything apart from perfectly ordinary. I was just his mother. It was no more complicated than that and no more simple, of course, than families ever are.
I have this impression that at that point we were in wee hours of the morning, that it was practically light. We were starting to fade for sure, tired of eating and sitting, tired from the wine and the food, emotionally drained from the evening, and aware that we had, many of us, still to drive tonight, still to get up in the morning. Answers—to marriage proposals, to baby plans—could wait until tomorrow, until next Sunday’s dinner. I thought tiredly, deliciously, of rehashing all this with Ethan tomorrow while we ran, with Jill after I got home, over leftovers for dinner tomorrow night just Jill and Katie and Atlas and me.
And then Diane, just barely audible, said, “Me too. I have something to tell you all too.”
My first flash was she was dating someone. My second was that she was pregnant herself. My third was full of hell and night, as I noticed that Diane looked pretty miserable, and remembered how depressed Jill thought she’d been. Cancer? Heart something? Diabetes? Probably cancer. And in just those few moments, while Diane steeled herself to tell us, I saw her shrivel and waste away, all bones and dark, faded eyes, and leave us before Atlas would even remember her. I saw it so clearly that therefore my response to what came next was at first something like relief.
“I’ve heard from Daniel,” she said, a defiant quaver in her voice, like she was laying this fact out for our inspection and constructive feedback but was unwilling to accept complete rejection. I could almost see it, lying there among all the dishes, a big bubble of bad news, glowing and angry and quivering as if there were thousands of tiny creatures inside trying to chew their way out. We found ourselves silent again, listening in on another moment in which we did not belong. This was obviously a conversation Diane should have been having with Jill alone. And it was obvious too that she couldn’t. Safety in numbers. Or is it strength? We were there, I guess, to protect Jill from the news and Diane from Jill.
“First, he was calling once a month or so, then every couple weeks, then we met for coffee, then he started coming to the house sometimes. He’s not met Atlas—I won’t let him come when I’m babysitting or anything—but he’d like to. He just doesn’t know how.”
Long, long pause during which we all sneaked sideways looks at Jill, who went hot and bright red and kept standing up and sitting back down again. “Since when?” she finally managed.
“Which part?”
“Since he started calling.”
“He started calling a couple months before Atlas was born.”
“A couple months—before—Are you kidding me?”
“He wanted to know how you were.”
“Why didn’t he call me?”
“It was complicated, Jill.”
“Why didn’t he call Janey at least?”
“Because you were living with her,” said Diane patiently, maddeningly. “He wanted to make sure you were okay. And the baby.”
“He wanted to make sure I was going through with it after all,” said Jill darkly, eyes narrowed, “because if I changed my mind he could have his girlfriend back.”
“Maybe. But he kept calling after. Wanted to know the sex, the name, how he was, how you were. He felt bad. He didn’t have to keep in touch.”
“He didn’t,” said Jill, bitterly. “And now you’re dating.”
“He asked if he could come by one day when Atlas was over. I said no. So he asked if we could meet and look at pictures. We had coffee.”
“But not just once.”
“Atlas kept growing. I kept getting new pictures. Dan kept wanting to see them.”
My head was spinning. I put a hand on Jill’s trembling arm. She seemed to be having trouble catching her breath.
“And now he comes over, and you guys just hang out?”
Diane shrugged. “I work, Jill. It was just easier than meeting him out someplace all the time.”
“All the time?”
“He brings dinner sometimes. We sit and talk and look at pictures of Atlas.”
“What do you talk about?” Jill was shouting.
“Atlas. What he’s doing. You. Him.”
“Me? Him?”
“He wonders if there’s some way he can be part of your life. If it’s too late. Why he couldn’t stay at the time. What’s different now. What’s the same. We talk about why I hadn’t told you. And how I might.”
“And?”
“And I said I was afraid you’d be angry. You’d not understand. You’d think I’d betrayed you.”
“And you haven’t?”
“I’ve been doing this for you. He just needed a little help is all. I was trying to make him better for—worthy of—you and Atlas.”
“Oh. My. God.” Jill banged her plate loudly on the table, pushed her chair into the garden, threw her napkin to the ground then looked around for other stuff to bang, push, or throw. Finally, as if on belated, eventual cue, Atlas woke up and started screaming upstairs.
I was the first one up but only by a beat or two—everyone was on their feet right behind me. I went up to grab Atlas. Katie started an extensive good night with Peter and Eli. Jason, Lucas, and Ethan sneaked into Atlas’s room with puffed out “holy crap” cheeks and rolled eyes to whisper thank-yous and apologies for leaving me alone with all this. But in the dark, I rocked Atlas back to sleep and realized that I never felt alone anyway when he was with me. Through the open window, outside in the garden, Jill had uprighted her chair and sat back in it but was still talking to her mother in harsh tones.