“What did Michael’s dad look like?”
“I mean, I’m sure he looks like most dads in Allentown.” Kelley put his fork at the side of his plate. “But now when I think of him I picture him in a cowboy hat on a front porch with a—”
Emira reached across the table to stop him before he did another impersonation. She lowered her voice and asked, “Do you wanna go back to your place?”
Later, in Kelley’s bedroom, he sat up in bed and said, “We forgot to drink the wine.” He put shorts on and walked out to the kitchen.
In a T-shirt of his that read Nittany on the front, Emira got up to pee. She took a selfie in Kelley’s medicine cabinet mirror and sent it to Zara, who replied, I can’t stand you rn. It was 11:46 p.m.
Kelley retrieved two glasses and set them on the island counter at the center of his kitchen. Emira brought the bottle wrapped in a purple plastic bag and stood at the other side.
“‘Little Lulu’s Ballet Academy,’” Kelley read. He removed the bag and set the wine on the counter. “That sounds like a complete nightmare.”
“It’s not. I take Briar every Friday and it’s like, my favorite thing.”
“This is the one I saw at the grocery store?”
“Mm-hmm. She’s terrible at it.” Emira stretched her arms up over her head and felt the bottom of the T-shirt begin to reveal her behind. “All the other girls are very shy and graceful, but Briar is always yelling that she wants a grilled cheese and shit. Next week is our last class. It’s a Halloween party and we’re very excited about it.”
Kelley poured the wine into the two glasses. “Will you be dressing up?”
“I will be a cat. And Briar will be a hot dog.”
“Nice. That classic cat-and-hot-dog combination. Are you ready for this?” Kelley placed a glass in front her. “Oh wait, you already tried it. Am I ready for this? Yes. Yes I am.”
With his eyes on Emira, Kelley did a very showy swirl of the wine in his hand. He took a sip, let it hit the back of his throat, and said, “Oh wow.” He nodded as he placed it back on the counter. “Shit, yeah, this tastes like a country club.”
“I told you. It almost makes me sad ’cause I’ll probably never have it again.” Emira leaned her forearms onto the counter. “Do you think your high school girlfriend is drinking this in first class right now?”
Kelley laughed. “Probably, yes.” He eyed Emira before he added, “You wanna know how I broke up with her?”
“Yes.”
“It’s awful,” he warned. “You can’t leave after I tell you this. There was like, a lot of other bullshit involved with her and how she wrote me letters all the time and all this other stuff, but when I actually ended it, I said, ‘I think it would be best if we went our separate ways, and that those paths never again connected.’”
Emira covered her mouth. Against her palm she said, “Noooo.”
“Yep.” Kelley took another sip and said, “I thought I was very cool.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“I was seventeen years old.”
“Yeah, I was seventeen once too, bro.”
“Okay okay okay, I don’t know. She wrote me all of these very flowery and poetic letters all the time, and I think I felt like I had to break up with her in the same elevated tone, but it did not go down that way. And I’d like to say that that was the dumbest thing I ever did in high school, but it most definitely was not.”
Emira stood up straight. “What else did you do?”
“It wasn’t exactly things I did but . . . things I thought? Like . . . you know how Valentine’s Day was invented by card companies? What I thought I heard was car companies. Till college, I thought that like, Toyota and Kia invented Valentine’s Day. Which I did think was odd, but still a thing that happened. Actually, no, wait. Even worse than that? I thought that the word lesbian had a d on the end? Like—lesbiand? And I thought it was a verb.”
“Kelley.” Emira covered her mouth again. “No, you didn’t.”
“I absolutely did,” he said. “I thought that one woman could lesbiand the other. Till I was like, sixteen. Why am I telling you this?”
Emira laughed. “I honestly don’t know. But tell me the breakup line one more time.”
Kelley put both hands on the counter and cleared his throat. “‘I think it would be best if we went our separate ways, and that those paths never again connected.’”
“That’s really beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Emira leaned against the counter with her hip bones first. She watched Kelley take the fifty-eight-dollar wine bottle and tip the remaining liquid into her glass.
“Do you want to call me an Uber?” she asked.
Kelley set the empty bottle on the tile. “Not really, no.”
Emira nodded and said, “Okay.”
Eight
Back in New York, long before Catherine was born, Tamra poured wine into three glasses. “Everyone has to share their most embarrassing moment.”
“I love when Tamra drinks,” Jodi said, “because she turns into an eleven-year-old girl.”
The four women sat on wiry patio furniture next to plastic shovels, pails, and a kiddie pool covered in leaves in the ivy-surrounded space that was Rachel’s backyard. Tiny white lights hung overhead. On the other side of the sliding glass door was a downstairs studio that Rachel used for guests. A queen-sized bed folded out from the wall where a very little Briar slept with her thumb in her mouth. Tamra’s daughters, Imani and Cleo, slept next to her, on the other side of Jodi’s daughter, who was soon to be a big sister (Jodi sipped a club soda with lemon). Rachel’s son, Hudson, was in Vermont with his grandma. It was the first time the four women were together without the immediate presence of their children.
Rachel quietly closed the sliding door with her elbow and her slippery black hair whipped behind her. “My answer to this question is more of a time period, and it is defined by my son’s penis.” She set four white plates on top of the table, next to a large pizza with tomatoes, pepper flakes, and basil on top.
“Don’t tell me this, la la la la.” Jodi raised her hands to her ears. She’d learned three days prior that she was pregnant with a little boy, whom she would later name Payne. Her thick red hair glowed as she reached over a large bug-repellent candle for the same slice of pizza as Alix. She retreated and said, “No, Alix, you go first.” It was Jodi whom Alix had first met in the waiting room when Briar had her four-month check-up. Jodi had introduced her to Rachel and Tamra, and Alix could still feel Jodi’s sweet concern and the gestures she made to make Alix feel at ease.