Friday Night Flights

by Susan X Meagher

  “But she and your dad joined us the other night.”

  “Only because I’d taken you inside and you knew she was home. She never comes out when Ben’s family’s over.”

  “Is she…?”

  “I don’t know what her issue is, but she’d rather be alone. My dad’s kind of the same. He has to be charming with clients, so he doesn’t want to have to be at home.”

  “They don’t have friends?”

  “My mom has some,” she said, looking thoughtful. “People she used to know from around here who’ve moved. She talks to two of the women a lot. For hours,” she added. “Other than that, she watches TV while she plays a game on her phone.”

  “I’ll ask my parents if they want to come take a dip. But I think they’d feel like they were imposing if they knew your parents were right inside while we were having a barbecue. I mean…they know them.”

  “I get that,” she said, nodding. “Think about it while I call Ben. I know he’d like to meet you…and Lisbet.”

  “Does he know your new best friend is literally a baby?”

  “He does. And so does everyone else at the brewery. They know I’m weird, so there’s not much I do that surprises them.”

  Avery cocked her head. “It doesn’t bother you that they think it’s weird?”

  She had a half-smile on her face that made her look particularly puzzled. “Why would it? I do what I do. If people like it, fine. If not, that’s fine too.”

  “Now that’s a healthy way of looking at the world,” Avery said, patting her on the back.

  “Mmm. Maybe. My belief is that what people say about you is none of your business.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Think about it,” she said, walking over to her discarded clothes to pick up her phone. “It’s the damn truth.”

  ***

  Casey swam a few laps while Avery was getting Lisbet set up. Eventually, she got brave and walked over to the pergola, leaving a trail of drips on the bluestone. Avery found it kind of cute that she was so skittish about watching her breastfeed, but she assumed she’d get used to it. Right now she wouldn’t let her eyes wander a bit lower than Avery’s head, but she didn’t seem uncomfortable when she sat down on another one of the comfy chairs.

  “The party’s getting bigger. Ben and Julie and Benji will be here in about a half hour. They’re bringing beer, not that I need any more.”

  “Great! My dad’s golfing, as usual, but my mom jumped at the chance to join us.”

  “Well, it is a nice pool,” Casey said, teasing a little.

  “Since this pergola is right in front of the kitchen, your poor mom might be getting a perfect view of my boob. Think she minds?”

  “I’m sure she won’t say she does,” she said, smiling. “For me, that’s plenty.” Her gaze flicked down for a second, then she said, “It’s a little hot under here. Would you rather move over where there’s more air? The house blocks the breeze.”

  “Oh, no. We didn’t have air conditioning in Brooklyn, and my parents don’t have it, either, so Lisbet’s acclimated to the heat. It doesn’t even seem to register with her.”

  Casey stared at the side of her face for a few seconds. “You didn’t have air conditioning in Brooklyn? You had to leave your windows open with all of that noise?”

  “I had a fan,” she said. “It was like old-timey days. No air conditioning, no garbage disposal, no car, no elevator. Carrying your groceries for six blocks, only to have to drag them up three flights. You could have dropped me into 1920 and I’d have felt right at home.”

  “Damn, Avery. I don’t mind roughing it, but only when I’m camping. I need my a/c to be able to sleep.”

  “Lisbet’s really a trouper, with very little bothering her. Not long ago, there was a big explosion that barely made her blink, and when the bank at the corner of our street was robbed, police cars roared down the street for five minutes, sirens ablaze. She looked up, but didn’t cry.”

  “An explosion?”

  “The building across from mine blew up when some unlicensed plumber was working on the gas line. Pretty dramatic,” she said, making her eyebrows pop.

  Casey’s mouth had dropped open. “How many people were killed?”

  “None. I’m not sure how, but everyone was lucky that day.” She laughed, mostly at the startled look on Casey’s face.

  “I like the drama of tasting a beer I’ve been tinkering with. That’s kind of enough for me.” She got up and went to the lush grass that abutted the pergola and stretched out on it. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’d almost always rather be lying in the grass than sitting in a chair.” She stretched out, looking so comfortable she could have been modeling for Patagonia or some other outdoorsy clothing company. “Lisbet followed me with her eyes when I moved,” she said, with a delighted smile brightening her face. “She looks…interested.”

  “That’s my goal, you know. I want to keep her interested in the world. Having her meet new people and have new experiences is a big part of that.” She looked at Casey, who was still staring at the baby. “It really is a lot of work, but it’s the most important work I’ve ever done. If I hadn’t been able to work from home a few days a week, I would have missed so much.”

  “She would have too. It’s a crime we don’t pay for at least three or four months of maternity leave. How can we keep yammering about how important families are and then treat working women like crap?”

  “It seems very easy to do that. Act like you care, but do nothing to help. That’s politics in a nutshell.”

  “Ugh. Let’s talk about something more interesting.” Casey rolled onto her side and held her head up with a hand. She looked directly at Avery, but paused for quite a few seconds before she finally said, “Would I be prying if I asked about being pregnant?”

  “I don’t mind a bit. Anything in particular you want to know?”

  “Everything,” she said, looking very sober. “Mostly I want to know how it feels.”

  “Mmm.” She thought for a minute. “That’s a tough one, since it feels different all of the time. Sometimes minute by minute.”

  “Right from the beginning?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s when you’re just getting used to it. You’re either sick or hormonal every minute, but because you’ve never felt like this, it’s kind of freaky. I’m sure some women like their first trimester, but I couldn’t wait to get to the second.”

  “That was easier?”

  “For me it was. I guarantee you’d get a hundred different perspectives if you asked a hundred different women, but my second trimester was kind of a breeze. Even from the first, I was enmeshed with this baby,” she said, stroking Lisbet’s warm skin. “But by the second trimester I was in love.” She closed her eyes as she tried to recreate the feelings she’d experienced. “I’d never spent much time thinking about my gender,” she said, surprising herself by bringing this up. “But being pregnant made me feel one hundred percent female. It’s like every bit of testosterone in my body disappeared, replaced with high-test estrogen.”

  “Mmm. I had a feeling it might be like that,” Casey said, gazing at her intently.

  “It was great. Really great. I felt like I was creating something fantastic. Something utterly unique.” She smiled. “I mean, I was, but I’ve come back down to earth now. Every parent should feel like their child is extraordinary, but not get so involved with them that they forget other children are just as important.”

  “Mmm. My former sister-in-law was like that. The other way, though,” she added. “She acted like the rest of the world should stop whatever they were doing to roll out the red carpet for her kids.”

  “Oh, I’d love to have people do that for Lisbet,” Avery said, laughing a little. “I’m just realistic enough to know that won’t happen. Actually,” she said, thinking about this for a moment, “being in Brooklyn helped me get my perspective right. When you’re in a city that big, with so many people surrounding you who will never, ever ha
ve one tenth of the things or advantages you do…” She shrugged. “If you don’t feel at least a little guilty for how great you have it, you need an empathy boost.”

  “I’m jealous of you,” Casey said softly, surprising the heck out of Avery. “I wish I would have had a baby when I was around twenty. Then I wouldn’t have overthought it for all of these years.”

  She looked so sober, so serious. Her gaze was locked on Lisbet now, who was kind of dawdling as she ate her lunch.

  “Is it too late?” Avery asked, worried that she might be prying. “Is there some reason…”

  She sat up and urged her hair behind her ear. “I decided not to quite a while ago. Now I’m focusing on forming relationships with other people’s kids until I can talk someone into having a baby with me.”

  “Ahh. Taking a shortcut isn’t a bad idea.” She meant that as a joke, but Casey didn’t smile. “If you want to have a baby with a partner, I’m sure you can manage it. A lot of women want to give birth, but don’t want to do it alone.”

  “If I’d gotten my wish, I’d have three or four kids by now.” Her gaze met Avery’s, now clearly not concerned about catching a peek. “If it was easy…” She trailed off quietly. “But it’s not. Trust me on that.”

  ***

  Avery’s mom arrived, bearing tacos from one of their favorite spots.

  Casey and Lisbet were in the pool once again, with Avery sitting under the pergola, using the Van Dyke’s super-fast wifi to check her mail.

  “Hello everyone,” her mom said when she walked over to the nearby table and put her bags down. “I brought lunch.”

  “We’ll be out in a minute,” Casey called out. “It takes me a while to kick my way down to the other end.”

  “Don’t rush. Avery and I will get everything organized.”

  Avery got up to help, putting tacos on the paper plates the restaurant had included, and they both looked up when Casey emerged from the water, looking like a very athletic dyke about to hit the beach on Fire Island.

  “Look at how cute she is,” her mom said quietly, clucking her tongue. “Most girls don’t look good in board shorts, but she sure does.”

  “She certainly does,” Avery agreed, just then realizing her voice had dropped down to take on a sexy tone she hadn’t intended it to. “I mean, yeah, she does. Must be the long legs. She’s got good ones.”

  “More than her legs are good. Look at how she fills out that snug top. Are breasts on your wish list? I don’t really know what you find attractive—”

  “And you’re not going to!” Avery said, racing across the patio to cut off any opportunity her mother had to say something Casey actually could hear.

  ***

  After they’d eaten, Avery took the opportunity to stay under the pergola to read a book that everyone at work was talking about. She hadn’t been able to dig into new fiction since Lisbet had been born, but doing so really wasn’t optional. Since she was charged with finding new voices for the podcast, she had to read everything she could get her hands on. Her mother and Casey had insisted they didn’t mind, and they certainly seemed to be having fun. But Lisbet was having the best time of the trio, clearly enjoying the heck out of the entire experience.

  Watching how they interacted with Lisbet, Avery got a warm feeling in her chest that eventually spread throughout her body. She hadn’t expected this from motherhood, but she’d found there wasn’t anything she enjoyed more than having other people enjoy Lisbet. Granted, her mother had a stake in the whole endeavor, but Casey could have given the kid a glance and walked on by. When Avery considered how little interest Casey’s parents had in the child, that would have been what she would have predicted. But Casey’s love for kids was obviously not genetic. It came from her own tender heart.

  She was idly musing over how good it felt to have a stranger delight in Lisbet’s mild antics when she heard a big, booming voice call out from the driveway. “That water had better be pee-free!”

  Casey waved, handed off the baby, and got out. She didn’t go for the easy exit, though. She placed her hands on the coping, pushed as she tossed a foot up, then was standing and walking toward her guests while Avery was still figuring out how she’d gotten out in around a second.

  A little boy ran around the corner of the house, a gleeful smile on his face. He was tall for his age, and very sturdy, with short, dark hair that stuck straight up on the top. He stopped abruptly when he spotted Avery, his smile frozen.

  She stood up and walked over to him. “Hi there,” she said. “I’m Casey’s friend, Avery. Are you Benji?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking up at her with cornflower blue eyes. The kid looked like he could be advertising just about anything marketed to rough-and-tumble young boys, with his handsome features and easy smile. “Is that your baby? Or the other lady’s?”

  “Mine. I’m the other lady’s baby.”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly, then got the joke. “Casey really likes your baby. She talks about her all the time.”

  “She really likes you too,” Avery said. She looked up as a very large copy of Benji, and an average-sized sandy-haired woman walked across the patio with Casey. The man carried a car seat, which was a little odd since Benji was clearly too large to fit into even a booster seat.

  “I bet these people are your mom and dad,” Avery said. “Is it weird to look so much like your dad?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head firmly. “I like it.”

  She made eye contact with Benji’s dad, and extended her hand when he got close. “It’s good to meet you, Ben,” she said. She wasn’t great at telling how tall people were, but she was sure she’d get a crick in her neck if she had to continue looking up at Ben for long. If he’d been introduced as a former NFL player, she would have believed it immediately.

  “Good to meet you, too,” he said. His smile wasn’t as guileless as his son’s, but he also looked friendly and accessible. “My wife, Julie.”

  “We’ve been dying to meet the baby who’s enchanted Casey,” she said, shaking Avery’s hand enthusiastically. “She’s been trying to get all of the guys at the brewery to have babies, and believe me, most of them are nowhere near ready.”

  “I hope I’m ready,” Avery said, “because Lisbet’s stuck with me even if I’m not.”

  “She is,” Casey said, giving her a surprisingly fond look. “Avery’s a great mom.”

  “I’m trying my best, but it’s a bigger job than I could have guessed. Without my parents’ help, I’d have really struggled, especially in those first couple of months.”

  “I’m still upset I didn’t run into you last winter,” Casey said. “I love being around Lisbet now, but newborns really fascinate me.”

  “I could definitely have used the help. But better late than never.”

  “Definitely,” Casey said.

  “We brought Benji’s car seat for Casey’s truck,” Julie said. “I went on the manufacturer’s site to make sure it wasn’t past its expiration date, which it wasn’t.”

  “Oh, god,” Avery sighed, trying to sound aggrieved. “If you give her a car seat, Casey might sneak the baby out of the house when I’m not looking.”

  “Never,” she said. “Well, maybe, but I’d leave a note.” She turned to Julie. “Thanks for lending it to me. I was going to buy one, but I’m sure you bought the best made. You treated this little guy like he was made out of glass.”

  She put her arms around Benji from behind, linked her hands together, and pushed him back and forth roughly. He could definitely take it, and seemed to like being tumbled around. He turned his head to look up at her. “Got any cookies lying around?”

  “Probably. Let me go see what I can get away with stealing.”

  Avery watched her go into the house, and a minute later she emerged with a plate full of them. But her mom, who was clearly inside baking, given the scent of lemon, butter, and eggs that permeated the air, didn’t emerge. That was clearly the accepted norm, since none of th
e guests commented. Avery had no idea what Marsha’s deal was, but she was definitely not a social animal.

  ***

  After everyone had taken a cookie break, Ben, Benji and Casey got back into the water, while Lisbet cuddled up to Avery for a nap. The pool games changed dramatically, getting rougher and louder. Casey had a Nerf football that they all tossed around, with both her and Benji acting like something dire would happen if they let the ball hit the water. Ben didn’t seem to have the same drive to make the game hard, but he hung in there with them.

  As mothers always did when they had a minute to chat, Julie asked all about Lisbet. Avery certainly didn’t mind, but talking about the birth in detail wasn’t any fun. Some women seemed to delight in recounting all of the trauma of the event, but Avery wanted to forget about the whole thing as quickly as her brain allowed. To her, it had been like having emergency surgery without anesthesia, even though she hadn’t had a C-section. Getting Lisbet was worth everything involved, but she had no interest in talking about the pain that she’d been sure would never end.

  “Have you been up to Baby Brewers yet?” Julie asked.

  “Oh, no, not yet. My mom’s watching Lisbet on weekdays, so Casey’s going to have to harass her to get her to participate.”

  “We’ve already talked about it,” her mom said. “Lisbet and I are going on Thursday.”

  “How did you get out of going last Thursday?” Julie asked, laughing softly. She reached over and covered Avery’s hand with her own. “I hope I don’t make it sound like Casey’s off her rocker or anything.”

  “Off her—?”

  “She didn’t start Baby Brewers just so she could get her hands on more babies, even though that’s what she tells people. The program was a marketing decision by Kaaterskill. Everyone up here’s trying to grab a piece of the market, and they decided it would be smart to get new parents interested in the beer. Sales are up, so I think it’s working.”

  “To be honest,” Avery said, taking a look over to make sure Casey was still in the water, “her interest puzzled me at first. Casey and I were in the same class in high school, but we weren’t friends. That afternoon when she saw me walking with the baby, she acted like Lisbet was the most fascinating creature on earth.”