by Carol Weston
“Wait! Wait! What?”
“If I’d known you were so naive, I would’ve talked to you! Why didn’t you come to me? I’ve got condoms in my desk drawer. I’m surprised Sam didn’t—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, putting my hand up. “I thought you were pregnant!”
“Me! Are you crazy? I’m not a virgin, but I’m not a moron. When I was eleven, Mom started making me proofread the sex chapters in the new editions of Girls’ Guide.”
“Well, then, is it Amanda?”
“Amanda?” Alexa looked at me like I had two heads. “Why would it be Amanda?? She—Omigod.”
“What?”
“Omigod!”
“What??”
“Omigod!”
“What?”
“It’s Mom!” Alexa said.
“Your mom?” I asked.
“Well obviously not your mom!” She looked at me. “Oh. Crap. Sorry.” She sat down on my bed. “Yes. My mom. Your Dear Kate.”
“But how—?”
“The old-fashioned way, I assume. Your dad probably had something to do with it.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t even make sense. Your dad’s a gyno, and my mom has a million jokes about the ‘urge to merge’ and the ‘sperm of the moment’ and the importance of ‘weenie beanies.’ It’s part of her spiel. She thinks she’s hilarious.”
The phone rang. It wasn’t in its cradle in the hall, so Alexa and I went hunting for it. She found it under her pillow and held it in the air. “It’s Mom. You want to talk to her?”
“No. I wouldn’t know what to say.”
The phone kept ringing. “Me neither.”
Kate’s disembodied voice drifted upstairs. “Hello there! You’ve reached our questioning machine, and we have three questions: Who are you, what do you want, and how can we reach you?”
“You’re not going to answer?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Your words may be recorded for quality assurance,” Kate’s cheery stage voice concluded. We heard the beep and then Kate’s normal voice: “Girls, you there? Pick up! Alexa? Sofia? Did you go out to eat? All right, listen, Gregg and I are about to have dinner at Gennaro’s, so we’ll be back late. Tomorrow, I’d like us to have a family meeting at six thirty. Okay? Well, see you later tonight—or early tomorrow.”
“What should we do?” I asked.
“I should do some physics problems. I have a test tomorrow.”
“I’ll make us a potato omelet.”
“I’ll make a salad, and I’ll text Mom so she doesn’t worry. I’ll say we were walking around the lake, taking in the fall colors.”
“Good call.”
“I would call, but then I’d have to talk to her.” Alexa followed me to the kitchen.
I put an onion on the cutting board. “Now I get why she’s seemed so tired lately,” I said. “Yesterday, she took a nap in the hammock. I’d never seen her do that, not even in the summer.”
“She told me her back’s been hurting,” Alexa said. “She even asked if I thought we should get fluffier cushions for the kitchen chairs. I was like, ‘Whatev,’ but didn’t think any more about it.”
My eyes got watery. “It’s the onions, not the news,” I said, though the news was disorienting. Every time I began to feel like I knew where I was, it was as if the signposts got switched.
“Well, it makes me want to yell at both of them,” Alexa said. “For starters, I’d say: ‘You two are too old to make a mistake like this!’”
“What if it wasn’t a mistake?”
Raindrops tapped against the window.
“Sofia, don’t even put that in the universe!” Alexa filled a bowl with triple-washed baby romaine and tossed in crumbled feta, walnuts, and cranberries. “I can’t imagine my mom getting pregnant on purpose.”
“Yeah, but a year ago, could you have imagined us making dinner? Or having a family meeting?”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and wind rustled the trees. Alexa leaned on the kitchen island, looking marooned. Was there such a thing as a midteen crisis? And if so, were we both having one?
• • •
During the night, a storm knocked down a bunch of honey locust branches and scattered them all over the backyard. After school, I went around picking up the branches and dragging them to the edge of the woods by the ball field. It felt good to clear away the mess. And it took my mind off the mess Dad and Kate were in.
I got so involved in carting off fallen branches that I didn’t see Dad appear on the deck. “Be careful,” he said.
Be careful? Why hadn’t he been careful?
“I know what I’m doing,” I replied.
“Something the matter?”
“Just gathering sticks.” I didn’t mention the stick I’d found.
Dad came down and helped me carry off some heavy branches. “I’ve been thinking about Mom lately,” he said. “This time fifteen years ago, she was out to here.” He put his right hand in front of his belly. “She loved being pregnant.”
I used to love hearing the Sofia Story. It had taken my parents a long time to conceive, and my mom liked telling her students that the Spanish word for pregnant was embarazada, which was a “false cognate.” Mom said she had been the opposite of embarrassed—she’d been thrilled.
“When you were born,” Dad said, “Mom was over the moon. We took you everywhere and spoiled you rotten.”
“Not rotten,” I said, and he knew he had me.
“No, not rotten. I used to carry you piggyback to the Hippo Park. I’d hold on to your little sandaled feet. I remember our very first conversation.”
He knew I was always hungry for these stories. And I knew they were not coming out of the blue.
“You were perched behind me,” Dad continued, “and I said, ‘What does a doggy say?’”
“And I answered, ‘Woof.’” How could I stay mad at Dad? It was almost unfair.
“Then I said, ‘What does a sheep say?’”
“And I said, ‘Baa.’” I felt so turned around. I was fourteen and two at the same time.
“Listen, sweetie,” Dad said, his tone more serious, “by now, Mom would’ve taken you aside and talked to you about contraception—”
“Dad! I’m taking Health and Wellness at Byram Hills! And I took Life Skills at Halsey!”
“I see so many women in my practice who are unexpectedly expecting, and I want you to know that you can come to me for information and, uh, in the future even, uh, for supplies—”
“Dad! It’s not like that!” Why was everyone offering me condoms?!
“Good. Good.” He wiped his hands on his pants. “My parents never told me anything. And in high school, my girlfriend’s father used to give me the hairy eyeball as if I were ‘only after one thing,’ which I resented. But, Sofia, you do know that some boys—”
“Dad! Enough!”
“Okay. Sam seems like a nice kid…”
I threw my armful of sticks to the ground and marched inside.
Dad shouted, “And he’d better not break your heart!”
• • •
“Ready for the big meeting?” Alexa flopped down on my bed.
“I guess.”
She spotted my copy of The Catcher in the Rye and said, “Eww! I couldn’t stand Holden. He was so preppy and whiny and depressed. He should’ve just taken meds!”
“I liked him,” I said. “His little brother died, and it messed him up for a while.”
Alexa considered this, and it occurred to me that Dear Kate was like a catcher in the rye. Her job, some days, was to stand on the edge of a cliff and catch kids who were about to go over.
“I’ve never been to a family meeting,” I said.
“Me neither.” Alexa looked at the photo of Kiki and her and me in flig
ht. “Unless you count the breakfast when I was eleven. That’s when my mom and dad sat down next to me and said that Daddy would always love me but that Daddy was out the door.”
I felt a pang for Little Alexa. “What did you say?”
“I just stared at my cereal. I always used to eat my Trix in order: first red, then orange, then yellow. When it came to Trix, I was, like, totally OCD. Anyway, Mom kept talking in this upbeat way about Daddy and his ‘new friend,’ and I did not get it. All I wanted was for Mommy and Daddy to keep being Mommy and Daddy. My dad barely said anything, and later, when I looked down, I saw that my milk had turned pink, and my puffs had turned soggy, and I threw the whole thing out. Pretty stupid story, right?”
“No, Alexa. Not at all stupid.”
• • •
Kate and Dad were waiting for us in the living room. They were sitting on the sofa by the fireplace, the cats on either side of them like sphinxes.
“This looks cozy,” Alexa said. “Maybe we should toast marshmallows.”
“Not before dinner,” Kate said. “Listen, we have some news.” I sat down. Alexa stayed standing. “We could have kept it to ourselves, but we thought it would be better to be honest, and you two are big girls now.”
“Big girls?” Alexa smirked.
“Listen, I’ll get to the point. I’ve been feeling slow and achy lately. I thought it might be early menopause. But yesterday, just to rule it out, I did a home pregnancy test—”
“Mom,” Alexa interjected. “We could act shocked, shocked. But I’m a lousy actress, and you might as well save your breath. Still, yeah, we were pretty shocked. Weren’t we? Sof?”
I shot her a look that said, Keep me out of this.
“If you really want to know,” Alexa continued, “Sofia saw the plastic thingy first, and then I did, and last night while you were enjoying seafood risotto, we basically started accusing each other of being nasty hos. I’m not kidding. You missed quite the scene. We invented a whole new sport called jumping to conclusions.”
“Oh, that’s terrible!” Kate said aghast. “I should have buried it! But I was just so stunned! And then I had to race for the train to give my talks about how to be…a responsible parent!” The cats both stared at her.
“Katie’s nine weeks along,” Dad said. “She came into my office yesterday. We did a sonogram.” I remembered how Kiki used to joke that whoever dated Dad would get free gyno appointments for life.
“And by the way,” Kate said, “it’s not like we threw caution to the wind. You know that contraception is never one hundred percent—”
“Mom, please, stop! TMI! We don’t want to know!”
I sat there all keyed up, the way I sometimes got in class when I had something to say but wasn’t quite ready to raise my hand.
“Mom, aren’t you way too old to have a baby?” Alexa asked. “I mean, are you getting this taken care of?”
My jaw dropped. Somehow, I hadn’t thought about what would happen next. Kate was pregnant—that’s as far as I’d gotten.
I looked at Dad and saw a sadness in his face that I hadn’t seen for many months.
Alexa pressed. “Gregg, do you handle this?”
“We’ve been talking about it,” Kate said. “And we scheduled an appointment for next week,” Kate added quietly. “But—”
“Why even wait?”
Dad turned toward her and sternly said, “Because, Alexa, you can’t terminate a pregnancy and then change your mind. Teenagers think the big worry is parents finding out. Adults know there’s a lot more at stake.”
I remembered that Dad and Mom had always said I was their miracle baby, their milagro.
“We weren’t even certain we were going to tell you—” Kate began.
“Well, we found out anyway,” Alexa said.
Kate sighed. “Sometimes, life ends when you don’t want it to, and sometimes, it starts when you don’t want it to. Girls, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread the word. Let’s keep this to ourselves, okay?”
“Actually, Mom, for American History, I’m supposed to write about how a social policy has affected me personally, and this could work. I mean, so many people are pro-choice, but hardly anyone ever admits—”
“No!” Kate shouted. “You may not write about me for wrinkly, old Mr. Bagwell. He was my teacher too, remember?” Coco and Pepper both jumped off the sofa and fled.
“Okay, okay. Sorry!” Alexa said huffily. “Whatever,” she added. “End of story.”
Kate rubbed the small of her back and stood up. “End of family meeting anyway.”
• • •
Dinner was beyond awkward, and afterward, Dad and Kate went upstairs. Alexa and I washed the dishes.
“Sorry if I made you squirm in there.” Alexa handed me a bowl to dry, and I thought about the times she’d deliberately made me squirm. “But, Sofia, you don’t get it. In your dad’s eyes, my mom is young. In your dad’s field, she’s ancient. And what if they had a special needs baby?”
“They’d love it specially?”
Alexa rolled her eyes. “Oh, please!”
“They would! Besides, my dad could run tests. Lots of couples have healthy late-in-life babies.”
“And lots and lots don’t. My mom is forty-six! That’s not a good age to have a kid.”
I dropped the bowl I was drying, and it shattered.
Alexa got out a broom and dustpan. “Don’t worry. It was already chipped. But I think my mom needs to put this all behind her and keep it under wraps. Especially since she’s, you know, Dear Kate. I mean, she’s probably embarrassed on top of everything else.”
Embarrassed about being embarazada.
“Fertility is a such crapshoot,” Alexa continued. “Mother Nature can be a sweetheart or a bitch. Anyway, I’m not going to write about this or tell anyone. When people found out about my dad, I was the hot topic of conversation for months, and I do not need that again. Even when I got used to the whole dad thing, I still didn’t like that some people thought I should be a poster child for gay dads. So do me a solid and do not tell Sam or Kiki or that new girl I’ve seen you with, Grace, okay? The one who dresses weird. And I won’t tell anyone either.”
“Gracie,” I said. I didn’t add that her dream was to go to FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology.
“Whatever. I just mean, it’s Mom’s secret.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious.” She looked right at me. “You swear, Sofia?”
“I swear.”
“All right then.” She wiped the stovetop and said, “Speaking of Sam, has he talked to you about me?”
“Um, he told me you were on the swim team together.”
“Good times! The other teams all practiced in pools, so whenever we had meets at Windmill, I’d say, ‘Watch out for the snapping turtles!’ just to mess with their heads. And it worked!” She laughed. “But that’s not what I meant. You know that he and I—”
“Yeah, I know.” I took a breath.
“Well, I wanted to say that Sam’s a great guy. I like him—I don’t mean that way. He’s all yours. Too young for me anyway.”
I continued putting away the pots and pans. Was there more? Were we finally having this conversation?
“I guess I do want to say one other thing.”
“So say it!”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I was the one who bumped up the friendship. Not that Sam objected. But looking back, I was rocked by what happened with my parents, and I guess I needed to make sure the guys I liked were straight, you know?” I didn’t answer. “So I might have pressured Sam more than I should have. A couple of other guys too, though not as many as people think. I’m not a skank.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted to tell you that.”
“What about Evan?”
“What about him? I like him.” She sponged off the counter. “He’s into indie bands, and he collects vinyl and he always says stuff I don’t expect. He can also calm me down, which is pretty impressive, considering.”
“So go for it,” I said, “but, you know, let it mean something.”
“Maybe.” She hung up her dish towel. “Hey,” she said as if she’d just thought of it. “Amanda’s having a Halloween party tomorrow night. She said you can come if you want.”
• • •
“So who was it?” Kiki said on the phone. “Alexa? Amanda? Montana?”
“None of the above! And it’s Nevada, not Montana.” I changed the subject. “Kiki, what are you doing for Halloween?”
“I’m still deciding. You?”
“I’m going to a party at Amanda’s with Alexa.”
“Amanda’s? Isn’t she a senior?”
“Yeah. But it won’t feel like Halloween without you!” I said. Kiki and I used to have a tradition of getting dressed together, taking the elevator to the top of Halsey Tower, and wending our way down the stairwell on foot, ringing dozens of doorbells.
“Remember when I was a Wolfe in sheep’s clothing and nobody got it? Everyone thought I was a regular ol’ sheep.”
She laughed. “I remember when you were a giant ice cream cone.”
“Mom and I made it with a beach ball and papier-mâché.” Mom had loved Halloween. They didn’t have it in Spain.
“I can’t believe I don’t have a costume picked out,” Kiki said.
“This morning, my dad gave us a lecture about how he hates when guys dress up as lecherous doctors and girls dress up as naughty nurses.”
“Hey! I can be a naughty nurse! A naughty night nurse! An NNN!”
I laughed. “Out here, if you have a great costume, you either freeze to death or you have to cover it with a coat. And how many houses can you even hit in two hours?”
