Nathaniel leaned forward and gave Maggie a kiss on the cheek, and then he extended a hand to Timmy, introducing himself.
“Nathaniel’s going to have lunch with us. Isn’t that nice?” Maggie asked Timmy.
He looked up at Maggie with a puzzled look on his face, and then he turned to Nathaniel and said, “Are you Aunt Maggie’s boyfriend?”
“Do you think we’d make a good couple?” Nathaniel asked, laughing.
Timmy shook his head, and Nathaniel winked at Maggie.
Nathaniel guided them through Quincy Market, narrating the various meal options as they passed crowded booth after crowded booth in the old marketplace. Maggie hadn’t been there since a class trip in school. She had forgotten how overwhelming it was, so crowded with tourists. She hoped Timmy wouldn’t have another meltdown. He asked for a hotdog and fries and then Maggie settled with him at a table near the center of the market while Nathaniel went to get falafel for himself and Maggie. Timmy was almost done when he returned.
“Aunt Maggie lives with my grammy now,” he said when Nathaniel sat down.
“I know. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“My mom said Aunt Maggie used to be a gold miner. That’s why she lived in California.”
“No kidding?” Nathaniel said, giving Maggie a mischievous grin.
Maggie felt her face turn bright red. Of course the kid waits until he has an audience to really spill the beans, she thought.
“I thought only grouchy old men with scraggly beards and silly hats were gold miners,” Nathaniel said.
Timmy shrugged.
“Did she ever show you any gold nuggets?”
“No,” Timmy said, shaking his head.
“She mustn’t have been very good at it then.”
“Yeah,” Timmy said. “But that’s okay because Uncle Andrew is rich.”
Nathaniel struggled to contain his laughter.
“Finish your hot dog, buddy,” Maggie said.
“I want a cookie,” Timmy answered.
“You already had your astronaut ice cream,” Maggie said. “Your mom won’t like it if I let you have too many treats.”
“I didn’t like the astronaut ice cream. It was gross.”
Maggie didn’t doubt that, but like or not, he had eaten the entire thing.
“After your aunt and I finish our sandwiches, we can see if there are any good cookies around here,” Nathaniel said.
“I saw some,” Timmy said.
Maggie was too worked up to eat much of the sandwich Nathaniel had bought her. She just nibbled at it and listened to Nathaniel keep up a steady stream of conversation with Timmy. He knew how to talk to the kid. It was a relief for Maggie to just sit back and let him handle things for a while.
When they had finished eating lunch, they went back outside. It was a gorgeous day. They walked slowly over the cobblestones around the market, checking out the street performers. Maggie held Timmy’s hand so as not to lose track of him, and to make sure he didn’t get too close to any of the vendors and have another “gimme, gimme” tantrum. They stopped to watch a magician—Timmy loved magic—and Nathaniel and Maggie sat on a bench and let Timmy stand up close with the other kids. Nathaniel slipped an arm around Maggie’s waist.
“Aren’t kids great?” he asked.
“Other people’s kids,” Maggie said. “I will not be sorry to drop him back off with his mother.”
“Oh, come on. He’s a cute little boy. And his gold miner speech could earn him a spot on ‘Kids Say the Darnedest Things.’”
“He’s a good kid. His mother could learn to shut up now and then, though.”
“Your sister always did speak her mind.”
“No kidding.” As much as she would have liked to, Maggie resisted the urge to nestle in against him. What were they doing? Playing house? Neither of them had mentioned the drunk dialing. Maggie didn’t know what to say about it.
“So Uncle Andrew is rich?” Nathaniel asked, grinning.
“Please, don’t—” She moved over on the bench, pulling free of his grasp.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I just want to find out more about the guy who convinced you to marry him. If I remember correctly, you always swore you’d never get married. You were going to be an independent artist forever.”
I only said that because the only person I ever wanted to marry was you, Maggie thought, but what she said was, “Yeah, I guess I grew out of that silly idea.”
“What was the silly part?”
“Oh you know, thinking it’s possible to be independent, thinking it’s possible to be an artist.”
Timmy came running back to the bench with a balloon giraffe in his hand. “Look!” he said, waving it at them.
Nathaniel examined the specimen, and as he and Timmy chatted, Maggie saw a glimpse of the life she used to let herself dream about while she told everyone she’d never marry. Whatever she said, what she imagined as the ideal life had always been to marry Nathaniel or some imitation of him and to live in a nice city townhouse where they could walk hand in hand to parks and enjoy all the culture a city can offer. They’d share all of that with their one-and-only child, preferably a girl, but she wasn’t too particular on that point. It was a nice picture—a TV sitcom picture of a wholesome family.
Maggie sometimes still thought she’d like that life, yet her experience with Andrew suggested otherwise. They had lived in a very nice neighborhood. Their condo was one block back from the beach and there were plenty of parks around where families and dog owners congregated. They had more than enough money to provide a great life for a kid or two. But that issue was the breaking point. Andrew, pushing forty, didn’t want to be the kind of dad who’s too old to get out there and play and chase the kids around. But she wanted, or said she wanted, to have a career and experience some success before she had a family, which she now could see was hilarious considering the fact that she almost never painted after they were married, and she’d had no real job prospects. Sometimes she wondered, though, if her feelings about having kids were really a reflection of that fact that her marriage was not satisfying. Sometimes she’d see a dad and a kid out at the beach or at the supermarket and think how nice it would be to come home to such a sweet pair, but she couldn’t picture Andrew as part of that.
Even though he worked with teenagers every day, Maggie knew Andrew wouldn’t be a good father. He would be domineering and hypercritical. She thought his influence could make any kid neurotic—look what it had done to her. It had left her self-conscious, uncertain, timid, a pretty face with nothing to say.
She had finally relented two summers ago and agreed they could try, but then, when it came time to refill her birth control pills—which she had told Andrew she would not do—she found herself at the pharmacy, getting the prescription anyway. She never stopped taking it. She just didn’t tell Andrew that. She hated herself for ending up in the situation of lying to him day after day. Why hadn’t she listened to that feeling in her gut that told her she should not marry him? She used to wish he’d do something vile and despicable so she had a clear reason to leave him. She wanted him to be the villain, instead of her being the idiot.
“What do you think, Maggie?” Nathaniel asked.
“Hmm?” Maggie answered, noticing that he and Timmy were both looking at her expectantly.
“A cookie before we hit the road?” Nathaniel said.
They walked around to the stand that sold huge, warm, chocolate chip cookies. Maggie glanced at her phone for the time as they stood in line.
“More big plans this afternoon?” Nathaniel asked.
“Timmy has karate at four-thirty. I’m dropping him off there. I think I’m going to be cutting it close.”
“You’ve got plenty of time. It’s not even 3 yet.”
“His mother will kill me if h
e’s late.”
Nathaniel took the subway with them as far as Davis Square. As the train rumbled along, he asked if she’d been holding up her end of their artistic pact. She hadn’t.
“Well, I have a gig coming up,” he said, grinning.
Maggie took out her phone and made a note of the date in her calendar. It would be good to see him on stage again. She’d always loved to watch him light up a crowd. When he sang, he was magnetic. You couldn’t listen to him without thinking he was a star in the making. He should have left Boston for Nashville or Austin or LA. He should have been on stage every day.
When he got up to get off the train, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. “See you around, kiddo,” he said to Timmy, who waved back at him.
“So you and that guy were friends when you were little?” Timmy asked later in the car.
“Well, Nathaniel and I were older than you, but yes, we were friends in school,” Maggie said, wondering why Timmy called Nathaniel “that guy” when she was certain he knew his name. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”
“He’s okay.” Timmy said, studying his balloon animal, moving its legs and bending its neck.
“Careful,” Maggie warned. “You don’t want to break it.”
“Is he going to be my new uncle?” Timmy asked.
Maggie paused for a moment, wondering why he would ask such a thing. “Nathaniel is just my old friend, buddy, that’s all. I don’t see him often so I thought it’d be nice if we all had lunch together. That’s all.”
“Okay,” Timmy said, sounding doubtful. Then he added, “He’s nicer than Uncle Andrew.”
“Yeah, he definitely is, buddy,” Maggie said under her breath.
Abby
When Abby walked back into the house, her parents were sitting in the living room on the couch, a photo album spread out across their laps. Her mother was no longer crying, and her father had an arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders. Abby thought maybe she should just leave them alone, but her father gestured with his free hand for her to enter. Jeremy gave her a pat on the back and then turned down the hall towards his bedroom.
“Come sit down, sugar,” her father said.
Abby complied. She sat beside him on the couch and looked down at the photo album. It was her baby book. Her mother turned the pages slowly, sometimes running her hand over the smooth plastic that protected the pages, letting her fingers linger on a particular image. After a few moments, she looked up at Abby and her eyes filled with tears again.
“You know how much we love you,” she said, her lip quivering.
“Of course I do, mom,” Abby answered, putting her hand on top of her mother’s on the album page.
“I shouldn’t have reacted that way.” She was crying in earnest again.
“No, it’s okay, you have the right to be upset.” Abby couldn’t stand to see her mother cry, and she felt her own tears pooling.
Abby’s mother pulled her hand away and wiped her eyes. She shook her head. “No, I don’t. You’re a grown woman. I guess I don’t often think of you that way, but you are.”
“We still worry about you,” her father said.
“I remember when I found out I was pregnant the first time,” her mother said. “I was so scared. I was happy, but I was terrified. All I wanted was my mom.”
And then both women were crying, and Abby’s father was hugging each with one arm and letting their tears fall on his soft golf shirt. Abby curled her legs up against her chest, forming herself into a little ball like a child. It was true, all she wanted was her mother. She needed her mommy.
“It’s gonna be okay,” her father said, over and over, rubbing her back. “We’re gonna take care of you.”
Abby’s mother closed the album and got up. She walked around the coffee table and knelt in front of Abby, placing her hands on her daughter’s feet. Abby unfolded her legs and let her mother hug her. It felt so good. Nothing in the world had ever felt so good. Now, knowing she had her parents’ support, maybe she could finally start to believe that things were going to be okay. Breanna would help her. Her parents would help her.
A small but ever-shrinking part of her still clung to the belief that Nathaniel, too, would help her. When he could feel the baby move and kick inside her, when he saw a sonogram that looked like a baby, when the baby came. How could he hold his child and not realize that what they all needed was to be a family? After all she had done for him, supporting him through his father’s death, standing by him when he was drinking so much that his friends wanted nothing to do with him—didn’t she deserve to be supported in return? Isn’t that how love works?
“You’ve got a good doctor, right? You’re taking your vitamins?” her mother asked, pulling away to look Abby in the eye.
Abby nodded.
“You have to take care of yourself.”
For the rest of the week, Abby’s mother whipped up her favorite meals and insisted they take walks each evening because it was important that Abby stay physically active. Her care was almost oppressive, as if Abby were a sick child and not a mother-to-be, but Abby allowed it. It made her mother happy to dote on her this way. Abby figured she may as well enjoy it, because when she went home and started her new job, no one was going to be in a hurry to fetch her a glass of water, prepare a homemade dinner, or insist that she go rest instead of washing the dishes.
On Saturday afternoon, instead of having Breanna come back out in Pat’s car to bring her home as originally planned, her parents drove her to Somerville. It reminded her of her brief stint in college, when they’d brought her back to campus after a visit at home taking her out to dinner before leaving her alone in her cramped dorm room, reluctant to leave her, but knowing that they had to, because she wasn’t a little girl anymore.
“I’ll talk to your aunts and we’ll figure out a good time for the shower,” Abby’s mother said, right before they drove away.
It was a relief that she was going to break the news to the family. Her enormous extended family was full of devout Catholics, and though they’d seen all kinds of mixed up messes between her parents’ siblings and her many cousins, to date there had not been any unwed mothers among them. This was new territory. She figured it couldn’t possibly be worse in their eyes than divorce, which at this point they didn’t even blink at, but you never know how people are going to react to anything. Whatever their initial reaction, though, she knew they’d rally, and they’d be at the shower, and they’d be sweet to her, just like they were at the second and third marriages of various family members. Family is family, and they all knew how to pull together when it mattered.
After her parents left, Abby unpacked the cooler of frozen meals her mother had sent back with her and put away all her freshly washed clothes, also compliments of her mother. They smelled like her parents’ house. She was homesick already.
Before she left to visit her parents, she had agreed to Nathaniel’s suggestion that they not call or text or email while she was away. This was a chance they both needed to clear their heads, think things through, he had said. She had already backed off any efforts to get him to talk about the future or commit to any apartments, and she wondered how much more head clearing he was going to need, but there was little she could do but give in to his request. Now she was back. He couldn’t avoid her forever.
Abby dug through her purse for her phone and dialed his number. On the fourth ring, he answered. Her stomach fluttered. She hadn’t actually expected him to answer, she realized now. She had expected that he would try to avoid her, and she would have the satisfaction of stewing in her anger until she finally could reach him, probably by ambushing him the way she did when she told him she was pregnant.
“I’m back,” she said.
“Good trip?” he asked, sounding bored.
Abby’s jaw tightened. Good trip? What kind of question was that? “Well, I had
to tell my parents that I’m pregnant with an illegitimate child, so it wasn’t exactly a picnic.”
“Sorry, I forgot—”
“You forgot?” How could he forget? And how was it that she continued to delude herself into thinking he was going to come around and support her?
“No, I mean, I wasn’t thinking. How did it go?”
“Is this how it’s going to be? Me raising this kid alone because you can’t even remember that we exist?”
“I didn’t forget about that. I just wasn’t thinking about you telling your parents.” He sounded agitated now instead of contrite, but Abby was in no mood to smooth things over or try to appease him. He could be angry if wanted but he had no right to be, whereas she had all the right in the world.
“Yeah, well maybe you should think about it. They want to know what the hell you are planning to do about any of this, and for that matter so do I. You keep asking for time, but pregnancy has a limited term, and at the end, there’s a baby.” It felt so good to let it all out, and as much as she hated that they were having this conversation over the phone instead of face to face, she knew that in person she would cave more quickly, so maybe it was better this way.
“What do you mean what am I going to do? I told you, I want to be a father.”
“Right. Some father you’re going to be. You don’t answer the phone for days on end, and if I’m lucky you text me back three words for every five voice messages I leave you. When are you going to start acting like a father? When your kid is an adult who you can hit up for a few bucks? Are you going to be the same kind of father that you are a boyfriend?”
“I don’t think I ever gave you any false sense of what kind of boyfriend I would be. You know me. You knew what you signed up for. I have told you from day one that I couldn’t give you what you wanted, but you hung on anyway.”
She hung on anyway? Was that what she was? A hanger-on? A tick? A parasite? It takes two. It wasn’t like she spent the past three and a half years begging him to sleep with her. Actually, as far as she could recall, it was the other way around. In those first few months, when he insisted they weren’t dating, he was the one who kept showing up, craving her. She put up with his behavior because she cared about him, because she knew he could be a good man if he stayed sober and got his head out of his ass. After his dad died, she stayed with him because she felt some responsibility for him, which is what happens when you are in a relationship for years. But apparently he had no such concept of responsibility.
The Latecomers Fan Club Page 13
