The Atlas of Love

by Laurie Frankel

  “I also agree you have some right to Atlas but not entirely. I’ll still need help with childcare, especially during Summer Two, plus I might be getting a full-time job, and since you two will both still be in school, you’ll have a lot more flexible time than I will. I still want you to be a part of his life—a big part. I always want you to be a part of his life. But I don’t want to live with you two for the rest of mine. I want to live with Dan. Dan and I are going to try again. We already loved each other. And who wouldn’t love Atlas? I want to share but not entirely.”

  This seemed to be her theme—some but not entirely. And I figured I could live with that because I had to live with that. She still wanted to consider us babysitters rather than family and, at that, at her convenience rather than ours. She was being condescending and selfish, and she still wasn’t getting it. But she was trying. And I was holding Atlas. And I figured I could live with that.

  “We never thought we would all live together forever,” said Katie.

  “No,” I agreed.

  “We aren’t babysitters,” said Katie.

  “No,” I agreed again.

  “And furthermore,” said Katie, “we’re your friends. Forget family. Forget what you owe us. We’re your best friends. We have been for a long time. We only want what’s best for you and anyone you love. We can talk about stuff. We’re not mean and we’re not idiots. And we’re not characters. We’re friends. We treat you like that. You should treat us like that.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. And then added, “I’m keeping the dog.”

  Because Jill is like this, after we all smiled gamely, exchanged hugs all around, and agreed to try, whatever that might entail, she asked if we would babysit so she and Dan could have an evening alone together. “We so totally need it,” she said conspiratorially. I swallowed my annoyance because it meant I got Atlas. Katie went over to Peter’s for a last not-married-yet evening together. I called Ethan and asked him to come over but didn’t tell him why. While we waited, I told Atlas all about what he’d missed—how sick he’d been, how worried I was, how his parents had had me arrested, how much better he was now, how his great-grandmother had died, how Ethan had kissed me on the mouth and apparently wanted to do it again. I knew he couldn’t understand. I just wanted him to know. I gave him his great-grandfather’s cufflinks to suck on for a while. Then I put them back in their box and put them away for him for a few more years until he was ready as my grandmother had instructed. “You can suck on them whenever you come over to visit me,” I promised him, and he seemed satisfied.

  “There’s my baby,” said Ethan, delighted, when he walked in and found Atlas on the floor playing with the stacking cups. He scooped him up. More squeals of delight. Atlas thought everyone loved him because everyone he met did. “What happened here? Janey, you have made some very good progress. Unless you really did kidnap him this time. You didn’t kidnap him, did you?”

  “Jill came over. She wants to go to the wedding tomorrow. She apologized but not entirely. She said she’d share but not entirely. She said she needs lots of babysitting help. She was really annoying but not entirely. Then she said she and Dan needed some alone time.”

  “Ballsy,” said Ethan.

  “Indeed.”

  “So we get Atlas.”

  “Indeed,” I said happily. We settled in with Atlas between us on the floor to watch the ballgame and eat yet more pizza because that was what there was.

  “Jill learned to share,” offered Ethan during one of the commercials.

  “I guess so. Or learned that she has no other choice.”

  “You learned to forgive,” he somewhere between stated and asked and reached over Atlas as he did so and cupped the back of my head with his hand.

  “Working on it,” I said.

  “You learned you can never lose this child—”

  “Maybe.”

  “Because he will always be in your life—”

  “Maybe.”

  “Because that’s what family means—”

  “Maybe.”

  “And because you are a very good mother and a very good friend and a very, very good person.”

  “Are you trying to make me cry?” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Ethan begged off early. Wedding setup (the guys’ job) started earlier than getting Katie dressed (ours). Katie came home, fairly floating, and then Jill, less so. It used to be that we sat on the floor together when we were having silly evenings or intimate ones or when we were watching Atlas play. Now we did it because Jill had taken all our furniture, but it conjured those evenings nonetheless. I couldn’t decide whether this recollection made me feel happy in the memory of it or sad in the vast gap that had opened up between then and now. Both I suppose. Sort of like the night before your best friend gets married—I was so happy for her, but also, I was pretty sad for me. There were so many ways in which this wedding was also loss.

  “So are you nervous?” Jill asked Katie.

  “No, actually.”

  “You should be. You hardly know him. Marriage is long.” Jill, indelicate as ever, but I checked my annoyance because, the farthest reaches of my memory insisted, this was what we’d always loved about Jill, her bluntness and honesty.

  “I know this is meant to be. I know it’s what God intends. I know Peter loves me, and I love him. I know he’s the perfect person for me and I for him.”

  “And you know sex hurts a lot, right?” said Jill.

  “Really?”

  “A lot. Your first time? It’s going to hurt like hell.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I put in. “It doesn’t hurt that much. You’ll use lots of lubricant. I already stashed some in the side pocket of your suitcase. Wedding present. You’ll be fine.”

  “Gross,” said Katie.

  “You better get used to this pretty quickly,” said Jill. “You only have about sixteen hours. You know how, right?”

  “Yes. I’m not stupid. I do read.”

  “You’re a Victorianist,” Jill pointed out. “It’s more fun than they let on, you know. But not the first time.”

  “Be on top,” I advised. “It’s easier.”

  “Don’t be nervous,” said Jill gravely. “Being nervous will make it harder.”

  “He’s a sweet guy, Katie.” I tried to sound reassuring. “You’ll figure it out together.”

  “You could have heavy petting,” suggested Jill, getting giggly. “You haven’t ever even touched an adult penis. And the man hasn’t had a nipple in his mouth since his mother’s. It took me three years to get from second base all the way home. You’re thinking of doing it in twenty minutes. Maybe you should delay actual sex for a night or two.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “Give you something to look forward to, give you a goal for your honeymoon.”

  “You have to have sex the night you get married,” Katie insisted.

  “According to God?” Jill asked.

  “According to everyone. Everyone knows you have sex the night you get married. I’m sure it will be great. Stop freaking me out. What about you? Are you nervous?”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because all of a sudden you’re not just back together but living with a guy who dumped you when he found out you were pregnant.”

  “He didn’t dump me,” said Jill, going dark again.

  “No, he didn’t even do you the courtesy of dumping you. He just disappeared and then reappeared without apology or explanation,” said Katie, whose near wifely status had evidently conferred on her some of Jill’s bluntness.

  “He’s given me both apology and explanation,” said Jill, but she didn’t seem sure. “He was scared and angry and felt manipulated. He needed to get away and finish being a kid, a college student. He thought he had years more of that freedom coming to him. But then he got a job, lived alone, realized he was lonely. It wasn’t a baby that was encroaching on his freedom; it was adulthood that was doing that. What, was I supposed to never f
orgive him and ruin all of our lives over some confusion and fear?”

  “But don’t you feel settled for?” said Katie. “He’s lonely, so he’ll come back to you. He has to be responsible anyway, so he might as well have a kid.”

  I thought Jill would explode or try to have everyone arrested again. But instead she just talked to us and got more and more sullen, so much so that soon we switched tactics and started reassuring.

  “I’m sure he loves you and Atlas, or he would have stayed gone,” said Katie.

  “If living with him doesn’t work out, you can always try living alone for a while or with your mom. You can always move back in with me,” I tried.

  She looked up. “You would still do that?”

  “What?”

  “Let me live with you again?”

  I shrugged and admitted it. It was embarrassing maybe. But it was also true.

  “Because you love Atlas?” said Jill.

  “Yes. And because I love you.”

  Then, finally, Jill apologized—entirely. “Weddings suck,” she said. Maybe this didn’t sound like an apology at first, but that’s what it was. “Dry cake, bad outfits, creepy relatives. That stupid chicken dance. Sappy, empty vows—honor, obey, forsake all others—what is that crap? No offense, Katie, but I’ve always thought it was such a load of shit.

  “Now, though, I don’t know. Things change. Love’s unstable. I would never obey anyone, obviously. But I do know we’ll always be together—that we’re stuck with each other—because you are Atlas’s family. My family,” said Jill. “This will never not be true. Other things will change. Everything else might change. But for better or for worse, this will never change.”

  Then it was late, and we had a big day tomorrow, and Jill claimed not to want to drive back to Daniel’s so late, but really I think she was just coming home, and since mine was the only bed left in the house, we all climbed into it and went to sleep.

  Forty

  The next day we had a wedding in the backyard. I stood at the front next to Katie and Jill and felt the sun and the wind and considered, because the bishop asked us to, what it all meant. This story ends with a death and a wedding. Does that make it tragedy or comedy? It ends with the dissolution of our little family, though not entirely, and the forming and reforming instead of two couples, possibly three. Does that mean it reifies traditional conceptions of family? Of narrative? It couldn’t possibly because none of us believe it. Because Jill and Katie and I are all moving, not in together anymore, but near each other like before. Because Jason and Lucas are having a baby. Because Ethan promises me that Atlas will always be my family and not, I think, just to make me feel better. Because we are all too in love with each other to be just friends. Because sometimes I hate them, but it doesn’t matter. Because who else would you forgive for having you arrested but family?

  But it’s also because this journey is not to death; this journey is not to marriage, and it’s not to couplehood or even parenthood. This journey begins with friendship and comes back to it again. My grandmother thought it all started with the baby in the Waldorf-Astoria, but that’s because for my grandmother, the story was all about me. I know better though. It’s the cracker aisle, meeting Jill, teaching Katie how to cook. The beginning of this story, Atlas’s story, is the three of us. And here, at the end, at the end of this part anyway, I looked out over how much bigger we’d become. Atlas was sitting on Jason’s lap, for the moment anyway more comfortable with him than with Daniel, and holding Lucas’s index finger in his tiny fist. Diane sat next to Lucas, trying to watch the wedding but having a hard time taking her eyes off her beautiful grandson. Dan sat next to her, sneaking occasional nervous glances at her beautiful grandson but having a hard time taking his eyes off Jill. My parents were there, happy for the first time in weeks, trying to keep Uncle Claude from rushing the altar. Ethan was there, smiling at me from somewhere between awe and wonder. It was a combination that worked for me. But none of that suggested it wasn’t a story from friendship and back again. In the beginning, in the end, it was our story, our wedding, we three.

  Katie was happy. Truly happy. You had only to look at her. Peter seemed indeed like he must be her One. It wasn’t based on the foundation of the years of friendship they shared, but maybe it was all the trial and error. Maybe it was God. Jill I was less sure about. Jill seemed angry and depressed and insane. I didn’t know that Dan would stay. I didn’t know that she would forgive him. I wasn’t sure she should. I wasn’t sure she could handle Atlas without more live-in help. So that’s a wash maybe? They cancel each other out? Katie’s surety versus Jill’s unknown? Katie’s joy versus Jill’s crazy?

  And me? I was what an unreliable narrator should be. Sadder but wiser and happier too. More skeptical, more injured, more in love. More tied in. Neither tragic nor comic. Not a happy ending exactly and certainly not a sad one. Ambiguous. With an emphasis on the why rather than the what, the what having been fairly clear all along. With an emphasis on the love rather than the anger, there being hefty helpings of both, this being family after all, but with love winning out in the end because that’s what it means to end. That’s how you know you’ve come to a close for the moment—because you’ve found the love again. You’ve reclaimed it, or it has—they have—you. This is why, finally, there are so many weddings at the ends of books. Not because the weddings are so much ends themselves but because it’s hard to go forward with the story after that much love. It’s too trite to use words to talk about it. It’s too momentous and extraordinary to return from to the mundane and the everyday. It is astonishing that after all the evidence and warnings to the contrary, such a leap of faith is possible. It asks us all what if you could love and be loved this much? In words, in spirit, in person even, it’s almost hard to believe. But believe it we must, we do, and so in the end, with our family, with our friends, with the ones who are both, with the ones we parent and choose to parent, with the ones we kiss on the mouth, with the ones we take in, with the ones who leave us, with the ones who come back, with the ones we remember, we make the leap. In the end, we leap; we always do.

  Read on for a sneak peek at Laurie Frankel's next novel

  THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS

  Available January 2017

  Once Upon a Time, Claude Was Born

  But first, Roo was born. Roosevelt Walsh-Adams. They had decided to hyphenate because—and in spite—of all the usual reasons but mostly so their firstborn could have his grandfather's name without sounding too presidential, which seemed to his parents like a lot of pressure for a six-pound, two-ounce, brand-new tiny human. First Roo was born, all pink and sticky and loud and miraculous. Then Ben was born. Then they debated and deliberated and decided just one more and therefore got twins—Rigel and Orion—who were no doubt going to voice hostility about their names when they became older than four, especially when Rigel found out he was named after the constellation's toe, but who for the moment were too little and too loud to care. The leap from two to four felt astronomical, so their parents had turned to the heavens.

  All of which was why, despite being a woman of considerable science, a disciple of logic and reason, a person grounded firmly in the right half of her right mind, and besides all that a doctor who knew better, Rosie Walsh was spending the fifteen minutes immediately preceding the kickoff of Claude dragging her bed from its spot on the wall into the middle of the room so that it faced east-west rather than north-south. The Talmud, her mother reported, was very clear that many sons were born to a man whose bed was facing north, and though Rosie doubted it sincerely, along with most of what the Talmud offered, she couldn't take the chance. She'd also quietly served salmon to her husband for lunch and, though of course they were adults, chocolate-chip cookies, German folklore prescribing red meat and salty snacks for men in need of heirs and afternoon delight for those desirous of daughters. The same website also suggested putting a wooden spoon under the bed to conceive a girl, and she did, then felt like an idiot and thr
ew it on the dresser then thought Penn would mock her—and rightly—if he saw it there so stashed it the only place close at hand: under the bed. Couldn't hurt.

  The sources, dubious and dubiouser, also recommended missionary position, and she was happy to oblige. Missionary position was, as far as she could tell, like vanilla ice cream: purported to be boring and chosen only by passionless, unimaginative, exhausted people but really the best one. She liked to look at Penn's face so close that it split into pieces like a modernist painting. She liked the length of his front pressed against the length of hers. She felt that people who needed to do it upside down and backward from behind—or who added candied bacon or smoked sea salt or pieces of raw cookies to their ice cream—were probably compensating for a product that was inferior to begin with.

  The dubious sources also recommended that the woman refrain from orgasm. But you could only take these things so far.

  Once upon a time, Dr. Rosalind Walsh and her husband had had sex that started spontaneously and uncontrollably, sex that demanded itself, sex they had for any number of reasons but also because they really had no choice. Now, with four sons and two jobs, the sex was better but less inevitable. More evitable? Proceeded, in any case, by light planning and a conversation rather than the tearing off of clothing and slamming into walls. Rosie was working the night shift at the hospital that week. Penn worked from home. They ate lunch, and then he did some research for his book while she worked out, and then she got a spoon, pulled the bed into the center of the room, and took off all her clothes.

  Penn sat on the edge of the bed, still wearing his reading glasses, still holding a highlighter in one hand and an article on World War II food shortages in the other. “The last thing I want to do is dissuade you from what's about to go down.” He put away his article, took off his glasses and then his clothes, and climbed in next to her. “But you realize this is how we got into this mess in the first place.”