“Well, I for one think it’s great that you’re allowing your creative side to blossom. You were always such an inventive child.” The stovetop knob clicked as Bobby pushed it in to ignite the starter. The kitchen smelled briefly of gas before the fire caught and hissed beneath the pan.
“You must be confusing me with your other child.”
Bobby swirled olive oil into the pan.
Alice motioned toward the oil decorating the pan. “You’re learning.”
“And you’re deflecting.”
“We both have our talents.”
“Yours apparently are of the narrative variety.”
After that, browning the meatballs required all their attention.
“It looks good,” Bobby said optimistically when they sat down to eat. She scooped a bite of pasta onto her fork, trying to hide the flinch as the sauce hit her tongue.
“That bad?”
“No, it’s good. Maybe a little...peppery? Or salty? Too acidic? Or bland? Maybe it just needs more cheese.” She grated enough cheese into her bowl to feed a starving writer.
Alice twirled her own pasta onto a fork, piercing the meatball with its tines. “What are you talking about? It’s fine. Good, even.”
“Oh, how you flatter me,” Bobby said. “So, how’s work?”
“Good,” Alice said, relieved that she’d managed to weather the inquisition into her stories. “I did that event for the mayor’s office. Two engagement parties and the biggest baby shower you’ve ever seen. It was a baby monsoon.” Funny how when you put it in exaggerated terms it no longer sounded appealing. Then again, the whole celebration had been unappealing. Often, there was a direct correlation between the grandiosity of the party and the pretensions of the people throwing it. The bigger the wedding, the more the couple seemed to have to prove. The grander the baby shower, the clearer it was that the couple was both terrified and ambivalent about becoming parents, not that Alice worked many baby showers.
In turn, Bobby told Alice a story about a new family who had visited her practice, how the parents came in distressed that their teething son hadn’t defecated in ten days. “I explained to them that anything between ten poops a day and one every ten days was perfectly normal.”
“That’s a one-hundred-poop differential and also not a great topic of conversation for dinner.”
“See,” Bobby said. “You’ve always been funny. I bet that comes in handy as a writer.”
“I’m not a writer.” Alice sighed. She was not going to get out of this conversation. “I’m, I don’t know what you would call it. An intuitor, I guess.”
“As a writer, you should know that’s not a real word.”
“Do you want me to explain it or not?”
Bobby gestured that she was backing off.
“It started with Gabby. She was so sad.” Alice told her about Gabby and Maria and the hummingbird tale, Rebecca and her friends, how she’d discovered something essential about each of them that they couldn’t see in themselves and how, in exposing it to them, they felt ready to embrace the love they’d always wanted.
Alice waited for Bobby to laugh. She waited for her mother to suggest therapy. She waited for her mother to offer reason, arguing it was all coincidence. Bobby did none of these things.
She stared intently at Alice.
“It’s not inexplicable,” Bobby finally said. “You were raised in a household of love. It makes sense that you’d be able to impart some of it unto others, especially since you never want to keep any for yourself.”
They’d had this conversation too many times to count. Bobby constantly worried about her daughter being alone despite having seen firsthand the toll Alice’s past relationships had taken on her body and ministering her back to health. If Alice let herself be fully vulnerable, Bobby knew her daughter would experience a love like she and Paul had. A love that ended, Alice had contended. A love that persisted, Bobby had insisted. It was the only thing they argued about regularly.
For the moment, Bobby seemed to have no more desire to repeat their tired refrain than Alice did. Instead, she said, “Tell me how it works.”
Alice explained that it started with an image, one she didn’t understand until she finished writing and the metaphor revealed itself. The stories seemed to run through her rather than out of her, like she was the pipe rather than the spout. The medium, not the oracle.
“And you don’t believe that’s magic?” Bobby asked. Her face softened, and she stared at Alice with an expression of awe that seemed strange coming from someone who had borne her. “Can you write one for me?” she asked without an ounce of sarcasm, possibly even with hope.
“What? You don’t want to fall in love again.”
