Their eyes were empty.“Oh.How fascinating.Tell me, what’s that like?”
“It’s a little like selling anything else,” Stevie told them.
“Oh!I can’t pretend to know what that’s like,” they said, laughing because they’d never had to put their lives on the line.They didn’t know what it meant to be broke.
After the wedding, Stevie didn’t hear from her daughter for more than two weeks.Stevie knew she and Sam were on their honeymoon on some island she’d never heard of in some ocean far away, and she didn’t know how to contact her.At work, she practiced thinking,I don’t have a daughter.I don’t have a family.She wanted to be able to sit with this comfortably.She wanted to be able to reckon with her own future.
But when Joni returned from her honeymoon, she called Stevie and asked if she wanted to go to lunch.Stevie felt a crush of love for her daughter and agreed right away.She left work at eleven thirty with no plans to return till one thirty at the earliest.If they asked her what had taken her so long, she resolved to quit.She hated it anyway.
Joni and Stevie met at a quaint brunch spot in Echo Park, not far from the lake.Joni arrived a few minutes after Stevie, making a grand entrance, her white dress flowing out behind her sculpted, tanned legs.Stevie had never had the money to make herself so beautiful.She hardly knew what Pilates was.She stood to welcome her daughter with a hug and tell her how gorgeous she looked.
“Thanks, Mom.”Joni smiled nervously and sat down, crossing and uncrossing her legs.
Stevie knew something was wrong right away.But she played the part at first, asking questions about the honeymoon and how Joni was feeling now that the wedding was over.“Relieved but sad,” Joni said.“But mostly relieved.”She laughed.
Stevie could hardly touch her sandwich.She was terrified of why Joni had brought her here and what Joni planned to tell her.She could feel it, dangling over her, like a sword about to fall.She bit her tongue to keep from demanding that Joni tell her right away.
“Listen, Mom,” Joni said, wadding up a napkin in her fist, “I wanted to tell you.Sam and I are going to try for a baby soon.”
Stevie’s heart nearly exploded.Is this what she wants to tell me?Is this why she’s so nervous?
“Honey, that’s fantastic!”she said.“You’ll be a wonderful mother.”
Joni bit her lower lip.It was like she couldn’t look up at Stevie any longer.“I hope so.I’m nervous.I mean, I know how rough motherhood was on you.Being single.And, you know, I was talking to Sam, and we were really curious about my dad.”
Stevie felt like she had stones in her stomach.She leaned back in her chair, gaping at Joni.“I’ve told you that he was never a part of my life,” she said.
“Right.I know that.I know what you’ve told me,” Joni said.“But Sam’s wondering if maybe that’s not the entire story?I mean, I know you’ve told me what you want to tell me.But we want to know more.I want to know more.Especially as we move into this new role as parents.”
Stevie thought she was going to throw up.It was clear that Sam had corrupted Stevie, that he’d told her that her relationship with her mother wasn’t enough.Maybe he’d told Joni that her mother had been lying to her and couldn’t be trusted.
“Your father was never even really my boyfriend,” Stevie explained.“We met in New York and hung out for a few months.Then one day, he was gone.I have no way of getting in touch with him.”
More than that, Stevie would be mortified to contact him.He’d left her in a lurch, pregnant and in love with him.Of course, she hadn’t let him know that she was pregnant.She hadn’t let him know that she was in love with him.She hadn’t told him so much.He’d thought she was a fun-loving twenty-year-old musician.He’d thought she was entirely different from any person in his wealthy universe.
By the end of lunch, it was clear to Joni that Stevie didn’t plan to tell her the identity of her father, not yet.But Stevie knew that Joni had no plans to give up.She wasn’t sure what was possible in the world of the very wealthy.Maybe Joni was going to get a DNA test and figure out his identity herself?Perhaps she was going to bond with her father and her other family, leaving Stevie abandoned?
Stevie hugged her daughter goodbye and felt her stiff in her arms.“Honey, please understand.It was only ever us, remember?We were all each other needed.In my mind, you never had a dad.”
But Joni was reticent.She said goodbye and left Stevie on the sidewalk in front of the brunch spot, racing down the road to her car.Stevie began to shake.She called work and told them that she’d gotten food poisoning at lunch and couldn’t come in.
For more than a month, Stevie didn’t hear from Joni.She threw herself into work, reading, and watching bad television shows with many seasons.She had never been lonelier in her life.Sometimes she looked at photographs from Joni’s wedding, at images of herself and her daughter in fancy dresses, and marveled that it had really happened.Her memories of it were fluttering away.
And then one day, Joni called her and told her she was pregnant.“I figured you’d want to know,” she said.
Stevie burst into tears of joy.“Honey, that’s fantastic!Oh, I’m so happy for you!”
At this, Joni melted the slightest bit.“We’re happy.We’re thrilled.Oh, Mom.”She let out a sob.“Mom, I don’t know what to say.”
Joni drove to Stevie’s apartment, where Stevie made her a grilled cheese sandwich, just as she used to, and demanded Joni tell her everything.Joni described her emotions, her fear, and her visions for the future.She ate a full grilled cheese and then asked for another, which Stevie happily supplied.She hadn’t seen her daughter so ravenous since she’d met Sam.She wished she could tell her daughter how little she liked Sam and how she saw Sam as a wedge between them.But she didn’t want to push her further away.
Two weeks after that beautiful day of grilled cheeses, Joni called with news.She’d miscarried.Her voice was dead.There were no tears.Stevie asked if she wanted to come over or if Stevie should come by, but Joni said no.She wanted to be alone.Stevie sat at the edge of her bed and stared at the wall for a full hour, then reminded herself that miscarriages happened all the time.They were typical and not proof that anyone was unhealthy.
She texted her daughter to say she loved her, and Joni didn’t text back.
Over the next few months, Joni miscarried again and again.A few times, Joni called to say she was pregnant, and they recreated the joy they’d once felt.But mostly, Joni now called to say, “It happened again,” and insinuated that she still wanted to know her father's identity.
“I’ve been thinking about him more and more,” Joni said over the phone one afternoon.It was raining outside, buckets of rain, more rain than they’d ever gotten in Los Angeles.“With each miscarriage, it boggles my mind that we’ve been living separate lives all this time.Life is precious, Mom.I want to contact him.I want to know him.”
