CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In those early, timid years, she dreams of having a baby at the beach. She dreams of her daughter.
Marcella wants to walk the sand with her and show her the seashells—hunt for coral and beach glass among the broken fragments of stone. She figures eventually they’ll move to town—somewhere central, where she can stroll the baby everywhere. Dress her up in a little outfit and carry her on her hip for the whole world to see. Take her to a coffee shop, browse at their local bookstore.
Her little best friend. Her mini me.
They get pregnant quickly, once they decide. They are living with Sylvia, saving money to move out on their own, but when she gets pregnant, it isn’t even a question: They will stay. Marcella knows nothing about being a mother, and even though she doesn’t believe Sylvia knows much more, moving out of her home feels unthinkable. They’ll stay with her mother, they’ll save money, and they’ll have the baby there.
Sylvia has the top floor in those days, and Marcella and Dave the room that is still theirs today. There is no back house, not yet.
Dave and Sylvia get along—better, in many ways, than Sylvia and Marcella ever have. They don’t have a history to contend with,to interrupt the harmony and flow of the present. Sylvia cooks, and Dave fixes things, and Marcella fills in the gaps—she buys paper towels and batteries and power-washes the deck when it needs it. She starts to make Malibu her adult home.
Lauren is born in the dead of winter, during one of the coldest Februarys Los Angeles has ever recorded. Marcella packs up a bunting for her—part puffer jacket, part hooded blanket. The baby spends four days in the hospital with jaundice and is returned to Marcella’s arms looking pink and perfect.
“Lauren,” Marcella says, without consulting anyone, not even Dave. “My baby’s name is Lauren.”
She loves the name, always has. It reminds her of normalcy and femininity—but still hearty. She cringes at the popular names surrounding her—Bethany and Tiffany. They all sound like accessories stores, but not Lauren. Lauren is dignified.
Sylvia visits in the hospital. She is uncharacteristically doting—asking Marcella what she needs, smoothing her hair down. Marcella cannot remember a time, except for early childhood, when they got along better, and she finds herself caught between affection at the possibility that Sylvia is recalling her own tender, lonely days of early motherhood, and jealousy that her new baby has been able to elicit this reaction from her mother.
They never speak about Marcella’s father, not because it’s a sore subject but because there isn’t much to say. There was no email back then, no iPhone, no way to trace and link every encounter.
To her knowledge Sylvia has never regretted the affair that led to Marcella, and Marcella, for all her issues with Sylvia, has not missed having a father as much as one might think.
It isn’t until Lauren is born that Marcella begins to long for adad—not for herself, at least, not entirely, but for her child. She wants Lauren to have a full and complete family. A grandfather to toss her in the air, sing to her, have her nap on his big, wide chest. She doesn’t say this to Sylvia, but she tells Dave, late one night in the hospital room, when it’s just the two of them—the baby napping in the nursery down the hall.
“Do you think I should try to find my father?” she asks him.
He is perched on her hospital bed, and he touches her cheek. “Is that what you want?”
She nods.
“Then we’ll do it.”
But they don’t, because she doesn’t remember. Such are the demands of new motherhood. They bring the baby home to a house full of balloons and flowers. Sylvia has stocked the fridge with food. She’s in the kitchen wearing a “Kiss the Grandma” apron when they arrive. She sets out salads and egg sandwiches, and Dave makes them all plates while Marcella takes Lauren outside.
Marcella holds the baby to her chest, and the little one curls up, as if trying to burrow back under her skin.
“You smell that?” she tells her. “This is the beach.”
Marcella does not find new motherhood hard, only challenging. The way a nice long run is after a day on a plane. She feels energized, activated—fulfilled for the first time in her life. This is where she belongs. Here, with her child.
Dave goes back to work quickly, but Marcella doesn’t miss him as much as she thought she might. Even after the first few months, when Sylvia begins to dip back into her old life, starts traveling again, Marcella isn’t lonely. She doesn’t need anyone but Lauren.
But when Sylvia is in town Marcella tries to include her in their unit—make it a threesome.
“Come with us,” she tells her mother.
They leave their shoes at the door and take buckets down to the beach. As Lauren gets older she hunts for treasure by the shore. Marcella cannot imagine anything better than this—her mother and her daughter and the edge of the ocean.
“She’s spunky,” Sylvia tells her. “She’s going to be a little wild, just like her G-money,” she says. Sylvia had named herself that, refusing to be called “Grandma.”
“She can be whatever she wants to be,” Marcella says, and she means it.
And sure enough, as Lauren grows so does her spirit. But it’s not just in size, it’s in direction. It grows away from Marcella.
Lauren is adventurous. She no longer wants to pick up shells with a shovel but instead wants to lay on a slab of foam and dive headfirst into waves with her father. She wants to run—faster, farther than Marcella is capable of. Lauren begins to leave her.
