They were so close Jess could have pushed the tangled hair out of Clara’s face to see her more clearly, the way she would have done once upon a time without even thinking, but she was afraid to touch her now. Or maybe she didn’t know how, now that their once-casual intimacy was a long-ago dream. And who was Jess now? Who was Clara?
But Clara was Clara, uninhibited as ever. She closed the distance, enveloping Jess in her arms for the first time in so long, such a stabilizing force after all these weeks with her universe in pieces. Jess could feel the tension leave her body as she let herself be held, and she returned that hug, the space betweenyouandme,hereandthere,nowandthenobliterated.
“Well, now you can tell him,” Jess said when they finally let go, stepping back, recovering her senses, still trying to straighten out her haphazard appearance, adjust her twisted skirt. “I’m really real.” She looked around for Nick, but he was still inside, like the moment in a play before the curtain goes up.
Clara had moved on, embracing Adam and the baby in his arms. “Oh my god, Jess,” she was saying. “Look what you made.” She was crying. “Look what you made,” she said again. She wanted to hold Bella, Jess could see that, and she signalled to Adam to pass her over.
“Jess, you have adaughter,” Clara said, her hair falling over the baby’s face. It was mind-bending, this was true.
“And this is Adam,” Jess said, inviting him in from his awkward place outside their circle.
Clara looked up from the baby, who was gripping her index finger. She said, “Adam I know all about. This one, on the other hand—” planting a kiss on Bella’s bald head (her black newborn hair had fallen away over the last six weeks when Jess wasn’t looking), “is still to be discovered.”
“You know all about me?” asked Adam, looking uncomfortable. He knew all about Clara, but perhaps he hadn’t expected the arrangement, the scrutiny, to go both ways.
“We’re Facebook friends. And I’ve filed away every single detail Jess has ever told me about you.” Clara said, sniffing the baby.
“And it’s all been good!” Jess cut in, trying to smooth things over.
Clara said, “Mostly.” She planted her lips on the baby’s forehead. “I would have registered objections otherwise.” Finally she looked up. “You’re the only reason I joined that loathsome website,” she said, staring Adam in the eye. “I had to check you out.” Then she handed him the baby and hugged Jess again, her wild hair everywhere.
“I never realized you were so vigilant,” said Jess when they drew apart again, feeling pleased. Pleased about Adam and Facebook, pleased that she’d been on Clara’s mind.
“Just keeping tabs. You’re prolific.” It was true. Jess had handily signed up for Facebook just three days before Adam proposed and her life ever since had been a montage of engagement, wedding, honeymoon, real estate, and baby-bump photos, right up to the birth and those precious photos of them immediately after Bella’s arrival, bowled over, dumbfounded, and stunned. Though soon after, reality had set in and she was less prolific. The chaos of her life since then had been so much harder to compose, but maybe all this was difficult to tell from the outside.
Clara led the way into the house, where they were welcomed by her mom and her boyfriend, as well as Clara’s sisters, Diane and Julie, whose kids were running in and out of doors in a blur as Jess sat down to feed the baby again. It was hard to imagine Bella ever turning into one of thosechildren. And there were Clara’s cousins, one whom Jess remembered and another she didn’t. Then a woman with an English accent Jess had mistaken as one of Nick’s relations.
But Nick didn’t have any relations, or at least none who’d seen fit to make the trip. It was only him, and he was so much older than Jess had expected, older than he’d looked in the photo Clara sent. Jess didn’t understand why Clara hadn’t mentioned that she was basically marrying somebody’s dad. Literally: he had a son, he told Jess when she introduced him to Arabella.
“I’ve changed my fair share of nappies,” he said, averting his eyes from a particularly nasty one Jess was changing on the floor. Clara’s mother was hovering at first—she’d told Jess she could change the baby upstairs; what she really meant was not to do it on the carpet. But Jess was so tired, the change-mat would suffice, and she didn’t know where Adam had disappeared to. There was only Nick, who wouldn’t be offering much help even with the experience he claimed.
“How old’s your son?” she asked, making conversation, fastening the fresh diaper and snapping on a onesie.
“Twenty-seven,” he told her. “He’s got babies of his own.”
Clara had mentioned none of this.
He said, “Looking forward to giving it all another round.”
“Another round?”
“Clare wants it all, the baby thing.”
Jess said, “Clare?”
Nick said, “My betrothed.” He was trying to be cute, and here was Clara now coming into the room with Adam.
Jess got up off the floor and handed the baby to her husband. “He calls you Clare,” she said to Clara accusingly. Howcould a person marry somebody who didn’t even know their own name?
“A lot of people call me Clare. It’s more common over there.” Clara had grabbed Jess’s hand and she drew her down the hall into the enclosed back staircase, shutting the door at the bottom. They were almost in darkness, and the sounds of the party were far away.
They sat down on a step side by side, Clara leaning in close. “Your boobs are unreal,” she said. They were, but most people were polite enough not to comment. “Can I touch them?” Clara asked. “That’s not weird, right? You know why I’m asking. Scientific inquiry.” Clara had always been the one with the huge boobs; Jess’s tended toward unremarkable.
“Of course.” They were right back to the way they’d always been, like no time had passed at all.
Clara put her hand on Jess’s left breast and squeezed. She was just one of the many people who’d done so in the last six weeks—midwives, lactation consultants, a public health nurse, the baby herself with her tiny, grabby fists. “They’re so soft,” she said.
“Because I just fed her,” said Jess. “When we first got here, they felt like rocks.”
