It was strange for Clara to see Jess living next door to somebody else, a worn path between their back doors. Perhaps she and Nick should have come across town a little sooner, but it had seemed like such a long journey on the transit map, and they didn’t have a car anymore. It had also been difficult for Clara to conjure the requisite enthusiasm for Jess and Adam’s next step up the property ladder just as it was becoming clearer that she and Nick might never be able to purchase a home anywhere. The housing market had gone bananas.
In the backyard, Adam was showing Nick the mess that was the garage, the spot where the raccoons were getting in through a hole in the roof. They’d paid over half a million dollars for all this. Clara watched them from the window as they sipped their beer, two men paired off without any say in the matter, almost nothing in common except that their wives had found themselves in the same room on a curious night more than a decade ago.
Jess followed Clara’s gaze. “So Nick hasn’t found anything yet?”
Clara tried not to prickle; the question had been innocent. “Oh, you know,” she answered, even though Jess didn’t.
“But at least you’re working,” said Jess, stirring the sauce for the pasta. Clara now had a six-month contract running educational programs at the museum across the road from the university residence where she and Jess were living when they first met. Clara had had to scramble to get this job because she wasn’t a teacher, but her affiliations were impressive and her references good. She had done more fieldwork than many of her colleagues, even if she lacked that essential graduate degree. But she’d been hoping for something permanent. And the pay wasn’t much; it just barely covered the bills in the condo they were subletting, a place with bland beige walls and a balcony you couldn’t sit on without inhaling exhaust fumes. None of it was really ideal.
“It’s just a contract,” said Clara.
“But it’s all you need,” said Jess. “Until the baby comes.” She turned back to the sink, where she was dealing with the pasta, so she couldn’t see how it made Clara uncomfortable, this naming of the situation.The baby. As though Jess were talking about the season, the weather, the inevitability of heavy traffic in late afternoon. Other than Nick, Jess—and presumably, Adam—was the only one who knew. Clara hadn’t even told her family yet. It was all very early, still not fit for ordinary conversation.
Jess turned around again. “I have to tell you now, while they’re still outside.” Nick and Adam, she meant. Her tone was urgent, confidential. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “I mean, I’m pregnant too.”
Clara felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She said, “How?”
“Just. Adam doesn’t even know yet. I mean, he won’t be surprised. We’ve been trying. I found out this morning, and I knew you were coming. I wasn’t sure if I was going to tellyou, to tell you first, but I had to. We’ll be pregnant together. We’ll be on mat leave together.” Jess was practically dancing, waving the wooden spoon.
“I don’t get a mat leave,” said Clara. Six-month contracts didn’t come with a mat leave. She shifted on her stool and sent a Tupperware tower toppling, which made Bella shriek. Clara got down on the floor to make things right. To hide.
Jess called over the counter, “But you know what I mean.” She sounded disappointed. And all Clara could think of was that Jess had gone and jinxed everything. She tried to stack the tower again, but Bella kept taking the pieces and hurling them across the room. “Clara?”
Clara reluctantly returned to her feet. Jess was waiting, waiting for her to say something, anything, except what she was really thinking. That the symmetry was too tidy, as if they were tempting fate. That Jess should have known better—but then really, how could she? Jess didn’t know what it was like for pregnancy to be so fraught, literally unspeakable. She didn’t know that if Clara dared to say the words, to truly acknowledge her situation, then all of this could be taken from her, and while this might be illogical, wasn’t all of it? To be standing here staking everything she had on a microscopic embryo. All of it was perilous—how did anybody ever manage to be born?
Jess looked concerned now, so what Clara said was, “This is incredible.” And it really was beyond belief, to be here together after all these years, in the same place at the same time, finally, and now to both be pregnant. She could feel this, on top of everything else she was feeling, which was a lot.
Clara had abandoned the Tupperware so Bella was yelling, and Jess came around the counter, got on the floor, and gathered her daughter while organizing the plastic containers—allat once, in a feat of dexterity. “But you can’t say anything. I don’t want Adam to know I told you first. But how could I not tell you when you’re right here?”
“You have to tell him.” Clara couldn’t imagine keeping such a thing from Nick.
“Oh, I will,” Jess said. “But he would have made me wait. It’s early, he’s cautious. But I needed to tell you first.” She stood up with Bella hanging off her body.
“I won’t say anything,” Clara reassured her. “What would I say?”
“Oh, no!” Jess said. Behind her on the stove the sauce was boiling, splattering. She popped Bella back down and rushed to turn off the burner, knocking the wooden spoon off the counter. She picked it up off the floor and tossed it into the sink, selected another from the jar on the counter and stirred the pot. Then she wiped the splatters off the counter, the wall, and the floor. “Never, ever get white tiles,” she called, disappearing as she got down on her knees, then popping up again. “They’re a disaster.” She wiped her brow and looked around. “There was a method to my madness,” she said, “but I seem to have lost it.”
“I know what that’s like,” Clara was saying just as Nick and Adam came inside.
“We’re never buying a house,” Nick said. “They’ve got raccoons in the roof.”
“The garage roof,” Jess clarified. “It’s not like it’s our roof.”
“You gave the raccoons their own roof,” said Clara.
“That’s how it works out here in the suburbs,” said Adam. He didn’t know, Clara was thinking. His wife was pregnant and he didn’t know, but Clara did. He scooped up Bella from the ruins of her Tupperware city. “Raccoons are actually the least of our concerns with this wild animal on the prowl.” Helifted her in the air and blew a raspberry onto her belly, making her squeal.
“We used duct tape,” said Clara. “Back when Jess and I lived together. We had squirrels then—remember?”
“And that actuallywasour roof,” said Jess, finally putting the lid on the pot. She pushed a cutting board across the counter with a serrated knife and a fresh baguette. “Could you?” she asked Clara, who was happy to start slicing, to focus on something other than Jess’s news, now the elephant in the room, in her brain. “Clara and I used to literally live in a hovel. Haven’t we come a long, long way?”
“Speak for yourself,” said Nick, pouring another drink for himself and Adam. “Who knows where we’re going to end up?”
“You could let us live in your garage,” Clara proposed to Adam and Jess. “With the raccoons.”
“Might be hard to climb up to the roof in your condition,” said Adam.
“Couldn’t I use the door?” Clara asked.
