“We made a person,” Cam had said to Eleanor, the day of Alison’s birth. “It’s the ultimate creative act.”
A few months after Cam and Coco’s wedding came the news. The girls must have known for a while, but kept it to themselves, recognizing that it would hit Eleanor hard. It was Toby—for whom no filter existed now between what you thought and what you said—who finally told her.
“Coco’s getting fat,” he said one day, when she’d picked them up at the farm that Sunday. She’d stayed in the car till they came out, as usual. No glimpse of Cam or Coco at these moments.
Coco, fat? This was hard to imagine. In the back seat, Eleanor could feel the tension in Ursula as she jabbed Toby, the code that meantSay no more.
“Last I looked, Coco was pretty skinny,” Eleanor said. She delivered the words like a friendly defense of her former babysitter, but there was strategy in what she offered, of course.
“Skinny legs,” Toby said. “Fat stomach.”
“Maybe she’s going to have a baby,” Eleanor suggested. If she kept her tone level and calm, they might tell her the rest.
The girls didn’t bite, but Toby did.
“Baby brother,” he said. “Maybe sister. I hope it’s a boy.”
From the back, she could feel the girls draw in their breath, waiting for an explosion—that part of Eleanor capable of spinning out into Crazyland.
“That’s wonderful,” she told them, her voice level. “Whatever sex it is, you’re going to love being a big brother, Tobes.
“And you’ll love it, too, girls,” Eleanor went on. Hands steady on the wheel, ten o’clock and two. Eyes on the road. “I know you’ll be wonderful big sisters to the new baby, same as you already are.”
Silence. The three of them just sat there: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
“So, when is it due?”
This must have served as a signal to Ursula that all was well. Or at least, not as bad as she might have anticipated. “October,” Ursula told her. “Dad said we never had a leaf season baby in our family before.”
Our family.Not Eleanor’s. But theirs.
“And you’ll have all Thanksgiving vacation to get to know the baby,” she offered. “Perfect timing.”
67.
The Last Bath
It was Friday night, five days after she learned about Coco’s pregnancy. It had been a few weeks since Eleanor had stopped by Timmy Pouliot’s apartment, but that morning she’d called him. “I was hoping I could see you.” She didn’t usually put it that way, but the news of Coco’s baby had left her wanting her bath.
It was all so familiar to her—as, once, her home with Cam had been. The Farrah poster and the beer signs and the upstairs neighbors’ baby (now a toddler) that never stopped crying. That night, it suddenly all seemed pathetic. Her ex-husband was remarried to a beautiful young woman and training for a new career. They were having a baby. And what was she doing with her life? Designing greeting cards and taking a lot of baths under a poster of Farrah Fawcett in an apartment full of pizza boxes, with a man who listened to heavy metal music and played horseshoes.
She remembered a movie she saw back in her brief days at college,The Last Picture Show.Specifically, she was thinking about the character of the lonely, sex-starved coach’s wife, played by Cloris Leachman, who has an affair with a boy on her husband’s team, played by Timothy Bottoms. At first he’s excited to be having passionate sex with an older woman, but later the relationship is nothing but an awkward embarrassment. Cloris Leachman is pleading with him not to leave her. He walks out the door, with Cybill Shepherd waiting for him.
“I’ll be forty before you know it,” Eleanor told Timmy from her place in the tub.
“Is that supposed to sound old?” he said.
“How would I ever introduce you to my children?” she said. The words had come out faster than she intended. She could see their effect on his face.
“You’re ashamed of me,” Timmy said. “I guess it comes down to that. Your ex-husband doesn’t worry that his kids will stop loving him because he’s shacked up with a twenty-one-year-old. But you still feel like you need their okay?”
He was right about that. But Eleanor knew she wouldn’t get off as easily with her children as Cam had with Coco. She could see Al’s face, sizing up Timmy Pouliot. Ursula would be more kind, but privately, she would judge him. She’d judge Eleanor too. What Ursula wanted was a normal life, free of drama. A regular boyfriend, the kind who wore a suit and tie and carried a briefcase and drove a minivan, not a Harley.
“You don’t need a woman with three children,” she told him. “You should have your own kids. With someone young.”
“And what makes you so darned sure you know what I need?” he said.
“You know it’s true. You’d love to have kids.”
