Chapter 16. Seth
Gloria and Emily’s house is the kind of place people move to LA for—a mid-century modern on a Silver Lake hillside overlooking Hollywood, complete with palm trees, a pool, and the smell of orange blossoms on the breeze. Inside is just what you would expect from a pair of set designers. The bathrooms alone are more beautiful than any room in my entire condo.
“You made it,” Gloria exclaims as I walk into the backyard, where about twenty intimidatingly stylish people have congregated around a long table surrounded by electric pink bougainvillea. I scan the crowd for Molly. She’s not here. I dislike how much this disappoints me.
I hold up two sparkly gift bags—one from me, and one from Marian—to the mothers-to-be. “For you.”
“We said no presents!” Emily objects. “Childbearing is so commercialized. It’s sickening. All the twins are getting are cribs and some swaddling cloths.”
“No diapers?” I ask innocently.
“Nope.” She laughs. “I hope that’s what you brought me.”
“One’s from me and one’s from Marian. She was so bummed she couldn’t make it.”
“Ooooh, open the one from Marian first!” Gloria says.
I point to the purple bag. “That one.”
Emily fishes inside and then bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, that tramp.”
“What is it?” Gloria asks.
Emily holds up two tiny Cubs jerseys with RUIZ on the back.
“Well Lordy me,” Gloria says, shaking her head. “I would never have imagined she could be so devious.”
“They’re signed,” I say sheepishly.
“What’s in yours?” Emily asks, grabbing the other bag. “It better not be matching hats.”
She pulls out a copy of Goodnight Moon.
“Awww, that’s more like it,” Gloria says.
“It was my favorite growing up,” I say. “I can’t wait to read it to my kids someday.”
Gloria kisses my cheek.
“You’re cute, ya know that?”
“It’s my only good quality.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Seth. It’s always a delight.”
“I’m glad I could come too. It’s great to see your place in person. It looked fabulous on Insta but wow. That pool. If I lived here, I would do nothing but lounge on a swan float drinking pi?a coladas.”
“Did you bring your swimsuit?” she asks.
“I wasn’t aware this was a baby shower slash pool party.”
“This is LA,” she retorts. “Every party is a slash pool party. And don’t worry, you can skinny-dip. LaCroix?”
I accept a coconut-flavored sparkling water that tastes deliciously of sunscreen.
Gloria’s sister, Eliana, emerges from inside the house, with Molly in tow.
Wow.
Molly looks so beautiful with the sun glinting off her curtain of dark hair that I have to look away. My days of admiring Molly’s beauty should be decidedly behind me. This is just a reflex.
“Elle!” I cry, getting up to give her a hug. “I had no idea you lived here.”
“Oh God, I don’t,” she says with an exaggerated shiver. “Never ever. I’m in New York with the sane people. I just flew in to host this shindig.”
“And what a host you are. So positive and full of joy,” Gloria says. “And only forty minutes late.”
“Sorry, I overslept. But just wait ’til you see what I have in store for you. You’ll wish I were less fun.”
Molly slings an arm around Elle’s shoulders. “Miss Gutierrez here is always fun. You should have seen her last night at the bar. Threw back like ten tequilas and took home a twenty-four-year-old Australian surfer.”
“Um, you matched me on tequilas and spent all night flirting with a fireman,” Elle retorts. “Did you get his number?”
“Been texting with him all morning,” Molly chirps. “We’re going out for drinks tomorrow at that new cocktail bar on Fig.”
I try not to wince at the idea of Molly in the buff embrace of a heroic firefighter. Or in the buff embrace of anyone. The buff embraces in which Molly chooses to spend her time are most certainly not my business.
“Don’t brag,” Eliana says. “Anyway, now that I’m here to be master of ceremonies, shall we begin?”
“Do we have to play games?” Gloria asks. “Can’t we just sit here in the shade and eat cupcakes and have civilized conversation?”
“My dear sister, I did not spend upward of twenty minutes on TheBump.co researching baby shower games for us to be civilized.”
“I agree,” Emily says. “Let’s see what horrors Elle has concocted.”
Eliana is a notoriously sardonic person who might have out-cool-girl’ed Molly in high school, were she not three years younger. She is now an AR executive for an indie music label. She has neck tattoos. (I am equally scared of and aroused by neck tattoos.) That she was tasked with planning a baby shower is shocking.
“One moment, please,” Elle says. She disappears around the side of the house and comes back dragging a giant plastic bin full of balloons.
“Oh God,” an elegant man in short shorts and a sheer caftan exclaims. “Are those water balloons?”
“Correct,” Elle says. “Our first game is called Baby Bumper Cars.”
“Dare I ask?” Gloria groans.
“I will divide us into two teams. Everyone puts a water balloon under their shirt to be their baby.”
Elle demonstrates, shoving a balloon beneath her T-shirt. The balloon is not large. She does not look pregnant so much as afflicted with a small abdominal tumor.
She waggles the fake belly around, causing it to undulate.
“Gross,” the caftan guy says.
I’m inclined to agree.
“What next?” Gloria prompts her.
“A person from each team runs at each other and bumps bellies to try to break the other’s balloon first,” Elle says. “Whichever team breaks the most bellies wins.”
Emily claps her hands in delight. “I love this game.”
“You would, since you don’t have to play,” Gloria grumbles. “Much too violent for a pregnant person.”
“Precisely,” she says.
Elle splits up the table into two teams, and we all pass around balloons.
“All right,” she says. “Team one on the left side of the yard, team two on the right. Emily, you’re in charge of documenting this for posterity and blackmail.”
We form two single-file lines on our opposing territory, with twenty-odd feet between us.
Molly catches my eye and jiggles her belly menacingly. “I’m gonna get you and your little fetus too, Rubenstein!”
I clutch my water baby protectively. “Keep your hands off Seth Junior,” I call back. “He’s my best prospect for an heir.”
“On your marks, get set, go!” Eliana cries.
At her command, twenty well-groomed thirty-something adults go careening toward each other. I sprint as fast as I can at Molly, clutching my belly so it doesn’t go flying out into the grass. Hers is secure beneath her tight one-piece bathing suit, giving her the advantage of speed.
She comes right at me, belly first. Our balloons collide. I cradle mine protectively, choosing a defensive strategy.
“Cheater,” she cries. “Stop that.”
“There are no rules!” I yell, dodging her attempt to smack into me.
“Okay then.” She waves her long nails at me, which are elaborately manicured into pastel-flowered talons. She comes at my stomach, claws-first.
I bend down to my knees to avoid her hands and attempt to pop her belly between my palms.
I use too much force and it surges up toward her boobs instead of bursting.
She lunges and pulls up my shirt. My baby falls into the grass, but remains intact. She lifts her foot to stomp on it but I grab her shoulders and press her into me, tight, to put pressure on her balloon. The balloon pushes up above her cleavage.
I know what I must do.
I bend down, take the balloon between my teeth, and chomp.
It bursts all over both of us.
Molly scream-laughs. “I cannot believe you just ripped my baby apart with your teeth.”
“Victory tastes sweet. And slightly rubbery.”
I wring out my shirt, which is drenched and clinging to my torso.
“Never pegged you for a wet T-shirt contest guy, but you pull it off,” Molly says.
“I guess I can go swimming after all,” I observe, trying not to focus on the suggestive nature of her words and the way she is openly eyeing my chest.
Around us, most of our fellow competitors are still swinging balloons at each other. But I barely clock them, because suddenly the air between me and Molly feels thick.
Too thick.
I step back, but Molly takes my hand and yanks it up into the sky.
“Rubenstein vanquished me,” she yells to Eliana. She turns back to me. “Let’s go in the pool.”
Without waiting for an answer, she shimmies out of the cutoffs she’s wearing, kicks off her sandals, and goes running. She jumps in without a moment’s hesitation, creating a splash that douses half of my teammates.
“Come on,” she yells at me. “It feels amazing!”
“No suit!” I yell back.
“Who cares?” Emily interjects, getting up and stripping off her cover-up to reveal a two-piece and a very adorable baby bump. “We have a clothing-optional pool policy.”
There is no way I’m taking off all my clothes in front of an audience of mostly women at a baby shower, but I figure boxer briefs are close enough to swim trunks.
“Okay,” I say, “but only because it’s ninety-nine degrees. How do you guys live this way in October?”
“Isn’t it already, like, snowing in Chicago?” Molly retorts.
I take off my clothes and hang them on the back of a chair to dry in the sun. I’m going straight to the airport after this and don’t want to throw them wet into my suitcase.
I jump in close enough to Molly to splash her. The water is warm from the sun and the heat, but cool enough to still be refreshing.
I swim toward Emily in the shallow end, but a hand grabs my ankle, and my head goes under. I hear the muffled sound of laughing and look down to see Molly’s mermaid hair swirling around my feet.
She lets go of me and surges toward the surface. I chase after her, grab her shoulders, and dunk her below the water.
She’s laughing and coughing as she comes up. It reminds me of all the pools of our Floridian youth. When Molly and I were dating, we’d often do homework together and then horse around for hours in my parents’ pool. It was a very convenient way to be almost-naked and touching in a parentally sanctioned way.
Molly’s hands reach out to my hip bones and she begins to pull me toward her, but I scoot backward and swim out of her grip.
I try not to like this attention, but it feels good on my ego. Restorative.
She comes at me again, and I pick her up out of the water and hold her above my shoulders.
“I’m going to throw you in if you don’t behave,” I threaten.
“I dare you,” she says.
I don’t need further encouragement. I send her flying to the deep end, and she lands with a splash. “Oh, you are going to get it,” she yells, power swimming back to me with a murderous glint in her eyes.
“Okay, children,” Eliana calls. “That’s enough Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
I look up and realize every single person is staring at us.
No one else is in the pool, except for Emily, who is sitting on the steps of the shallow end, smirking.
“Let’s play the next game, if Molly and Seth are quite done with their horseplay,” Elle says.
“I think I’m pregnant just from watching them,” the caftan guy says to a soaking wet woman beside him.
My cheeks go hot. We’ve been acting like teenagers.
Flirtyteenagers.
Completely unacceptable.
“Sorry!” I call, paddling very, very far away from Molly Marks, and lifting myself out of the pool.
I’m better than this.
Gloria throws me a towel. “What’s the next game?” she asks Elle.
“Baby Bucket List,” Elle says. “It’s where we go around in a circle and write down an activity we think you should do with the babies in their first year. I’ll compile them all into a book, and you and Em can write little notes about the experience on the back of the cards, to remember.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet!” Emily says.
“I know.” Eliana laughs. “It’s sickening.”
We all gather around the table, and Elle passes out Sharpies and yellow cardstock embossed with the words In your first year as moms…
“Okay,” Elle says, “I’m setting a timer for five minutes. Let’s do this.”
We all bend down over our cards. I try not to drip water on mine. This is important. They’ll probably keep these for the rest of their lives. (Or, at least, I would.)
I rack my brain for an idea. Then I remember when my nephew Max was born. He was a fussy baby, and when I came out to visit Dave and Clara, they were desperate for any break they could get. So I used to strap him to my chest in their baby carrier and walk him around the hiking trail near their house. Some days we’d do it for hours, just me and him. I loved the feeling of him tucked against my chest, his tiny feet dangling on either side of me.
I take care to make my terrible handwriting legible.
Hike with them close to your chests on a beautiful trail on a beautiful day.
When everyone is finished, we take turns reading them aloud.
Elle suggests feeding the babies her and Gloria’s mother’s recipe for arroz con leche. A pink-haired woman in a linen jumpsuit suggests making copper molds of their hands and feet and turning them into a mobile to hang over the crib. (She offers to do it herself; unsurprisingly, she’s an artist.)
I read mine aloud and successfully avoid choking up, even though the game is making me emotional.
Molly goes last. I expect her to say something glib or sarcastic, since mushy topics repel her. Maybe something like “Make breast milk cheese and bring it to a cookout for your neighbors,” or “Remember: don’t shake the babies—too hard.”
She clears her throat, and her voice is softer than usual. “So, when I was a baby, and really until I was nearly grown up, my mom would sing me lullabies while I was falling asleep. And it was so soothing that to this day I still have a lullaby playlist I listen to when I have insomnia. So my suggestion is to sing your babies to sleep together.” She pauses and twists her lips. “Yeah. So that’s my, um. Yeah.”
Gloria puts a hand over her heart. “Molly! That is so sweet.”
And it is. It really is.
I can’t help but think of tough, flinty Molly curled up in bed with her earbuds, drifting off to a lullaby.
Or better, Molly cradling a baby of her own, singing her child to sleep.
It makes me regret that it will never be me singing with her.