Chapter 14 #2
Todd waves. ‘I’m from Michigan.’
‘Means we’re still hell-bent on actually owning our own place, aren’t we, babes?’
‘We are,’ says Todd. ‘I think you’ve been to our café? Querido, just a few streets over?’
‘Ahhhh,’ says Ash, penny dropping. ‘I knew you looked familiar! Yes! Oh, it’s beautiful there.
Good job, congratulations. I was there just this morning, in fact, with my friend Mona.
’ Ash takes in the family scene of the apartment, the two men and CJ, the little boy.
‘So, CJ, you live here with Todd and Miguel and your … husband?’
Todd laughs again, but CJ shoots him daggers.
‘He thinks that’s so funny because I’m not the has-a-husband kind.’ For Todd’s benefit she says in a loud, sarcastic voice, ‘And that isn’t a character flaw!’
Todd rolls his eyes playfully and then Miguel is in the kitchen with him and they argue about the merits of adding more basil to whatever deliciousness is simmering on the stove. It smells amazing.
With Jorge happily playing on his racing car mat, Ash finally gets a beat to turn to CJ and ask, ‘CJ. What am I doing here?’
CJ nods. ‘You’re having dinner,’ she says. ‘I am welcoming you into my home for good food, and good wine, and good company. And hopefully, at some point in the next few hours, I will come to understand who you are and what you value in this life.’
‘Right,’ says Ash, suspiciously. ‘If that was supposed to make things less confusing for me, you just failed. You have a lovely home, and the food smells amazing, but …’ Ash can’t finish her thought.
What she wants to say is, but you hate me?
? For some reason, she can’t. The words stick in her throat.
‘OK,’ says CJ, leaning in to her. ‘Real talk? I just want to know why you keep crying.’
Ash goes wide-eyed. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I don’t know how else to say it. You keep crying, and I find it …’
Ash raises an eyebrow. What the hell? She has been brought here to be insulted, is that it?
CJ continues, ‘OK, I see the eyebrow.’ She holds up her palms in surrender. ‘Look. I just wanted to bring you somewhere that’s not CoLab, or CoLab-adjacent, and ask outright: what’s the big deal with Luis? Why are you so into him? And why are you even in Lisbon at all? What’s your deal?’
‘My deal,’ Ash says, ‘is that I’m here to …’ She searches for the best way to sum it up. She fails. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, impatient with herself. ‘Relax, or whatever.’
CJ narrows her eyes, nods. ‘Life at home not great?’
Ash cannot believe this woman, coming in hot on the questions like Ash is a suspect and CJ wants to nail her for the crime.
‘I feel like I’m on trial here,’ Ash says. ‘I still don’t get why you’re holding me hostage and asking about my life. Why you even care.’
‘You’re not a hostage,’ says CJ, coolly. ‘You can go, if you like. You’re here because it hit me that maybe you need somebody to talk to. You’re this fancy, posh woman on a three-month holiday, yet you don’t seem very happy. I can’t lie – I’m very curious, Ash.’
Ash has a sudden flashback to being in bed with Luis.
Wasn’t that the word he’d used? He said CJ is curious about her, or …
no, he said CJ thinks Ash is hot. Isn’t that how they’d ended up in their little CJ-and-Ash fantasy?
Ash has to blink the idea away, shaking her head to rid herself of any thoughts that might be incriminating.
‘OK, well, likewise,’ Ash says. She’s defiant, chin jutting out. She’s not going to roll over simply because CJ has issued a command. ‘I’m curious about you as well. So, you go first.’
‘What do you want to know?’
Ash doesn’t miss a beat. ‘I saw you kissing a man, last week. You were in tennis whites. It was the night I was drunk.’
‘Just a guy I see sometimes.’
‘And sometimes you see Luis, too?’
‘Yeah, sometimes.’
‘But you don’t want to be with any of them properly?’
CJ pulls a face. ‘Define properly.’
Ash rolls her eyes. ‘You know what I mean. Traditionally. Like, were you ever in a one-on-one relationship with Jorge’s dad?’
‘I don’t have a dad!’ Jorge says from the floor. Ash hadn’t even noticed he’d been listening in – although, on reflection, she knows from her legions of nieces and nephews that kids are always listening. She should have spoken more discreetly.
‘But you do have …’ CJ prompts him, apparently not at all flustered by the inclusion of Jorge in the conversation.
Jorge doesn’t look up from his car track as he says, ‘A mummy who loves me more than anybody else in the whole wide world!’
‘Correct,’ CJ says, grinning. She turns back to Ash and says, ‘Jorge is a donor baby. I found a nice man who wanted to give me his special seed to make a baby. The man wanted to help me become a mummy. So I used his special seed to get pregnant, and then Jorge was born!’ Ash understands that CJ’s use of language is for Jorge’s benefit, especially when CJ leans in and whispers, ‘IUI. Got pregnant on the first round. I always knew I’d become a mum on my own. ’
Ash doesn’t know how to respond to this. She finds herself saying, ‘You wanted a baby, so you just … had a baby?’
CJ shrugs. ‘Pretty much,’ she admits. ‘Isn’t that how straight couples usually do it? I didn’t see why it should be any different for me.’
Ash thinks of her sisters, all of whom seemed to magically pop out a kid nine months after their weddings, and then one a year thereafter.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Ash nods. She looks down to Jorge’s mop of blond hair, how absorbed he is in his own little world. Still, she lowers her voice. ‘You weren’t worried about doing it alone?’
CJ drains her glass of wine and shakes her head. ‘Not really,’ she replies. ‘I mean, I had plenty of examples growing up of couples where the mum, and it was always the mum, seemed to essentially be raising her family alone, anyway. Partner away for work, at the gym, playing golf …’
Ash thinks of her sisters’ husbands. It’s true: they can go on a week-long business trip that is essentially a holiday compared to staying home and running a house and family. And her sisters all work, too! But they never go on trips, not even girls’ weekends or overnights away.
‘And financially?’ Ash asks, newly confident in her role as interviewer.
She has a tremendous number of follow-up questions, mostly rooted in the fact that despite freezing her minimally numbered eggs, it has never crossed her mind to use them alone.
Or, rather, it crossed her mind once and was instantly discarded.
Doing it alone would, to Ash, signal defeat, an admission that she is unlovable by grown-up standards and couldn’t find anyone who liked her enough to start a family with her.
Oh, why did you go it alone? someone might ask her, and she’d have to reply, Couldn’t get anyone to shag me, could I?
CJ’s expression doesn’t change in the slightest. ‘I don’t really worry about money,’ she admits.
‘My dad died, and I was his only kid – I inherited his modest estate, which was basically enough to buy this place. He was from Portugal, you see, so I have dual citizenship. I know I’m lucky that way, to own an apartment, but even if I didn’t, even if I’d been renting a one-bedroom, I’d still have done it.
There’s not much I’ve ever been one hundred per cent sure of in this life, but being a mother was a non-negotiable to me.
I think if something is truly important to you, you find a way to make it work. You just do.’
‘I want kids, but I don’t think I could ever do it alone,’ Ash volunteers, voice quiet.
‘Maybe you don’t really want them as much as you think you do, then,’ CJ shrugs, and before Ash can properly process what she’s said – so flippantly! – Miguel interrupts them to announce that dinner is served.
Ash has impeccable manners, and so it does not show on her face how furious she is at CJ for what she’s just said.
Ash wants a family more than anything in the world, and that’s why it hurts so much that she doesn’t have it yet.
CJ doesn’t know her, doesn’t know her life – proof in point, Ash successfully navigated the conversation away from herself and instead got CJ talking about her life instead. For fuck’s sake.
‘Who are you?’ asks Jorge, as Todd pours water, CJ pours more wine, and Miguel dishes up hearty-looking bowls of green soup.
‘Caldo verde,’ Miguel explains, passing her a bowl. ‘A simple soup from the Minho Province. It’s greens, potatoes, onions and garlic, and on top we have chorizo. It’s Jorge’s favourite, isn’t it?’
Jorge nods, but keeps looking at Ash. He wants his answers.
‘I’m Ash,’ she says. ‘My name is actually Ashley, but I don’t like how that sounds so I cut my name in half, like this.’ She karate-chops the air, for emphasis. ‘And then I just use the first part.’
‘If I did that, my name would be Jor—’ The kid pauses, sticking his neck out, and looks left and right, waiting for laughter, which is exactly right because a tiny child making fun of himself is damned cute.
Ash plays his audience well, laughing freely. ‘Hmmm, maybe it doesn’t work as well with your name,’ she agrees. ‘I guess there are some names that are better without being—’ She does the hand movement again.
Jorge nods his agreement and Ash’s heart twangs in her chest. She’s good with kids, likes them, is experienced with all her nieces and nephews, everyone’s favourite auntie.
But of course she does not have her own, and every successful interaction with a kid makes the reminder bubble up to the surface. It’s just unfair.
‘You’re pretty,’ Jorge says. ‘Mummy says you have a stick up your tiny little ass, but you seem nice to me.’