25. Luna
LUNA
“I want to meet him. Sooner rather than later, if he can pencil me in.”
“I’ll figure it out. You were saying about Mom?”
Marty has spent the last twenty minutes telling me things about my mother I’ve never heard before.
“She was pregnant with you the same year she turned thirty-one,” he says, without turning from the stove.
“She didn’t tell anyone but your father for five months.
Not even me, and I was sleeping on their couch at the time.
She just held it in. The whole thing, for five months. ”
I cannot imagine doing something that way. I mean, I can be pretty private at times, but hiding a pregnancy for five months? I barely kept it to myself for five minutes. “Why would she do that?”
“Waiting to see if it was real, I think. Waiting until she knew what to do with it.”
“What about Star?”
He makes a face at the risotto. “Your mom knew it’d be a problem for her firstborn, so she worked extra hard to keep it from her.”
I have my mother’s photograph in a frame on my dresser, the one from her twenties, before I existed. Dark hair, the strong chin that Marty says I have too. Same set to our shoulders. We have a lot in common, but I can’t imagine letting my child treat their sibling the way that Mom tolerated Star.
Mom died when I was nineteen of a heart condition I didn’t know was hereditary until I was in the ob-gyn’s office three months ago, reading the new patient form.
The form had a row for maternal cardiac history, and I stared at it for a minute.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t sure about what had happened to her.
So, I asked a nurse about it, and sure enough, it’s something I have to watch out for.
Another to add to the pile, I guess. Now Mom’s medical history is in my chart, and the cardiologist was added to my care team by a doctor who said it calmly and watched me take it in.
I don’t like being watched when I’m processing things, but there isn’t much alternative in the room. “She was secretive about medical stuff. I’m trying not to be. It’s harder than I thought it would be, but I want to stay alive, so there’s reasons to share that stuff, you know?”
“Definitely. She had her issues,” he says firmly. “I’m glad you lean more toward the open-and-honest end of things. The world would be a better place if more people were that way.”
I don’t know what to do with this. “Well, I don’t want to end up dead because I kept a stupid secret.”
“That’s life, though, isn’t it? How we navigate the world in our own ways?
” He pauses. “I’m sure she had her reasons.
But she kept the heart thing a secret, and I’ll never stop believing that if she had just told someone, we could have stayed on top of her.
Made her take care of herself. Something… ” His voice almost cracks at the end.
“I guess so.” I pat his back, trying to reassure him. I’m not sure I’m doing a good job of that. “What did she do when she finally told people about her pregnancy with me?”
“Picked them carefully,” he says. “In the right order. Called her friend Ellen in the middle of the night. Ellen drove over. They sat in the kitchen and made tea, and your mother cried a little and then put on a record, and they danced.” He smiles at the risotto.
“Your grandmother didn’t know for two more months.
“She must’ve been pissed.”
He takes the risotto off the heat. “She was, but it didn’t amount to much.
And you do that too, you know. Keep things to yourself until you can’t anymore.
You always have. Your whole life, Luna. You hold things until you know them, and then you hand them to the people you trust, and you never once got the order wrong.
So, it doesn’t really matter who gets mad about it, because it all works out in the end. ”
The lunch is served on his good plates, with bread that Gerty made, and a salad Fred insists on despite having no detectable opinion about salad on any other occasion.
We eat at the round kitchen table, all four chairs occupied.
I look at Marty across the table and think about the women in my family and what they held, when they let go, and what order they chose.
“And Dad? How did he deal with a surprise baby at his age?”
Another shrug. “With as much grace as you might expect.”
None.
I expected nothing from that man. That way, I was never disappointed. “Was anyone happy that I was in the world?”
He laughs, and so do Gerty and Fred. Marty says, “We all were. Think about it—your parents were older. Your sister was… well, we all know what Star is. Your grandparents were very much older. Everyone thought they were done with babies. There were no hand-me-downs to be had. No bottles still tucked away in the attic. They had to start everything from scratch. Again. A decade after the last time.” He clasps his hand over mine.
“You were a wonderful surprise, but even wonderful surprises come with odd logistics.”
“When you put it that way, I guess I get it. It’s just…” My heart is already cracked wide open. Might as well go all the way. “I never felt welcome in my own home.”
“Oh, kiddo,” Fred says, taking the other hand. “I can’t speak for them, but you knew you always had a home here, right?”
I bob my head, my tears welling. “Always.”
Gerty wipes a tear away. “That’s our good girl. Now, eat up. You’re eating for two, so take as much as you want. Do you want my plate?”
I chuckle. “No, I’m good, thanks.”
We finish up lunch, and I head back. Parking is a bear for some reason, so I have to find a spot a few blocks away. Maybe it’s because I’m used to taking the train to work, and I don’t know what parking is normally like in the middle of the day. Maybe it’s always this bad.
My poor customers.
On the walk back to the shop, I pass the baby clothing store on the corner of Archer and Wentworth. I’ve been passing it for years without looking in. I had no reason to check them out before now. Baby things were always for someone else’s life. I ignored it the way I ignore sporting goods stores.
But today, I peer in.
Small winter things line the display. A tiny yellow coat, mittens on a wire, a onesie with a crescent moon on it that is extremely my brand, and I cannot tell if that’s fate or marketing.
I stand at the glass for a long time, not deciding anything, not shopping, just looking at the world through the window, scaled impossibly small.
I’m going to be someone’s mother.
The thought keeps breaking my brain in new ways every time I think it, and today is no exception. I know how it happened, but I still keep asking myself, ‘How did this happen?’
But life doesn’t have to make sense, so neither do the questions I ask myself.
When I pull myself from my wandering mind, the world seeps in at the edges.
A car slows at the curb behind me, idling.
A man stands near a car down the block, also watching the window from a different angle, or maybe looking at his phone.
There’s a woman with a fabulous coat on, strolling down the sidewalk like she owns it.
The coat is a little heavy for the weather, which makes me wonder why she’s got it on at all.
What’s she hiding?
It’s funny—I never noticed that kind of thing before being with Ivan. I’m not paranoid normally. My version of normal is me, stuck in my head with my thoughts. But today, I notice all these people being odd.
Or, she’s strutting her shit down the street in that coat because it’s fabulous and she’s happy to suffer for fashion.
That’s not odd to most people, I’ve learned.
It’s odd to me because if I’m not comfortable, then I’m cranky, so I don’t wear a heavy coat on a warm day, no matter how fabulous it is.
The car moves on after a moment. The man is gone when I look again. Since I noticed Ivan’s tail, I might be a tad paranoid these days. He wouldn’t do it again, would he?
There’s no way he’d do that. Ivan might break a guy’s foot for ripping him off, but ignore a woman’s consent? Never.
I think about the tiny yellow coat in the window for another minute. A coat for a person who doesn’t exist yet, who will need a coat that small eventually in this city. Should I buy it?
The thought makes my stomach flip, so I don’t. I’m not ready to go into nesting mode just yet, so I go back to the shop.
Mike has reorganized the display again. Cherry is adjusting it back toward coherence.
There’s a rhythm here that runs without me when it needs to and with me when I show up, and I stand in the doorway of the shop I built with grief money and stubbornness. I watch my people and think about risotto and family.
The shape of my life. Simple. Normal. A life I built that I love. And soon, I’ll be adding to it.
Mike looks up and gives me the smile that costs him nothing and buys everything. “Good lunch?”
“Really good lunch,” I say, and take my apron from the hook.
Cherry, without looking up from the window, asks, “How’s Marty?”
“Stirring food, listening, and doling out advice,” I say. “Per usual.”
“Best kind of person.”
“Best kind.”
Mike brings the vision together on his third attempt, and Cherry calls it acceptable, which means she loves it. Olga texts at three with a preliminary deck attached.
Somewhere in the city, a man is at a desk with a baby book in his drawer. In Berwyn, Marty is cleaning the risotto pot. My goldfish is doing laps. And in Austin, a severe woman in a perfect office is missing everything good in life.
I hope that one day, my child will know her aunt. The likelihood is that Aunt will be Cherry Darling. Her grandparents will be my uncle’s throuple. Her first pet? Hairy.
It’s already a good life. It’s going to be even better when my daughter gets here.