40
OLIVE ANNE COHENwas born on a Friday afternoon in August, weighing eight pounds two ounces, and clocking in at twenty inches long. She had a thick mop of black hair, not shocking considering her mom. In the three hours that I’d known her, I’d gathered that her interests included scrunching up her very tiny face, squawk-crying, and pecking at her mom’s nipples as she figured out how to nurse.
Sam’s mom, Joann, had arrived just as Olive’s head was crowning, and now she was holding the tightly swaddled baby against her chest, bobbing side to side in the corner of the tiny recovery room.
“Auntie Clara!” Sam announced when I returned from the vending machine with my red Gatorade and the bag of Doritos I’d inhaled on the walk back. She had a hospital gown half draped over her body, her hair now loose and flowing. The adrenaline of childbirth was still emanating from her; she glowed, rosy and bright, and seemed like she could have leaped out of that bed and polished off one hundred push-ups, no problem.
“Do we need to be quiet?” I whispered, pointing at the watermelon-sized bundle in Joann’s arms.
Sam shook her head. “Babies love noise. The womb sounds like a highway at rush hour. They can sleep through anything.”
“Speaking of, do you want to try to get some rest?” I asked.
“You know, I thought I would be exhausted, but I feel like I could push a truck across a bridge with my hands,” she said, marveling at herself. “Also, my doctor told me I need to try to fart in the next hour, so buckle up.”
“Samantha!” her mom scolded with a laugh.
“Mom, why are you acting like we don’t talk about farts all the time?” she said before turning back to me with the kind of eye roll only a daughter could give their mom: irritated beyond belief and yet somehow still full of love. “She’s trying to impress you.”
“I find you very impressive already, Mrs. Cohen,” I said, hovering over her shoulder to admire her new granddaughter.
“Thank you, Clara,” Sam’s mom said, never taking her eyes off Olive.
“She’s so beautiful.” I couldn’t stop marveling at every small detail. Her face was pink and full, eyes shut like little crescent moons. She was everything; a galaxy of stars, a tiny universe. I’d never felt so overwhelmed by limitless love in my life.
“I know,” Sam said before taking a sip from a plastic cup full of tiny ice cubes and chomping them in her mouth. “I can’t believe I made that.”
“Our bodies are seriously amazing,” I said, almost like I was just realizing this for the first time.
“Speaking of,” Sam continued. “I peed while you were getting food, which, let me tell you, is slightly terrifying after vaginal childbirth. You’re lucky you missed it. I scared Eloise away with that adventure.”
“Samantha!” her mom said again.
“Mom,” Sam huffed. “We all have vulvas here, including Olive. I think it’s fine to talk about them.”
I pressed my palm to my mouth, suppressing a laugh. I had seen Eloise on her way out of the hospital before she headed back to Pine Lake, and she did, indeed, mention the drama of Sam shouting with pain from the toilet, trying to pee.
“Do you see why I wanted you here?” she said in a low, conspiratorial voice.
I nodded. “I wouldn’t have missed it.”
Sam patted a hand on her bed, an order for me to sit on the edge. “You didn’t have to come, you know that, right? I really was just texting you because I wanted you to know it was happening.”
“Sam.” I leveled a look at her. “I really appreciate that you’ve given me a lot of space to screw up in our friendship. And I also appreciate you giving me the chance to make things right. But yes, I know I didn’t have to be here. I wanted to be here.”
“Wait, also, your hair,” she said as if she had just remembered it was now almost six inches shorter and hacked unevenly to my chin. “You still haven’t told me what the hell you did in the last twenty-four hours since I saw you.”
“Well, you know, you’ve been busy,” I teased.
“And now I have to sit in this room with a baby and try to pass gas,” she said, “so I have literally all the time in the world.”
“I quit my job this morning,” I said, marveling at how good that felt to say. The entire car ride here I kept waiting for the fear to creep in, for the self-doubt to take over my brain.
I was still waiting.
“Before the pitch?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter as she reached for her cup of ice. “Or after it?”
“In the middle of it,” I clarified.
“Holy shit, Clara!” She sucked air through her teeth, flinching at this news. “I thought you loved your job, though?”
“I did,” I agreed, shifting a little closer to her. “But I’ve spent a lot of my time doing everything but letting myself really stop and think about what might make me happy.”
“Well, that’s always scary to do,” she agreed.
“It’s terrifying,” I said. “Which is what I wrote to myself in my camp letter. I wanted to be doing things that scared me. So thank you for saving it all these years and sending it. I didn’t know how much I needed it.”
“Somebody’s lips are moving again,” Joann cooed as she brought Olive back over to Sam, gently resting her in the crook of Sam’s arm. Sure enough, Olive’s pink lips were puckering, even though her eyes were still closed. Sam pulled down the hospital gown, nestling Olive against her bare skin.
“Can you believe my letter didn’t mention having kids at all?” She looked down at Olive, eyes full of wonder, and then back at me. “I wrote that I wanted to live in Rome.”
“You still can,” I said. “Maybe Olive will be an amazing traveler.”
“I’m definitely going to save it for her to read someday,” she said. “So when she’s fifteen and thinks she has the world figured out, I can remind her that I thought so once too.”
I followed her eyes back over to her daughter. “She has so much hair. Like more than Mack, even.”
Sam coughed out a laugh. “Please do not tell me my child looks like your boyfriend. To be clear, he is not the sperm donor.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, though I wasn’t sure exactly what we were to each other. “Nothing’s changed since I left yesterday. He’s still leaving, and now I’m—well, who knows what I’m doing.”
“Look. He’s definitely your something,” she said thoughtfully. “Or he’s going to be. I tried calling Regan my ‘partner’ for like, one day, and I hated it.”
“Eloise called Linus her partner when she introduced him!” I remembered, and Sam grimaced.
“Well, wife always felt weird too,” she said as she focused on guiding Olive’s mouth toward her breast. “We used to say ‘my person,’ which worked. Until, you know, our marriage didn’t.”
“How do you even know, though?” I asked, and suddenly felt very self-conscious, like I was back in middle school, trying to work out a math equation on the whiteboard in front of the whole class. “I thought Nick and Trey were, like, this perfect couple.”
“Well, first of all, perfect is bullshit,” Sam said. “Every couple has issues and differences and, honestly, shit they downright hate about the other person.”
“Sure,” I said. “I guess what I mean is, how do I know if Mack is my person? What if I’m wrong?”
“Clara,” she said as she stroked the dark wisps of Olive’s hair and then traced a finger lightly across the two perfect arches above her eyes. “There is no way to really know. You just have to trust yourself. And be okay with it, and yourself, if you do end up being wrong.”
“There is a part of me that thinks maybe Mack has been my person this whole time,” I confessed. “I just never wanted to admit it.”
“Aw, look at you!” Sam squealed. “I love that. I love you. I love the two of you together. Why do you think I’ve been pushing you to get up here every summer?”
“Uh, because I’m your oldest friend?” I guessed. “And you wanted to see me?”
“Okay, fine, that is true,” she said with a laugh, just as a nurse breezed in through the door. “But maybe also because you and Mack have been in love with each other forever and so goddamn stubborn about it, so someone had to help you two get there.”
“I think that’s my cue to go,” I said, nodding at the nurse. “But I’ll let you know what he says.”
“You’re going back to camp?” Sam asked.
I nodded, giving her a wink. “I have one more thing to check off my list.”
“I hope it’s that you’re done with lists,” Sam teased.
I gave her mom a quick hug before placing a kiss on the top of Sam’s head and ogling Olive one last time.
“Hey, Clara?” Sam said as I grabbed my shoes, which were still on the floor next to my bag.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“You’re my person, too, you know.” I don’t think I’d ever seen Sam look more beautiful than right now, and the sight of her melted me, overwhelmed me with all that was good in my world.
I nodded. “You too.”
“I’ve always known that,” she said. “I’m glad you finally figured it out.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
“And I guess if I have to share you,” she said, giving me that sly look of hers as she stretched her arm out for the nurse, “I’m okay doing that with Mack.”