Finding herself accidentally pregnant in middle age was the second-greatest surprise of her life.
The greater surprise was that she could do it. Unlike many of the patients she counseled, she was a functioning adult—healthy, employed, financially stable. She worked fifty feet away from an excellent gynecologist. Importantly, she was not in crisis. She felt ready to raise a child—clearheaded, unambivalent, sure.
In pregnancy she was always hungry. At first she found this alarming, the body taking over. For a person who loved to drive, there was something unutterably terrifying about a self-driving car. At the grocery store she filled her shopping cart. After a lifelong diet of processed garbage, she wanted fruit, fish, bread, vegetables. For the first time in many years, or possibly ever, she was hungry for actual food.
It was possible—likely, even—that these cravings were a form of atonement. Her future child, a girl, already had certain strikes against her. Half her genetic material had come from a man with an epic weed habit. （All day, every day.） The implications of this, its consequences for the next generation, were not clear.
Shortly after Claudia fell pregnant, she got in touch with a geneticist she’d once dated, a former e-boyfriend. He assumed she was asking on behalf of a patient, a misconception she didn’t correct. His response was distinctly unhelpful.
Anything’s possible, he said. No one knows anything.
In the spirit of atonement she ate salads, drank smoothies. She did not smoke weed. Like the pregnancy itself, quitting had been an accident. Claudia had exercised no special discipline; she’d quit out of cowardice. After spending the night with Timmy, she’d been too embarrassed to call him and buy more.
WHEN SHE TOLD PHIL ABOUT HER PREGNANCY, HE WAS DUMBFOUNDED. It was the first time she’d seen him at a loss for words.
“How did this happen?” he asked finally.
“In the usual way.”
“Stuart?”
“God, no.”
If it were anyone else, she would have dodged the question. At work, especially, she avoided the subject. She was a reproductive health professional. There was no easy excuse for her lapse in judgment, her failure to contracept.
“It was someone else,” she said finally. “We’re not in touch now. I knew him for a couple years.” It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was all she was prepared to offer. “He was a friend.”
ACCORDING TO HER MOTHER, CLAUDIA HAD BEEN A LATE TALKER. Until the age of three she never said a word. When she finally spoke, her first word wasn’t Mama, and it certainly wasn’t Daddy. Her first word was No.
Naturally enough, she said it to Deb.
For most of her adult life, she’d said no to everything. No to marriage and no to daughterhood, no to food and no to love. She’d said yes to sex, it was true, but only to a certain kind: curated sex, electronically screened and vetted sex. When an e-relationship ran its course, she started over with a new e-boyfriend who would be, in the end, not so different from the last one. This was in no way surprising, since she had selected him using the same filters: education, profession, political views, zip code.
If she were to remove all the filters, she might’ve gotten someone like Timmy.
ONE CHRISTMAS EVE SHE WENT TO SEE HIM. HER MOTHER HAD been dead for just three months. Claudia planned to spend her first orphan Christmas alone in her apartment, asleep if possible. To execute this plan, she needed a supply of weed.
Timmy’s porch light was on, his giant TV tuned to the Travel Channel. A celebrity chef in a leather jacket was eating blowfish in Osaka.
“No way would I eat that,” he said, as if Claudia had accused him of doing so. “No fuckin way.”
After smoking a bowl they were both ravenous. Timmy tried to order Chinese food, but at midnight on Christmas Eve, even Jade Garden was closed.