She’s talking to Sierra in Portland, who is not in for the night, but, rather, getting ready to go out. “Oh, just drinks, then dinner with friends, and then we’ll stop by a burlesque show, and then probably a club after.” Sierra, it turns out, is sleeping with both a musician and their former human biology professor, who flies up regularly to see her. “I call them ‘the Body’ and ‘the Brain,’ ” Sierra says. “I can’t decide which I like more.”
“If you can’t pick one, maybe you don’t actually like either.” Brianna hates her prissiness. But it doesn’t seem fair that Sierra bewitches men so casually.
“Maybe. So tell me about the student’s dad? That still on?”
Brianna affirms. “I don’t know, though. It’s fun when it happens, but after I’m like, what am I doing?” She wants to explain how attracted she is to him, how she imagines them together, actually together, sees herself as a young, cool stepmom to Angel, singing together in the kitchen as they make cookies. But she can’t tell Sierra this; the fact is that she’s ashamed of Amadeo, because he hasn’t been to college, doesn’t have a job, and that even as she’s imagining a future for them, she isn’t sure this is the future she wants, but she still wants him.
Sierra is talking to someone else now, her voice muffled as though she’s tucked Brianna into her armpit. “Sorry,” she says, clear again. “I’m getting wine. Well, I mean, do you have better options?”
Brianna should be offended, but Sierra isn’t wrong. She admits that, no, she doesn’t. “I spend all day around teenage girls.”
“So, go with it. Have fun. It’s not like you’re going to marry him. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with getting practice.”
Practice. Last time, in bed, he stopped moving above her right in the middle of things. “Can I ask you something? Is it, like, normal, for a girl to say she regrets her baby?”
Brianna had swiped her hair out of her face, pushed herself onto her elbow. “Angel said that? Is she depressed?”
“I don’t know,” he said, troubled. “Is it bad?”
Brianna had thrilled at his respect for her authority, his trust that she might be able to help them. “I mean, it’s definitely normal for her to have mixed feelings. She’s had to give up a lot. But, like, is she eating properly? Sleeping? I haven’t noticed any changes at school, but I will keep an eye out.”
“Can we talk about this later?” he asked, and it was only then that the strangeness of pausing sex to talk about his daughter struck her.
“Well, I’m at the bar,” Sierra says now. “Hey!”
“Yeah?”
“No, just saying hi to someone. I should go.”
Instead of hanging up, Brianna watches her phone’s screen, listening to the joyful sounds of friends meeting up in a distant, exciting city, until the call cuts off. She drops her phone back onto her stomach and it slides onto the brick floor with a clatter. She gazes around the room again: her dimly glowing paper lantern; her wall of art museum postcards; her Klimt poster peeling up in the corner. All the sad artifacts of her careful, small life.
Hi, she texts Amadeo. What are you up to?
Each afternoon for the next two weeks, Angel and Lizette arrange study dates after Smart Starts! “Are we going to do our project after school?” Angel will say with studied nonchalance.
Lizette shrugs. “Sure. My house or yours?”
And Angel, as though actually considering bringing Lizette to her grandmother’s, where her dad sits in front of the internet all day, mulls it over. “Yours is closer.” Neither Lizette’s brother nor his girlfriend is ever around.
Angel has already told her father she has to scale back on her work for Creative Windshield Solutions due to a school project, and he doesn’t object. Concern for her father flashes to the front of her mind, then dissolves.