“I try to be. It’s harder now, obviously. But they’re awesome, and they deserve a great dad.” He hesitates, then asks, “What about you? Are you a kid person?”
Greta thinks of her nieces, a whirling scrum of tears and laughter and affection. Sometimes, when she’s visiting, she tries to imagine what it would be like if they were hers, if she were the one responsible not just for the day-to-day stuff—the changing of diapers and the negotiations over vegetables, the carpools and pajamas and bedtime stories—but also the larger work of shaping little human beings, making sure they value the things you do, like empathy and kindness and equality, while still having minds of their own; basically doing everything you can to keep them from turning into assholes one day.
It seems like an impossible job, being a parent, and a sad one too, watching them pinwheel further and further away and out into the world, so much more interesting and complicated than you imagined they might be, like a song that starts out as one thing and ends up something else—not necessarily better or worse, but different. And entirely out of your control.
“They’re okay,” she says to Ben.
“I know everyone says this, but it’s different when you have your own.”
Greta nods, noncommittal. “Yup. Everyone says that.”
“That’s because it’s true. Honestly. Other people’s kids are total monsters. They have sticky hands and snotty noses and they’re really, really loud.”
“And yours aren’t?”
He shrugs. “They are. But somehow it’s cuter when they’re your sticky, snot-nosed, noisy little monsters.”
“I get it,” Greta says. “I have three nieces, so it’s not like I’ve never spent any time with kids.”
“How old are they?”
“The twins are five and the little one is three.”
“Wow.”
“I know. My brother and sister-in-law have their hands full.”
“What are their names?”
“Asher and Zoe.”
“No, the kids.”
Greta hesitates. “Don’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh?”
“Violet, Posey, and Marigold.”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “Oh. Wow.”
“Zoe owns a flower shop,” she says by way of explanation. “But the girls are honestly great. They’re so silly and unself-conscious, and they give the best hugs. And they’re always asking if they can be in my band.”
“What do they play?”
“Right now? They mostly just bang on whatever’s around.”
“Sounds promising.”
“It is,” she says, absently rolling up the edge of the sheet, then letting it unfurl again. “The thing is, I love them. I really do. But even when I’m with them, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on that. At least not right now.” She shrugs. “I like my life too much.”
“What about marriage?” Ben asks. “Can you ever see that for yourself?”
He’s doing what they all do: pacing the perimeter, trying to locate the outer edges of her feelings on the subject. Greta doesn’t mind; she’s never tried to hide who she is. Once, she met up for drinks with a guy she’d broken up with the year before, and while they sat at the bar, he kept trying to look at her left hand.
“What?” she finally asked, annoyed, and he gave a sheepish shrug.
“Just trying to see if you’re wearing an engagement ring,” he admitted.
Greta was twenty-eight at the time, and though her friends had started to get engaged—through a series of increasingly over-the-top proposals that would’ve mortified her—nothing could’ve been further from her mind. When she laughed at the idea of it, the guy looked first confused, then maybe a little relieved, like he’d dodged a bullet of some sort.
It’s not that Greta doesn’t want any of that—marriage, children, the whole complicated circus—it’s that she doesn’t need it. Not the way so many other people seem to. If she were to stumble across someone perfect for her, if she found herself wanting to be with him more than she wants to be flexible, more than she wants to be on the road—then that would be great. Of course it would. But if it never happens? She’d be okay with that version of her life too. And that’s what makes people so uneasy.
“Maybe,” she tells Ben. “If the conditions were right.”
He looks amused. “Isn’t that the case with anyone getting married?”