Emily drew her chin back. “Melinda? Fine, I assume? She’s been retired for, like, two years, I think? You interviewed with Patricia when you came in with Dorothy, I remember.”
“Of course,” Alice said. “Must have slipped my mind. And how are you? How’s Ray?” Alice felt high—it was obvious that in this life, in this timeline, in this reality, she shouldn’t know anything about Emily’s private life. She would barely know Emily at all! But Alice was desperate for a real conversation.
It wasn’t possible for Emily’s face to contort or purple any more, or she would have burst into flames. “I’m fine. Ray’s fine? Did we talk about Ray for some reason? Anyway, I need to get these quiches to all your guests.” Emily skidded her back along the wall to get around Alice, who had to move out of the way of the large silver tray. The Talking Heads were playing on the invisible speakers—This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife. The bathroom door opened, finally, and Sam stepped out.
Alice gasped, so relieved. She threw her arms around Sam’s neck and pulled her close for a hug before being stopped by the beach-ball-sized bump in between them. Alice looked down at Sam’s belly.
“Oh, wow, sorry,” she said.
Sam rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be sorry,” she said. “It was a planned pregnancy.”
Alice grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled her down the hall into her bedroom, leaving stray flamingo feathers in their wake.
41
Sam sat down on the bed without waiting to be asked and kicked off her shoes.
“My feet are so swollen, it’s like trying to walk on two meatballs.” Sam hoisted one of her feet on top of the opposite knee and began to rub.
“How many children do you have?” Alice asked. “Your husband is Josh, right? Who you met in college? At Harvard?”
“Jesus, Alice.” Sam let her heavy foot fall back to the floor. “Are you having a stroke?”
“No, I’m fine—” Alice stopped. “I’m not fine. I mean, I might be fine, eventually, but right now I seem to be in a slightly . . . weird place?” She paced back and forth at the foot of her bed, the feathers waving. Alice stopped in front of the window and looked out at the park. Some of the trees were already yellow and orange. It had been almost a whole day. Time was going to keep going, churning away. Alice had to make a decision. “Do you remember my sixteenth birthday?”
Alice watched in the window’s reflection as Sam swiveled her body toward her. Sam’s belly was the shape of a perfectly taut basketball. Like a three-dimensional clock. This time, Alice knew what it felt like, to have someone swimming around inside your body. She felt a little ghost flicker near her belly button, a reminder.
“I do,” Sam said. “Do you?” Samantha Rothman-Wood, she wasn’t going to give anything up, Alice thought, her gratitude boundless. There was no friend like a teenage girl, even if that teenage girl grew up. She turned around and walked back to the bed, where she and her feathers perched next to Sam. “I have two children, and this is my third. I am married to Josh, and we met at Harvard. What about you, Alice? Where’d you come from? Where’d you go?” Her voice was gentle—Sam was a good mom. She cooked, she played, she let the kids watch television, she loved their dad, she went to therapy. If Alice could have chosen a mother, she would have chosen Sam.
“When you didn’t pick up today,” Alice said, “I got worried that something had happened, you know? Between us?”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, something happened. Between us, we have four and a half kids. Do you know how hard it is to find a time when no one is saying your name, or touching your body, or needs help going to the bathroom?”
“Have we talked about it ever? I’m sorry. I feel like a really bad friend right now, because not only did I tell you this very big, very weird, crazy thing, but now I have no idea if it’s something that we just pretended never happened. Does that even make sense?” Alice put her face in her hands.
Sam put a hand on her belly, and Alice could see it move—whoever was inside was adding something to the conversation. “So, you’re like 13 Going On 30, but it’s 40 Going On 16 Going On 40? Something like that?”
“Exactly,” Alice said. She sank down next to Sam and put her head on her shoulder.
“That’s trippy,” Sam said. “But okay.” She paused. “Either I believe you again or I believe that you have ongoing psychosis, which is sort of the same thing, if you think about it. You believe this is happening to you, and I believe that you believe it. And obviously Leonard believed it, too.”