Alice nodded. The house was so big, like something on a TV show, one of the sitcoms that she and Sam used to watch after school, like Debbie’s show. Rooms big enough for siblings and parents and guys hoisting boom mics over all of their heads. Sam led them out the back door. Mavis was on the little wooden play structure they had, dangling upside down by her knees, with Josh standing next to her, his waiting arms ready to catch if she needed to be rescued. Alice waved, and Josh waved back, unable to leave his post. That was fine—they both knew she was there just for Sam.
“Forty’s not so bad,” Sam said. “You struggling with it? The idea of it?” She popped open her can and took a long sip. “God, being pregnant is like always being hungover. I am always thirsty, and I always have to pee, and I never want to get up to go to the bathroom.”
“No, it’s fine,” Alice said. “That part’s fine.”
Sam looked at her. “So what’s not fine? What’s going on? You know I love when you come here, but you never come here.”
“I just miss you,” Alice said. “And I miss my dad.” She let out a noise that was somewhere between a hiccup and a sob. “I’m sorry.”
“No, honey, come on! It’s okay! You know how much I love Lenny. Did he give me royalties for telling him to write a book that would make him a gazillion dollars? No. But did he thank me in the acknowledgments? Yes. Did he offer to put my kids through college? Also yes. I don’t need him to, but you never know. What if Josh gets run over by a bus, and I have to stop working? Your dad is like my personal Oprah.” She squeezed Alice’s arm. “I’m kidding. Not about him offering to put my kids through college, though—he really did.”
“I didn’t know that.” Alice could imagine it, though. She could see her dad saying it to Sam, pregnant with her first baby. He had probably wanted more kids—Alice had never considered it, they were always just a team of two, but coming from a tiny family, maybe he had wanted more. Or maybe he’d assumed that Alice would give him a grandkid or two eventually! He would never have pressured her, not in a million years, but Alice wondered if when he had gone back, Leonard had ever tried to find someone else—or if he’d ever gone back after meeting Deborah, to see if he could find her sooner. Have children of their own. Maybe he had. What else had he done that he didn’t want to tell Alice about? Probably a thousand things.
“Are you going to go see him today?” Sam asked.
Josh helped Mavis unhook her knees, and the girl disappeared into the top of the structure, which was built to look like a pirate ship.
“I’ll go this afternoon.” Alice put the cool can to her forehead. “It just sucks, you know?”
“I know.” Sam put her arm around Alice’s shoulders. “Oof, this kid just will not stop kicking me.”
“Can I feel?” Alice had reluctantly touched several pregnant bellies—teachers at school, friends from college, Sam. It always felt invasive on her part, borderline creepy. Alice had never been one of those people obsessed with babies, who would flirt across tables in restaurants and over the backs of airplane seats with any nearby child. Having a baby—carrying a baby—seemed so unfairly public, and compelled strangers to weigh in on your life choices with nary an invitation. But Alice felt like she needed proof that this world was real, that today, whenever today was, was a real day in her real life, and in Sam’s, too.
“Of course,” Sam said. She reached for Alice’s hand and put it low on her belly. “Oh, you know who just moved to Montclair? That kid—man, I guess, he’s a man now—but that kid who was a year behind us at Belvedere. Kenji?”
“Kenji Morris,” Alice said. She’d seen him a lot recently—he was the very tail of the boy train coming into her sixteenth birthday party on Pomander. A year behind them, but tall for his age, and skinny, Kenji had swayed like a willow tree. His mother was Japanese, and his father was dead. Alice didn’t think she knew anything else about him. He’d smoked Parliaments, maybe? No, he hadn’t smoked at all. They’d had Spanish together—he was good at languages, and was the only sophomore in the class.
“Right, Kenji Morris,” Sam said. “He and his kid live around the corner. He just got divorced. His daughter is Mavis’s age, and we met them in the park the other day. He’s nice! I never really knew him.”
“Let me guess—he’s a lawyer.”