Elodie considers this. “Maybe,” she relents.
We’re in her living room, sprawled out with a dozen bottles of nail polish on the coffee table, listening to the Mean Girls musical soundtrack.
“You just do musicals, not plays?” I can grasp the nail polish with my left hand at this point, but I don’t quite have the stability needed to paint my nails, so I’ve told her she can paint my right hand any way she wants. She’s taken this under careful consideration, testing a few shades on a sheet of paper before deciding on a blue base with little suns on top.
Elodie leans over my hand, dotting the sun on my thumb with two eyes and a black dash of a mouth. “If there aren’t songs, what’s the point?” she says. “Sorry, this one looks kind of angry.”
“It’s okay. She’s still cute.” I peer down to admire her handiwork. “And you’re right. I get so bored during plays.”
Elodie gives me this long-suffering look. “Thank you. My dad dragged me to Shakespeare in the Park last year, and I fell asleep at the beginning of the second act. He said he was exposing me to ‘culture,’ but honestly what is more cultured than Hadestown?”
I’m laughing, imagining Russell doing this. The Mean Girls soundtrack ends, and Elodie leaps up to find a new one on her phone. She knows all the words even to shows she hasn’t seen. It’s impressive.
“You don’t have to sing so quietly,” I say, and she blushes. “You have a great voice.”
“Sorry. I get a little shy singing in front of new people sometimes. It’s different when you’re onstage, in a costume. Did you ever do theater?”
“Does Tree #2 in my middle school’s production of The Wizard of Oz count?”
“But you’re on TV.”
“It’s a very different kind of acting,” I say. “Our goal isn’t solely to entertain people. Well, we hope we’re entertaining, but we’re delivering information, first and foremost, and we want to make sure we’re doing that in a clear and non-biased way.” I consider that for a moment. “Except when I’m going on about how much I love the rain, but that’s not exactly a hot-button issue.”
“I always ask my dad if it would really kill him to cover the arts every once in a while so we could get free theater tickets. When we do see musicals, he tries to sing along sometimes. But here’s the thing you need to know about him if you’re going to date him.” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “He is a terrible singer.”
“Oh—we’re not—” I say, stumbling over the weirdness of explaining your relationship to a twelve-year-old when you don’t even know what that relationship is.
“O-kaaay,” she says in this singsong, and once our nails dry, she runs upstairs to grab her script.
While she’s gone, something catches my eye: a large bright yellow book on a side table next to the couch, so thick it’s nearly bursting.
“What’s that?” I ask when she gets back, script in hand.
Elodie groans. “My baby album. It’s the most embarrassing thing.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these in real life.”
“Your parents didn’t do one?” she asks, and I tamp down every emotion that wants to escape as I tell her no. “I swear it’s like, a national emergency if I have a milestone they don’t get a chance to put in the book. They even pass it back and forth. For a while I had to take it with me from house to house, but I had to put my foot down because it was too much, even for them.” She shakes her head, more hair escaping her messy bun. “They’re obsessed with me.”
“You’re their first kid. I think that warrants a little obsession.”
She rolls her eyes, but I can tell there’s some pride there. “I need to show you how ridiculous it is.” She snatches up the book. On the cover is a photo of Elodie as a baby, faded with age. “The ticket my dad got when my mom was in labor because he didn’t know where to park. My first hat. My first pair of socks.”
My eyes snag on a picture of Russell at seventeen, a blanket-bundled Elodie in his arms. His hair is a little too long, and he’s in what looks like a hockey jersey over a long-sleeve shirt. Even though he’s wearing glasses, I can tell he’s gazing at his baby with pure awe.
There aren’t enough words to describe what happens to my heart at that point. Whatever it is, it’s not something I knew my heart was capable of doing.
“I know. He was really young. I think the book was a way for them to process everything? Which makes me feel a little bad about making fun of it, but”—she flips a few pages—“the receipt for my potty chair?”
I laugh along with her, but I don’t think it hit me until now, looking at the pictures, how young seventeen really was. I can’t imagine everything he had to take on at that age, the things he put off and those he gave up completely.
And of course, all the things he’s denied himself since then so he can be a good father, which he so clearly is. The evidence is all over this house, in Elodie’s love for theater, in the way they joke with each other.
Elodie turns the page, and there’s Russell and Liv with a toddler Elodie. Again and there they are on Halloween, Elodie dressed as a tiny Bob Ross, Russell as a palette and Liv as a canvas.
What I don’t tell her: I kind of love this scrapbook.
“I might throw up,” she says as she stabs a glittery nail at a small stapled bag. “That’s my first toenail clipping.”
* * *
? ? ?
RUSSELL LEFT SOME money for dinner, and since it’s what most people would call a “nice evening”—meaning, no rain—we decide to walk five blocks to Elodie’s favorite Mexican restaurant to pick up some takeout.
After we put in our burrito orders, Elodie uses the bathroom while I reply to a text from Russell asking how it’s going. All good, I write. She’s a freaking delight. I’m scrolling through social media when I hear a frantic hiss from the dark, graffitied hallway.
“Ari?”
I slide my phone into my pocket and step closer to the bathroom. “Everything okay?”
The door opens a crack, and there’s Elodie’s head, her face pinched with concern. “Do you have any . . . you know? Period stuff?”
“Oh!” Shit. With my IUD, I don’t get periods. I haven’t carried around a spare tampon or pad in years. “I don’t. I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t think it would come for another week.” There’s this panic in her voice so unlike the way she’s chattered on all night.
“Number sixty-two!”
“That’s us,” I say. “Let me grab it and we’ll head right home. Do you want me to call an Uber?”
Another pause. “I don’t actually have anything at home, either?” She phrases it as a question. “I just . . . it was supposed to come next week, so I didn’t get anything from Nina or Sasha, even though I probably should have.”
She’s lost me. I assume Nina and Sasha are her friends, but I’m not sure whether they’re running some kind of underground menstrual products ring or what. “That’s okay. We can get some.” I take out my phone again, searching the map. “There’s a Walgreens about ten minutes away.”