“I’ve been thinking about asking if you wanted to do something for a while. Go to a spa for a few days, or take a trip somewhere. When this came up, I thought, ‘Why not?’？”
“Why not,” Abby repeated.
“And there’s only so many summers, you know? If you have children, you’ll be busy.”
“I am not planning on having children anytime soon,” Abby said.
“Well, if you want kids, you can’t wait forever,” Eileen said.
“I don’t even know if I want children,” Abby said.
That closed her mother’s mouth. At least for a minute or two. Eileen seemed to be considering a few different responses before settling on, “Who can say what the future will bring?”
“Um, me,” said Abby. “I can say. Me, and Dr. Kravitz, who put my IUD in last year.”
Eileen looked at Abby, eyebrows arching toward the smooth expanse of her forehead. “An IUD’s a smart choice. And you can get it taken out and start trying the next month, right?”
Abby didn’t answer. I’m not getting it taken out, and I’m not going to start trying.
“And it doesn’t have the side effects, right? I know the Pill can cause weight gain.”
And there they were, back at Eileen Stern Fenske’s favorite topic. It was amazing, Abby thought. Just like pop culture buffs could link any actor to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six steps, her mother could swing any conversation around to weight in just two or three.
“I’m going to go see how the rest of the group is going,” Abby said.
“Okay! Have fun!” her mother called, and Abby sped off, pumping her legs faster and faster, wondering why on earth her mother was really here—on the same trip as her hookup!—and what on earth she was going to do about it.
Lily
Lily Mackenzie could hear Abby, the ride leader, and Abby’s mother, Eileen, just behind her, talking companionably. She couldn’t make out words, but she could hear the low hum of their voices as they rode together, side by side. It made her heart ache. Will it ever be like that with us? she wondered. She tensed her muscles and lifted her head long enough to peer along the trail, trying to find Morgan, but her daughter was nowhere in sight.
Lily’s bike wobbled, and she struggled to straighten it out. She was gripping her handlebars so hard that her wrists and fingers ached. A droplet of sweat crept down her forehead and into her right eye. She tried to rub her stinging eye against her sleeve, but that made her bike wobble even more violently. You can do this, she told herself, keeping her eyes on the back of the elderly man just ahead, who was pedaling along confidently, smooth and steady and stable, not a care in the world, sometimes not even bothering to hold on to the handlebars as he glided nonchalantly along, past one of the stainless steel bollards that narrowed the path, like a belt cinching a lady’s dress. Lily panicked whenever she had to navigate past them. The other riders barely seemed to notice them at all. You can do this. You’ll be fine. People say it’s just like riding a bike when they mean it’s something you can pick right up again, no problem, so this is going to be okay. You won’t get hurt. Everything will be fine.
Lily tried to look past the man, still hoping to catch a glimpse of her daughter, wishing that Morgan had stayed back with her, that she hadn’t gotten so far ahead. She’s a teenager, Lily reminded herself. And Morgan was a good girl; sweet-natured, and kind, a diligent student, a talented artist. Oh, there’d been a few rough patches of back talk and boundary pushing when Morgan was thirteen and fourteen and she’d argued with Lily and Don at every opportunity. She’d broken her curfew. She’d made friends Lily and Don didn’t approve of. She’d purchased a push-up bra and a thong from Victoria’s Secret. Lily knew because she’d found these items tucked away at the back of Morgan’s underwear drawer.
She and Don had talked it over. They’d waited… and the curfew-cutting had ended, and the back talk had mostly abated. There was, still, the matter of Olivia. Morgan had met Olivia in her after-school art class and now claimed that she was her best friend. Olivia went to public school. She had two mothers, and she did not belong to their church, or any church at all. Olivia’s hair was brown, but sometimes dyed pink or blue. She wore overalls, with striped shirts underneath, and what looked like construction-workers’ boots with platform soles that added at least four inches to her height. When Morgan had brought Olivia home for dinner, Olivia had cheerfully told Don that she was an agnostic, that her family was “culturally Jewish”—whatever that meant—and that, if she got married—“to a man,” she’d blithely added—she wasn’t planning on submitting to her husband as head of the household.