<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m not sure I can live with 93 percent.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> You can.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I want to try to get pregnant again, is that awful and dysfunctional?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I guess it depends on why.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think the answer to why is—because I really want to have a baby. But I don’t trust myself not to have some twisted reason lurking in my subconscious. I feel like I’ve lost something so important. I know that I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve a baby.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Nobody deserves a baby.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I feel like we should be having this conversation over a bottle of Blue Nun.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> My bad. I thought we were.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> The idea that you’re hard to love is ludicrous.
LUDICROUS.
It didn’t change anything, knowing that Beth was single. Had been single for weeks. For practically months.
What did that change? Nothing, right? Nothing, really.
“Are you listening?” Doris said. They were playing cards and eating hoagie sandwiches they’d bought from the machines. (Doris never took anything for free.) Lincoln had spent the night at his apartment again and come straight to work.
“I’m trying to tell you about tens around,” Doris said.
Chris wasn’t ever the problem. Not the biggest problem, anyway. Not that it mattered anymore.
“It’s not that complicated,” Doris said.
Nothing had changed. Nothing.
“Listen,” Doris said, “I need to talk to you about something. Your mother called me today.”
“What?”
“She was supposed to give me the recipe for that carroty chicken thing she makes, with the celery?
And the rice? Well, she ended up telling me that she was worried about you. She said you haven’t been coming home at night. Now, you didn’t tell me that the apartment was supposed to be a secret. You didn’t tell me that you weren’t going to tell your mother you were moving out.”
“But I haven’t moved out. I haven’t moved anything.”
“That’s crazy talk. Is this about that girl?”
“What girl?”
“You mother told me what that girl did to you, that actress.”
“Do you mean Sam? She didn’t do anything to me,” Lincoln said.
“Didn’t she leave you high and dry for a Puerto Rican?”
“No,” Lincoln said. “I mean, not exactly.”
“And now she’s calling your house.”
“Sam’s been calling my house?”
“And I don’t blame your mother for not giving you the messages,” Doris said. “Look at the secret you’re keeping from her. Are you meeting that girl at my apartment?”
“No.”
“It would explain why you’ve been so moony. And why you ignore everything else in a skirt.”
“No.” It came out too high. Lincoln pressed his palm into his temple and tried not to sound like a child. “Did you tell my mom about the apartment?”
“I’m too old to be lying to other people’s mothers,” Doris said.
IT WAS TOO late to talk to his mother when Lincoln got home that night.
When he came downstairs the next morning, she was in the kitchen, slicing potatoes. There was a pot steaming on the stovetop. Lincoln leaned on the counter next to her.
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I’m here.”
“Are you hungry? I can make breakfast. But you’re probably rushing off to the gym.”
“No,” he said, “I’m not hungry. And I’m not rushing off. I was hoping we could talk.”
“I’m making potato soup,” she said, “but I could spare some bacon. Do you feel like bacon and eggs?” She was already cracking eggs into a cast-iron pan, pouring milk and stirring. “I’ve got English muffins, too. The good kind.”
“I’m really not very hungry,” he said. She didn’t look at him. Lincoln put his hand on her arm, and she scraped her fork against the bottom of the pan. “Mom,” he said.
“It’s so strange … ,” she said. He couldn’t tell from her voice whether she was sad or angry. “I can remember a time when you needed me for everything.
“You were just this little kitten, and you cried if I set you down even for a second. I don’t know how I managed to ever take a shower or make dinner. I don’t think I did. I was afraid to hold you too close to the stove.”
Lincoln stared down at the eggs. He hated when she talked like this. It was like accidentally seeing her in her nightgown.