First Comes Love (12 page)

I cut her off. “Well, when you have your test-tube baby, you can make those decisions. But Harper is
our
daughter,” I say. “And we would appreciate it if you kept her out of these discussions.”

Josie stares at me with pursed lips, then says, “First, I don't think a child should be defined by the circumstances of his or her conception. Second, it wouldn't be a
test-tube
baby.”

Before I can respond, Mom says, “What about marriage?”

“What about it?” Josie says, looking defiant.

“Well…are you just…
giving up
on that idea?”

“Well, Mom. Maybe that will happen later….I hope it does….But I'm almost thirty-eight—”

“Women have babies into their forties now,” Dad says, his first contribution to the conversation.

I glare at him, wondering if he has plans to impregnate his court reporter, as Josie says, “Yes. True. Some do. But it's risky to wait.”

“You could always freeze your eggs,” Mom says.

“I could,” Josie replies. “But I'm ready for a baby
now
.”

“Well, it's all about what
you
want, isn't it?” I say.

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” Josie asks me. “I'm not allowed to be a mother just because I'm not married? There are plenty of wonderful single parents out there…and conversely, plenty of married people with children who are unhappy, terrible parents.” She gives me a purposeful look, clearly talking about my marriage, if not my mothering, and I feel my anger burning deeper, hotter.

“Do you
really
think you're in a position to judge
anyone
?” I ask my sister.

“I'm not
judging
. Nor am I asking for advice or permission. I am simply sharing my plan with the people who matter most to me. And I was sort of hoping for a more supportive reaction. Gabe thinks it's a great idea.”

I look at him, wondering how soon after the birth he will be seeking a new housemate. “Right. Well. With all due respect to Gabe,” I say, “he has no clue what's involved here. He's not a parent, now is he? Shit…you told me he forgets to take the dog out when you're not home.”

Gabe looks at Josie and says, “That happened
once
.”

“Okay. Well, Dad, what do you think?” Josie says, turning to the third-least-qualified person in the room to weigh in on parenthood.

“I think…I think you have to do what makes you happy,” he stammers as I predict the number of diapers he will help her change could be counted on one hand.

Mom scowls at her ex-husband, then turns back to Josie. “Honey, you know we want to support you….We're just asking…have you really thought this thing through?”

“Yes,” she says. “I've given it a lot of thought. And to be honest, since having Will's daughter in my class—”

“I knew it!” I shout, cutting her off. “I
knew
this was about Will.”

“It's not
about
Will!” she yells back. “It's about Edie and my realization—”

I interrupt her again. “If you loved him so damn much, why did you screw up that whole relationship?”

Josie looks as if she's just been slapped. “Did you really just ask me that?” she says, her voice quivering.

“Yeah. C'mon, Meredith,” Gabe says. “That's not cool.”

“Well,” I say, crossing my arms and glaring back at him. “She's the one using Will as an excuse to bring a child into the world.”

“An
excuse
?” Josie says. “The last time I checked, bringing a child into the world isn't a
bad
thing.”

“It is if you can't properly care for it.”

“Who says I can't properly care for it? I might not have as much money as you two,” she says, “but I have a job—a great job….And I have friends and family who I thought might want to be involved in this child's life…but I guess that was too much to ask for.”

“That's not fair,” Mom says. “Of course we'd want to be involved.”

“Of course we would,” Dad echoes.

Josie looks at me, waiting.

“Sure.” I shrug. “I'll breeze in for a quick game of Twister…then be on my merry way….Isn't that what aunts do?”

“
Wow
. That is so unfair,” Josie says. “I'm totally involved in Harper's life.”

Gabe chimes in, agreeing with her. “She is, Mere. And you know it.”

“Okay. Fine. But do you have any
clue
how much easier it is to be an aunt than a mother?”

“Do you have any clue how big of a bitch you are?” Josie says.

“Josie.
Language,
” Nolan says, as I announce that we're leaving. I stand up and walk over to Harper, trying to pull her away from the dog as she whimpers that she doesn't want to go, that she wants to stay at Aunt Josie's.

“Fine. Stay with Aunt Josie,” I say, fuming. “In fact, why don't you move in with
Aunt
Josie and
Uncle
Gabe? Since they want to play house and have it all figured out.”

“Meredith,” Nolan hisses, appropriately horrified that I'm taking my anger out on our daughter. My face burns with shame as I catch my breath, then tell Nolan I'll be waiting in the car.

“Can't you just sit down?” he says, looking up at me. “So we can all discuss this calmly?”

“No. I can't,” I say, shaking my head. Then, talking about my sister in the third person, I add, “Would someone please tell her that bringing a child into the world is the hardest thing you can do?”

When nobody answers, I finally turn to walk out of the house, catching the look of anguish on Mom's face and knowing, in an instant, she's thinking how wrong I am about this. That watching your child
leave
the world is actually much harder.

“W
ell, that went swimmingly,” Gabe deadpans the second the door closes behind Mom and Dad, the two of them giving new meaning to the expression
eat and run
.

“It's all Meredith's fault,” I say. There was no way the rest of us could recover from her outburst and exit, the conversation vacillating between awkward, tense, and downright contentious.

“Yeah,” Gabe says as we make our way back to the table and begin to clear the dishes. “But no surprise there. We both knew that was going to happen.”

“I guess so,” I say. “But I always think she'll be different.”

“You know that's the definition of insanity according to Einstein?” Gabe says, raising one eyebrow. “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?”

I sigh and say, “Yeah. Well, I knew she wouldn't embrace the idea, but I thought she'd at least stay for dinner.”

“I didn't,” Gabe says. “Although it is pretty hard to resist my cooking.”

“True,” I say, cursorily acknowledging his culinary prowess. “But she wouldn't even listen….Her mind is so made up about
everything
.”

“She really
is
closed-minded,” he says. “I'll give you that.”

“Mom is, too,” I say, thinking about some of her remarks during dinner—how many different ways she suggested that I just go on a few more dates.

“Yeah, but it's kind of different. Your mom's just…traditional. Conservative. She wants you to follow that set boy-meets-girl path because she thinks that's the only path to happiness….Meredith's not really traditional—she's just judgmental toward
you
. If another friend came to her with this same half-baked idea, she'd be all over it. Praising her independence.”

“Exactly!” I say, so excited by how well Gabe always captures and articulates what I'm feeling that I choose to overlook his slightly offensive choice of adjectives. After all, he is correct—the idea hasn't
fully
baked yet. But it
has
been slid into the preheated oven.

“Meredith has no faith in me whatsoever,” I continue. “Did you see how she acted about Harper? It was as if she thought I was going to start discussing orgies or heroin in front of a four-year-old.”

“You do like a good heroin orgy,” Gabe says with a little grin.

I don't crack a smile; I'm too worked up now. “And can you believe she brought up Will like that? As if that is at all relevant at this point…”

I return to the table for another armful of dishes as Gabe trails behind me. “Were you at all tempted to set the record straight?” he asks. “She really thinks you cheated on him—”

“No. Not one bit,” I say, cutting him off. Because I know what he's thinking, and he knows what I'm thinking, and I see no reason to rehash all of it.

“Okay, okay. Just asking,” he says, palms up, facing out. His gesture would suggest that he's offended, but I know it takes a lot more than a few terse words to offend Gabe.

For the next several minutes, neither of us speaks as I rinse our dishes, glasses, and utensils, handing them to Gabe to load in the dishwasher.

“There's no point in discussing ancient history,” I finally say, trying to soften my retort. “Especially with Meredith.”

“I hear you,” Gabe mutters, glancing at me.

“I mean…what's done is done,” I say, handing him the final few steak knives.

“Right,” Gabe says. “What's done is most definitely done.”

We are speaking in code, of course, the way best friends do, talking about several layers of things at once. The night Daniel died. And also the night, years later, on which we discovered that there was more to the story than we once thought.

I
T HAPPENED ABOUT
halfway between then and now, seven years after Daniel died. Gabe picked me up for dinner, no destination in mind, and we landed at Tin Lizzy's, a Mexican dive. It was just the two of us, which had become something of a rarity, as Will and I were approaching engagement, and one of his terms of marriage seemed to be curtailing my time with Gabe. He insisted that he wasn't jealous; he just thought my friendship with Gabe was “odd” (which of course meant that he was jealous). Trying to accommodate him, I mostly obliged his request.

But on that particular Friday night, Gabe and I had Will's blessing, likely because he was going to a bachelor party and figured this was a way to keep me from whining about the strip club antics that were sure to come.

“So ol' Willy gave you a hall pass tonight?” Gabe asked over fish tacos, guacamole, and a couple of ice-cold Coronas.

“Ha-ha. Very funny,” I said, feeling defensive. “I don't need his permission to hang with you.”

“Oh, yeah, ya do,” Gabe said, raising his eyebrows. At that point, he had never directly told me what he thought of Will, nor would he ever tell me he missed me, but I knew the truth, on both fronts. “So what's he got tonight? A bachelor party or something?”

I reluctantly nodded, marveling at his uncanny ability to read a situation.

“Where is it?” he asked, nonchalantly making conversation, though he'd unwittingly stumbled onto very sensitive terrain.

“They started out at Five Paces,” I said, feeling myself tense as I looked away. Then I blurted out that I hadn't been back there since the night Daniel died.

“Yeah,” Gabe mumbled. “Me neither, come to think of it.”

“What?” I asked, looking up at him with a jolt, thinking I must have heard him wrong—or simply misunderstood what he was saying.

But then he clarified. “I haven't been back there since the night your brother died, either,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.

“Wait. You were
there
that night?”

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “You don't remember?” He let out a nervous laugh, which I would overanalyze later, and added, “Thanks a lot.”

As I stared back at him, my heart began to race, and the haziest recollection of Gabe sitting at the bar, wearing a gray hoodie and nursing a pint of beer, returned to me. I wondered if it was a real memory—or just the power of suggestion. “Were you wearing a hoodie?” I asked, squinting into space.

“Hell if I know—” he started to say, then stopped. “Well, actually, I think I was. Maybe…”

“Why haven't you mentioned this before?” I asked him, incredulous.

“Because you were
there,
that's why,” Gabe said, softening the sarcastic edge I'd usually get with such an answer, given the emotional territory we were in.

“Did we speak?” I asked.

“No. Not really,” Gabe said with a little shrug. “We just said hello…in passing. That was pretty much it. But I was kind of sitting near you—at the end of the bar. Right at the corner. For some reason I do remember that.” He points at the corner of the napkin and says, “You were like this, facing the street…and I was right here, facing the back of the bar.”

Suddenly I had no appetite. I pushed my plate away and asked who he was with. I wanted,
needed,
to know every detail.

“Nobody, really,” he said, which was par for the course. “I knew a lot of people there. But I didn't
go
there with anyone.”

My hands turned clammy, the way they always did when I thought about the nauseating minute-to-minute time line of that night. “What time did you get there? What time did you leave?”

Gabe used a chip to scrape the last bit of guacamole from the little bowl between us. “I don't know, exactly,” he said, the chip halfway to his mouth before he changed his mind and dropped it onto his plate.

“Well, then, approximately?” I pressed.

He insisted that he truly didn't know—that he couldn't even ballpark it. “My guess would be as good as yours.”

“No,” I said with a sad little laugh. “Actually that's not true. Your guess would
still
be better than mine.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it does,” I said.

This answer must have been good enough for him, because he said, “Okay…well, if I had to guess…I'd say I got there around ten…and then left around…midnight. Maybe twelve-thirty.”

I closed my eyes, wondering if we could have been saying hello at the precise minute that Daniel was killed. What was I doing at exactly ten-fifty-four that evening? I had asked myself that question many times, though never with Gabe in the frame. And of course, that was before your cellphone could pretty much give you an answer, providing a near-perfect time-stamped record.

“What else do you remember?” I said. “About me on that night?”

Gabe bit his lip, then said, “Well…you were pretty lit. I remember that.”

I nodded, feeling a rush of thick shame, not for the first or last time. Shame that I was at a bar at the moment my brother was killed. Having fun. Laughing. Flirting with boys—probably lots of them. Getting blackout, stupid drunk.

“What else?”

“To be honest, Jo…that's it. I don't remember anything else.”

I could tell he was lying or at least covering something up because Gabe almost
always
told the truth, hence eliminating the need to add the “to be honest” qualifier.

“Yes, you
do,
” I said. “Tell me. What was I doing? Who was I talking to?”

“I don't remember. A lot of people.”

“ ‘A lot of people' or you ‘don't remember'? Which is it?”

He took a deep breath, then an even longer exhale. “I
honestly
don't remember…exactly. A ton of people were there that night….It was near the holidays so everyone was home….”

“I know
that,
” I said, frustrated. Of
course
I knew it was near the holidays. It was December freaking twenty-second. I told him to please tell me something I
didn't
know.

“As we've established,” Gabe said, sounding weary but patient, “I don't know what you remember, and what you don't remember. So please don't get mad at me here. I'm trying the best I can to answer your questions.”

“I'm not getting mad at you,” I said, still sounding mad, but feeling something closer to desperation. “Just
please
tell me everything!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hand. “Shawna was there. You were talking to Shawna for a while…and a lot of the other usual Lovett girls from your class….”

He looked into my eyes as I waited, then waited some more. “I think you were also talking to Nolan Brady at one point,” he finally said.

“You
think
?” I quickly replied. Nolan's was the name I'd been waiting for.

“You were…but I honestly wasn't paying that close attention. I just knew you were really, really drunk…and Nolan looked…concerned. That's it. I swear.”

I felt as if I might pass out and realized that I'd been holding my breath. I sucked in a few gulps of air as Gabe asked a logical follow-up. “What does
Nolan
say about it? Surely he remembers what you talked about….”

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“He doesn't remember, either?” Gabe asked.

“I never asked him,” I finally said.

“Oh.” Gabe nodded.

“I've never talked about it with anyone,” I said. “Not him or Shawna or Meredith or Mom. Not even that annoying therapist that my parents made me see. No one until now.”

“But
we've
talked about the accident before….” Gabe said.

I shook my head. “I don't mean the accident. Or Daniel's death. Or any of that. I mean what
I
did that night….”

Gabe held my gaze and said, “And? What did you do that night, Josie? What do
you
remember?” His expression was so classically Gabe-like, focused and intelligent and compassionate (though he never wanted you to know just how much he cared), that I started to talk. I told him how I had my first drink in my bedroom as I dressed, sipping from my sorority flask. I told him I was in a fight with Meredith because she wouldn't let me wear her pendant that went with my outfit, and Mom had taken her side, and I left the house pissed off.