The Appetites of Girls (45 page)

•
2003
•

F
rancesca presents me with a silver-ribboned box—a collective shower gift from Opal, Setsu, and herself, she says. Inside are three infant-sized knitted sweaters with matching hats: one in white, one in pink, one in pale green, with ribbon woven through their cuffs and collars. We pass the sweaters around the table. Setsu holds up one of the hats—the green one. It has a single tiny bow on its brim.

“Have you ever seen anything sweeter!” Most of Setsu’s mannerisms are as I remembered, but her laugh is different now, bursting from her as if uncontainable.

Opal smiles. “Their colors are beautiful,” she says, studying them. One of her new clients is Bridgeton, the hotel chain. The graphic design firm she owns with her husband, Campbell, is updating the chain’s brochure and the green of this sweater might work perfectly.

“How is Campbell?” we want to know. “How is married life?”

“We’re two peas in a pod!” she laughs. Children still seem a long
time off, though, she says. “But if we ever have one of our own, and if it’s a girl”—she reaches for the hat in Setsu’s hand—“I want to find her an outfit just like this!”

Francesca disappears into her house then returns with a pastel pink cake molded in the shape of a bassinet. She smiles at us over the cake as if she knows what we are thinking—that this is a sentimentality in her we never could have imagined. But her steps are as clipped and purposeful as I remember them from before, when she marched in protest of everything that crossed her track. And when she talks of her work, her most recent cases at Bausch and Firth, where, since finishing law school, she has practiced as a women’s rights advocate, the same flames ignite her words as they did long ago. Still, who could have expected this kind of celebration from the Francesca I lived with throughout our years at Brown? On the night the four of us first met, she had rolled her eyes when Setsu and I admitted that we hoped, before graduating, we might find true love, the men we would marry, even share children with. She reached into the back pocket of her jeans for a pack of matches and lit the cigarette she had long held in the fingers of her right hand. She blew a perfect “O” of smoke then broke it with her thumb. “You know,
this
is why we’re suitemates. All colleges do this. It’s policy. They match you with roommates as different from you as night from day.” She shrugged. “I
guess
it’s supposed to keep things interesting.”

At the time, we’d believed she was right. But now I can see, though we walked different paths, we were more similar than we had thought: each one of us—whether or not she knew it—had been fighting her own bit of darkness. Each trudging, climbing toward what the best part of herself believed she could be. Toward the self that could soar.

“You didn’t have to do all this!” I say to Francesca.

“I wanted to. Isn’t that okay?” Having returned to her seat beside me, she gives my elbow a poke with hers.

Behind her on the lawn, which smells of newly mown grass and the sweet viburnum that borders her garden, her young son and daughter are
toddling after each other. Every now and then, they tumble to the ground, soiling their party clothes. Then they turn toward Fran, their noses wrinkling in the sunlight, and explode into a fit of giggles. As I watch them, I feel a nudging against my ribs, the internal fluttering that still manages to surprise me though I am already in my eighth month of pregnancy. I look down at my hands folded across my swollen abdomen, then from Francesca to Setsu, from Setsu to Opal. Setsu, who had become reed-thin during our last years of school, her cheeks pale hollows so that people began to whisper, is still slender but full-faced, almost glowing now. She has joined an orchestra in New York, she tells us, a well-regarded one. She is modest as always, but the flaring of her delicate nostrils betrays her pride as she mentions an upcoming concert, one I promise to attend. “I’ve missed you, Setsu,” I say. And she and I vow to see each other more regularly. We are lucky to be in the same city; we won’t let so much time slip away from us again.

Opal is the only one of us to have returned to Rhode Island. She and Campbell have just finished building a house near the water in Bristol. She has begun a painting class, too, she says. Of course, work for her design company demands most of her time, but she could lose herself in her art for days if life allowed. “Well, you must know, Ruth!” She loved my last novel,
After the Clouds
, she says. She always checks the local bookstores to make sure they carry it. “You and Joshua should visit us sometime! Campbell and I would look forward to the company.” “We will, we will,” I agree, because her invitation, I can tell, is sincere and because the once plump, wide-eyed girl who had emerged from her parents’ dented Chevrolet wagon at Brown will always hold that corner of New England in her heart.

And Francesca—I need only to look around—appears to have everything. She admits, when pressed by Opal, to having just made partner at Bausch and Firth. This will allow her to do more on behalf of her clients, she says. And she and Jonathan are about to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary. Can we believe how the time has flown?

Suddenly the thought of the countless experiences my daughter has before her stops my breath. What a miracle it is—this life that awaits us with all its possibilities. But as she stirs once more, a sigh moves through me for the pains she will certainly endure, the aches of growing to womanhood no girl escapes. And for the battle she, too, must wage to triumph over herself.

Francesca’s cake is spongy and light. Its soft frosting turns to liquid on my tongue. Somewhere I have read that, even from their first samplings of food, babies have definite likes and dislikes. I shift my hands, feeling for the firm roundness of my daughter’s head and cup it lightly as if to speak through my fingers:

“
May you honor your own inclinations. May you find the fullness of your strengths. And as bit by bit, year by year, Girl reaches out into Woman, may you take hold of the truth of yourself.”

For this is my greatest hope for her. Even before she is born into this world.

I am forever grateful to my wonderful editor, Amy Einhorn, for taking a chance on this book, and for her vision and wisdom and guidance. To Liz Stein, for her calm and patient attention to every detail.

To my agent, Matt Bialer, for believing in this novel, for his instincts, and for his kindness and good humor. To Lindsay Ribar, for her suggestions and insights.

To the entire team at Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, for their expertise and creativity, and for the great care they have devoted to this book.

To my mother, for her sound advice and for being, always, a most invaluable reader. To both of my parents, for teaching me to be true to myself, for encouraging my writing all of my life, and for giving me more than I can ever thank them for. To my husband, for his love and support, and the gift of time to write.

And to the family and friends who offered inspiration along the
way.

Pamela Moses grew up in New Jersey. She attended Brown University and received a master’s in English from Georgetown. After graduating, she moved to Manhattan to teach English at a girls’ school. She now lives outside of New York City with her husband and two children.
The Appetites of Girls
is her first
novel.