The three of them stand there and stare at the terra-cotta planter, which, although her prediction is accurate, looks like a bunch of onions stuck in a lot of dirt. They stare at it much longer than necessary.
ELLIOT IS MAJORING in English, but he can do math. Mr. Rickey got his mother pregnant first, and married her second. Over fish en papillote at Duck’s, he thinks back to the summer, which was too hot and too long. Elliot worked odd jobs, as a tutor, a playground crafts director, and a picture developer at a one-hour photo place. In between, he lay on the green-striped sofa in the family room or on a chaise by the unfilled pool or in the hammock. He didn’t read much. He saw his friends sometimes. He spent Fourth of July with his father and Veronica on their roof, where they had a barbecue because even though his father has lived in Manhattan for eight years, he can’t let go of his suburban life—he keeps a car and shops at malls and has barbecues on rooftops. During all this, Elliot’s mother was somehow, somewhere, fucking Mr. Rickey. “The Rickeys are having trouble,” she told Elliot sadly. On Friday nights, she and Mr. Rickey had dinner here at Duck’s. But she was always home and in her pajamas, her half-glasses perched on her nose, a book opened, when Elliot got home.
They are acting like they are in love, his mother and Mr. Rickey. They keep touching, intimately, knees and hands, and even gently bumping foreheads. Mr. Rickey is drinking too much, almost a whole bottle of wine himself.
“It’s so different having a baby now,” Elliot’s mother tells him. She has taken small sips from Mr. Rickey’s wineglass all night. “When I had you, I still had a martini whenever I wanted one. I got knocked out during delivery. I had never even seen my cervix.”
They bump foreheads and giggle.
“These days, they make a point of including you in everything. We’re going to Lamaze classes together. Fran will cut the umbilical cord. The works.”
Embarrassed, Elliot looks down at his fish until his mother says, “You know who did all this way back when? Georgia. You know she had a child, don’t you?”
He looks up and nods, suddenly interested.
His mother lowers her voice and leans across the table. “At the time I thought she was crazy, of course, but she had it with a midwife, and this woman made her squat like she was in a field or something, made her stay naked the whole time, and made her chant these Indian birthing songs while she rubbed her perineum with eucalyptus oil. Georgia says it wasn’t so bad.”
“Squatting?” Mr. Rickey asks. It is clear he cannot imagine such a thing.
Elliot’s mother says, “Something about gravity.”
“But she gave that baby away,” Elliot reminds her.
“She never even held him.”
“Tragic, really,” Mr. Rickey says, shaking his head.
Elliot’s mother has returned to her perfect posture. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, there is potting soil under her fingernails. She opens her small oval purse and pulls out a bad Polaroid that she slides across the table to Elliot. Mr. Rickey kneads her neck. They both grin.
The picture is dark, blurry. A picture of a night sky, perhaps. Or airplane radar.
“That’s Tatiana or Alexander,” she says proudly. “Of course we’ll find out the sex. Why not? They can tell you nowadays, you know.”
It sinks in slowly: this is a photograph of their baby. Tatiana or Alexander? Why the Russian names? Elliot wonders. Then he remembers that Mr. Rickey has something to do with Russia. His old house was filled with those dolls that sit inside each other and ornate, painted Easter eggs. Once a year he and the real Mrs. Rickey used to have a party with caviar and borscht and thirty different kinds of vodka. Maybe he was even a spy.
Elliot’s mother points to a place with her dirty fingernail and says, “That’s the heart.”
“Looks just like you,” Elliot tells her, and slides the picture back across the table.
“He inherited his sarcasm from his father,” she tells Mr. Rickey.
“Elliot,” Mr. Rickey says, taking his mother’s hand in both of his, “your mother and I would like you to join us at the birth of our child.”
“It’s allowed,” Elliot’s mother says. “We can make a whole list of people.”
Elliot wonders if Mindy and Randi Rickey will be there too. It doesn’t seem right.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Rickey says, “no squatting and chanting.”
Elliot can see it, Georgia squatting naked, her teeth gritted, pushing out her baby, chanting. But he can’t understand what his mother and Mr. Rickey want from him, can’t picture his mother naked and panting or doing any of it. The busboy picks up the dirty plates and smiles at Elliot, oddly, when he whisks his away.
“Georgia said they massaged her with honey,” his mother whispers to Mr. Rickey.
Georgia’s baby could be anyone, Elliot thinks. He could be here at Duck’s eating dinner with his adopted parents. He could be the busboy. Anyone at all.
ON THANKSGIVING MORNING Elliot’s mother and Mr. Rickey show up smelling like fish.
“I’m doing a bouillabaisse,” his mother announces.