Olivia looked around Janice’s kitchen with its slate blue cupboards and ornamental copper molds hung along one wall. She had never thought she would one day envy Janice’s ordinariness, but, Olivia realized, she did in a way. Janice’s husband, Carl, was stretched out on a recliner in their family room, watching CNN and enjoying a beer; Kelsey was entertaining herself, humming “Frère Jacques” as she tore up a book; the baby, Alex, stood in the playpen, throwing measuring spoons onto the linoleum floor; and Janice herself was at the stove, frowning over a recipe that was too complicated for someone who could not cook very well. It made Olivia feel bad that her old friend was trying so hard for her. But then Olivia was gripped by an even stronger pang of envy for the things that Janice had.
Across the state, the country, the world even, families were operating in this very way, Olivia knew. Even Winnie, who was up in Rhinebeck painting a mural of a cow jumping over the moon on the nursery wall. Olivia imagined Jeff, Winnie’s investment banker husband, downstairs cooking spaghetti just the way Winnie liked it: so al dente, it crackled slightly when she bit into it. They could hear chickens, too. And the low mooing of cows at the farm across the street. They drank milk from that dairy, milk so rich and fresh, it lay heavy on your tongue all day.
And what do I have? Olivia asked herself.
She was surprised by the answer that popped into her mind: Ruby. Ruby’s baby.
The girl was back at Olivia’s house, in Olivia’s bed, wearing Olivia’s white cotton nightgown. Before she left for Janice’s, Olivia had given Ruby extra pillows, warm milk, an iron pill, and a stack of the magazines that her sister, Amy, had left for her to read. “They’ll help you get a grip,” Amy liked to say. “Look at what’s going on in the world. Put things in perspective.” Surely the girl needs iron, Olivia thought. Six months pregnant—“I guess,” Ruby told her. “Something like that. I wasn’t ever too regular, you know? My girlfriend Betsy told me just not to do it fourteen days after your period and you’re fine. Ha!”
Olivia had cringed. Didn’t they teach birth control in schools these days? Even she and Janice had suffered through a course euphemistically named Health when they were in high school, lessons about ovulation and condoms and how long sperm could live. She thought again of Sheryl Lamont, happily pregnant in Texas, and Winnie, fat and happy in Rhinebeck, and she sighed.
“I know,” Janice said, appearing beside her to refill her wineglass, “dinner’s taking forever. Carl told me just to make steak, but I told him a lot of people don’t eat red meat anymore. You know Carl, though. Steak, potatoes, and ranch dressing.” She rolled her eyes so that Olivia would know that she, Janice, was better than that.
Olivia reached out and patted Janice’s arm, a gesture she meant as something kind but which came out wrong.
Janice squinted and said, “Is the wine okay?”
The wine was an expensive one. Too expensive, Olivia decided. Overhead, a ceiling fan churned the hot air around. Earlier, Carl had explained that the house never got hot because of all the ceiling fans. But Olivia was sweating and miserable, hungry for air and food.
“Bon Appetit recommended it,” Janice was explaining. “Carl wanted to get a jug of something horrible, but I wanted to splurge. Here you are, a New Yorker now. A city girl. I want you to know that not everybody here is such a hick. I want you to know that you’re not all alone.”
Olivia decided she would drink too much tonight. She had let a stranger into her house; she was reckless.
“When you were pregnant,” she blurted out, “did you have to take iron pills?”
It occurred to Olivia that maybe she had done the absolute wrong thing giving Ruby iron tablets. Maybe she should race home this instant and be sure Ruby and that lovely kicking baby inside her were fine.
Janice was back at the stove, frowning over a recipe. “Probably,” she said. “But I threw up everything, so eventually I stopped taking stuff. Even the prenatal vitamins. They say you really need that folic acid, but I didn’t take it, and my kids came out fine.”
Olivia glanced over at the kids. Alex was banging his head against the side of the playpen; Kelsey was eating Play-Doh. She stopped when she discovered Olivia watching her.
“It’s nontoxic,” Kelsey said.
Three years old and she knew words like nontoxic. What other words did they know? Nuclear waste? SCUD missiles? Safe sex? Not my baby, Olivia thought, her hand jumping a little at the memory of those glorious kicks. She would go to some special school where they taught the ABCs and long division and none of the bad stuff.
Kelsey was staring hard at Olivia. She had brown hair cut in a sort of pageboy—short, straight bangs and the rest in a bob. Her eyes were oddly big—not in a charming wide-eyed way, but in a way that reminded Olivia of Marty Feldman.
“Is your husband still dead?” Kelsey asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re never ever going to see him again?”
“No,” Olivia said.
“Never never ever?
Olivia decided she didn’t like this kid.
“Never,” she said.
“Not even in a million years?”
“I’m not going to be alive in a million years myself. No one lives that long.”
Kelsey considered this, then ate more Play-Doh, the blue.