“You’ve got a lot left,” he said. “Go ahead and get back to it. We’ll stand over here.”
“I can get you chairs . . .” Becca started to say, but Lauren seemed to understand that he needed to be on his feet, needed to feel like he could bolt at any minute even if he had no intention of doing so. She demurred, saying they were fine as they were, and Becca took her seat again.
His sister proceeded to open a series of presents that made no sense to him—a breast pump that looked like a torture device, a long circular piece of fabric that was supposed to somehow wrap the baby against her body, a thing that heated up wipes. He was only half paying attention, trying to remember to smile or make a similar sound to the one other people were making. Most of his focus was on his parents. Even though he hadn’t looked directly at them since entering the room, he knew that his mother hadn’t stopped looking at him, whereas his father hadn’t glanced over once.
Lauren leaned over to address the woman who had opened the door, seated closest to them. “What’s that thing do?” she whispered about the last present.
“Oh!” the woman said, brightening. “It’s pretty nifty. I had one for my kids. Sometimes the cold can be a real shock to their skin, so when you change your baby’s diaper—”
Lauren held out her hand, and the woman flushed when she realized her mistake. She unclipped her clothespin and gave it to Lauren, a sour twist to her lips.
Asa glanced down at where Lauren was clipping the clothespin next to her other one, and when she looked up, she did the most surprising thing. She winked at him.
He couldn’t stop the grin that split across his face. God, he wanted so bad to just haul her out of there, go back to bed, forget this stupid impulse that had him surrounded by strangers and baby paraphernalia. But if he had to see this through, at least he had the distraction of watching her work the room.
She was scarily good at the game. One by one she targeted people, making polite small talk until eventually they slipped up and said the forbidden b-word. It wasn’t long before she had a conspicuous five clothespins, and people started eyeing her like she was a hustler walking into a pool hall. Who knew, maybe that was what she was.
After the presents had all been opened, the room cleared out a bit, some people leaving early for other engagements. The significance of the date and time only hit Asa then, and he grabbed Becca as she was heading into the kitchen with a stack of paper plates.
“It’s Sunday,” he said. “And the shower started at ten.”
He didn’t have to spell out what he meant. Growing up, Sundays had always been untouchable. Not just because they were the Sabbath, but also because it was a day that his dad’s schedule was completely spoken for—last-minute preparations for the sermon, the sermon itself, and then a disciplined block of time afterward for reflection and study. When Asa was a kid, he hadn’t been allowed to join a Little League team because it had a few Sunday games throughout the season.
Becca gave him a slightly sad smile, and for the first time he noticed that despite the makeup and her bouncy blond hair, her brightly flowered maternity dress, she looked . . . tired. He could only imagine how hard it would be to get any sleep right now, and if the rumors were right she was staring down the barrel of at least a few more years of not getting much sleep.
“Follow me,” she said. “I want to show you the nursery.”
He made quick eye contact with Lauren, who seemed to understand his wordless message as he followed his sister. I’ll be right back. But hopefully she also understood the plea under that, somewhere even beyond wordless—If I’m not, come rescue me.
The room that Becca showed him into was down a hallway, small but painted a cheerful yellow, early-afternoon sunlight coming in stripes across the hardwood floor. There was a crib, an overstuffed rocking chair in one corner, and a scuffed dresser with bright red drawer pulls. The room looked a bit unfinished, boxes still stacked in one corner, impossibly tiny baby outfits strewn across the chair. But nice.
Asa shoved his hands deep in his pockets, looking around. “I kind of can’t believe it,” he said, the reality fully hitting him. His sister was having a baby, an actual human person who would be part of his family forever. Somehow, it had felt a little theoretical before this moment—his own fault, for not making more of an effort to see her.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but Becca cut him off before he could say anything.
“I planned this shower so they wouldn’t come,” she said.
He didn’t need to ask who she meant, but he was still confused. “You didn’t want . . .”
“I wanted you to come,” she said. “And I knew you probably wouldn’t if they were here. So I purposely scheduled the shower for a Sunday morning, figuring they’d say they couldn’t make it, and then I could call you up and tell you that it was safe if you didn’t want to risk running into them.”
“But instead they canceled church.”
Becca picked up one of the outfits draped across the back of the rocking chair, using her belly as a shelf as she folded it into a neat square. And then she undid it and laid it the way it had been before, as if she wasn’t even conscious of what she was doing.
“Dad got someone to fill in for his sermon,” she said. “It’s not like he straight canceled.”
But he’d canceled church for himself. That was almost bigger than if he’d shut down the entire operation. The service had happened—in that same building Asa remembered from childhood, cream-painted stucco with brick accents at the corners, one end more traditional with a tall spire, the other more utilitarian, added on sometime in the nineties. His dad just hadn’t been there.
“Well,” he said, because he didn’t really know what to say. “Thanks for trying, I guess.”
Becca had picked up the pink onesie again, but threw it back on the chair with such force that it slid to the floor. “No,” she said, “that’s what I need to apologize for. I didn’t try. I couldn’t just call and tell them they weren’t invited, because I was inviting you. I took the chickenshit way out instead, and then tried to pressure you to come anyway. Just like I tried to pressure you into coming to my wedding, yelled at you when you wouldn’t. It was hard not having you there, I’m not going to lie, but I do understand why you stayed away. I just—”
He was surprised when his sister appeared to be wiping away tears. Growing up, she’d always been so tough. She’d pinch him when their parents weren’t looking, and then make fun of him if he cried. But she also didn’t stand for anyone else bothering him, had once grabbed a kid’s bicycle by the handlebars and forcibly turned him around when he rode by to call out insults. Asa didn’t know when exactly that had changed, when he’d started to feel like he was on his own.
But he didn’t want to be on his own anymore. His relationship with Becca wasn’t perfect, but if she said she wanted to try, then he was ready to try, too. The old hurts were still there, but maybe they could move forward through them.
“I needed you on my side, Bec,” he said. “I need you on my side. It was always us. Don’t you remember? I’m not asking you to cut them out, I’m not even asking you to try to change their minds. I just need you to support me, to stand up for me the way you did when we were kids, before it ever became about who I was with or how I identified. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes,” she said, so quickly it was like she’d been offered a chance to win a prize on a radio show and she didn’t want to lose it. She was definitely crying now, the skin around her eyes blotchy and red. “I can, I will. I’m so sorry I didn’t do that before, I can’t even—”