150 Pounds (31 page)

“The guy with the funny name you told me about ages ago. Lowcock, something like that? The nose, ear, and throat doctor from JDate?”

“I completely forgot about him,” Shoshana said. She’d been so busy getting the orchard together, she’d forgotten about the e-mail she’d received months ago. He’d had a cute profile picture, too.

“Maybe I’ll e-mail him back,” she said finally.

“You should. He’d be lucky to go out with you,” Greg said.

She smiled at him.

The rabbit peeked out from one of the apple trees, hopped around, then ducked beneath the white fence and took off, its body a blob of gray paint against the green hills.

“This sure ain’t Hoboken,” Greg said. They once again opened the latch for the fence, and walked back to the house through the tall grass. (She kept it on the long side. She couldn’t get
Christina’s World
out of her head, and didn’t want short, suburbs-type grass. She didn’t want a
lawn
. She wanted fields, and she ran her hand along the top of the grass as they walked. It tickled her palm.)

“No. It’s the opposite. But I love it,” Shoshana said. “I haven’t figured out exactly what my plan is yet. I’m keeping my room in the ’Boken for now, and I’m back there once a week or so. Emily and my mom are threatening to move here.”

“Do you have a business plan for the orchard yet?” A distant car’s motor purred as it drove over the hills into town.

“Not really. I just figured I’d sell pies, and let people pick their own apples. I found all these cute wooden baskets in the shed out back that would be perfect.”

They’d reached the doorway and he fingered the pineapple knocker. “You know, I do contracts for a living. I can set you up as a real business with a tax ID, like we did for the blog.”

“That would be awesome! You’d really do that?”

“Of course. You should set things up properly if you’re going to make any money.”

“I know. I’m such a space cadet when it comes to business. But you’re right. Thanks so much, Greggie!”

“After Jane’s wedding we’ll pick a date and I’ll come out here with the forms.”

“I love it when you speak lawyer to me, baby,” she said in a deep, sexy voice that made them both laugh. They walked into the house and sat in the kitchen, talking the afternoon away. She’d baked a spinach quiche the day before and they each had a slice.

That evening they walked to the mansion for dinner with Joe Murphy and Greta. Joe had a chest cold. “A cold in the summer, ah, fockin’ hell,” he’d said when they rang the doorbell and Greta ushered them in. The hallway smelled like a combination of yummy cooking and … pee.

“P-Hen had a little accident on the rug,” Greta said. Her white hair was tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck. “Why this crazy man insists on keeping a bird indoors is anyone’s guess.”

“She doesn’t complain about my drinking!” Joe Murphy bellowed from his seat in the dining room.

Shoshana rolled her eyes. “They fight because they love,” she whispered to Greg, who looked intrigued.

Dinner was a delicious combo of mussles in spicy broth, white bean and tomato soup, and an assortment of different kinds of meat and vegetable empanadas. “These were my mother’s recipes,” Greta said, her black eyes shining over the candlelight.

“I thought yer mother was wicked and beat you with a hickory stick,” Joe Murphy said. He took sips from his silver flask whenever Greta went into the kitchen to bring out a dish.

“Yes, she did, but that was all she knew,” Greta said. She ducked Shoshana under the chin gently. “She did the best she could with no money.” She turned to Joe. “It would have done you some good.”

“Greg, have you ever paid someone who yells at ya constantly?” Joe Murphy asked. He was feeding Patrick O’Leary scraps of food under the table.

Greg laughed and took a sip of his wine. “Yes, my assistant.”

“Women!” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, exasperated.

“I’ll toast to that,” Greg said, tipping his wineglass to Joe.

Greta rolled her eyes, collecting their plates. “You can’t live without us,” she said. “You shriveled old prune.” She placed one on top of the other, the sound of knives scraping against porcelain filling the great room. There were cherubs painted on the ceiling, and Shoshana spent time looking up at each one. P-Hen gave a great screech from the other room.

Joe was feeling tired, but he stayed up long enough to talk Greg into smoking a cigar with him (despite Greta’s warnings about his blackened lungs). So the women sat on the back porch, watching night come over the fields.

“This sky is so different from Hoboken’s,” Shoshana said. They’d brought their wineglasses with them. They were big goblets, with red, blue, and green stones embedded in the silver stems. “You can see so many stars.”

Greta smiled. “Your father said something exactly like that to me once. He missed the farm once he moved to Summit. He loved the house he bought with your mom because that was home, and then, well, you two gorgeous girls came along, but he enjoyed painting the sky out here.”

“I love it that you remember so many things about my dad,” Shoshana said.

Greta was quiet for a few minutes.

“Georgina, Bob, and Mimi were my family. Their souls still reside here, in this special place. I miss all three of them so dearly. I came here from Ecuador and didn’t know a soul. They never treated me like a, what do you call it? Hired help? Even now, that crusty old man in there has set up a stipend with his bank for me after he goes. Though that won’t be for a long time, if I have anything to do with it.”

Shoshana smiled. Joe was pretty old. No matter how much Greta bugged him about his drinking and smoking, time was running out. But that didn’t mean you didn’t try to cheat death and take care of the people you loved, in the best way you knew how.

She tilted back her head, warm with wine and company, and again looked up. She wished she knew how to tell planets from stars. Didn’t one blink?

She wasn’t sure what dress to wear to Jane’s wedding tomorrow (though she’d recently bought a new cotton striped number from Target, not in the plus size section!), but it was okay to decide at the last minute. Life was led at a slower pace in the country. Splitting her time between Hoboken and here, her mother and sister and friends coming to live part-time with her, the anticipation of the harvest in the fall, informing her readers about her weight loss … It would all come together. The small apples that now lay sleeping on their boughs would soon become large and ripe. She didn’t have to have life figured out to enjoy it.

Alexis hadn’t driven in the three years since she’d left Greenwich, so it felt strange to be behind the wheel of the rental car. The idea of visiting her parents sent shivers of nervousness down her spine as she steadied her hands on the wheel and 95 North sped by outside her windshield in a blur of asphalt and trees.

She had a small, raised ball of a belly that made the seat belt somewhat uncomfortable; she had to keep squirming around and changing position, something she imagined the baby inside her was doing in sync with her movements. When Billy was having a particularly hard day, they’d lie in bed together and she would read aloud to him from
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
. This month, they learned the baby could begin to hear outside voices and low tones, so Billy would put his head on her stomach and hum Dolly Parton songs in a deep voice that made Alexis laugh. Last week after a round of “9 to 5,” he’d looked up, his eyes tired, black fuzzy spots of hair coming in around his scalp, his cheekbones sharp like knives, and said:

“You have to call Noah, Alexis. You have to tell him you kept the baby. He asks about you every day and he has a right to know.”

She hadn’t responded. Instead, she walked to the living room window, and oh, how ironic, there was Noah pulling down the metal grate that covered the Off the River Ale House window at night. His silhouette, so familiar to her now with his wild curly hair, tall, strong build, and big hands … he always looked sad to Alexis, his shoulders slumped, and knowing she was the cause of his hurt only made things harder. Every day that went by, their fight loomed in the black velvet back part of her brain, seeping into every interaction, every inflection in her voice, every thought streaming through her brain. That moment when she’d flung angry words at Noah three months ago in the bathroom seemed ridiculous now, but she was too stubborn to admit it. She’d never fallen in love before and it terrified her. Billy told her he’d named a sandwich at the restaurant after her, “The Alexis,” and the thought made her happy, like he’d been thinking about her, too.

Alexis blinked and gripped the wheel. She adjusted the strap of the seat belt again and sighed, remembering the horrible words she’d used, the anger she’d felt when Noah called
Skinny Chick
“crazy.” Really, he was calling her crazy, right? She
was Skinny Chick
. Or at least she had been. She let out a bitter chuckle that sounded more like a bark as she flipped on her turn signal and entered her neighborhood. No one would call her skinny now. She’d gained forty-five pounds, and was nearly five months pregnant. The baby was due in January.

She had mixed feelings about keeping the baby. On the whole she was glad; she hadn’t seen herself as a mother, at least not one who kissed skinned knees and packed school lunches, but in the last few weeks, seeing Billy so frail, she wanted to push death out of her house and welcome life with open arms.

She made an appointment a week after the argument with Noah for an abortion at a hospital on the Upper East Side. It was scheduled for nine a.m., and she was told not to eat anything the night before, which was hard because these days her appetite was so strong she often ate two dinners. She’d worn an absurd outfit, a raincoat with a large black hood she’d pulled over her face, and huge sunglasses, as if somehow she could crawl inside herself and hide. As if the paparazzi, or maybe her father, would be waiting outside her apartment building shouting, “Selfish bitch!”

Billy had been at a doctor’s appointment, and didn’t know she was going through with the abortion. She’d planned it that way, knowing he would try and talk her out of it, as he had been doing since she’d told him the news. Two blocks from the hospital she sat down on a street bench, hit with a wave of nausea. She’d looked up, and lo and behold, there was a coffee shop named Miracle Café, and she’d laughed out loud at the irony. Because wasn’t her pregnancy a small miracle?

Placing her hand on her stomach as New Yorkers buzzed by her left and right, she realized either she had to eat something or else she would faint right here on this bench, so Alexis walked inside and ordered a whole wheat bagel with nonfat cream cheese, lox, and a large coffee. Then, she took a deep breath and changed her order with the waitress with amazing green eyes and a nose ring, to leave off the lox (uncooked fish) and change the large coffee to a small (too much caffeine, there were so many pregnancy rules!), and that was when Alexis let out a quiet gasp of surprise because she realized she was keeping the baby.