If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (22 page)

“You never know when people are going to come screaming out of their house at you. It’s happened to me.”

“Jerks. You’re being a good citizen just by picking it up. They should be applauding you.”

“No one applauds a girl carrying a bag full of shit.”

“That’s very philosophical,” he said. “Can I quote you?”

“I’m saving it for the title of my memoirs.” I reached for the leash. Our fingers touched.

“I can hold it,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll take her.”

He let go of the leash, the side of his hand sliding along mine. We stood there for a moment then I said, “Should we keep
going?”

“I’m in no hurry to get back,” he said. “Anyway, I want to hear the rest of the story.” We started walking again. “So you
did this unusual thing. You had a baby at eighteen. On purpose.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you want to have a baby so young?”

“There was this guy,” I said. “That’s the short answer, anyway.”

“Lots of people fall in love, but they don’t necessarily start having babies right away—or at least not if they have access
to a medicine cabinet full of condoms.”

“Yeah but most people aren’t obsessed with human biology the way we were.”

A short pause. “Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one.”

“We were both biology majors. I mean, I wasn’t yet but I was planning to be one, and Duncan was in his senior year but he
was going to go on to graduate school to get his Ph.D. in human evolution. He had this theory—” God, it was hard to talk about
this without feeling the self-loathing and bitterness and embarrassment rising out of this knot of poison in my gut. “I mean,
it wasn’t just a theory, it’s true, I guess. That humans were meant to have babies much younger than people do these days.
That an eighteen-year-old girl was likelier to have an easy pregnancy and a healthy baby than a thirty-five-year-old. I mean,
biologically it’s all true, right?” Eleanor Roosevelt had settled down to a steady walk. Her nails made a quiet clopping sound
on the pavement.

“So he said you should have his baby right then and there?”

“It was all much more complicated than that.” I flicked the leash lightly on Eleanor Roosevelt’s back, the way you’d giddy-up
a horse. She turned and looked at me questioningly but then continued placidly on her way. “We had a
plan
. We were going to live together in the school housing for families and have a couple of babies while we were young and take
turns going to classes and caring for them—we figured we could stagger our classes so we wouldn’t even need babysitting—and
then by the time I was done with college and he had his doctorate, the kids would be in school and we’d both be able to have
full-time careers and then of course they’d grow up and leave the house and we’d still be young enough to travel and have
tons of adventures, unlike people who have their kids later in life and then are too old once the kids are grown to do anything
fun.” I flicked the leash again, more irritably this time. “You can see how it all made sense, right?”

“Sure,” Andrew said, his voice as quiet and dark as the night around us. “If you overlook the part where an eighteen-year-old
college freshman has a baby.”

“Technically I was a sophomore.” I stepped over a tree root that was breaking through the cement of the sidewalk. “Or, more
accurately, a dropout, given the way things turned out. I thought I was a very mature eighteen-year-old, by the way. Perfectly
ready to settle down.” I remembered how Ryan had told me not to be in such a rush to grow up when I was fifteen. Where was
he when I needed him?

Andrew’s thoughts had gone in a different direction. “What did your parents think of all this?”

“Mom briefly freaked but then she got all ‘We can make this work’ about it. That’s how she operates.”

“And your dad?”

“He was pretty nice about it. I mean, compared to how
most fathers probably would have reacted, he was incredibly calm. Just said it sounded like I knew what I was doing, and he’d
support me. He liked Duncan. He’d only met him once or twice, but they talked biology and kind of bonded.”

“So what happened to Duncan? And the plan?”

I kept my voice flat and emotionless. It was the only way I could actually talk about this stuff. “A couple of months before
I was due, Duncan scored a three-year fellowship to go study with some world-famous biologist in South America. I didn’t even
know he had applied. He said he didn’t think he’d get it so didn’t see the harm in applying.”

“What? That’s crazy.”

“He said he’d come back soon and join us.”

“Did he?”

“He’s never even met Noah.”

You could hear the disgust in Andrew’s voice. “How could he do that?”

“I don’t know. He was so far away, living this crazily different life. Maybe the whole idea of Noah seemed unreal to him.
I know
he
started to seem unreal to me pretty quickly—Duncan, I mean. Not Noah.” I gave a short laugh. “Definitely not Noah.”

“But he knew you were going to have a baby, right?”

“Are you kidding? It was completely his idea. For months he was beyond excited about the whole thing. He had this ability
to believe in something so totally that he kind of swept you along with it.” I found it hard to explain Duncan to someone
who had never met him. He had been so compelling in person but now that I hadn’t seen him in years, it all felt vaguely hallucinatory.
“I thought he was so intense because of how he felt about me, you know? That it was all personal—that he was just so into
the idea of
me
and our having a baby and then this
future together… that his whole life had become about that.” I didn’t tell Andrew—couldn’t tell him, couldn’t really tell
anyone—how it made me feel when Duncan’s light blue eyes had burned with desire and passion and certainty and all that burning
was for
me
. When he said he wanted to impregnate me, I had felt so special, like I was the Chosen One, like I was some goddamn fertile
female Harry Potter.

That was the part I couldn’t forgive myself for… that I had bought into the whole thing and believed him when he said that
I was his future.

Not that Duncan had been lying when he said the things he said. He had meant every word—for that moment. I just hadn’t known
him long enough yet to realize his nature was as mercurial as it was passionate.

His intensity was like the sun: warm and satisfying and bright. As long as he had directed it at me, I was sure I was doing
the right thing because nothing in my life had made me feel as special or wonderful or privileged.

And then it all went away. The warmth, the certainty, the attention. Our future together.

Sometimes I wondered if there had been other women since then who had discovered what it was like to feel that unbelievable
glow on them, to feel chosen and special because Duncan had singled them out from all others. Not that Duncan was likely to
have asked anyone else to bear his baby. He
had
to have learned he didn’t want that, right? Plus the odds were slim he’d have found anyone as willing to follow him into
Crazyland as I’d been, anyone else who was young and innocent enough to think she was old and mature enough to do
that
before she really was.

I closed my eyes briefly and forced myself to shove all those thoughts away. For the moment, at least. Then I said, as lightly
as I could, “Turns out Duncan was just intense about whatever he happened to be into at the moment. Once he switched to something
else, he just switched completely.”

“But you can’t get a girl pregnant and then just head off into the sunset,” Andrew said.

“For a while he’d call and check up on us. And he always said he’d come join us as soon as he could.” Every time the phone
would ring in the months right before and then right after Noah was born, I’d run for it, hoping it was Duncan calling me
to say he was coming back. I could still remember the look on my mother’s face whenever she saw me dive for the ringing phone.
I couldn’t stand it—the pity and the anger and the confusion that battled in her expression, none of which she ever voiced
but all of which I felt radiating from her in waves. I hated her for watching me like that, hated her for being right when
she said she didn’t trust Duncan. “He kept postponing when he was actually going to come back,” I said. “Then he stopped saying
he was coming back anytime soon. Then he just stopped calling.”

Andrew was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Does he help with child support?”

“I haven’t asked him to.”

“He should.”

“Well, money’s not an issue with my parents helping out.” I stared at the dog’s ears, bobbing gently in the glow from the
streetlights. “And I don’t want to give him any excuse to butt into our lives. Noah’s mine now,” I added with an edge of fierceness.
“Not ours. Mine.”

“The law would see it differently. I mean, legally he has rights. And obligations.”

“Believe me, I’m aware of that. You should hear my mother on the subject. If Duncan ever comes looking for us, I’ll deal with
the legal stuff then. But I don’t think he will.”

“Noah might want to find him when he’s older.”

“I know,” I said shortly.

A pause. Then, “How was it?” he asked. “After Noah was born?”

“I dropped out of school, cried a lot—so did Noah, he was an awful infant, constantly crying and colicky…” I trailed off and
we walked a few steps in silence. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “We survived. My parents helped. Melanie helped. It wasn’t
so bad.”

“You’re lucky to have the family you do.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“And Noah’s great.”

“He’s great,” I said. “But not easy.”

“He’s still figuring stuff out. He’s going to be okay. Better than okay. I can tell.”

“How about me?” I asked, only half joking. “Can you tell about me? Am I going to be okay when I grow up?”

“I think so.” He gently knocked my elbow with his. “You might want to run around outside a little more and criticize teachers
a little less.”

“Fuck you,” I said amicably.

“And watch your language. And maybe grow your hair out. But you should grow up to be a fine young lady someday.”

“Grow my hair out?” I repeated with genuine distress. “You said it suited me!”

“That’s the problem,” he said. “It
does
suit you. But what’s with all that? The nose stud and the tattoos and the torn jeans and all that? You come from this nice
upper-middle-class home and you have a kid. You don’t exactly look like who you are.”

“Who do I look like, then?”

“I don’t know.” He considered the question for a moment, then said, “A little like the girls who used to hang out in the back
alley behind my high school and smoke and scare the shit
out of anyone who accidentally got in their way. Only prettier,” he added quickly. “And nicer, of course.”

“I don’t scare the shit out of you?”

“Not so much.”

We had circled around the block and were back at my house. I put my hand on the gate latch but didn’t open it. Eleanor Roosevelt
watched me intently, panting, eager to get inside to her water bowl. I stared absently down at her, wondering why I was telling
Andrew stuff I hadn’t told anyone else. It was because I was drunk, I thought, and the night was so dark. “I went through
kind of a weird phase,” I said slowly. “A couple of years after Noah was born. I just—” I shook my head. “It was like I couldn’t
believe where I was, what my life was, that I was back to living at home only now I had this kid. I had been a good girl for
so long. Always getting good grades, always behaving the way I was supposed to… And suddenly all these strangers were staring
at me like I had done something I should be ashamed of. So I guess I kind of felt like if people were going to stare at me
because I’d had a kid too young, then I’d make them stare at me for my own reasons, on my terms—that I’d give them something
to stare at. And if it made me look like those tough girls at your school, all the better. I figured I could use a little
toughness.” He was silent. “Does that make any sense at all?” I said. “Or do I just sound nuts?”

“Of course it does.” He leaned against the gate, his face in shadow. “I’m sorry you’ve had it so rough.”

“This isn’t rough.” I gestured to my parents’ gracious two-story house. “Teenage mothers in Compton, they have it rough. I
have it easy.”

“Okay, so maybe they have it rougher.” A pause. “Did you get a college degree?”

“No. I’m still working toward it.”

“Where?”

“I take some courses online.”

He digested that for a moment. “Do you know what you want to be when you finally graduate?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Six inches taller.”

“Seriously. Do you think about that stuff?”

“Sometimes. I think about it and then I stop thinking about it.” I wished I had a better answer to give him, that I could
honestly say I was planning to do something worthwhile, that I didn’t sound like such a loser.

“Maybe you should—” A sudden burst of music cut off whatever he was about to say. “Shit, sorry.” He hesitated, then reached
for his pocket. “I better just check…”

Please don’t answer it
, I thought.

He checked the screen, flipped open the phone, and hesitated—then raised it to his ear. “I better get this one. I’m sorry.”

“No worries.” I unlatched the gate. Eleanor Roosevelt waggled with joy. She was always happy to leave and always happy to
come home.

“Hi,” Andrew said into the phone. “Oh, that’s great… Yeah, me too… Listen, can we IM later, at the usual time? We’re all here
talking and… okay. Love you. Bye.” He slipped the phone back in his pocket. I wondered why he said we were “all” here talking.
It was just the two of us. Unless he was including the dog?

“We should go in,” I said, breaking the suddenly awkward silence. “There’s pie.”

“Mmm,” he said jovially. “Pie.”

I started to push the gate open, but stopped. Poor Eleanor Roosevelt, who had waited patiently up until now, nosed at it desperately,
confused and eager to get inside. “I just need to tell you one last thing,” I said. “So you don’t think I’m horrible.”