CLAIRE AND I were sitting up in her bed that night after our outing at Susie’s, having a two-girl pajama party. Edmund was on tour with the San Francisco Symphony, and Claire had said, “I really, really don’t want to go into labor1 here all by myself alone, girlfriend.”
I looked over at her, lying in the huge divot she’d made in her memory-foam mattress2 with her rotund 260 pounds.
“I can’t get any bigger,” she said. “It’s not possible. I wasn’t this big with two boys, so how can this little girl-child turn me into the blimp that ate the planet?”
I laughed, thinking it was possible that when she’d had her first baby twenty years ago, she was a few sizes smaller than when she’d conceived Ruby3 Rose, but I didn’t say so.
“What can I get you?” I asked.
“Anything in the freezer compartment,” Claire said.
“Copy that,” I said, grinning at her. I returned with a carton of Chunky Monkey and two spoons, climbed back into the bed, saying, “It’s cruel to call an ice cream Chunky Monkey when that’s what it turns you into.”
Claire cackled, pried4 off the lid, and as we took turns dipping our spoons in, she said to me, “So how’s it going with you and Joe?”
“What do you mean?”
“Living together, you idiot. Are you thinking of getting seriously hooked up? As in married?”
“I like the way you kind of edge into a subject.”
“Hell. You’re not such a subtle creature yourself.”
I tipped my spoon in her direction - touché, my friend - then I started talking. Claire knew most of it: about my failed marriage, about my love affair with Chris, who’d been shot dead in the line of duty. And I talked about my sister, Cat, divorced with two young kids, holding down a big job, and having a bitter relationship with her ex.
“Then I look at you, Butterfly,” I said. “In your grown-up four-bedroom house. And you have your darling husband, two great kids off into the world, and now you have the guts5 and love enough to make another baby.”
“So where are you in all this, sugar?” Claire said. “You going to let Joe make the decision you don’t love him enough to marry him? Let some other girl make off with Joe, the perfect man?”
I threw myself back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. I thought about the Job, about working with Rich seventeen hours a day and loving that. How little time I had for anything but work; hadn’t done Tai Chi in ages, stopped playing the guitar, even turned the nightly run with Martha over to Joe.
I put my mind on how different it would all be if I were married and had a baby, if there were people who worried about me every time I left the house. And damn - what if I got shot?
And then I considered the alternative.
Did I really want to be alone?
I was about to run all this by Claire, but I’d been quiet for so long, my best friend picked that moment to jump in.
“You’ll figure it out, sweetheart,” she said, capping the empty ice-cream container, resting her spoon in a Limoges saucer on the nightstand. “You’ll work on it and then, snap. You’ll just know what’s right for you.”
Would I?
How could Claire be so sure, when I was without a clue in the world?
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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pried
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| v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的过去式和过去分词 )；撬开 | |
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guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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