Джули Салливан - Friends and Strangers

Most days, Elisabeth didn’t know what she was doing at 32 Laurel Street. How, after all that searching for the perfect place, she had ended up here, in the middle of nowhere.

Before they left, when anyone asked where they were moving to, Andrew would say, “Upstate.”

She felt the need to add, “But not, like, cool upstate. Take wherever you’re picturing and add two hundred miles.”

She liked that their house didn’t look like every other house on the block, at least. Their neighbors had torn down old capes to build monstrosities that extended to the furthest possible edges of their property.

Their house was an original. Small but lovely. A glossy red door, ivy crawling up a white wooden façade that the realtor advised would need to be repainted every four or five years. Elisabeth and Andrew nodded, casual, when she said it, as if they hadn’t spent their entire adult lives in apartments, never taking on a home-improvement project more involved than changing a light bulb.

Gil reached for Sam now and cooed, unwilling to be left out of the conversation.

“Is it okay?” Sam asked.

“Of course.”

She took hold of him, held him up in the air. In that way one does with an infant, she spoke to Elisabeth through him. “I can tell you are an exceptionally smart young man, Gilbert,” she said. “I think we’d have lots of fun together.”

He grabbed hold of her hair, and they both laughed.

Elisabeth beamed. “Look how good you are with him.”

“He seems like such a sweet one.”

“He is. We got lucky.”

Her eyes still on Gil, Sam said, almost absentmindedly, “Do you think you’ll have more kids?”

A strange thing to ask during a job interview. But then, she was young enough to believe this was a simple, unloaded question. And hadn’t Elisabeth recently complained to Andrew that it gave her the creeps how everything here seemed hidden? In the city, she found it unsettling that lives were on display. People fought or ate lunch or tweezed their eyebrows right in front of you on the subway. But her neighbors here, darting out their front doors and straight into their SUVs with plastic smiles and apologetic waves, were worse.

“I only ever wanted one,” Elisabeth said. “Andrew, my husband, he’d have five. So, who knows what will happen.”

Didn’t she sound carefree? Unbothered. Willing to leave it all up to chance. She thought of the two embryos, frozen in liquid nitrogen at a storage facility in Queens.

Andrew had nightmares about them.

Four times a year, they received a bill from Weill Cornell in the amount of two hundred and sixty-two dollars. The storage fee was the same no matter how many embryos a person had, so every time Elisabeth saw that bracketed number 2 on her statement, she felt a tug of annoyance at the cost.

In the early days, when doing IVF was still a theoretical, they read an article that said there were more than a million frozen embryos around the country that would likely go unused. Couples who had produced children in this way and didn’t want to have more found themselves in limbo—unable to discard what could potentially become their child, but unwilling to bring that child to fruition.

Andrew said it wasn’t fair to create those potential lives and then just leave them there. He made her swear they would never do such a thing.

She thought to tell Sam all this now, but resisted.

“It’s time for Gil to eat. I’ll get him a bottle,” Elisabeth said, rising to her feet. “I do breastfeed, but I supplement with formula.”

She went into the usual monologue. “I’ve always had a low supply. I was taking forty herbs a day for the first three months, and tying myself in knots. Three different lactation consultants. This disgusting tea that made my sweat smell like maple syrup. Pumping after every feed, every two hours, even in the middle of the night. Then I decided to throw some formula into the mix and be done with it.”

The intensity of her shame had surprised her at the time. Even now, she’d be loath to say it to another mother.

“I once read that Charles Manson was breastfed,” Sam said brightly. “Ever since, I’ve figured that it can’t possibly matter one way or the other.”

Elisabeth smiled.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything to drink?” she said. “I made coffee.”

“Coffee would be great if it’s no trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all.”

3

AS SOON AS ANDREW GOT HOME, Elisabeth thrust the baby toward him and said, “Can you hold him for a sec? I have to pee.”

When she called him at work earlier to say she had hired a sitter, Andrew said, “I can’t wait to hear more about her tonight.”

Translation: I’m busy. Stop talking.

From the start, theirs had been an egalitarian marriage. He cooked; she washed the dishes. He vacuumed and did laundry and mopped the kitchen floor. She cleaned the bathroom, which most people thought was the worst chore of all, when really it was the easiest. If either of them did more than their share, it was Andrew, no question.

But it sometimes seemed like the baby was only hers. At first, it was a biological thing. But Gil was four months old, could take a bottle, and still she did all the night feedings, all the mental calculations of knowing when he needed more diapers and lotion and clothes.

“His pants are getting tight. I think he’s ready for the next size up,” she said a week ago, and Andrew made the mistake of asking, “What size does he wear now?”

In part, she knew, this was a function of Andrew’s new job and the fact that she was more often physically present at home. She was technically still on maternity leave, though that was a murky concept when you worked for yourself. But Elisabeth couldn’t help fearing it was more than that; that parenthood had redefined the terms in a way she hadn’t expected.

By the end of the day, she felt exhausted and resentful and spent. Hiding in the bathroom was a greater solace than any spa she had ever been to, as relaxing as a vacation in Saint Barts.

Twenty minutes passed, and she was still on the toilet, scrolling through pictures of the baby on her phone. This was what happened—the urge to escape Gil fulfilled, Elisabeth pined for him. The first day home from the hospital, she got teary at the thought of his moving away to college.

“You’re going to live at home and commute,” she told him.

She had never before missed something as it was happening.

Elisabeth texted Nomi.

I hired a sitter.

Great! What’s she like?

College senior. Wants to be a painter. Adorable. We talked for two hours.

Why?

She was interesting. (And it’s possible I haven’t had a real conversation with anyone besides Andrew in weeks.)

A moment later, her phone lit up with what she assumed was Nomi’s response, but instead her sister’s name appeared.

E…I HATE to ask, but is there any way you can spot me $200? I’ll pay you back ASAP—the deal’s going through next week!

A familiar knot in her stomach.

Sure, Elisabeth wrote back. No prob.

She hated the feeling this thing with her sister always aroused in her.

She toggled over to the BK Mamas as a palate cleanser. It was an instinct beyond her control, like a stutter or a twitch. Someone had posted the saddest story, about a child abused in foster care. There was a related online petition. She signed without reading the particulars. Her eyes filled with tears. Why had she logged on to this page? Elisabeth was certain she had come looking for something, but she couldn’t remember what.

She sensed Andrew’s presence outside the door.