Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“Maybe you should try having some fun,” Dr. Amelia said.

Zoe wiped the sweat off her face. “Yeah,” she said. “Any suggestions?” She poked her head out of the covers, knocking Bingo onto the floor.

“When was the last time you went on a date?” Dr. Amelia said. “Maybe you need to kick the snow off your boots. Kick the tires. See if you can pump a little air into the bicycle.”

“I gotcha,” Zoe said. “We’ll book an appointment when you’re back. Thanks for calling. I’m sorry to bug you on your vacation.”

“That’s what telephones are for. It’s fine. You take care.” And then Dr. Amelia was gone, and Zoe and Bingo were alone in the house again. There was a thump downstairs, and Zoe called out “Hello?” but no one answered. The house had its own problems.

Elizabeth hadn’t seen Iggy Pop all afternoon. She’d been in and out — into the office, to the grocery store, to the coffee shop — but Iggy usually rotated through his sleeping spots throughout the day, and so it didn’t seem strange until she realized that it had been nearly all day. Harry was playing a video game in the living room, an SAT book splayed open on the coffee table. “Igs?” she said. “Iggo Piggo? Pop Pop?” Elizabeth walked in circles around the kitchen.

“Have you seen the cat?” she asked.

Harry shook his head without taking his eyes off the screen.

“Hmm,” Elizabeth said. She checked all the beds and the bathroom sinks. Sometimes when it was hot, Iggy went from sink to sink, trying to stay cool by pressing his body against the porcelain. Andrew was at EVOLVEment again.

Elizabeth wasn’t interested in being a nag. She loved that Andrew was in touch with his feelings. She never wanted a husband like her father, who could have been on fire and wouldn’t have called for help. But she didn’t love that Andrew seemed to have chosen to be an intern at a yoga studio instead of finding an actual job, even if that actual job had been an internship as a woodworker. Andrew had never cared about money — he’d never had to — but for most of their adult lives, he had at least respected the appearance of having a job.

There were tons of kids at Whitman in similar situations — the children of actors and hedge-funders, the grandchildren of people whose names were on the sides of public buildings. Brooklyn wasn’t the same as it had been when they’d moved, a city next door, with its own rhythms and heartbeats. Now it was all Manhattan spillover — the Russian oligarchs were buying up Tribeca and the West Village, and so Brooklyn was the next-best thing. It was her job to support this, but Elizabeth didn’t like it. She would have been happier making smaller commissions and keeping the borough full of middle-class families. She’d sold so many houses to public-school teachers — Center Slope town houses — and those houses were now worth absolutely stupid amounts of money. Sometimes she thought about moving upstate, somewhere pretty along the Hudson. Maybe when Harry graduated, she and Andrew could cash out for good. Sell the house, sell the life. If they weren’t in the city, then maybe Andrew wouldn’t ever have to pretend to have a job again. He could just go on meditation retreats and build sculptures or throw pottery or take tae kwon do classes. She could sell country houses to the rich people who were buying $2 million houses in Brooklyn — she’d ask the O’Connells to let her open a branch office in Rhinebeck. Harry could spend summers at home, living in the apartment over the garage. What did it mean about their self-worth if they needed to be in the city for no reason? Was she that afraid of what her friends would think of her, if they’d say she was a quitter? Was she a quitter?

“Mom?”

“Sorry, what?” Elizabeth blinked. Harry was staring at her, the scene on the screen paused with his detective frog in mid-jump.

“Do you want help looking for the cat? It’s going to get dark soon.”

Elizabeth rubbed her hands together. “Yes, oh, sweetie, yes, let’s do that. Can you check the basement? I’ll do one more search down here, and then maybe we’ll walk around the block?” Iggy Pop wasn’t supposed to go outside — there were feral cats in the neighborhood, and he was no fighter — but the back screen door was easy enough to shove, even for a cat. He’d gotten out a few times before, and they’d always found him stalking around the flower beds in the yard, a determined look on his face.

Elizabeth opened and shut cupboards in the kitchen and peeked under the dining-room table.

“Not in the basement,” Harry said, coming up the stairs.

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t think so.”

They started in the garden, Elizabeth walking clockwise and Harry counterclockwise. No sign of Iggy.

“Let’s walk around the block,” Elizabeth said. They walked down the driveway to the sidewalk and turned right, checking under the parked cars and in the flower beds.

Harry needed a haircut. His curls were starting to creep down his neck the way they had when he was a baby. Elizabeth resisted the urge to reach out and put her finger inside one of the ringlets.

“So, are you spending time with Ruby?” Since the eBay incident, Harry hadn’t mentioned her, but Elizabeth saw his phone light up more than usual, and then his whole face, and so she knew that Ruby was still hovering around. She wasn’t against it, not really — she loved Ruby. She loved Zoe. She loved that Harry was spending time with a girl, whether what they were doing was romantic or platonic or, most likely, somewhere in that giant, hazy, in-between zone.

“I guess,” Harry said. “Yeah, we hang out. I mean, after our SAT class, and stuff. Sometimes.”

“That’s nice,” Elizabeth said. She didn’t want to press. She had never once talked to either of her parents about her love life as a teenager, or as an adult. When she and Andrew had decided to get married, her father had made a joke about the marital bed, and Elizabeth had felt nauseous for days. It was Harry’s business. Ruby was a little bit wild, but Elizabeth very much doubted that her sweet son was up to Ruby’s romantic standards. Zoe had been like that — happy to flirt with anyone who looked her way, but much harder to pin down. It was funny to see how things repeated. Not funny ha-ha.

When Zoe and Jane had started talking about having a baby, it wasn’t clear how they’d do it. Zoe was younger, but also more squeamish. Jane’s mother had had four kids at home with a midwife and no drugs; her genes seemed promising. It was a logistical conundrum — they would both be mothers, of course, but who was going to carry the child, who was going to breast-feed, who was going to have her hormones and pelvis put through hell? They were both open to it. If they were going to have more, then maybe Jane should go first? But how could they know if they were going to have more? Neither Zoe nor Jane had elaborate fantasies about big families. And then, of course, they had to figure out the sperm.

It was what people always wanted to know — and what Elizabeth had been afraid to ask too many questions about, even as close as she was. Were they going to get it from a friend or a sperm bank? If it was from a friend, would they actually have sex, or go for the turkey baster? Elizabeth hated to think about how Ruby probably got asked all those questions — at school, at summer camp, by bigots and friends alike. Before Zoe had Ruby, Elizabeth had never thought about how easy it was for a heterosexual couple — even though she and Andrew had had a horrible time getting pregnant, both before Harry and after, it was their private trauma and heartbreak and no one else’s. No one ever asked how they were planning on having a baby, what elaborate measures they would have to take.