Rumaan Alam - Rich and Pretty

“So how is it?” Lauren is on the floor, her back against the sofa, looking up at her. She’s cradling a cup of coffee. “You’re a mother.”

“I know,” she says. “It’s. . I don’t know yet, is that a weird answer?”

“Not especially,” Lauren says.

“One day I was myself, then one day I had a baby, and now I’m still myself, but I’m also not. It’s not like something magical happened. I mean, sure it was magical and chemical and blah blah, but mostly, I still feel like the same person with a whole new set of things I have to think about during the day. Every day. For the rest of my life.”

“That seems like a pretty succinct description of parenthood,” Lauren says. “Of course, it’s all another country to me, so to speak.”

“Maybe not forever,” Sarah says.

“Maybe forever,” Lauren says. “What do I know?”

“What do you know? Tell me about Rob.”

“Nothing to tell,” she says.

“Nothing at all?”

“He’s good, I don’t know. Would you like his number?”

“Don’t be an asshole.” Sarah sighs. “We’re making conversation.”

“I’m not being an asshole, I’m just saying. Rob’s Rob. It’s good, it’s fine, it’s the same, it’s not important. We’re here together for the first time since you had a baby, I don’t want to talk about some guy.”

Some guy —this is a telling turn of phrase. Sarah sees it immediately, that Rob will not last the year. Something has changed, Lauren’s mind has changed. Sarah’s disappointed, maybe not as disappointed as she’d have been a few months ago, before a baby monopolized her every emotion. She likes Lauren and Rob together but is somehow not surprised. “What should we discuss? South Sudan? The election? I can conference in Papa if you’d like.”

“I don’t know, your baby?”

“Yes, he’s very important,” Sarah says. “But he’s very boring. He sleeps, he nurses, the doctor says he’s healthy. You’re not going to turn me into one of those women who only talks about the consistency of their baby’s poop.”

Lauren frowns. “The dignity of motherhood.”

“Do you ever think about it, having a baby?”

“The last time I thought about it was because I was going to and had to take care of it.”

Sarah remembers Lauren’s abortion, of course — the year after college, for all those years of expensive education, it was the first year they actually learned anything. Lauren didn’t have a doctor, as she’d been seeing student health clinicians the previous four years, so Sarah had found the place, out in a part of Queens that was otherwise all tile distributors and malls that catered to Chinese people. They took a car service there, Sarah sat in the waiting room, which was trying so hard to be tasteful, with its plants, its upholstered seats, unobtrusive classical music, its general, genial air. Before, and after, despite not wanting to interfere, despite wanting to simply let Lauren heal, she’d urged her to discuss the thing with Gabe. He had a right to know, didn’t he?

“Shit.” Sarah thinks for a minute. “This isn’t hard for you, now, is it, this baby stuff, because of that?”

Lauren shakes her head. “Ancient history.”

Sarah doesn’t know if Lauren ever actually told Gabe about it. She’s almost sure she didn’t. “Not so ancient.”

“Ten years, basically. A decade. A lot has happened in ten years. Look at you. You’re a wife and a mother.”

“I am a wife, and a mother.” Sarah doesn’t want to think about it — what a ten-year-old boy or girl would look like next to her own baby. Still, she can’t help it.

“Don’t say it like it’s a bad thing. It’s your thing. It’s the thing you were meant to do.”

Sarah is quiet. Everyone’s been tiptoeing around it, concerned words, delivered in hushed voices. This is a surprise. “Thanks a lot,” she says. She’s mad in that way that only Lauren can make her.

“What thanks a lot? It’s not an insult. It’s a good thing. You’ve got a good thing.” Lauren finishes her coffee, sets it on the glass table.

“Do you think that this is all I am, is that it? When people say someone is a wife and mother, what they mean is that she’s merely a wife and a mother. Only a wife and a mother. There’s this implicit poor thing .”

“You’re hearing things,” Lauren says.

“I am? Maybe what I’m hearing is the collective voices of every woman of the last two generations ready to throttle the first person who brings up having it all. Please, Lauren, I know you well enough. Don’t condescend and tell me it’s a compliment.”

“You’re hearing italics where there are no italics,” Lauren says. “You’re wonderful; why are you getting mad at me for pointing out how wonderful you are?”

“It just feels like you’re emphasizing the difference between us for some reason. Like I’ve made some choice that you would never make. Because. I don’t know. Because I’m stupid, or old-fashioned, or something.”

“Yeah. You’ve never thought that I’ve made any mistakes,” Lauren says. “You’ve never acted like my being me is totally insane and not the way to do things.” She stands. “I should finish cleaning up.”

“Just leave it, I can clean up later,” Sarah says. They can do this, switch from annoyance with ease. They don’t need to have a big let’s-clear-the-air. All this time, all these years, the same conversation: It shifts, it evolves, but remains essentially the same.

Lauren sits on the sofa. “Okay.” She’s quiet. “Lulu seems to be taking grandmotherhood in stride.”

“Mamina, did she tell you?” Sarah snickers.

“She mentioned.”

“It’s hilarious. My whole life the only times I’ve heard her speak Spanish is to hotel maids. Suddenly, she’s an abuela.”

“You’re forgetting the super, on Eleventh Street. Ramon? She talked to him en español .”

“The super?” Sarah can only barely recall him.

“When we moved in, or right after, she came over, with a bunch of crap for the apartment, then she saw Ramon and gave him a long lecture in Spanish about how he had to look after us or something, I couldn’t follow it, but actually, I could tell what she meant.”

“I never knew that,” Sarah says. She remembers that day, though — Lulu, with lamps, a rug, some framed photos, a coffee table, a plant, a plant stand, a huge number of things for their ridiculously small apartment. The rug had covered almost every inch of the living room. “That seems like a long time ago, somehow, Eleventh Street. It seems like longer ago than college. It seems like longer ago than actually being eleven.”

“It does. I wonder why?”

“I remember all that other stuff so well, you know. Being eleven. With you. Being with you is mostly what I remember. Weekends in Connecticut, the horse, stealing Papa’s cigarettes.”

“I remember that stuff, too,” Lauren says. “Drinking wine with dinner on Sunday, that was the first time I ever had wine. Your mom, pouring me a glass, like it was totally normal. I never saw anything like that.”

“Mom’s always been a social drinker.”

“Lulu is a social everything. I can just picture it now, can’t you, ten-year-old Henry getting a little shot glass of cabernet so he can join in the toast?”

Sarah can see it, with such clarity, such certainty. Lauren truly knows her family. “I never knew that,” she says, “your first glass of wine.”

“My first so many things, Sarah. You’ve been around for so many of my first things. My first trip to the state of Connecticut, I’m pretty sure. The first horse I ever rode on. My first kiss, the first time I touched a penis, you’ve been there for all that. We are old.”