“AND WHAT DOES FROST MEAN WHEN HE SAYS ‘good fences make good neighbors’?”
Maisey’s gaze blurred, the lines of Robert Frost’s poem becoming nothing more than a swirl of ink on her desk.
It wasn’t like she didn’t understand the poem. She’d read Frost in tenth grade—wrote a paper on him. For extra credit.
And for fun.
But with the AP tests coming up in the spring, Maisey was more than happy to review old material (although, it was only old for her. Most of her class didn’t read years ahead on the syllabus). And usually her hand would be up in the air, ready to set the record straight on Frost’s sense of irony, but today . . . in fact for the past couple days . . . it just didn’t seem to matter.
What the hell was her mom thinking?
Getting knocked up?
There was a bowl full of condoms on their health teacher’s desk—she never grabbed any because her own sex life was nonexistent, but God, apparently she should have been taking some home for her mother!
“It means, boundaries make people respectful, right?” Haley, who was celebrating her obviously miraculous early admission to NYU, said.
“Hmm . . .” said their English teacher. “Is there maybe any other interpretation? Maisey?”
“What?” Maisey’s eyes snapped front, and back into the present.
“What did Robert Frost mean when he said ‘good fences make good neighbors’?”
Maisey knew the answer, of course. But as she had been distracted, she hesitated. And that’s when the apparently unconscious form of Foz Craley jumped in.
He was the kid that you always thought was asleep in class, his arms folded over his desk, his head disappeared underneath a mop top of hair. But then, when a question came up, he would always shock the teacher and the class by having not only the right answer, but an in-depth analysis of the question itself.
It was annoying as hell. And this time was no different.
“The poem is about how people automatically put up walls, and it keeps us from engaging with each other,” he said. “He put the line in the mouth of the antagonist, so the protagonist could argue against it.”
“Precisely! Now, what are the arguments Frost makes against ‘good fences’?”
Maisey let the classroom discussion fade into the background again. But first she sent Foz a dirty look—not that he could see it. He had gone back to sleep.
Maybe life would have been better with a couple more walls, Maisey thought. Because damn if she didn’t regret the open-door bathroom policy she and her mother had always had.
Maisey had seen the pregnancy test, and despite being seventeen years old, it took her a second to realize that it was not a thermometer, and instead the harbinger of impending doom.
And even then, she didn’t quite believe it.
“But, it can’t be,” she’d said when her mom told her it was positive. “You’re too old!”
Mom had let out a short laugh. “I’m thirty-six, Maisey. I’m not quite menopausal yet.”
“Ew, Mom.” She shut her eyes at the biological thoughts her mother was putting into her head. “Does Nana know?”
“Not yet.” She looked from the pregnancy test to her shoes.
“Great, Nana’s gonna be super pleased.”
“Actually, Nana will be pleased.” Her head came up, defiant. “She loves babies.”
“No, she loves her book club and her Zumba class and her monthly trips to the Golden Nugget. She won’t be pleased you’re dropping a baby into the middle of all that. Again.”
“HEY,” her mom said, her tone swinging from kid-caught-out-after-curfew to full-time-parent. “It wasn’t like that with you. And it won’t be like that now. I’m different. And Sebastian is different.”
Sebastian. At the thought of her mom’s boyfriend and apparent father of the fetus, Maisey nearly puked. How her mom—her (usually) smart, steady, cautious mom—had decided this was the guy to end her dry spell for, she had no idea.
Seriously, there were a million guys who were after her mom! She’d always seen it, even when she was little. Store clerks were nicer to her, the guy who towed their car after it broke down the fourteenth time, her swimming coach. The ones on set—the grips and electrics and transpo guys—always treated her mom more gently than they did others. They stood up straighter, and spoke sweeter.
She’d even conspired once with her friend Wendy in fifth grade to get her mom and Wendy’s divorced dad together. They’d seen The Parent Trap one too many times and thought if only they could get them on a date together, they’d automatically fall in love and Wendy’s dad would buy a house and she and Maisey would totally share a room.
(It hadn’t worked, which was for the best. Because the minute they hit middle school, Wendy started hanging with the track team crowd and left Maisey in her social dust.)
Her mom had always been the prettiest mom. And it wasn’t just her aptitude with makeup, or the fact that she was a decade younger than most moms (although she remembered her friend Jennifer’s mom making a snarky comment to that effect once). It was this light she gave off. This energy that said “isn’t the world a magnificent place to be?”
But her mother always avoided men, and their entanglements. And when Maisey asked why, she’d said that she was right where she belonged, with Maisey.
Until Sebastian.
It’s not that Sebastian was a bad guy. He was just . . . not mom material. He was younger, like thirty—but not young enough that he could pull off relating to a high schooler, as much as he thought he did. He was also a musician, which as far as Maisey could tell, meant he wore really expensive weathered clothes and always looked like he was wet.
She’d give him one thing—he was all about Sophia. He’d never once said anything leering to Maisey or given her a lecherous look. When he looked at her mom, it was like there was no one else in the room.
Even when there was someone else in the room. Specifically, Maisey.
The PDA was a little much to take.
All in all, he was just . . . lame. No, he was worse than lame—he was lame and he didn’t know it. She’d have killed for her mom to date an actual lame person. A staid, boring accountant who told dad jokes and wore pleated pants and didn’t keep her mom out until dawn at the ALT 98.7 After Party.
Seriously, who does that past thirty?
But her mom had just looked at her, standing in their tiny yellow bathroom, tears shining in her eyes.
Tears of happiness.
“Oh, baby doll,” she had said, wrapping her arms around her. And Maisey let it happen, this sweet folding that had become rarer and rarer as she’d gotten older. “This is not a scary thing. This . . . this is a wonderful thing. You were the most wonderful thing to happen to me, Maisey. And this little boy or girl, they’ll be the most wonderful thing to happen to us.” She pulled back, held her daughter by the shoulders and looked in her eyes. “We are going on an adventure. I’ll show you.”
And as her mother had enveloped her in her arms again, she thought she could feel the stretch and push of the baby growing between them. And she could only think, that while her mother looked on this as a good thing, as an adventure . . . Maisey could only see the mess.
“Yes. Lives are messy,” her English teacher said, snapping Maisey back to the present. “Lives intertwine. And we do ourselves an injustice when we fight against that.”
Maisey audibly scoffed. But the scoff was heard by only one person—got-into-NYU-early-admission-Haley. For everyone else, it was covered by the shrill cry of the school bell, and the immediate commotion thereafter.
Haley shot her a look of pity—practicing her New York attitude, no doubt—as she packed up her bag. That Foz kid disappeared into the crowd like a ghost. But Maisey didn’t care. She had bigger things to worry about than Haley Baumgarten or Foz Craley.
“You were very quiet today,” her teacher said, as she walked past her desk. “I figured you knew Frost backward and forward.”
“Sorry, Ms. Kneller,” Maisey said automatically. “I mean, I do know Frost. I did the reading. I just . . . I have a lot of other stuff—”
“I can imagine,” Ms. Kneller said, as she reached into her desk and pulled out a package of crackers. “Still haven’t heard from Stanford?”
Maisey’s stomach leaped at the mention of her top choice college. “No, not yet.”
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Kneller said, her blue eyes twinkling. “It won’t be long now. I’m told California schools send out their early admission acceptance packets this week.”
“Oh.” That in no way made Maisey feel better. “Thanks.”
“Saltine?”
“Oh.” She looked at the proffered cracker. “No thanks. I have lunch next.”
“Well, enjoy your lunch, then.” Ms. Kneller smiled, and Maisey took that as her cue to head out the door, as the next class began to dribble in.
Maisey glanced back at her English teacher before she left. And thought for a brief second that the flash of worry that crossed Ms. Kneller’s face matched her own.
Whatever, she thought to herself. She had her own shit to worry about. And her mom’s reproductive system shouldn’t be anywhere on that list.