I think we should throw Natalie a baby shower,” Rachel says as we’re hiking through Runyon Canyon the next Saturday morning. Thumper is, as always, leading the charge.
“Yeah, that would be nice,” I say. “We should do everything we can to make sure she feels welcome. We sort of botched it the other day.”
“Right,” Rachel says. “We blew that one. But I do really like her. She seems awesome.”
“I hope their baby has her skin tone. Can you imagine? What a gorgeous baby that will be.”
Thumper has stopped to smell something, and Rachel and I stop with him. We’re standing off to the side waiting for him as we talk.
“You knew, right?” Rachel says. “He told you ahead of time?”
I can’t look directly at Rachel until I decide what I’m going to say. I pretend to look at whatever Thumper is smelling, and in pretending, I actually notice that he’s about to step in mud. I yank his collar, but he steps right in it anyway. Now both his front paws are covered in it. I should just come clean.
“Yeah,” I say. “I did. He told me a bit before.” I really feel like shit about this. Our family always spills the beans about everything, and this time, I kept the beans.
I watch as Rachel’s face starts to lose resolve. She doesn’t look me in the eye for a few moments. She stares at the gravel path beneath our feet.
“You OK?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice cracking and her eyes looking forward. She starts walking ahead, and so I follow her, dragging Thumper along.
“You don’t sound OK,” I say.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” she asks. “Did he say why he didn’t want me to know ahead of time?”
What do I do? Do I tell her the truth and possibly hurt her feelings? Or do I keep yet another secret from her? I opt to split the difference. “I think he was afraid that you wouldn’t take the news well.”
“But why? I love Charlie! I’m always happy for Charlie. I’m always happy for everybody.”
“I think sometimes we worry that you can’t handle some of the love talk. We all have some sort of love life to discuss, for better or worse, in my case.” I shrug. “But you know, you haven’t been able to find a relationship, and I think . . . maybe . . . it’s hard to . . .”
“I seem bitter,” Rachel says.
“Yeah, a little.”
“You know, it’s funny. I swear, I don’t even think about being single that much.”
I look at Rachel as if she’s trying to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.
“No, I’m serious!” she says. “I really like my life. I have a perfectly fine job. I can afford to live on my own. I have the best sister in the world.” She vaguely gestures to me, but it’s clear she’s not saying it to flatter me. She’s saying it because she thinks it’s true, and it’s one of the things in her life that she’s happy about. Ironically, that’s even more flattering. “My mom is doing well. I get to spend my nights and weekends with people I love. I have plenty of friends. And the best part of my week is every Sunday morning when I wake up around seven thirty, go into the kitchen, and bake something completely new from scratch while listening to This American Life.”
“I didn’t know you did that,” I say. We have stopped moving again. Our feet just sort of gave up on moving forward and instead planted themselves firmly in their places.
“Yeah,” she says. “And to be honest, I don’t really feel like anything is missing.”
“Well, isn’t that—” I start to say, but Rachel isn’t done.
“But that’s not how the rest of you all live,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Mom always has someone. Even if we don’t meet him and it’s not as serious as she’s been with Bill, she’s always talking about meeting some guy.”
“Right,” I say.
“And Charlie is always dating someone. Or impregnating them, as the case may be.”
“Right,” I say, laughing.
“And you,” she says. She doesn’t need to extrapolate further. I know what she means.
“Right.”
“That was part of why I was so excited for you to have time away from Ryan, you know?”
“Sure.”
“It just seemed like maybe you could have my kind of life, too.”
“Living alone?”
“Living alone and being on your own and finding your Sunday morning hobby. I was excited about the idea that I’d have someone to talk to and it wasn’t always about boyfriends or husbands or girlfriends.”
“Right.” Even separated from my husband, I am still preoccupied with the opposite sex. Maybe not all the time. But still. On some level, my love life is a defining factor in my life. I’ve never been a person who had a career passion, really. I like my job at Occidental in part because it affords me a life outside of work that I really enjoy. I make enough money to have the things I need and want. I have time to spend with my family and, in the past, with Ryan. Love is a big part of who I am. Is that OK? I wonder. Is it supposed to be that way?
Rachel is quiet for a moment. “I just . . . I don’t feel like I’m missing out on love, really.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” she says. “Honestly, the problem is that I just feel like I don’t fit in.”
I never thought about it that way. Rachel just always seemed as if she was jealous or unhappy being single. I didn’t realize that perhaps it was the way the rest of us considered her singleness that really bothered her.
“I want to meet someone,” Rachel says. “Don’t get me wrong.”
“OK.”
“But if that doesn’t happen until I’m forty or fifty, I think I’m OK with that. I have other things I’m interested in.”
“And if you don’t have kids?”
“I don’t want to have kids,” Rachel says. “That’s the other thing.” She’s never said this before. We don’t talk about it that often, I guess. And I suppose I never asked her. I just assumed that she did. How hetero-normative of me. “I love kids. I’m excited for Charlie’s kid. I’m excited for when you have kids. But you know? I just haven’t ever felt that longing to have my own. I look at new moms sometimes, and I immediately feel stressed out for them. I saw this family the other day at the mall. It was these two parents and then these two kids. The boy was a teenager, the girl was maybe ten, and I just . . . I felt this very clear sense of ‘I don’t want that.’ ”
“Well, you might,” I say. In my head, I’m thinking that she’ll feel it once she meets someone, and then I realize, Jesus Christ, it’s so ingrained in me that I can’t get it out of my brain, even when I’m consciously trying to get it out of my brain. Marriage and kids. Marriage and kids. Marriage and kids.
“Sure,” she says. “I might. But listen, you and Charlie, you want that normal family life so bad. You wanted it so bad you met someone at nineteen and never looked back. Charlie wants it so bad that he’s going to marry a woman he barely knows.” She shrugs. “I don’t need it.”
My sister and I are alike in so many ways, and it is that similarity where I have always found comfort. But the truth is, we are two distinct women, with two distinct sets of wants and needs. This basic difference between us was always there. I just never saw it, because I was never looking.
“I’m really glad this came up, actually,” I say. “I’m happy you said all of this.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I think it’s been on my mind for a while.”
“I forget sometimes that you’re not me,” I say. “You seem so much like me that I just assume you think all the same things I do.”
“We’re still pretty similar,” she says. “You know me better than I know myself sometimes.”
“I do?”
“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “I have an appointment with a bank on Tuesday.”
“You do?”
“I’m looking into a small-business loan.”
“For the bakery idea?”
She smiles, embarrassed. “Yeah.”
I high-five her. “Oh, my God! This is such great news!”
“You don’t think it’s a disaster waiting to happen?”
“I really don’t. I swear. I really think you would be so good at it.”
“I was thinking of doing a line of sugar-free stuff, too, seeing as how the sugar cookies went over so well.”
I laugh. “Finally, Grandma’s cancer does us a favor.”
Rachel nods and laughs. “I knew it would be good for something!”
We move on to talk about other things, but on the car ride home, one thing just keeps playing over and over in my mind. You want that normal family life so bad. You wanted it so bad you met someone at nineteen and never looked back.
I couldn’t see it until she said it, and yet now it seems so blazingly clear that it’s all I can see. It’s amazing the things that have been written across your forehead for so long that even when you’re looking in the mirror, you don’t see them.
At home, there’s an envelope waiting in my mailbox from one Mrs. Lois Spencer of San Jose, California.
Here they are, sweetheart. A few of Ask Allie’s columns. Think about it. Love, Grandma.
She printed them out from the Internet and mailed them to me. I laugh to myself as I look them over and then stick them in a box of miscellaneous stuff. I tell myself that I’ll sit down and read them soon. Then David calls asking if he can come over, and I say yes. I jump into the shower.
By the time I’m dressed and dry, I’ve already forgotten where I put the Ask Allie articles. They simply aren’t on my mind. I’m not thinking about what advice I need to fix my marriage. I’m not reflecting on what my grandmother thinks of what I’m doing.
I’m not reflecting at all, really.
I’m starting to just live.