Natalie is wearing a maxidress. She’s the sort of pregnant that makes you want to offer your seat to her on the bus. Due in six weeks, she is glowing, but when you tell her that, she says, “It’s sweat. Trust me. I’m sweating like the house is on fire.”
I didn’t tell anyone it’s going to be a boy, so we stuck with yellow as the shower theme. My mother insisted on hosting it, and she’s gone a little over the top. There are yellow balloons and yellow streamers. There are gifts wrapped in yellow. And a yellow cake, courtesy of Rachel. I think perhaps there is also an unspoken theme of ducks that I didn’t get the memo about. The buffet table and the coffee table are covered in rubber duckies. Rachel even made a rubber ducky out of fondant and put it on the top of the cake.
“Guess it’s more of a fondant ducky,” I say when she shows us.
My mom laughs. “That’s what I said, but she didn’t seem to think it was funny.”
“This cake is beautiful,” Natalie says. “Rachel, I can’t thank you enough. It looks professionally done.”
I know that Rachel has baked this same cake five times, decorating it just this way, to be sure that she could do it. I know that she was up until the early hours of the morning getting the duck right. But she acts as if it was a breeze. “Oh, please,” she says. “It’s my pleasure.” Rachel has on a cute short red dress with a square collar. She was wearing high heels for the occasion but kicked them off about ten minutes ago, well before anyone was even here. “Although I did take a picture of it for my portfolio.” She’s supposed to hear news on the loan any day now.
Mom comes out from the kitchen with a platter. “OK, you three girls will tell me if I’ve overdone it,” she says. “But look! How cute, right?” My mother shows us a plate of cucumber sandwiches.
“It’s not high tea, Mom,” Rachel says. “It’s a baby shower.”
My mom frowns, but Natalie turns it right around. “They are adorable, Leslie. Really. Thank you so much. And my friend Marie, who is coming, is a vegetarian and always worries that there won’t be things for her to eat. So it’s perfect.”
“Thank you, Natalie. I’m relishing this time before you feel as comfortable around me as my daughters do. This is when I still get compliments and not things like ‘It’s not high tea, Mom.’” My mother’s impression of Rachel sounds absolutely nothing like Rachel and everything like Minnie Mouse.
Natalie laughs. “I really do like them, though!” she says.
“OK, Natalie,” I say. “You’ve proven your point. She likes you best.”
My mom laughs and puts the platter down and goes back into the kitchen to get more.
“Do you need help?” Natalie asks.
Rachel puts her arm out to stop Natalie from saying any more. “Relax,” she says. “You’re the pregnant one,” she says. “We are the ones who should be offering to help Mom, and we aren’t.”
“Yeah, so don’t make us look bad,” I say.
Natalie laughs and sits down on the couch, crossing one leg underneath her and smoothing out her dress. “Well, since I have you two, I actually wanted to ask you a favor,” she says. “As I know you know, Charlie asked Ryan to be his best man.”
Rachel’s jaw drops, and she whips her head at me. “What?” she says.
I shrug. “It’s what Charlie wants. What was I going to say?”
“And you’re OK with it?” Rachel asks. “How have we not talked about this?”
“It’s fine,” I say to Rachel. I don’t want to get into it and complicate things in front of Natalie.
Natalie looks at me. “I want to say thank you for that,” she says. “It has made Charlie really happy, and obviously, I’m not as well versed in the details of you and Ryan, but I would imagine it takes a big person to . . . just . . . thank you.”
I nod at her. It’s such a complex issue, with so many feelings involved, I fear that if I speak, even if only to say You’re welcome, I’ll start crying, and I won’t even know exactly why.
“Anyway, Ryan is Charlie’s best man, and it turns out his friend Wally is going to be able to make it to the wedding, so Charlie wanted him to be up there with him, too,” Natalie says. “Which means I’ve got two spots on my side, and I’d love it if you two would be my bridesmaids.”
“Wow,” Rachel and I both say at the same time.
Rachel continues. “Are you kidding? That is so thoughtful of you.”
“I know that it’s short notice,” Natalie says. “I wasn’t sure what was happening with Charlie’s side, but now that it’s all settled, I really do think it worked out perfectly. I would love to have you two up there with me.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “I mean, our feelings won’t be hurt if you have friends you’d like to ask.”
“No,” Natalie says. “I mean, I have people I could ask. I have girlfriends I love. But you guys are family. I love the idea of being a part of a big family. My family is just me and my parents. I’m excited to have sisters.” Natalie tiptoes around the word sisters as if she’s not sure that it’s OK for her to be so presumptuous, and because of that, I feel the need to go overboard in letting her know that I absolutely do want to consider her my sister. That I want her to be a part of our family.
“We are excited, too!” I say, and then try to modulate my enthusiasm to seem less over the top. “Seriously, I feel lucky that Charlie has chosen someone so cool.”
“Yeah?” Natalie says. “You’d be my sort of co-maids of honor, I guess. Since there isn’t an official one.”
“Works for us,” Rachel says.
My mom comes back out with pigs in a blanket. “Check these babies out!” she says, laughing to herself. The three of us look at the tray and see that she’s put food coloring in the “blankets.” Some of them are pink, some of them are blue. “Since we don’t know the sex of the baby yet. Get it?”
“So we are going to be eating the babies as an appetizer?” Rachel asks. I start laughing; I can’t help it. Natalie tries to stifle hers.
My mom looks down at the plate, frowning. “Oh, no,” my mom says. “Do you think people will feel like they’re eating babies?”
“You guys are so mean!” Natalie says. “Leslie, they are great. It’s a perfect baby shower thing.”
“Mom, I was totally kidding,” Rachel says, trying to take it back. My mom normally doesn’t mind being made fun of, but today she’s taking it at least a little bit seriously, and I feel bad about that.
She hasn’t put the tray down. She’s seriously considering not serving them. “No,” she says. “It’s weird. Shoot. I should have just left them not colored.”
“No,” I say. “Please. She really was kidding. It’s perfect. It’s just like those games where people melt candy bars in diapers to look like poop or bob for nipples, you know? Baby showers are supposed to be a little over the top. It’s good!”
“You’re sure?” my mom asks all of us.
“Positive,” Rachel says.
Natalie nods her head. I walk over to my mom and put my arm around her. “Totally. You’ve done such a great job. It looks incredible.”
“OK,” she says, finally putting the tray down. “But I didn’t get any nipples to . . . bob for. Is that bad?”
“No,” I say. “It was just a suggestion. Is there more stuff in the kitchen? I’ll come help you.”
We head toward the kitchen, leaving Natalie and Rachel in the living room.
When we are out of earshot, I ask, “You doing OK?”
“Yeah,” she says. “This is . . . it’s a little stressful!”
“What can I help with?” I ask, standing at the counter, but it looks as if everything is under control.
“No, nothing,” my mom says. “It’s just . . . it’s my first grandbaby.”
“I know,” I say.
“I always pictured myself throwing a baby shower for my first grandbaby.”
“Sure,” I say. “I can understand that.”
“And I just figured . . .”
I wait for her to finish, but she doesn’t. “You thought it’d be for me,” I say.
It takes my mom a while to answer. “Yeah,” she finally admits. “Which is fine. Your life is your life. I’m so proud of what you’re doing with it.”
“I know, Mom. But that doesn’t mean it’s not surprising. Or that things haven’t worked out in a way that is stressful or confusing,” I say.
“I’m so happy about all of this,” my mom says. “I really am.”
“But . . . ?” I ask.
“But,” she says, taking the bait, “I don’t know her. When I was shopping at the store and putting together the menu, I kept stopping and going, ‘Does Natalie like olives? Does Natalie like cilantro?’ I mean, some people hate cilantro.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I just don’t know her all that well yet,” my mom says. “It’s hard to throw a baby shower for someone you don’t know that well yet.”
“All that matters is that your heart is in the right place,” I say. “Natalie is easy to please.”
“Yeah, maybe,” my mom says, staring at the plate of crab cakes in front of her. “Will you just go out there and casually ask her if she likes cilantro? I put some in the crab cakes, and some people just really hate cilantro.”
“Sure, Mom,” I say, just as the doorbell rings.
We can hear Rachel open the door, and a group of women’s voices begin to chatter. The party has started. Natalie’s friends and coworkers will start streaming in. The gift table will begin to pile up. Before you know it, we will be pinning the sperm on the egg and acting as if the Diaper Genie is the most fascinating object the world has ever seen. “You know, one day, it will be me,” I say as I leave the kitchen. “And when it is, you can serve all the cilantro you want.”