Chapter 19

PRESENT DAY

 

After we finish up at Marshall’s, it’s nearly time for lunch. I figured we were going to hit up another diner, but instead, Noah pulls onto the drive-thru line of a Taco Bell. I couldn’t have been more shocked if he drove off a cliff.

“You hate Taco Bell,” I say to him.

“I don’t think you’re any kind of authority on what I hate or don’t hate.” He cranes his neck to look at Lily in her booster seat. “What do you say, Lily? You like Taco Bell? Wanna head for the border?”

“Yay!” Lily cries, even though I haven’t ever been able to talk her into going to a Taco Bell in the city. When I offered it to her, she said she “hates tacos,” even though I’m certain she’s never had a taco in her entire life.

I’m no idiot though. I know why we’re eating here. I recognize we could probably buy everything on the menu at Taco Bell for what Noah paid for our bathing suits.

“You don’t have to eat here just because it’s cheap,” I mumble.

“I’m not,” he says as he pulls forward on the drive-thru line. “I like Taco Bell. Yo quiero Taco Bell.”

I roll my eyes. “Stop it.”

“What’s wrong, Bailey?” he says. “No quieres Taco Bell?”

I don’t dignify that with an answer.

“Anyway,” he says, “I’m going to get the most expensive thing on the menu. I’m going to get a steak… quesadilla.”

He doesn’t get a steak quesadilla. He gets two tacos that cost a dollar combined. I get the same. Lily hems and haws because she really doesn’t want tacos, but when Noah tells her to order a quesadilla, she obliges. The whole meal costs six dollars and change.

We eat in the car, which is something I haven’t done in ages. Noah and I used to do that. We’d take road trips together all the time, and we’d pull off the highway to grab drive-thru fast food, which we’d always eat in the car. “It’s more private in here,” he’d tell me, as he’d lean forward and kiss me. Yes, a lot of meals did end with a make-out session. We could never keep our hands off one another.

“So what did you think of Taco Bell, Lily?” Noah asks her.

Lily chews thoughtfully on her processed quesadilla. “I like McDonald’s better. Do you know McDonald’s?”

He laughs. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”

She takes another bite of congealed cheese and cardboard-texture tortilla. “Noah?”

“Uh huh?”

“Can we go visit McDonald’s farm?”

He flashes her a perplexed look. “McDonald’s… farm?”

“McDonald’s farm!” She sings, “Old McDonald’s had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-o!”

“Oh!” He laughs again. “Well, it’s not… there are farms out here but… I mean, they’re not affiliated with…” He pauses thoughtfully. “Have you ever been to a farm, Lily?”

“Nope!”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “Never?”

“We live in Queens,” I point out.

“Yeah, but…” He frowns, trying to comprehend the fact that I don’t have the funds or transportation to get my daughter to a farm. And God knows, it’s not like Theo ever had any interest. “So… we can go to a farm today, if you want. Right now. There’s one about fifteen miles from here. I buy milk there sometimes.”

Great. More time in a car with Noah. But then again, he’s been fairly well-behaved today. Maybe it will be fine.

“And on that farm, will there be pigs?” Lily asks.

“Yep,” Noah says.

“And on that farm, will there be sheep?”

“I think so.”

“And on that farm, will there be cows?”

“Sure.”

The next fifteen miles in the car involve Lily singing Old McDonald Had a Farm. Over and over. And over. I ask Noah if he’d like to turn on the radio but he gives me a look and says, “Lily’s singing.” So I just have to listen to it.

As we get closer to our destination, I find that I’m getting weirdly excited. I haven’t been to a farm in… I don’t know how long. We turn off the main road onto a dirt path, and I can tell by the tempo of Lily’s singing that she’s excited too. There’s a white fence that surrounds acres of grass. Even grass is something I don’t get to see much of unless we’re at the park.

Noah pulls his 4Runner onto an even more uneven path, leading us down a road to where there are a couple of dusty barns and a large pen with animals pacing around. Lily bounces in her seat, shrieking, “Mommy, I see a cow!”

I glance at the main barn, looking for a sign. “Is there an admission fee or…?”

“No, nothing like that,” Noah says. “They know me. We can just check out the animals—no big thing. There’s also an ice cream stand.”

I crane my neck to get a better look at the animal pens, barns, grass, and numerous trees. This is so different than what I see in my daily life in Queens. I haven’t been to a place like this since…

Well, since I was dating Noah.

“Can we pick apples?” I ask.

He frowns. “Apples?”

I nod. “Yes, like from the trees?”

A smile twitches at his lips. “It’s April, Bailey. Spring. You know how stuff gets planted in the spring and then has to grow and ripen?”

“Oh, right,” I mumble, feeling dumb.

“But,” he adds, “you can come back here in September for apple-picking.”

I stare at him in surprise. “You… you want us to come back here? To visit?”

He throws the car into park, avoiding my eyes. “Sure, why not? Lily seems to be having a good time.”

Without another word, he gets out of the car. Except the second I get out myself, I can see how uneven the ground is here. It’s much worse than around his cabin, and he needed a cane over there. Noah holds onto the hood of the car as he makes his way to the trunk.

“Are you okay?” I ask him.

“Fine,” he grunts as he pops the trunk. He pulls his cane out from inside while I help Lily get out. She makes a beeline straight for the pen of animals, but I hang back to make sure Noah doesn’t need help. He’s more stable with his cane, but I can tell it’s still difficult for him to walk here. I remember how he used to love to go hiking, but it’s clear something like that would be hard—if not impossible—for him now.

He’s walking very carefully over to where Lily is fawning over some baby goats. He hits a dip in the dirt, and his knuckles turn white as he struggles to keep his balance. He stops for a moment while I step closer to him, one arm outstretched in case he really does fall.

“Are you okay?” I ask again.

Noah lifts his blue eyes to look at me. “Bailey, don’t ask me if I’m okay again unless you see me sprawled on the ground. Okay?”

I nod. Sheesh.

The door to one of the barns on the side opens, and a woman steps out. She’s about the same age as Noah’s mother, with white hair scraped back into a bun. Her eyes light up when she sees Noah, just like every other female between the ages of one year and death.

“Noah!” she calls out, waving her hand.

He stops walking, looking relieved to have an excuse to take a break. “Hi, Peggy.”

“You didn’t have to get out of your car,” she says to him. “I would have brought some milk out for you.”

“No, it’s okay,” he says. He nods at me and then at Lily in the distance. “I brought…”

The woman, Peggy, looks me up and down, and a smile quickly spreads across her lips. “Oh!”

He shakes his head. “No, they’re not… remember how I told you my mother’s getting remarried? She’s her fiancé’s daughter. They’re visiting for the week.”

The smile doesn’t leave Peggy’s face. “Oh,” she says again. She thrusts out her hand to me. “I’m Peggy.”

I take her hand, and when she gives me a squeeze, I feel the deep callouses on her palm. “Bailey,” I say. “And that’s my daughter, Lily.”

“Ooh, I love those names,” Peggy sighs. “Very earthy.”

“Lily’s never seen a goat,” Noah explains to Peggy.

“Yes, she has,” I protest. At the Central Park Zoo.

“Well.” Peggy rubs her hands together. “Let me give her the grand tour then.”

I don’t know how, but we manage to spend the next two hours at this little farm. Lily gets an experience that I’m certain very few of the kids in her kindergarten class in Fresh Meadows will ever have. Peggy lets her feed the goat and the sheep, sprinkle out feed for the chicken, and she even—no joke—gets to milk a cow. For two hours, Lily is a little farmer, and when I see the way her face glows with happiness, I don’t ever want to leave. Even though being around Noah is stressful, I definitely want to come back here just to go to this farm again. And actually, Noah isn’t too bad at all right now. He’s grinning as he watches Lily experience all the cool stuff on the farm. Once he even smiles in my direction, although he looks away the second I catch him doing it.

We end our afternoon on the farm with Noah buying us all ice cream from the farm store. The ice cream is so delicious and creamy that I’m convinced every ice cream I’ve ever had in the past has been synthetic garbage.

By the time we head back to the car, I’ve almost forgotten about the fact that Noah hates me. Or that in spite of that one smile, he’s barely said two words directly to me all afternoon.

We head back home in the afternoon. Within five minutes of driving, Lily has been lulled to sleep by all the fresh air and food she’s eaten. Her head sags against her shoulder, some drool slipping adorably from her lips. Noah turns the radio down to low, Kelly Clarkson’s voice just barely audible from the speakers.

There’s something surreal about this scene. For a moment, I imagine another life—one I could have had, where I married Noah instead of my deadbeat ex-husband. I imagine Noah is Lily’s father, and he’s driving his wife and daughter home from a fun day we spent as a family at the local farm. And when we get back home, Noah will make us dinner on the grill, and we’ll tuck Lily into her bed. And then Noah and I go to bed. Together.

But of course, that’s so far from reality, it’s ridiculous. Noah is not Lily’s father. Her father is a man who can’t be bothered to make time to see her most weekends. And Noah hates me so much, he can barely bring himself to speak to me.

I really screwed things up.

“Thanks for taking us there,” I say softly, breaking up the silence in the car.

“Yeah,” he mutters.

“Lily enjoyed it,” I add. “We don’t get to do stuff like that very often.”

Noah is quiet for a moment. At first, I think he isn’t going to respond at all, but then he says, “Does he pay you child support?”

“Um, what?”

“Your ex. Does he give you child support for Lily?”

If someone else had said that, I would have told them to mind their own damn business. But I’m skating on thin ice already with Noah. “Why do you ask?”

“Why do I ask? Because you were having a panic attack over buying a couple of bathing suits at Marshall’s. So I’m thinking he’s not giving you much—or any—money.”

I look away from him, at the blur of grass outside the window. I don’t want to make excuses for Theo, but I also don’t want to admit I was dumb enough to get knocked up by a guy who doesn’t support his kid.

“Maybe he should spend less money on his girlfriends then?” says Noah.

My face burns. I don’t care what Noah has hanging over me—I’m not going to have this discussion with him. “This isn’t any of your business.”

He takes his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at me. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “It’s not. After all, I found out you were getting married from fucking Facebook.”

I lower my eyes, looking down at my lap. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? It’s not like I was expecting an invitation.”

“Yes, but…” I pick at a loose thread on my shirt, which turns out to be looser than I thought. The whole thing might unravel if I’m not careful. “I should have called you.”

“You think so?” He stops at a red light and raises his eyebrows at me. “What would you have said, exactly? ‘Hey, Noah, just thought you should know: I found this great guy I’m marrying. He’s a musician, and you know I’m into those artsy types. Oh, and he’s got two legs, and you know how much I like that…’”

Oh God. This conversation has gone downhill fast.

“I’m sorry I said anything,” I mumble. “I just… I wanted to thank you for a nice afternoon. I didn’t want to fight with you again.”

Noah doesn’t say anything right away. I hold my breath, steeling myself for his next attack.

“You’re welcome,” he finally says.

And we don’t speak again for the rest of the drive back.