Page 42 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About
“Yes,” Sadie said decisively. “You must have painted an accurate picture of me for her to come up with such an idea.”
“I wouldn’t say I’ve earned a blue ribbon raising you. But you came out the prize pumpkin of the whole patch anyhow.”
Leave it to Stu to revert to pumpkin metaphors instead of talking about actual fucking feelings.
“Well, she’s definitely a sorceress.”
“She worked her magic on me, too. She said it felt good for me to devote my life to pumpkins after your mother left. But falling in love again would be healing.”
“Why was this all a big scheme? Why didn’t you tell me any of what you were planning?”
“You know me. I play things close to the vest. It’s like pumpkins. I do all my secret shit and then I win.”
Some things never changed. “Okay, well, get Priscilla to figure out how to heal that. I gotta run. Having lunch with Grace today.”
“Say hi to Gracie Train from me. Best thing your mother did was give you a sister,” Stu said.
Where was this coming from, this unabashed sweetness? “I am speaking to Stu Fox, yes? Not some pod person replacement who eats hard-boiled eggs and says almost nice things about his ex-wife?”
“I shouldn’t have spoken so ill of her all your life, Sadie. She made me believe I was hard to live with, and I made her believe that the only way to get through to me was to act out.”
She said it before she could stop herself. “But you are hard to live with.”
Stu laughed again, full-throated and loud. “My little lady here doesn’t think so and neither does your uncle. Yet another reason to stay.”
“Okay,” Sadie said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Lotsa love, Sadface.”
The effusiveness made her nose wrinkle. “Love you, too,” she said.
This was all too saccharine for her. Even though she always thought she wanted it to be like this.
Priscilla’s talk of feeling and healing was the kind of stuff you overheard in LA in line for coffee.
That kind of stuff sent her right out the door of the coffee shop empty-handed and back to her weaving studio/apartment, where she could be free of that nonsense. What was healing, anyway?
Still, as she biked into town, Stu’s words echoed. She made me think I was hard to live with.
All her life, Sadie had been tormented by people who made her feel that her natural tendencies were wrong, which only made her dig into them harder.
Josh foolishly tried to engineer his way around her habits, but he never asked her to change herself.
He didn’t make her feel like she had to be anyone else.
She could be grumpy and cynical and it bounced off him.
She could be competitive and he rose to meet her.
She could be demanding and he would accommodate her. What if he wouldn’t grow to resent her?
She thought about what awaited her back in California.
Sunshine, tacos, galleries, her agent, her adorable garden-level studio apartment that was getting swallowed up by the birds of paradise and jade plants out front.
The lemon tree. Her landlord, who offered cheap rent and quiet friendship.
She liked it there. And it wasn’t the city’s fault that she hadn’t forged deep and lasting personal connections there.
She thought she was hard to be around, especially compared to easygoing West Coast types, so she had isolated herself.
What if she was stuck in her art because she wasn’t letting anything or anyone in?
* * *
Grace wanted to switch things up for lunch, so they went to the Burmese restaurant in downtown Pea Blossom instead of the coffee shop.
Grace was standing outside, wearing a close-fitting red sweater dress and black knee-high boots, a velvet headband in her shiny hair.
A giant leather tote no doubt held a small and vicious dog.
“You look like slutty Santa Claus,” Sadie said.
“Ho ho ho, ho. You look like the before picture in an antidepressant ad,” Grace came back. Sadie barked out a laugh. Whatever else they were, they were certainly related. They went inside and the server showed them to a table.
“Sorry you lost the weigh-off,” Grace said, “though I’m guessing you had a nice day at SPICE.”
“What makes you say that? Was Josh looking at me again?”
“Yes, but also your lipstick was smeared and I thought I saw the beginnings of a hickey.” Grace pointed at Sadie’s neck.
Her hand flew to cover the offending patch of skin. “Are you serious?”
Grace snickered. The server came over and Sadie ordered a ginger lemonade and a tea leaf salad for the table.
As soon as the server left, Grace looked Sadie square in the eyes. “I’m pregnant.”
What the fuck was Sadie’s first thought, but thankfully “What do you need?” came out of her mouth instead. She would let Grace fill in the details, and she’d congratulate her or console her as necessary.
“I’m still figuring that out,” Grace said quietly.
“Maybe I can help?” Sadie wasn’t afraid to talk abortion; she had coached Grace through this once before while she was in college. But that was before obtaining an abortion required a secret fucking mission out of state.
“I was planning for a baby. I had stopped birth control, remember? I’m taking vitamins. So divorce or not, I was pretty much into it. Then I talked to our mother. I thought she would be excited about being a grandmother. But she told me I was being selfish. And she made me second-guess myself.”
“ You’re being selfish? Always telling on herself, that woman.” As low an opinion as Sadie had of their mother, Grace, true to her name, gave her a lot of leeway.
“You’re probably right.”
“Let’s face facts. It’s so fucked up that there are people forced to give birth against their will, but you’re in a position to choose for yourself. Anyone trying to influence that choice can eat a bag of dicks.”
“Thank you,” Grace said again, her voice awash in relief. Sadie hadn’t thought she was dispensing especially deep wisdom, so Grace must have been desperate for a sympathetic ear.
“Is this what you were worried about when you said I might agree with our mother? That I would also want you to get an abortion? I’m about as pro-abortion as it gets, but it’s not like anyone’s paying me a commission.”
Grace chuckled at that. “She said that having a baby with Stu tied the two of them for life. I should free myself of Kyle and not repeat her mistakes.” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth when she realized she hadn’t softened any of those words.
The words essentially admitting that their mother wished Sadie had never been born.
“It’s fine, Grace. I’m immune to her bullshit by this point.”
It wasn’t true, not by a long shot. Her father’s words kept turning over in her mind. She’d made him feel like a difficult person, and she also ended up feeling like a difficult person. All thanks to good old generational bullshit.
What if Josh didn’t feel that way about her?
“I can’t have a baby simply to spite our mother, can I?” Grace asked.
She chuckled. Grace might, honestly.
Grace continued. “I told her that if she was serious about having a relationship with me and this possible child, we needed therapy. Then she pulled the ‘I know when I’m not wanted’ card. And now my father might be applying to transfer his job to fucking Chicago?”
“What a mess,” Sadie said. Chicago wouldn’t solve any of her mother’s problems, but at least she could deal with them out of Grace’s hair.
“I’m sure it’ll cool off. But I need some space from her, and in a stroke of luck, she seems to be giving it to me.”
“The woman knows how to give space. She gives me galaxies’ worth of space.”
“I’m serious about the therapy, though.”
After the tea leaf salad showed up, Sadie ordered a curry and Grace ordered a fried rice dish.
Sadie helped herself to a plateful of salad, savoring the crunchiness of the toppings and the unique tang of the fermented tea leaves.
As she ate, she tried to remember the last time she’d held a baby.
It was probably three years ago, when her agent invited some clients to have brunch together.
She had spent the whole time ignoring everyone and blowing raspberries at the little chunk in the high chair next to her.
Was it pathetic to realize she’d probably unconsciously gravitated to the baby because how could a barely sentient creature find her unpleasant?
“Fuck it, I’m doing it,” Grace said, giving her a welcome reprieve from her spiral. “I want a baby. I’m having a baby.”
Why was her chest so warm? “I’m going to be an aunt.”
“Yes, and you’re going to buy books like Baby’s First Necronomicon , and I’m going to have nightmares.”
But I could babysit. Sadie tried to talk herself out of it, with the sour smell of spit-up and the horror of diaper blowouts, but then she imagined someone calling her Auntie and it was too precious for words.
She’d never desired children of her own, but here in this moment, with her sister facing challenges left and right, she wanted to help.
“How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly fine,” Grace answered. “I was expecting to feel afraid, and I don’t.
I’m definitely not numb, because I’m so fucking mad at Mom and Kyle.
I expected to feel elation when I became pregnant.
Instead I’m feeling determined. I have a job and health insurance.
I have a house and a dog. People have kids all the time and love them with a lot less, so why should I think it’s a bad idea? ”
“I think we’re not genetically disposed to elation.”
Sadie didn’t think it was a bad idea either.
It was undoubtedly a difficult road to choose, but Grace loved to stick to a plan, and the plan was baby.
Had that steadfast determination led her to stick with her marriage plan in spite of red flags?
People’s strongest traits could be their undoing as easily as they could be their salvation.
Still, she believed in Grace’s determination to be a good mom.