Page 63 of Spectacular Things

Mother and Child

Squatting in search of her favorite skillet, Mia laughs at her own awkwardness as she tries not to get stuck.

Her pronounced stomach and altered center of gravity have begun to make even the most mundane tasks comical, especially now that she’s landed safely in the third trimester.

“There should be an Olympics for pregnant women,” she muses, pulling herself up with the natural grace of a walrus. “Pancakes?”

“Pancakes,” Oliver agrees, his mind elsewhere as he peers out the kitchen window.

It’s a snowy Saturday morning—because it can snow in late April in Maine and it’s considered unfortunate but not apocalyptic.

He decides that right now is as good a time as ever to bring up what they’ve both been avoiding.

“So the baby needs a nursery,” he says.

Mia nods. “I was thinking we could convert the attic.” She throws a generous chunk of butter in her mother’s pan and gives the batter one more vigorous stir. “We’d paint the ceiling white, get lots of floor cushions,” she says. “Make it Bohemian cozy.”

Oliver laughs before he realizes Mia isn’t kidding. “The attic is a crawl space. It’s not even insulated.”

“I guess we could spruce up the basement?” Mia opens a drawer and roots around for the good spatula. “But would paint stick to—what are the walls made of?”

“Plaster.”

“Does paint stick to plaster?”

“Sure, eventually,” Oliver says, humoring her. “It’ll take several coats, and then I guess we’d just wedge the crib between the pipe that drips whenever it rains and the dryer that randomly turns itself on.”

“Ooh, next to the dryer is a good idea—I keep reading babies like vibrations.”

“Mia!”

“What?”

“This is a three-bedroom house!” Oliver palms his forehead out of frustration. “We’re not putting our baby in the basement. Or the attic.”

“I promised Cricket we wouldn’t touch her room,” Mia says, adding more butter to the pan. “If we convert it into a nursery, she’ll think we don’t want her to visit.”

“I agree, which is why I’m not suggesting Cricket’s room.”

“Oh.” Mia waits to see bubbles before she flips the pancakes with an expert wrist.

“Mia?”

“Yeah.” Mia tries to blink back the sudden sadness, the cold forward march of time, even toward something as beautiful as a baby.

“Mia?”

“Okay.” Mia plates the pancakes and nods at the floor because she knows Oliver is looking at her with such gentle compassion that she will fall apart, and she is too hungry to fall apart right now.

“Okay,” she says again, softer this time.

She wants to be in the past with her mom but also in the future with her family of three, and she wishes she didn’t have to choose.

Instead, life demands a constant compromise.

What was that thing she’d read somewhere, before she was pregnant, when she still had a memory?

A good compromise is when everyone leaves dissatisfied.

After breakfast and one more cup of coffee than she usually allows herself, Mia reties the sash of her robe as if she’s dressing for battle. Outside, the snow has turned to rain. “Wish me luck,” Mia says with a dramatic sigh.

“You don’t need luck,” Oliver responds. “You get to choose what happens next—what stays and what goes.”

Down the hall, Mia holds her breath and turns the doorknob to her mother’s room.

It’s exactly how Liz left it on November 9, 2019, only the shades are drawn.

Taking a step inside, Mia realizes she never should have let this room sit in the dark when Liz so ardently lived for light—she often said it was the key to surviving a Maine winter.

The first thing Mia does is pull up the shades.

The bedroom has two south-facing windows and as the sun streams in, it exposes an inch of dust on every surface.

Motivated and caffeinated, Mia yells down to Oliver that she needs a bucket of warm, soapy water and a stack of rags.

When he appears with the requested items, Mia dunks an old washcloth into the bucket of sudsy water and looks around the room, clocking the insurmountable work ahead of her. Where to start?

“Don’t do it for me,” Liz says, appearing on the edge of the bed. “Do it for the baby.”

It’s the first time Mia has seen her mother since the morning of November ninth, nine years ago. “Look at you,” Liz says affectionately, tilting her head. “I know it’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason: You’re glowing, Mia. You look beautiful.”

Mia jumps at the sound of Oliver’s voice shouting up the stairs to ask how she’s doing.

“I’m good!” Mia yells back, unable to take her eyes off her mother. Her mother.

“You’re going to be such a great mom,” Liz says. “She’s already so lucky.”

Mia doesn’t realize she’s crying until Liz comes over, holds her hand, and she seems so real, more so than in any dream she’s had—and she’s had plenty of vivid dreams about her mom.

“Where have you been?” Mia asks. “Everyone says to look for signs, ask for a sign, but you—why now?”

“Because,” Liz says softly, “this is the first time you’ve needed me.”

“How can you say that?” Mia balks. “I’ve needed you every day for nine years.”

Unfazed, Liz admires Mia’s wedding ring. “Not the way I needed you,” she says calmly. “You were always the rock—even when you were too young to be so steady.”

“You were young, too,” Mia points out through blurry vision.

“True,” Liz says with a faint smile. “But I relied on you like a partner and it wasn’t fair.”

This acknowledgment shocks Mia more than the freezing waters of a polar plunge. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, swollen from pregnancy.

“But you’re going to need me when the baby comes,” Liz says, sitting up straight at the idea of being useful. “So what color for the nursery?”

“No.” Mia shakes her head to try to stop the tears that keep coming. “This is your room.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’ll be perfect for her—and look at all this light!”

In the living room, Oliver lies sprawled across the pink floral couch, reading his phone, when Mia comes downstairs carrying a box of her mother’s black server aprons. The raccoon eyes suggest tears, but her face radiates hope. She grins at him like she did the day they found out she was pregnant.

“I’m making piles, so can you grab all the heavy stuff I’m not supposed to lift?”

“Absolutely,” Oliver says, hopping to his feet. “I’ll come up right now.”

“And I think we should try lavender.”

“Huh?”

“For the nursery—I’d like to paint it a super light, soothing lavender.”

Oliver is not going to squander this step forward. He is already lacing up his sneakers and sliding his wallet into his back pocket when he asks, “Do you want to come with me to the hardware store? For the paint? Or should I just bring samples back here?”

“I’ll go with you.” Mia approaches Oliver and plants a forceful kiss on his lips. “You were right,” she says. “It’s the perfect room for a nursery—so much light!”

On the drive to Hammer It Home, Mia decides not to tell Oliver about seeing her mother.

If this is some kind of pregnancy symptom, a temporary delusion that goes hand in hand with having to pee every seven minutes, so be it.

She is grateful for this opportunity, even if the opportunity might also be a sideways brush with madness.

Two weeks later, Mia has transformed her mom’s bedroom into a nauseatingly perfect nursery.

The walls are painted a calming “Spring Iris,” board books line the shelves in alphabetical order, tiny onesies are organized by season within the drawers of a new dresser, and the changing table is well stocked with diapers, wipes, and an assortment of ointments and creams. Rather than the holdover stillness of a shrine, the nursery is bursting with potential energy, like a classroom before the first day of school, right before life rips throughit.