The thought brought a sense of loss – loss of childhood? Of innocence? Had her own mother felt that? Susan had no way of knowing. Even in the best of times, they hadn’t talked, certainly not the way Susan and Lily did.
‘Don’t be like Grandma,’ Lily begged, sensing her thoughts.
‘I have never been like Grandma.’
‘I would die if you disowned me.’
‘I would never do that.’
Turning to face her, Lily grabbed her hand and held it to her throat. ‘I need you with me, Mom,’ she said fiercely, then softened. ‘This is our family, and we’re making it bigger. You wanted that, too, I know you did. If things had been different, you’d have had five kids like Kate.’
‘Not five. Three.’
‘Three, then. But see?’ she coaxed. ‘A baby isn’t a bad thing.’
No. Not a bad thing, Susan knew. A baby was never bad. Just life-changing.
‘This is your grandchild,’ Lily tried.
‘Um-hm,’ Susan hummed. ‘I’ll be a grandmother at thirty-six. That is embarrassing.’
‘I think it’s great.’
‘That’s because you’re seventeen and starry-eyed – which is good, sweetheart, because if you aren’t smiling now, you’ll be in trouble down the road. You’ll be alone, Lily. In the past, we’ve had two other pregnant seniors and one pregnant junior. None of them wanted to go to college. Your friends will go to college. They want careers. They won’t be able to relate to being pregnant.’
Lily’s eyes widened with excitement. ‘But see, Mom, that’s not true. That’s the beauty of this.’
Susan made a face. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Cute,’ Kate Mello told her youngest and proceeded to pour dry macaroni into a pot of boiling water. ‘Lissie?’ she yelled upstairs to her second youngest. ‘When are you going? I need that milk.’ She stirred the macaroni and said more to herself than to Mary Kate, who stood beside her at the stove, ‘Why is it that I’m always out of milk lately?’
‘I’m serious, Mom. I’m pregnant.’
Holding the lid in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, Kate simply touched her forehead to Mary Kate’s and smiled. ‘We agreed that you had the flu.’
‘It’s not going away.’
‘Then it’s lactose intolerance,’ Kate said, setting the lid on the pot. ‘You’re the one who’s drinking me out of milk. Lissie? Soon, please?’
‘I’m drinking milk,’ said Mary Kate, ‘because that’s what pregnant women do.’
‘You are not a pregnant woman,’ Kate informed her daughter and reached for her wallet when Lissie appeared. There wasn’t much in it; money disappeared even faster than milk. She found a twenty among the singles, and handed it over. ‘A gallon of milk, a dozen eggs and two loaves of multi-grain bread, please.’
‘Alex hates multi-grain,’ Lissie reminded her as she pulled on her jacket.
Kate put the car keys in her hand. ‘Alex is twenty-one. If he hates what I buy, he can get his own apartment and buy what he likes. Oh, and if there’s money left over, will you get some apples?’ As Lissie left, she handed Mary Kate a stack of plates. ‘Eight tonight. Mike is bringing a friend.’
‘I conceived eight weeks ago,’ Mary Kate said, taking the plates.
Kate studied her daughter. She was pale, but she was always pale. Same with looking frail. The poor thing had the delicate features of an unnamed forebear, but her hair was all Kate – sandy and thick, wild in a way that the child never was. Kate tacked hers up with bamboo knitting needles. Mary Kate tied hers in a ponytail that exploded behind her, making her face look even smaller.
‘You’re not pregnant, honey,’ Kate assured her. ‘You’re only seventeen, you’re on the pill, and Jacob wants to be a doctor. That’s a lot of years before you two can even get married.’
‘I know,’ Mary Kate said with a spurt of enthusiasm, ‘but by then I’ll be older and getting pregnant will be harder. Now’s the time for me to have a baby.’
Kate felt the girl’s forehead. ‘No fever. You can’t be delirious.’
‘Mom—’
‘Mom, did Lissie leave?’ This from Kate’s third daughter who, not seeing her twin, snatched a cell phone from the clutter on the kitchen table.
‘That’s mine, Sara,’ Kate protested. ‘I’m low on minutes.’
‘This isn’t a social call, Mom. I need tampons.’
‘I don’t,’ Mary Kate said in a small voice, but with Sara calling Lissie and Mike choosing that minute to duck in and ask if he could have two friends for dinner, Kate barely heard her.
‘It’s only mac ’n cheese,’ she cautioned him.
‘Only?’ her twenty-year-old son echoed. ‘You said it was lobster mac ’n cheese.’
‘Is that why they’re coming?’
‘Definitely. Your lobster mac is famous. The guys hit me up every Wednesday morning for an invitation.’
‘And if your uncle decides to pull his traps on Friday?’
‘They’ll switch to Friday. So two is okay?’
‘Two’s okay,’ Kate said, and remarked to Mary Kate when Mike and Sara were both gone, ‘Lucky the catch is up and the price is down.’
‘I’m trying to tell you something, Mom. This is import ant. I stopped taking the pill.’
Hearing that, Kate turned. Her daughter looked serious. ‘Are you and Jacob cooling it?’
‘No. I just decided I wanted a baby. Did you know that a woman is more fertile right after she goes off the pill? I haven’t even told Jacob yet. I wanted you to be the first to know.’
Something about her serious look gave Kate pause. ‘Mary Kate? You’re not joking?’
‘No.’
‘Pregnant?’
‘I keep doing tests, and they’re all positive.’
‘For how long?’
‘A while. I mean, I would have told you sooner, only I wanted to make sure. But I’m really on top of this, Mom. I bought books, and I’m getting more info online. They have a support group for teens, but I don’t really need that. I already have a support group.’
Kate frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Well…well, for starters, my family. I mean, we normally have seven for dinner. Tonight it was eight, and now nine. What’s one more?’
Kate would have sent Mary Kate to the back porch for another folding chair, because that was what one more meant in their cramped dining room, if she hadn’t been struggling to process what the girl had said. ‘Is this true?’
‘Yes. Anyway, you love kids. Didn’t you have five in five years?’
‘Not by design,’ Kate said weakly. ‘They just started to come and didn’t stop.’ Not until Will had had a vasectomy,