Читать книгу Pages For Her - Sylvia Brownrigg - Страница 27

Flannery, siblingless, counted her friends as her family and her mother as her only actual parent. Lenny, though at least a person she knew existed, remained most vivid on the pages of Flannery’s book. She received periodic emails from him, generally with links to animal videos or occasional rambling political reflections. A week after she had sent out a brief general email about Willa’s birth, she received a one-line note back from Len: YOWZAH!!!!

Most who could expressed their congratulations in person. People trooped through the house on Ashbury Street after Willa was born, offering their advice and admiration, their snacks and their blankets. Flannery didn’t know this ritual. Few of her friends had had children yet, she hadn’t grown up in a community with many babies in it, and she felt as though she were visiting a country whose religion she had only read of, a place more vibrant and lively than she had expected.

Flannery’s cousin Rachel came to the door with her ringletted three-year-old Claudia, who stiff-armed a soft cotton-candy-pink bunny in Flannery’s direction though it looked from her pout as though she would rather have kept it herself. In Rachel’s cashmere arms was an aluminum dish of lasagna, and though Flannery had never been much of a lasagna eater before, she found now that she was an everything eater and accepted the dish gratefully, along with Rachel’s lengthy tips on getting the baby to sleep through the night. Charles’s nice architect and pianist friends, whose children were teenagers (an unimaginable age, and dimension), brought pumpkin scones and a soft gray cap with mouse ears; Susan Kim had bags of fragrant Korean barbecued beef and a teething ring in the design of a shark. ‘Other people can do the teddy bears,’ she announced. A colleague of Flannery’s from the art school brought wine for the parents and rusks for the baby, saying, with a little chuck under Willa’s chin, ‘This is how it goes, kid: the grown-ups get all the good stuff. You might as well know that now.’

By the time Flannery’s college friend Nick showed up with his sleek-skinned Greek boyfriend, a felt ball that played a musical jingle, and a spread of delicious meze, Flannery was almost overwhelmed.

‘More swag! Thank you,’ she stage-whispered, as Willa had just gone down for a nap. Flannery ushered the men into the living room, where Charles’s Roche Bobois looked on disapprovingly at the collecting pool of pastel and polyester objects scattered on the Turkish carpet. ‘I wasn’t expecting all this. When you publish a book, people don’t bring you stuff. They congratulate you, but they don’t feed you.’

‘No,’ Nick said. ‘They just come to your launch party and drink.’

‘And nobody asks to hold the book. You don’t pass it around.’

‘Which is why it feels really overlooked, and has to go to therapy later, when it grows up. Where’s Charles?’

‘At the studio.’

Nick tilted his ashy blond head and raised a questioning brow at her, as only an old friend can.

‘No, it’s fine.’ Flannery answered his wordless question. ‘I don’t mind having some time to myself with Willa. Charles has a lot of work to do.’ In response to the continued look, Flannery said more firmly: ‘He does the meet-and-greet in the morning with whoever is here. But afternoons he has to go to the studio.’

Nick nodded, looked around the home, took in the shape of Flannery’s life. Possibly swallowing some other thought, the boy she once thought had a crush on her said simply: ‘I can’t believe you got to parenthood before I did, Jansen. You always were secretly competitive.’ He gave Stavros a sideways embrace after he said it, and the two men exchanged a tender moment that did not require her.

When Willa woke up a little later with a rhythmic cry, Nick did indeed ask to hold her. Flannery cooed a moment in private over Willa, lifted her from the bassinet, then handed her baby to her old friend, who received the bundle with the appropriate solemnity – and humor. He chuckled and chatted over her.

‘Everyone’s a winner, Nico,’ Flannery said as she watched Nick’s gentle, fathering hands. ‘And anyway, you’ll catch up.’