The night before, well, the night, Mandy decided to take my mom, Naomi, and me all out for supper at her favorite restaurant, this small Mexican place just south of town. So, everyone getting into her rusted truck, we drove a good half hour, dodging awkward small talk, until we arrived at the blue-stoned building.
For another hour, we ate, laughed, and spoke loudly over the banjo playing on repeat above us. That night, mom only drank one martini, Naomi wore her hair in two ponytails, tied with ribbons, and Mandy, for once, didn’t look like a mother.
She looked like a girl.
A regular, rotting-from-the-inside girl.
At the end of the night, Mandy paying for us with a little cash from her dad’s bank account, we all walked back outside, and, while Mom walked to the ice cream shop with Naomi to grab us some Italian desserts, I turned to Mandy with tired ears. “This was fun.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Thank you.”
She looked at me, her eyes glistened with a layer of sweat or tears or simply haziness from reality. “You know, if I was having this baby, I don’t think you’d make a half-bad father. Really, I think you’d make a good one. I think we could have suppers like this every Friday, and we could make our kid learn violin, and have them wash the dishes with us, and dance in our pajamas on lazy Sunday mornings, and read stories in flashlight-lit forts, and go to the park just to feed the ducks, and whisper sweet dreams before the nightmares hit, and—”
“Mandy,” I stopped her. “We’re not having this baby.”
