22.

The parents got together one night in May to discuss our future. I took it as a good sign that the Westons were willing to come downtown.

Will called while they were out. “Notice how they didn’t invite us?” he said. “It’s like we’re little children they need to sort out.”

I sat on the living room couch and pulled the purple yarn I’d crocheted into half of a scarf out of its scarf form. The woman at the yarn store had told me to use some scrap yarn to practice new stitches I’d need for the bikini. I was feeling cheap and I wanted to save money for the good stuff once I figured out how to do it. I loved that about crocheting—how yarn could transform into something else just by pulling the hook out and unraveling. When the yarn unraveled, it bent in this cool pattern, like long, crimped purple hair.

I leafed through the crochet magazine I’d bought that showed the new stitches and watched the clock, envisioning the four of them. Dad would spot Mr. Weston and walk over to him with his arms extended, the way he walks across the lawn to greet someone at a summer party, and then he’d grasp Mr. Weston’s elbow as he shook his hand. He’d introduce Mom to the Westons, and for a moment, the formal introduction would soften her heavily bleached hair and her fire-engine-red lipstick, smudged around her lips in a way that was okay for a Saturday visit to art galleries but foreign and a little odd to people who had a basketball hoop in their living room.

I imagined them sitting at an outdoor café on lower Fifth Avenue, the May breeze billowing through Mom’s pretty blond hair and Mrs. Weston’s scraggly ponytail. How they’d order drinks and the Westons would wonder about Dad’s choice of plain tonic with lime, but at the same time they’d notice his quiet, distinguished demeanor and understand that whatever battles he’d had were in his past, and they would respect him for overcoming them. Dad would smile at Mr. Weston’s twinkly-eyed attempts to lighten the situation. He’d take out a legal pad to figure out our finances and Mr. Weston would make a joke about the pad, and Dad would laugh gruffly and say, “Well, I am a numbers guy.” Mrs. Weston would watch Mom in her low V-neck, black jersey wrap sweater and wonder why she didn’t try to dress like that every so often instead of in her usual baggy button-downs and jeans. She’d wonder where she could find clothes like that, stuff that was for every day but that also had a little edge. She’d be tempted to ask Mom, but decide to do it when they’d see each other again. Toward the end, they’d give each other knowing looks of resignation and talk about Will’s and my endearing, exasperating habits, like how Will comes home from school and records basketball games that he never watches, and wastes Mr. Weston’s DVR space, or how he leaves his socks balled up under the dining room table like little cow pies, or how I leave the caps off everything—toothpaste and especially medicine bottles—and how I’m going to have to be careful about that when the baby comes. “They’re in for it,” I imagined Mom saying as they put on their coats, and I pictured them giving each other knowing looks, behind which would be little flickers of joy and anticipation for their unborn grandchild, as if he or she were already in the restaurant with them, drawing them together into an intimate football huddle.

Mom walked through the door at ten on the dot.

“Hi,” I said, rolling up from the couch.

“Were you sleeping?” she asked, undoing the belt of her coat.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “How did it go?”

She threw her coat on a chair and went to the kitchen. I heard her unlock the dishwasher and start clattering stuff onto the counter.

I followed her and sat down at the table. “So how did it go?”

“One of these days you could empty the dishwasher.”

“Sorry,” I said. “What happened?”

“We talked.” She tossed some forks into the tray, then picked up the small strainer she used to rinse berries and shook it dry.

“About?”

“Money, basically. We’re each going to give you ten thousand dollars. You’re going to keep separate bank accounts and be responsible for your own expenses. We’ll see how far that goes. I hope they hold up their end.”

“Wow, okay,” I said, feeling suddenly like a helpless child. “Like I said, we can treat it as a loan. We’ll pay you back over time.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” she said. “You won’t exactly be employable, and Will’s parents appear to be keen on him staying in school. Daddy is also hell-bent that you keep your spot at NYU until the time is right for you to go back.” She shut the silverware drawer and turned around. “Honestly, I don’t understand this country’s obsession with education. Will should get a job, in my opinion.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, fingering the Bloomingdale’s catalog on top of the stack of mail, too embarrassed to look at her. Money had a way of doing that.

“Other than that, we discussed our disappointment that you couldn’t be persuaded,” she said. “That took a while.”

“Mom, I’m done. I’d always wonder. I know enough to know I couldn’t live with not keeping it. Can we move on now?”

“Move on. My only daughter is wrecking her life. Move on.”

“What did you think of Mrs. Weston?”

“What did I think?” She reached down to pull the plates out of the dishwasher. “What does it matter?”

“She’s sort of bug-eyed, don’t you think?” I thought about how so much of what I said came from rotten, anxious places. “She’s more with it than she comes across, but she seems a little spacey, right?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“You were just together for two hours. You didn’t notice anything?”

“Thea, don’t.” She shut the dishwasher with a neat click and dried her hands. “I know she wants more for Will, things that don’t involve this crap.” The way she drew out the word crap, I felt like a trampy, knocked-up cretin with big buckteeth, wearing dirty, light-blue corduroys. “I sometimes wish you could just be me for a minute so you could understand how much this stinks.”

“You know, what about just thinking about what I think is right for me?” I asked. “What’s meaningful to me? It is my life, after all.”

She turned around and faced me, one hand on her hip. “I forget who once said to me, ‘Children are thankless,’ but they were right. They were absolutely right.” She pulled a Toblerone bar out of the butter door of the fridge and went to her room.

“I said thank you!” I yelled after her.