“Don’t say those things in front of Mary,” Theresa says.
“Mary is old enough to hear the truth.”
Mary looks as if she might have something to say for herself, but my mother cuts her off. Her voice is a combination of flustered and defensive. “Gracie is twenty-nine years old. I can’t forbid her to do anything. What do you expect me to do, be her chauffeur?”
She looks at Meggy nervously, as if she half-expects the answer to be yes.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Gracie’s not coming here alone. Grayson’s with her, so he’ll probably drive.”
There is a muffled hum in the room as the women absorb this piece of news.
“Were men invited to the shower?”
“Is Gracie dating?”
“Someone other than the baby’s father?”
I almost speak up to explain that Grayson is simply Gracie’s boss and friend. But there seems to be little point in jumping in. I need to save my energy, and Gracie can handle the aunts’ questions when she gets here. I no longer doubt that she can. Gram is wrong; my sister does not need my help. She is stronger than she looks.
“Stuffed mushrooms?” A heavy platter is balanced on my mother’s hands. She glares at me. I am not being what she considers helpful.
“I hope this baby comes soon,” Gram says. She is sitting in the corner, but her presence there has made it the center of the group. Except for Mary, we are clustered around Gram, some standing, some sitting. Nurse Ballen is standing beside her chair. She seems vaguely uncomfortable. She has the look of someone who is trying to pretend that she is not in the room, and certainly not listening. She emanates: I am on duty, and nothing more.
“Noreen, won’t you please sit down?” my mother says.
“I’m fine, thank you. I sit all day. It’s nice to be on my feet.”
I press my fingers against the pane of glass. I watch my father pull into the driveway in his truck. I watch Grayson’s black sedan parallel-park into the space between my aunts’ cars at the curb. I watch Grayson hold on to Gracie’s elbow as she and her round stomach bob slowly across the lawn.
The windowpane, which was at first cold to my touch, grows warm. Just before I take my hand away, my sister looks up, sees me, and waves. She thinks I am at the window for her, to greet her, to perpetuate her belief that she is the center of every story. She is a little selfish in that way. My story fits only in the margin, scrawled in poor handwriting around the typewritten, spell-checked account of her life. Mine is thrown together at the last minute, secured with tape and spit, while hers is as real and substantial as the hard, round belly she holds in front of her. She will soon have a child, but she has a job and a lot of support; I am a dropout struggling to get back together with someone I used to sleep with. I can’t believe it, but I am actually jealous of Gracie.
Gram says, “It didn’t used to be like this. There was a much smaller gap between generations. Women had more children, and they had them younger. Families didn’t have to wait so long between babies. It’s the waiting time that’s hard. You lose your hope, and you lose sight of the point, when there are no young ones.” Gram’s purse sits on her lap, and she rests her glass of lemonade on the leather bag. I can see a ring of wetness beginning to form on the fabric. In the past Gram never would have done something so untidy and careless. The bag will be ruined.
She says, “A family needs the old, the young, and the infants. When you only have two out of the three, it doesn’t work.” Gram nods at the cluster of daughters around her. “I know some of you girls have been fighting over this baby. We all have. But we don’t need to fight. You’ll see when the child is born.”
Gracie walks in then, with Grayson behind her. My sister is wearing a light blue maternity dress, and her hair is up in a ponytail. She looks like a pale young girl who has swallowed a basketball.
Everyone regards her. Mom puts the tray of stuffed mushrooms down on the coffee table so quickly, I wonder if she’s afraid she might drop it. I hear my father come in through the back door and take off