cold wind and am surprised to find myself sweating in the humidity. New Jersey is brutal in the summer. The high temperatures make the pavement steam. The density of the air makes it difficult to breathe. The heat slows your mind, and people rush from one air-conditioned space to another. From car to house to business to mall.
With the baby heavy in front of me, I sweat more than I ever have. My sweat is smellier now, too. I don’t smell like the person I used to be before this pregnancy. My body emits a salty, earthy odor that I don’t recognize. Several times I have walked into a room and thought, What is that smell? only to realize that it’s me. There are other changes in my body that I didn’t expect. A moss of pale hair has grown across the stretched skin of my belly. And not only have my breasts grown enormous, but the nipples are the width of one of my fingers and stained a deep wine color. They are amazing and a complete departure from the breasts I used to have. I go for days on end without looking at myself naked in the mirror because the sight is so alarming.
A car slows in front of the house and then turns into the driveway. I can tell from the sound of the engine that it’s not Lila’s car. It is hard for me to see through the darkness, and I am immediately nervous. Maybe it’s Meggy, sensing my vulnerability and circling in for another attack. I would like to declare this house a no-visiting zone. The last welcome unexpected guest we had was Gram, and she gave up her driver’s license months ago. Since then, everyone who has shown up has wanted something.
The car door slams and I see a man walking across the lawn.
I stand up. “Hello?” I say. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” he says.
I sit back down on the step. “You couldn’t wait to yell at me until tomorrow?”
“You aren’t returning my calls, so I decided to take action.”
I had been feeling guilty about skipping work, but now that I’m looking at Grayson, I’m nothing but annoyed. “You know,” I say, “you could have skipped the column this week altogether, or run an old column, or a ‘best of’ compilation. You didn’t have to do the work yourself.”
He doesn’t even have a chance to respond before I start to cry. This pisses me off even more. I hate for anyone to see me cry. I don’t cry the way a girl is supposed to; my tears are a messy, choking affair. My face gets red and puffy and my nose makes noises. Grayson, Mr. Unemotional, is the last person I want to cry in front of. He doesn’t even have the common decency to look away while my eyes and my nose run. He stares at me through the whole thing.
“Gracie,” he says, loudly, as though I can’t hear him because of the tears, as though I can’t hear him because my life has risen up around me in a shape I can’t recognize. “Gracie, I didn’t come here to talk about your column.”
“My grandmother fell,” I say.
“I came here to talk about getting married. Just hear me out before you object, all right? If you think about it, it makes sense for us to get married. The way I look at it, we can help each other. You need someone who understands you, Gracie. You get yourself so lost, and you have so little confidence in who you are. You need someone who knows what you want. And you know that you need financial help. When we last discussed this—”
“We did not discuss this.” A deep exhaustion presses me down into the cement step.
“Fine. When I—”
“I don’t want to discuss this, Grayson.”
He shakes his head, shakes my objections off. “When the subject last came up, you couldn’t have known what it would take to bring a baby into the world. You must have a better idea now of how much support is necessary. Who are you going to get that from, if not from me? It doesn’t sound like the father of the child, or even your beloved gram, is going to be able to provide for you both.”
My voice is very quiet. “No.”
“No, what?”
“I’m not going to marry someone who feels more pity for me than anything else, Grayson. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? My family thinks I’m a slut,