Chapter 36

Six months later

The heat that summer had dragged into fall, heavy and wet, pushing in from all sides. None of Rosie’s clothes fit. At night, she and Jordan blasted the air-conditioning to keep away the humidity. She took walks in the early morning before the woolen heat took hold and tourists clogged the sidewalks. She sensed that the baby turning inside her liked these walks, along with other things: Oreo milkshakes from Shake Shack; the theme song from the reality TV show; and a superhero voice Jordan had started delivering straight to Rosie’s belly button ever since they’d moved back to Brooklyn.

They lived in the penthouse of a brand-new building in Downtown Brooklyn—an enormous black tower that ruined the skyline for everyone else. Whenever anyone asked where she and Jordan lived, Rosie was vague, choosing to list the landmarks around it—a Whole Foods, an Apple Store, the performing arts center. That spring, Swimmrs had sold for an incredible amount of money to an e-commerce company that liked its drone-delivery infrastructure, and Jordan bought the apartment before it even hit the market. “It has a huge balcony,” he assured Rosie, after finalizing the offer. “We’ll be able to see fireworks on July Fourth.” He glossed over the existence of an annexed suite, which would—and had—become a place for his mother to stay anytime she was in town for trade events.

The building had four rooftops, each outfitted with fake grass, benches, and Big Green Egg grills, which could be customized with an endless list of attachments to cook a pizza, or a whole turkey, or a brisket. The communal hallways were decorated with screen-printed street signs. One street sign read, “City Life Street.” Another one, puzzlingly, read, “Bleecker Avenue.” There was a communal dining room, an entertainment center, a co-working floor, and a gym with dozens of spin bikes that Rosie had never seen anyone use. A doorman said hello and goodbye to them each time they came and left, and she wished she could think of a polite way to tell him not to—that it would be a relief for both of them if she could pass through the lobby without small talk. The elevators required a key fob and connected to a grocery store in the basement. This meant that there was no real reason to ever leave the building.

“Rosie,” Jordan called. He poked his head out onto the balcony, where she stood at the railing, surveying the noisy street, one hand on her belly. Next to her, a potted basil plant wilted alongside a leggy tomato vine that hadn’t grown any tomatoes. “You coming? Bridey’s on her way up.” He held a sweaty beer by its neck. His thighs pushed muscularly against his tight chino shorts.

Rosie pressed her lips into a smile. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. I’m coming.”

The air-conditioning blasted her in the face when she stepped inside, giving her goosebumps. Their friends—Jordan’s, mostly, from high school, college, Family Friend, and Swimmrs—were seated on the sofa, which Jordan had ordered from a California-based start-up. It had arrived flat-packed, which now seemed impossible; the sofa ran the length of the wall, and the cushions were enormous and bloated.

“You should get Amex Platinum,” one of Jordan’s friends said to Alice. He held a slice of watermelon in one hand and a paper plate in the other. Alice steadied her two-month-old baby on her lap. The baby had Damien’s long hooked nose and Alice’s full cheeks. She craned her neck to get a good look at each adult in the room, her expression stunned, her eyes dark and glassy. “She’s checking us out!” Noguchi said, reaching an index finger to her cheek. “She’s doing a vibe check!”

Jordan’s friend with the credit card pushed the rest of the watermelon into his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his wrist. “You get access to the best airport lounges,” he continued. “In the first two years, babies basically count as luggage, right? My buddy and his wife took their parental leave at the same time and did a whole Euro tour.”

“We should look into that,” Alice said to Damien, who nodded politely from the chaise. Everyone had their phones out.

“It’s expensive,” Jordan’s friend added. “Like seven hundred dollars annually. But if you use all the perks, it basically pays you.”

Rosie tried to think of an errand that would allow her to leave, even just for ten minutes. “Does anyone need anything?” she tried, but no one did. The refrigerator was stocked with cold seltzer, fruit, and pasta salad. An Oreo cream pie was setting in the freezer.

“Sit, sit,” Noguchi said to Rosie, patting a cushion next to him. “The only thing missing is you!”

“And Bridey,” Jordan said, checking his phone, and at that moment, there was a rhythmic knock at the door, as if he had delivered her cue. He swung open the door to reveal Bridey, who’d had her hair blown out, her dress a cheerful lime green. Rosie looked down at her own overalls, which still carried old stains of chicken blood.

“I’m here,” Bridey sang. She beamed, taking stock of everyone. “I’m here, I’m here. Cliff is just parking the car.” In one hand she held a wrapped gift, and in the other, a suitcase, which Jordan carried into the suite. She kissed Rosie on the cheek. “The last trimester is really something,” she said, bringing her hand to Rosie’s stomach. “Jordan loved to push his foot right here.” She brought her knuckle between Rosie’s ribs. “And you know what? I loved the feeling. I did!”

She reached into her purse and took out a GoldenDrop bottled smoothie. “This will taste terrible at first, but then you’ll start to crave it.” She looked around the apartment, which Jordan had slowly furnished over the months with brutalist furniture, at the advice of an interior design app that matched him with a personal shopper. “Well, it’s not my first choice, but it’s a huge improvement from you-know-where,” Bridey said.

The table by the door was crowded with gifts. Shiny paper bags with lavender and peach tissue paper stuck out from the top. Boxes were wrapped in glossy paper with illustrations of rattles and bottles, and one was covered in cartoon breasts of various shapes and sizes.

“I should have bought a place in this building” Noguchi said, returning from the bathroom. “And nice touch with the landscape painting. Do I recognize it? I feel like I do. It’s super classy. I felt like I was peeing at a museum.”

They hadn’t been able to find a good place for the painting. For several weeks it sat on the floor, leaning against the wall in the downstairs hallway, until one day Rosie found it hanging in the bathroom above the toilet, a hammer resting on the toilet tank.

“Just something we picked up when we were upstate,” Jordan said, fixing himself a plate of cheese cubes.

“We’re actually looking into buying a place upstate,” the guy with the expensive credit card said. He patted the knee of a woman who sat beside him.

“I’ve always had a dream of starting a little commune,” the woman said. “What was it like up there?”

Jordan and Rosie each waited for the other to speak before Bridey finally broke the silence. “You’d be much better off investing in real estate in New Jersey. Unless you like bears.”

“You saw a bear?” The credit card guy took a sip of his mimosa and looked between Rosie and Jordan.

“Our boy fought a bear,” Noguchi said.

“Did he, actually?” Alice said doubtfully.

“Rosie, you tell it,” Noguchi said. “You were there.”

“I’ll start,” said Jordan. “So, I was coming back from the grocery store, because Rosie really wanted a pickle, and so Rosie waited at the house alone.” The story had, over the months, spun itself into something only vaguely adjacent to the truth. In the revised version, Rosie had discovered the smashed glass in the kitchen and seen, from the corner of her vision, a large shadow pass by the window. Jordan had pulled up to the house just in time. Without hesitation, ax in hand, he’d chased the hulking bear off the deck, off the lawn, and into the woods behind the house. As they told the story, Jordan blushed beside Rosie, sipping his drink while she spoke, their guests gasping at the right moments.

“That’s when I knew I was pregnant,” Rosie said. “I never really cared much about pickles. But this time, I really, really needed one.”

Bridey beamed.

“That’s it right there,” Jordan said, pointing at the ax, which hung in the hallway leading to their bedroom, next to their vows.

Rosie excused herself to the bathroom. One of the benefits of being pregnant was that she could leave for the bathroom as often as she wanted. She sat on the closed toilet beneath the Lise Bakker painting and opened Instagram. The Bakker Estate had its own hashtag, which Rosie followed closely. Dylan had renovated the attic and turned it into a weaving studio for Lark. The most recent post was a photo of Dylan, Lark, Sasha, Hank, and the toddler, who sat on Hank’s lap, holding a guinea hen in his own lap, a wooden spoon clutched in one fist, a serious expression on his face. Little fam, the caption read. Rosie zoomed in on the photo, accidentally tapping the Heart button in the process, which made her pulse jump. “No, no, no...” she said, un-liking the photo. She stared at the bulky hand-knit socks on the toddler’s feet, the spoon that she was sure Dylan had carved. What once might have been longing and possibility now felt only like fatigue and sadness. Dylan had texted Rosie only twice after she left with Jordan.

i see a bear threw a party... exciting...

u good?

Rosie had given a thumbs-up to the second text and there had been nothing after that.

The baby kicked. “OK,” she whispered. “OK, let’s go back out there.”

“So they bought the app just for the drones and the vending machines?” Damien was saying when Rosie returned to the living room.

“Pretty much,” Noguchi said. “I think they’re using it for food delivery.”

“What happened to all the, you know, samples?” Alice asked. Rosie stared at the carpet. She hadn’t told anybody, including Alice, about what she and Dylan had done.

“It got tossed,” Noguchi said. “We did manage to sell a handful of them, though.”

“So there was a market up there?” Damien asked.

Noguchi raised his eyebrows. “Big market. Like you wouldn’t believe. It’s cool when you think about it. We made at least a few families’ dreams come true.”

“And if your stuff gets used, do you get notified?” the wife of the friend with the credit card asked.

Noguchi cracked open a beer. “Nope. And we don’t either. It’s totally anonymous.”

Rosie brought a hand to her belly.

“Should we do gifts?” Jordan said anxiously.

“Are we waiting for your mother?” Bridey said to Rosie.

“She couldn’t make it,” Jordan said, and Rosie was relieved he answered for her. When they’d told Rosie’s mother about the baby shower, she complained that they were always arranging things at the most difficult time. She sent a card with nothing but the prewritten congratulations and her signature in it.

Jordan handed Rosie a small box. She unwrapped it and lifted the seafoam tissue paper to reveal a trio of plastic rattling rings in primary colors. “That’s from us,” the woman with the husband with the credit card said. “Our Homer loved it.”

“Homer,” Noguchi said. “Now that’s a name!”

Alice handed Rosie a gift bag from Noguchi containing a Swimmrs onesie. “Collectible!” Noguchi shouted as she unfolded it. “Discontinued!”

Next she opened Alice’s gift: a handmade mobile with tiny, brightly colored ceramic vegetables. Yellow carrot, bright green lettuce, a blushy purple turnip. “I just made the veggies. Damien engineered it,” Alice said. Rosie held it up to the light.

“From me,” Jordan said, handing her a small box. Rosie untied the ribbon and pulled out a pair of suede-and-shearling slippers.

The gifts kept coming. Box after box of tiny objects made of plastic. Bottles, crinkly pom-poms, stuffed animals, a plastic changing table, gauzy swaddling blankets, a hedgehog night-light, a noise machine that replicated the sound of a snowy, windy night. Jordan had rewrapped and regifted the Jumbo Prawn bib his mother had given them as a wedding gift.

The next thing that was handed to Rosie was soft and warm. A small body. Alice’s baby. And Alice’s voice saying, “Can you take her for a minute? I need to pee.” She was stronger than she looked, her bare feet pushing against Rosie, her knees and elbows fat and dimpled. Rosie held her under her arms. Tiny grasping hands, wobbly thighs. She could barely keep her head up. Her eyes were wide as she searched Rosie’s face. Her own face was bright like a moon. Jordan took out his phone and aimed his camera at her. “Rosie, look over here!” he said. But she did not look up at him. She kept her eyes on the baby. Small sounds issued in bursts from her wet, O-shaped mouth, which twisted into an expression that Rosie felt desperate to read. The corners of her mouth lifted. She hasn’t given us any social smiles yet, Alice had told her. But then, what was this? She peered into the baby’s eyes. Was it just reflexive? Was she smiling? Was she trying to?