ONE NIGHT AFTER SIMON left, Stella decided to go out to a bar called Oh Yes. She sat on a stool and listened to the band, Charlie’s Rooster, perform acoustic versions of golden oldies hits. The music felt comforting, like a blanket, warming her.
“Beer,” she said to the bartender, a young blonde woman with a tiny blue star tattooed on her shoulder. Well, well, Stella thought, here I am on my own. This feels good.
She was on her third beer, feeling a little woozy, when the bartender nudged her and pointed to a table on the side. “That guy’s scoping you out,” she said, and Stella looked over.
He was younger than she was, with shaggy hair and eyes that were big and deep and blue. He smiled at her, and Stella looked away. “He’s a baby,” Stella said.
“That’s Nick Headgrow,” the bartender said. “A budding novelist.” She looked at Stella encouragingly. “He’s cute for a cis white guy.”
“He’s way too young.”
“He never goes out with anyone less than ten years older than he is,” the bartender said. “Really. His last girlfriend was fifty and she was the one who ended it, not him, and he was heartbroken about it.”
“Do you mean he’s forty?” Stella said. “That’s not so awful.”
The bartender laughed. “He’s twenty-six.”
She looked up again and there was the guy in question, rising from his chair, coming over to them, waving. “May I join you?” he said.
There was an empty stool next to Stella and he settled in, leaning into her as if they were the only ones in the bar.
“So, you’re a writer,” she said. He told her he was, that he had won prizes for his short stories, that he had completed a novel and had sent it out, and surprise, surprise, he had actually gotten an agent—a big agent on his first try.
“What’s the novel about?” Stella asked.
He looked embarrassed and then smiled. “It’s about this lost guy, a writer, and his love for this older woman.”
Stella nodded. Of course. He was writing what he knew, the old dictum. “Sounds great,” she lied.
Stella had known writers before. She’d treated them in the hospital, talked with them at their bedsides, and she knew how hard it was, that you had to sometimes try for forty agents before you got one, and even then, there were even more rejections from publishers and sometimes you never knew why. But this guy was so sure of how things were going to turn out that she found herself turning toward him, like he was a light and she had been living in darkness. He was burning with a desire for fame. He told her that when he went into bookstores he immediately headed for the new fiction shelf. He took down one book and then another, considering the cover and studying the blurbs. “Some writers get a million dollars right out of the gate,” he told Stella. “And I know one guy who was a failure until his ninth book, and now he’s famous.”
I can be a success, too—Stella knew that was the message emanating from him in waves, just the way it had for Simon. “I like your shirt,” Stella said, nodding at the black silk he was wearing.
“I don’t know if black is good on TV,” he said, and then he tapped her hand. “What about you?” he said, and she told him the same story she had told her friends, that she was an artist, that she was going to stay in Woodstock, that she had a house she loved and it loved her back. That part always made people laugh, but they didn’t realize how important it was, how it could honestly be true.
Suddenly it was late and people were going home. The bartender winked at Stella, which confused her. Nick took Stella’s hand. “I could talk to you forever,” he said. “Can we go to your place?”
She thought about it. Her head was buzzing from the beer and the music. A flash came into her mind—Simon kissing her hip—and she shook her head to dislodge the image.
“No?” he said.
Stella put on her coat, wound her scarf around her neck, and slung her bag over it. She still could remember Simon’s kiss on her hip, vibrating, but less so, she thought. Less and less. She knew it was hotter not to jump into things, to wait, but he was a baby, twenty-six, and how long would this last anyway?
You need to get laid, she told herself. That would erase Simon altogether. “Let’s go,” she said.
NICK WAS A sloppy lover, and Stella found herself directing him to do what she really wanted, how she wanted him to kiss her, how she wanted to be on top. She gave a small cry and then he did as well, and they both fell back on the bed, grinning at each other. He tapped her nose. “I like you,” he said.
“You don’t really know me,” she said.
“Yet.”
She didn’t know why, but she began to tell him her story. He listened without interrupting, once sucking in his breath, and when she was finished, he shook his head. “That’s some tale,” he said. He drew one finger along her arm. “Could I write about it?”
“I don’t know. It’s sort of my story, you know, and even I don’t know how it’s going to end.”
He kissed her shoulder. “It’s such a great story.”
“Well, it’s a story, anyway.”
“So, would you live in Manhattan again?”
“No. I love it here. Why?”
“What if it was with me?”
“Earth to you. We just met. So, no.”
“But picture it. I’d be writing and you could be painting. We could get a loft maybe.”
“You know how much lofts cost in Manhattan?” Stella said. “We’re talking millions.”
“An apartment, then. Space for your studio, space for my office. I’m getting a book deal. My agent is sure of it. I’ll be able to afford it.”
She laughed and ruffled his hair. “Go to sleep, beautiful dreamer,” she said. “We’re way too new for such plans.”
They saw each other every day all that week. They took long walks, and sometimes they just talked for hours. Stella found it odd to be in a relationship again, one that seemed to be everything for Nick but just an interlude for her, like getting her feet in the broil of surf before plunging into the waves. He slept over most nights, and he began talking more and more about his plans for them. How they’d live together in New York. How maybe she could design his book cover. She told herself she was just exercising her heart, rebuilding its strength, the same way you would do with any muscle.
She was aware of their age difference all the time. In the morning light, her face was creased from sleep, but his was smooth. Sometimes he lifted up the covers and studied her body, and she felt embarrassed, wanting to cover her belly, the sag of her breasts. “So beautiful,” he said.
THEY HAD BEEN together only a little over a week, and though he kept promising to give her his novel to read, he never did, and when she pressed, he said, “Well, what if you hate it?”
One day, he burst into her house, a package under his arm. “I got the call! I sold my novel!” he cried, and she looked up at him, stunned.
“That was so fast—”
He rattled off this story that his agent had sent it out to an editor he respected, and the editor had sat up all night reading. “And that was that,” he said.
He leaned against her, as if he had to keep it secret. “Two hundred thousand,” he whispered, and Stella started. “What?” she said, because it seemed like so much money, especially for a guy whose sneakers had holes in them, who never managed to pay for his share of dinner when they went out. And also, it disturbed her a little the way he mentioned money like that, as if he were showing her his dirty socks. Then he put the package in her hands. “That’s it. That’s my novel. I want you to read it now that I know it’s good.” She studied it. “I wrapped it up like a present for you,” he said, watching her, eager as a puppy. “But you can’t show it to anyone. You have to promise that when you’re finished, you’ll destroy it. I don’t want anyone reading it until it’s in galleys.”
She felt the weight of the pages in her hands. “Sure,” she said.
His whole face was filled with wonder and he jittered on his legs, pacing back and forth. “I added some stuff to it. It’s even better now. I’m going to be a Young Writer to Watch!” he said. He took her hands. “So, you’ll come with me to New York, right?”
“You know I can’t do that,” she said.
“I love you. I have money. We can live it up.”
“Shhh,” she said. “Now you’re being silly.” He looked so young to her now. “It hasn’t been enough time.”
“What’s time? There’s no time. Every quantum physicist knows that. I’m going to keep asking you to be with me. Even from New York. I’ll show you photos of my apartment. I’ll keep writing you. I’ll make you admit you love me back.”
She kissed him. “I’ve loved being with you,” she said, but inside she knew that she probably wouldn’t miss him.
HE LEFT TWO days later, still asking her to pack a bag and come with him. “Not so fast,” she said, laughing.
To her surprise, she did miss him. She expected to see him when she woke up or when she remembered something she wanted to tell him, books she had loved that he might like, people they both knew. However, the impulse grew weaker every day.
But he had left part of him for her, what he thought was the most important part, his novel, and Stella sat and read a little every night. It was about a writer like him and an older woman like her, and it wasn’t bad, though it did feel glossily polished and overtly commercial. But when she got to the end, there was a chapter tacked on that was printed on a different kind of paper. The new material, she thought. She read, and there it was: the protagonist took a pill and drank wine, then went into a coma and emerged from it with a different personality.
Stella put the book down, unsettled. He had taken her story even though she had asked him not to, and he’d used it in his novel, giving it a new ending. And she didn’t know how she felt about it.
She could call him and ask him why he’d done it. But what good would that do now? All she wanted was to move on.
She remembered he had told her to destroy his novel when she was done with it, so she stood over the wastebasket and began tearing the pages, turning them into confetti.
NICK DIDN’T WRITE her. He didn’t email or text, and she felt relief growing inside of her. Good. That meant he was okay, and so was she. One day a month later, the December air so chilly it had a bite in it, she was at the local market when she picked up New York magazine. New York City felt like a foreign country to her now, but still she leafed through the pages to her favorite parts, scanning the interviews, the hot list, the photos of parties, and then, there he was.
He was wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans and had a beautiful older woman slung around his shoulders like a cashmere sweater. They had their heads thrown back in laughter and people were crowded all around him.
She felt happy for him. He had been sweet and loving and really good for her at a time when she had needed someone like him. He knew what he wanted, and that was a good thing, too. He was okay. And so was she.
MOST DAYS, STELLA still biked into town. She knew more people now, some of whom became friends. She hung out with a woman named Amy, an actress-slash-waitress, and with Pat, the owner of the diner, who was a painter, too. She didn’t tell them much about herself, never mentioning the coma, the whole Simon-and-Libby thing. She didn’t tell them that she sometimes felt like she was still straddling two different worlds. She knew if she told them all that, she’d get pity or maybe odd looks. She didn’t want her story to be the center of their conversation.
One day after lunch with Amy, she went to see a client who wanted to be painted with her pet Bengal cat. The woman’s name was Edith (“Like Edith Wharton,” Edith said to her, which made Stella like her even more.) Edith’s home was choked with plants and cat toys, and Stella started when she saw the cat, which looked like a tiny leopard.
“That’s Rivington,” Edith said. “Very smart animal.”
Stella covered the floor with a tarp and then set up her portable easel and paints. “Come here, darling,” Edith said, and to Stella’s surprise, Rivington leaped to her shoulder, kneading with his paws, delirious with pleasure.
Stella studied the two of them. Edith was in her midsixties, dressed in a teal velvet gown and sparkly earrings. Her hair was white and she wore it in a long braid down her back.
Stella was just sketching in the outlines when she suddenly felt queasy. At first she thought it was because of what she was seeing. Edith had told her that she just wanted a portrait for fun, but Stella felt something more, something deeper. Edith was mourning her lover, a younger woman who had left her and taken up with a man. Oh, terrible, Stella thought. How sad and cruel.
Stella’s stomach bucked. “Excuse me,” Stella said, and dashed into the bathroom, vomiting. She threw water on her face and then dried it.
It must have been the clam chowder she had for lunch, she decided.
But the queasiness continued for days, and then a week, and she thought she’d picked up a stomach virus that was going around. She began to lose her taste for meat—she couldn’t even look at it anymore. The only things she wanted now were greens and carrots. But then when her period didn’t come, and still didn’t come, she went to the drugstore to get a pregnancy kit. She felt too old for pregnancy to be a possibility, unsettled. Time couldn’t mix her up like this, not when her old life was falling away, peeling like an old skin, making room for something new. She knew she once had wanted a baby, but that had been what felt like lifetimes ago.
Stella bought two different kits, one with a picture depicting a happy woman laughing, triumphant. The other was plainer; it had clinical type and seemed more official. She biked back to Silverwood, into a headwind and the thickening clouds that promised snow. “Here goes nothing,” she said to the house once she was inside. She went to the top floor bathroom, the same one in which she and Simon had once gloriously had sex while his parents slept. She peed on both sticks at the same time, then she held them out in front of her, watching the blue line on one turn into two and the line on the other one shout out the verdict: pregnant.
She shut her eyes for a moment. Then she went to her computer to find a doctor.
A WEEK LATER, right before Christmas, Stella lay on the doctor’s table, the paper gown crinkling about her. She didn’t know this doctor but had pulled her name out of Zocdoc, choosing her because of all the reviews. Dr. Rice doesn’t pry. She doesn’t give unwanted advice. One person wrote, If you want or need to talk about sex, Dr. Rice is the one to go to! It made Stella laugh, which she thought was a good sign. And then she saw this: Dr. Rice is totally nonjudgmental. She never made me feel I had decided wrong. I still go to her.
That decided it for Stella. She was already second-guessing and judging herself. She didn’t need anyone else doing it for her.
Dr. Rice was younger than Stella, with thick black hair that was cut into a shag. She wore rose-colored lipstick and a Moody Blues T-shirt under her lab coat. “So,” she said, looking at Stella’s file, “you think you’re pregnant?”
“I took two tests, but they’re junky; you can’t count on them.”
“Actually, you can,” said Dr. Rice. “They’re pretty reliable now.”
Stella swallowed. “I’m on my own. I don’t know who the father is.”
Dr. Rice didn’t flinch or narrow her eyes.
“It’s not like there are more than two,” Stella said.
Dr. Rice nodded. “Well, we’ve got you here, so let’s take a look.”
The gel on her belly made Stella shiver. She didn’t want to look at the sonogram screen, so she shut her eyes. It had to be a false reading.
Dr. Rice put the wand down and looked over at Stella. For a moment, Stella felt that she wasn’t pregnant, and relief flooded through her because she wouldn’t have to decide, and from now on, every time she slept with anyone, she’d insist they wear a condom. Maybe two, one on top of the other. She’d go back on the pill, too, and soon, with age, she wouldn’t have to worry about pregnancy at all.
She sat up, swinging her legs over the table, reaching for her clothes. The nausea was probably just nerves. The bloat was because she wasn’t exercising enough. Well, she’d treat herself to a long walk now.
“You’re pregnant,” Dr. Rice said.
Stella blinked hard. The air clamped down around her.
“Get dressed. Then come to my office and we’ll talk.”
DR. RICE’S OFFICE was filled with framed photographs of exotic places. There were giraffes loping across the plains in Africa. A mountain range was dusted with snow. Beautiful. Wish I were there. She sat across from Dr. Rice, her fingers threaded together.
“So, you have a choice to make,” said Dr. Rice. “Do you want to have this baby?”
“I don’t know,” Stella whispered. Dr. Rice doesn’t judge, the reviews had said. Stella felt something unwinding inside of her. She tried to breathe. Her hands cupped her stomach.
“I don’t know what to do,” Stella said.
“Okay, let’s talk about it,” said Dr. Rice. “What do you think you want?”
The air felt like a live wire crackling against her.
“Were you considering ending this pregnancy?” Dr. Rice prompted. “Or do you want to have the baby?”
Stella felt her heart hammering. Was she considering having it? Nothing was going the way it should, the way she had carefully planned out her life. She wasn’t with Simon. She wasn’t a nurse, a job she had loved. She was an artist now. And she was pregnant and she had no idea if Simon or Nick was the father. Women didn’t have to have babies to be fulfilled. They didn’t have to be married. They didn’t have to be mothers at all.
Dr. Rice touched her hand, making Stella start. “Go home, think about it,” she said. “You have some time.”
AT HOME, STELLA paced. The next morning, she showered and threw on clothes, then sat in front of her easel. She had an appointment later that day to meet with a woman who was getting married and wanted to give her husband her portrait because she hoped he would hang it in his office. Stella picked up her brush to make the outlines, and then suddenly the face changed shape, the chin began to take on a subtle point.
Like her own chin.
Stella had never successfully painted or drawn her own portrait. She’d never really tried. Maybe because she had been so afraid of what she might see. Maybe she had somehow known.
Daubing her brush in paint, she made another stroke, her heart thumping.
She worked without thinking about the brushstrokes, the way she always did when she painted, her hands flying.
When she was done, she was panting. She stepped back to look at the picture, to get out of herself and see what was really there.
The woman in the portrait wasn’t sad or confused the way that Stella had thought she might be. Usually Stella’s subjects were looking right at her, telling her everything she needed to know, but this one was looking off, into the future, into a world Stella couldn’t see.
She put the brushes down and wiped her hands. She wrapped her arms about herself. All that painting was telling her was that she herself had to make the decision, not her art. But how was she supposed to do that?
She wanted someone to talk to, someone who knew her, who loved her. She reached for her phone and called her mother.
Bette was quiet the whole time Stella was talking, telling her the whole story of how she was living at the Woodstock house now, how Simon had practically given it to her, and how she had gotten pregnant. “I don’t know what to do,” Stella said. “I don’t even know who the father is.” And then, to her surprise, as if that made everything so much worse, she started to cry. “What if I decide the wrong thing?” She swallowed hard. “What if I make a mistake?”
She could hear her mother breathing. “Honey,” Bette said finally. “Maybe there’s no wrong thing. What’s important is making a decision.”
“What do you mean there’s no wrong thing? Yes, there is. You knew it was right to love Daddy from the second you met him. You told me.”
Bette sighed. “I did, and sometimes that happens. I don’t regret a second of it, but honey, there’s a cost for everything. You know why I left for Spain?”
“You left me,” Stella said bitterly.
“No, that’s wrong,” Bette said. “You were a grown-up. I knew you were going to be all right. And I knew all I had to do was hop a plane or pick up a phone and I could be there with you.” Her voice warmed. “I left because everything reminded me of your father. I picked a country your father and I had never visited together, and once I was here, I felt different. I was different. Grief changes you, honey. It turns you into a whole other person. And so, really, does living your life.”
Stella thought of her mom in her T-shirts, her gray hair that looked as if she cut it herself. “You never found anyone else . . .” Stella said.
“Because I didn’t want to. Because I kept looking for your dad in everyone else, and when I finally realized he wasn’t there, I stopped looking.”
“I don’t want to have a baby and have it be a mistake.” Stella felt her throat closing. “The way I was.”
“What?”
“I heard you talking to Dad once. You said you wondered if I were a mistake.”
“You heard wrong, then.”
“You said it would have been easier without me. You said—”
“Baby,” Bette interrupted. “Easier doesn’t mean better. I loved you. We loved you. I couldn’t imagine my life without you. I want you to know that there are no right answers. I want you to know that we’re all on loan to one another, and whatever we get, we should be grateful for, because any minute we can lose another person. We should try to remember every experience. Maybe you’ll have this baby, and if you do, I’ll come and help if you want me to. I’ll shower that child with love, and you, too. Maybe you won’t need my help, but I’ll still come and see you. I’ll still shower you with love.”
Stella kept crying. She bowed her head. She had no idea what the future might hold. She had no clarity about anything.
And then suddenly she knew what to do.
TWO DAYS LATER, she sat in front of Dr. Rice. “I’m going to have the baby,” she said.
“Well, then,” she said. “There are plans we need to make.”
After talking with Dr. Rice, Stella walked out into the waiting room. She would have an amnio. She had a prescription for prenatal vitamins. “I’ll monitor you carefully,” the doctor said.
Everyone in the waiting room was so much younger than she was. Some of the women had their moms with them, or partners holding their hands. But so what, she thought. Who knew how good those relationships were or what anyone’s situation might be?
Stella walked outside onto the street, dizzy for a moment. She rested one hand against the building. She wanted her mom, ached for her. Growing up, whenever she got sick, her mother would stay home from work and bring her rock candy and ginger ale. Stella would call her again, have her support. Maybe Bette could come and be with her when the baby was born. They’d be three generations.
Dr. Rice had given her lots of information and Stella did everything she was instructed to do. She took the vitamins. She ate better.
IN APRIL, WHEN it was time to have the amnio, her friend Pat from the Bee diner went with her to the doctor’s office and held her hand. Stella squeezed her friend’s fingers tightly, twisting her head so she could see the images flickering on the screen.
Dr. Rice smiled warmly at her. “You want to know the sex,” she asked, “or you want to be surprised?”
Stella knew now that everything was a surprise, so she held Pat’s hands tighter and said, “Tell me.”
Dr. Rice grinned. “Boy,” she said. “A fantastic little boy.”
STELLA GREW, CHANGING shape with the child growing inside of her. She began wearing dresses and drawstring pants, and while she painted, she tried out names. Tom. Jack. Names that were simple and strong. A boy! She was going to have a boy in September, a new life to add to her new life! Her son might look like her or he might have Simon’s strong nose or Nick’s bright green eyes. He might just look like himself, and no one else.
A DNA test was the only way to tell who the father was. She could call Simon, and though she didn’t know what his reaction would be, she knew that he would agree to take the test, and as long as he did, then she wouldn’t have to ask Nick. She’d know who the father was just by process of elimination.
But then what? Did she really want to know? Did she need to do this? She had Bette and Pat and loving friends who all wanted to help her, who she knew would love her son as much as they loved her.
And did it matter who the father was? What good would it do to tell Nick or Simon, to foist a responsibility on them that they didn’t really want? Did she want either of them in her life again? Nick was already in Manhattan, forging literary friendships. His story was still being written, and while Stella had enjoyed and liked him well enough, she was happy to watch him from a distance, and he clearly had already forgotten her. She and Simon no longer fit, but she had seen how he had grown up. He had just about given her this house, and if he didn’t want to be involved as a father, that was fine by her, but shouldn’t she at least offer him the opportunity?
Maybe it wasn’t really for her or Nick or Simon to decide at all. All that mattered was what her son would want, when he was old enough to want it, and then she’d tell him the truth. The important thing was that he knew that she loved him unconditionally and she’d never leave him. But she’d tell him things about both men, good things, like how she had really loved Simon and how, in a way, he had saved her life, and his own, too. She’d tell her son that Nick was a writer, that he was younger than she was, and talented. If her son wanted to meet either man, Stella would do her best to find them, making sure that both Nick and Simon knew she wasn’t asking for anything they weren’t prepared to give, that it was for her son, that he wanted connection, or answers, or just to meet them this once. They would all have to figure out how it all might work.
She was forty-three now, and when this baby was born, maybe, in a way, she’d be newly born, too. She’d become someone and something different. Yes, she’d have this child, and she would love him, and already she was looking forward to the journey they’d have together, both of them growing and changing with time. Listen, she would whisper to him. Nothing and no one stays still or stays the same. Everything and everyone changes. We all have multitudes inside of us, each of them young with hope.
Listen, she’d repeat. Any moment, something amazing can happen.