“I’d move anywhere with you,” he said, sliding his arms underneath her shirt and around her stomach. He rested his head in her neck and she thought he was sleeping until she felt his shoulders shaking. “But I won’t drink the Kool-Aid,” he managed to get out above his laughter. He lifted his face to look at her. “Even for you, Abby. Even for you, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid from the lactating mothers.”
After Matt’s visit, Abby felt herself slipping back in time. It took her hours to pick out which shoes to wear, and when she final y did, she immediately regretted her choice. Her clothes seemed to fit differently, tight in places they never were before, too loose in others, and she pul ed at them, trying to figure out why they didn’t look right. “Do I look okay?” she asked more often. She stared at herself in the mirror until Matt grew impatient, tel ing her she looked fine when he wasn’t looking at her at al .
Abby couldn’t help what was happening. She needed Matt around al the time, felt confused when he was gone, fol owed him around the apartment, her toes hitting his heels when he stopped short. “Your wanting,” he said one night, “is overwhelming.” It sounded poetic, but Matt was not a poetic person. One night, she woke up holding a fistful of his shirt. Matt stared at her across the darkness, then shook his shoulders like a dog does when it’s wet, and rol ed over to face away from her. She knew he would be gone soon.
Three months after Abby woke up holding Matt’s shirt, she arrived alone at her parents’ house. As she pul ed into the driveway, she thought, “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds.” That was not unusual. Ever since the peacock incident, that sentence came into Abby’s head at the oddest of times. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” she wanted to say when there was a lul at a dinner party or a friend told her that she was pregnant. And so she wasn’t surprised that on the night she came home to tel her parents that she wasn’t getting married, it was that thought that ran through her head: The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds.
It was no stranger than what she had come to tel them: that the wedding was off, that Matt had moved out, and that they would probably not be able to get a refund on anything. She turned off the car and thought about her options. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” she said out loud to no one. Her breath made little puffs of white in the winter air, and she sat in the car until it was too cold to bear, and then she walked inside the house.
“Mom, I’m not getting married,” Abby said as soon as she walked through the door. Her mother was reading a book on the couch, and she marked her place with her finger before she looked up.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m not getting married.” Abby made no move to take off her jacket or move farther into the room.
“Al right, then,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in, and we’l talk about it?” She put the book down on the couch and stood up. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. Abby nodded.
Abby’s mom didn’t even look surprised to see her. She’d driven al the way from New York, walked into the house unannounced, and her mom acted like she’d been expecting her. Abby had never been able to shock her mom. Once, in col ege, Isabel a had said, “Can you imagine if you had to tel your mom that you were pregnant?” She shuddered after she asked this and Abby made a sympathetic noise, but she couldn’t real y relate.
Abby could have told her mom that she’d been arrested for heroin possession while carrying on a lesbian affair, and she would have taken it in and then suggested that they talk about it.
“So, wil we stil have the party then?” her mom asked. They were sitting at the kitchen table with their tea, and it took Abby a minute to realize that she meant the wedding. She and Abby’s father were never official y married, of course, so maybe she thought they just decided to skip the legal part and live together forever.
“No, Mom,” Abby said. “No party, no wedding.”
“So you and Matt are …”
“Done. We broke up.” She nodded and blew on her tea.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “That’s a shame.”
Abby wanted her to scream or cry or jump on the table. Tears of frustration came to her eyes, and she shut them tightly.
“Oh, sweet pea. Oh, Abby,” she said. “Come here.” Abby let her mother pul her onto her lap like she was a little girl. She cried for about two minutes and then felt like an idiot sitting on her mom’s lap, and so she got up and went back to her seat.
“I’m fine,” Abby said. “It was for the best.”
“Then this is the right thing to do,” she said.
“Mom, I don’t think we’l be able to get much money back,” Abby said. “It’s only three weeks away. I don’t know what they’l do.”
Her mom was already waving her hands at her. “That is not for you to worry about. Money is just money.” Abby wondered, not for the first time in her life, if her mom would stil think that money was just money if she didn’t have so much of it.
“I have to stay here for a couple of days while Matt moves his stuff out of the apartment,” Abby said.
“Of course,” she said. “Do you need help with anything else?”
“Not now,” Abby said. “But I have to start cal ing people soon, I guess, to tel them that the wedding is off. I guess that’s what I should do.”
“I can do that,” her mom said. “These things happen al the time. No big whoop. We’l get it al straightened out.”
“Thanks,” Abby said. “Can I have a real drink?”
“Sure, honey. Wine or vodka?”
“Vodka,” Abby said. “I think this cal s for vodka.”
The next morning, Abby walked downstairs to find her dad making eggs in the kitchen. He saw her and gave her a hug. “Your mom told me what happened, kiddo. I’m real y sorry about that,” he said.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Do you want some eggs? Sunny side up or scrambled?”
“Sure,” she said. “Scrambled, I guess.”
Her dad nodded and turned back to the stove. He whistled while he cracked the eggs and beat them with a fork. “If you like, you can help me feed the birds when you’re done,” he said as he put the plate in front of her.
“Sure, Dad,” she said. She waited until he walked out of the kitchen, and then got up and scraped the eggs into the garbage.
Abby put on rubber boots that were by the back door, and borrowed her mom’s winter jacket. Stil in her pajamas, she slogged through the snow to the chicken coop. She thought about brushing her hair, but there was real y no need to. She pushed open the door to the coop and smel ed the coop smel of poo and bird dirt.
“Dad?” she cal ed.
“Back here, kiddo.”
She walked past the cages, wrinkling her nose at the dirty birds. Abby’s parents had started raising birds when she was twelve. “We eat so much poultry,” her mom explained. “And people are starting to talk about the way these birds are raised. This is much more humane, Abby. We know that the birds are fed right, and treated right.”
Her parents didn’t kil the birds themselves. They had someone come in and do it for them and prep the meat. Abby had never seen it happen, but less than a year after they built the coop, she stopped eating meat.
“Abby, don’t be ridiculous!” her mother would say. “This is good for you. This is delicious meat!”
“It makes me sick!” she’d say. And it did. The thought of chewing chicken in her mouth made her want to gag. When she tried to eat it, it refused to go down her throat. Once, she got a bite halfway down and then promptly threw up on her plate. “Fine,” her mom said after that. “You don’t have to eat chicken anymore.”