Attachments(20)
Author: Rainbow Rowell

The kitchen already smelled like garlic. Christine had the dinner ingredients—and everything else —spread out on the counter. She handed him a sharp knife and an onion. “Just clear a space.”

He pushed aside two sacks of potatoes, a jug of red wine, and an electric yogurt maker. This is the girl my mother wanted me to bring home, he thought as he washed his hands. Or this is the girl she’d want me to bring home if she actually wanted me to bring home a girl. A girl like this, who makes her own yogurt and breast-feeds while she’s telling you about something she read in a medicinal herbs book.

He watched Christine make her toddler a plate of raisins and banana slices. What could his mother find wrong with Christine? he wondered. Something. Eve would say that Christine smiled too much and that she should wear a more supportive bra.

He chopped the onion into clean, regular squares and started on the tomatoes. His arms still felt strange from all the lifting, and his face still felt strange from all the smiling.

“You’re different, Lincoln,” Christine said, clearing more space on the counter to roll out dough.

She looked at him like she was doing math in her head. “What is it?”

He laughed. “I don’t know. What is it?”

“You’re different,” she said. “I think you’ve lost weight. Have you lost weight?”

“Probably,” he said. “I’m trying to exercise.”

“Hmmm,” she said, studying him, kneading the dough, “that’s something. But that’s not it …Your eyes are clearer. You’re standing taller. You look like you’re in flower.”

“Isn’t that something you’d say to a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“Does this have something to do with a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“Of course not,” he said, laughing again. “Where would I even meet a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“But it is a girl,” Christine said enthusiastically. “It’s a girl!’ “Who’s a girl?” Dave asked as he walked in. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers. “Is Lincoln pregnant?”

Lincoln shook his head at Christine, which, he could tell, made her even more curious.

“Have you finished crushing the Rebellion?” she asked.

Dave frowned. “No,” he said peevishly, walking back to the living room, “but I shall.”

“It’s a girl!” Christine whispered as soon as Dave had gone. “Our prayers are answered! Tell me all about her.”

“Have you really been praying for me?” Lincoln asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I pray for everyone we care about. Plus, I like to pray for things that seem possible. There are so many things that I pray for that seem almost too big even for God. It’s rewarding to pray for something that might actually happen. It kind of keeps me going. Sometimes, I just pray for a bumper crop of zucchini or for a good night’s sleep.”

“So you think it’s possible that I might meet a girl?” He felt genuinely grateful to think that Christine was praying for him. If he were God, he would listen to Christine’s prayers.

“The girl.” Christine smiled. “More than possible. It’s probable even. Tell me about her.”

He wanted to. He wanted to tell someone. Why not Christine? He couldn’t think of anyone who would be less judgmental.

“If I do,” Lincoln said, “you can’t tell anyone else. Not even Dave.”

Her face fell.

“Why not? Are you in trouble? Is it a bad secret? Oh my God, are you having an affair? Don’t tell me if you’re having an affair. Or breaking the law.”

“I’m not breaking the law … ,” he said. “But I may have employed questionable ethics.”

“You have to tell me now,” she said. “Or it’ll just drive me crazy.”

So he told her everything, from the beginning, trying not to play up the parts of the story that made him sound shady, but trying not to play them down either. By the end, Christine had nervously rolled the first pizza crust thin as tracing paper.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, scrunching the dough back into a ball. He couldn’t read her face.

“Do you think I’m horrible?” he asked, sure that she did.

“No,” she said. “Oh no, of course not. I don’t know how you could read people’s e-mail without actually reading it, if that’s your job.”

“But I shouldn’t have kept reading hers,” he said. “There’s no getting around that.”

“No.” Christine frowned. Even her frown looked like it wanted to be a smile. “No, that part’s messy.

You’ve really never met her? Do you even know what she looks like?”

“No,” Lincoln said.

“There’s something really romantic about that. Every woman wants a man who’ll fall in love with her soul as well as her body. But what if you meet her, and you don’t think she’s attractive?”

“I don’t think I care what she looks like,” Lincoln said. Not that he hadn’t thought about it. Not that it wasn’t exciting in a weird way, not to know, to imagine.

“Oh, that is romantic,” Christine said.

“Well,” Lincoln said, feeling like he was getting off too easy, “I know that she’s attractive. Her boyfriend is the kind of guy who dates attractive women. And I know that she’s had other boyfriends …”

“It’s still romantic,” Christine said, “falling in love with someone for who she is and what she says and what she believes in. It’s actually much more romantic than her crush on you, which would have to be almost completely physical. You might be nothing like she thinks you are.”

Lincoln had never thought of it like that.

“Oh, not that she would be disappointed,” Christine said reassuringly. “How could she be?”

“It’s felt like enough,” he said, “that she thinks I’m cute.”

“Lincoln,” she said quietly. “Cute has never been your problem.”

Lincoln didn’t know what to say then. Christine smiled and handed him two green peppers. “Your problem,” she said, “at least in the immediate sense, is that you have to stop reading this woman’s e- mail.”

“If I stopped, do you think I could try to meet her?”

“I don’t know,” Christine said, rolling out the dough again, “you’d have to tell her about the e-mail, and she might not be able to get over it.”

“Could you get over something like that?”

“I don’t know …It would seem pretty weird. David stole my dice one summer, before we started dating, so that he would have something of me to keep near him over break. He carried them in his pocket. That seemed kind of romantic, but kind of weird, and this is much weirder than that. You’d have to tell her about how you’ve gone to her boyfriend’s concerts and how you walk by her desk. I don’t know …” Christine started spreading tomato sauce with her fingers in bright red swirls on the dough.

“You’re right,” Lincoln said. It didn’t matter that Christine wasn’t as judgmental as Eve or his mother or anyone else he could have told about Beth. There was no one he could tell, no one he respected, who would tell him that this was going to work. “I guess I ruined it the moment I decided to keep reading her e-mails. The thing is, I never really decided that. It wasn’t like a formal decision.”

“Just think,” Christine said, putting the first crust in the oven, “if you had never read her mail, she would still have a big crush on you. She’d still be gossiping about you to her girlfriend. That should make you feel good.”

It didn’t.

THAT NIGHT, LINCOLN played his character so recklessly, the poor dwarf lost three toes and was cursed with blindness. Lincoln ate too much pizza, drank two big mugs of Dave’s home brew, and slept fitfully on the couch.

The next morning, Christine made him oatmeal and tried to tell him to hold on to the momentum in his life, to try to channel it into a healthier direction. “Remember,” she said, “not all those who wander are lost.”

He thanked her for breakfast and for everything else and hurried out, hoping she wouldn’t see how irritated he was. It seemed like such a pointless, flaky thing to say. Even if it was his favorite line from The Lord of the Rings.

CHAPTER 48

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

To: Beth Fremont

Sent: Mon, 12/06/1999 9:28 AM

Subject: I’ll bet you’re the kind of girl who’s already picked out baby names.

Am I right? What are they?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Like I’m going to tell you. A pregnant person.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m not going to steal them.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> That’s what they all say. Are you starting to pick out names?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m not. Mitch is. Actually, he already has a name that he likes: Cody.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> For a girl or a boy?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Either.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Hmm.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Go ahead. I know it’s awful.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It really is. For either a boy or a girl.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I know.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> That name feathers its bangs.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I know.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It collects dream catchers.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I know.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It cries out for the middle name “Dawn.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I know, I know, I know.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> So, did you say, “No child of mine will be named Cody, not in this lifetime, not in the next 50 lifetimes.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I said, “Let’s wait on names until we know what we’re having.”

And he said, “But that’s the beauty of Cody. It works for everything.”

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I know it’s mean to laugh at someone who might have to name her firstborn Cody, but I can’t help it. It works for everything.

What names do you like?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t know. I can’t even think about it that way, like something with a name.

I feel like Mitch should get to pick out the name because he’s more invested in this whole idea. It’s like, when you’re going out to dinner and you don’t really care where you go, but the other person really wants to go to the Chinese buffet. Maybe you don’t love the Chinese buffet, but it’s kind of rude to argue when you don’t even really care.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Um. I think you’ve got a lot invested in this baby. You’re the one carrying it.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yes, but Mitch is more attached to it.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Your umbilical cord begs to differ.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Do you think I have an umbilical cord already? I’m only six weeks along.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Isn’t that what feeds the baby?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yes, but it doesn’t pop out of nowhere. It’s not like you already have a cord in your uterus that’s just waiting for an outlet to plug into.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I think it forms with the baby. Isn’t this covered in that What to Expect When You’re Expecting book?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m sure I wouldn’t know. I can’t stand books like that. Why should every pregnant woman be expected to read the same book? Or any book? Being pregnant isn’t that complicated. What to Expect When You’re Expecting shouldn’t be a book. It should be a Post-it: “Take your vitamins. Don’t drink vodka. Get used to empire waistlines.”

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I might have to see if there’s a What to Expect When Your Crabby Best Friend is Expecting book. I want to know about the umbilical cord.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> It’s nice of you to say I’m your best friend.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You are my best friend, dummy.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Really? You’re my best friend. But I always assumed that somebody else was your best friend, and I was totally okay with that. You don’t have to say that I’m your best friend just to make me feel good.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You’re so lame.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That’s why I figured somebody else was your best friend.

CHAPTER 49

THAT NIGHT, WHEN Lincoln was changing the toner in a printer near the copy desk, he heard one of the editors complaining about some numbers that might be wrong in a story. “If journalism majors were required to take math, I might know for sure,” the guy said, throwing a calculator off his desk in frustration.

Lincoln picked it up and offered to help check the math. The copy editor, Chuck, was so grateful that he invited Lincoln to go out with a bunch of the copy desk people after work. They went to a bar across the river. Bars in Iowa stayed open until 2:00 a.m.

Look at me, Lincoln thought, I’m out. With people. New people.

He even made plans to play golf with a few of the guys the next day. Chuck told Lincoln that copy editors do everything together because “the shitty hours keep you from meeting regular people.” And also, another editor said, from figuring out that your wife is sleeping with some guy she met at church.

The copy editors drank cheap beer and seemed kind of bitter. About everything. But Lincoln felt at home with them. They all read too much, and watched too much TV, and argued about movies like they were things that had actually happened.

The little blond one, Emilie, sat next to Lincoln at the bar, and tried to get him to talk to her about Star Wars. Which worked. Especially after she bought him a Heineken and said she didn’t notice any differences between the original movie and the special edition.