Page 1 of Living at 40

1

[Autumn]

“I’d just like to have a baby.”

Thud. The statement falls heavy after my sister-in-law brings up a previous conversation moments before the arrival of guests.

I want to have a baby. It is that simple and that complicated, and I’d been discussing such a thing with Anna since summer began.

My sister-in-law is the sister I never had. As the middle McCaryn child, she defies the stereotypes of siblings and birth order. She’s the one with it most put together out of her clan. The handsome, devoted husband. The stable, loving marriage. The three beautiful, growing children.

On the other hand, I recently had a breakup with my longtime boyfriend, thus leaving me shy of forty years old without what I want most—a baby.

“Doesn’t that typically involve having a husband?” my brother, Ben, asks as the three of us gather around the kitchen island inside his in-laws’ home—the house his wife and her siblings inherited upon their parents’ death. “Or at least a boyfriend?”

“Yes, well, there is all that.” I glare at Anna for bringing up this topic now of all times and wave dismissively from where I stand opposite my brother sitting on a stool. Of course, there are the mechanics of producing a child, and as I’ve been on a dry spell since my breakup with Rick, actually making a baby might be a teeny, tiny issue for me at the moment.

“Is this because of Rick?” Ben asks, concerned for me. Ben Kulis is a great brother, like the best brother ever, and Anna totally lucked out with him. Me? I’ve had a string of losers. It seems to be my forte. Don’t have a job? I’ll pay for everything. Don’t have ambition? No worries, I’ve been told I have enough for two people. Need a place to stay? Come live with me, eat my food, mess up my apartment, and then run off with someone else. All this passivity is left from my teen years, which happened twenty years ago, but whatever. Textbooks have been written about women like me and my issues in triplicate.

Fat girl. Lonely heart. Starved for attention. Ate cookies.

“I would prefer not to give Rick credit for this decision,” I state, glancing at Ben before fiddling with an apple in the large bowl of fruit on the island counter. My brother worries about me. He wants me settled down. He wants someone to love me and take care of me in an emotionally supportive kind of way, and I want those things as well. I just haven’t found anyone who gets me.

“That might be the first sound thing you’ve said,” Anna states with a smile. My sister-in-law is also the best. She’s the best of the best, like Ben, and she’ll be the first to tell you how perfect she is in a teasing sort of way. She’s not a snob. For a woman who was once incredibly shy and lacked confidence, she’s grown bolder as we age, with a self-assurance I wish I had half of.

“Maybe we should discuss this another time,” I suggest as my brother’s three best friends are due to arrive for a two-week stay at the house at any minute. It’s actually a cottage—Lakeside Cottage—but by most people’s standards, the six-bedroom home on a cliff overlooking Lake Michigan isn’t quite the quaint image that comes to mind when the word cottage is mentioned. On top of the sprawling home and glorious view, a coach house doubles as a three-car garage with a two-bedroom apartment above it. Anna’s father was extremely successful in the sausage industry. This was her mother’s dream home, a second home away from their modest family house just outside Chicago. Eventually, her parents sold the house where she grew up and moved here for their retirement. Unfortunately, they have both passed away.

“So, who all will be here again?” I ask Ben, hoping to redirect the focus from me to him. He’s the one who wanted to gather his friends and for good reason, although that’s another topic we aren’t allowed to discuss.

“Logan, Mason, and Zack, plus kids.”

“Minus wives,” Anna says, wiggling her brows at me. It isn’t that they don’t have them, but Logan is a divorcee. Mason is the perpetual bachelor, and Zack has a wife equivalent to the Grinch. I swear her heart is three sizes too small.

“Jeanine won’t be with Zack?” I ask, looking over at Anna as she hangs a dishtowel on the towel rod.

“She gave some lame excuse about travel overseas and sent Zack with Oliver and Trevor.” Zack’s twin sons are a handful.

As if summoning one of Ben’s friends, the doorbell rings, and Ben claps his hands once. “Here we go.” He sounds like a kid on Christmas morning. His body swings around on the stool, and he pops off it to stalk toward the hall leading to the front door like Santa himself will be standing on the other side.

“He’s so excited.” Sadness fills Anna’s voice, and we both know why.

“It’s going to be great,” I assure her. Wanting to reach out for her arm with comfort, I stop myself, afraid I might cry if I touch her. Instead, I blink rapidly, willing away tears I’m not allowed to shed.

“So, we could always talk to one of the guys,” Anna says, straightening the already artfully arranged fruit in the giant bowl. “Maybe Mason could sleep with you.”

My head shoots up, and Anna’s ulterior motive for bringing up this conversation today becomes more clear. “Gee, thanks. Let’s beg the eternal manwhore to impregnate me.” Mason Becker already had an oops a few years ago. I’d like to say he’s a good dad, but I doubt it. I’d also like to hope I’m not that desperate. While nothing is physically wrong with Mason—he’s cover model-worthy to look at—I just don’t trust him. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but there’s just something. Maybe it’s the fact he tried to make me kiss a manhole cover when we were kids after he cheated at ghosts in the graveyard. As Ben and his friends are four years older than me, I was the tagalong little sister, annoying all of them, and Mason picked on me the most.

“I’m not saying you have to marry him. I’m just saying you could pull a Big Chill. Pick three guys, sleep with each, and then voila, baby.”

The Big Chill was a popular movie in the early eighties, released a few years after my sister-in-law was born, but she’s obsessed with all things from that decade even though she was an infant back then.

“I am not picking three random men to sleep with in hopes they give me a baby,” I mutter. However, it wasn’t an entirely awful idea. My baby plans hadn’t been well-thought-out yet. It was just a thought.

I’d like to have a baby.

When Mason walks into the kitchen with his hair artfully styled in an I-just-ran-my-fingers-through-these-acorn-colored-locks way, the Big Chill idea has some merit. Mason also has bright blue eyes, which stand out against his tanned skin. If my child inherited his genes, that would be one beautiful baby, but Mason isn’t the friend of Ben’s who had my interest in the past.

“Speck,” Mason calls out, reminding me of my childhood nickname from him. A speck of dust. Ben would argue it was short for spectacles because I wore thick glasses, but my brother was only being nice. It could have been worse, I suppose. Mason could have called me testicles.