Page 106 of Maybe in Another Life

Silence again. And then a high-pitched squeal. A squeal so loud and jarring that I pull the phone away from my ear.

And then I hear my mother scream, “Sarah! Sarah, get over here!”

“What, Mom? Good Lord. Stop screaming.”

“Hannah is pregnant.”

I hear the phone being rustled from person to person. I hear them all fighting over the handset. I hear my mother win.

“Tell us everything. This is marvelous. Tell us about the father! I didn’t know you were seeing someone serious.”

Oh, no.

My mom thinks I got pregnant on purpose.

My mom thinks I’m ready to have a baby.

My mom thinks there’s a father.

My mom, my own mother, is so unaware of who I truly am and what my life is like that she thinks I planned this baby.

That is one of the funniest things I have ever heard. I start laughing, and I keep laughing until the tears in my eyes fall to my cheeks.

“No father in the picture,” I say between fits of laughter. “I’ll be a single mother. Entirely accidental.”

My mother quickly adjusts her tone. “Oh,” she says. “OK.”

My dad grabs the phone from her. “Wow!” he says. “This is shocking news. But great news! This is great, great news!”

“It is?” I mean, it is. It is. But they think it is?

“I’m going to be a grandpa!” he says. “I am going to be a phenomenal grandfather. I’m going to teach your kid all kinds of grandpa things.”

I smile. “Of course you will!” I say it, but I don’t mean it in the slightest. He’s not here. He’s never here.

Sarah grabs the phone from my dad and starts talking about how happy she is for me and how it doesn’t matter that I’m raising the baby on my own. And then she corrects herself. “I mean, it matters. Of course itmatters. But you’re going to be so great at it that it won’tmatter.”

“Thanks,” I say.

And then my mother steals the phone from Sarah, and I can hear the background din changing as she moves into another room. I hear the door shut behind her.

“Mom?” I say. “Are you OK?”

I hear her brace herself. “You should move home,” she says.

“What?” I ask her. I don’t even understand what she’s talking about.

“We can help you,” she says. “We can help you raise a baby.”

“You mean I should move to London?”

“Yeah, here with us. Home with us.”

“London is not my home,” I tell her, but this doesn’t faze her in the slightest.

“Well, maybe it should be,” she says. “You need a family to raise a baby. You don’t want to do it on your own. And your father and I would love to help you, love to have you here. You should be here with us.”

“I don’t know...” I say.

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