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Show All the Variables & Other Love StorieslOl "Window," Angie muttered. It was the same old lecture-Angie was unfit to be a mother, she wasn't good at anything, if she wanted Patrick to marry her, she'd better make some changes-she could recite it in her sleep. Her mother waited for a proper response but Angie coolly ignored her, and her mother, irate, slung Cleo into Angie's lap and left without closing the front door behind her. Angie knew from the beginning she wasn't ready for motherhood, but only now did she understand there was no way she could have been prepared. It was like nothing else she had experienced; like having a third leg or arm-it was literally a second stomach. For weeks all Cleo did was eat and purge, and Angie had been expected to know the new stomach was empty without feeling its hunger. She had expected a new instinct to kick in when it was time, and she would know what to do. She'd thought a change would come over her, like when her breasts grew or her hips widened or her period came, she would just be newly inconvenienced by the nesting instinct, the god-given magic of maternity. But that never happened. Angie's parents had been remarried almost thirty years. The first time, they were barely married a year before divorcing. Two years later, after her father had finished his studies and taken a good job as a pharmacist, they'd remarried. The story was infamous at family reunions, and both of them relished the tale. "When you find the one you truly love, let him go," her mother would lilt, "If he comes back, it was meant to be!" Then her father would chime in, "It got to the point I was through trying to save our divorce, and sued for remarriage!" The story of her parents' divorce and remarriage had been |
