Page 62 of 28 Summers
“What?” Jake says. He laughs. “What are you talking about? I know you’re upset, Ursula. I’m upset too. The entire country is upset. But we can’t just uproot our lives and move back to the Bend because you think it’s safer.”
“Sure we can,” Ursula says. “My mother is there, and your parents are there. We have family there.”
“Right, I know. But your career is here, Ursula. What on earth do you think you’re going to do in South Bend?”
Ursula gently kisses Bess’s forehead, then smiles down at her. “I’m going to run for office.”
Summer #10: 2002
What are we talking about in 2002? The Queen Mother; No Child Left Behind; Daniel Pearl; Homeland Security; the Beltway sniper attacks; Elizabeth Smart; farm-to-table; Chandra Levy; Jed Bartlet, Leo McGarry, Toby Ziegler, Sam Seaborn, Josh Lyman; “My friend the Communist holds meetings in his RV”;The Nanny Diaries;Andrea Yates;American Idol; 8 Mile;Match.com.
On Saturday, April 6, Lincoln Cooper Dooley celebrates his first birthday and Mallory throws a party at the cottage.
Who comes?
Well, Kitty and Senior fly up from Baltimore; they’re staying at the Pineapple Inn because the White Elephant and Wauwinet have yet to open for the season. Cooper, now divorced from Valentina, says he can’t make it, and Mallory doesn’t push for a reason though she suspects it’s because he’s in a new relationship. In lieu of his presence, he sends presents, including a four-foot-high stuffed giraffe from FAO Schwarz that is such overkill, Mallory rolls her eyes, even though the giraffe is cute and does sort of resemble Cooper.
Fray drives down from Vermont with his girlfriend, Anna, pronounced “Ah-nah.” She’s the bassist in an all-female post-grunge band called Drank.
Also coming for Link’s birthday are Sloane Dooley and Steve Gladstone. They’re staying at a different inn from Kitty and Senior because Kitty has been staunchly aligned with Geri Gladstone since the Gladstones split. Mallory doesn’t particularly relish the idea of Sloane and Steve in her cottage, even for a matter of hours, but Sloane is Link’s grandmother, so what can Mallory do?
The second Mallory became a mother, she felt like she had finally entered a room where she belonged. Link was delivered by cesarean section at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, and the nurse whisked him off to get cleaned up while the surgeon stitched Mallory up. The operating-room nurse said, “They’ll bring your boy back in a few minutes.”
“He’s mine,” Mallory said. “He’s mine for the rest of my life.”
This was the happy ending to a situation that started out as…complicated,to say the very least. Mallory and Fray were not in love, and any lust they felt for each other evaporated the instant they walked off the dance floor at Cooper’s second wedding reception.
Six weeks later when Mallory called Fray and told him she was pregnant and that the baby was his, he asked if she was sure. She said yes, she had taken three pregnancy tests, all of them positive, and she hadn’t been with anyone else since the previous September.Okay, he said,so what do you want to do?She said, I want to have the baby and you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want to be, no pressure, I don’t expect you to marry me or move to Nantucket or even kiss me again, but if you could throw me some money for expenses, I would be grateful.
And guess what—Fray was as amazing as could be. Yes, he was excited too. They were going to have a baby! It seemed funny and surreal, as though they’d taken a biology class together and during lab, this was what they’d produced: a baby. Fray had always wanted to be a father, especially since he had never had one. He would be present but not omnipresent. He would travel to the island the first year or two and then, once the baby was weaned, Fray would bring him or her to Vermont for stays. They would figure it out; they wouldn’t argue or quarrel. This was a miracle they would both cherish.
Sharing the news was thorny. Mallory and Fray decided on the unvarnished truth: They’d hooked up at Cooper’s wedding and Mallory had gotten pregnant. They were no longer involved but they were going to co-parent.
Mallory decided the best way to tell her parents was in a letter. She explained what happened, and at the end, she wrote:Call me when you’re ready to discuss.This was a genius move on her part because Kitty was able to process her emotions offstage and then call Mallory once she’d sorted her thoughts. She said that although this was “quite unexpected,” both she and Senior had always loved Frazier like their own child and they were, of course, “simply thrilled” to become grandparents.
Next up for Mallory was Cooper. She called him in the evening after work. She said, “Listen, I have some crazy news. I hooked up with Fray during your wedding reception and now I’m pregnant.”
Cooper had laughed. Of course he’d laughed.
“I’m serious,” Mallory said.
She should have sent a letter to Coop as well because that phone conversation lasted forty-five minutes, with Cooper starting out incredulous, then moving on to angry (Cooper had apparently made Fray promise, way back in high school, that he would never “go after” Mallory), before ending up at loving acceptance. It was going to be great, he said, the two people he loved most in the world were having a baby together.
Two people he loved most? Mallory had thought at the time. What about Valentina?
The final hurdle was Leland. How could Mallory tell Leland that she was pregnant with Fray’s baby and expect the friendship to survive? There was no way. Leland was still with Fiella Roget, they were in love, a couple—but no matter, Leland would see this as a betrayal. Fray washers.
Mallory would have gone the letter route but she was afraid Fray would tell Sloane, then Sloane would tell Steve, and then Steve would tell Leland. Mallory couldn’t let the news reach her that way.
She called the apartment in New York and left a message for Leland to call her back, she had urgent news. The phone in the cottage rang at quarter past two in the morning, waking Mallory up. She knew who it was and she was glad for the late hour, the velvety dark, and even Leland’s inebriation because it made the whole thing slightly easier.
Sit down.
Who’s dead?
No one. I’m pregnant.
What?
