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she received her doctorate. “It’s exhausting,” she says. “Putting on the show.”
    She stops, her hands palmed at her mouth and her chin rising, angling her head down again and straight toward her friend.
    â€œBut then, you’re so earnest all the time,” says Laura, “so fervent . You must be even more exhausted than I am.”
    Maya nods, not wanting to answer. They were doing so well too.
    Laura pulls her legs off the desk and sidles to the edge of the chair; her hands reach across toward Maya.
    â€œHoney,” she says.
    Laura had gone with them. Stephen still didn’t know. Maya had never meant to tell Laura Ellie was pregnant, but she’d been so relieved the minute her friend knew.
    El was sixteen: they went to a small brightly colored office on Fifty-ninth Street and Tenth Avenue, where they sat quietly in the too-tightly-packed-in chairs with plastic armrests and waited for their turn. Maya tried to hold Ellie’s hand, but Ellie freed herself of her mom quickly, so Maya had just leaned in very close to her, brushing up against her. There had been an initial screening to which only Maya and Ellie had gone the week before. The day of, Ellie let Maya stay with her as she changed her clothes and was prepped, and then she sent Maya back to sit with Laura, both of them staring at the yellow diamonds spread across the dark blue carpet, waiting for her daughter to return.
    After, Laura took them out as if this were all cause for celebration. They shared a bottle of wine among the three of them. No one carded. It felt like the last thing to worry about then.
    â€œI’ve had four,” said Laura. She was forty-nine then and regularly slept with men ten and fifteen years younger. There had been the wedding in Minnesota when she was still an undergrad thathad lasted right up till she left for grad school at Yale. Laura had only ever said her husband had been too sweet to stay with past the age of twenty-two.
    Maya watched her daughter finger the rim of her wine glass.
    â€œI wouldn’t recommend that many,” Laura said.
    Ellie pursed her lips, then sipped from her wine glass. She wore jeans and one of Stephen’s sweaters. She looked twelve years old.
    Laura pressed her palms against the corners of the table and leaned in closer to Ellie. “Things stopped working after the last one.” She turned to face Maya. “Uterus like a pinball machine.” She shrugged.
    She was quoting someone, and it took Maya a moment to place it. She could tell, though, the way the words seemed wrapped up to keep Laura safe—they weren’t her own.
    â€œSophie,” Maya said after a moment. Desperate Characters.
    Laura smiled and turned back to Ellie. She tipped her head toward Maya. “That’s why your mom’s the best.”
    Maya wasn’t sure if this was right. Should they be talking this way, smiling? But what else was there to do?
    â€œYou wanted kids?” asked Ellie. Their food was set down before them and only Laura reached for her silverware. Maya fingered the napkin on her lap.
    â€œWho knows?” said Laura. “I’d probably completely fuck it up.”
    Maya laughed then, though she hadn’t meant to.
    Ellie shook her head. “You’d be really good.” She sat up a bit straighter in her chair and picked up a piece of asparagus with her thumb and forefinger, taking a small bite, then setting it back down.
    Laura smiled. She twirled pasta around her fork and swallowed seemingly without chewing. “Thanks, El. You’re lying, but you’re sweet.”
    Ellie tore at a piece of bread and rolled it with her fingers till it was small, smooth, and round, then dropped it. “No, I mean, you’re a little crazy. But I think that’s good. Less pressure on the kids.”
    Maya was trying to figure out what this meant about her as a mother. She was either crazy or not very good. Whatever she was,