41.

The weekend rolled around and Dad pushed me to go out. “You deserve a break,” he said. “I’ll watch the kid.” So I called Donna to hang out. Donna went to Barnard. She was more of a quasi-friend—she was really closer to Vanessa—but I called her because I couldn’t think of anyone else who was still in the city other than Will.

I got Ian ready for bed, praying he wouldn’t poo since I didn’t think Dad could handle it. I pumped milk with the machine Mom had given me for the first time, the repetitive sucking noises sending me into a trance. “Ya homesick, ya homesick,” it chanted over and over. Ian was fed and cleaned up and when I left, he and Dad were lying on the floor under Ian’s mobile, jingling the terry-cloth hearts.

“We won’t wait up for you,” Dad said.

Donna lived in a ground-floor apartment on 104th and Amsterdam. A girl wearing magenta tights and motorcycle boots that fit her calves like gloves answered the door. Her hair was impossibly thick and messy—some of it had to be extensions—and she had on a plaid miniskirt with some sort of rainbow sweatshirt material squeezed around her midriff, clashing flawlessly with the skirt.

Before she could say anything, a guy yelled to her from inside.

“Cloudia!” he said, then something about a “bacio.”

Cloudia, whom I guessed was Claudia to mere Americans, couldn’t be bothered with introductions. I thought, This girl knows how to dress in a way I never will. I took comfort in the knowledge that I could recognize, understand and accept that fact as I watched her backside swing toward an emaciated guy in leather pants.

Donna was on the phone in the kitchen. It was weird to see her living here, actually inhabiting Manhattan. When we were in high school, she was a tourist, with her black leggings–black sneakers combo and her iPod wires always hanging off her, helping her bide her endless hours on the R train from Queens. But ah, how things had changed.

“Oh, please,” she repeated into the phone. “Oh, please.” Her eyes crinkled with a self-confidence I’d always found off-putting. I imagined it came from growing up with the kind of family who were very clear and straightforward about how they loved her. A lot of kids from Forest Hills had that.

Eventually she hung up.

“How are you?” She reached out from halfway across the room for a hug.

“I’m good, really good,” I said, my enthusiasm nowhere near hers.

“Come,” she said, grabbing a tray with a bottle of wine and some glasses. “Ginny’s in my room.” Ginny was Donna’s best friend from high school.

“Ginny’s here?”

“She just transferred to Barnard in the beginning of January. You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

“Claudia, come have some wine,” Donna called to the living room, where Claudia was playfully straddling Emaciato.

“Your roommate?” I whispered, though it was obvious. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Ginny was sitting on the radiator in Donna’s room, hunched over in an attempt to blow smoke out the window.

“Hey, Thea, how’s mothahood?”

“Hey, Ginny,” I said. Ginny’s big, stiff, blue-black Queens shag remained intact in spite of the wind blowing in. I looked at her and felt the instant affection I’d always felt toward her. Why weren’t we better friends? If we’d spotted each other on the street now, we would have just waved and stayed talking on our cell phones.

“Donna, I am not living in this dump, I will tell you right now,” Ginny said, laughing her husky laugh. “You’ve got termites or something, I’m telling you. You see this dust?” She pointed a magenta pinky nail toward the windowsill.

“I’m trying to get Ginny to move in with me,” Donna explained. Claudia slinked in, poured two glasses of wine and left without a word.

“My mothah won’t have it,” Ginny said. “Not when she sees this.” It was an interesting comment, given that Ginny’s mother worked in the garment industry and barely noticed Ginny was alive—at least, that was what Donna used to say. Donna’s family was Ginny’s surrogate family. That was the lore.

We went to a Columbia fraternity party. Part of me wondered if I’d see Will there, but I knew there was very little chance of him showing up at a party like this. It wasn’t exclusive enough for him. They played music from the eighties and there were guys in big plaid shirts with the sleeves cut off and greased-back hair, jumping and fist-popping like I remember people doing at Mom’s club. It reminded me of Mom sticking shoulder pads into her black silk blazer and going to work.

I ended up getting rip-roaring drunk, sitting bored at a cafeteria table where Donna and Ginny glommed onto some guys from Long Island. Later on I found this guy Florian and made out with him in the stairwell while people trudged by us, their rainy shoes stepping on our coats.

For a while it was nice to kiss someone new, to erase Will from my lips. Florian had a rich, spicy smell that I attributed to his being Greek, and he wanted me to come back to his room, pulling my face toward his in a wonderful need-you, need-sex way. But I played coy. The truth was, I thought of Ian and that little spot under his chin I loved to kiss, his God-spot, and what if Florian was an ax murderer and killed me while we were doing it, leaving Ian motherless. Donna and the cheesy guys ended up going to a club in the West Twenties. I bullied the cab driver into letting five of us ride, thinking I might go too, but I ended up bagging and was home by one, and even that felt too late.