Free The Opening Sky by Joan Thomas

sits – but he’s got his mother’s composure, if not her expansive warmth. And Sylvie … Aiden has never felt prouder of his daughter. Tonight Sylvie isn’t crying. And in spite of her distress, she’s not tailoring what she says to what they want to hear. She’s poised, with her straight, perfect white teeth and herconfident voice. She has an old-fashioned wave-of-the-future look about her, like the girls in Communist Youth League murals.
    George heaps a cracker with tapenade and eats it with gusto. “What would that be?” he asks. “The black stuff.” No one answers. Caviar? he mouths to Patti. She shakes her head furtively.
    Maggie sits with her face turned to the fire, its light picking up the rosy tones of her skin. She looks expectant, as though the poignant resolution of this dilemma is just around the corner. But it’s obvious to Aiden that the meeting is foundering. Something concrete has to be put in place, promises made, a plan hammered out. No doubt if they were the kind of people things like this happen to, they’d know what that was.
    It’s the tiny stepmother, with her thin blond ponytail, who rises to the occasion, murmuring a hope that Noah and Sylvie will go for a June wedding, by which time Sylvie will be able to fit into a lovely gown. Their disdain rises and washes over her. She feels it, tries to get a purchase on the rug with her dangling feet, then scrambles out of her chair, setting her wineglass on the coffee table, and turns fiercely on Noah. “I’m not exactly a stranger to this situation, you know. I was seventeen when I got pregnant with my son Troy. My boyfriend was just seventeen too, and he did the right thing by me. He dropped out of school and got a job pumping gas. We lived in a basement apartment on Arlington and it was bloody hard. We didn’t last forever, but that boy made sure my baby had a father. That boy did the right thing by me.”
    She’s about four foot ten, one of Santa’s ancient elves, and she’s standing right over Noah, scolding him. He pulls himself to his feet. Then he’s looming over her, and looking just as uncomfortable with that. “You knew what the right thing was,” he says when she pauses for breath. It’s not aggressive, the way he says it; it’s just a thoughtful observation.
    “We did,” she protests, thrusting her wrinkled little face up at him. “Of course we did. And so do you.”
    Maggie gets up and steps around the coffee table. “Listen, Patti, I know you mean well, but Noah is not seventeen and he will not be pumping gas – not now, not ever.” She turns to Liz and Aiden and says confidingly, “I should let you know the dilemma we’re facing with all this happening right now. Noah has been hoping to become part of a research team on Lake Malawi this summer. It’s a fabulous opportunity. One of his profs, Doctor Anish Chandak, is the lead, and Noah has every reason to believe he’ll be accepted into the project. This is not an experience we want to see him miss. He is a strong candidate for a doctoral fellowship to Stanford or UCB , and the Lake Malawi project would be a huge asset.”
    “He is
going
,” Sylvie says. “He’s still going to Malawi. There’s no reason for him to change his plans. I’m not changing mine. I’m staying in school. I won’t know the exact due date until the ultrasound, but the doctor thinks the end of April, when exams are over, which is perfect. I still want to go to field school in the summer. It’s just an hour or so out of the city.”
    “Field school?” Liz says. She gets to her feet too, for a better sightline into Sylvie’s mind. What she sees there is the baby swinging in a shawl from the low branch of a tree while Sylvie scrabbles in the dirt below.
    Sylvie looks back at her mother defiantly. “There’s a daycare at the university. A good one.”
    “But you’re going to move home.”
    “No.”
    “Oh god, darling, you have no idea.”
    Maggie turns the full melting