Page 3 of Counting the Days

The vast majority of towns in America do not have the word “canyon” in their name.A deep, narrow gorge with cliffs on either sidedoes not sound like an inviting place to build a neighborhood, and yet the residents of Topanga Canyon had done just that. They perched their homes up narrow winding roads, dangling off precarious cliffsides, giving the town an air of creativityand insanity. Ensuring the only people who chose to move to Topanga were highly creative and highly insane.

Rhea approached Tiny’s black Range Rover at the end of her driveway and spied no fewer than ten boxes of party decorations in the trunk. She sighed and cursed her empty womb for allowing her to be so capable of carrying so many boxes and began lugging them up to her house two at a time.

“We’ll have to hide all the party stuff at your house, Ree Kee,” Ada told her. “It’s the only place Zoe will never find it.”

That was because Zoeneverwent to Rhea’s house, and she was not alone. Rhea’s entire friend group avoided visiting her cottage. Taking a razor-sharp turn off a busy highway, driving vertically up a winding street, taking an even sharper turn up her narrow driveway, parking and praying the emergency brake was strong enough to hold their car at an unnaturally erect angle for however long they were unlucky enough to stay, made her friendsreallythink before agreeing to stop by.

The first and only time Zoe visited, right around step thirty-six of Rhea’s fifty-two rotting steps, Zoe decided she was never going to go through that ordeal again. Rhea could see it in her eyes. Zoe seemed to double down on her internal pledge after she entered the one-bedroom cottage that was so small, putting her purse down made her feel like she was taking valuable space away from Rhea.She’s never coming back,Rhea guessed, and she was right.

Which was why Rhea’s house was the absolute best place to hide all the decorations for Zoe’s surprise baby shower. The idea was to store everything at Rhea’s house, where no one ever went, and then bring it to Tiny’s house, where everyone always went, right before Zoe walked in for a delightful shock. Most OB-GYNs frown on shocking women in their third trimester, but there were no OB-GYNs on the guest list.

“Sor-ry, thank you,” Ada said in her singsong voice each time Rhea put two boxes of decorations on the carpet. Rhea’s friends were now sprawled on her couch, eating peanut-butter-filled pretzels.

“We’re cashing these, hope that’s cool,” Tiny said as she waved the bag of pretzels.

Rhea did not know she owned peanut-butter-filled pretzels, but leave it to pregnant women to sniff out even the most obscure snacks.

“Sor-ry, thank you,” Ada said for the fifth time as Rhea put down the last two boxes.

Rhea stopped to catch her breath and drink an entire glass of water. Living in her cliffside cottage was the only gym membership she would ever need.

“Okay, let’s separate everything into two groups,” Ada said as she shoved herself to her feet. Ada approached the boxes and began to talk the women through her plan. All of the decorations had some kind of DIY element, which Ada thrived on. There were burlap banners that needed to be painted and pastel construction paper that needed to be cut into circles and glued into garlands.

Ada also thought it would beamazingto hand out party hats that were personalized with Zoe’s face. So, Ada had printed one hundred and fifty different photos of Zoe; each one needed to be cut out and glued to a cone-shaped hat.

Ada was incapable of doing anything half-assed, so when she came to Tiny and Rhea with the idea of throwing Zoe a surprise baby shower, they were already exhausted. Since this was Zoe’s second child, she had protested the idea of another baby shower, but Ada had other plans.

Ada’s parents were born in Nigeria, and they wereboth engineers. They had passed on to Ada their passion for solvingproblems and the work ethic of immigrants eager to create a new life. Tiny and Rhea knew they were about to be on the receiving end of that work ethic, but fighting it was futile; Ada was a force that could not be assuaged, so they offered themselves up for cutting, gluing, and painting.

When Ada asked Rhea if she had scissors, Rhea made a big show of looking for them everywhere before sneaking into the closet and pulling them out of the pile of junk she had so recently shoved in there. She told herself she was not embarrassed about her vision board, but she definitely was.

She knew she was the only person in her peer group who still made vision boards. She felt that manifesting was for your twenties, when you had none of the things you wanted, so you needed to speed up the mystical process of fate with scissors and glue. But by your thirties,especially your late thirties,Rhea thought, everyone had already successfully manifested most of the things on their vision boards—everyone except Rhea. She feared she had a glitch in her divine timing and was determined to fix it.

Rhea began cutting a photo of Zoe and her firstborn out of their beach background. Zoe’s daughter was so impossibly small that Rhea had to do some delicate scissor work around her fuzzy head. It was a good thing she had spent the morning cutting little children out of magazines; she was developing a skill.

Their companionable silence was broken when Ada innocently asked, “So, Ree Kee…how’s your love life?”

Tiny made an almost imperceptible face. The air grew thin and chilly. Rhea blushed.

“Do you still want us to ask about it?” Ada inquired gently.

“Yeah, totally—it’s okay, I’m just—my love life is currently nonexistent.”

This awkwardness had been going on for years, ever sinceRhea’s thirty-second birthday, when she got too inebriated on mezcal margaritas and cried to her best friends about her singleness. Ada had just gotten married the week before, and this felt like a personal attack; how could Ada get married when Rhea was turning thirty-two while single?

“Youneverask about my love life!” Rhea wailed. “You all treat me like being single is a disease and you’re afraid to catch it!”

Zoe, Ada, and Tiny locked eyes, and that glance betrayed all the evenings they had spent discussing Rhea, worried for Rhea, unsure of how to take care of Rhea. Rhea saw that glance and ran to the toilet to throw up.

Her friends surrounded her and held her hair behind her ears. They rubbed her back and assured her they’d only stopped asking about her love life because when they would ask if she was seeing anyone, she would sigh and say she didn’t want to talk about it.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’teverwant to talk about it!” Rhea said as mezcal fire-hosed out of her esophagus.

Rhea flushed the toilet and wiped her mouth, which resulted in a vomit-covered hand, and because she was so drunk, it made complete sense to her to dip that hand in the toilet water and swirl it around until it was clean. The next morning, Rhea took them all out for a very apologetic brunch and told them that was the alcohol talking and to forget everything she said; they were, unfortunately, not able to do that.

Rhea tried not to think about this traumatic memory while she cut out a photo of twenty-two-year-old Zoe in a graduation cap and gown.

“Are you still…on Bumble?” Tiny gingerly asked.