Five Things I Can't Live Without (17 page)

I nodded. I most definitely could.

“I go up to the cashier, and I say, ‘Sorry. I must have left my muffin.’ He says he threw it out. He pulls it out of the trash underneath the register, and it’s still in its bag so I think, ‘Fine, I’ll work with that.’ But he won’t give it to me. He says I need to pay for it. I’m suddenly livid. I say, ‘I already paid for it!’ And he’s like, ‘No, I didn’t ring it up. It was left in the basket, so I thought you didn’t want it.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, no. I wanted it. I still want it.’ I reach for the muffin and this kid, this twenty-year-old kid, actually pulls his hand away. He says, ‘You need to pay for it.’ I say, ‘I don’t have any money. My purse is in the car. My
son
is in the car. I just ran in for the muffin.’ He says, ‘Well, you still need to pay for it.’ And here’s the craziest part—well, the craziest part up until this point. I say, ‘I’m starving!’ How melodramatic is that? I’m still carrying a spare tire from the baby, and the thing is, I actually believed it!”

At that, we both started laughing.

“So now I’m actually begging this kid to give me a muffin. I’m a grown woman, I’ve had a career, I’ve got a baby—who I’ve locked in a car—and I’m begging for a muffin. But I’m really thinking, ‘There’s no fucking way I’m leaving here without this muffin.’ It’s like, this is my line in the sand. I’ve given up everything to have this baby and I’m going to have my fucking muffin!”

We were laughing again, but I also felt a little sad. Because for practically the first time since I’d known her, I thought I heard regret.

“And the guy doesn’t budge. I’m actually losing this battle. Later, I tell Chris and he says, ‘Well, the kid didn’t owe you a muffin.’ And I was like, ‘He was pulling my muffin
from the trash
. He made the error and now he wanted me to pay for it.’ You know Chris. He’s basically like, ‘The kid had to do his job.’ I could have killed Chris for that.”

“Chris doesn’t understand our logic,” I said. “He’s a letter-of-the-law man. But you and me, we want things to be right. We want them to be fair. And it seemed only fair that if you had to run back in, the kid gives you your muffin.”

“Exactly.” Palance had begun to cry again, and Sonya once again lifted him to her chest. “So I lose, and I go back to the car. Oh, but before I do that, my parting shot to the kid is, ‘You’re mean.’ And I meant it so deeply. I thought he was doing the meanest thing imaginable, and I didn’t care that I was playing the mom card and trying to shame him for not giving a starving mother a muffin. So
then
I go out to the car and I drive a few blocks, and I think, ‘Fuck that little punk.’ I pull a U-turn and go back. I leave Palance in the car again in front of the store, and I storm back in. I go right up to the guy, who is in the process of ringing up this woman’s groceries, and I throw my grocery bags on the counter and say that I want to return them. I announce that I will never be shopping there again, and that he can have my Preferred Customer card, too. The kid’s a little flustered at this point, and he says he needs to finish with this woman, and I stand there waiting and glowering. And the funny thing is that it’s all women in this line, and apparently they’d been talking about me, and one of them pats my hand and says, ‘We were going to buy you the muffin, dear.’”

“Like they were moms who’d had those days, too?”

She nodded. “It was kind of a nice solidarity, or at least, nice to know they thought I was out of my mind for a reason. So I stood there, and the kid tries to do the return, and he can’t get it to go through, and he calls the manager, who never comes. The minutes are ticking and I’m thinking of Palance outside, and my righteous indignation or my hormones or whatever are wearing off, and I’m just starting to feel really, really ashamed. I’m starting to see myself clearly, so I ask the kid for his name and for the manager’s phone number and I say that I’m going to file a complaint and I storm out.”

“Did you do it?” I asked.

“No. They’d probably give the little Nazi a raise.”

“When you said you saw yourself clearly, what did you see?”

Sonya got quiet. She patted Palance’s back, as if to reassure him in advance. “That I’m seething a lot of the time. They wouldn’t let me come back to my job part-time, and I don’t blame them really. I was hoping they’d value me so much that they’d make an exception, but they obviously didn’t. With jobs like mine, they don’t want part-time people. I didn’t want to be with Palance full-time, and I didn’t want to leave him full-time. My choices stank. But I chose Palance, and of course that’s the right one. I didn’t want him to be in day care all day. I didn’t want to miss big swaths of his life. But sometimes I feel like I’m just losing it. I’m losing me. I mean, who was that muffin-starved freak?”

I nodded sympathetically. “But he’ll get bigger, and he’ll go to school. You can go back then.”

“I know. I tell myself that all the time. It helps me get through the day. And that frightens me. I stayed home with him because I wanted to be with him. But all that keeps me going is knowing that someday I won’t have to.” Sonya wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry. This isn’t much fun for you.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. I’m glad you trusted me with all that.”

“But didn’t you know? It was just a funny story.” She let out a hiccupy laugh. “People say that motherhood’s hard, but they don’t say in what ways. They don’t say how many ways.”

I hesitated for a second before asking, “But are you glad you did it?”

“Oh, my God, yes. That’s what’s so confusing. It really is like people say. It really is the greatest, hardest thing you’ll ever do.”

“I think that’s what they say about the army.”

“You know what never occurred to me before? That every choice you make negates other possibilities. If you have this, you can’t have that. Maybe I’ve been blessed not to have realized that before, but it’s so glaringly apparent to me every day now.”

I knew what she meant. I felt it every day, too. I liked my profile job, but it didn’t seem like forever. And if I kept choosing to do this thing that wouldn’t last forever, wouldn’t I be taking myself further from my true calling, whatever that was? “Do you think your calling was to be a mother?” I asked.

Sonya made a face. “Not at all.”

“Was your calling to be a corporate vice president?”

She thought about that longer. “Not exactly.”

“But the corporate job would be more of a calling than being a mother?”

“I guess for me, it’s just a weird question. Callings are for creative people like you. You’re waiting for the muse to strike. I just decided what would fit me, and what would let me live the way I wanted to live, and it turned out pretty well for a while. I’m not searching for inspiration.”

Maybe that was my problem. I constantly expected to be moved or engaged in some way. It was what fed the meta-life. And the crazy thing was, even now, even after hearing the muffin story, I envied Sonya more than I ever had. There were hard choices, but she knew what she absolutely couldn’t live without.

“Do you want to take a walk?” Sonya asked. “It’s a gorgeous day out. I could put Pal in his stroller. That usually soothes him.”

“Aha! So there is something besides the boob.”

“I guess there is.”

Chapter 11

I
n theory, I still liked my lifestyle. I definitely still told people how much I liked it. But in practice, it was wearing seriously thin. I was tired of all my mini-trips to the grocery store; they no longer symbolized European sophistication and instead seemed like the mark of a shallow life. (American) people who are doing things in the world do not go to the market three times a week. And acting like a tourist in San Francisco had gotten old. I’d sat on the pier and contemplated the ocean no fewer than seven times. I’d ridden cable cars and carousels. I’d gone to museums venerating the history, culture, and art of five separate peoples. I’d never celebrated diversity so much in all my life, and it dawned on me that it was because I didn’t have a life of my own. What I had was the kind of solo vacation that starts out exhilarating and just gets lonely and long.

Reality had set in. Unless I quadrupled my rates or worked four times as much, writing profiles would always provide me with only subsistence living. For it to be a viable career, I’d have to become a true entrepreneur, with an actual business plan, a marketing strategy, and the willingness to work myself into the ground. I’d never thought of myself as someone who’d ever run a business, unless it was through some elaborate sitcom setup, like I’m trying to bake a cake and I mess up the recipe and end up with the strongest adhesive known to man. I’d only ever imagined success coming through a sequence of lucky bumbles. Besides, writing profiles was a good enough way to pass the time and make a buck, but it didn’t approach the level of a calling. I knew it was ridiculous to be almost thirty and still waiting for the muse to strike, but that’s where I was.

I started romanticizing my days at the animal rescue. I missed being part of something with a clear purpose. I missed knowing what my paycheck would be every week, meager as it was. I actually missed having a structure imposed by someone other than me. I missed being part of a team of people carving out their small piece of goodness in the world. I missed the clarity, predictability, and simplicity. In short, I missed nearly everything that I had fled from in the first place.

So that’s why I was having lunch with Estella. She wasn’t the person I would have chosen, but she was the first person from the shelter to extend an invitation. Given the transparency of her e-mail, it made sense that it was Estella. I’d always suspecte

d her of being an opportunist, and her e-mail didn’t remotely camouflage the fact that what she really wanted was free advice for her dating profile. I was game because I remembered how she had insulted the people who needed my help, and I wanted to rub her nose in it at least a little. I also wanted to feel superior to one of the most breathtaking people I’d ever seen. And it was a reason to stop by the shelter, which I’d been meaning to do.

My nostalgia was tempered the moment I opened the door. There was my old desk, right at the head of a long corridor lined by cages. I was struck by the smell and the sounds of a hundred animals penned up, and I hadn’t even re-experienced the sights yet. It was strange to think how inured to it I’d become. Now that I could take it all in fresh, I realized that I’d have to compare my current life unfavorably to something else.

Denise jumped up from my old desk to hug me. We exchanged excited greetings, then I took a good look at her. She had cut her hair into a sleek bob and finally looked twenty-three instead of seventeen. “You look fantastic,” I told her.

She fluffed her hair. “I’ve gone urban.”

“Eventually all you Midwestern girls fall.” I glanced down the corridor. “Since when do you work the front desk?”

“I’m just covering it while Regina’s at lunch. She’s cool, but she’s not you.” It was apparent that Denise had really missed me, which was gratifying.

“Probably not. I bet she actually likes the animals.”

Denise laughed. “Deep down, you liked them. I know you did.”

“I didn’t hate them,” I conceded. “I’d forgotten what they smelled like, though. It’s amazing what you can get used to.”

She nodded. “I barely notice it.” She unleashed a huge smile. “I’m so glad to see you!”

“It’s really good to see you, too.”

“I was thinking of you the other day, about how cool it would be if someday you turned your animal bios into a book. Like, a coffee-table book or something. You were so good at those.”

“Thanks.”

“Like,
really
good. I can really see the difference now. When you used to write them, people came in and they acted like the animals were rock stars. Like, ‘Omigod, there’s Rocco!’ And sometimes they’d quote your bios. You had, like, a hundred different ways to say a dog was good with kids.”

I was actually blushing. Man, I needed help.

Denise affected a more serious expression. “I don’t think I ever told you how much I respected the way you left. I mean, I hated to see you go, but you did what you had to do. Most people don’t go with their instincts like that. Now, dogs—they go with their instincts. Which is why I love them.”