Read Mommy Tracked Online

Authors: Whitney Gaskell

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Family Life, #Humorous, #General

Mommy Tracked (6 page)

BOOK: Mommy Tracked
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“Come on, give it to me,” Patrick said, stretching his arms up over his head as he yawned again. He was a tall man, nearly six foot five, and broadly built. It was another trait that had attracted Juliet to him when they’d first met at a dinner party thrown by mutual friends. She’d been tired of always wearing flats for her date’s benefit and loved being with a man who was taller than she, even when she wore her highest heels. Standing next to Patrick had made her feel petite and dainty for the first time in her life. She’d also loved that he was a firefighter. It had seemed like such a manly-man sort of job, so much sexier than the lawyers and tech executives she was used to dating.

Still, when she’d gotten pregnant a few months after they married—a surprise souvenir from their weekend scuba-diving jaunt down to the Keys—it had only made sense for Patrick to be the one to stay at home with the girls. Juliet earned nearly three times what he made, and they would never have been able to pay their mortgage on his salary alone.

Juliet had to talk Patrick into leaving his job. He hadn’t wanted to at first.

“I don’t want to be a kept man,” he’d said every time she brought up the subject.

“Is that what you think of stay-at-home moms? That they’re ‘kept women’?” Juliet would counter.

“No, of course not. It’s just…different,” Patrick had said.

And Juliet, ever the litigator, would pounce. “It’s only different if you’re approaching it with a dated, misogynistic point of view,” she argued.

“It just doesn’t feel right having you bear all of the financial responsibility,” Patrick would respond somewhat feebly.

Juliet knew it was only a matter of time before she’d wear him down. There were so many reasons it made sense for him to stay home with the twins. Day care was expensive for one child; for twins it would end up being nearly two grand a month. A nanny would cost even more. Patrick would have to pick up extra shifts at work to cover the additional costs, and then he’d hardly ever see the girls. And Juliet was already stuck working long hours until she made partner at her law firm.

Finally Patrick had agreed. Reluctantly. At first Juliet was thrilled with the arrangement, happy that she could leave the twins every day knowing they were being cared for by the one person in the world who loved them as much as she did. If that meant she’d miss out on all of the firsts—first smiles, first words, first steps—well, that couldn’t be helped. And if one of the twins woke in the middle of the night, shaken to tears by the aftereffects of a nightmare, and called for Daddy, not her, Juliet tried not to take it too personally. The same applied when she got home in time to supervise the bath-and-bedtime routine, only to have one of the twins bossily inform her that Daddy poured lots more bubble bath into the tub and that the pajama tops covered with little red hearts could not, under pain of torture, be worn with the purple striped bottoms.

It’s a small price to pay, knowing that the twins are safe and happy
, Juliet had thought.

As Patrick took the crumpled suit from her and laid it back out on the bed, she hesitated for a minute, wanting to apologize for her irritable outburst, to explain that the stress of the dead-baby case had been getting to her, to fold her arms around Patrick and rest her head against the flat plane of his chest, absorbing his calmness.

But Patrick was in the closet for a long time, noisily trying to extract the ironing board from where it was stored behind the luggage, for some inexplicable reason. Juliet noticed the clock.
Shit
. Now she was really, really late. She hurried back to the bathroom to finish getting ready, instantly forgetting her intentions to apologize.

“I have to cancel our lunch,” Alex Frost announced.

Juliet looked up from the deposition she was reading, startled at the interruption. She hadn’t heard Alex approach, hadn’t realized he was standing in the doorway to her office until he’d spoken. Excitement fluttered in her stomach at the sight of him.

Alex was in his late forties but looked young for his age. He was tall and muscular, with blond hair that he wore back off his face, vivid blue eyes, and a sharp jaw that rounded at the chin. He was, as usual, dressed impeccably in one of his custom-made suits, this one a gray sharkskin. Alex wasn’t a traditionally handsome man—his eyes were too squinty and his nose too snub—but he had a sleekness about him and the sort of forceful alpha-male personality that Juliet had always found irresistible.

Juliet smiled coolly at him, pushing back the swell of intermingled excitement at seeing him and disappointment that their lunch was off.
Shit
. “Okay. Would you like to go over the dead-baby case later this afternoon?”

“I can’t. I just got called into court for an emergency hearing on the Dunder case, and then I’m going to be in client meetings all afternoon,” Alex said. He grinned sexily. “Life of the busy lawyer.”

“Tell me about it,” Juliet said, gesturing toward the stack of depositions on her desk.

“Let’s get together tomorrow. I have a client meeting at four that will probably run late, though, so it’ll have to be after that.”

The twins had a tap-dance class tomorrow afternoon, and Juliet was planning to slip out of work early to watch, since she hadn’t yet made it to one. But that wasn’t exactly something she could admit to her boss. Not if she wanted to make partner. Most women lawyers who had children were shunted onto the mommy track, with no hope of making partner. It was the price they paid for taking advantage of maternity leaves, flextime, and weekends off. Juliet wasn’t about to let that happen to her, even if it meant working twice as hard as every man in the office.

“Fine. I’ll put it on my calendar,” Juliet said.

After Alex left, Juliet returned to her deposition, quickly scanning each page before flipping to the next, and marking down notes of what she thought was important. She’d gotten through one deposition and started on another when her phone rang.

Juliet picked up the phone. “Juliet Cole,” she said briskly.

“Hi, Juliet? This is Chloe Truman? We met at the Mothers Coming Together meeting?” The woman’s voice was tentative, so that everything she said sounded like a question.

Juliet frowned and tried to place the name.

“You don’t remember me,” Chloe said, reading Juliet’s hesitation accurately.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” Juliet said.

“I’m the pregnant one. Anna Swann introduced us,” Chloe reminded her.

“Oh, that’s right.”

“I called because I’m writing an article for
Mothering
magazine on mothers who are balancing work and family, and you said you might be interested in being interviewed for the article,” Chloe continued.

“I did?”

“Yes. I understand if you don’t have time, but it would be great if I could talk to you. I haven’t interviewed any moms who work full-time in a traditionally male-dominated profession yet, so I think your insights would really round out my article. We can do the interview whenever you’re free. I could come to you? Or we can do it over the phone, if you’d prefer?”

Juliet had no idea why she responded as she did. She should work right through lunch, on the off chance that she might finish the depos and get home in time to see Emma and Izzy before they went to bed. But the words popped out on their own, completely out of her control.

“How about lunch today?” Juliet said, and immediately wanted to kick herself. Lunch! She didn’t have time for lunch, she thought, her eyes flicking back to the mountain of work piled up on her desk. “Although, maybe—”

But before she could yank the invitation back, Chloe pounced on it. “Lunch would be great! Where should I meet you?”

         

At twelve-thirty, Juliet walked into the Dolphin Street Café, a little sandwich shop in downtown Orange Cove. It was a pleasant restaurant that did a brisk breakfast and lunch business, specializing in paninis and homemade coleslaw. The windows were open, letting in a cool breeze, and ceiling fans rotated lazily above. The bistro tables were already filled, as were the tall stools that lined the counter. Enormous photographs of Orange Cove hung on the wall—scenes of the river, the bridge, a stop-action shot of a train chugging past downtown.

Chloe was already there, sitting at a table in the corner, her blonde head bent over a plastic-laminated menu. She looked up and waved when she saw Juliet approaching.

“Hello,” Juliet said, sitting down.

“Hi! Thanks so much for meeting me,” Chloe said, leaning back in her chair. Her voice was just as perky as it had sounded on the phone, but Juliet noticed that Chloe looked tired; there were black smudges under her eyes, and her face was pale and slightly bloated. Her pregnant stomach swelled in front of her, and her belly button had already popped out, like one of those plastic temperature gauges that come with turkeys.

Oh, Christ
, Juliet thought with dismay.
I hope she isn’t going to want to talk about her pregnancy. That’s right up there with having to listen to someone blather on about their diet or whatever dream they had last night. Like anyone’s ever interested.

“The timing worked out well. The lunch engagement I had scheduled was canceled.” Juliet made a point of checking her watch. “But I don’t have a lot of time, so why don’t we order and get right to your questions.”

Chloe hesitated and blinked a few times, clearly startled by Juliet’s brusqueness.

“Oh…okay,” Chloe finally said.

The two women studied their menus in silence for a minute, and then the waitress came by and took their order. A cheeseburger with extra cheese, extra mayo, and a side of fries for Chloe, and a raisin–walnut chicken salad for Juliet.

“I’m always hungry lately. I know I’m supposed to be eating for two, but most days it’s like I’m eating for twelve,” Chloe said, sounding apologetic, once the waitress had left. “Anna told me you had twins.”

“Yes. Four-year-old girls,” Juliet said, unable to keep a note of pride out of her voice.

“Wow. I’ve always thought that being pregnant with twins would make you twice as hungry—and have to pee twice as often,” Chloe continued, with a conspiratorial laugh.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember. It’s been a while since I was pregnant,” Juliet said.

She’d found this was the best way to avoid the sort of intimate conversations most women loved jumping into. It started with shared pregnancy cravings, which sounded harmless enough, but—as Juliet knew from experience—that would just open the floodgates. All of a sudden she’d be listening to whines about husbands who didn’t do their share of chores around the house, or bouts of postpartum weepiness, or episiotomies that went astray, leaving the new mom with a numb vagina. None of which Juliet wanted to know about.

As Juliet had hoped, her unwillingness to discuss the frequency of her urination while pregnant seemed to dampen Chloe’s enthusiasm for the subject. The younger woman fell silent and busied herself by rummaging through her brown shoulder bag. She pulled out a small tape recorder and a yellow legal pad on which she’d neatly written a series of questions.

“I must admit I have an ulterior motive in writing this story,” Chloe confessed. “I work at home—I’m a freelancer—and I haven’t figured out how that’s going to happen after the baby’s here. I know I want to keep working, but I want to spend time with the baby too. I guess I’m trying to figure out a way to have it all.” She laughed again, this time a little self-consciously, and pushed her short blonde curls back from her face. “In fact, this might sound a little…well, weird, but I was sort of hoping to find a mommy mentor.”

“A what?” Juliet had no idea what Chloe was talking about. She thought again of the pile of depositions waiting for her back at the office and glanced at her watch.

“A mommy mentor,” Chloe repeated. “Someone who’s already been through it. You know, balancing work and family? Someone who could give me some advice and pointers along the way? I thought maybe, you know, you could…”

Juliet stared at Chloe for a moment.
Is this chick for real? A mommy mentor?

Finally she cleared her throat and said, “My schedule is a bit full at the moment.”

Chloe blinked at her, and her mouth formed a round pink O. “Oh…I didn’t…I wouldn’t bug you or anything. I didn’t mean to make it sound like some huge, time-consuming thing.”

A little voice in Juliet’s head, one that sounded disturbingly like Grace, piped up.
Be nice, Juliet. You’re terrorizing the poor pregnant woman.

“Well…what exactly would you want me to do? I’ve never heard of a—what did you call it?—a mommy mentor before,” Juliet said.

Chloe colored. “It’s just something stupid I made up,” she mumbled. “Forget it.”

“Okay,” Juliet said.

Juliet
. It was Grace’s voice again, and it sounded disapproving.

Crap
, Juliet thought.
Go away, Grace.

“If you really want some advice, I could probably give you some pointers,” Juliet said, somewhat reluctantly.

Chloe perked up. “Really?”

“Sure, why not,” Juliet said, with a resigned shrug. “Although today’s not a great day for me—I’m under the gun at work.”

BOOK: Mommy Tracked
8.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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