She, Myself & I (15 page)

“I have to go,” I said, standing abruptly. I heaved my enormous black nylon Baby Gap diaper bag onto my shoulder and balanced Ben in my arms. He reached out and grabbed onto a piece of my hair and pulled it hard. My eyes watered, and I grappled with him, peeling his fingers off my hair. “Ouch.”

“Ouch, Beatrice does that to me all the time,” Cora said. “Here, I’ll walk out with you. I was just stopping by for a minute, I can’t stay.”

The others didn’t seem all that disappointed to see us go.

“Thank you for coming,” Lucille sang out in her annoying, saccharine voice.

“I think C-sections should be outlawed,” Missy was saying to Velvet, who was nodding along in agreement.

“It’s just one more example of how Western medicine has gone wrong,” Sonya opined. I slammed the door behind me, cutting off whatever other brilliant insights they might offer up.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Cora said as we walked out together, our arms full of babies and diaper bags. I always felt like a pack mule doing this, but Cora looked elegant and together with her Kate Spade bag tossed casually over her shoulder and her fresh-faced daughter cuddled up against her. Was I the only mother who rushed madly around the house before going out, stubbing my toe on the leg of the changing table, dropping my keys when I picked up my sunglasses, and then dropping the glasses when I bent over to retrieve the keys, and in the process forgetting to replenish the wet wipes in my diaper bag, or to pack a freshly laundered onesie or Ben’s sun hat?

“What
was
that? A moms’ group or a cult of Moonies? While I was in there, I was lectured on how I gave birth, where my child sleeps, and what my child eats. And when I admitted that Ben was circumcised, Sonya actually started to cry. She likened it to the mutilation of female genitalia that’s practiced in some cultures,” I ranted, and at the end of this my voice cracked and tears stung at my eyes.

We paused at the curb, where a fleet of minivans were parked. I felt a stab of pride when I saw my Tahoe, the only SUV there. I
love
my SUV. Aidan had tried to talk me into trading it in for a minivan—a.k.a., a dorkmobile—but I’d flat out refused.

“Don’t let the Mother Superiors get to you, they’re always like that. You should hear how they go after me. I once said I didn’t see anything wrong with teaching Beatrice to self-soothe, and they practically had me stoned for it,” Cora said, laughing. She kissed her daughter’s smooth forehead and then rested her cheek on the cloud of dark downy hair. Beatrice was a miniature version of her mother, from the serene dark eyes to the tiny cleft chin.

“Why are you a member of the group, then?”

“Velvet and I go way back, from before she was doing her Vampire Queen act,” Cora said.

“What’s up with all of the ‘bloody hell’ and ‘loo’ stuff? Is she trying to be British?”

“I don’t know, she must have just started that. I haven’t heard her doing it before. When I met her, she had pink hair and worshipped Madonna. She talked me into joining the group after I had Beatrice, so I gave it a try. Today was the final straw, though—I’m not going back. I’m just not into the whole attachment-parenting thing,” Cora said.

“I don’t know what I’m into,” I said honestly. I reached into my diaper bag for my keys and felt something cold and slushy in the pocket. When I withdrew my hand, I discovered the remains of a cherry Popsicle, now mostly melted. I had a vague memory of Olivia hovering near my diaper bag.

And then I actually burst into tears. I leaned against my car, heaved Ben up to my shoulder, and let my tears soak into the fuzz that masqueraded as his hair.

“Shit. I think this calls for a caramel macchiato. Follow me, there’s a Starbucks down the street,” Cora said.

Chapter Seventeen

“Hey,” Aidan said, walking through the garage door into our remodeled kitchen.

The room was still a sore subject between us, even though the renovations had been completed months ago. He’d been furious that I’d hired Zack to tear apart a kitchen Aidan insisted was perfectly acceptable. When I’d tried to pretend that I’d done it to surprise him, he’d just looked at me and said flatly, “Do you really think I’m that stupid, Soph?” Now nearly every time his eyes took in the gorgeous cherry cabinets, granite countertop, and professional stainless steel range, his expression soured.

Don’t start a fight, don’t start a fight, don’t start a fight,
I told myself.

I thought that maybe if I repeated the words often enough, it might actually work. Lately everything about Aidan—from the pinched-up corners of his eyes to the tightness of his jaw—irritated me. Had he always been wound this tight, and I just hadn’t noticed?

“Hi. How was your day?” I asked as I sliced into an onion. Ben was lounging in his vibrating bouncer seat next to my feet and drowsily staring at the attached mobile. Every once in a while, he’d reach out and bat at the brightly colored plastic balls.

“Crap. This department reorganization means that I suddenly have three different bosses, and they each seem to think that I should be doing work only for them,” Aidan said. He rummaged through the cupboards. “Isn’t there anything to eat? I’m starving. I thought you were going to the store today.”

“I didn’t have time. I had my moms’ group, and then I went out for coffee with one of the women I met there,” I said proudly, as though I were eight years old again and had succeeded in wooing the popular Jenny Wells into sitting with me at lunch, sipping our silver Capri Sun drink packs and playing with our Strawberry Shortcake dolls.

“Must be nice,” Aidan said. He found a nearly empty box of graham crackers, fished one out, and popped it into his mouth. He made a face. “These are stale.”

Don’t start a fight, don’t start a fight, don’t start a fight.

“Why don’t you just tell your bosses to talk to one another and work out amongst themselves who you’re supposed to report to?” I suggested.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not? It’s unreasonable for them to expect you to answer to three different people. It’s not good management skills. You’ll be stretched too thin, and you’ll never do a good job for any of them,” I continued.

I finished chopping the onions, stopping to sniffle into a tissue—onions didn’t make me cry, but they did cause my nose to run—and scraped them off the wood chopping block into a frying pan along with a tablespoon of chopped garlic and a pound of spicy Italian sausage.

“They don’t care about any of that. They just want their projects completed on time,” Aidan said.

I noticed that he still hadn’t said hello to Ben. I tried not to let this bother me. If I commented on it, Aidan would get defensive and we’d spend yet one more night avoiding one another while we watched the same television shows in separate rooms. That’s what had happened last night, when I suggested—okay, maybe not using the nicest possible tone of voice—that Aidan should give Ben his bath, since he hadn’t been spending much time with him lately. And three nights earlier, when Aidan miraculously did get Ben ready for bed without my having to ask him, but dressed him in an expensive velvet romper, and I’d groused at Aidan for not knowing what pajamas looked like.

His fumbling approach to parenting was seriously starting to push me over the edge. It wasn’t like I had any experience with babies either, and pregnancy hormones didn’t program me with instructions on what kind of diaper rash balm to apply to Ben’s bottom. The first time Aidan was left alone to change Ben’s diaper came when I was sitting on the toilet, sobbing my way through my first postpartum bowel movement (
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
hadn’t mentioned that this would be nearly as painful as giving birth, although to be fair I’d tossed out my copy when it piously preached limiting sugar in your pregnancy diet). Aidan had stood outside the door asking me what side of the diaper the tabs were supposed to fasten on and was it normal for Ben’s poop to be neon green and where could he find extra wipes, until I snapped, and screamed, “You have a fucking MBA, figure it out yourself!”

But I knew that the only way we were going to get out of this negative pattern was if I stopped focusing on everything Aidan did wrong with Ben and instead approached problems from a position of unity. This job dilemma was an excellent opportunity to practice.

“I think that’s really unfair, but I don’t blame you for being upset,” I said, careful to make “I” statements, just like the expert on
Oprah
had recommended (for example,
I appreciate how hard you work to support us, but I’d really like it if we could spend more time together as a family,
rather than,
You never help out around the fucking house, you selfish bastard
). “But I think that if you could talk to all of your bosses, or maybe just the most senior one, and explain that you can’t work effectively if you’re taking orders from more than one person, they’ll figure out they’re overloading you.”

“Jesus, Sophie, you just don’t get it. I can’t do that. That’s not how men work. My bosses just want the work done, and they don’t want to hear any bitching. They don’t fucking care if I’m overloaded, or if their counterpart in another department is throwing work at me. It’s not like one of your moms’ groups, where everyone sits around sharing their feelings and being supportive of one another.”

“Do not swear in front of the baby. And don’t talk to me like that in front of him, either. You’re supposed to be a role model for Ben on how to treat his future partner,” I hissed. I glared at Aidan—if I was barred from telling him to fuck off, I wanted my eyes to communicate the sentiment for me—and then glanced quickly at Ben, hoping that he wasn’t going to be scarred by witnessing this exchange.

“Fine. Whatever. I’m not hungry anyway. I’m going upstairs, I need to work tonight,” Aidan said.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “I’m making baked ziti, and now you’re not even going to eat it?”

“I’ll just have some cereal or something. I need to go over some reports, and if I don’t get started, I’ll be up all night,” he said.

I could tell that he was just being mulish from the way he was pressing his lips together so tightly they were flat and ringed with white. He only did that when he was irritated, and it was an expression I’d become all too familiar with lately.

His face had once been so dear to me.

Now I was starting to wonder if I was still in love with him.

“Fine,” I said shortly. I pulled the frying pan off the stove and, with a flip of the wrist, neatly emptied the contents into the garbage. I dropped the pan into the sink with a loud clatter.

“God, Soph, you don’t have to get so mad. I have to work, why are you getting pissed off about that?”

I leaned over and plucked Ben out of his vibrating chair. He smiled at me with a pure and untempered joy, and I kissed him on the pink roundness of his plump little cheeks.

And then I walked by Aidan and out of the kitchen without another word.

“What are you doing?” I asked Paige over the phone a few hours later.

Ben was nestled up in his crib, sleeping. Aidan had emerged from his study long enough to give Ben a bath and lather him up with lavender-chamomile baby lotion and then wrestle him up into his blue-striped Carter’s footie pajamas with the fuzzy frog on the front. I hadn’t thought Aidan would put Ben to bed after our fight, and had been gearing up for an even bigger blowout over it—I was planning on pointing out how Aidan was becoming just like the dad in the “Cat’s in the Cradle” song. Now I was a little miffed that I didn’t get to use my “Cat’s in the Cradle” line, and hoped I would remember it the next time he pissed me off.

“Zack’s over, we just finished dinner,” Paige said. She sounded happy, a marked change from the months following her separation and divorce.

When Paige had first told me about Scott, I’d been horrified and angry on her behalf, and at the same time, a little smug that I’d been wiser when choosing my mate, especially since Paige had always been so much more successful than me when it came to school and work. But now here I was, stuck rattling around a house we couldn’t afford—an interesting little nugget of information Aidan had only let me in on after we’d bought the place—living with my sour-faced husband, while Paige was moony-eyed in love with Zack the Hottie, living in a condo she owned outright. Every time we got together with them, Paige’s hair was mussed and her eyeliner smudged, as though they’d rolled out of bed just moments earlier.

I’d wondered—probably too often—what would have happened if I’d been thin and single when we met Zack. Would he have picked me over Paige? I’d always been considered the prettier sister—Paige was the smart one, and Mickey, who was smarter and prettier than either of us, was so much younger she escaped the inevitable comparisons. I’d lain in bed, my hugely pregnant stomach propped up on a pillow. And fantasized about Zack leaning toward me, his eyelids heavy, his lips firm as they nibbled at me, savoring the taste of my skin.

And early on, I’d thought that Zack was flirting with me. Only later, after he and Paige had gotten together, did I realize that Zack was just naturally as friendly as a freaking Labrador retriever, that he treated everyone with the same grinning affability, and he hadn’t been interested in me at all. I’d seen him look at my sister with awestruck reverence, and wondered when—if ever—Aidan had looked at me like that.