Time of My Life (7 page)

“Thank you, dear,” she said, not warmly, but not too coolly, either. “You were quite something today.” She kissed me on each cheek, and I saw the family beaming behind her.

“Anytime, Mrs. Turnhill,” I answered, pulling back to meet both her eyes and her approval.

“Vivian, dear. Feel free to call me Vivian.” She offered an (almost) genuine smile, then tugged her cashmere sweater over her waist to iron out any nonexistent wrinkles and retreated into the house.

“The next time we’re in the city, can we call you?” Leigh asked. Her hands rested on Allie’s shoulders, who was parked at her feet and who gazed up at me, her new hero, with huge, hopeful eyes.

“Of course!” I said with honest surprise and leaning down to kiss Allie one last time. “It would be the highlight of my week.”

Then Jack flung his arm around my shoulder, having forgotten entirely that just hours earlier, when I burst through the door fifty minutes late, he was too annoyed to even spit out a hello. None of that mattered now. Now, we were headed home.

“I
DIDN’T KNOW
that you knew magic,” Jack says, after we’d climbed out of the bathtub, where he’d scrubbed the clown paint off my fingers and the remaining dirt from playing in the grass from underneath my nails. We are splayed on top of our plaid comforter, and he is rubbing my feet.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, I suppose.” I shrug.

“But magic? Seriously?” He laughs. “I mean, normally, I’d call you lame, but you did save the day.”

“I did indeed.” I smile. “And you best be careful. I’m skilled enough to make you disappear.”
That’s only the half of it,
I think.

“Just don’t saw me in half,” he says, sticking out his tongue, then crawling up toward the head of the bed and placing himself on top of me.

The truth is that Jack didn’t realize that I knew magic because, in fact, the me he knew
didn’t.
The me he knew couldn’t have been more removed from kids and their exploits, mostly because they reminded me of my discolored childhood and the scars it had laid into me.

And then came Katie. She wasn’t planned. She wasn’t unplanned. She just was. Henry and I spoke in vague terms about children before we got married; he agreed for both of us that we wanted them, and I didn’t disagree enough to argue. I did want children; I was just terrified of the damage that I might do to them. So the easier solution was not to have them at all. But then I fell in love with Henry, an only child who felt lonely like me most of his life, though for different reasons, and it seemed like it was an easy compromise to give him.

After two years of marriage, he urged me to go off the pill. I looked at them with bittersweet fondness and tossed them in the trash. While we weren’t actively trying to shoot his sperm straight toward my egg, three months later, I was pregnant. Nine months later, my life would change in all conceivable (literal and not) ways. Ready or not. Here she comes.

During my pregnancy, I read every last morsel of information that was available to the literate public. If there was a book or an article or a website on gestation (At ten weeks in utero: fingernails develop! At eighteen weeks: your child will suck his thumb!), I devoured it. And after I pushed Katie out, I subscribed to all the magazines, too:
Parents, Parenting, Baby Talk, American Baby, Your Baby, Mothers and Babies, Babies and Mothers.
Our mailbox was clogged with them the month through. And in my desperation, I would memorize far more than just the age-appropriate tips or stage-of-life information that applied to Katie and me. (“Silly Solids! How to Start Your Baby on Fun Food!”) No, I read articles for mothers of eight-year-olds, for divorced fathers who saw their kids only on weekends, for adoptive mothers who worried about bonding issues with their new African children. I hungrily ate them up because, really, what else did I have to do (Pilates class only met three times a week); and boredom aside, I read them with the frantic hope that Katie might turn our differently than I did. Or maybe that I would turn out differently than my mother. It was a blurry line, and one that I didn’t consider too much.

Which is exactly how I became an expert magician. Read enough magazines, and you can do just about anything. Because inevitably, on any given month, tucked inside the pages of these bastions of knowledge, there are articles on pulling rabbits out of hats and pulling coins out of noses and pulling off the perfect birthday party, as if that might ensure, or perhaps even prove, that you are the mommy dearest. The mommy best.

“It was sexy,” Jackson says tonight, slowly lifting my tank top over my head. “Seeing you with the kids today.”

“Yeah, even your mom managed a grin.” I giggle as he kisses my neck. “Not quite a smile, but a toothless grin.”

“Don’t bring her up right now,” he grunts.

“Duly noted.” I feel his mouth work its way down my collarbone.

“So, Ms. Magician,” Jack says, his voice husky and low, “how about you show me some of those new tricks?”

“How about you show me some of yours first?”

“Happy to,” he says, reaching down to unbuckle my belt.

I press my eyes closed and try to remember why I’d ever jumped off this track to begin with. Because these tiny accommodations, like placating his mother with magic tricks or sidestepping arguments about her in the first place—these small shifts—didn’t seem so seismic now that I understood the consequences of forgoing them. Last time, I asked Jack to make changes; this time, it seemed so much easier if I just made them in myself.
It doesn’t feel like so much,
I think.
No, these compromises definitely don’t feel like too much.

Jack tugs off my pants.

What matters, I tell myself just before clearing my mind, is that I’m here, now, making new memories while the old ones are fading into dust.

Chapter Seven

T
his came for you.”

I look up from my loupe, with which I was poring over storyboards, at the sound of Josie’s voice, and see that her head has been replaced with a Herculean-sized gift basket.

“Ooh, goodies!” I set the loupe aside and rub my hands together. “What have you got?”

The monstrosity lands on my desk with a thud, and my pencil cup rattles.

“Well, you’ve made it,” Josie says, easing herself into a chair and shaking out her arms. “This is the official invitation to the annual Coke friends and family event, which basically means they invite all of their investors to Cipriani and pour top-shelf liquor down their throats to convince them that management is doing right by their money.”

I start to unpeel the layers of pink plastic that envelop the basket.

“Have you ever been?” I ask.

“Five years ago,” she answers. “Before they left us for BBDO. It’s legendary. And they don’t hand these invites out lightly. When I got invited, I’d already been promoted to director.”

I stand on my tiptoes and try to peer into the depths of the silo-sized gift.

“So,” Josie continues, “as I said, you’ve made it. Really knocked the hell out of this campaign.”

“Thanks,” I say with a shrug. “It’s been pretty easy.”

“So I’ve noticed.” Josie tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ve juggled the responsibility well, and just so you know, I’ve put in a word for a promotion.” I meet her eyes and she smiles. “Seriously, Jill, my job could be yours in a few years.”

I force a grin but feel my pulse beating in my neck, rising in panic. I’m not supposed to get a promotion. I’m supposed to cruise along comfortably at this level until I meet Henry and eventually quit when my belly bulges out to the point at which it can no longer be disguised.

But all of that’s different now,
I remind myself and exhale. Your future is what you make of it, and so what if you don’t exactly envision a life like Josie’s: one in which you feel like you’re leaving half of you behind every morning when you kiss your kids good-bye, and then leaving the other half of you behind each dusk when the hum of your computer whirs to a stop and you click off the light to go home and fall asleep on the couch next to your husband who has flipped the TV to ESPN.

Her life doesn’t have to be mine, I tell myself.
My
life, my new life, is yet unwritten.

“That’s amazing, Josie. Thank you,” I say, my voice weighted in appreciation. I reach into the basket and pull out some bounty. “Seriously? They make Coke-flavored Jelly Bellys? And Coke-flavored licorice?”

“Oh yeah, you’d be amazed. My daughter lives for this stuff.”

Tentatively, I take a bite, and it tastes like processed cola with six shots of sugar blended in.

I can’t remember the last time I had jelly beans. And then it hits me with a rush: Easter 2007, just a few months back, when Katie, at fifteen months, had finally stopped lumbering like a drunken seaman and was rushing around my father’s backyard in Connecticut with the freewheeling bravado that nearly defines toddlerhood, before you’re old enough to remember that falling hurts and that stumbling leaves bruises that won’t fade for days.

I’d spent the previous night dyeing hard-boiled eggs various shades of lavender, pink, yellow, and baby blue, and then, after greeting my dad and Linda, his girlfriend of nearly a decade but whom he refused to wed, I tucked the pastel-hued creations behind trees and logs and flower beds to create our very own Easter egg hunt. (I’d read about it in
Parents.
) From my perch on the porch, I watched Henry chase Katie around the grass—she’d lost interest in uncovering the eggs after four minutes, tops. Linda came out with a brimming bag of candy, and even though my trainer at the gym had sworn me off refined sugar, I reached for the Jelly Bellys and popped five (only twenty-two calories, I reminded myself!) in my mouth, savoring the tang of the tartness and the hint of crunchiness that comes with dissolving granulated sugar between your molars.

“These actually aren’t bad,” I say now to Josie. I stuff down a whole handful. “God, I never eat this crap.”

“Yeah right, me neither!” She laughs and throws me a wink. “And with that, I’m sure that I’ll see you at the vending machines at 4:00. I’ll fight you for the Red Vines.”

Oops. Indeed, back before Katie granted me a muffin top and eight stubborn pounds that wouldn’t budge despite my virtuous cross-training and weight-lifting routine (as read about in
Self
), I abused sugar much like someone might abuse crack.

“Oh,” Josie said, popping her head back into the door opening. “You should buy a new dress for this. And bring that boyfriend of yours. He’s a keeper.”

“He is, isn’t he?” I grin.

Maybe this time, he’ll actually stick.

“H
OW ABOUT THIS ONE
?” Megan holds up a red, white, and blue empire-waist gown that looks like it would be more appropriate for a Fourth of July float than a classy candelabra-lit affair with a swing band playing in the background while various canapés are offered by tuxedo-clad waiters.

I scrunch my face up like I’d just eaten a sour pickle and shake my head no. I still hadn’t adjusted to the fashion of half a decade past. In 2007, I was the embodiment of the Lilly Pulitzer catalog: crisp dark jeans, linen blouses, floral-printed sundresses.

“It’s the look that makes the woman,” I’d tell myself each morning after dragging myself from bed, dreading the oncoming day, the tedium and the poop-filled diapers and the plastic smile that would eventually cause my cheeks to cramp if I didn’t let it fall at least three times during one of Katie’s playdates. So I’d reach into the depths of my closet and pull out a splashy pink and green tank top with ironed khaki capris to match, and I’d slide on deep chocolate leather sandals, and pull my highlighted hair into a clean low ponytail, and wash just a touch of cream blush across my cheeks and onto my lips, and then I’d stare into the mirror and convince myself that indeed, “it’s the look that makes the woman,” and now, this woman was me. Then I’d nod at the embodiment of mommyhood perfection and turn to climb the stairs to whisk Katie from her crib.

“Come on,” Megan whines. “I never thought I’d say this, but Jill, I’m sick of shopping. We’ve been at this for nearly two hours, and you haven’t liked anything you’ve seen!”

Is it my fault that designers in 2000 seemed to think it was a brilliant idea to bring back the hideous fashions from the ’80s? Is it my fault that I have good enough taste to just say no to prints that look like they belong on the curtains of my Westchester home and shoulder pads that couldn’t flatter a linebacker?

“Here,” I say, pulling a strapless silver cocktail dress from the back rack. “This might work.”

“Finally,” Megan sighs, and plops down on a beige leather chair that they put out for drained husbands who are forced to trudge after their wives for a rash of weekend shopping. Nearly a month after her miscarriage, Meg’s looking vibrant, healthy even, and I can’t help but stare just before I duck into the dressing room.

Last time around, I hadn’t stopped to notice. Jack and I were starting to wind our way free of each other, like a ball of yarn in which just one thread had come loose, and the Coke project was drowning my free time, and I’d started dreaming about my mother again, so somehow, Meg got lost in the shuffle. Lost in the innocuous way that happens when life simply piles up. You grab a friend on her cell for two minutes, then promise to call each other back later, but later becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow ebbs into a week, and before you’ve even realized it, a month has flown by, and you’ve disengaged yourself from each other’s worlds. Which doesn’t mean that you don’t adore each other, and certainly doesn’t mean that when you do catch up that you don’t pour out all of the missing details. You do. But for that month or those weeks, you’re blind to the nuances that change a person over the course of time, that stack up like dominoes until she’s a different person entirely. This time out, I’d vowed to keep a closer eye on Megan, to perhaps protect her from the spiral that would suck her downward into emotional depths that, at least in my previous life, I’d failed to understand. Or perhaps more honestly, I failed to understand because I didn’t see the spiral in the first place.

“How’s work?” I ask Megan over coffee, after I admired my naked body in the dressing room mirror (No stretch marks from Katie! No stomach that perpetually looks three months pregnant! No shaking jello under the curve of my butt!) and purchased the silver dress (two sizes smaller!).

“Eh,” she says. “I don’t really give a shit.” Meg’s an associate at Bartlett and Jones, one of the top law firms in the city, where they process their lawyers in the way that cuts of beef might be at a slaughterhouse. They string you up, put you through your paces, and just like those poor cows, you rarely get out alive.

“That bad?” I say. She never wanted to be a lawyer in the first place, and just went to law school because she couldn’t think of anything better to do, a holding pattern for those first few postcollege years and her early twenties.

“Just a lot of filing papers and reading over fine print in documents and blah, blah, blah.” She rolls her eyes, then blurts out, “So Tyler and I are ready to try again.”

“Has your doctor given you the okay?” I attempt to offer enough support in my voice to conceal my alarm at her announcement.

She nods, her mouth full of raisin scone.

“And you feel ready to do this?” I pause. “Not physically. Emotionally.”

“You sound like my doctor,” she laughs, though there’s no joy behind it. “She told me that since I’ve stopped bleeding, we can try again as soon as I get my period. But that maybe I should take some time to cope with the loss of the first baby.”

“And you disagree?” I raise my mug to my lips, careful not to spill the steaming coffee on my fingers. My eyes watch her steadily over the rim.

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “But why put it off? What’s the point in delaying it? The longer we wait, the longer it is until I get pregnant again.” Her face falls, and I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.

“You know what’s funny,” she continues, not really asking a question.

“No,” I say. “What?”

“You spend your whole life frantically trying not to get pregnant. I mean, I’ve been on the pill since I was sixteen! Eleven fucking years of being on the pill until I went off it last year. So you spend your whole life trying to prevent this thing—condoms, pills, gels, creams, whatever—and then, it turns out that guess what? It’s not so easy to do, to get pregnant in the first place!”

“I was certain that I was pregnant back in high school once,” I say. “With Daniel. God, remember him? Did I ever tell you this story, how our condom broke, and I was two days late, and I was
freaking out
?” I stop, unsure why I’m telling the story. I think of Daniel, his black curls and his cherry cheeks, and how we split soon after I got my period, in that awkward, stilted way when you still see each other in the hallways and still wonder whether or not you broke up because the other person thought you didn’t know how to kiss or because your boobs were too small.

“Oh, God, yeah, I know.” Megan’s words are accelerating. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was pregnant. Crying on the toilet because my period hadn’t come or because I’d forgotten to take a pill
exactly
on the dot—because you know, that’s what the stupid package warns you about—or because of whatever.” She stops to gather her breath. “And Jesus, I remember being so filled with goddamn fear because, well, what the hell do you do if you’re eighteen and pregnant or twenty and pregnant, and now, I’m twenty-eight, and I can’t get fucking pregnant, and then when I do, I lose the baby!”

I think she’s going to start crying, so I reach over to touch her hand, but instead, she peers up with a wistful smile.

“Jesus,” she says. “If I knew that it would be so hard to get pregnant, I’d have had a lot more sex.”

I snort out some coffee and nod.

I raise my mug. “To more sex,” I say, and startlingly, Mrs. Kwon, my dry cleaner, echoes in my ear.

“To more sex,” Meg replies, matching her mug to mine and clinking them together.

“And to a baby,” I say, fervently, feverishly hoping that this time, Meg is more blessed.

“To a baby,” she answers. “To babies for both of us. And to whatever those babies might bring.” She catches the panic in my eye. “Not now.” She smiles and waves a free hand. “But, you know, in the future. To the babies of our future.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I say. “To the babies of our future.”

I feel my chest tighten like a clamp’s been placed around my heart.
Katie,
I think.
Katie.
The baby of my future. What happens to Katie now that the future is nothing more than a foggy memory, one that might fade when the sun rises and the morning mist lifts?