Chapter Three
My mother arrives on Monday as scheduled. We all go to the airport to pick her up. Caleb is wary about taking the baby out in public so soon, but I convince him that she’ll be fine if we keep her in the stroller. I'm tired of sitting at home, tired of holding bottles and tired of pretending that eight pounds of screaming human flesh is cute. Besides, I want a Jamba Juice. I'm sipping on my juice and following Caleb and the stroller around baggage claim when we spot her obnoxious blonde head coming down the escalator. I roll my eyes. She is wearing an all-white pantsuit. Who travels in all white? She waves at us brightly and trots over, first hugging Caleb and then me.
She leans over the stroller and claps a hand over her mouth like she’s wrought with emotion.
God, I want to be sick.
“Ooooh,” she coos, “She looks like Caleb.”
This is absolute bullshit. I decided a day ago that she looks exactly like me. The kid has fluffy red hair and a heart shaped face. Regardless, Caleb smiles broadly, and they engage in a five-minute conversation about Estella’s eating and pooping habits. I’m confused as to how she knows anything about babies eating and pooping since a nanny raised my sister and me. I tap my foot impatiently on the tacky tropical carpeting and look longingly at the exit. Now that I’m here I just want to leave. Why did I think this was a good idea?
When Caleb’s attention is diverted with the baby, my mother pokes me accusingly in my stomach and shakes her head. I suck in my belly and look around guiltily. Who else noticed? True, I had a baby only three days ago, but I was being so careful to stand up tall — suck in the belly fat. My momentary lapse embarrasses me. It’s all I can think about on the ride home. I make a pact with myself to stop eating until I reassume my former figure.
At home, my mother insists on taking the room next to Estella’s, even though I had the larger guest room prepared for her.
“Mother, what is the purpose of having this room?” I ask as Caleb deposits her bag next to the bed.
“I want to help you, Leah. Get up with her in the middle of the night and all that good stuff.” She bats her eyelashes at Caleb, who smiles at her.
I hold my eye roll.
She is pretending to be enamored with the baby, but I know better than that. Public doting is what she does to spunk up her image, and when her audience is gone — so is the love. I remember being a child, having her stroke my hair, kiss my face, comment on how pretty I was — all in front of her friends. After they left, I would be sent back to my room to study or practice the violin — basically get out of my mother’s hair, until the next of her ‘good mommy’ performances.
“Really, Mother?” I say through my teeth. “How will you hear her after you’ve taken your sleeping pills?”
Her face becomes splotchy. Caleb elbows me in the ribs. We’re not supposed to talk about her addiction to sleep aids.
“I won’t take them tonight,” she says decidedly. “I’ll do the feedings so you can rest.”
Caleb gives her a quick side hug before we all go downstairs.
I watch suspiciously from my barstool in the kitchen as she carries Estella around and sings show tunes to her. We small talk, or they do. I pick at my split ends.
“We’re going to have a wonderful time while Daddy is gone,” she coos to the baby. “You, Mommy and I.”
Caleb shoots me a warning look before going upstairs to get the last of his things for the trip. I am itching to make a snarky comment, but I remember my promise to him and hold my tongue. Besides, if she wants to play ‘Grandmother’ and take care of all of Estella’s needs while Caleb is gone, so be it. It would save me the trouble.
“Her hair is red,” my mother says as soon as he’s out of earshot.
“Yes, I noticed.”
She clucks her tongue. “I always imagined that my grandchildren would be dark like Charles.”
“She’s not,” I snap, “because she’s mine.”
She shoots me a look out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t be so touchy, Johanna. It doesn’t become you.”
Always critical. I can’t wait until she’s gone.
But, then it hits me. When she’s gone, Caleb isn’t going to be staying home with the baby. I am. This business trip is the first of many during which I am going to have to pull all-nighters and change … human excrement … and — oh God — give baths. I almost fall off my barstool. A nanny, I have to break Caleb on this and make him see how much I need the help.
“Mother,” I say sweetly — almost too sweetly because she looks at me with her eyebrows raised. “Caleb doesn’t want me to get a nanny,” I complain. I am hoping to get her on my side enough to talk to him about it.
Her eyes dart to the stairs where Caleb disappeared only moments before. She licks her lips, and I lean in to better hear what nugget of wisdom she is going to impart. My mother is a very resourceful woman. It comes from being married to a controlling manipulator. She had to learn how to get her way, without getting her way.
When Court was eighteen, she wanted to go to Europe with her friends. My father had refused. Well, in actuality, he’d never verbally refused. He slashed his hand through the air as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The SLASH. It was a common occurrence in our Greek home. Didn’t like dinner? SLASH. Had a bad day at work and don’t want anyone to talk to you? SLASH. Leah crashes her fifty thousand dollar car for the fifth time? SLASH. At the end of all the slashing, Court had gone to Europe.
Remember when you were a poor boy? How much you wanted to travel? My mother.
She’s still a child. My father.
It’s good that she goes while we can still control her. We pay for the trip, the hotels, and the safest travel … much better than her going when she’s in her twenties, sleeping her way through France. My mother.
My father hated the French.
He’d looked thoughtful. Mother’s logic was appealing. He booked everything a week later. Court was under careful, controlled watch, but by God she got to go to Europe. I went to community college. She gave me a small painting that she bought from a street vendor. It was a red umbrella suspended in the rain like an invisible hand was holding it. I’d pulled aside the paper and had immediately known what she was trying to say. I’d started to cry and Court had laughed and kissed me on the cheek.
“Don’t cry, Lee. That’s the point of this painting, yeah?”
Two months in Europe and she was saying yeah at the end of all of her sentences.
Court is … was … so cute. I want to bring her up, ask Mother about her last boyfriend, but the subject is still touchy.
“What your husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” My mother’s voice snaps me back to the task at hand.
That’s it? I stare at her blankly. How am I supposed to translate that nonsense into full time baby help?
She sighs.
“Leah, darling … Caleb is away on business trips much of the time, is he not?”
I catch her drift and nod slowly, my eyes becoming wide at the possibility. Could I do it? Hire someone to come in and take care of the baby on the days that Caleb is gone?
My mother is an expert in the art of deceit. Once, before Caleb and I were married, we took a break at his request. He had just been in a terrible car accident and suffered major memory loss due to a blow to the head. To my absolute horror, he didn’t remember who I was. I remember thinking, How could this happen to me? I was about to get engaged to the man of my dreams, and here he was, looking at me like I was a perfect stranger. I had quickly gathered my wits and resolved to be supportive until his memory came back. It was only a matter of time before he would remember how much he wanted to be with me and placed the huge Tiffany’s rock I had found in his sock drawer on my finger. But, instead of getting closer to me as we waited for his memory to come back, he pulled away, opting to spend more and more time alone. Soon, he announced that he was … seeing another girl, if seeing is the right word for the shadiness that was going on, and g
irl is the right word for the cunning, worthless tramp that almost ruined my life. I called my mother right away to report what he had told me.
“Follow him,” she said. “Find out how serious it is, and make him end it.”
I had done just that, following him one evening to a tacky apartment complex in an even tackier neighborhood. The blocky buildings were painted a bright salmon color. I glanced at the pitiful attempt at landscaping that did nothing to cheer the place up and parked my car a block away from Caleb’s Audi. I was an emotional mess, knowing that he was probably going to see the girl. Through my rearview mirror, I watched as he walked right up to a door and knocked. He hadn’t consulted a piece of paper or his phone to find it. It was as if he knew exactly where to go. The door opened, and though I couldn’t see who was standing inside, I knew it must be her, because his face immediately broke out in a grin that was usually directed toward me; flirtatious and sexy. God, what was going on here?
I waited for several minutes before climbing out of my car and approaching the door. Just to make sure I was doing the right thing, I texted my mother, who responded with a firm: Go in there and get him before he does something stupid!
— Which was followed a few seconds later by a single word: Cry
I did both, and Caleb left with me that night. But, it was a short-lived victory. The girl he was seeing was an old girlfriend from college. Unbeknownst to both Caleb and me, she was pretending to have just met him, trying to squeeze her way back into his life for another round. I found this out after breaking into her apartment. I went straight to his condo with the evidence clutched in my fist, ready to out her scheme. She looked like trouble. I should have known the minute I laid eyes on her that it wasn’t a casual thing by some unsuspecting girl he’d met. It took me some time to figure out. He wasn’t home when I got there. I let myself in with a key that he didn’t know I had and studied the mess he left behind like I was fucking CSI. He had obviously cooked dinner for two. There was still the unmistakable smell of steak lingering in the halls. Had she been here with him? I felt sick. I found two wineglasses in the living room, and in a panic, I rushed to the bedroom for evidence that they had been together. His bed was unmade, but I saw no sign of sex anywhere in the room. What traces would he leave behind anyway? Caleb didn’t — wouldn’t use condoms. I’d gone on birth control shortly after we started dating because of this. He said the sight of them turned his stomach, so I wasn’t going to find any wrappers lying around.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I went to his dresser and opened a drawer, running my hands along the back of it until I found the square Tiffany box that held my engagement ring. I cracked it open and felt tears spring to my eyes. It had almost happened. He was getting ready to propose when that damn accident wiped me from his memory. I deserved to be with him, wearing my two-carat, princess cut diamond ring.
I got rid of her.
For a while.
After I drop Caleb off at the airport, I go shopping. Seems sort of shallow, like I should feel guilty … but I don’t. I want to feel the buttery silks beneath my fingers. I decide that since I no longer have a basketball attached to my waist, I need a whole new wardrobe.
I pull my new SUV into a spot at the Gables and head right for Nordstrom. In the dressing room, I avert my eyes away from my belly. It feels good to slide into dresses with cinched waists. By the time I head for the doors, I am carrying over three thousand dollars in merchandise. I toss everything on the backseat and decide to meet Katine for a drink.
“Aren’t you nursing?” she asks, sliding into the seat next to me. She eyes my burgeoning breasts as she plucks a cherry from the bartender’s garnish tray.
I shrug. “Pumping. So?”
She smiles all condescendingly and chews on her cherry. Katine looks like a blonde, botoxed Newt Gingrich when she’s being snotty. I lick the salt from the rim of my margarita glass and feel sorry for her.
“So. You’re not supposed to drink when you’re nursing.”
I roll my eyes.
“I have plenty of stock in the fridge at home. By the time I need to pump again, the alcohol will be out of my system.”
Katine widens her eyes, which makes her look even dumber than a blonde should.
“How’s Mommy Dearest?”
“She’s watching Baby Dearest,” I say. “Can we not talk about that?”
She shrugs like she couldn’t care less anyway. She orders a gin and tonic from the bartender and drinks it entirely too quickly.
“Have you had sex with Caleb yet?”
I flinch. Katine has no filter. She tries to blame it on the fact that she’s from a different culture, but she’s been here since before she could walk. I motion for another margarita. The bartender is attractive. For some reason I don’t want him to know I’m a mother. I lower my voice.
“I just had a baby, Katine. You have to wait at least six weeks.”
“I had a C-section,” she announces.
Of course I know this. Katine has regaled me with her disgusting birth story over a dozen times. I look away, bored, but her next words make my head snap around.
“Your vagina is going to be all stretched out and useless now.”
First, I check to see if the bartender heard her, then I narrow my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Birthing, naturally. What? Do you think everything just snaps back into place?” She laughs a true hyena laugh. I watch her exposed throat as she throws her head back to finish her cackling. How many times have I wondered what it would feel like to slap my best friend? When she calms down, she sighs dramatically.
“God, I’m just kidding, Leah. You should have seen your face. It was like I told you your kid died.”
I toy with my drink napkin. What if she's right? My fingers begin itching to pull out my phone and Google. I do some Kegels for good measure.
Would Caleb notice a difference? I break out in a sweat just thinking about it. Our relationship had always been about sex. We were the sexy couple; the ones who kept things alive when all of our friends were retiring into a life of half-lucid missionary sex after the kids went to sleep. For months in the beginning of our relationship, he would get this relieved look on his face when he reached for me and I responded. I never pushed him away. I never wanted to. Now, I had to consider that he might push me away.
I order another drink.
This was going to cause all kinds of new anxiety. I would have to schedule an appointment with my therapist.
“Look,” says Katine. She leans toward me and her overly sweet vanilla perfume creeps into my nose. “Things change when you have a baby. Your body changes. The dynamic between you and the husband changes. You have to be inventive, and for the love of God, lose the baby weight … fast.”
She snaps her fingers at a server and puts in an order for a basket of fries and fried calamari.
Bitch.
Chapter FourPast
I met Caleb at Katine’s twenty-fourth birthday party. It was held on a yacht, which was significantly better than my twenty-fourth birthday venue at one of South Beach’s swanky nightclubs. I invited two hundred people; she invited three. But, being that my best friend’s birthday is four months after mine, she has the advantage of outshining me every year. I call it even since I am prettier and my father placed twelve spots above hers in Forbes.
I was wearing a black silk Lanvin dress that I’d seen Katine eying the week before as we shopped in Barney’s. Her hips had been slightly too wide to accommodate the slim cut of the dress, so I scooped it up when she wasn’t looking and bought it. She would have done the same to me, of course.
After making rounds among our friends, I headed to the bar for a fresh martini. I spotted him sitting on one of the barstools. His back was toward me, but I could tell by the width of his shoulders and the cut of his hair that he was going to be beautiful. I slid into the available seat next to him and shot him a look out of the corner of my eye. I noticed the strong jaw first. You co
uld crack walnuts on that jaw. His nose was kind of weird, but not in an unattractive way. The bridge was curved, a slight bend in the road. It was elegant, the way an old revolver would be. His lips were too sensual for a man. If it were not for his nose — that incredibly elegant nose — his face would have been too pretty. I waited a few customary minutes for him to look at me, normally I didn’t have to work very hard to garner male attention, but when he didn’t, I cleared my throat. His eyes, which had been focused on the television above the bar, turned slowly toward me like I was an imposition. They were the color of maple syrup if you held it up to the light. I waited for him to get that lucky look that all men got on their faces when they stumbled upon my attention. It didn’t come.
“I’m Leah,” I said finally, holding out my hand.
“Hello, Leah.” He sort of half smiled as he shook my hand and then dismissively turned back to the television. I knew his type. You had to play hard to get with boys that had crooked grins. They liked the chase.
“How do you know Katine?” I asked, suddenly feeling desperate.
“Who?”
“Katine … the girl whose birthday party you’re crashing?”
“Ah, Katine,” he said, taking a sip from his glass. “I don’t.”
I waited for him to explain that he came with a friend or his distant relation to someone at the party, but he offered no explanation. I decided to try a new route.
“Do you need bourbon and a beer to go with that Scotch?”
He looked at me for the first time, blinking as if he was clearing his vision.
“Is that your best pick up line? Lyrics from a country song?”
I saw a hint of laughter in his eyes, and I smiled, encouraged.
“Hey, we’ve all got a vice and mine is country music.”
He studied me for a minute, his eyes roving over my hair and stopping on my lips. He ran his fingers across the condensation on his glass, collecting the moisture on the tips of his fingers. I watched in fascination as he used his thumb to rub the moisture from his fingertips.