Ever since Toby called their house, Elinor has sensed him and Gina hovering at the periphery of her life with Ted, like the swirling doughnut shape of a hurricane offshore on a weather map. Brewing out of anyone’s control. She shouldn’t have to worry about Gina and Toby! She already misses the days when she let everything go and sprawled under the oak tree staring at the sky. Life is much less intimidating when you ditch your ambitions and stop wishing for things. But you can’t be so cavalier when you’re pregnant. Which is why she can’t afford to have Toby and Gina looming over her any longer.
“Hey, how ’bout breakfast?” she asks Roger as she puts away the last mug from the dishwasher.
“No thanks.”
“Already ate?”
Roger shakes his head.
“It’s the most important meal of the day.” She grabs bacon, English muffins, eggs, cheese, an onion, and mushrooms from the refrigerator. Finally, Elinor has discovered something she can cook—a hearty breakfast. Toast, marmalade, big wedges of peach from the farmer’s market drenched in honey yogurt. She cracks eggs into a bowl, whisking them so vigorously, yolk slops onto the counter. Here she is: in suburbia, in the kitchen, barefoot, pregnant, and cooking. Back in college, these were all the things she thought she didn’t want. Yet she is content.
Roger steps back from the window to check his work. “If I take a break I’ll fall behind. I have another house today.”
There you go: conscientious. Another great attribute. Roger will be perfect for Toby and Gina.
Elinor peels the bacon into a frying pan. “It’ll take you ten minutes to eat, tops.” While he eats, they’ll talk about how Roger is going to ask Gina out. How, how, how? She chops onions, slices leftover baked potatoes, frying them in olive oil with a bit of rosemary. “You have to keep up your energy level!”
“Okay.” Roger laughs, his ears turning red.
They sit together at the table, and Elinor watches Roger eat. He closes his eyes as he takes a bite of egg yolk and brown potato. “Oh, awesome.” He opens his eyes, chews on his toast. Elinor beams. Roger swallows, wipes his mouth. His cheeks begin to color again.
“Um, I was wondering . . . ,” Roger begins.
Elinor slides more fresh sliced tomatoes onto his plate.
“Would you like to go with me to the Avedon opening in San Francisco?” he asks.
“Oh, Roger.” Elinor hopes she doesn’t sound condescending. “I’d love to. But you know I’m not single anymore.” She claps her forehead. “What a boob. I forgot to tell you—Dr. Mackey moved back in. That means extra work for you to clean up after another person, I know. But he’s very neat and we’d be happy to pay you more.” She doesn’t want to linger over the fact that Roger sort of just asked her on a date. If he gets any more embarrassed, his face might actually catch fire.
She gets up to fetch more coffee. “Hey, so you’re single?” She fills his cup, trying to sound nonchalant.
“I have a girlfriend.” Roger doesn’t say this with much conviction. “I did. We broke up.” He pushes his bacon around. “She broke up with me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Elinor folds a napkin. “That’s hard. Breakups are the worst. I know.”
“But I’m dating,” Roger adds quickly. He picks up his toast.
“Really? Because I know a girl who would love you. There’s this woman who works at my gym who’s very cute. What a figure. Wow.” Elinor feels a pained expression creasing her brow.
“Um. A blind date?” Roger asks with dread.
“Are you good at math?”
“Is she a mathematician?”
“No, but, I must tell you: She has a son.”
“Cool.”
“And he needs help with his math homework. I know that would mean a lot to her, if you could help her son.” Elinor slaps her thigh. “He is such a great kid. In fact . . .” She gets up from the table, goes to her purse, and takes out her wallet to retrieve her gym membership card. “. . . you can call her at work.” Elinor copies the number for Roger and tucks it under his plate. “Give her a call at the club and offer to tutor her son.”
Roger frowns at the scrap of paper.
Elinor sits, covering Roger’s hand with hers. “It would be sort of a personal favor to me. I really want her to meet somebody great. I think you’d be perfect. Hey, but do not tell her that I suggested all this. It’s kind of mortifying when somebody sets you up, you know?”
“Uh, tell me about it.”
“Oh! I mean for women. Sometimes.” Elinor is faltering. “Anyway, she’s really cute and athletic. Besides, what do you have to lose? Worst case, you get a little extra work, tutoring.”
“Right,” Roger says. “What does a loser have to lose?”
“Roger! You, my friend, are not a loser.”
“Cleaning houses? Going on blind dates?” Roger tosses his napkin on the table in disgust. “I need to finish my graduate school application.”
“You can. You will. Try not to worry so much. You’re young.”
Roger stands, carrying his plate to the sink. “Okay. I’ll call her.” His tone brightens. “She sounds cool. Thanks. But I gotta get back to work now, okay?”
“Okay.” Elinor feels giddy. Is it crazy to imagine this plan actually working? Now she’s like one of those meddling Greek gods, who always have something mischievous up their sleeves for the hapless mortals in The Iliad and The Aeneid—a pie in the face at every turn.
15
Screw Ted. Gina is tired of thinking about him all the time. She hasn’t been able to stop herself, but she will. Somehow. Whenever she thinks of Ted she’ll think of something else. That’s how you break bad habits—with replacements. Instead of missing Ted, she’ll brainstorm how she might start her own business as a personal trainer and dietitian consultant, going into people’s homes. What about health insurance? She’ll carry a little pad and write down ideas and questions such as this.
She leans in the doorway to Toby’s room, exasperated. When Ted was in the picture, Toby kept the place neat—for a boy—and did his homework and chores. Now he has let everything go. The room looks like it’s been blown to bits by a hurricane. Dirty clothes, belts, and sneakers are strewn with all kinds of other junk—CDs, books, comic books, a half-built LEGO spaceship, the inner workings of a dismembered computer, a half-strung guitar (where’d that come from?). The Styrofoam solar system that used to hang from the ceiling lies tangled on the floor, with one planet crushed. The desk is piled with dirty dishes—bowls caked with cereal and milk, glasses with gunk glued to the bottoms.
Gina can’t do anything to persuade Toby to clean up this room. She has asked, nagged, and yelled. She tried a motivational approach, clapping her hands as though at a pep rally. “Let’s work on it together for just thirty minutes,” she cheered, setting the kitchen timer and placing it on Toby’s dresser. “Then we’ll order pizza.” Toby rolled his eyes. He worked with her, but he was so cranky and slow they made little progress.
Last week Gina took away Toby’s “screen time,” telling him he couldn’t watch TV, use the computer, or play with his Game Boy until he cleaned for half an hour. Toby shrugged and retreated to his room, burying his head in his book on medieval knights.
When Gina was in elementary school, her class took a bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Her favorite section had been the Egyptian collection—the majestic sphinxes and scarabs. But all the boys loved the giant towering atrium crammed with life-size knights and horses clad in armor. Remembering the museum exhibit at work one day, Gina came up with a plan: She and Toby could go to New York City. They didn’t need Ted. They’d fly east and stay for a weekend and go see the armor and eat giant slabs of cheesecake at the Carnegie Deli. When she told Toby her idea at dinner that night, his eyes widened and he clicked his tongue in his mouth, clearly growing excited. But finally he frowned and shunned the trip. “Boring,” he said, rolling his eyes and kicking the table.
“No, not boring,” Gina repli
ed. “The real thing is much better than pictures in a book. But if you want to turn down a fun adventure just to spite me, fine.”
Just chip away at it, she tells herself now, peering into her son’s room. She’s determined to get the disaster cleaned up before Toby gets home from school. As she steps over the threshold, she immediately slips on a CD and twists her knee. A startling cracking noise is followed by a burning pain. She rights herself, picks up the CD, limps to the desk, and begins a stack. The pain in her knee makes her eyes water until the room is blurry. “To heck with you!” she shouts at the room. She’s tired of always trying to make Toby happy. “To heck with Ted!” Forever trying to convince him to love her. It’s like running for office. Like she’s got one of those dumb little signs in her front yard: VOTE FOR GINA! I CAN BE YOUR MOTHER! I CAN BE YOUR LOVER! CHOOSE ME! LOVE ME! “Fuck them,” she shouts, stomping on Jupiter. The Styrofoam pops and crunches under her sneaker. Ha. There, she swore. Just like all the other grown-ups. Maybe her Goody Two-shoes, clean-language cheerfulness is a curse. Hi! I’m Gina! Walk all over me!
She shovels dirty clothes into the hamper, not caring when a few CDs tumble in. The room has a rank sour-milk, dirty-sock smell that makes her gag slightly. On some days, she can’t even persuade Toby to take a shower.
“Do you want to be the smelly kid?” she asked him one morning as he was leaving for school. It was mean to say this, but she could not get through to him.
“Yeah! I want to be the smelly kid with no dad!” he screamed.
“One, you have a father,” she told him, trying to be firm and upbeat at the same time. “Two, lots of kids in your class have divorced parents. I’m sorry that’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean you have to be miserable and make us both miserable.”
But they are both miserable. And Gina is at a loss. She drags the hamper through the debris out into the hall. She gazes up at the white ceiling in the hall, which she often does when she needs to collect her energy. Sometimes you just need a blank slate for a moment. But when Gina looks back into the room, she doesn’t feel any more prepared to tackle it. If she could just get everything into one pile. Yes: one pile. She heads for the garage.
She still owns paraphernalia from country life in Maine, where she met Toby’s father: a shop vac, a small tool chest, and a leaf blower. She’s always been fairly handy. Her father, who died of lung cancer when she was twenty, had been a general contractor, and he took her to work with him on Saturdays when she was a kid, letting her hand him tools and even squeeze caulk out of the gun. In high school, Gina still went on jobs with her dad, and he paid her. They ate lunch sitting at a slab of plywood between two sawhorses in someone’s garage, peeling oranges and eggs and reading their horoscopes from the newspaper. To this day, Gina loves the smell of hardware stores and the tool department at Sears—the metallic odors of copper, aluminum, and stainless steel, the muskiness of wood floors. Hardware stores smell like Saturday, like her father. Like everything she loves about men.
She locates the Yard Pro super turbo blower/shredder/vacuum and drags it from a bottom shelf. It didn’t seem like a strange thing to buy back in Maine. She was more independent there, relying mostly on herself for happiness. Or maybe she’d just never really been in love before she met Ted. She grabs the tube attachment for the blower and an orange extension cord and heads back to Toby’s room. It would take hours to pick through all of his junk, so she’ll just blow it into one corner and make him sort through it all.
Clumps of dust under the desk make Gina sneeze as she reaches to plug in the extension cord. The machine is heavier than she remembers. She should have found her headphones. As soon as she switches it on, her ears crackle from the shriek and her arms shake from the vibration. She nudges the speed control button down to 125 miles an hour, the lowest setting, and works in sweeping motions from the door of the room toward the opposite corner. Papers fly up and smack against the window screens as though trying to escape. When she lifts the blower to push down the papers (stupid!), a screen pops out and falls into the bushes outside. Gina’s stomach cramps with laughter and she has to bend her knees not to drop the blower. This isn’t funny, but it is funny. She should blow Toby’s junk out the dang window!
When is the last time she laughed? When she was with Ted. But it wasn’t Ted that made her laugh, it was Toby. Ted made Toby laugh and Toby made her laugh. It wasn’t her imagination, things were better when Ted was with them.
A significant pile is gathering in one corner of the room. Sweatpants, swim trunks, computer game boxes, candy wrappers, school papers, dirty socks, clean socks—who can tell the difference? The heavier things, like books and sneakers, are resistant to the blower, so she kicks them along, pleased with her progress. But Ted was never really with them, she thinks. That was the problem. How foolish of her to believe that he was, that he would stay. A half glass of Coke tips over, brown syrupy soda drizzling into the carpet. Gina changes directions and points the blower at a spiral notebook. A flurry of pages flaps by. As she moves the blower away she sees the words Dear Dad in Toby’s small square handwriting. She turns off the blower and picks up the notebook. Dear Dad, It’s not so bad living with Mom now. Did you know, she is really pretty and popular? I mean popular with guys and popular at her work. Everybody wants her to be there trainer. Gina presses the notebook to her chest, wondering exactly what Toby’s agenda is here—to get his father to reconcile with her even though he’s already married? I like California because September is still like summer. It’s hot enough to swim in the pool still and . . . And nothing. The letter ends there. Gina tears out the page, folds it, and pushes it into her pocket. She looks down at the blower. There’s an 800 number for customer assistance on a big yellow sticker. She’d like to call and ask how she’s supposed to raise this boy of hers.
“Hey! What the hell?” Gina looks up to see Toby standing in the doorway. He’s wearing his big surfer shorts, a black T-shirt, and orange Converse high-tops without socks. “What are you doing?” His breath is shallow and quick.
“Making a pile for you, that’s what. You can go through it after you finish your homework.” Gina tries to remain calm. “What would you like for a snack?”
Toby throws his backpack against his desk. “I have no screens! Get out of my room!”
“Toby, I’ve asked you nicely a dozen times to clean up this—”
“I don’t want to clean up my room because I hate it. I hate it here!”
Gina crosses her arms over her chest. “Right, it’s so awful here, where you have your own room and your own TV and a swimming pool practically to yourself and we eat out at least once a week.” Gina digs her hand into her pocket. “You wrote to your dad that you like it here.” She pulls out the page of notepaper, unfolds it, and points to Toby’s letter.
“That’s when Dr. Mackey was my tutor. Hey! You read my stuff.”
Gina drops the page on Toby’s desk. “You hate it here? You hate me? Fine. I’m calling your father and Cruella and telling them you’re on your way.” That’s it. She gives up. She pushes aside a pair of jeans on the chair at Toby’s desk, so she can sit at his computer. The keyboard keys are coated with dust and crumbs and sesame seeds from a bagel. She types in expedia.com and then Bangor, Maine.
“What are you doing?” Toby asks.
“I’m buying you a plane ticket.” Don’t threaten your child with consequences you have no intention of following through on, she hears her parenting book chide. Children will call your bluff. But maybe Gina should buy Toby a ticket to Maine.
“Don’t.” Gina is surprised by the panic in Toby’s voice as she skims through flights. “Don’t touch my computer,” he hollers. “Get your own computer! Dad bought that for me.” He storms at her in a whirl, swatting his arms.
Gina lifts her hands from the keyboard and folds them in her lap. “Fine. I’ll buy the ticket on the telephone.” There’s no harm in making a reservation, she figures. You have twenty-four hours before you actually have to
purchase the ticket.
She leaves the room, slamming the door behind her. Once again, she has sunken to Toby’s level. The letter, the fear in Toby’s voice. She doesn’t understand. When you get right down to it, people don’t want just love. They want tough love, complicated love, messy love. Clean up your room! Do ten more reps! Meet me behind the gym. She doesn’t get it. Why do people make life so much harder than it needs to be? Suddenly the roar of the leaf blower fills the house, followed by the sound of breaking glass and Toby’s laughter. Gina turns back to her son’s room.
16
The waiting room at the ob-gyn’s office is Elinor and Ted’s Ellis Island. They’ve crossed over from the land of infertility to the land of pregnancy. Elinor squeezes her clipboard of updated information in one hand and Ted’s fingers in the other.
“Ow!” Ted yelps.
“Sorry!” She’d been nervously rolling and kneading his fingers in her palm. She loosens her grip, taking comfort in the warm dryness of his hand.
Women in various stages of pregnancy fan themselves in the too-warm room. A toddler wails and his mother roots through a diaper bag, producing string cheese. Ted is the only husband. Elinor feels wimpy for bringing him. For everyone here, pregnancy is routine. A woman yawns. Boring even. But Ted wanted to come. He’s never met Elinor’s OB, Dr. Kolcheck, and, since Elinor’s nearly through her first trimester, today they’re going to discuss the amnio. Ted flips through Parenthood magazine, pausing over a shaded box showing the merits of whole apples versus apple juice versus apple cider. Elinor touches her stomach. She feels better since she’s gone off the progesterone. Now it’s just her and the baby along with folic acid and Mother Nature. When she wakes in the morning, she’s no longer crushed by nausea and fatigue.