“Nah, too small. He’s okay.”
Still, there are plenty of bigger beads strewn on the floor around Lucy, plus some coins, hair elastics, a Super Ball. Lucy’s room is a death trap. What if he’d decided to suck on a quarter? What if one of the larger orange beads had looked particularly tasty to him? What if I’d gotten here too late? What if Linus were lying on the floor, not breathing, lips blue?
If Bob could read my mind, which he probably could, he’d tell me not to go there. He’d tell me to stop imagining the worst and to relax. Everyone’s fine. All kids put things in their mouths that they shouldn’t. They eat paint chips and crayons and swallow dirt and pebbles and all kinds of things we don’t even know about. They even climb stairs unattended. Kids are tough, he’d say. They survive.
But I know differently. I don’t have to imagine the worst to go there. I can remember it. Sometimes kids survive. And sometimes they don’t.
Being the highly superstitious, God-fearing, slightly obsessive-compulsive, type A perfectionist that I am, with the bead in my fist, I knock on the wooden bedpost, thank God for keeping him safe, and blame his sister.
“Lucy, this room is a disaster. You need to pick up all of these beads.”
“But I’m making a necklace,” she whines.
“Here, I’ll help you, Goose,” says Bob, now on his knees and gathering beads. “Why don’t you pick out one of your already-made necklaces for today? Then you can come downstairs with me and Linus.”
“Charlie hasn’t dressed or eaten yet,” I say, agreeing to the routine, passing the parenting baton over to Bob.
AFTER A QUICK SHOWER, I stand naked in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom and assess myself as I slather Lubriderm over my arms and legs.
N, Needs improvement.
I’m still about fifteen pounds over my pre-Linus weight, which was, if I have to be honest, ten pounds over my pre-Charlie weight. I grab a handful of the loose and puckered bread dough that used to be my taut belly and trace the rust-colored line that runs unfaded from a few inches above my belly button down to my pubic hair. I continue down to the pads of flesh cushioning my hip bones, which migrated sideways to make room for Linus, my biggest baby, leaving me with wider hips and a drawer full of pants that won’t button.
The gym I belong to could more accurately be called my favorite charity. I never go. I really should cancel my membership instead of essentially donating a hundred dollars to them every month. There’s also the gym equipment in the basement, positioned like statues, collecting dust: the elliptical machine, the Bowflex, and the rower Bob bought me for Christmas when I was eight months pregnant (was he insane?). I pass these hulking pieces of equipment every time I do the laundry, which with three kids, is often. I always walk by them at a quick clip, without looking at them, as if we’ve had some sort of emotionally charged fight, and I’m giving them the cold shoulder. It works. They never bother me.
I rub the remaining Lubriderm into my hands.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, I think, knowing that is my tendency.
Linus is only nine months old. The phrase “nine months up, nine months down” from The Girlfriends’ Guide to Getting Your Groove Back pops into my head. The author assumes I have time for things like manicures and shopping and trunk shows and that I have made my groove a priority. It’s not that I don’t want my groove back. It’s on my list. It’s just unfortunately way at the bottom where I can barely see it.
Before I get dressed, I pause for one last appraisal. My fair skin is covered with freckles, courtesy of my Scottish mother. When I was a girl, I used to connect the dots with a pen to create constellations and tattoos. My favorite used to be the perfect five-point star my freckles outline on my left thigh. But that was back in the ’80s, before I knew about sunscreen, back when I and all of my friends toted bottles of baby oil with us to the beach, quite literally sautéing ourselves in the sun. Now every doctor and the media are all saying that my freckles are age spots and signs of sun damage.
I hide most of the damage with a white camisole and my black Elie Tahari power suit. In all the right ways, I feel like a man in this suit. Perfect for the kind of day I’m facing. I towel dry my hair and work an emulsified gob of Shine-and-Hold into it. Auburn and thick and wavy to my shoulders, there is nothing masculine about my hair. I may be fat and freckled and dressed like a man, but I love my pretty hair.
After a perfunctory application of foundation, blush, eye-liner, and mascara, I head downstairs and reenter the fray. Lucy is now planted in one of the beanbag chairs singing along with Dora the Explorer, and Linus is penned in the Pack ’n Play next to her, sucking on the head of a plastic school bus driver. In the kitchen, Bob sits alone at the table, drinking coffee from his Harvard mug and reading the Wall Street Journal.
“Where’s Charlie?” I ask.
“Getting dressed.”
“Did he eat?”
“Cereal and juice.”
How does he do it? Bob in charge of All Three Kids is an entirely different show than Sarah in Charge of All Three Kids. With Bob, they’re happily willing to be independent little task-masters, content to leave him in peace until he comes to them with an offer of a new activity. With me, I have all the magnetism of a favorite rock star without the bodyguards. They’re on me. A typical example: Linus is under my feet, whining, begging to be picked up, while Lucy hollers, “Mom, I need help!” from another room, while Charlie asks me forty-seven hundred relentless questions about what happens to trash.
I grab my coffee mug and sit opposite Bob for our morning meeting. I take a sip. It’s cold. Whatever.
“Did you see the note from Charlie’s teacher?” I ask.
“No, what?”
“His teacher wants to talk to us about his report card.”
“Good, I want to know what’s going on.”
He reaches into his messenger bag and pulls out his iPhone.
“You think she can meet with us before school?” he asks.
I grab my laptop off the counter and sit back down.
“I could do early on Wednesday and Friday, possibly Thursday if I move something,” I say.
“I can do Thursday. You have her email?”
“Yup.”
I shoot an email to Ms. Gavin.
“You going to his game today?” he asks.
“No, are you?”
“I probably won’t be back in time, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I can’t, my day’s packed.”
“Okay. I just wish one of us could be there to see him.”
“Me, too, honey.”
I believe he’s being entirely sincere, but I can’t help taking his words “I just wish one of us” and translating them in my brain into “I think you.” And while the gears of my internal language interpreter are greased, it transforms “could” to “should.” the majority of women in Welmont with children Charlie’s age never miss a soccer game and don’t earn special good mother status for being there. This is simply what good mothers do. These same mothers herald it an exceptional event if any of the dads leave the office early to catch a game. The fathers cheering on the sidelines are upheld as great dads. Fathers who miss the games are working. Mothers who miss the games, like me, are bad mothers.
A standard dose of maternal guilt sinks to the bottom of the cold coffee and Lucky Charms soup in my stomach. Not exactly the Breakfast of Champions.
“Abby can stay and watch him,” I say, reassuring myself.
Abby is our nanny. She started working for us when Charlie was twelve weeks old, when my maternity leave ended. We were beyond lucky to get her when we did. Abby was twenty-two then, right out of college with a degree in psychology, and lived just ten minutes away in Newton. She’s smart, conscientious, has tons of energy, and loves our kids.
Before Charlie and Lucy were old enough for preschool, Abby watched them from 7:30 in the morning until 6:30 at night, Monday through Friday. She changed their diapers, rocked them to
sleep, read them stories, wiped their tears, taught them games and songs, bathed and fed them. She grocery shopped and cleaned the house. She became an essential member of our family. I can’t imagine our life without her. In fact, if I had to choose between keeping Bob and keeping Abby, there have been times when it would’ve been difficult to pick Bob.
This past spring, Abby told us the unthinkable. She would be leaving us to attend Boston College for her master’s in childhood education. We were stunned and panicked. We couldn’t lose her. So we negotiated a deal. With Charlie and Lucy already in school for seven hours a day, we were willing to put Linus in day care in September for the same hours. That would mean we’d need her only from 3:00 to 6:30, and we’d pay for part of her tuition.
Sure, we could’ve combed through Craigslist and found someone who would probably be good and would definitely be cheaper. Or we could’ve hired someone through a find-a-nanny agency. But Abby already knows our kids. She knows their routines, their moods, their favorite things. She knows how to handle Charlie’s inquisitions, Lucy’s tantrums, and she knows to never, never forget to bring Bunny wherever Linus goes. And she already loves them. How much is too much to pay for knowing without any doubt that your kids are well loved when you can’t be there?
Charlie gallops into the kitchen, out of breath.
“Where are my Pokémon cards?”
“Charlie, you’re still in your pajamas. Forget about Pokémon. Go get dressed,” I say.
“But I need my Pokémon cards.”
“Pants, shirt, shoes, and shut off your light,” I say.
Charlie throws his head back in frustration but surrenders and barrels back upstairs to his room.
“Any house stuff?” Bob asks.
“Will you call the garage door guy this time?”
“Yup, he’s on my list.”
Our automatic door opener is one of the newer models, and it has a seeing-eye sensor that prevents it from closing if it observes something under the door, like a small child. It’s a great safety feature in theory, but it only seems to drive us crazy. One of the kids, and we suspect Charlie, keeps knocking into the eye on the right side so it’s not level with and can’t see the left side. And when it gets cross-eyed, it won’t work at all.
When we were kids, my brother Nate and I used to play Indiana Jones with our automatic garage door. One of us would hit the button on the remote, and then we would see who had the guts to wait the longest before running and rolling under the closing door. No safety features in those days. That garage door opener operated completely blind. It would’ve taken all the fun out of the game if the risk of getting crushed to death, or at least painfully squished, had been removed. Nate was great at it, diving and rolling at the last possible second. God, I still miss him.
Charlie tears into the kitchen wearing a tee-shirt, shorts, and no shoes.
“Mom, what if the earth runs out of gravity?”
“What did I tell you to put on?”
No answer.
“It’s November, you need pants and a long-sleeve shirt and shoes,” I say.
I check my watch. 7:15. He’s still standing there, I think waiting for an answer about gravity.
“Go!”
“Come on, kiddo, let’s find something better,” says Bob, and they walk off together.
I wrangle the other two kids into hats and coats, send out a few more emails, buckle Linus into his bucket car seat, listen to my work voicemail, pack my own bag, leave a note for Abby about the soccer game, down the rest of the cold coffee, and finally meet Bob and a suitably dressed Charlie at the front door.
“Ready?” asks Bob, facing me.
We both cock our fists back into position.
“Ready.”
Today is Friday. Bob drops the kids at school and day care on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I take them on Mondays and Wednesdays. Fridays are up for grabs. Unless one of us makes an indisputable case for needing to get to work before school starts, we shoot for it. Scissors cut paper. Paper covers rock. Rock smashes scissors. We both take the shoot very seriously. Winning is huge. Driving straight to work with no kids in the car is heaven.
“One, two, threeeee, shoot!”
Bob hammers his closed fist on top of my peace sign and grins, victorious. He wins significantly more times than he loses.
“Lucky bastard.”
“It’s all skill, babe. Have a great day,” he says.
“You, too.”
We kiss good-bye. It’s our typical morning good-bye kiss. A quick peck. A well-intentioned habit. I look down and notice Lucy’s round, blue eyes paying close attention. I flash to studying my own parents kissing when I was little. They kissed each other hello and good-bye and good night like I would have kissed one of my aunts, and it terribly disappointed me. There was no drama to it at all. I promised myself that when I got married someday, I would have kisses that meant something. Kisses that would make me weak in the knees. Kisses that would embarrass the kids. Kisses like Han Solo kissing Princess Leia. I never saw my father kiss my mother like that. What was the point of it? I never got it.
Now I get it. We aren’t living in some George Lucas block-buster adventure. Our morning kiss good-bye isn’t romantic, and it certainly isn’t sexual. It’s a routine kiss, but I’m glad we do it. It does mean something. It’s enough. And it’s all we have time for.
CHAPTER 2
Mom, can I have a piece?” asks Lucy.
“Sure, honey, what piece do you want?”
“Can I have your eyes?”
“You can have one.”
I pull my left eyeball out of the socket. It feels a little like a deviled egg, but warmer. Lucy snatches it from my hand and skips away, bouncing it on the ground like a Super Ball as she goes.
“Be careful with it; I need that back!”
I am sitting at the kitchen table, staring with my one eye at the hundreds of numbers on my Excel spreadsheet. I click the cursor onto an empty cell and input more data. As I’m typing, my eye is lured to something just above and beyond my focus on the laptop screen. My father, dressed in his full fireman’s uniform, is sitting in the chair opposite me.
“Hi, Sarah.”
“Jeez, Dad, you scared me to death.”
“I need you to give me your appendix.”
“No, it’s mine.”
“Sarah, don’t talk back. I need it.”
“No one needs their appendix, Dad. You didn’t need a new one.”
“Then why did it kill me?”
I look down at my computer. A PowerPoint presentation slide appears on the screen. I read it.
Reasons Why Your Father’s Appendix Ruptured
• He had a bad stomachache for two days and did nothing about it but drink a little Pepto-Bismol and some whiskey.
• He shrugged off the intense nausea and gave no consideration to his low fever.
• You were away at college, your mother was in her bedroom, and he didn’t call the station or 911.
• It became inflamed and infected with poison.
• Like any living thing that is disregarded for too long, it eventually couldn’t take it anymore and did whatever had to be done to get his attention.
I look up at my father. He’s still waiting for an answer.
“Because you ignored what you were feeling.”
“I may be dead, but I’m still your father. Give me your appendix.”
“It has no purpose. You’re better off without it.”
“Exactly.”
He stares at me unflinching, transmitting his intention into my consciousness like a radio signal through my one eye.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me,” I say.
“We’re all worried about you, Sarah.”
“I’m fine. I just have to finish this report.”
I look down at the screen, and the numbers are gone.
“Shit!”
I look up, and my father is gone.
“Shit!”
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Charlie runs into the kitchen.
“You said ‘shit’!” he announces, delighted to be telling on me, even if he’s only telling on me to me.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I say, keeping my one eye glued to the computer screen, frantically searching for some way to retrieve all that data. I have to finish this report.
“That’s a swear word.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I say, clicking everything clickable.
I don’t look up at him and wish he would take the hint. He never does.
“Mom, you know how I’m not good at listening?”
“Yes. You drive me crazy.”
“Can I have your ears?”
“You can have one.”
“I want both.”
“One.”
“Both, I want both!”
“Fine!”
I twist my ears off my head and throw them like a pair of dice across the table. Charlie fastens them over his own like earphones and cocks his head as if he’s trying to listen for something off in the distance. He smiles, satisfied. I try to hear it, too, but then remember that I have no ears. He says something and runs away.
“Hey, my earrings!”
But he’s already out of sight. I return to my computer screen. At least he’s gone, and I can be sure to concentrate now in quiet.
The front door opens. Bob is standing on the other side of the table, a blend of sadness and disgust absorbing into his eyes as he looks at me. He says something.
“I can’t hear you, honey. I gave Charlie my ears.”
He says something again.
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
He drops his messenger bag and kneels down next to me. He flips my computer screen shut and grabs me by the shoulders, almost hurting me.
He yells at me. I still can’t hear him, but I know he’s yelling from the urgency in his eyes and the blue veins popping in his neck. He yells what he’s trying to tell me in slow motion so I can read his lips.
“Way up?”
I look up at the ceiling.
“I don’t get it.”