Once in a Lifetime

by Bliss, Harper

  On weekends when Troy was with his dad and the weather was nice, I’d take a case file to the park, and I’d read it but never attentively because I could never keep my eyes off Jodie when she was engrossed in a book and she’d suck her bottom lip into her mouth without knowing she was doing it, because she was lost in the story, and she was totally relaxed, and I could almost physically feel the happiness we shared.

  She was my soul mate.

  When I break from the kiss with Karen I want to answer her question with those words, but that’s just not something you say to a person you’re courting. I may enjoy inflicting pain in the confines of the bedroom, but I’m not cruel in other aspects of my life.

  “Let’s sit,” Karen says and tugs me toward a bench lining the path. She’s so tiny she can pull her feet up onto the bench with her and still sit comfortably. “I guess I’m just trying to understand what made Jodie so special.”

  She hasn’t finished quizzing me just yet. But how can I possibly describe to her that it was everything about Jodie that made her the perfect match for me? Her kindness. Her fighting spirit. Her big, big heart. Her green eyes, and how they could sparkle when I introduced her to a new, unexpected activity after dark. The kind of mother she was to Troy. The way she folded a tea towel just so. How an upturned corner of the living room rug could drive her nearly mad. The softness of her shoulder when she leaned into me after a long day at work, looking for the sort of comfort I was convinced only I could give her. Her long-standing crush on L.A. Law’s Amanda Donohue.

  I sigh, hopefully indicating that I don’t like where this conversation is going.

  Karen turns to me, her arms folded around her tucked-in knees. “I don’t mean to give you the third degree. I guess I just want to gauge if you’re ready for this. I’m not interested in a casual sex partner. I want more, and I think you do, too.”

  “I do.” I nod to emphasize my point.

  “Sorry to be so lesbian about it.”

  “I like the fact that you’re such a lez.” I cover one of Karen’s hands with mine.

  “I like many other things about you.” Karen slants her head to the right and bats her lashes.

  “Come closer.” I swat her knees away and she unfolds them so she can shuffle toward me. I grab her by the back of the head and kiss her, so as to stop the thought flitting through the back of my mind: Karen will never be Jodie.

  Our lips meet again and again and I focus on the fact that she doesn’t need to be Jodie. Nobody else can and will ever be Jodie to me ever again. This is Karen, whom I’m very fond of, and who turns me on, and that, frankly, is much more than anything I’ve felt since I left New York.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “What are you thinking?” Amy asks.

  Her question jolts me. Have I told her about how Leigh used to ask me that? If I did, I don’t remember, but I have been drinking more than I should of late, and sometimes I wake up not remembering exactly what I’ve said the night before.

  “Nothing,” I reply. Above us, boys’ feet stomp the floor. In a room adjoining the living room, Rosie’s sleeping in a bed Amy bought for her especially, so she could nap at her house. The plan is for me and my children to go home after she wakes up. It’s what we always do on a Sunday evening. “Just daydreaming.”

  I wouldn’t call this a quiet Sunday afternoon. Amy’s had to go upstairs twice to break up a quarrel between her two boys. They seem on edge today, but they’re teenagers, so that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Troy’s been up there with them for a few hours and I presume he’s doing all right. Rosie refused to go down for the longest time for her afternoon nap, so Amy played with her until Rosie’s stubbornness gave way to extreme fatigue and she as good as fell asleep while maneuvering her toy chicken around the floor.

  “You seem troubled,” Amy continues. “Is it work?”

  I’m glad Amy is not the type of person to ask too many direct questions. She could have inquired about when I’m finally going to take steps to move in with her, but I think we can both do with the peace and quiet of avoiding that dangerously loaded topic right now.

  “I could use a longer weekend.” I glance at Amy, who’s sitting by the window, the light catching in her hair.

  “Couldn’t we all?” She opens her arms wide. “Come here.”

  I scoot over to her and lie down, putting my head on her upper thigh. When she starts stroking my hair, running her fingers through it and lightly massaging my scalp, I’m brusquely reminded of how Leigh used to do the exact same thing to me.

  Since Amy has asked me to move in with her, and I reluctantly agreed—more in spirit than in action, so far—tension has grown between us. Unspoken, because neither one of us is very keen to address it, but it’s there. In unguarded sighs, in phone calls cut short, and in these precious moments of quiet that we have, which we don’t want to ruin by discussing our living arrangements.

  When Leigh raked her fingers through my hair, whether it happened after sex or not, I felt every caress shoot through me as though it was her love for me itself making physical contact with my skin. The biggest tragedy of Leigh and I breaking up was that, before we couldn’t get past our clashing aspirations in life, we hardly ever fought. We had nothing to quarrel about. The ease and pure exhilaration of being with her is what kept me from starting the much-needed discussion about having more children much sooner and in a more serious manner.

  When Leigh and I danced around a subject, it didn’t feel like it does now with Amy. I happily avoided it because I had Leigh Sterling by my side. Leigh, who, when I took her to Gerald’s house in The Hamptons for the first time, recited a self-written poem for me on the beach. Leigh, who drew our initials in the snow with a stick on the sidewalk outside of our building, and who, I knew, would do anything for me, except the one thing that I wanted so badly.

  When I did bring it up in a serious conversation for the first time, I tried very hard to not bombard her with it.

  “Troy adores you,” I said after she’d put him to bed one night.

  “Likewise.” She fell onto the sofa right next to me—Leigh would never sit at the other end of a sofa if I was in it. I could listen to her for hours on end about how she believed Troy was so smart for his age, and so incredibly sweet.

  “I’ve always wanted two.” My heartbeat picked up speed.

  “You’ve said.” For once, Leigh came to lie with her head in my lap. She stretched out on her back and stared up at me.

  “I’m not getting any younger.”

  “You are getting hotter, however.” She smiled and I knew what she was trying to do so I ignored her remark.

  “I’m serious, Leigh.” I trailed my fingertips through her gel-slicked hair, getting stuck there as well.

  “I know you are, sweetie.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think you do.”

  “I love Troy to bits.”

  “I’m not talking about Troy. I’m talking about Troy’s potential sister or brother.”

  “Look, Jodes, if this is a real, burning desire inside of you, we need to address it. But not after nine on a Monday evening. I’m not dismissing you, but give me some time to think about it.”

  Troy was ten years old by then. I couldn’t allow myself to wait any longer, whether Leigh agreed to it or not.

  Now, with my head in Amy’s lap, when I try to remember how our civil, quietly spoken conversations turned into full-blown arguments about who exactly was being the most selfish, I fail to pinpoint the exact time. It happened in stages. One discussion ended with a snide remark. The following one was halted abruptly by a few words said in an accusing tone. But, from the very beginning—from that time she lay with her head in my lap looking up at me—I’d been able to sense that we’d never see eye to eye on the subject.

  “Are you thinking about her?” Amy asks. When feeling insecure, it’s easy to give in to paranoia, I conclude, so I don’t reply to Amy’s question in a harsh tone.

  “No, babe. I’m not th
inking about anything in particular.” Keeping the peace is high on my agenda. I don’t want any more fights. I just want to lie here with Amy and enjoy a few more minutes of quiet.

  Then, even before I hear it, I see the baby monitor light up green. Rosie’s awake. This is how most conversations between Amy and me end. Kudos to her for not making a big deal about that. I count my blessings and get up to fetch my daughter. She’ll be hungry now. Amy will feed her—she claims it’s important for bonding, and who am I to argue with that?

  After Rosie’s been changed and fed, I call for Troy. Getting two children and their belongings in a taxi requires my full attention—lest I forget the frog Rosie sleeps with—and my goodbye to Amy is quick and almost methodical.

  Sitting in the backseat of a taxi driving away from Amy’s house in Brooklyn doesn’t sting me nearly as much as it should.

  Not the way it stung me when, in the beginning of our relationship, before Leigh had moved in, she would leave my place on Sunday evening to go back to hers, do laundry, and get ready for the work week, and all I wanted the second the door closed behind her, was for her to come back. To break all protocol and just move in, because I already knew that she belonged with me, and nowhere else.

  Shortly after Leigh joined Schmidt & Burke, I came down with a massive flu and was bed-ridden for days. Luckily, Troy was at his dad’s and he managed to avoid our germ-filled apartment.

  I spent the first two days in a fever-induced half-sleep, not very aware of my surroundings. The third day when I ventured out of the bedroom in the middle of the afternoon, I found Leigh hunched over a stack of papers at the dining table.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. It was the first time since falling ill that I’d seen the time and I knew it was only three o’clock in the afternoon.

  “What are you doing up?” Leigh dropped her pen and scanned my face.

  “My back is sore from lying down for the past forty-eight hours.”

  “Come here.” Leigh pushed her chair back. “I’ll massage it for you.”

  “Seriously, Leigh. Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I’m working from home until you’re better.” She gestured with her fingers for me to come to her. “Making you chicken soup and all that.” Leigh was as far removed from a staying-home soup-making kind of person as I’d ever encountered in my life. “Are you feeling better?” She cocked her head. “I should let Troy know. He’ll want to see you. We’ve both been worried.” She reached for the cell phone she’d recently bought. She and Troy were constantly texting back and forth, leaving me entirely out of the loop.

  “I think I might be hungry,” I said, not expecting her to have actually made any soup. But perhaps she’d gone to the corner store and got a can.

  Leigh rose and walked over to me. I was still standing in the same spot. She curved her arms around me, not caring that I’d spent the past two days in bed sweating out a fever. “I called your mother and got her chicken soup recipe. I made the stock from scratch and everything.”

  “Am I stuck in the most absurd fever dream?” I asked, my head resting on her shoulder. “Who are you and what have you done to Leigh Sterling?”

  “I know I don’t contribute much to this household in the way of cooking, Jodes, but I step up when I need to.” She pulled me closer to her. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.”

  “I’ll have to be sick more often,” I joked, but just having my hot cheek pressed against her shoulder was making me feel better by the second.

  “Why don’t you sit.” She started walking me to the couch. “I’ll get you a bowl of soup and text Troy. I’m sure Gerald will bring him over after school if he asks.”

  “Next you’ll be telling me you and my ex have become best friends while I was fighting off the flu.”

  “Very funny,” Leigh shouted from the kitchen.

  Later, after a few more bowls of chicken soup, which I suspected my mother had made and brought over all the way from Connecticut, Troy arrived and the three of us sat cozily on the sofa, Troy perched against me on my left, and Leigh on my right. Despite not feeling very healthy yet, the combination of starting to convalesce, Leigh’s chicken soup, and the fact that she’d worked from home the past three days—her biggest love declaration to date—made a different sort of delirium course through me. The two biggest loves of my life sat by my side while I was ill, when I needed them most, and I wondered if I’d ever been happier, and what could possibly top my sentiments of that moment.

  The next day, Leigh left for work, having already stretched her option to not go into the office too far. When she closed the door behind her and left me on my own, I counted every hour until she came home. Throughout the day I felt much worse than I had the evening before when she and Troy had been with me, and it was as though I could, as of that moment, physically assess what love felt like.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I never see you,” Karen says. “We’ve been dating for six months but it feels more like six weeks based on the amount of time we’ve actually spent together.”

  I’d been so passionate about Karen in the beginning. She couldn’t have been more perfect. We shared the same kinky proclivities in the bedroom, and she was free as a bird. No exes hanging around. Fully secure in her lesbian status. No children and no desire to have any. A dentist with a flourishing practice. On paper, it should work.

  “We both work too much. I know.”

  “No, Leigh. I work normal hours. You work insane hours.” We’re in her apartment in Nob Hill. When I rang the bell half an hour earlier—having knocked off work much sooner than I normally would have on a Tuesday—my head had been filled with the things I was going to do to her. How her pert little mouth would pout, and how the skin of her bottom would color pink under my touch. But she pushed me away as soon as I arrived and sat me down in the sofa for ‘a much-needed conversation’.

  “I have no choice. You know that. The offer of a partnership could come at any time. I can’t start slacking now.”

  “That’s what you have to say?” The side of her mouth twitches a little when she gets angry. I never noticed before. “Well, here’s what I have to say.” She expels a dramatic sigh. “I don’t want to be with someone who rings my bell late at night for a booty call, and is up and gone again before I even open my eyes in the morning. We have no life together, Leigh.”

  “We have Sundays,” I try, because even on weekends I spend many Saturdays catching up on cases in my home office. But I’m the firm’s top litigator in San Francisco. I spend a lot of my time in court and juniors and paralegals can’t do all my prep work for me.

  Karen shakes her head. “You think you’re so important.”

  I’m starting to feel under attack. “This is only temporary. We met at a bad time for me work-wise, that’s all.”

  “Here’s the order of importance of things in your life according to me. Work comes first, of course. Then you. And only then do I come into play. You can deny it all you want with your silver tongue and… Bambi eyes. But it won’t work. I know what I feel.”

  I’m a bit taken aback by her accusation that I put myself before her and already arguments start stirring in my brain, but if I turn this into a proper fight, I’m not sure we can bounce back from that. I could take the other route, the only one we’ve tried and tested successfully. I could back her into a corner—literally—and fuck our problems away. But I doubt that will work with the mood Karen’s in.

  “You’re right,” I hear myself say. “I’ve been a selfish workaholic.” I’ve only become so consumed with work since I moved here. Things were different in New York. Jodie made a lot of accusations toward the end, but she never blamed me for working too much. If anything, she spent too much time after hours worrying about the people she had in her care. “How about we set aside one night a week as a steady date night?” As the words come out of my mouth, I realize I’m signing the death sentence of our very young affair.

  “One night a week
?” Karen wrings her hands together. “Do you even hear yourself?”

  It would be such a pity to lose Karen. I haven’t invested enough of myself—and my time—in ‘us’ to be too heart-broken if it were to end, but she has saved me from doing a lot of things I don’t want to do any more. Like bar crawling and one-night stands, and waking up alone on Sunday morning. I decide to fight for her.

  “I’m sorry.” I slap myself on the chest in dramatic mea culpa fashion, only to realize I’m being ridiculous. I don’t want to end up hurting her more in the long run. We’re very fond of each other, and the fact that she’s demanding more of my time can only mean she has strong feelings for me. I also don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep, because she was right about one thing: my work does come first. I haven’t worked my butt off for the past three years to lose sight of the prize now. That would surely make us both miserable, and not be conducive to romantic dinners in Sausalito and picnics with a view of the bridge. “I’m not going to lie, Karen. My work is important. I’m about to make partner, you know that. I have no choice but to put in the hours.”

  “At what cost, though? Have you asked yourself that?”

  I know it’s costing me her. Not the biggest price I ever paid. It hurts nonetheless. “If we’d met a year later…” I start.

  “Save it. I know your type. Narcissistic to the bone. Think the world stops spinning if you work a few hours less a week. Total disregard for any balance in your life… and for the people who care about you.” She chews the inside of her lip for a second. “I’m done, Leigh. When I’m with someone, I want to come first.”

  This reminds me of one of the perpetually returning arguments Jodie and I engaged in. Her telling me that Troy would always come first. Me replying that I had no trouble with that, that I understood, but what would my place be in the order of importance if she had another child?