A few months later, my life reached total nirvana. I was pregnant. Oops.
‘We agreed we’d wait,’ Alec said, visibly annoyed and upset when I told him the news. ‘I was supposed to get my PhD first. Having a kid now messes everything up.’
Sure, it was sooner than we’d planned. Was the timing great? Not for him, but for me it was perfect. The road of life was littered with surprises. Alec needed to get over it. He would, eventually.
He stood by the window with his back to me processing the baby news.
‘I can’t do this right now,’ he said. ‘It’s too soon. We just got married.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ I said fiercely. ‘I’m not having an abortion.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that. I’m just upset.’
‘You’ll be a great dad. We’ll make it work, you’ll see,’ I said, putting my arms around him.
After a few seconds, he turned around and hugged me, and I knew the angry moment had passed and everything was going to be alright.
‘I guess I don’t have much choice,’ he said, finally smiling. Then he gave me a big kiss. All was forgiven. We were going to have a baby, and our lives would be incredible.
The day my son, Jack, was born was even better than my wedding day. My whole family came to the hospital to meet my new little angel. I finally had what I’d always longed for, my very own baby.
‘I want you to be his godmother, Erin,’ I said when my sister and I were finally alone in my hospital room. ‘Promise me, if I die young, you’ll watch out for Jack?’
‘Stop being so morbid,’ Erin said, making a face and rolling her eyes. ‘You just had a baby, and you’re talking about dying? Seriously, Quinn?’
I laughed and let go of the negative thoughts that had been with me all day. Erin always knew how to snap me out of a mood. She was right; this was a time for joy. Happiness is fleeting, you have to grab it and savor it, whenever you can.
A few months after the baby arrived, everything changed again. Alec came home with news that turned my world upside down.
‘Pack your bags, Quinnie,’ he said with a big grin. ‘Your big deal husband just accepted an adjunct professor position at Pondfield College. It’s right outside of Rochester.’ He smiled proudly while puffing out his chest. ‘I’m on my way to becoming a History professor. Now that my masters is done, I can go for my doctorate over at the University of Rochester while I’m teaching at Pondfield. It’s my dream come true. Isn’t this great? We’re on our way.’
While I was happy about his job offer, the school was six hours away from where we currently lived, and everyone we knew. Alec had been trying to land a teaching job for a while, but he’d promised he’d only apply to schools in the NY metro area so we could stay close to our family and friends. In my opinion, six hours from New Jersey didn’t qualify as close.
Now that I think about it, there’s another commitment you didn’t keep, Alec.
I didn’t want to move to Rochester. The schools there were crappy, everyone had Lyme disease, it was freaking cold. I didn’t know anyone up there. I stared at him, tears pooling in my eyes.
‘Don’t look at me that way, Quinn. Everything is going to be great,’ he said. ‘The college is even going to give us free housing for three months. Think how much money we’ll be able to put away. We can save up for a house. I start in four weeks.’
We stared at each other in silence for a minute, each subscribing to the notion that whoever spoke first lost.
‘How about “congratulations, Alec”?’ he finally said.
I was incredulous. Did I have no say whatsoever in my future? Alec had decided for both of us and expected me to blindly follow him like a trained seal. A lump formed in my throat when it occurred to me that my son wouldn’t know his grandparents.
‘You promised you’d only take a job near New York or in New Jersey,’ I said.
‘Hey, remember when you told me you were pregnant?’ said Alec with a look of superiority on his face. I stared at him, not knowing where he was headed and not wanting to open that can of worms.
‘I know it’s not what we planned, Alec, but we’ll be fine,’ he said, mimicking me. ‘I got through that little change of plans, you’ll get through this.’
He must have seen the look of quiet desperation on my face and changed his tactics. His smug expression faded away and was replaced with a look of empathy. He walked over, wrapped his arms around me and gave me a reassuring hug.
‘It’s only temporary, honey,’ he said softly, looking into my wet eyes. ‘We’re young. Try to be flexible. This move will pay off for us down the road, you’ll see. I need a year or two under my belt, I’ll finish my PhD and then we can move back to a school in New Jersey. Maybe I’ll even teach at Princeton one day. I’m smart enough for Princeton, don’t you think? That would be cool. Professor Alec Roberts of Princeton University.’
I smiled back at him but on the inside, I was freaking out. I convinced myself that the move was only for a little while and soon we’d be back near my family and friends, before I had my next baby.
While I made peace with our move north, my parents were a harder sell. Mom cried when I told her. She loved being a grandma and had become a permanent fixture in our apartment from the day Jack came home from the hospital.
‘I’ll never see you or my grandson if you move that far away,’ she said, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘He won’t know I’m his grandmother.’
‘Mom, you’re over-dramatizing. It’s only for a year. Alec needs this teaching job, they’re hard to come by. He guaranteed me, in about twelve months, we’ll be back,’ I said.
When I told my father, he looked sad and shook his head. It killed me.
‘Eighteen months, max, Daddy,’ I said emphatically. ‘Alec swore to me. You can visit us, and Jack will still be a baby by the time we get back. I promise.’
Chapter 25
While he wasn’t ready to be a father, Alec rose to the occasion. He handled the new development like he did everything else: methodically. His biggest worry was whether his wife would look the same after she’d had a baby. Some women started blowing up right after the first kid and kept going. He hoped Quinn wasn’t one of those and decided he’d have to watch what she ate to prevent a problem.
They were just getting into a regular routine with the new baby when Quinn announced she was pregnant again.
‘How the hell do you get pregnant when you’re on the pill?’ Alec demanded, his voice getting louder. ‘It’s supposed to be ninety-nine percent effective.’
‘I don’t know,’ Quinn said, looking away. ‘I guess I’m in that fertile one percent.’
‘The pill didn’t work twice? You think I’m stupid? It’s statistically impossible,’ he snarled.
At twenty-four, he’d now have three other people to take care of, and he didn’t like it. This was not his plan and he resented his wife for saddling him with all the responsibility. Most of his friends were still living the freewheeling single life in New York City and here he was with a wife and two kids.
By the time Hannah was born, they had settled in up near Rochester and Quinn fully embraced motherhood. She stopped dressing the way she used to. Make-up only came out on special occasions, and slinky dresses and short skirts were replaced with ‘mom clothes’ and sweatpants. Alec found it impossible to see his beautiful wife under layers of oversized clothing and encouraged her to dress differently.
‘You still have a great figure, why don’t you show it off?’ he’d say. What good was it, he thought, to have a gorgeous wife when she was covered up in sweats or in her ratty old bathrobe with baby food stains on it? Did she think he found that attractive? He didn’t marry that. He married a knockout and what he ended up with was a hausfrau. This wasn’t the deal he thought he’d made.
‘You need to take more time with your appearance,’ he said. ‘This is not a one-way street. You have an obligation to keep yourself looking good for your husband. I take care of
myself for you. Spend more time with your clothes, hair and make-up. You should paint your nails.’
Quinn looked at him unconvinced, saying she didn’t care about all that stupid stuff.
‘I have two little kids who need me,’ she said. ‘I don’t have time to waste getting dressed up every day. I’d rather do things with our children.’
‘Yeah, well, what about me?’
‘I’m a mom now,’ she said, not paying attention to his complaints, ‘not a contestant in a beauty pageant.’
But that was what he wanted. He thought he had married Miss America. If Quinn hadn’t started looking like shit, he rationalized, he would never have looked elsewhere. She forced his hand. At least the college girls put on a little lipstick.
As time passed, Alec was surprised his wife changed the way she did. He grew resentful and decided she had misrepresented herself. She wasn’t the perfect princess she had projected to the world. She trapped him with babies and lies. That’s what forced him to seek other options, he told himself. There were loads of flirty girls on the UR campus looking for extra help, and he was more than happy to provide it.
Chapter 26
QUINN
Alec’s promise to return to New Jersey was never kept. My daughter, Hannah, was born after an emergency C-section and whenever I brought up moving back to Jersey or closer to my parents, Alec shut me down.
‘You’re being selfish,’ he’d say, his voice bristling. ‘I’m doing the best I can to take care of this whole family. How about a little support instead of complaints for a change?’
‘We have two kids,’ she said.
‘Whatever. I have to make money to support all of us. Right now, that means we stay in Rochester. You got a better idea?’
Was I being selfish? I didn’t think so. I was taking care of two babies and a house, and he had promised it would only be for a year or two. I tried to sort everything out in my mind. Alec loved me and just wanted the best for me, check. He worked hard to take care of all of us, check. I didn’t mean to find fault with him. He was my husband, and I loved him. Didn’t I?
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to smooth things over. ‘I am grateful, and I know you work hard. I miss my family and friends, that’s all.’
‘We’ll move back right after I become a full professor at UR and chair the History Department,’ he said, warming up. ‘Once I get to that level, I’ll be able to earn a lot more money and things will be easier for us.’
The following year, with a little financial help from my parents, we put a down payment on a three-bedroom house on a leafy street in the center of Avon, a small suburb of Rochester. It was exciting to have our own home and move out of the cramped apartment we had been renting, but I knew once we bought real estate, the move back to New Jersey was further away. At least he promised we would always spend Christmas with my family in Cranbury, no matter what.
We hardly ever saw Alec’s family. They were polite but reserved, not warm and noisy like mine. My father-in-law, George, was demanding and liked things his way, which required Alec’s mother to acquiesce on everything in order to keep the peace. Once in a while, I’d see a little of Alec’s father in my husband, and it scared me. I didn’t want to end up like my mother-in-law.
Then the strangest thing happened. Alec’s parents, who rarely visited, announced they were moving up to Avon from New Jersey to live near us. I was stunned. His parents had never taken that much of an interest in us before. If it had been my parents moving to Avon, I would have been doing cartwheels. My husband didn’t care at all. I thought having my in-laws nearby would mean we’d have a few extra hands to help with the kids. Alec and I might be able to get out once in a while for dinner or a movie.
A few months later, Alec’s parents moved to Avon. I guess the joke was on me. All those years they lived two miles from us, and the only time they ever watched our kids was when we were in a jam and literally begged. I thought they moved near us so they could be close to their grandkids. What I think now is they moved to Avon so we could take care of them as they got older. What was wrong with that picture? Everything. I read them all wrong. His parents never had my back. Not once.
Chapter 27
When she was four or five, Hannah convinced herself that her mother was a princess and her father, a prince. She was pretty sure it was true.
Her father called her his ‘little pumpkin’ and they’d go on adventures together, just the two of them. He’d often take her with him to the supermarket. Hoisted up on his shoulders, Hannah would point to things she wanted, items her mother would never buy. When they’d get home and unpack the groceries and her mother questioned all the junk food, Dad would wink at his daughter and pretend to be surprised to see all the cookies and chips in their bags. It was their little secret. Those shopping trips with her father were happy memories for Hannah. So was the summer her father taught her all about photography. He showed her which lenses to use and how to set up a shot. He taught her how to work with light and once in a while he even let her use one of his good cameras. He was nice then.
When her parents would go out for the night, Hannah loved watching her mother get ready; putting on make-up and fixing her hair. Quinn would sit at her vanity table with a glass of white wine and slowly apply different magical potions out of tubes and jars. Eyeshadow, lipstick, liner, mascara. With each stroke, her mother became more beautiful. Sometimes, she would let Hannah sit in her chair, and she’d apply lipstick to her daughter. Then she’d style Hannah’s hair and fasten it with one of her faux-diamond clips. The back of Hannah’s neck would tingle as her mother brushed and she wondered if was going to be beautiful like her mom.
Her mother taught Hannah to play the ukulele and how to cook. The two of them often baked cookies and cakes, and her mother showed her the proper way to knead bread and roll out homemade pasta.
By the time she was ten, Hannah had learned to make about fifteen different meals and started cooking the family dinner once a week. Whenever Hannah cooked, her mother called her ‘zee little chef’, doing a terrible French accent that would always make her kids laugh.
As the kids moved into their early teens, their father was rarely home, always over at UR with his precious students, even on weekends. Sometimes, when their mother knew their father was going to be away, she’d plan an overnight trip and take Hannah and Jack camping. It didn’t cost much, and the kids loved it.
The three of them would drive up to the mountains, pitch their tent and her mother would light a fire and play her ukulele. The three of them would sing songs, toast marshmallows and dance around the flames before crawling into their sleeping bags. Those were happy times, and their mother was alright then.
Later, everything got dark and scary, and Hannah wound up cooking almost every night because there was no one else to do it.
Chapter 28
QUINN
For the longest time, I was lonely in Avon. I had my kids and our dog, but Alec was gone most of the time, always over at the college. He had his own social network at the university, and I wasn’t part of it. I didn’t really want to be, anyway.
Occasionally, he invited me to some official college event to honor a colleague or some other pomp and circumstance university bullshit. He’d be all up in my face for weeks leading up to the date. He wanted to know exactly what I was going to wear and insisted I get my hair done the day of the event. Before we’d leave the house, he’d inspect me from head to toe suggesting different jewelry or another shade of lipstick, like he was some expert on women’s beauty products. My style was simple and conservative, but he always pushed me to look sexy. Tighter clothes, bigger earrings, higher heels. I complied to keep the peace. It wasn’t really me, but it made him happy and got him off my back. Eventually, I started dressing that way all the time. It was easier than arguing and he’d smile more.
At some point, he started coming with me when I went clothes shopping under the guise of spending more time with me. He said he enjoyed he
lping me pick things out.
‘Look at it this way, I’m another pair of critical eyes,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep you from making a fashion mistake. Like a girlfriend.’
I interpreted his interest in my wardrobe as a sign of his love. I figured he must love me an awful lot if he cared so much about what I wore. We’d enter a store, and he’d pick out all the dresses, shirts and pants for me. Then I’d model each item for his approval. He’d say, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘I like it, but it’s too big’ or ‘you look like an old lady’ or ‘that makes you look fat’. If I got upset, he’d say he was ‘just trying to help me look good’. I always felt terrible after one of our little shopping excursions.
By the time Jack entered kindergarten, I knew our family was staying in upstate New York for a while. We owned a house and Alec was now chairman of the History Department, just like he had planned. His new responsibilities came with more money and financially, things had gotten more comfortable for us. I wasn’t miserable.
I threw myself into being a great mom and wife. I took care of the house, grew fresh vegetables in my garden and cooked my family healthy meals every day of the week. Most importantly, I spent a lot of time with my kids.
When Jack was in first grade, he signed up for intramural soccer. There were two practices after school during the week and games on Saturday mornings. Alec often taught Saturday seminars, so I was usually solo at Jack’s games and practices with my daughter in tow.
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