by Kate Rorick
Daisy threw her hands into the air. “Are you INSANE? You think it was my dream to move to your hometown? To be three thousand miles away from everything I know and love? To be sneered at by moms at preschool and unemployable because I don’t dress like a Daughter of the American Revolution?”
God, it felt so good to finally let all of this out, it was practically spewing out like hot lava and volcanic ash.
But all that lava singed her husband.
Robbie looked stricken. “So, what? You have one foot out the door? I thought you liked it here.”
“I miss everything about Los Angeles. The weather, my friends, my work, the atmosphere of creativity . . . But mostly, I miss myself. I miss feeling confident. I miss feeling like I’m not a freak. And I tried to fit in here—you know I tried. Wear the clothes, hide my tattoos—but that just made me feel worse. Like I was hiding out here even more.”
Robbie took off his Red Sox hat to run his hand through his hair. He looked as if she had slapped him—and she had, metaphorically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you felt this way. I mean—I knew it was going to be an adjustment, but . . . I thought you were happy.”
“No, you needed me to be happy, so that’s how you saw me.”
“Well . . . at least one of us was.”
He said it so forlornly, Daisy found herself sitting down next to him, drawing his eyes to hers.
“Are you happy?” she asked.
“Yes . . .” Then, “Sometimes. Mostly I’m . . . disappointed, I guess.”
“How so?”
He rubbed his hand over his face, blowing out a long sigh. “I think I expected to pick up where I left off. That my friends would be here. My family. But everyone is busy, has kids, jobs. Jamie can’t even make it to a football game. I just . . . sometimes feel alone here.”
“You were barely twenty-two when you left. No responsibilities.”
“Yeah, it turns out being an adult sucks no matter where you are,” he said with a grimace. “I miss my friends from LA. I know you miss yours. And work is . . . not what I had hoped.”
“I thought Joe Sr. went with your idea. Adding in a mini competition for the other contractors?”
“He did. But Jo-Jo is like the king of passive aggression. I’m out on a limb on my own, and I don’t have long relationships with any of the staff . . . they all have worked with him for a decade or more. Every day it’s eggshells. If the competition idea flops, I don’t think I’m back for next season. And then we’re really screwed.”
“We’re not screwed,” Daisy said. “You’d find other work. They’re not the only show produced in Boston.”
“They almost are.” Then, he cocked his head to one side. “Boston? You wouldn’t want to go back to LA?”
“I don’t think we can,” Daisy said after a moment.
“You mean because of the house?” he asked. “We don’t have to—”
“No . . . not just because of the house,” she admitted. “If you had asked me a couple of months ago, I would’ve told you that I was secretly hoping you would want to.”
“You were?”
She nodded. Then, she thought about everything that had happened since then. She had made her first real mom friend. And she had resolved to be herself, living out loud. Just making that decision had brought her so much relief, all the hard puritan edges of Needleton seemed to lose their pointiness.
“But now,” she continued, “we came to Needleton, we set ourselves on this path. I think we’d regret it if we gave up. Especially for Carrie—she loves it here. She loves Grandpa Bob, loves the school. I think . . . this is the right place for her to grow up.”
“It is a good place to grow up,” Robbie said. “I should know. But that doesn’t mean Los Angeles is bad. We . . . we might have judged it too harshly. It’s where you basically came into being.”
“No, it’s not bad. And I am going to work my ass off to make certain my daughter is as weird as she wants to be. Because I am going to be myself here. Tattoos, hair . . . overelaborate celebrations every time a Star Wars movie comes out. And that might mean she doesn’t get invited to some birthday parties—but I can’t exist any other way.”
Robbie leaned over and kissed her. A deep and grateful apology.
“I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you had to be someone else.”
She kissed him back. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you are alone here.”
“So . . . you don’t have one foot out the door?”
“No, you’re stuck with me for the long haul. But,” she said, after another long, lingering kiss, “I need your help—to remind me that it’s okay to be myself. If you ever see me slipping.”
“You got it.”
“I’m just sorry that I had to lose a job to get to this point,” she sighed. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about the down payment.”
“Honestly—I’m not worried about that now,” Robbie said, leaning back with a smile.
“Why?”
He took her hand. “Because I know we’ll figure it out, together.”
Together. Daisy and Rob. With Carrie. In Needleton.
What a wonderful, wonderful place to be.
Little Wonders Preschool March Newsletter
Hello, WONDER-ful parents!
Well, we are MARCHing right along into the year! Soon enough this in-like-a-lion month will be out like a lamb and we will welcome spring! Ha. Wishful thinking. I can’t feel my toes. But while we wait for that first breath of warm weather, don’t forget that we are celebrating Literature Week at the beginning of the month! Parents are encouraged to come in and read to the whole class if you don’t you are shortchanging your children and no it doesn’t count toward your volunteer hours. The highlight of the week is always Dress as Your Favorite Literary Character Day, so we look forward to seeing your little Harry Potters and Alice in Wonderlands! And no, PJ Masks are not literary characters, I don’t care how many books of theirs your kid has. Stick to the rules.
Also, don’t forget St. Patrick’s Day! I know you won’t, this is Massachussetts. Send your kid to school in green clothes, lest they get pinched! Just kidding, we don’t allow pinching. Any kid caught pinching will end up in the calm down corner . . . but green clothes, just in case.
And mark your calendars for the Parent Association meeting on the first Wednesday of the month! The Family Fun Fest is a little over a month away, and we will be handing out assignments for volunteers on a first come, first serve basis! So if you don’t want to be stuck cleaning up the puke behind the cotton candy machine, better show your face at the meeting. Also, our exhausting annoying bitchy clueless indomitable leader, Shanna Stone, has an exciting announcement to make, so attendance is highly recommended!
We will also be addressing the recent contagion that has infected our school. That scourge we no doubt all know and love by now: the word “poopybutt.” We have been assured by Ms. Anna and all of the teachers that this is a normal developmental moment in a child’s vocabulary and expression, and that they all eventually learn insults such as “poopybutt” from other kids. Whatever. If I find out it was your kid who taught my kid “poopybutt” I swear to god I am GOING TO COME FOR YOU.
Ms. Anna and the Tadpole Room’s Ms. Rosie will be on hand at this month’s Parent Association meeting to address parent concerns related to “poopybutt,” and discuss strategies to return our children to a more loving form of self-expression.
It was your kid, wasn’t it, Terry? They’ve got older siblings, learned it from them? I AM GOING TO KILL YOU TERRY.
Together in Parenting!
Suzy Breakman-Kang
Parent Association Secretary
Chapter Seventeen
Everything was fine. Perfectly normal. In fact, Quinn told herself, it was a relief to have things back this way. She just . . . needed to sleep.
Her internal alarm—which usually went off precisely at 5:45 AM—decided that having her wide awake by four and staring
at the wall for two hours was the absolute best use of her time.
This is what she got for abandoning her Parcel Method in fits of imperfection.
Stuart snored lightly, blissfully beside her. Well, not exactly beside her. In their king-size bed a wall of pillows had been erected in the middle. Ostensibly it was because she wanted to read in bed, and didn’t want to disturb his sleep with even her tiny reading light. But really, it was because the strangeness of having him back in their bed had not worn off, even after more than a week of having him home.
The closeness of him, the weight on his side of the mattress, was both foreign and heartbreakingly familiar. After that first night—where they negotiated his returning to not just the house, but to their bed (“It would confuse Ham otherwise” was the argument), she woke up in the middle of the night, and found that she was spooning him, pressing her body up against his.
After that, the pillow wall came into effect.
She felt massive amounts of guilt for it. And then she hated herself for the guilt. And then she felt guilty for hating the guilt. Because honestly, Stuart had done everything right. Absolutely everything, from the moment they’d pulled up to the door, and saw him sitting there, flowers in hand.
“Hey, buddy!” he’d said, as Ham jumped out of the car and ran through melting slush to hug his dad.
“We got Pluto!” Ham had cried.
“You met Pluto? At Disney World?” Stuart had replied.
“No, at the doggy store!”
At that moment, Pluto—who had somehow gotten out of his cage; this dog might have been more than Quinn had bargained for—burst out of the open car door and galloped up to Hamilton on the front steps.
“You got a dog?” Stuart said, his attention turning to Quinn for the first time.
Her heart tripped over itself the second his eyes met hers. It was like a body blow, knocking her back on her heels.
Stuart let go of Ham, whose joy at seeing his father was quickly replaced with the joy of having his dog at home.
“Come on, Pluto! I’ll show you my room!” Ham said. He climbed up the steps and through the front door that had been opened by Gina, who had arranged her life to meet them when they got back.
Gina met Quinn’s eyes, questioning. Quinn nodded, letting her know everything was okay.
“Hamilton!” Gina then cried. “How I missed you! Who is your friend?”
With Hamilton chattering, and Pluto snuffling and woofing, Gina ushered them inside, leaving Quinn and Stuart to freeze their toes off in the melted slush around their feet.
Oh man, Ham and Pluto’s muddy feet were going to destroy her floors.
The fact that such a thought raced through her mind at *this* moment caused a bubble of hysteria to creep up her throat. Dear god, honestly, who cared? She didn’t. Not when Stuart was standing in front of her after two long months.
How many times had she imagined this exact situation since New Year’s? Stuart, on her doorstep, flowers in hand, an intense expression of remorse on his face. It was her favorite falling-asleep fantasy, when she was trying to convince herself everything would be okay. That he would come home, that he would beg for her forgiveness, and that they would have another baby within the year and small sick children would only need surgery during regular business hours and he’d be home for dinner every night.
She never told anyone about this fantasy, not even Daisy. Because she never believed it would happen.
But there he was, his romance novel face and his spin class–trained body and those hands holding flowers. Those hands. That had held hers in front of an altar at the First Episcopal Church five years ago. Those hands that liked to lace hers, pinning her down, when he was inside her.
There he was.
And here she was, travel weary, her hair was a mess, and wearing leggings and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt under her open jacket.
And she’d had absolutely no clue as to how to proceed.
“Gina wouldn’t let me inside,” he said.
Well, Gina was getting a raise.
“You look . . . nice,” he tried.
That was a reasonable start. Very soft, cordial, a way to ease into the eggshell conversation they were no doubt about to have.
But Quinn—Quinn was done with eggshells.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, blunt. A little snort of air blew out her nose when she saw the look on Stuart’s face.
It goes both ways—she could pull the rug out from under him too, she thought.
“I . . . ,” he started, then stopped himself. “You went to Florida.”
“Yes. To see my mother. And Disney World.”
“You . . . willingly saw your mother?” Stuart asked.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes, I did,” she said, putting her chin up in the air. “What about it?”
“Nothing!” Stuart said. “It’s just, she usually drives you crazy.”
“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of unusual things lately.”
“Like getting a dog?”
“Actually, that is perfectly normal. I’ve always wanted a dog.”
“You have?” Stuart asked, his nose wrinkling in distaste. “I didn’t know that.”
“No, because I knew you hated dogs, so I never brought it up.”
“I don’t hate dogs,” he said. “But . . . they do take a lot of work.”
“You’re not the one who’s going to do it, so what do you care?” she challenged.
“I care because you are the one who took on so much stuff that your life basically imploded. And now you want to take on a dog?”
“Okay, so we’re back to blaming me for everything,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Thanks for the flowers, great seeing you, Stuart, I’ll tell Ham you had to go back to work.”
She marched past him, making for the door, but his hand slid gently down her arm and clasped her hand.
Oh, that hand. That touch. It had been so long since he’d touched her.
“I don’t want to fight,” he said, soft.
“Then what do you want?” she breathed.
He licked his lips. “I . . . I didn’t know that you were going to Florida.”
“I called you. A half dozen times.”
“I know.”
“Sent you emails. Texts. Left word with your parents’ household and with Charlene.”
“I know—I just . . . I got busy and I didn’t check my messages. And when I figured out you had taken Ham and left the state, I . . . I freaked out.”
“Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Unlike you, I check my messages.”
It had come after a long day at Epcot. Her heart had leaped when she saw it, because her phone glitched and said it was coming from a Crabbe and Co. number. But it wasn’t Jeremy, or Sutton, or anyone begging her to come back. It was Stuart who left a message. Telling her that he was upset—no, livid—that she took Hamilton to Florida without talking to him first. She could practically hear his gritted teeth on the recording.
But those teeth weren’t gritted anymore.
“I just took him on vacation. We don’t have an official separation agreement, no custody arrangements, so you have no—”
“It wasn’t that,” Stuart said. “I realized . . . I realized I didn’t like not knowing where you were. Not knowing what you were doing.”
“You haven’t known where I was or what I was doing for two months.” Not to mention, she had no idea what he was doing, where he had been. She didn’t even know where he had been living. The doctors’ quarters at the hospital would have been for a night or two, not months. Did he get a sublet? Did he . . . did he stay with someone else? A female someone else?
“I knew you were here,” Stuart was saying. “In Needleton. I knew you were taking care of our son. It shook me to my core—to think that you were out in the world somewhere and I wouldn’t know what you were doing. I realized I never wanted to not know.
“I want to come home.” He sighed. “Nothing make
s sense in my life without you. I can’t find my socks, I don’t know what Hamilton’s doing in school. You’re my home base. I can have the worst day at work, the world can go cockeyed, but as long as you’re here, I know everything is okay.
“I miss you. I love you.” He took a deep breath, stepping into her warmth. “And, I’m sorry.”
He was so . . . there. So warm, smelling so good, so present, and so there. And she’d missed him.
Really, really missed him.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” he said, a hopeful smile breaking across his face. “Okay, I can come home?”
“Okay, you can come inside . . . and we can talk about it.”
As they crossed the threshold, a cacophony greeted them inside. The sound of paws and little feet on hardwood, Gina calling after them both.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Hamilton said, when he saw them. “Pluto went potty on the floor!”
“I’m on it, Ms. Quinn—” came Gina’s voice from the playroom.
Quinn’s eyes darted to Stuart, who was frowning, and looking like he was choking on an “I told you so.” The second he saw Quinn’s eyes though, his expression cleared.
“Really, buddy?” Stuart called back to Hamilton. “Then . . . let’s get Gina some more paper towels.”
So, they’d talked. And talked and talked and talked. And they’d cried (well, Quinn cried) and laughed, and talked some more.
And then they’d had sex.
Really, really, mind-bending sex, full of longing and anger and fighting for control. Quinn had no idea who won—although her orgasms plural put her in the plus column.
But she had a suspicion that the winner was truly Stuart, because from that moment on, he’d be sleeping in their bed. Having breakfast at the kitchen nook, leaving, coming home after work to have dinner with them, and then doing it all again, as if nothing had happened.
But nothing was normal. Nothing felt right. How he managed to snore next to her, sleeping deep, threw her for a loop. There was so much that no longer fit into the spots it used to.
The clock next to her blinked 4:26 AM. She let out a long sigh, and tried to shuffle into a more comfortable position.