by Lisa Beazley
June 5 Cassie,
Adrian was in town all week—a rare occurrence. This is terrible to say, but we’ve gotten so used to him being away that his being here was as disruptive as it was nice. He messed up my whole routine. I eat dinner every night with the kids, and with Rose doing all the cleanup, my evenings are so relaxed. I love playing music and rocking Lu to sleep, then watching Mad Men with River. It’s become my idea of a perfect evening. When Adrian’s here, he comes flying in the door, usually on the phone, just as I’m about to take Lulu to bed, adding this whole frantic energy to our night. He’ll try to read her a story, but a client or his boss will call and he’ll have to excuse himself, leaving me to take over. And then I find myself eating two dinners—one with the kids at six and then one with him at nine, which is not an ideal schedule when it’s swimsuit season year-round. Poor Rose was a wreck about what “sir” was going to have for dinner every night. She hardly knows him, so she’s all nervous when he’s around. And now I have a request for you: more talk about the weather, please. I want to remember what it feels like not to be hot. I miss the seasons so much. It’s actually hard to remember important events, because when you look back on the day, it was hot and you went to the pool. In real life, you can rely on what you were wearing or whether you had to shovel the driveway or buy more sunscreen to set things in time, but here, every day is kind of the same. Did you know that we’re eighty miles from the equator? Lulu and I practically live at the swimming pool, and you should see her go. She loves the water. Speaking of swimsuits, I took Rose shopping for one today. She doesn’t know how to swim, so I’m enrolling her in lessons. Kisses! —Sid PS—If you know anybody at John Deere or Toro, you might let them in on this hot tip: A wealthy nation in Southeast Asia has never heard of you. I’m watching the elderly Chinese gardener cut the grass on the hill outside my condo with scissors. Scissors! Maybe too many people complained about the noise, and since this guy is making only a few bucks a day, they can afford a half-dozen more of them to spend all day snipping the blades of grass like they were bangs. CHAPTER NINE
Out of the blue, my old boss from the magazine e-mailed and offered us tickets to an Alvin Ailey dance performance at Lincoln Center. When I called Wanda to see if she was available, she said we had already booked her for that night. I checked my calendar and discovered it was Leo’s brother Stevie’s fortieth birthday party in Hoboken. Irritated because I really wanted to go to the dance performance, I begrudgingly got to work on an eighties costume for the theme.
On the bright side, I would get to hang out with my sister-in-law Emma. Emma, Stevie’s wife, is British, which makes her more of an outsider than me. She’s giggly and mischievous and hands down the best thing about spending time with the Costas. She keeps a stack of British celebrity gossip magazines in her purse and drinks sparkling wine almost exclusively. No matter what else is going on, we manage to sit down and drink and flip through magazines. Forty-five minutes with her is like a mini vacation. I came into the family only a few months after she did, and we bonded quickly, probably because she clung to me like a life raft in icy shark-infested waters. Which isn’t far from the reality of, say, a lunch with Becky and Alyssa, who, as the wives of Rob and Tony Costa, had formed an early alliance, both being Jersey girls and—either actually or pretending to be—at ease with what Emma and I saw as an unusual family dynamic. Rob Costa the first was killed in a truck accident when Leo was in high school, and Mary had received a large insurance settlement. The trucking company also provided a big payout, which she’d used to buy a house on the Jersey Shore. I have a feeling it was always this way, but Rob Sr.’s absence likely ramped up Mary’s intimate involvement in each of her sons’ lives, perhaps best summed up by this anecdote: A week before our wedding, she pulled me aside and suggested I “powder down there to keep things fresh for the wedding night.” I was unable to look Mary in the eye for weeks afterward. While I eventually surrendered to Mary’s lack of boundaries and built a friendly relationship with her, Emma hadn’t made much progress since those early days. To make matters worse, I think Mary enjoyed keeping her on edge. She made a lot of xenophobic comments, which were mostly based on Wimbledon or the royal family or crumpets, to which Emma would guffaw and say things to only further alienate herself, like, “But I’m from Hounslow!” as if it were proof against the snootiness that Mary couldn’t separate from her accent, which did sound more Dick Van Dyke than Julie Andrews. For all Mary knew, she may as well have been from Timbuktu. Mary had never been out of the tristate area and was wary of anything unfamiliar. Long ago, Emma learned to stop mentioning the summer she’d spent working in Italy, because Mary’s lack of interest could seem downright hostile—especially if the topic was authentic Italian food. I used to think she was intimidated by Emma’s worldliness, but what I think it mostly boils down to is a fear that Emma would take Stevie to live in some far-off land, which, I have to admit, I get. The fact that I’d delivered Mary’s only two grandsons—her prized princes among a gaggle of granddaughters—is the chief reason for our improved relationship. I did suffer some major setbacks, including my decision to keep my own last name when Leo and I married and the awful Easter lunch—late in my pregnancy, at the height of my blood-sugar problem, when I had dared to help myself to a plate of food before fixing one for Leo. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and was feeling light-headed when we arrived at Mary’s house just as she had finished setting out the food. With Leo still in the yard catching up with his brothers, I went straight to the table and filled my plate greedily. When I slumped into the closest chair I could find, and balanced the paper plate of lasagna on my belly, poised to slice into that red-and-white rectangle of goodness, I felt a pair of cold eyes on me. One look at Mary told me that I had broken the natural order of things: Women never eat before all of the men and children are fed. But with my mouth watering and my blood sugar dropping, I felt I had no choice but to continue with plan A. “Leo, sweetheart,” she yelled out of the kitchen window, her eyes still on me. “You must be starved. What can I get for you?” as if he were incapable of figuring out a standard buffet line. There is a unique brand of vulnerability associated with eating food you are not welcome to, especially if you are a woman and currently weigh something in the neighborhood of 170 pounds, and my cheeks burned with shame as I chewed. Slowly, my dizziness subsided, and as I ate, I cycled through the embarrassment all the way to anger, which eventually dulled to annoyance. I was annoyed that Leo wasn’t in the room to defend me, to tell his mom that I hadn’t eaten since seven a.m. and that the doctor said I should be vigilant about my blood-sugar swings. Annoyed at Mary for reducing me to the meek little wife sitting in the corner and annoyed at myself for allowing it to happen. By the time I got up from that chair, I had decided that this whole dynamic was not going to work for me. I wasn’t going to let her push me around, yet I had no interest in bucking her firmly established system. Swimming upstream when it’s not absolutely necessary is a fool’s errand, if you ask me. I vowed to stop behaving like a watered-down version of myself, ramped up my mirror neurons, and found a way to be the most Mary-complementary version of myself I could be. I embraced my role as prep cook in her kitchen, and she even had me over to learn to make sauce. She also taught me lasagna and stuffed shells—“with meat, for when Leo grows out of the vegetarian thing and you can cook nice family meals.” New York June 15 Sidney Sue— It’s Saturday night, we have a babysitter coming later, and Leo and I are headed out to—what else?—spend time with his mother and his brothers. Bleh. What we need is to spend time together, but every second is filled with his obnoxious family. I mean, it’s fine when the kids are involved. I like them to spend time with their cousins. But when they encroach on our kid-free time—ugh. I should go get ready for this party—the theme is eighties, and I have to try to repierce one of my ears (remember how you did it with a needle and a potato the first time—in the eighties!!) so I can wear thes
e awesome plastic earrings I bought for $4 in Union Square. My look is very Desperately Seeking Susan. To be continued . . . Hi again—well, I looked like a prostitute at the party. Seems everyone else went with a preppy tennis-court look. Popped collars, turtlenecks, and argyle, and there I am in my black miniskirt, garish jewelry, bra straps, and black panty hose complete with a run. Needless to say, I drank more than was advisable. I don’t know why Leo didn’t stop me from dressing like that. Of course, he was wearing a bolero tie and puffy pleated pants, so he looked almost as ridiculous as me. Emma, bless her heart, tried to make me feel better and got drunk with me while giggling about the awkward way their friend Carl kept steering his eighteen-month-old daughter away from me. Yes, there was a toddler at the party. They have these friends, Carl and Michelle, nice people, but they bring their kid EVERYWHERE. The rest of us are putting down good money to leave the kids behind, dress like harlots, and say “fuck” with abandon. And there’s Carl, behaving as if we’re at the after-Mass doughnut reception. He does this thing where he narrates his kid’s every move, in a faux-clever, overrehearsed monologue. “Yep, there she goes for the doorknob. Fascinating contraptions, aren’t they?” His poor wife must endure his ridiculous routine every time they go out. It has got to be hard to have sex with someone like that. Speaking of sex, I am having a slow start to the challenge (although compared to Carl, Leo’s looking pretty damn good). But on the way home from the party, Leo and I held hands, which led to kissing, and I think we both assumed we’d pick things up when we got home, but honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d still be in the mood by the time we got home, and—emboldened by my outfit and seven or eight champagnes—I was very much in the mood right there, so I climbed on top of him. Oh Lordy, our livery-cab driver completely freaked. He flipped on the interior lights in the car and yelled, “No sex in my car! No sex!” My miniskirt was pulled up high around my waist and my Pillsbury Doughboy tummy was bulging out of my control-top panty hose. It was about the least sexy sight you can imagine. We played the part of the loudmouth bad kids getting busted. “All right! All right!” I yelled, in my best eighties Madonna voice, shielding my eyes and dismounting Leo. Leo rested his head on the back of the seat and said, “We’re not doing anything, man. Can you turn off the lights?” By the time we got home, as I had predicted, the mood had passed. Leo was asleep by the time I returned from the long session in the bathroom required to rinse off four coats of black eyeliner and mascara. So I’m sitting up writing to you so I can make the morning mail. But wait—I haven’t even covered the evening’s low point. Leo’s sister-in-law Becky, that bitch, suggested (in front of a bunch of people) that I have Joey “tested.” Leo and I were telling some story about him, and she interrupted to say, “Have you thought about having him tested?” Me: For what? Her: Well, perhaps to see if he might be on the spectrum? Me: What spectrum? Her: Autism? Us: Blank stares. Her: It’s just that some of the things you are describing sound a little spectrumy. I mean, don’t get me wrong; sometimes I think I could be more patient with Joey if he had some sort of label or diagnosis. I could tell people that he has “special needs” or whatever you’re supposed to say, and then, instead of looking like a shitty mom who can’t control her kids, I’d get nods of respect or smiles of empathy. But he’s three! I don’t want to dive down a rabbit hole of coping strategies and therapy for kids “on the spectrum” unless we really need to. My pediatrician says he’s probably fine, and I’m going with that. Love you. —Cass That wasn’t my only letter written under the influence, but I really should have had a rule about writing after drinking. It hurts to read that one. I can think of a hundred more diplomatic ways to have said all of that, but the things you say when you think no one is listening are a lot different from the things you would say otherwise. CHAPTER TEN