by Lisa Beazley
June 23 Hey, Cassie,
I have a bad feeling about Adrian’s business trips to Bangkok. I can’t put my finger on it, but every time he comes home, something is off. His smell, his mood, everything is just different. It’s nothing concrete, and I might be paranoid from the “smorgasbord” type stories I’ve heard. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can feel myself looking the other way. Me! Looking the other way! Who am I?? Honestly, I just don’t want to deal with this right now. Love, Sid I immediately knew it was true. Adrian. That ass. Who was he to cheat on Sid? A hundred guys would have given their left arm to be with her. She chose him. He should have spent his life proving himself worthy. There was always something a little off about him. He was supercharismatic yet somehow removed. He’d be all chummy with you, making jokes and elbowing you in the ribs like you were old pals, and then the next time he saw you, you’d expect to pick up where you left off, but he would be distant and quiet. Also, at his only Christmas at Joe and Margie’s, he’d found an excuse to leave the room during “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which didn’t sit right with anyone. Next, deep shame and panic set in. I believe my exact thoughts were, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, shit, shit. I considered waiting for the mail lady to come, but I knew there was no way she’d give me my letter back. My chances were better of having the boys create a diversion and stealing it myself, but involving my children in what is likely a federal offense was just a bit further than I was willing to go. I couldn’t wallow in misery over the letter for long because I had a nasty hangover to contend with and a full day ahead with the boys. Before I had kids, I actually enjoyed the occasional hangover—that is, if I hadn’t done anything too stupid the night before. Because if there’s one way to ruin a perfectly good hangover, it’s by being the kind of person who is sure she embarrassed herself a thousand times over. The other way is to have twin three-year-old boys to care for. I still remember my first real postbaby hangover when the boys were nearly one. Leo and I had gone to a friend’s holiday party and I had what I thought was a modest amount of champagne, but it had been nearly two years since I’d had more than one glass of anything. The next day, I updated my Facebook status to say, “Add hangovers to the long list of things my kids have ruined.” My mom friends added things like, “Museums!” “Bookstores,” “Sex,” and “My tits” in the comments. We all had a good giggle over it, and Monica turned it into a funny poem and one of her highest-rated blog posts ever. Around noon, while I sipped my fourth Vitaminwater at Bleecker Playground, Monica called. “Details!!” she shouted when I answered with a flat, “Hey.” “Oh, Lord, no. Can’t do it.” “Well, I know there was dancing. What else?” “How do you know there was dancing?” For a horrifying moment I pictured myself as a YouTube sensation: Drunk mom on a dance floor thinks she’s still got it. “You texted me, ‘Add to the list: dancing.’ I take it Cassie didn’t get her groove back.” “Oh God, oh God, don’t make me relive it. No. No groove back. And why can’t someone tell Rhonda to clean the goddamn bathroom?” “Hand your phone to Rhonda. I’ll talk to her,” Monica said. “You’re sweet. But she’s gone now.” I’d had to visit the playground’s toilet more than once that morning. Rhonda was the maintenance woman at the park responsible for emptying the garbage and cleaning the bathroom. She was cheerful and always singing, knew Quinn and Joey by name (and could tell them apart), and was generally difficult not to love. She disappeared into the bathroom with a bucket of cleaning supplies once a day, but I have no idea what she did in there because the bathroom is always so hideously disgusting that I often let my boys just pee through the fence into the landscaping surrounding the playground rather than enter that snuff-film set. Some days—today not being one of them—I thought about asking Rhonda to watch my kids and give me ten minutes with her mop and bleach. “Wait, how are the kids?” I thought to ask. “Not great. We’re headed to the doctor in ten. Do you want me to bring you something on the way? Advil? A milk shake, maybe?” “That’s all right, hon. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said, opting not to tell her about Jake. After the boys were in bed that night, I forced myself to open the computer and reread my last letter. It was as bad as I remembered and probably on a truck to JFK right now. I’d write her an apology letter tomorrow, I decided. Maybe it could get there the same day as my other letter, or the day after. It didn’t help my guilt over the whole matter that if it weren’t for me, Sid would never have even met Adrian. It all happened when she came to visit after the twins were born. Her plan was to be there for the main event—she’d helped me develop a birth plan and had even walked me through several hypnobirthing sessions over the phone. I wanted her by my side, coaching me to envision myself floating on a strawberry cloud or whatever it was. But I went into labor six weeks early, and by the time Sid made the drive in from Ohio, we were a family of four. Quinn came out first, but Joey did some kind of flip at the last minute, requiring an emergency C-section. There was no hypno anything, but there were plenty of drugs. Sid lived on our couch for those first two crazy, beautiful, terrifying weeks of the boys’ lives. One evening, Leo’s good friend Grant Eshel stopped by with a gift for the babies and a bottle of champagne. He had a friend with him—Adrian—which was weird. It’s kind of an intimate moment, visiting new babies, not one you bring a stranger to. But Grant is no Ann Landers, and apparently he’d just run into Adrian on our block and had dragged him up. Adrian handled it well, politely congratulating us and hanging back while Grant met the babies. They invited Leo to join them for dinner. He looked at me, unsure. “Go, go. Please,” I said. Then, to my surprise, Adrian spoke up and said, “And what about you, Sidney? Are you hungry?” “Oh, Cassie and I will just order in,” she said. “But it was nice meeting you.” And then he turned to me. “Does your nursemaid ever get out?” I laughed uncomfortably. Sid was busy cooing at one of the boys, and we both stopped to look at her. He looked back at me with a questioning smile, and I said, “Actually, I wouldn’t mind some alone time with the babies. If you’re hungry, why don’t you go, Sid? Bring me something, okay?” She looked even more unsure than Leo did. “Really—I want you guys to go. Have fun.” When Adrian tells the story, he fell in love with her at first sight and worked like hell to get her to fall in love with him. In other words, the standard narrative as far as Sid’s relationships go. He said she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and she wasn’t even trying. To be honest, I’d questioned whether he’d ever been around a girl who wasn’t “trying” and wondered if that in itself was a red flag. He said that when he saw her holding the baby, he felt for the first time that he wanted to be a father. It sounded sweet enough, if not completely original. Sid admitted to liking him and was glad to have him visit her in Ohio, but stopped short of calling him her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Adrian courted the whole family, which no doubt helped his cause. When he sent me flowers and a charming note congratulating us on the twins and apologizing for intruding, I called Sid and gushed about how thoughtful he seemed. He made an ally in River, too, taking him to basketball games and the scary movies that Sid refused to see. His persistence eventually paid off, and she fell for him. Right around the time the twins turned one, he proposed and transferred to his bank’s Columbus office. Moving to Columbus meant he’d had to travel once or twice a quarter to meet with colleagues and clients in Chicago and New York, but Sid never seemed to mind. She was used to being on her own, and she’d mentioned time apart being good for their relationship. His comings and goings played nicely into his penchant for romantic gestures, and he was often surprising her with lavish gifts and expensive jewelry purchased on his business trips. After the proposal, I made Leo invite Grant over so we could pump him for intel on Adrian. Grant had bland answers for us: “A great guy,” and, “Rich as hell.” He did tell us that Adrian had described Sid as the perfect girl next door: simple and beautiful and kind—the type you can’t find in New York anymore. I’d felt tha
t was nice, but something about it made her seem like a commodity. His use of “simple” made me think that he either got her perfectly, or not at all, and Grant was less than helpful at discerning any nuance in Adrian’s assessment. CHAPTER ELEVEN
We all overslept on the boys’ last day of preschool before summer. It was eight fifteen when Joey placed his warm little hand on my cheek and yelled, “Mommy! Gotta go poop!” I went from deep sleep to full-on mania, which at least spared me that guilty prerousing moment of I need to write Sid that apology letter today. It had been almost two weeks, so chances were she’d read my embarrassing letter already. Coincidentally, I hadn’t received any letters from her during that time, so even though it wasn’t possible that those two letterless weeks had anything to do with my transgressions, it was hard not to feel like I was being punished.
“Go, go, go,” I whispered to him as I chased him into the bathroom. The vaguely sore throat that had been building for the last few days had crossed over to the kind where your whole body shudders with each swallow. I brushed my teeth and did a few extra gargles while he sat on the toilet, singing “The Wheels on the Bus.” Leo poked his head in. “Are you done, bud? Your brother has to poop, too.” “Mmmm. No,” Joey said. “Okay, try to hurry, my man. He’s really gotta go.” Then, frowning at me, “You all right, Cass?” “Throat’s killing me,” I whispered before going in for another gargle. I splashed some warm water on my face and leaned into the shower for a pump of face wash. I was rubbing it into my skin when I felt Quinn’s head butting my hip. “Poop, poop, poop, poop, poooooop!” he hollered. I rinsed and dried my face and mustered the will to use my voice again. “All done, Joey?” “Nope! Still pooping!” “Try to finish up,” I said in a whisper. But it was too late; in one fell swoop, Quinn pulled down his Spider-Man pajama bottoms, crammed his fingers under Joey’s thigh, and held on to the toilet bowl while he squatted down. “Shit! Leo!” I yelled, pain ripping through my throat. “Quinn, what are you doing? Hold it! Joey, hurry up!” I begged. I put my hands under Joey’s arms, planning to move him off of the toilet and into the tub and replace him with Quinn, but my nose told me that it was too late. Indeed, a rather large brown pile of (blessedly solid) feces had appeared on the black-and-white-tiled floor between Quinn’s chubby feet. When I let out an exasperated sigh, Quinn’s lower lip curled and he started to sob. I grabbed him under the arms and lifted him over Joey and into the bathtub. “Look, Mom! It’s like a snake!” yelled Joey. “Sorry, Mommy,” Quinn bawled. “You’re fine. You’re fine,” was all I could mutter. I felt bad for him, but despite what he’d once seen a grown man do into a pizza box on the C train platform, it’s not okay to defecate on the floor, and I wasn’t going to tell him it was. I carefully took his clothes off, set them in the narrow space between the toilet and the tub, and started to hose him down. “Hands!” I barked, holding the bottle of Burt’s Bees shower gel. “No!” Quinn screamed, and shoved his hands under his arms. I lathered my own hands and slid them into his armpits, managing to cover most of his fingers and palms. “All done, Mommy!” yelled Joey from the toilet, as if nothing unusual were happening. “Stay,” I said, and aimed the water flow at Quinn’s butt crack. He was screaming about the water being too cold, but I was almost done and I knew if I moved the temperature a hair in the other direction, it would turn scalding hot, so I’d have to err on the side of freezing. “Leo!” I yelled. My throat was on fire. “Daddy!!!” hollered Joey as he moved to get down from the toilet. “Hang on, Joey, please,” I said. I didn’t want him to make a move before I cleaned up the pile of shit that he would step right into should he attempt to exit the area, which I probably don’t have to tell you is only slightly larger than an airplane bathroom. I wondered if Leo had just up and left. I recalled him mentioning he had to be in Long Island City by nine to do something to a server. Or maybe he had the same sore throat as me and went back to bed. Either scenario made him a jerk, and my resentment was building. Another squealing sound coming from the other room now competed with Quinn’s sobs and Joey’s entreaties. I bundled Quinn in a towel and carried him like a baby into the living room, yelling at Joey to hang tight. From the stove, the teapot rattled angrily and shot white steam onto the wall. Quinn was crying even louder and covering his ears. I dumped him on the couch and ran over to turn off the stove and move the teapot. Quinn calmed down a bit, but Leo was still nowhere to be seen. I silently cursed him and went back to help Joey, who was now standing backward on the toilet seat—one foot on either side of the bowl—straining to see his butt in the mirror above the sink. I grabbed him and placed him in the bathtub, safely isolated from the poo pile, despite his pleas to let him see if there was a red mark on the back of his legs from sitting on the toilet for so long. I wiped him, helped him wash his hands, and then lifted him over the mess and set him down in the hall, asking him if he thought he was fast enough and big enough to get dressed all by himself before I finished cleaning up the bathroom. “How about we race?” I said. “I’m gonna win! I’m gonna win!” he yelled, running toward the bedroom. I took a moment to close my eyes and sigh. The pain was spreading to my ears, and a dull headache was building. I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and went to scoop the poop from the floor but was dismayed to see a little toe-shaped indent on the side of the otherwise symmetrical brown coil. I grabbed a pack of baby wipes from the shelf over the toilet and took off to find the toe in question. Quinn was still lying down wrapped in his towel on the sofa, rolling from side to side and muttering something about the gingerbread man. Joey stood on our bed, struggling to pull his T-shirt over his head—backward and inside out—when I yelled, “Joey! Stop! Sit! Sit down! Let me see your feet!” His feet checked out. Then, with horror, I realized that, of course, it was my toe that had brushed the poop. I was the only one who hadn’t been carried out of the bathroom. I ordered the boys to stay where they were, walked on my heel to the bathroom, washed my foot in the tub, grabbed two towels and threw them over the spots I’d just tracked on the living room rug, and Swiffered the other parts of the floor. Leo came home as I was replacing the Swiffer on its back-of-the-door hook, so the door whacked me in the forehead when he opened it. “What the hell!” I hissed. “‘Hell’ is a not-nice word!” the naked Quinn chirped from the couch. “Oh, sorry about that,” Leo said, rubbing my head. “I just ran down to get you a lemon for your throat. Is the water done?” It was a thoughtful thing to do, I admit, but I had been shooting mental daggers at him for the past ten minutes and was not quite ready to switch gears. I also knew that under the guise of a good deed, he had shot the breeze with Amir, scanned the front pages of the Post and the Times, and smoked half a cigarette. In other words, he’d enjoyed a nice little grown-up moment while I endured a literal shit storm. Leo needed to be out the door in five minutes if he was going to make it to Long Island City on time, so I couldn’t ask him to drop the boys off. He took a two-minute shower, grabbed his travel coffee mug, hugged the boys, and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll probably stop by to take a dump before my meeting at Varick Street,” he said. That did it. “What is wrong with you?” I said, incredulously. “Your wife does not ever need to hear you say ‘take a dump.’ And neither do the boys. This isn’t a flipping frat house. I feel like dying, and my entire morning has centered around poop. I don’t want to hear it!” “I was just telling you in case you were going to be here!” he said, looking at me like I was crazy. “Actually, I will be here,” I said, scrapping my plans to go grocery shopping and to Pilates in favor of a nap. “And I’d rather you didn’t come here to stink up the place.” “Okay, bye,” he said, and left. I walked into the bedroom to grab clothes for Quinn. Joey was fully dressed, in a backward and inside-out T-shirt and a way-too-small pair of sweatpants the exact same shade of gray as his T-shirt. He was pulling a pair of Leo’s socks onto his hands. “Mommy, do you want to die?” he asked me gravely.
“What? What? No!” I snapped. Then I vaguely recalled having spat something along those lines to Leo just ten seconds ago, in addition to a few other ill-advised comments. I sat on the floor next to Joey and pulled him into my lap. “It’s just an expression grown-ups use sometimes when we’re very frustrated. But it was a dumb thing to say. I made a mistake. I don’t want to die and I’m not going to die. Okay?” “What’s an expression?” Ugh. Why is every situation this morning requiring me to speak? “Just words people say when they don’t have the energy to explain how they’re really feeling. Sometimes they sound silly.” “Huh?” he said, lip curling up on one side. “Come on, honey. Take Daddy’s socks off your hands and let’s go eat breakfast.” Normally, when we’re running late, I give them a granola bar for the road, but I couldn’t make myself hurry today. I poured the boys Cheerios and the last of the milk and sliced up a banana and an apple before squeezing the lemon and some honey into my hot water. We sat at our small square table, which was pushed up against the window. The rain fell hard, making plink, plink, plink sounds on the fire escape. I calculated that circle time was well over by that time and they’d be lucky to make it for snack. Walking fast, I hunched over the stroller in an effort to grasp the umbrella and steer the double-wide, which required both hands on a slippery morning at the tail end of rush hour. My umbrella made a perfect dome over my head and shoulders but not much else, so my entire backside was soaked within minutes. I loved that umbrella. It was totally transparent except for a red “Gensler” printed on it, the name of an architecture firm that had sponsored an event I’d attended years ago. The little spokes pointed toward the ground and not out to the sides. With it, I felt superior to the other umbrella-wielding commuters, unable to see properly and unwittingly poking other people in the side of the head, or, worse, taking up way too much space with their planet-sized golf umbrellas, which are my least favorite thing about rainy days in Manhattan. People who use them must think that their absolute dryness is more important than anyone else being able to walk down the same side of the street as them. If everyone had an umbrella like mine, rainy days would be much more civil. On my way into school, another mom was coming out, perfectly coiffed and made-up, in a silk blouse and pencil skirt. I fixated on her spotless four-inch heels as she trotted into a waiting town car. If I’d kept working, that could have been me, I thought. But in my cutoff jeans shorts, marled gray ARMY T-shirt that had belonged to the roommate of my college boyfriend, and a yellow childlike raincoat, it was hard to imagine ever attaining that level of sartorial sophistication. On the bright side, I always felt chic in my black Hunter Wellingtons, although three out of every five women on the street were wearing the exact same pair. After drop-off, I headed north out of habit. Within a few blocks I remembered that I’d meant to go home and nap, not do my weekly Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s run. But our cupboards were nearly bare, so I kept walking, planning to skip Whole Foods and get a couple bags’ worth at Trader Joe’s, then hopefully catch a cab home in time for a hot shower and a quick nap before pickup at noon. I was pushing my little red cart around the meager produce section when my phone in my back pocket started buzzing. Oh shit, I thought. My entire rear end was soaking wet, which meant the phone was, too. I withdrew it and saw the photo of my mother, Rita Sunday, beaming and balancing a boy on each hip. I didn’t want to answer, given the state of my throat, but I was curious to see if my wet phone still worked and was also alarmed that Mom was calling at nine thirty on a Thursday morning. Our weekly Skype sessions, eight a.m. on Saturdays, supplemented by her call to me Sunday nights in the hour after the kids went to bed, were immutable. I couldn’t recall a single time she or I had called each other off schedule. I wondered if she and Sid kept to a similar schedule. With only the teensiest pang of not jealousy so much as sorrow, it struck me that they probably talked on the phone several times a week and didn’t need a rigid schedule to keep in touch. “Mom? What’s wrong?” I answered. “Oh, hi, honey! No, no, nothing’s wrong. I was thinking of you and thought I’d call to check in.” But her voice sounded strained. “Oh, okay. Well, I’m at the store, so . . .” “Are you all right? You don’t sound good.” “Sore throat,” I said, economizing my words. But instead of the expected instructions to make some tea and go to bed, she soldiered on. “So what’s new with you and Leo?” “Uuuh, not much,” I said, girding myself against the pain that erupted each time I spoke or swallowed. “Are you finding time to be together as husband and wife?” “What?” “I mean, it’s important to remember that you aren’t just parents. You are also man and wife.” “Man and wife? What are you talking about?” I said while attempting to steer my cart into the fray at the free-sample counter. I was chilled and starving, and the steaming plastic ramekins of Roasted Corn Tortilla Soup were beckoning me. But the cluster of senior citizens leisurely sipping their soup right there at the sample counter made things difficult. I was not in the mood for this. To check out, I found the end of the line, which snaked around the entire perimeter of the store, and did the rest of my shopping by grabbing whatever I could reach from my place in line. I half listened and tried to do as little talking as possible while reaching for the odd loaf of bread, canister of coffee, and bag of flax chips. Mom yammered on about “date nights” and “keeping him interested,” and then it hit me: Sid must have told her about my letter from the Pig. “Mom, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. I’m in line at the store. I’ll talk to you Sunday, okay?” I wanted to get off the phone before she confronted me about the kiss—or worse, talked about her own affair. Mom had had an affair when I was in the sixth grade. I found out on a Sunday afternoon when Sid was at a friend’s house. I had been napping on the family room couch and awoke when I heard the phone ringing. Dad answered and called to Mom in a clipped voice that her boss was on the phone. She got on the phone and said that yes, she could come in early tomorrow to assist with a root canal. Then Mom and Dad had a brief and barely audible argument about why she was still working for Dr. Shapiro. Apparently, Mom had given her notice but still had a week to go. This was surprising information for a few reasons. I hadn’t known that she had any intention of quitting her job. She liked being a dental hygienist, as far as I knew. She used to come into our classrooms with her giant toothbrush and a set of model teeth and teach proper oral hygiene (brush up and down, not side to side; don’t neglect the gums and tongue; soft bristles, not hard; eat an apple or some cheese before bed if you forget your toothbrush on a sleepover). Furthermore, she needed that job—we were a two-job, one-(used)-car, clearance-rack-shopping family. Then Dad wondered out loud if her boss really needed her help in the morning or if it was just an excuse to see her alone, before the receptionist arrived. I got the shock of my young life when Mom said sharply, “I told you it was over with him.” It’s a line I’d heard dozens of times on Santa Barbara—the soap opera Sid and I faithfully watched, in which the wealthy Capwell family navigated an endless storm of lust and betrayal from their picturesque town on the sea—but not one I ever imagined hearing in my own home. “I told you it was over with him,” was something Gina the slutty villainess said, not my mom. My parents walked out the back door to finish the yard work, and I heard no more. For an hour I remained in the fetal position on the couch, under the crocheted afghan. I remember desperately needing to talk to Sid. But in the time that passed between my shocking discovery and Sid’s arrival home, something shifted in me. I couldn’t tell her what I knew. I didn’t want my sister to hate Mom the way that I did now. I think this was the moment I started to become my own person, to grow away from my sister a bit. I felt very grown-up, protecting Sid from something that would hurt her. This secret became my dark superpower: a source of strength, but also the saddest and most uncomfortable thing I’d ever encountered. I both relished my ownership of it and deplored its very existence. The whole thing was downright Capwell-esque, and I envisioned myself as a character: the strong and stoic sister, my
eyes flickering knowingly each time I caught Dad gazing at Mom with those pathetic puppy-dog eyes. It was a defining phase for me: I was not a frivolous blabbermouth. I was a shrewd and serious player who knew when to keep her mouth shut. I felt that I understood darkness and pain. I got my first period a week later, and instead of telling Mom, I told Sid, who set me up with Kotex and Tampax and a hug. Mom, of course, found out and came to me in a jubilation I could hardly share in. “You’re a woman now!” she said, hugging me. And I thought, Indeed I am. I may not have been (definitely was not) a woman, but it was by keeping that secret that I stopped being a little girl who modeled herself after her big sister. I still admired Sid as much as ever, but now that I’d made a conscious decision to protect her, I was a force in the world, distinct and separate. I became wry and sarcastic. A shade bitter, even. I grew to own my new outlook, taking pride in not seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. I was the Rizzo to Sid’s Sandy, the Laverne to her Shirley. Meanwhile, I daydreamed about sitting Dad down in front of the TV so that he could see how these things work. A woman who says, “I told you it was over with him,” is, in fact, receiving long-stemmed red roses by the dozen that cause her to gaze longingly into space while she replays in her mind the sultry evening they’d spent in a bubble bath only the night before. I wanted him to storm out, to give her an ultimatum, maybe go to her office and threaten to rough up Dr. Shapiro. But the irritation I felt with my father’s meek nature paled in comparison to the indignity of having to think of my parents in a sexual way. The horrifying flashes I’d get of Mom mounting Dr. Shapiro on the very chair in which my family had our teeth cleaned were deeply troubling to me at this tender point in my development. Dr. Shapiro was older—or at least seemed older, with silver hair and deep crow’s-feet. The pictures in his waiting room were all of him partaking in bike races and marathons and rock-climbing adventures. He had perfect sparkly white tombstone teeth, and I wondered which came first, the teeth or the interest in dentistry. Was he so vain that he built a career around his best feature? Or had he had awful teeth his whole life and gone into dentistry to fix them? Either way, I thought he was totally lame. After that Mom took a few months off and then got a part-time job working for another dentist, a female dentist. Dr. Shapiro must have been paying Mom pretty well, because right about this time, Sid and I were told we had been “chosen” to work one day a week each in the church rectory. I think it must have been some kind of work-study program to help pay our tuition. In the four-to-seven-thirty shift on Tuesdays, as a thirteen-year-old, I was tasked with answering the phone, taking money from people who came in to reserve a Mass for someone, and following the day cook’s instructions for preparing dinner. Since no one in our house ever cooked, both Sid and I were completely useless when it came to this last part. Each Wednesday, I’d read the cook’s scrawly, old-fashioned cursive note instructing me to prepare something I’d never eaten. It was mostly a matter of heating a meat loaf or shepherd’s pie, but I was also expected to mash potatoes or assemble a salad. Terms like “relish tray,” and “gravlax” had me on the phone to friends’ mothers every week. The whole thing only fueled my irritation with my own mother. Why does everyone else in our town know what a Betty’s Salad is? Why haven’t we ever once eaten meat loaf? Sid was perplexed when I lashed out about this, and I came close to telling her why we were working there in the first place, but my vision of myself as a Santa Barbara character steadied me, and I kept mum. Eventually, it all came out. Mom and Dad sat us down at the kitchen table one night and explained that they were having trouble with their marriage. They sensed that we had noticed. They wanted to stay married because they loved each other, but marriage was hard and they were working on it. Sid cried and asked a series of invasive questions provoking Mom to confess her affair. I watched, stone-faced, wishing I could make it all stop, to go back to it being my secret. Sid’s emotional reaction and my non-reaction led my mother to sign us up for three sessions of family counseling. No one I’d ever heard of went to therapy, which made the experience all the more strange and embarrassing. I suffered through those awkward meetings saying as little as possible, but Sid and my parents made up for my passivity with copious crying and hugging and sharing. I imagine our therapist felt like a real healer. Despite—or perhaps because of—the early encounter with my parents’ sexuality, I always clammed up like a fourteen-year-old when my mother broached subjects of a carnal nature (which she did quite a lot, unfortunately). She and Sid had teased me about it at Christmastime. “Well, I’m just saying it’s important, is all,” she said after I rolled my eyes at some thinly veiled double entendre she made as we stood in the kitchen sipping wine and putting away dishes. “All right, Mom, we got it,” I said. “Well, I think it’s beautiful,” said Sid. “Thank you, Sid. It is beautiful. And sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s dirty and sometimes it’s . . .” “Jesus!” I yelled, cutting her off. “Listen, Mom, there’s gotta be some kind of Internet chat room for frisky empty nesters. Go tell them about your conquests with my father.” “Oh, come on, Cass!” Sid said. “You know how many of our childhood friends’ parents are still married? Not many. And how many of them are still enjoying a healthy sex life? Probably even less. I say, you go, Mom!” “Thank you, Sid,” Mom said, and then started doing an embarrassing dance around the kitchen, where she kind of rolled her fisted hands at waist level while rocking side to side. I groaned and closed my eyes, while Sid, just to make me squirm, started dancing with her and chanting, “Go, Rita! Go, Rita!” Suffice it to say, I was not cool with my mom calling to talk about sex, and I was even less cool with Sid telling her about my note. I managed to get home by eleven, and I could have taken a thirty – or forty-minute nap but was revved up from that phone call, mad at myself for being mean to Leo this morning, angry with Sid for presumably telling Mom about my kiss with Jake, and trying hard not to think that maybe infidelity is simply in my blood. I unloaded my groceries, washed the breakfast dishes, took a quick shower, spot cleaned and vacuumed the living room rug, forced myself to gargle with salt water, and went to pick up the boys. It was drizzling again, but my favorite umbrella was nowhere to be found. I must have left it in the cab. I purchased a four-dollar number at the bodega and walked with my unspecial black umbrella back to school. As soon as I got there, I was accosted by one of the assistant teachers. “Oh, Cassie, hi. Do you have a minute?” She was a young woman named Breezy, who always seemed completely wonderful with the children but took an imperious tone with the parents. I stepped into the office with her before Joey and Quinn noticed me. Apparently Quinn had a lot of questions about death and had told his friends that his mom wants to die, which forced me into a long explanation of the morning. Once she seemed assured that I was not having suicidal thoughts and sharing them with my three-year-olds, I sheepishly presented her with one of the Trader Joe’s gift cards I’d picked up after seeing the pile of last-day gifts and apples and flowers on the windowsill when I’d dropped the boys off. The rain had stopped, so I took the boys to the playground and let them get muddy with the goal of wearing them out before the movie I had planned for that afternoon. I hoped the huge bag of Pirate’s Booty cheese puffs and sachets of dried mangoes combined with Buzz, Woody, and the gang would keep them content long enough for me to lie down and not speak or swallow for an hour or so. I was so intent on getting to that couch that I wasn’t even going to check the mail, but it was Joey’s day to be in charge of the keys and he insisted on stopping. Singapore