by Lisa Beazley
Despite my proclamations to the contrary, everything was not okay. I died a thousand deaths before noon, physically crumpling at each flash of a catty revelation or unkind characterization of Leo’s family that appeared in my letters. How much did I say about Jenna? Was there anything about Mom that might hurt her to read?
Question upon question piled up in my brain. I couldn’t grasp the timeline of this whole thing. Was it over, or was it just beginning? It hadn’t become real yet, because Leo and Sid hadn’t seen it. Maybe they never would. But still, I had to do something about this, didn’t I? There was damage to be undone, wasn’t there? I didn’t trust myself to find the answers. What I needed was a third-party assessment: someone to explain to me what I’d done, how bad it was, and what I needed to do to fix it. My first two choices—Leo and Sid—were obviously out of the question, so I called Monica and set a noon playdate. We would bring lunch. The next two and a half hours were rough. While the boys ran naked through the fountain at the Bleecker Street playground, I stole glances at the comments on the blog. Nothing new since last night, which meant my privacy lock worked. I could barely stand to read most of them. Lots of people were talking about me, and just as many were talking to me, which was strange. They were also talking to Sid about her letters. Some of the comments made me gasp out loud with bemusement or shock or even mirth. “These girls seem nice but boring. I gave them a chance but going back to the Real Housewives.” Some kind souls came to my defense. “You are missing the point,” wrote BarrioBabe. “This is about communication and sisters trying to navigate their lives while still staying close, not about manufactured drama.” Um, no. I wanted to correct them. This is not “about” anything. This is nothing to you. Stop reading my letters! Stop having opinions about them! When Monica answered her door, she had the phone to her ear. Waving us in while she nodded vigorously and said, “Yes, uh-huh, nine twenty, sounds great.” I shushed the boys and tried to get them to enter like secret agents. Pocketing her phone, she looked at me with eyes bulging. “You will never guess who that was.” “I’m not even going to try.” “Kathie Lee motherfucking Gifford,” but she only mouthed the “motherfucking” part, not that the boys would have noticed. They were barreling in to join Ana and Jonny in the playroom in the back of the house. “What? Why?” I said as we walked back to the kitchen. “So in the Hamptons my Twitter feed was bursting with this stupid ‘Dear mom on her phone’ post written by some old man,” said Monica. She handed me a glass of water and I leaned against the kitchen counter while she loaded the dishwasher. “You probably saw it.” (I had, but hadn’t clicked through to read it.) “He was admonishing every mother who ever used her phone in the park and saying they were basically missing their children’s childhoods and demonstrating that their phones are more important than their children.” “Dick,” I said. “Complete asshole,” said Monica. “Anyway, I wrote a response on my blog and it went viral.” There I was, dying to share my big news, and she beat me to the punch! I almost said, “Okay, great, but guess what happened to me!” But I couldn’t. That would be shitty. First I had to work through forty-five minutes of her thing before we could get to my thing. I pride myself on being an actual conversationalist, not just a person who waits for her turn to say something, but I struggled that afternoon. Luckily, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for my input. “And now Kathie Lee and Hoda want to have me on the fourth hour of The Today Show,” she continued. “Kathie Lee called me herself. She was all, ‘You go, girl!’ She said she read the post, too, and was wondering why all these moms were letting some old guy shame them, and then someone e-mailed her my post and she was all, ‘Yes! Thank you!’ So I’m going on tomorrow. I have to be there at nine twenty. Do you want to come with me? What should I wear?” We were on our way to her bedroom when we were diverted by the kids, who needed a peace deal brokered over a plastic dinosaur. After hearing their arguments, Monica set her kitchen timer for five minutes, at which point Joey would have to give the toy to Jonny. We sat with the kids and she pulled Ana onto her lap. “I mean, it’s not like the guy doesn’t have a point. Most of us should put the phone away more often, but the moms I know are awesome, regardless of how much time they spend staring at their phone. So I listed all of the things these moms he’s judging might be doing on their phones—like making doctors’ appointments for elderly parents; researching their child’s autism; editing a blog post that needs to go live in the middle of playtime . . . They should be applauded, not shamed. Their kids get to run around and play outside while they get stuff done. Right?” And then, as if really looking at me for the first time, she said, “Cass? Is everything okay? “Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I was sort of spacing out for a second there. I actually have a crazy story of my own.” “What’s going on? Tell me.” She lifted Ana off of her lap and shooed her away. “All right. So, did I mention how I’ve been writing letters to my sister all year?” “Yeah—you told me a while ago.” “So, yeah, it’s been this great thing we’ve done all year, and I feel closer to her than I have since we were teenagers.” I was stalling. “So what’s the problem?” Ding! The timer sounded. With minimal cajoling, Joey handed the dinosaur to Jonny. “Okay, five minutes for you and then we eat lunch!” announced Monica, setting the timer again. She and I got up and went into the kitchen to set out the bagels and salads. “All right, Cass, let’s have it,” she said, and handed me a stack of plates. I set the pile of plates on the table, and it all came tumbling out in one breath. “Wait a second—what?” said Monica. “Well, in a nutshell, I had a private blog of all the letters between Sid and me. But it turns out it wasn’t private, and it became superpopular for a couple weeks. So we both went viral, I guess.” “What’s the blog called?” “The Slow News Sisters,” I said. She gasped and pulled up a note on her iPhone. It said, “Slow News Sisters blog.” “What the hell?” I said. “You’ve seen it?” “No—I overheard two women talking about it at the market up in the Hamptons,” she said, “so I made a note to check it out.” “Well, what were they saying?” “Cass! I can’t believe this is you. One of them was telling the other one she had to read it. That it was these two normal sisters writing these honest and real letters. Someone was being cheated on. Oh shit, it’s not you, is it?” “No. Wait, they said we were normal?” “Does that surprise you? “God, I don’t know. I guess we are normal.” “So what did Sid say?” “I haven’t told her. You’re the first person I’ve told.” “But you’re going to tell her, right?” “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I made it private again, so it’s gone now, right? I mean, no one can see it anymore, right? That’s what I need you to explain to me.” “Well, here’s the thing. It’s rare that you can one hundred percent erase something from the Internet. Remember that picture I took of that little girl taking a dump in a portable training potty in the middle of the playground at Chelsea Piers and it turned out to be Suri Cruise?” “Yeah.” I had a feeling that this little allegory was not going to end well for me. “Her lawyer asked me to take down the photo, so I did, but Perez Hilton and Page Six had already reblogged it with a screen capture. I could only control what’s on my site, so the legal team had to track down everyone who had reblogged the shot and linked to Perez or Page Six.” I took a deep breath. “So I’m fucked?” “Maybe not. Did you delete the whole thing, or is it still up?” “Still up. But private again.” She looked at me, narrowing her eyes and nodding in thought. “I mean, you’re probably okay, but it’s hard to say for sure.” Then the timer dinged again and the kids came stampeding into the kitchen. “Do you want to see it?” I said, once all the kids were settled with bagels and peanut butter and carrots and cucumber sticks. “I’m dying to! But only if you’re cool with it.” “I think I want you to—I need you to tell me how bad it is.” I handed her my phone, and she took her salad into the living room to eat and read on the couch
while I dined with the kids. I plowed through my salad in a fit of nervous energy and then picked at the kids’ bagels during the impossibly long time it takes them to finish the smallest amount of food. The kids finished lunch and charged into the back room while I stayed put, awaiting a signal from Monica. When I heard her ask them about Play-Doh, I cleaned up the lunch dishes while she, presumably, continued to read. Once the kitchen was spotless, I couldn’t take it anymore and I went into the living room. I looked at her expectantly. “Cass. Wow.” “So what do I do?” She got up and followed me back into the kitchen. “Well, you’ve got to tell Leo. And your sister.” “I was afraid you’d say that.” “Oh, come on! You and your sister are solid. What about you and Leo? Do you think a drunken kiss is enough to topple your marriage? And, Jesus, I was not prepared to read that part—I wish you would have warned me.” “Pretty major, right?” “Well, unexpected, but what are we talking, a kiss? Or is there more?” “No. No more,” I said, though in my memory it was hardly just a kiss. “I think that’s something Leo can handle.” “But other than that, there’s so much in those letters I would never want him to see—petty stuff about his family, stupid complaints about our marriage. Nothing I’d call a deal breaker on its own, but all added up, it would be hard to take. I mean, where do I even begin with him? Do I have him read everything?” “I’d vote against doing that. What if you told him about the kiss, and the blog, and then asked him if he wanted to read it all?” “I guess that could work,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced. “It’ll be all right, Cass. You just need to come clean. Dreading their reaction is the worst part.” The kids were still happily playing Play-Doh (a magical substance, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve often wondered if it contains a mild sedative, based on the uncharacteristically calm and content behavior my boys exhibit under its spell). We had moved from the kitchen to her bedroom during the course of our chat, and Monica was rifling through her closet for something to wear on The Today Show, while I lay on her bed, chewing apart my lip in thought. I knew she was right about telling Leo and Sid. But now that I had stopped this runaway train, I had to gather my thoughts—or read an instruction manual—before I defused the bomb. Talking to Monica had helped a little, but it also made it clear that this was my mess to clean up, that no one was going to do it for me. I thought, if I could just get some time to think, I might be able to handle this situation with some delicacy and save my loved ones from pain and disgrace. And then I remembered something. I scrambled for my phone and scrolled back through the letters until I found the one I was looking for: Sid said she was going to Bali for another yoga retreat on September first—today. (Or was it yesterday for her?) And Leo and I were scheduled to be at the Jersey Shore with his family tomorrow. When Leo wasn’t working, he rarely checked his e-mail. His team could handle almost anything that arose but knew to phone him if there was an emergency. So as long as no one in his family found out about the blog, I was safe. Contemplating the idea of someone in his family finding out triggered another wave of panic. I needed to walk. I asked Monica if she’d keep the kids while I did a quick Duane Reade run. Filling my basket with bubbles and sunscreen and car snacks, I weighed the pros and cons of the weekend away. I framed it like this: With Leo and Sid effectively sequestered, I’d gained a few more days of ignorant bliss for them—torturous anticipation for me, yes, but as long as none of the Costas knew, I could maintain the status quo. Not that I had a choice in the matter. September third is my mother-in-law’s birthday, and it goes without saying that all four of Mary Costa’s boys will be together—with her—on Labor Day weekend. It is the one holiday she insists on, having given up on getting full attendance at Christmas or Easter years ago. Besides, the boys loved seeing their cousins, Leo would get to spend time with all three of his brothers, and I would get to hang out with Emma. I fetched the boys from Monica’s and we walked home. It was one of those special days where the mailbox contained two letters from Sid, only instead of feeling the childlike joy that I’d felt the other few times this had happened, I felt anxious and guilty. Still, here they were. Once upstairs, I distributed iPads and decided to open the one with the earlier postmark and save the other one for later. Singapore
August 20 Hey, Cass—
Oh no—I’m not calling the police about the missing money. I doubt my little bank operation was entirely legal, and if there’s one thing Singaporeans are exacting about, it’s their rules. I’m over it. It was just a really bad week. The Adrian mess still smarts, as I suspect it will for a long while, but this bank business isn’t getting me down. But listen, you aren’t the only mom on a mission. I’m getting certified to teach yoga—six classes to go! And speaking of clichés, how was I not into yoga before now? It’s right up my alley, and completely saving my sanity these days. One of my mantras is this: “The stronger you become, the gentler you will be.” Cool, right? Think about it. I really am so lucky to have the time for it. Rose is like family, and Lulu has a great time with her. Plus, River’s officially on his “gap year.” He’s looking into volunteering in Cambodia or Vietnam, but for now he’s around a lot, which is great. Oh, and NYU said they would let him defer until next year. I’m really hoping that he does so he’ll have you around, but he’s still considering a few other schools. You are a doll for offering your place to me. Believe me, I will keep it in mind—because yes, it would be beyond fun!! Love you. —Sid And what could I do? I had to write her back. So the letters continued, though sans scanning and posting. By this point, every day that I let pass without fessing up meant that my stupid, yes—but innocent—mistake became a conscious lie. New York Sept 1 Sid, The other day Leo and I had drinks with some old work friends of mine and I caught myself telling the story about the stitches and how the doctor couldn’t believe we didn’t want a plastic surgeon for Quinn’s eyebrow gash, but Leo and I were both like, “No. Scars are cool. And he’s already a twin, so this scar will be his thing. He’ll be the one with the scar.” I’m getting good at that story, and Leo has heard me tell it to neighbors, friends, Amir at the bodega, his mom on the phone, and just about anyone who will listen. And he laughs and nods and even chips in at just the right moment every time. So as I was telling the story for the twenty-fifth time, an equal parts wonderful and horrible thought occurred to me: Leo is Joe and Margie stock. I’m the problem. He is decent and kind and simple, and I’m a fucking mess. I mean, I don’t let the guy finish his own stories if I’ve heard them before. I’m trying, though. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Congrats on the yoga teacher thing. I hope you can teach me someday. I don’t even think I told you about my disastrous attempt a few months ago. How awesome is River? Let me know what he decides to do with his year. I would be so happy to have him at NYU! Xoxo, Cass When I’m trying to look on the bright side of challenging situations, I focus on the empathy it can teach me. When I was pregnant and couldn’t tie my own shoes or walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded, I had compassion for obese people. When the boys were in the thick of the terrible twos, I understood those mothers who go berserk and plunge their cars off of cliffs. And when I became a deceptive and secretive ne’er-do-well, I gained empathy for blackmailers and backstabbers and those men in Lifetime movies who have two families in two different cities who know nothing about one another. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN