Breakfast at Stephanie's

by Sue Margolis

  Then there were the other women. He was renting a studio flat in the center of town. Once when she stayed over, she dropped an earring, which rolled under the bed. As well as retrieving the earring, she found two bras—of different sizes. His mobile rang constantly. He said it was work, but she could tell by the way he turned his body away from her and lowered his voice that he was speaking to girlfriends. After the third or fourth time it happened she was reminded of the rest of that Eagles’ song—the bit about him having “seven women on my mind.” She smiled to herself. There was no doubt, Alberto Rossi went through women like Pete Sampras went through tennis rackets.

  Even so, there was a tearful, passionate good-bye at the airport.

  “Ciao, principessa.”

  “Ciao, Albert.”

  They promised to e-mail. She knew they would for a bit. Then it would peter out. She would miss him—not to mention the glorious sex—for a few painful weeks, but eventually she’d get over him and the whole thing would have been no big deal. Then she missed her period.

  “I can’t have a baby yet,” she wailed to Lizzie and Cass. “I can’t. I’m not ready. There were all these things I wanted to achieve before I became a parent. I wanted to get my career off the ground, trek round India, own a Habitat sofa.”

  But what really scared her was doing it alone. She, Lizzie and Cass all sat on the bathroom floor, holding hands until it was time to check the stick for the pregnancy kit.

  “It’s pink,” Lizzie whispered. “You’re pregnant. Oh, Steph.” Then they both hugged her, but Lizzie, who was already a mother and knew about babies and the months of sleepless nights, hugged her the hardest.

  Stephanie went to her GP, who confirmed the pregnancy, along with the fact that her diaphragm, newly fitted before her trip to Italy, was “just a tad too small.” Cheers, Doc.

  She considered an abortion for all of two minutes. She firmly believed in a woman’s right to choose, but for her there was no choice. There was no way she was about to destroy this life growing inside her. She dreaded making the call to Albert in L.A. It occurred to her he’d probably gotten women pregnant in the past and she was sure he’d be pretty dismissive and simply offer to send her a check to cover the cost of an abortion.

  “Principessa. So, what’s new?”

  “Well, the thing is …”

  “Steph, can you just hang on a minute? … Hey babe,” he called out. “I’ll be back in a second. Don’t start without me.” He laughed. “Steph, this won’t take long, will it? You see, I’m kinda on a date here, and she’s really hot for me.”

  She came straight out with it.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  “Yes. Seems like my doctor fitted me with the wrong size diaphragm.”

  “Oh my God. Pregnant.”

  “Look, I know it’s a shock.”

  “You can say that again. Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Pregnant? You’re pregnant?”

  “Albert, please stop asking me. I’ve said I am.”

  “But that’s fantastic. I’m gonna be a dad. I cannot believe it. This is so cool. I mean, this is the best news.” A pause. Then: “Steph, you are going to keep it, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not …”

  “No, Albert, I’m not.”

  “Oh, thank God. You know, my mom is just gonna go crazy when I tell her. This will be her first grandchild.” Then he promised faithfully to be there for her and the baby as much as he possibly could. Over the next weeks and months they discussed all the practical things like how much he should pay in child support. They never discussed the possibility of rekindling their relationship. There seemed to be a silent agreement between them that this was a non-starter. Nevertheless, throughout her pregnancy he phoned a couple of times a week to see how she was doing and to make sure that she was eating properly. He even bought a book on childbirth, but said he couldn’t read it because it was too gory.

  “Life is a strange thing,” Cass said after Stephanie made that first call to Albert. “Sometimes the people you’d least expect come up trumps. It’s like the time that tax inspector let me off that huge fine because I sent in my return too late.”

  “Cass, you offered to give him a blow job behind the filing cabinets. He let you off because he was twenty-two, totally petrified and desperate to get rid of you.”

  Albert had promised to be there for the birth, but in the end he missed it because she went into labor a month early. Looking back, it was probably for the best, what with Albert’s low gore threshold and her mother offending the doctor on their arrival by telling him it “might be a good idea to check how dilated she is.” Then there was the doula—the oh-so-fashionable “alternative” birthing coach (a present from Cass)—who ignored Stephanie’s cries of agony on account of contractions not being “real pain” and skipped around in size eighteen orange silk pajamas lighting scented candles.

  “So,” she singsonged at one point, “are we planning to do anything festive with the placenta?”

  Estelle pulled a face and muttered something about this being northwest London, not the Congo Basin. Then she handed Stephanie the gas and air. Stephanie had taken no more than half a gulp when the doula snatched it away, proclaiming that “baby would come out all tipsy.” At this point Estelle suggested a temporarily tipsy baby might be preferable to a permanently traumatized mother. The doula smiled thinly.

  “I’m guessing you’re a meat eater,” she said.

  In a few minutes the two women had locked antlers and their “discussion” developed into a blazing row. Of course they both ignored Stephanie’s cries of agony and neither of them noticed when the hospital midwife came in. “Epidural?” she mouthed to Stephanie. Stephanie gave her an instant thumbs-up. When the anesthetist arrived a few minutes later, the doula left in a huff.

  From the moment they found out about the pregnancy, her parents’ only concern was how she would cope emotionally without a partner to support her. Especially since Sylvia down the road’s lesbian daughter who’d had an IVF baby was finding it a real struggle on her own.

  Stephanie suspected that from a selfish point of view, Estelle was secretly pleased there was no man on the scene. It wasn’t that she objected to having a son-in-law—far from it. What she wasn’t keen on was being forced to share the baby with a rival grandmother. Since Albert’s mother lived six thousand miles away, this wasn’t going to be an issue and she could have the baby all to herself.

  After Jake was born, Estelle offered to come and look after the two of them for a couple of weeks. The offer was something Stephanie had been dreading. Then Harry’s mother had a heart attack, which later turned out to be fatal. Harry wanted to be with the old lady. Estelle said she would stay with Stephanie and the baby, but Stephanie insisted that her mother’s place was with Harry and that she’d be fine.

  In the end Lizzie’s mother came to stay with Lizzie’s husband, Dom, and the twins, and Lizzie came to look after Stephanie. For ten days Lizzie was just there. She walked Jake up and down for hours at a time when he refused to stop screaming and Stephanie was desperate to sleep. She shopped, tidied up and even had cabbage leaves at the ready when Stephanie’s nipples started to crack. On day four, Stephanie got a major attack of the baby blues. “I’m never going to be able to do this,” she sobbed to Lizzie. Lizzie took her in her arms. “Yes, you will. And you’re going to do it brilliantly.”

  When Lizzie left to go back to the twins, Stephanie sent up a prayer.

  “Look, God, I appreciate that what with the world situation you’re probably a bit underresourced right now, but if you could just see your way clear to making Jake sleep through the night, I’d be very grateful.” Clearly the Almighty’s mind was on higher things. Jake screamed practically nonstop for the next three months. On the rare occasions he slept, Stephanie would sleep too. Once she woke up with the words to Marianne Faithfull’s “Ballad of Lucy Jordan” going round and round her head. The woman in the song has reached her late
thirties and she suddenly knows she’ll “never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.”

  “My God, that’s me,” she wailed on the phone to Cass. “I’m turning into Lucy Jordan.”

  “Don’t be an arse. First, you’re not in your late thirties, and second, nobody in their right mind would want to drive through Paris anyway. The Périphérique’s a sodding nightmare. I should know, I got stuck on it for five hours last year.”

  Colic, the clinic said. He’ll grow out of it. Estelle spent hours on NetDoctor and came back with countless possible illnesses and conditions. She insisted on paying for Jake to see a private pediatrician. Colic, he said. He’ll grow out of it. Then, when Stephanie was virtually on her knees with exhaustion, he suddenly stopped. He began sleeping through the night and she began to believe that, one day, she might indeed ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.

  Albert visited every few months. He always arrived on a motorcycle, which he hired or borrowed from Tom, a mate of his who lived in Kentish Town. He was a film cameraman and often away filming abroad. Each time, Albert had a different woman with him. They were all the same: exceedingly sweet California flakes with fake tits and too much lip liner. They couldn’t have been more different from Stephanie if they’d tried, and she often wondered why he had fallen for her in Verona. She’d challenged him about this several times. “I’ve dated all types of women,” he would shrug. “You represented the height of my gorgeous, feisty intellectual phase. Right now I’m going through my Pammie phase.”

  Albert and the girlfriend would come straight from the airport, him carrying champagne and toys for Jake.

  “Principessa! Let me look at you.” Then, bursting with excitement, he would charge over to Jake. “Hey, champ. How you doing? You know, Steph, he’s got my dad’s eyes.”

  He’d hold him for a few minutes, but hand him back to Stephanie the moment he cried. He would always call Stephanie if he puked or filled his nappy. She knew it wasn’t Albert’s fault. Most men had no idea how to cope with babies. Learning to be a dad was something they did on the job. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that Albert was one of those men who, even if he’d been around, would never have wanted to be a hands-on father. This great big guy in his Levi’s and cowboy boots was far too macho to change a shitty diaper. He’d tried it once, just after Jake was born, but he’d made a great show of telling everybody how he didn’t inhale. No, Albert was in love with the idea of fatherhood, and especially having a son, but there was no way he was going to do it.

  “Come on,” he’d say an hour after arriving. “What say we all go out to eat? Chinese food good for everyone?”

  “But, Albert, you’ve just gotten off a ten-hour flight. Don’t you want to get to the hotel and sleep?”

  “Nah, we’re fine. We took melatonin on the plane. So, where’s good to eat around here?” And they would go, Albert and the girlfriend, Stephanie, her parents, Jake in his portable car seat. Estelle, in particular, loved Albert, and no matter how often Stephanie assured her it was never going to happen, Estelle—not to mention Grandma Lilly—had never quite given up hope that Stephanie and Albert would get together.

  Albert would spend the evening telling his Hollywood stories, flirting with Estelle and listening to Harry’s theories about the medicinal properties of char siu pork, while Stephanie tried to pacify a colicky baby with her breast and manage chopsticks at the same time.

  “Say, Steph,” Albert said the first time they all went out to dinner, “don’t they use pacifiers in this country?”

  “You tell her, Albert,” Estelle said. “I’ve been trying to get through to her for weeks. Stephanie doesn’t seem to realize there’s no shame these days in using a dummy.”

  “I know,” Stephanie said, “but they become addictive and eventually all that sucking can push their teeth out of shape.”

  They were always short visits. After two days he would be off on the bike with the girlfriend. A few days later she’d get a postcard addressed to her and Jake from Scotland or the Lakes.

  Later that night she phoned her friend Ben, who was a GP, to ask whether Lilly could still have sex now that she had a pacemaker.

  “No problem,” he said, laughing. “She can’t possibly electrocute herself. Plus a bit of energetic sex will help keep her fit. It’s important that she does some formal exercise as well, though. Something gentle, like yoga or tai chi, would be excellent for somebody her age.” Then he launched into a long spiel about VD rates among the over-sixties, which rather put her off her lasagna.

  Jake woke in a bad mood. Then he started coughing. “Oh, sweetie, I hope you’re not coming down with anything.” She felt his head but it was fine.

  He ate his honey toast on his digger, watching his Mary Poppins video. He must have watched it two hundred times. Stephanie knew the entire script by heart.

  Jake was going through a phase of refusing to get dressed, and because he was in a bad mood, he was being even more difficult than usual. Then, once he was dressed, he had to decide which hat to wear to Grandma’s. “Not policeman one.”

  “OK, how’s about the pirate hat and you can take your hook if you can find it.”

  “No pi-wat one. Crown. No, no, no. Wolf mask. Wolf mask. To scare Gan’ma.”

  He ran to fetch it. Then they couldn’t find his zizzing label. She looked in his bed, under it. She checked the dirty laundry basket to see if it was in there with his pajamas. Nothing. “Jake, we’ll have to go without it. Or I can tear out another one from one of your Tshirts.”

  “No. No. No. Want my lay-a-bel. My one.” Just then the doorbell rang.

  “Who’s that at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning? Jake, go and have one last look for the label while I answer the door.” He went charging upstairs.

  An elderly, rather agitated woman she didn’t recognize was standing on the doorstep.

  “Stephanie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Audrey. Mary McCreedy’s friend.”

  “Oh, yes, from the darts team.”

  She couldn’t begin to fathom what she was doing there.

  “Mary asked me to pop round. I’m afraid she had an accident last night—at the match.”

  “Goodness. It’s not serious, is it?”

  “She broke her hip.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “You see, she needed a double seven to win. There we were, holding our breath. And she did it. The landlord—who’s a bit soft on her—came dashing over, picked her up and swung her round. Eventually he let her go, but she landed badly and that was it. She was in real agony until the morphine kicked in.”

  “How long is she going to be in hospital?”

  “Oh, a fair few weeks, I think. They’re talking about doing a hip replacement. Don’t know how long she’ll have to wait, though.”

  Stephanie thanked Audrey and said she’d visit Mrs. M. in a couple of days.

  She shut the door and went back to the living room in a trance. She was feeling a mixture of emotions. Along with the sadness she felt for Mrs. M., she couldn’t suppress a feeling of relief. Relief that Mrs. M. would be out of action for Lord knows how long, which meant she didn’t have to sack her. There was, of course, the major problem of who was going to look after Jake. Lizzie could probably help out for a day or two, but what then?

  “Found it. Found it.” Jake was standing on the sofa, waving his label.

  “Good boy, Jakey. Good boy. Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. Mrs. M.’s had a bit of an accident. She’s got a poorly leg and she can’t come to look after you. That’s really sad, isn’t it? But the doctors are going to make her better and she’s going to be all right.”

  “We get Mary Poppins ven, yes?”

  “No, Jake, she’s just pretend, I’m afraid.”

  “OK, Gan’ma come.”

  “Er, no, I don’t think that would work.”

  He started bouncing on Jimmy’s white overstuffed sofa.<
br />
  “Gan’ma come. Gan’ma come. Gan’ma come.”

  Chapter 3

  Estelle opened the front door.

  “Hello, darling,” she said, kissing Stephanie. “Listen, your Grandma Lilly’s here. Not a word about what we were discussing, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Oooh,” Estelle squealed in mock horror, seeing Jake’s werewolf mask, “and who’s a big scary monster, then?”

  “My am,” Jake growled, waving his plastic sword. This caused a small but significant intake of breath from Estelle. “Careful, darling. You’ll have somebody’s eye out. Now then, who’s got a kiss for his grandma?”

  “Mum, he’s less than three feet tall. How’s he going to have somebody’s eye out?”

  Her mother didn’t reply. Jake delivered his kiss through the mask, and the three of them walked down the hall toward the kitchen. As they went in, a Peggy Lee CD was playing softly in the background. The large kitchen-diner with its central breakfast bar, dividing the kitchen bit from the dining bit, had the familiar smell of Glade and fried onions. But today Stephanie detected another smell. Fish. Estelle saw her wrinkling her nose.

  “Just steaming some salmon,” Estelle said.

  “But the stove’s not on,” Stephanie observed.

  “I’m steaming it in the dishwasher,” her mother said with a shrug. “It’s brilliant. Takes four whole salmon at a time.”

  “O … K. Assuming I can get my head round the dishwasher bit, which isn’t easy, could we move swiftly on to why you and Dad need four salmon? By my reckoning that’s two entire fish each.”

  Estelle looked at her daughter as if she had lost the plot. “For the freezer,” she said. “Why else?” Estelle was a great believer in cooking in bulk—some for now, some for the freezer. As a result the freezer was always bursting with food. It wasn’t so much a place to store food as another mouth to feed.