“I’m heading downtown,” Josh said.
“I’m going that way too,” said Kelsey.
I began walking backward. “Okay, see you later!” I said, waving.
Hugo began walking backward beside me.
“We don’t have to do this all the way home, do we?” he said.
I liked the sound of “we” and “home” in the same sentence, though I wasn’t really sure what that meant. We were going together to the one block that separated our buildings, and then we’d figure it out.
I knew he wanted to be with me; I could feel it. And I wanted it too. Of course I did. He was a wonderful guy, warm and funny and smart and handsome and sweet and sexy and tall. I loved him. I just loved him.
I really had never felt like this. It was like the two halves of the picture came together, and the person I was wildly attracted to was also a person I loved being with. A person who respected my work. A person who was good to me.
But how was it possible that such an amazing person could want me? How could somebody who could have anybody want me? I wasn’t being falsely modest. I didn’t have a big self-image problem. Yes, I thought I was nice-looking and in decent shape for my age, and I was confident that I was smart and thoughtful. I laughed easily, and people—men and women—usually liked me. I was a pretty good catch, for a hipster entrepreneur in Brooklyn or a dentist in New Jersey. Not for a world-famous movie star. If I went out with Hugo, would I ever really trust him? Would I ever stop questioning whether I was good enough?
“Are you and Stella having an affair?” I said.
He let out a bark of laughter. “You asked me that before and I told you no. Why are you asking me again?”
“Something doesn’t feel right,” I said.
It was subtle; the kind of thing that, when I was younger, I discounted and pushed out of the way. It was the same kind of discomfort I was feeling when I walked down the aisle to marry David, for instance. Not listening to it had probably helped me push through some fear in a positive way, but it also had gotten me into some bad situations that were even more difficult to untangle.
“I swear to you, I am not having an affair with Stella,” he said.
But what he said was the opposite of reassuring.
“I haven’t heard that since the night of the mushrooms,” I said. “That phony voice.”
“I am not having an affair with Stella,” he said in his deep, sober, pharmaceutical-commercial voice.
I laughed, despite myself.
“You swear to me that you and Stella are not together.”
“I swear.”
“What is real?” I said.
“You are real; I am real,” he said. “The way I feel about you is real.”
He reached over and took my hand. We were walking down the street that separated our two buildings. I could go left with him, back to his place, or turn right and go to mine. I was on the brink of turning left when I saw her, standing outside his building. It was a warm night, but she was shivering. She was also smoking and pacing back and forth in her bare feet. She had, it was clear as we got closer, been crying for quite some time.
“Where have you been?” she shouted.
“What’s happened?” he said to her. “What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
He broke apart from me and went to her.
“Come on,” he said in a soothing voice. I noticed him put a steady hand on her back. “Let’s go inside.”
“I don’t need to go inside!” she screamed. “I can say everything I need to say right here.”
“You don’t want to do that,” he said, his tone calm and even. “Come on, now. Let’s go upstairs.”
Stella took a big last drag on her cigarette and dropped the butt to the pavement, where it smoldered dangerously close to her bare toes. Then she blew the smoke in my direction.
I wasn’t sure what to do. When Hugo said, Let’s go upstairs, did he mean me too? I took one baby step in their direction.
“Not you,” Stella said.
That was real. She was real. Realer than all the pretty words Hugo had been feeding me, or all the lies I’d been telling myself.
twenty-one
When Caitlin asked if we could take the Volvo for a drive so she could show me something, I thought we were headed for some far-flung neighborhood in Brooklyn or Queens—Red Hook or Breezy Point—to see a house she and Ravi wanted to buy. Then, when she drove through the Holland Tunnel into New Jersey, I figured we were going to Hoboken or maybe Jersey City. And was astonished when she kept going, all the way to Homewood.
“Did you buy a house in Homewood?” I asked my daughter, amazed.
But she only shook her head no, smiling mysteriously.
After spending the past months in big-city Los Angeles and New York, Homewood looked different to me: smaller and pokier, but also more beautiful. It was hard to believe that this leafy village with big, comfy-looking family houses was twelve miles outside New York.
“There’s the playground where we used to smoke pot in middle school,” Caitlin said.
“You smoked pot in middle school?”
“Duh, Mom.”
Caitlin had seemed like a little girl in middle school, at least in the first half of it. She wore purple tee shirts and flowered overalls and bows in her hair. Her best friend had been Amanda Posner; in sixth grade, they still played Barbies together, though I knew they had a mutual pact of secrecy. Now I understood that Barbie wasn’t the only thing they’d kept secret.
“I smoked pot in LA,” I said. “Well, edibles mostly. And one night I did mushrooms.”
“Mom!” Caitlin sounded a lot more outraged than I had at her confession. “I hope you’re not doing that kind of thing now.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Pot is legal there.”
Though if it was legal in New York, I would totally be doing it. And the mushrooms were strictly a one-time thing.
“You can’t do that around the baby,” Caitlin said.
“I know that,” I told her.
Eloise was almost ready to leave the hospital. She might not have been quite smiling or focusing yet, but she was spending several hours a day in a regular bassinet, even nursing rather than feeding through a tube, which understandably thrilled Caitlin. Caitlin and Ravi were more relaxed and excited now that their daughter was clearly okay and would soon be coming home.
Homewood held memories for me on almost every block, in every shop and restaurant and landmark. There was the corner where we waited for the school bus when Caitlin was in kindergarten, the coffee shop where I had Friday lunches with my moms group, the post office where someone got shot, the pond where we’d all ice-skated that winter when everything stayed frozen through March.
Most of the memories were good, but it was still too much: I felt assaulted at every turn, so filled up with the past that I lost all sense of who I was now.
Caitlin pulled up outside a three-story dark-blue house with a wraparound porch. Her childhood best friend Amanda Posner’s house.
“Are we going to see Amanda?” I said brightly.
I had always liked Amanda, and I remembered her mom, a librarian, as being smart and sweet. I always loved talking books with her.
“Amanda moved to the Bay Area to work for Facebook,” Caitlin said.
Actually, that rang a dim bell.
“She’s pregnant, and her parents are moving to San Francisco to be near her,” Caitlin told me. “We’re renting their house.”
Once she said it, it made perfect sense, but I had not seen it coming.
Caitlin already had the key in her hand and led me down the front path to the welcoming front porch, where the wicker furniture I remembered from the girls’ childhood was still arrayed.
“They’re leaving a lot of their furniture—isn’t that great?” Caitlin said. “And they gave us a real deal on the rent. They’re not ready to sell yet—they want to see whether Amanda and her wife
really stay in the Bay Area—but if they do, they’ll give us an insider’s price. And this way we get to try out suburban life without making a major commitment. Isn’t it amazing?”
It was amazing, I agreed once we got inside: so much space for the money, on a quiet street with plenty of charm, and enough furniture to fill up the corners until Caitlin and Ravi figured out what they were going to do long-term. I was glad she’d decided to leave the city and take this practical step. It was so hard, once you had a baby, to give up the idea that you were no longer cool, living the sophisticated urban life, when the fact was you were spending all your nights at home getting the baby to sleep and then collapsing yourself.
“It’s walking distance to our old house!” Caitlin pointed out.
I wasn’t sure what the significance of that was, but that was one place in Homewood I had no desire to visit. Too many ghosts, too much heartache at the way it all had ended.
Caitlin showed me around the four bedrooms on the second floor, including a nursery painted a beautiful shade of periwinkle blue. There were two bathrooms with pretty antique tile.
“Ravi and I can’t believe how big this place is,” she said delightedly. “We’re going to have to call each other on the phone when we want to talk.”
I remember having that same feeling myself when we first moved to Homewood. I loved living in a place I felt my already growing life could keep growing into, a place so capacious that the only limits were the ones I set myself.
“And now for the best of all,” Caitlin said, her eyes twinkling.
She led me up a flight of steep blue-painted stairs to the third floor, a typical feature in Homewood houses, most of which had been built around the turn of the last century. These top floors, with gables and pitched ceilings, had been servants’ quarters before the First World War and had morphed over time into teenager lairs, home offices, and nanny apartments.
This third floor had three rooms, wide-plank wooden floors painted the same blue as the stairs, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchenette along one wall.
“You can have a live-in nanny!” I said.
A cloud darkened Caitlin’s face.
“I thought you’d live here,” she said.
“Me?” I was astonished. And appalled.
“This place is big enough that we can all have our own space,” Caitlin explained. “And once you’re done shooting the pilot, you’re going to need a place to live.”
“I really appreciate the offer, Caitlin,” I said. “But I don’t want to live in Homewood again.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “How many times did you tell me I should move to Homewood?”
“And you told me you would never move to New Jersey!”
“But then it turned out you were right; this does make more sense!” Caitlin cried. “And now I got offered a promotion at work, but if I want it I have to start Monday, and that’s the day after they’re sending Eloise home from the hospital.”
I thought she was going to have a panic attack right there before me.
“All right, let’s think about this,” I said. I steered her over to a comfy pink-flowered chair near the window. “I know there’s a nanny service—”
“Mom, Eloise was a preemie! She’s been living in the hospital for six weeks! This will be her first time home and I’ve got to turn around and leave her every day!”
Caitlin broke down weeping then. She seemed absolutely heartbroken.
“Honey, maybe you’re not ready to go back to work,” I said, my hand on her shoulder. “Maybe after all you’ve been through, you might want to take this time and stay home with the baby.”
“Mom, I can’t do that, we need the money!” she burst out.
She got up and started bustling around the attic room. I’d forgotten this: When she was a teenager having regular temper tantrums, directed at us or at a boy or a friend or a teacher, she’d rant and clean at the same time, unaware she was doing it. There was always a consolation prize when we fought: Her room would be spotless.
Now she was rearranging the books on the bookshelf by color and size, moving methodically left to right, not looking at me. It was disconcerting, but she’d probably say more and say it more honestly if she was moving while we talked.
“I thought Ravi’s residency was over,” I said. “Isn’t he going to get a job?”
“He got that fellowship!” she said. “They pick only like one in ten thousand people. He can’t turn it down.”
I was trying to think of another alternative that wasn’t me, but I wasn’t getting far. She’d rejected the idea of a nanny, so she would definitely not be up for day care. I mulled she and Ravi both going part-time, but given her promotion and his prestigious new fellowship, they were bound to be working more not less.
“You said you would help me,” my daughter said.
“I also told you I couldn’t be your full-time caregiver.”
Caitlin paused for a moment before she spoke again. “Mom, you know when I was a little girl and I used to tell you that you were the best mommy in the whole wide world?” she said. “I really meant it, and even when I got older and realized it was the kind of thing most kids said, I still thought it was true. I think it’s true now. You were always so warm and loving and creative and fun. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have taking care of my little girl.”
I was misting up by this point. “Not even you?” I said gently.
“Mom, if it was practical for me to stay home with her, I’d do that, but it’s not and it’s breaking my heart. If I’m going to go back to work and hold it all together, I need to know you’re here with her.” She stopped for a second and then hastened to add, “Not forever. But for now.”
The room had four corners, and I felt as if I were backed into at least three of them. I loved my granddaughter. I loved my daughter. I kind of theoretically loved my son-in-law. But I really really really, deep down in my soul, did not want to stay home with a baby. And that made me a terrible person.
“I might want to write another book,” I said.
“Didn’t you always say you wished you’d written when I was a baby?” Caitlin said. “That you wished you’d been able to figure out how to do both?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I did figure it out.”
“Mom, if I had another plan I’d take it, but this whole time you’ve been telling me over and over that you want to be here for me and help me with the baby… well, this is it. I need your help.” Her tears had dried now; her mouth was set in a hard line. “Are you going to help me or not?”
I wanted to say no, but not as much as I didn’t want to say no. What were the big things I wanted to do instead anyway? Write some fake story that nobody wanted to publish? Live in Maggie’s closet, pining for my secret movie-star love? It was ridiculous, adolescent, and what did any of it matter? Was I really not mature enough to tuck away my insignificant personal desires for a while and help my daughter get her career and her family on its feet?
I was finally leaving my younger life behind—I could see that version of me fading into the distance—but I had nothing to replace it. It was time to put away all my childish fantasies and get real: There was nothing I could do or even dream of doing that was more important than this.
* * *
I grabbed Kelsey at the first coffee break. I couldn’t hang around the set thinking only about having to tell her.
“I told Caitlin I’d move to New Jersey and take care of her baby,” I blurted.
“Wow,” Kelsey said. She was eating a Krispy Kreme donut, an unusual occurrence for her. “Wanna trade places?”
That was not the response I’d expected.
“Uh, kind of?” I said.
“Oh, come on, you don’t want to be here from morning to night dealing with Madame Stella and her Romeo,” said Kelsey. “We should have been finished shooting this pilot two weeks ago, but somehow Stella keeps finding ways to drag things out.”
“Can’t
you get her back on schedule?”
“She’s paying the bills,” Kelsey said. “I think this is all an elaborate justification for extending her time in New York.”
“I’m not sure you want to be alone in the suburbs with an infant,” I said to Kelsey.
“Are you going to do anything besides take care of the baby?” Kelsey asked me.
“I actually have a new novel idea,” I told her. “It’s called The Matriarch.”
Kelsey laughed. “Now you’re writing about your new life.”
Incredibly enough, that hadn’t occurred to me until she said it.
“What about your new life,” I said. “How are things with Josh?”
She shrugged and looked away, but she was smiling. “We’ll see,” she said.
“We’ll see… whether you two keep going out? What develops between you?”
“All of the above,” she said. “I love Josh, you know that. I’m just not sure yet whether I can love Josh.”
I didn’t know if it would be helpful or otherwise to state what was obvious to me, but it went to the heart of why I thought they’d be so perfect for each other.
“You both want kids,” I said. “I was hoping maybe you’d found your baby daddy.”
Kelsey shrugged. “We’ll see,” she said. “I’ve actually been thinking that maybe if Josh and I don’t work out, I’ll have a kid on my own.”
“Really? What changed your mind?”
“Maybe being in New York? I can imagine having a different kind of career here that might make it possible.”
“We can get together for play dates,” I told her, half teasing.
“Maybe we could start a moms group,” she said. “I know someone else who could join.”
“Who?” I said.
Right at that moment, Stella walked by the cafeteria door, talking a mile a minute to Hugo. Kelsey jutted her chin in their direction.
It took me a moment to catch on. And then I literally lost my breath. “What?” I said. “You’re kidding.”
“There hasn’t been any announcement,” she said, “but the wardrobe mistress came to me and said Stella was popping out of all the clothes we bought for her. In all the places that indicate a pregnancy.”
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