Woman No. 17

by Edan Lepucki

  Did Seth know what he was being born into? Maybe he intuited that the love between his parents was circumstantial, and that most of the time his father shuffled between lust and apathy. I am sure he knew that for all my happiness, I was lost and afraid. Sometimes at night I prayed that my pregnancy would last forever. I never spoke these prayers aloud, and I don’t have much belief in God, so who was I talking to? Seth was my only listener.

  When I pushed him out of me, he didn’t cry. I tried to describe the moment to Karl on one of our early dates. “I’m pretty sure that’s normal,” he said, trying to comfort me. “They had to suck the mucus or what-have-you out of his throat first, didn’t they?” But it wasn’t just that, I said. Seth’s cry was hoarse when he finally let it out, and the look on his tiny wrinkled face told me that making the sound pained him. I think it did.

  I should have felt protective of my baby at that moment, but instead I was disgusted. They placed his writhing body atop my chest and I almost asked them to remove him. It’s not that I wanted him to be taken away, it’s that I wanted him back inside.

  Even in my weakest moments, even when we were having our big fight, I never told Karl that.

  4.

  Karl insisted we meet for dinner every week despite our separation. “Kit thinks it’s a good idea,” he said. Kit was his photographer sister. I hated almost everything about her, starting with every piece of advice she gave Karl and ending with the essential oils she rubbed on the soles of her feet whenever she was feeling stressed. I’d been calling her Pizza Slut in my mind ever since S had come over.

  “We’re taking advice from Kit now?” I said. “She’s hardly objective.”

  “No one is objective. Ever,” he replied.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I can hear that, you know,” he said.

  “Hear what?”

  “You loathing me.”

  “I don’t loathe you, Karl.”

  “Listen up, we’re meeting at Paul Feldman’s at six.”

  I sighed. “Which one? Galleria? The one at the Bev Cent closed.”

  “You betcha.” He hung up.

  —

  Paul Feldman’s was our name for P. F. Chang’s. Karl had read somewhere (he was always reading somewhere) that the Chinese restaurant was actually owned by a Jewish guy with the initials “P. F.”; the Chang was total fakery. Karl couldn’t remember the name of the actual restaurant mogul so we called him Paul Feldman, Karl’s old friend from Hebrew school.

  We were only a week into dating when I took him there for the first time. Seth was with his tutor all afternoon and Karl needed a new belt, so I suggested we go to the Beverly Center.

  “Beverly Center?” Karl said, his eyes twinkling. “I think I went to college with her…Bev! What a gal!”

  I laughed. These were the pre–eye rolling days.

  At the Beverly Center, we wandered into one store and then another until Karl finally said he was starving. A few blocks away there was a café he loved. “Great coffee,” he said, “in cups as big as your face.”

  I knew the place. It was favored by rich Hollywood types and out-of-work actresses, flawless in yoga pants. I wrinkled my nose and said, “Let’s do a mall restaurant.”

  Even then I was testing Karl’s willingness to give me what I wanted. That he gave and gave and gave, and with humor, was one of the reasons I fell in love with him. And out.

  Karl shrugged and looked around. “When in Rome…”

  “I don’t mean the food court,” I said, and led him to the escalators.

  As we passed the huge stone horses that flanked the restaurant’s front door, Karl said, “These are like the horses outside China’s original Forbidden City.”

  He described how an insane emperor had built a city-sized mausoleum for himself with hundreds of terra-cotta horses and soldiers guarding its gates.

  “So we’re entering a giant tomb?” I said.

  “Which makes this the most romantic date I’ve ever been on,” he replied.

  Inside the dark restaurant, a ponytailed blonde, no doubt a recent transplant from Iowa or Fresno, greeted us with a big smile. She was dressed in head-to-toe black polyester.

  “Table for two,” I said.

  As he slipped into the booth Karl kept his gaze on the Chinese scroll hanging above the bar.

  “God, it’s so offensive in here!” he said gleefully.

  “You should order a specialty cocktail,” I said.

  “Something with lychee, I presume.” Karl held the menu far from his face, squinting.

  I put a hand on his arm. “Hey, silly. I like you in your glasses.” He was over a decade older than I was, and trying not to draw attention to it. As though I didn’t notice.

  Once he had his little granny glasses on, Karl crowed. “Gluten-free! Did you see this?”

  He couldn’t stop laughing, and neither could I. With Karl the world was a delight.

  We were married six weeks later, at his friend’s house in Malibu, and in our whirlwind courtship we had tried every Paul Feldman’s in the Southern California region. In record time, Karl had become a scholar of P. F. Chang’s, and of the other establishments we frequented: California Pizza Kitchen (CPK), Yogurtland (Yogalandia), Cheesecake Factory (Cheesecock Perfunctory), et al. Karl drew the line at Domino’s, but before that line he reveled in what he called Chain Tourism. He told all his friends about it. “You can experience the restaurant ironically, and yet, when you bite into a slab of Oreo cheesecake, it’s almost impossible not to slip into an earnest, unmitigated mode of pleasure.”

  Before I met Karl my critical gaze was flabby, practically atrophied; one date with him and I felt like I was back at CSUN, except that instead of studying literature I was taking classes on everything from the politics of traffic to the societal pressures of eating Swiss chard. His interest in the world, combined with his interest in me, eradicated my boredom.

  Never mind that Seth and I actually liked the chain restaurants Karl so loved to analyze, irony notwithstanding, and that we frequented them on special occasions. Karl would never admit it, but his Chain Tourism was a variant on Lady Tourism. My life and rituals were exotic to him: I was the person who watched the shows he produced—not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t afford cable. I was a single mother who lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her teenage son. That I hadn’t been raised poor myself made the country of Lady even more fascinating. Karl wanted access to my world: as stunning, amusing, and tragic as a third-world island.

  —

  When I arrived at Paul Feldman’s, I saw that the booths were full; everyone wanted to get out of the heat, even if for only an hour. They’d stuck Karl at a table in the center of the room. There was already a high chair set up across from him, a kids’ menu and crayons in place of a plate.

  He stood as soon as he saw me. “Where’s Dev?”

  “I got a sitter.”

  I was still getting used to how much attention Devin required at restaurants. He’d throw food, drop a glass of water, request a sip of my wine. I knew if Karl and I tried to have our own conversation, Devin would interrupt us, saying stuff like, “No talking, Daddy!” Or, “Lions have sharp teeth! Lions have sharp teeth!” He would not, could not, be ignored.

  “You knew I wanted to see him,” Karl said, standing to hug me. I let him even though I was still a little sticky with sweat. He was freshly shaved and wearing a nice white shirt I didn’t recognize. But he’d gone overboard with the Kiehl’s and smelled like a grove of eucalyptus trees.

  “You’ll have him all weekend,” I said, pulling away. “We have a lot to discuss and if he’s here that won’t happen.”

  A smiling waitress came over with two frosted martini glasses, halfway filled with something magenta-colored.

  “It’s something with açaí berries,” Karl said, beaming at the waitress. He asked her for the salt-and-pepper calamari, my favorite, and after a brisk nod she was gone.

  The drink tasted like a
blended Fruit Roll-Up.

  “Now you’re ordering for me?” I said.

  “You said I was too nice, so I’m trying to be an asshole.”

  “Karl,” I said.

  “Lady,” he said. “I want to come home.”

  I took another sip. “You said you’d give me time.”

  “Time,” he echoed. He looked exhausted. Kit was letting him stay in her guesthouse, and I wondered if the bed there was firm enough.

  “I hired a nanny,” I said. “Her name is S.” I drew the letter in the air between us and punctuated it with a jab of my index finger. I described how well she and Devin got on, and her recent degree. “I know you’d prefer a Stanford grad.”

  “Is she certified in CPR?”

  “Of course,” I said, though I didn’t know. Then I said, “She’s live-in.”

  I wasn’t surprised by his anger. “What? You said nanny, Lady. You never said au pair.”

  “She moved from Berkeley, not Paris. I told you, I need the help.”

  “You need the help because I’m not there!” He picked up his glass and downed the whole sickly drink. “Is there even alcohol in this?”

  The waitress was suddenly between us, plate of calamari in hand. “Why, yes sir, there is! You’d be surprised how much,” she said.

  “Give us a minute?” I asked. “And also—the pot stickers.”

  Before the waitress could ask, Karl said, “Pork, please. Steamed.”

  When we were alone again, neither of us spoke. I rolled a piece of calamari in the cup of salt, and popped it into my mouth.

  “This is a trial separation,” Karl said, his hands flat on the table. He was calm now, but I could tell the news of S was bothering him, because he wasn’t eating. “I am giving you time, and that is all.”

  “I need a nanny’s help. It’s more affordable for her to live in.”

  “I won’t let you go,” he whispered.

  “I hired her because I’m on contract. You know that.”

  “You’ll write the book. You already have two chapters and the proposal.”

  “And it’s been three months and I still haven’t written a word.”

  With the help of Karl’s friend Joyce, I’d published an essay in Real Simple about raising Seth, which had landed me an agent, and then a deal to write a book about my experience. “Our experience,” I told Seth when I got the news. He’d smirked, and I hugged him fiercely. After we pulled apart he tapped his right elbow with his left hand, three times fast. This meant Big-time! Karl had looked on, confused. He was better at ASL than I was, and maybe for that reason I’d refused to teach him the special signs.

  “You’ll get into the book now that you have Est. I’ll need to meet her, immediately.”

  “Her name isn’t Est. It’s S.”

  “Just the letter?”

  “Just the letter.”

  “Jesus, Lady, where did you find this girl?”

  “Devin loves her.”

  That seemed to hurt him, but it also, thankfully, distracted him from any further questioning.

  I turned my attention to the menu. “Beef or chicken?” I said.

  “To be or not to be?” Karl replied, which was what he always said.

  As we ate, I told him we needed to come up with a regular custody schedule.

  “I want to see him every day,” Karl said.

  “You work every day. And you can’t come over in the evening.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look, I’ll give you every weekend if you want. Friday evening, afternoon even, to Monday morning.”

  “Really?”

  What I didn’t say was that S would be around the other days to take care of Devin. That I was effectively never going to have to watch my son.

  “Maybe if I have time away from Devin,” I said, “I’ll be able to write. I can take the weekends to focus, and Seth and I will do stuff together that Devin’s too young for.”

  I took a bite of beef something-or-other (gluten-free, because we could), and imagined writing. Just picturing myself in front of my laptop, the cursor blinking like a well-behaved narcoleptic, was enough to make me wish I’d never met Joyce for tacos to go over “my incredible story” as she called it. Joyce was connected to everyone in the magazine world, and she wanted to help me. (“She’s obsessed with you,” Karl had said.)

  Over one afternoon I told her a couple of what she called “key vignettes,” which she recorded on her phone before hiring someone to transcribe. Together we worked over the transcription, discarding what didn’t fit, elaborating on dramatic moments, and then she crafted a through-line, which was, basically: We are all God’s creatures, the agnostic version. But now Joyce was back in Manhattan, working for an online magazine about day trading, and she couldn’t help me.

  “I hate Joyce,” I said now.

  “Joyce believes in you. I believe in you. Devin’s getting older and this is an excellent career path for you. Everyone always says you tell the best stories.”

  “This isn’t a story, Karl, it’s my life.” My fork slipped into a swamp of brown sauce. “This food is so fucking garlicky. Garlic should not be the dominant flavor in every single dish! I can already feel it seeping out of my pores!”

  Karl leaned forward and put two fingertips against my sternum. “You aren’t breathing, sweetie.” He pushed against the bone as if he were trying to find a secret passageway. “Open up. You need to open up.”

  I reared back. “Stop it!”

  He removed his hand. “What?”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Fine. Don’t breathe.” He looked around for the waitress, and I knew he was going to ask for the bill.

  “You’re so paternalistic.” It was one of his words, only he didn’t apply it to people but to things like the government and foie gras bans.

  Karl already had his wallet open. The black AmEx. “ ‘Paternalistic’?” he echoed. “You know not what you speak.”

  “Kill the Shakespeare. You’re not my dad.”

  This time, he rolled his eyes. “Lady, you have no clue what it’s like to have a dad. And if I do remind you of your father, it’s obvious why.” He held up two fingers, and counted off: “One, I love you, and two, I am a man. You can’t handle a man loving you.” He sighed. “Sometimes I want to find your mother and yell at her for fucking you up.”

  “What about all the other times?” I asked.

  But Karl was already standing. “I’m going to find that waitress.”

  While his back was turned, I slipped the drawing Devin had made for him onto the table. Devin had used the brown crayon and so instead of a drawing it looked like he’d squatted over the picture and taken a messy shit.

  5.

  In all our correspondence, S had hardly asked a thing about me. I get it: I wasn’t the kid she would be taking care of. To her credit, she did ask about Devin’s sleep schedule and eating habits, whether he was up to date on his vaccines and even whether he was afraid of loud noises, like blenders and vacuums. It was as if she was putting together a dossier on my child. When she asked how many teeth he had, I said, “When you get here, you can ask him to open wide.”

  After that remark, the questions stopped.

  S never once asked me why I needed to hire her. She must have assumed I didn’t work, and that I merely needed help so I could attend to self-care: my hair needed to be dyed, my spine realigned, my chi centered. Lord smite down the stay-at-home mother who doesn’t actually mother. S had probably turned onto our steep street, cataloging the luxury German vehicles parked along the curb, the Latinas dusting the mailboxes, and once she’d seen our house, she decided I was wealthy enough not to need an occupation. It was true. After Karl and I married, I quit my office-management job because his salary had turned it into a cute little hobby. Once Devin was born, it didn’t seem like I’d ever work again. It had been only a few months since Joyce had engineered not just a job for me but a career, and I was still in shock.
<
br />   And so when S rang the doorbell for the second time in seven days, I thought I might keep the Lady-who-lunches ruse going. I’d wear drawstring linen pants and pretend I was going for a Reiki session when really I was headed to the Coffee Bean on Sunset to suffer sentence-making and pick through the memoirs Karl had bought me. If I needed to call my editor with some inane question about how close the manuscript had to adhere to the proposal, I’d sneak into my car. Because once S knew what I was up to, she’d hold me accountable. That was partly why I’d hired her.

  I was still ruminating on this as I opened the door. There she stood as before, but this time, an enormous backpack hovered over her shoulders. I was reminded of Richard Scarry’s hitchhiker, the raccoon with the backpack larger than his own body, the one who can’t get a ride.

  “Don’t you love my backpack?” She rolled her eyes upward.

  “It’s large.”

  “My mother gave it to me. Some graduates get a ticket to backpack around Europe. I just got the backpack.”

  I smiled. “It’s useful, at least.” I stepped aside and she gave a stiff little twirl into the foyer. The backpack was reflective and mesh, and stuffed full with clothes.

  “Seth took Devin to see some construction down the block,” I said. “They’ll be back in a few.” What I didn’t say was that Seth and I’d had an argument, or as close to one as you can have when one party can’t speak. Devin had been throwing a tantrum, flinging himself across the living-room couch, his face pink with effort, and Seth had typed, See? Needs Karl. As if Karl could cure a toddler of being a toddler.

  But Seth had a point. Since his father had moved out, Devin was quicker to cry, less sure of himself. Suddenly he was afraid of the howling wind outside and, oddly, of rats, which he was convinced would come squeaking out of the closet after nightfall. The day Karl packed up his Audi, Seth had stayed out for hours. He’d gone to Kit’s for dinner, and would have spent the night had Karl not made him come home to me. I knew he and Karl emailed daily, and that sometimes they met for lunch. Seth didn’t tell me, Karl did. Hoarding information was a by-product of my son’s silence, and so I pretended this withholding was simply more of the same.