Four: Stories of Marriage

by Nia Forrester

“It was just a thought,” Thierry rushed in to fill the silence. “I’m sure you’re rather busy.”

  “No. It’s … I would love to,” Tracy said without thinking. “Should I meet you there, or …?”

  “Why don’t I come in my car to fetch you? If Brooklyn is anything like Manhattan, parking is sure to be an issue.”

  He pronounced the word ‘ISS-you’.

  “No, Brooklyn is not like Manhattan,” Tracy said. “Except in that respect. Parking is an issue. But I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

  “No, not at all. Where might I collect you?”

  Tracy recited her address and repeated it to make sure he got it.

  “Wonderful. Shall we say two p.m.?”

  Tracy thought for a moment. This was moving way too fast.

  And apart from that, she could not afford to be late tonight. To go to the gallery at two, she would have to find someone to watch Layla on short notice and ensure that she was home by five to cook dinner and get ready for Brendan.

  Tonight, she was determined not to have anything get in the way of conceiving their second child. And if she went off to Fort Greene on an art collection trek, she would throw off the entire planned rhythm of her day.

  “Actually, Thierry,” she said. “Now that I think about it, today might not be the best day for this. I just remembered, I have an appointment this evening that I need to prepare for, and …”

  “Tomorrow then?”

  She could have asked why it was so important to have her along for the trip, a woman he barely knew, but Tracy didn’t bother. For all she knew, he had heard terrible things about Brooklyn in general, or about Fort Greene in particular. Maybe he wanted to have a local guide with him.

  “Ahm … just a moment.” Tracy reached for her datebook.

  She still liked to write things down, rather than store information in her smartphone, gaining a strange satisfaction from seeing her appointments, Brendan’s and Layla’s all listed in her neat, compact script. She checked the book each morning and checked the next day’s plans each evening. It gave her a sense of her bearings, and that her and her family’s lives were moving forward in an orderly fashion.

  “I’m free tomorrow,” she said. “In fact, you have your pick of times eleven a.m. to three p.m.”

  “Perhaps we can make an afternoon of it?” Thierry suggested. “What restaurants might we find interesting in Fort Greene for lunch?”

  Tracy narrowed her eyes. It almost felt like he was asking her on a date. It wasn’t out of the question. According to Robyn who had once lived in France for a spell, Europeans weren’t governed by all the same boundaries as Americans, particularly when it came to love and sex.

  “I can think of a few,” she said slowly, still assessing the nature of what he might be proposing. “What kind did you have in mind? Italian, French …”

  Thierry laughed. “Oh please, not French,” he said.

  “I guess French restaurants in Brooklyn would suffer from comparison to the restaurants you’re accustomed to,” she acknowledged.

  Thierry laughed again but was apparently too polite to comment on the quality, or lack thereof, of French restaurants in New York.

  “New American,” he offered. “Let’s just go to a place where the food is American. I haven’t had much of that even since I’ve been in New York.”

  “I should be able to manage that,” Tracy said.

  From another part of the house, she heard the rustling and shuffling that told her that Layla was up from her late-morning nap. They would go for a walk in the park, then to the butcher where Tracy would find good cuts of lamb for dinner, and afterward, they would head over to the bakery on Clinton that had the delicious mousses and tiramisu.

  They would have a slow, leisurely day. And in the late afternoon, Tracy would take Layla to the library for Story Hour, as was her habit on the afternoons when Layla hadn’t gone to morning preschool. Back home, she would keep her up, for as long as possible, especially if Brendan was due home at a reasonable hour. And once she was down for the night …

  Tracy smiled. It still excited her to think about the nights when she was the sole focus of her husband’s attention. It didn’t happen as often as it used to, nor as often as she would have liked.

  “Tomorrow at noon, we’ll go to the studio, and then afterward, American food. How does that sound?”

  “Great,” Tracy said. “And …”

  How to put this?

  “I’d love to have your wife’s number as well as yours. To thank her again for inviting us to your home.”

  There was no way she was going art-shopping and then to lunch with a married man without touching base with his wife, and letting her know first, even casually and in passing.

  “Of course,” Thierry said without hesitation. He rattled off two numbers, which Tracy scribbled in her datebook, with his and Simone’s names next to them.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Tracy said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  She could hear Layla upstairs now. She had climbed out of her bed, and was toddling, heavy-footed toward the top of the stairs. In a moment, she would carefully make her way down. She was four, and it was ridiculous, but Tracy always felt her heart in her mouth a little bit, picturing her baby tumbling headfirst toward the bottom, breaking something on her way down.

  “See you tomorrow, then,” Thierry returned.

  They hung up just in time for Tracy to hear Layla’s voice, a little plaintive, the way it always was when she woke up from a nap.

  “Mama … mama? Mama!”

  There were still days when, hearing that moniker directed at her seemed almost unbelievable.

  “I’m in here,” Tracy called back.

  “Mama, come!”

  Smiling, Tracy went out to the foyer, just in time to see Layla taking the stairs.

  One step. Stop.

  One step. Stop.

  One step. Stop.

  By the time she was halfway down the staircase, Layla released the bannister that had been steadying her, and extended her arms. Her pecan-colored face was puckered as though she was about to cry, but she didn’t. She simply waited.

  “Come!” she ordered again.

  “I’m waiting for you right here,” Tracy said, nodding her encouragement. “Come on down.”

  Since Layla was eighteen-months-old, Brendan had been prompting Tracy to give her every chance to become more independent. And learning to navigate their home was, in his view, a low threshold.

  Give her some breathing room, Trace, he said, the first time Layla tried the stairs. Let her figure it out.

  With the stairs, as soon as Layla had good balance and became a proper toddler, he stood a couple steps down, coaxing her to try to come to him on her own. It was slow, and painstaking, and she almost fell face-first a time or two, but Brendan was right there, urging her forward, telling her what to do rather than going to her aid.

  Hold on, baby, he told her. Right there. Hold on to the side, so you don’t fall. That’s it …

  And Layla, eyes on her father, took one tentative step after another, and worked her way down five steps before Brendan picked her up, kissed and praised her, and carried her the rest of the way.

  You did good, he told her. Smart girl.

  After that, he let her do seven steps, then ten; until she was able to make it all the way down on her own with him standing guard, and ready to help if she needed him. Now, Layla could do of course it all on her own, but knew that when only her mother was around, she could probably hitch a ride on her hip.

  Brendan always spoke to Layla the way he spoke to everyone else. Never baby-talk, cooing, or nonsense words. He told her she was smart much more often than he told her he was pretty, and never patronized. From the moment her eyes began to focus, Layla was his little person, but no less a person than anyone else. Tracy, on the other hand, struggled to treat her daughter as anything less than the most precious and exquisite thing on the face of the earth.
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  Keeping her eyes on Layla’s chubby and sometimes unsteady legs, Tracy forced herself to stay put as her daughter made her way to the foot of the stairs. Only once she was at the bottom did Tracy release the breath she was holding and open her arms.

  “How about we get a snack?” Tracy reached down and picked her up.

  Layla nodded, and rested her head on Tracy’s shoulder, still a little drowsy. Turning her head, Tracy sniffed her hair, rubbed her cheek against it and smiled.

  Some women would have been bored out of their minds to have this life. A few short years ago, she would have insisted she was exactly that kind of woman herself. But she was not bored. She was happy. And the thought of another baby only made her happier still.

  5

  He couldn’t believe he was in this situation again. Whatever happened when he opened the door, he probably deserved.

  There were very few actual crises in his work. And when there were, they usually involved the talent and not the administrative, management or investment sides of the business where Brendan spent most of his time.

  But today—just his luck—there had been such a crisis.

  Someone in the finance department had gotten email, instructing them to make a sizeable wire transfer to an account in Paris. The instruction to send money to Paris was not that unusual, since they were beginning to do some business there, but what was unusual was the sum of money requested, and that the email came from Brendan himself.

  Except it hadn’t.

  Somehow, someway, someone had hacked into the company server and accessed his email account, sending the message and hijacking his inbox so that responses were diverted.

  Upon receiving a message from the COO asking for a transfer of fifty-grand to Paris, the finance specialist had run it up the chain to the CFO, as required by their internal financial controls. The CFO, a by-the-book brother named Pierce, had emailed Brendan asking for supporting documentation to authorize the wire. Brendan-who-was-not-really-Brendan responded promptly, with a brusque message that he would send the documentation as requested but the transfer had to happen right away.

  Being who he was, Pierce found that response unsatisfactory, and walked from the other end of the building over to Brendan’s office to get more information. Once there, he learned that Brendan wasn’t even in the building, but out for a lunch appointment. Pierce, of course, didn’t wire the money, but waited for Brendan to return.

  And that was when they realized he’d been hacked.

  For the rest of the day, and past eight p.m., Brendan, Pierce and the entire finance department had been in the office conducting an internal audit, reviewing past transfers, and double-checking that they were all authentic. Meanwhile the IT department, and their various banks took precautions to make sure none of their accounts had been compromised.

  It was after six before Brendan even remembered to call Tracy, and when he told her he wasn’t sure if he’d make it by eight, she had shut down on him.

  She didn’t shout, scream, or even complain. She just said she would see him when he got home.

  Now, at almost nine p.m., he was finally here.

  Expecting the house to be dark and quiet, with Tracy probably upstairs reading in bed, Brendan was surprised when he opened the front door to the brownstone, to find the lights on in the front room. Not the bright, overhead recessed lights, but the softly glowing orange lamps set on the tables on either end of the sofa. In the middle seat of the sofa, sat Tracy, legs folded to one side beneath her and in her hand a large glass of white wine. On the coffee table sat a platter with flatbreads, cheeses, slices of meat, and olives.

  She was wearing a crème-colored lounging pajama set, the one that fell like water off her frame, clinging to the curves of her breasts and butt, hinting at instead of exposing the best parts of her. He had once told her he liked it more than lingerie, so Brendan guessed that she had put it on for their intimate evening.

  Without a word, she looked up as he entered. Her expression was impassive.

  Brendan dropped his bag next to the armchair opposite her and sat. His tie was already loosened, his suit-jacket draped over his arm. He tossed it aside and reached for the platter on the coffee table.

  Tracy leaned forward and slid it closer to him.

  “You must be hungry,” she said. Her tone was cool, dispassionate. But Brendan knew all too well that ‘dispassion’ was not likely to be an accurate descriptor of his wife’s emotions in this moment.

  “Yeah. Little bit. But Trace …”

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’s fine. It was an emergency. And I’m sure you felt you had to be there to take care of it.”

  “I didn’t feel I had to be there to take care of it. I did have to be there to take care of it,” he said, pausing with a piece of flatbread in hand and looking directly at her. “But I’m still ...”

  “Pierce wasn’t around?”

  “Yeah, of course he was. But this isn’t the kind of thing …”

  “Once they knew what happened, he needed you why?”

  “To get into my computer and check my messages. They even needed to check out my phone, my iPad … Everything had to be scrubbed. And on top of that, there were all the past transactions to look at.”

  Tracy nodded and took another sip of her wine.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  Brendan held his breath. She was too calm. And now she was saying she’d been “thinking”? Nothing good was likely to come of that.

  “Maybe we don’t need to be working on another baby right now.”

  Brendan’s hand, which still hadn’t made it to his mouth with the flatbread, lowered. He narrowed his eyes.

  “I thought you …”

  “All of this planning and …” Tracy shook her head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it puts too much pressure on everything. And every time you disappoint me, I …”

  “Every time I disappoint you?” Brendan echoed. “Tracy, this has only been …”

  “The fourth time, Brendan. The fourth time I’ve asked you to be home, so we can … It’s ridiculous at this point. It’s more than a pattern, it’s almost as though you don’t want to …”

  “Don’t even start with that,” he said, cutting her off. “Having another baby is as important to me as it is to you.”

  “No, it’s not.” She shook her head. “It’s clearly not.”

  “Tracy, don’t even …”

  “Each time you’ve missed these appointments, you have an excuse …”

  “A reason,” he corrected her.

  “No, an excuse, Brendan. And always an excuse just good enough to exonerate you. But never quite good enough to explain why you couldn’t make our family a priority. For a change.”

  “For a change?” He put down the flatbread. “And exonerate me? What am I? Accused of a crime or something? For workin’?”

  “Yes. For a change. You’re out there chasing … I don’t even know what, and I’m here …” She broke off and took another slug of her drink. “And if you feel like you’ve been accused of a crime, maybe it’s because you’re guilty.”

  “I’m not guilty as a matter of fact,” Brendan said. He could feel his breaths grow shorter, shallower. He was, despite himself, getting angry. “Y’know why I work so hard? To make sure everything you and Layla have now, you’ll always have. Even if I get hit by a bus tomorrow and couldn’t work another day. That’s what I’m out here doin’.

  “So you can have spa days, and vacations, and parties and expensive-ass red bottoms and clothes and … our apartment in the city that we barely use. So Layla can do soccer and ballet, and any other little thing you get in your head she ‘needs’ at three-and-a-half years old.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow what, Tracy? You sayin’ you don’t need those things?”

  “No,” she said, practically spitting the word. “I’m saying that providing those things is your job, Brendan. As my husband, and her father. Just like being here and
making sure our house is clean, your clothes are pressed, your meals are cooked, our bills are paid on time are my jobs. Not to mention my other job, of just keeping myself attractive enough that you even want to come home at night. But lately it seems like that isn’t doing the trick, so …”

  “Wait. What did you just say?”

  “I said, your job is …”

  Brendan shook his head impatiently. “Nah. Not that. The part about keeping yourself ‘attractive enough’ for me to … want to come home at night?”

  Tracy looked down at her lap. “Do you even want another baby with me?”

  “Yes!” he said, raising his voice, before he remembered that Layla was upstairs asleep. “For the millionth time, yes! But I can’t lie, Tracy, if I have to go through all this old shit again …”

  He broke off and leaned back in his armchair, hands clasped above his head.

  They sat in silence for a long while, as Tracy sipped her wine, and Brendan stared at the ceiling.

  “What’s it going to be like when we have two babies and not just Layla? What’s it going to be like if we have three?” Her voice was almost as quiet as a whisper.

  Brendan said nothing.

  “When I think about having another baby, I think about you and me with Layla at the dining table, the baby in the high-chair, all of us eating breakfast together, and dinner every evening. Going out together on weekends, taking trips …”

  “And we’ll do all that.”

  “When?” Tracy demanded. “You’re never here.”

  “Maybe if you were working …”

  Tracy put the wineglass on the table and sat up even straighter. “Is that what you want?”

  Brendan exhaled heavily and shook his head. “No, but … I mean, I feel so fuckin’ … crowded sometimes. By all these damn expectations you have in your head about how we’re supposed to be. Can’t we just …? If you had to go to work every day …”

  “And who would look after Layla?” Tracy’s voice had grown almost shrill. “You’d want to hire a nanny or something, like Riley does? Get someone to watch her while I’m out making money we don’t even need?”

  “I said, no! I’m just … I don’t know the answer, I’m just … thinking out loud.”