by Emily Gould
Ever since Laura’s trip Marie had been acting maddeningly clingy and babyish, which Laura hated except in the moments when she secretly enjoyed it. A part of her liked the sick-day feeling of sitting up late at night after Marie claimed to have had a nightmare, reading Madeline in a purposely boring monotone until Marie finally passed out, lips cutely parted and drooling slightly on Laura’s arm. Less cute were her uncharacteristic lapses in potty-trained-ness, which both of them found jarring and humiliating, though Laura did her best not to act ruffled. Her day care wasn’t the greatest, just a group of kids and their caretakers hanging out in an older Polish lady’s fluorescent-lit basement, and Laura worried that they were probably snappish when kids wet their pants. But she couldn’t afford anything better. It was only thanks to the work she’d done on the album that she could afford day care right now at all. She couldn’t let herself dwell on it.
The patrons of Oslo at ten thirty in the morning on a weekday ran a predictable gamut. There were the neighborhood’s rich-hippie moms (in Laura’s imagination, in her darker moments, everyone with children except her was rich). These women all seemed to be friends with one another; their older kids ran around in the park together while the younger siblings relaxed in their strollers. When Laura was with Marie, she could socialize with them a little bit, in a superficial way, but when she wasn’t she became invisible to them again. It was fine, she got it; they had to stick together with their own tribe. They somehow had correctly intuited that she wasn’t one of them.
And then there were the young people, who were, confusingly, probably Laura’s exact age. But she could tell in an instant, just from their clothes and the women’s makeup, that they didn’t have kids. They talked with enormous gravity about a TV show they’d watched, which wasn’t as good this season as it had been in previous seasons, then segued into a conversation about a guy one of them was dating. As if it made any difference who you dated or what TV shows you watched!
There was also a woman, sitting by herself near the entrance of the coffee shop with a large iced coffee at the big square communal table, with a tiny baby in a woven wrap. It was probably one of her first times venturing out of the house with the baby, whose livid-pink head was barely visible within the wrap. She had been one of the young people a couple of weeks ago—pregnant, but still able to care about trivialities deeply, unable to imagine not being able to care. Now she wasn’t a member of any of the coffee shop’s constituencies. Her baby cried, that steely newborn wail, and she soothed it inefficiently with bouncing when really the only thing that was going to work, Laura knew, was feeding it. Laura tried to force herself not to pay attention, to focus on her own life, what she was going to tell Callie, how she was going to make it make sense.
No matter how she put it, though, Callie wouldn’t understand, because she was a young person like the ones in the corner, the ones wearing recently purchased clothes without stains or holes except ones they chose or intended. To Callie, eschewing months’ worth of nights like the one they’d had in Philly because you had to take care of your daughter didn’t make sense. To childless people, children were a logistical problem to be solved: find a way to pay for and arrange childcare, and you were free. They didn’t understand that even when you weren’t with your child, the child continued to exist in a part of your brain that you had to consciously work to silence, or as a low hum of anxiety that colored everything. Either way, you were fucked. Either way, pleasure and creativity were sacrificed entirely, or only permitted in small doses.
She would tell Callie that it wouldn’t always be like this, that soon Marie would be older and wouldn’t need her as much and they could try again. She didn’t know whether that was true. She hoped that it was.
* * *
Later that day, Laura ran into Matt at day care pickup, and when he asked if she and Marie wanted to go to the park with him and Kayla, she said sure. On the way to McCarren, Matt motioned them into a bodega, where he bought cups of Italian ice for the girls and, without asking, brown-bagged cans of beer for Laura and himself.
They sat on a bench and drank while the girls ran back and forth on the dusty path in front of them, playing some variation of tag that required a lot of screeching. Matt didn’t try to get Laura to talk, so they just sat there in silence, watching the girls. Halfway through her beer Laura burst into silent tears.
“You want to talk about it?” Matt moved tentatively closer to her on the bench, still allowing her the protective buffer of space you’d give a fellow subway passenger, if you weren’t an asshole.
“I don’t want her to know that I’m upset.” Laura sniffled, hiding her face in her hands in case Marie was looking in her direction, but of course the girls were oblivious.
Matt fished a napkin out of Kayla’s miniature owl-shaped backpack and handed it to her. It smelled like jelly. Quietly, as simply and unemotionally as she could, she told Matt about how she’d met up with Callie and told her that she couldn’t play any more tour dates but could be in the studio with them over the summer and would play shows in New York if they wanted. It had seemed like a reasonable compromise. She’d even offered that she might revisit touring when Marie was a little older. But Callie had said no.
“She’d said that it would be good to have my songs, but that if I wasn’t going to go on tour it wouldn’t make sense to have my voice on the tracks; it would set them up to disappoint people. I wanted to get mad at her, but I realized that she’s right, actually. It would be weird for them to sound totally different on the album than they do live.”
Matt blew air out of his mouth slowly, a genteel belch that also managed to convey solidarity and understanding.
“I want to believe—I want to pretend that this is something that will still be there for me when Marie is older, that I’ll be able to just reenlist whenever I feel up to it. But I can tell that this is my chance to get back to doing what I’m good at, what I’m meant to do. And I’m not taking it because I’m scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“That I’ll like it. That I’ll like it too much. That I’ll forget about her, or that it will change the way things are between us, and we won’t be able to get it back. She’s the most important thing in my life; my life is hard, but it’s also simple. How can a life have two most important things?”
Matt finished his beer and tossed it into the overflowing trash can next to the bench they were sitting on. “Well, I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself. I think you’re making the right choice. It’s what I would do, in your shoes. Look, life is long and your talent isn’t going anywhere. Patti Smith took a thirteen-year maternity leave.”
It was surprising that Matt seemed to have already thought this through. It was like he had spent time thinking about her. She felt obligated to push back against what he’d said, though; it was so optimistic and unrealistic.
“Patti Smith was already famous! She had made three great albums before she had her kids. I haven’t done anything. I’ve accomplished nothing in my life so far.”
It was a melodramatic thing to say, and Laura knew that she’d said it because she wanted to be contradicted. She was also aware that she was leaning on Matt for support the way that people did when they were in relationships, which was inappropriate; they were barely friends.
Instead of telling her how great she was and how much she’d done and citing keeping Marie alive and happy as an accomplishment, the way a female friend almost certainly would have, Matt started laughing at her.
“Seems like you set the bar pretty high for yourself. What would satisfy you, even? You want to raise a little kid and be a world-famous musician, knocking out the best songs of your life while also giving her everything she needs from you twenty-four hours a day?”
Laura smiled, in spite of how miserable she’d been feeling a minute ago. “Playing big venues, making lots of money, still tucking Marie in bed every night myself. Yeah, that’s all. I don’t know. Is that so unrealistic?”
> Matt shrugged. “Maybe not for you. You seem like the kind of person who makes stuff happen, even though you get in your own way a lot. I’m the kind of person who is just satisfied to watch other people make stuff happen. For which I thank my lucky stars every day.” He smiled at her. “I have to say, it’s a trip to be around someone like you. I mean, I’m really enjoying it. I hope it doesn’t ruin it that I just said that.”
Laura couldn’t resist the opportunity to insult herself again. “Someone as fucked up as me?”
This time, he took the bait; he would have been an idiot not to. “Someone as cool and smart and … uh, as beautiful. As you,” he said quietly. They both looked to make sure the girls weren’t looking at them, and then, as she’d known he was going to for a few minutes already, he furtively leaned over and kissed her.
Just once, no tongue. But it wasn’t a friendly, reassuring back-pat of a kiss. It was a real kiss, and to the extent that Laura could stop herself from worrying immediately about what to do about it and how she might explain it to Marie if she had happened to be watching, Laura enjoyed it.
They sat back and made sure they had gotten away with it.
“Do you guys want to come over for dinner?” Matt asked after a minute. “We’re going to order pizza and watch a movie.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t make your life harder?” Laura said, watching the girls run as an excuse to avoid eye contact with Matt. She was afraid that if she looked at him she would start laughing and lose her nerve.
“It would make it easier,” he said. It would make Laura’s life easier, too, she thought. She sat and watched while he rounded the girls up to go.
* * *
Laura ordered the burger, and Matt ordered the mac and cheese, which were the things you were supposed to order at DuMont. It was the known fancy restaurant of their neighborhood, but Laura had never been there before. She had never actually been on a “date” in New York during the four years she’d lived there; this had occurred to her only as she was getting ready to go on this date with Matt. She had been on dates in college and high school, but they seemed to have taken place during a previous lifetime. What she’d done with Dylan had involved meeting at places, usually his apartment, but restaurants had never been involved. The babysitter had asked her when she’d be home and she’d been briefly flummoxed. It was possible that she would go back to Matt’s after this, but it also seemed so gross to have to tacitly tell Caroline that she would be home at either ten or midnight, depending on whether she ended up getting laid. She’d said she would call to check in and left it at that.
The waiter left, and Laura tried to just relax and have a normal conversation without constantly monitoring the fluctuating levels of her attraction to Matt, and worse, the likelihood that he was doing the same thing. The date had been his idea, which was reassuring. She kept losing track of what they were talking about because she was staring at his face, the shape of his shoulders and the way he sipped his wine, the way he held his wineglass, evaluating the erotic potential in each feature, each gesture. The way he sipped was greedy in a way that could have seemed gross but wasn’t; he had big, full lips, and at one point, briefly, she saw the tip of his tongue flick unintentionally against the rim of the glass. It had been so long since she’d had sex that the whole enterprise seemed kind of improbable and disgusting. But there was also the possibility that once presented with the opportunity she’d actually feel ravenous, insatiable, like when you go too long without eating and don’t actually feel hunger anymore until you’re presented with a plate of food. She forced herself to snap back to attention.
“Delaware,” he was saying. “Like, the very most boring place in the world. Do you even have a stereotype in your mind about what people from Delaware are like?”
Laura thought about it. “Not into paying sales tax?”
Matt laughed, a little too long and hard, but still sincerely, and Laura felt her whole body relax. “Yeah, that’s definitely part of our cultural identity. How about you?”
“Ohio, so all the dying-rust-belt-town clichés. Most of my parents’ friends growing up worked for the Limited and Bath and Body Works; their corporate headquarters employs, like, half of Columbus. They weren’t farmers or steel mill workers, at least not in that generation.” She shrugged. “I’m second-generation boring.”
He widened his eyes. “Are you kidding? You’re so far from boring. I think you’re the most famous person I’ve ever hung out with. Definitely the most famous parent at Rainbow Tots.”
“Not even! Abigail’s mom was in an extra in Eternal Sunshine.”
“Wow, like, a featured extra? Did she have a line?”
“I think she would be delighted to tell you all about it; she gave me like a loose thirty-minute set about it when we worked at the bake-sale table together.”
Matt laughed again, and this time it didn’t seem like a performance at all. “You’re so funny, God. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve had any nonwork adult conversation, basically.”
“So the bar is set really low, is what you’re saying.” They were both grinning stupidly. He was so receptive, so easy to parry with.
“You’re vaulting over the bar so effortlessly. You are Olympic-level vaulting over it.” He accidentally bumped her knee with his large one under the tiny tabletop, but then he let their knees rest against each other. Laura felt a jolt, then that completely bypassed the analytical-mode part of her brain. She drank the last sip of her fashionable juice glass of red wine and stood up. “Excuse me a sec? I’m just gonna call and check in with the sitter.” She was going to be home at midnight.
9
One morning in the fall of 2007, Laura got up before anyone else and went into the kitchen. As usual, Matt had done the dishes, but he had, also as usual, left a few stray water glasses in the sink, plus the bowl that had contained the candy they’d shared while staying up too late watching TV. The dish drainer was full, stacked like a Jenga puzzle so that if Laura made one false move while unloading it, the plates would come clattering down and wake up everyone. She moved with finicky precision, lowering them gently one by one. When the drainer was empty she filled the kettle and set it to boil. She would grab it just before it whistled. Then she washed the dishes that Matt had left and started getting food out of the fridge for breakfast. Butter, eggs, bread, jam. If she got lucky, she would have a minute or two to herself at the kitchen table to drink coffee and stare at the wall, listening for the first sounds of stirring from the girls’ bedroom. If she didn’t get lucky, they would soon be upon her, all of them, leaving no inch of physical space in the kitchen or any other part of the apartment until they were tucked back in bed that night. She had not even cracked the first egg when she heard them, and then the day began.
The girls ran into the kitchen in their sleep T-shirts yelling at each other about something. There was still something toddlerish about their big heads and jutting bellies, but at five they were quickly becoming more like kids than babies. They could have conversations, and they required detailed explanations. They were, luckily, truly friends, and had handled the transition to living together as a welcome addition rather than a competition or a threatening intrusion. They called themselves sisters. Marie called Matt “Matt,” but sometimes Kayla slipped and called Laura “Mom.” Her mother had moved to California after Matt and Laura’s wedding and now saw Kayla only a few times a year. She sometimes sent checks that Matt sometimes did not cash. How Matt felt about this was a mystery to Laura; even on the rare occasions when they were awake and the girls were not, their conversations were mostly about logistics. They were always too exhausted to talk about how anyone besides the girls was feeling.
“What are we doing today?” Kayla asked Laura. “It’s Saturday, right? Can we go to the park? Can we go to the zoo?”
“First we have to eat breakfast, and then we can figure out what we’re up to,” said Laura. “Your aunt Callie might come by later. I’m going to see her
play music tonight.”
“Can we come?” Marie asked as they started to fork up their scrambled eggs.
“No, it’s after bedtime. That’s why Callie’s coming this afternoon; she wants to see you guys. She hasn’t seen you since the wedding.”
Callie had been on tour for months, but it wasn’t like she and Laura constantly hung out when she was in town, either. She was decent about staying in touch via email, though, especially when she had particularly good gossip; she shared the details of her conquests as though metrics like dick size and number of orgasms could still impress Laura, when the only thing that could spark true envy in Laura these days was affordable real estate near good public schools. Everything else was cordoned off in an area of her mind that had become derelict from neglect. Occasionally a random perennial in that mental vacant lot would bloom—a sense memory of her first time with Dylan, a pang of loss when Callie described the new album Laura wouldn’t even have time to listen to, much less play on—but it was otherwise overgrown, unvisited.
She decided to take the girls to the zoo. Matt stayed behind, claiming that he needed to catch up on work, and because he would be on duty for the end of dinner and bedtime Laura cut him some slack. Their apartment was only two blocks from the edge of the park, but the park was enormous and the zoo was all the way on the other side of it, and it took them forever to get there. It was unseasonably humid and they were all sweaty and cranky by the time they arrived at the carousel near the zoo entrance, where there was a little stand that sold overpriced water bottles and ice pops. The girls agitated for both and Laura spent twenty dollars getting them all one of each, and they plopped down in the grass next to the carousel with lime-green FrozFruit dribbling down their arms. When the girls finished, they started playing a game with the ice pop sticks, poking them into each other’s faces, then dodging at the last minute, which Laura put a stop to immediately.