When in Doubt, Add Butter

by Beth Harbison

  But no, they were all the same.

  “You’re gonna have to find the guy, you know,” Penny said.

  “First I’m going to have to decide what I’m going to do.”

  “Okay … yes, you’re right.” She put her hand on my arm. “You have time for that. You know that. There’s no point in pretending you haven’t been to this crossroads before.”

  “Right.” I took a shaking breath.

  “It’s okay, Gem. It will be okay. No matter what.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  She hesitated. A hesitation that spoke volumes before she said unconvincingly, “It’s true.”

  “I know what I’m going to do.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t have an abortion.” I’d thought about it. God help me, I had thought about it. Faced with an unexpected crisis, it’s hard not to think of all the options, but that was one I just couldn’t face. I was all too aware—whether right or wrong—that this was my last chance, and having an abortion would be a firm cap on any ideas I might ever have about having children, even if I had only a few years left to entertain the idea. “And I can’t give this baby up,” I went on. “I know I’m going to have the baby. No matter what I say, or whether I go through the motions of making a decision here, the bottom line is I already know I’m keeping the baby.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I turned to her. Her swollen belly hovered between us like a big sign from God. I knew how hard she and Dell had tried for Charlotte and how much harder they’d tried for this baby. The options I felt I had were not options she ever would have felt herself.

  And they were choices I never would have dreamed I’d have to make again.

  Most of the time, I pride myself on being a strong and decisive person—at least about big things. I know what I want and I know how to get there. If a roadblock pops up in the way, I’m usually pretty easy and flexible about finding a way around it.

  Usually.

  But this time, I was out of my depth.

  This time I didn’t know what to do.

  So I did the only thing I could at that moment: I cried.

  Chapter 16

  “It’s all about odds,” Willa said. “Even when something bad happens to you against the odds, in a way, that’s a form of luck.”

  She wasn’t talking about my pregnancy, though she could have been. No, she was explaining her livelihood to me—and it was clear she was really passionately interested in it, Lex’s disdain aside. The odds, the numbers, the chance, the adrenaline—all of that made her come alive.

  It was hard to find fault with that.

  “Luck, huh?” I laughed. “There are a lot of people walking away from casinos in Atlantic City, Vegas, et cetera right now—minus their mortgage payment—who would disagree.”

  I was making a carrot ginger soup, which, to my surprise, she declared smelled delicious, even though the ginger smelled so perfumy to me, I almost gagged.

  “Well, that’s just bad sense.” She shrugged. “People come up with all kinds of systems for gambling, like the triple martingale at the roulette table, where you dominate two-thirds of the table and double your bets until you, theoretically, win, but the fact is, each roll of the dice is a Bernoulli trial.”

  I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t, so I said, “It’s like you’re speaking a foreign language to me.”

  “I mean each roll of the dice is random. You have an equal chance of any outcome each time. If you’re betting red or black, you have a fifty–fifty chance of either. You can’t predict anything that way. That’s why it’s better to stick to games that have more obvious chances of success.”

  “Like—?”

  “Poker. That’s where I make most of my money. The number of cards is finite and the values are clear.”

  I got that.

  Until she added, “It’s like dealing with people.”

  “People,” I said, stirring the pot but turning my nose away from the gingery smell, “are never clear.”

  “Not true. Everyone has their tells. You just have to figure them out.”

  “Hm.”

  I guess that was mine, because she narrowed her eyes and asked, “Who are you trying to figure out?”

  I paused and turned to her. “I’m not sure. Someone seems to be sabotaging my work at the country club, and I don’t know who or why.” I wondered at the wisdom of admitting that anyone might be saying bad stuff about my cooking, but it was too late, I’d already said it. “Actually, yes, I do. I think it’s Angela Van Houghten, a woman I work for.”

  It was quickly clear that she was undaunted by it. “Why? What’s her story?”

  “Her husband made a pass at me.” I sighed.

  As soon as I’d spilled it, I regretted it. Willa had warmed up a tiny bit to me, but it wasn’t like we were pals. This was just the kind of information that would prove to her I was more trouble to have around than I was worth. I was untrustworthy, whether with your husband, your cutlery, or your computer.

  So it surprised me when Willa simply shrugged and said, “So you need to stop her.”

  I met her eyes. Emotion wasn’t getting me anywhere. “How? She probably wouldn’t even admit it, much less stop it. This is exactly the kind of humiliation she would hate. Hate.”

  “Well, no one likes public humiliation.”

  “True. But no one likes it less than someone like Angela. I’m screwed.”

  “Maybe. But you’re looking at the negatives instead of the positives, and believe me, if you look at the negatives, you’re going to see plenty. It’s like statistics that can prove whatever theory you want. So turn it around a little.”

  “How?”

  “You’re still working for her, right?”

  “Incredibly, yes.” I couldn’t quit. I would have loved to, but I couldn’t.

  “So watch her. Be aware that she might be behind this and watch for a vulnerability and then”—she flipped her palm in front of her—“turn it on her.”

  She wasn’t entirely wrong. If Angela tipped her hand, I could address this directly. “Good advice.”

  She smiled and sat back. “Hey, it’s how I make my living.”

  “How long have you been doing that?” I asked her.

  “What, being a shut-in, making money anonymously in front of the computer screen?”

  I smiled. “Yes, that.”

  “Since I was twenty. Ten years.”

  It had never occurred to me to wonder how old she was, but the news that she was thirty somehow surprised me. She seemed older.

  She must have read my thoughts in my eyes—and if anyone could, it would be her—because she said, “I know, you thought I was older. Most people do. I think it’s because I don’t have that youthful spring in my step.” She smiled, but I could tell she didn’t feel it.

  “Is that why you started doing this? Because it was hard to get around?”

  “Ah. No. Believe it or not, when I was twenty, I weighed a hundred thirty-three pounds.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t mask the surprise in my voice. I wanted to ask what happened, but there wasn’t a way to do that without sounding incredibly rude.

  “My mother was a rail, but my father was very heavy,” she said. “Still is. Nothing like me, though.” She gave an awkward shrug. “I was so determined to be like my mother that I dieted insanely in high school and college. Barely ate a thing. Almost no nutrition, I realize now. Celery isn’t exactly a powerhouse of vitamins.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “So I got no exercise. But I was thin enough to model for the store. Until I ‘ballooned’ to a hundred and thirty-five pounds, that is. Then I looked like a blimp next to the other models and plus size wasn’t cool in those days. On the runway or on the street. My boyfriend dumped me, and I guess that’s when I just stopped caring.”

  She sounded so defeated, it broke my heart.

  “A hundred and thirty-five on your frame is nothin
g,” I said. “How tall are you?”

  “Five eight and a half.” She nodded. “I see now just how ridiculous it was that I bought in to that, but at the time, it was very painful. Obviously, it’s more painful now.…” She looked down at her form, sitting on the sofa like an unsteady pile of tires.

  I won’t pretend for a moment that I knew how she felt or how hard it really was for her, but I have struggled with weight in my own way as well. After the baby was born when I was eighteen, my body changed in a lot of ways. In many ways, it never came back. To this day, I have the faint white road map on my hips and lower abdomen that shows the astute observer exactly where I’ve been in my life.

  After the baby, like Willa, I was vigilant about diet and exercise in college, and like Willa, I had experienced the draining effects of lack of fuel in the body.

  Unlike Willa, I kept it up for years, fighting my body’s pleas for nutrition. It wasn’t until I stopped working in the corporate world and started cooking that I actually developed a healthier relationship with food.

  And my body.

  Now my body conforms to its natural state: curvy, with a narrow waist but hips and boobs and upper arms that no one would ever mistake for a twelve-year-old boy’s (the ideal I had aspired to for so long). Once, I would have considered this body hideously fat. I would have been horrified at the prospect of “letting myself go” to this degree.

  Now I’m horrified that I ever thought that way.

  And I was looking at a dramatic illustration of how badly that line of thinking could potentially go.

  “Do you know what this feels like?” she asked suddenly. “It’s like being trapped inside a tiny, claustrophobic place.” She looked at me, and I saw she was crying openly.

  But I was careful not to invade her space. This felt like an important revelation, and I didn’t want to interrupt it. “What do you mean?”

  “This body, which must look so enormous to you from the outside, feels like something wrapped tightly around my real body, keeping me from moving, from running, from swimming. From driving a car, from flying in an airplane, from even leaving the house.” Her voice trailed off. “People look at me, I know this, they look at me and imagine me to be some lazy pig who derives enormous pleasure from consuming disgusting amounts of unhealthy food. That’s just not true. I can think of no greater pleasure than”—she thought for a moment—“to be able to take the steps to the top of the Washington Monument as fast as a child. And not die.”

  “There’s not a reason in the world you can’t get there,” I said. “How much weight have you lost in the past two weeks, since you first started being vigilant about the diet?”

  “Twelve pounds.”

  I gasped. “Are you kidding? That’s great!”

  She snorted. “It’s like throwing two deck chairs off the Queen Mary. Statistically insignificant.”

  “It’s fantastic,” I said firmly. “And you’re doing it in a healthy, permanent way.”

  “As long as I can afford you!”

  “Well, I’m not looking to lose any more work, but the truth is, you could do what I’m doing. Easily.”

  “I doubt that!”

  “No, really. I’ll teach you. Come on.”

  “Nooo, no. I’m the one who can’t be trusted to have ingredients in the house, remember?”

  “That’s why you need to learn to buy the right ingredients.”

  “I don’t know.…”

  “I do.” I went to her and put a hand out to help her off the sofa. “We’ll start now.”

  And thus, I began my first cooking lesson.

  I had to be mindful of the fact that there would come a time, in about seven months, when I would have to take some time off, and I didn’t want to leave Willa—who by then I hoped would have made tremendous progress—alone to fend for herself.

  I didn’t want to make myself obsolete, of course. That was the danger of teaching a person to fish, so to speak, instead of just preparing a nice thick swordfish steak with tropical salsa and rice pilaf.

  But it was a chance I had to take.

  Chapter 17

  “I don’t care what Angela’s saying or doing,” Penny said, “you can’t afford to be worrying about this right now.”

  And there it was.

  No, it wasn’t just me I had to think about. I had run into this exact problem when I was a teenager and too young to reasonably have an answer to it, but I never, ever thought I’d come up against it again. And I had spent an adult lifetime being really vigilant in order not to run into this again.

  Yet here I was.

  A more woo-woo person than I might have called it fate.

  I, on the other hand, just called it bad luck. I had stolen condoms from my friend’s bedside table drawer without checking the label, the expiration date, or even to see if they were novelty items made from chewing gum. In short, I’d told myself I was being responsible when, in fact, I was masquerading for my own sexual convenience.

  Not that I thought I “deserved” the result as a consequence for being irresponsible or something. I had been completely confident I was being responsible. At the time, additional vigilance hadn’t seemed necessary.

  Hindsight, of course, was 20/20.

  Now I had to keep my eyes open.

  “I think you need to expand your horizons,” Penny said. “Think about working new places so that when one goes down, it doesn’t mean the end of your career.”

  I nodded and reached for a cookie. She started buying those Danish butter cookies from Costco right when they started selling them around Halloween, and I’d probably already put on two pounds from them in the past three weeks.

  Or from something.

  “I have been,” I told her. “It’s not so easy, though. I’m a luxury in a bad economy.”

  She smiled. “Oh, honey, you’re a luxury in any economy!”

  “Right. This has always been my problem.”

  “It’s always been your choice! You took a huge chance leaving the corporate world, and it paid off! You have a wonderful job, you work for yourself, and all of that took courage most people don’t have! Yes, it’s hard sometimes, like now, but you’re living your dream.”

  As was so often the case lately, my eyes teared up. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining.”

  She shrugged and took a cookie. “I don’t know, you’ve got plenty to complain about, too!”

  I had to laugh. “Great.”

  A moment passed, and then Penny grew serious and said, “Have you thought about finding him?”

  Mack. “Not much.”

  “Not much because you don’t intend to or because you don’t think you can or what?”

  Another cookie. “Not much, meaning I’ve thought about it a ton and have seriously wondered if there’s karmic significance to the fact that it was a big clusterfuck when I ran into him at the grocery store.”

  “Karmic significance?”

  “Like, maybe I’m not supposed to be with him. He was physically significant, obviously, but maybe not spiritually.”

  She looked at me, aghast. “Are you joking? That is the dumbest thing I ever heard!”

  “I would think you, of all people, with your belief in psychics and signs and fate and all of that, would be on board with this.”

  “Okay, you want signs and fate? You met a stranger in a bar, had an instant attraction to him, took more than reasonable precautions to stay safe, yet ended up pregnant anyway. Tell me that’s not meant to be!”

  “Of course, I could argue with some of that.”

  “Of course you could, but it wouldn’t ring as true as what I just said. This was meant to be. There is no question.”

  “Then what about the other pregnancy? Was that meant to be as well?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then fate isn’t always very nice.” Tears filled my eyes and burned down my cheeks.

  “No,” she agreed, handing me a box of Kleenex from the table next to her. �
�It isn’t.” She rested her hand on her belly and moved her thumb along it thoughtfully. “But most of the time, I think fate just isn’t always very clear. So far, it’s not clear for you, but it will be.”

  I wanted that to be true. I really, really wanted it to be true. But I was deeply afraid that it wasn’t. That this was all a mistake or a glitch that would become the exact nightmare for the child I was carrying now that I had worried the last time would be for the child I gave up.

  Just the thought made me cringe. I had gotten pregnant by accident not once but twice in my life. From the outside, that made me look like an absolute idiot.

  What business did someone like me have raising a child?

  “I’m afraid,” I said.

  “Of what?”

  “Of not being good enough.”

  “We all are.” She looked down and gave a dry spike of a laugh, but I saw her swipe a tear from her eye. “Every single day. You just have to do your best.”

  Charlotte came into the living room then, wearing bright little pajamas that had cartoon cowgirls and horses all over them. Life looked so easy for those cowgirls. “Mommy?”

  “Yes, honey?” Penny put out her hand, and I gave her the box of Kleenex back. She dabbed at her eyes. “What are you still doing up, Char?”

  “I thought I heard Gemma.” She looked at me shyly through the thick glasses she wore.

  I held out my arms, and she threw herself into them, sitting on my lap. The fabric was warm, and just a little pilled, and I remembered exactly what those kinds of pajamas felt like to wear.

  It was unexpectedly poignant.

  I gave her a squeeze. “I’m sorry I didn’t go in and say hi, but I thought you were asleep.”

  “As you’re supposed to be,” Penny said, falsely stern. I’d seen this before. She and Charlotte were pals, and many, many times Penny had kept Charlotte up watching old movies or playing board games.

  A small hope surged in me. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about the potential negatives here, but I hadn’t really allowed myself the luxury of looking at the potential positives. The snuggle time, the cookie baking, the arts and crafts, the bedtime stories, the thrill of watching a person I already loved grow from wordless infant into whatever he or she would eventually be.