All the Difference

by Leah Ferguson

  Molly felt her body sag. Years of work, of budgeting to make more than the minimum payment each month, and in one fell swoop Monica could clear the lot. She’d wanted so badly to get to a place where she could be like Monica—hardworking, secure, with years of relationships invested in colleagues and business partners—and here Monica was, offering her an early exit off that same road. Molly sat where she was, breathing heavily, the muscles around her belly clenching with the effort. She should be happy, she told herself. Elated, to have less financial stress to worry over, to be joining a family capable of such generosity. But she felt the walls start rushing in on her again and struggled to fight off the feeling that an iron cage was clamping itself around her lungs, making her stay in place, struggling to breathe. She was supposed to feel grateful, Molly thought. She was supposed to be relieved. Be relieved, Molly, she told herself. For God’s sake, be RELIEVED.

  Monica seemed to sense the change in the air. “Well,” she said, patting her bag with a flourish, “I want to talk wedding invitations. Who’s coming to lunch with me? I was thinking either Tinto or the Fountain.”

  Molly’s mouth watered. Tinto had some of the best Spanish food in the city.

  “You’re kind, Monica, but I’m actually not feeling very well,” she demurred, avoiding the surprised look from Scott.

  “Oh, you poor darling,” Monica said, and took a step back from her. “Is it this heat?”

  “I think so,” Molly said. “I was going to lie down for a while.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. I was really looking forward to some mommy chitchat, too.” Monica pouted.

  Scott was still watching Molly, a frown creasing his forehead between his eyes. It disappeared as Monica turned to him in expectation.

  “Scott, then? Shall we?”

  “Um, yeah.” Scott gave Molly a sidelong look. “Though I was starting to think you liked my fiancée more than you like me.”

  “Well, she is prettier,” Monica replied, and patted the side of his face with her hand. “I’m kidding. Your fiancée just reminds me of me when I was her age.” Monica smiled at Molly, then turned her attention to her son’s attire. She took in the stains on his clothes.

  “I’ll pull the car around while you get changed.” She kissed the air around Molly’s cheeks again and stepped to the door.

  Molly looked up at Scott. She felt the question on her face before she had to speak a word.

  “I know what you’re going to say, Molly. But you heard what my mother said.” He leaned against the island where she sat. “Think about how much our baby is going to love seeing you every day, knowing you’ll be there to take care of him. I can’t imagine you’d be okay denying him that because you like your job.”

  “Well,” Molly said, “at least I make my own money.”

  For a long moment, they stared each other down. Scott’s face had taken on the hue of a raspberry, but when he spoke, his voice was soft.

  “Molly. I can’t have some stranger coming in here to raise my kid. We’re not hiring a substitute mom,” he said. “That’s what I went though, and it can’t be the same for him. I won’t let my child grow up thinking he’s not good enough.” Scott’s voice faltered. “I can’t have him, or her—whatever—wondering what he did wrong to have to sit in an empty house, waiting for his family to remember he exists. It messes with a kid’s brain, Mol. Do you really want that for our child?”

  The gentle voice became a growl when Molly started to respond. Scott cut her off before she could say a word.

  “You can’t have it all, Molly,” he said. It felt like he’d slapped her in the face. “You’re smart enough to know that.”

  He strode out of the kitchen, looking straight ahead as he walked past her, and Molly could hear his heavy footsteps climbing the stairs to her bedroom. She struggled to allow her racing pulse to settle down so she could catch an even breath. Tears fell singularly from her eyes, taking their time carving salty paths down her cheeks.

  Molly looked down at her hands. Her fingers were shaking. The light from the ceiling bounced around on her diamond ring, throwing splashes of white and yellow onto her pale skin. She saw how the huge ring overpowered her finger, making her hand look too small, too fragile. For a brief, quick moment, she allowed herself to imagine what a ring from Liam would’ve looked like. Its stone would’ve been small, the setting plain. It would’ve shone, though, and she could imagine the flashes of light throwing themselves out with abandon from the modest diamond. She would’ve been proud to wear it.

  Molly felt a swift kick from the inside of her stomach and looked down at her belly. Tears rose up in her eyes with purpose now, before she could prepare herself for them. She hoped Scott wouldn’t walk back into the kitchen to find her still sitting there, sobbing into her hands.

  “Poor baby,” she whispered. “I’m sorry Mommy and Daddy are fighting so much. We’re just trying to figure out what’s best for you. I swear to you, we’ll be better by the time you come. We’re really going to try, okay?” She took another shaky breath. “I’m going to try.”

  Molly stood up to refill her glass with water and glanced out the window at the darkening sky. There was a storm rolling in. She could smell the moist air coming in through the open window. She checked the clock on her phone and slid her keys from the counter. She heard heavy footfalls again as Scott came running down the stairs, and she blew a breath deep from her lungs as the front door slammed behind him. She waited a moment before going to the door herself. As she walked out of the house, Fleetwood Mac was still singing from the speakers, so determined in their harmonies on “The Chain,” even though no one was there to listen. Let Scott turn it off when he gets back, Molly thought, closing the door. It was about time he realized that a world of music existed outside of Whitesnake anyway.

  Thirty minutes later, Molly was wandering around the magazine racks of the massive Barnes & Noble on Walnut Street, looking for a pregnancy or parenting journal she hadn’t already read cover to cover, when she saw Jenny’s husband sitting at a table by himself in the in-store Starbucks with an oversized coffee cup in his hand. Without hesitating, she walked over to him. She hadn’t seen him since that awful incident at her and Scott’s engagement party.

  Dan didn’t notice Molly’s approach, and she was able to get a good look at him before he registered her arrival. He was hunched over a stack of papers on the table, a pen held tightly in his left hand. His shoulders were tense, his feet planted wide on the floor. It looked like he was still in his work clothes. Must be teaching summer school again, Molly thought. Dan was always doing what he could to help his kids—and he said the extra money was nice, of course. He consistently looked the part of the standard-issue young, idealistic teacher, in his khakis, button-front shirt, and tie. His black Dr. Martens were shined to mirror-like quality, and his hair was cropped neatly close to his head. He looked tired, Molly noticed, but she wasn’t sure if that meant he was up all night worrying about his struggling marriage or if the dark circles were just the result of another strenuous day spent manning the trenches in the classrooms of Philadelphia’s public schools. She swallowed the lump in her throat when she saw the wedding ring in its usual place on his finger.

  “Dan. Hi.”

  He looked up with surprise but seemed genuinely pleased to see her. He smiled wearily. “Hey, Mol, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be off hobnobbing with the cream of the Philly crop? Here, sit down and take a load off. You look like you ate an inner tube.”

  Dan leaned over to take his school bag off the chair and placed it on the other side of the table.

  “Oh, you hadn’t heard?” Molly said as she sank down into the seat. “My hobnobbing days are over, buddy, at least for now. I got canned.”

  Dan choked on his coffee. “What? No shit. What for?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just say I’m not as good a juggler as I used
to be.” Molly leaned back in her seat and placed her feet on the chair between them. It felt good to sit down.

  “And what does Handsome Harry think about all this?”

  Molly chuckled and shook her head, staring at the papers stacked under the pencil in Dan’s hand. “Scott? He’s why I’m here. We’re having some, uh, difficulties agreeing on how to raise the baby.”

  Dan raised an eyebrow. “What did he say now?”

  Molly laughed out loud this time, a genuine laugh, the whole situation suddenly just seeming absurd. “Oh, Dan. He’s actually excited I got fired. His whole family’s practically drawn up a schedule for me for when the baby comes—stay home all day to do laundry and breastfeed, cook gourmet meals, attend charity galas with his parents at night . . .”

  “. . . and bring him his midnight snack after you come home? Molly, that dude’s messing with you.” Dan looked at her now with an expression of real concern. His body was still, without the usual pitter-pattering of his pencil against a table or jitter of a leg. He waited.

  “Nah.” Molly shook her head. “He’s not messing with me, Dan. He means it. It’s like he wants me to be the exact opposite of the person he started dating.”

  Dan rubbed his hand through his spiky hair and sighed. “That’s not good, Mol.”

  She sat up a little bit and squared her shoulders. “It’ll be fine. We’re just going through a rough patch. It’ll be fine,” she repeated. “He’s just been in a weird mood or something.”

  “Molly, that’s what the girls in my classes will tell their friends right before they walk into school with a black eye.”

  “Dan!” Molly stared at her friend, her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying, be careful, Mol, okay? I gotta admit, I’m a little worried about you. Scott’s been acting really shady ever since you got pregnant, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Molly sighed. “I guess you have a right to that opinion, huh?”

  Dan was quiet.

  “Look, I’m sorry he was such an ass that night. I’m starting to think we just need to keep him out of a twenty-mile radius of any alcohol, ever.”

  Dan still didn’t speak. He started toying with the pencil, doodling circles around a corner of his grade book.

  “How are you, anyway? That’s why I stopped over.” Molly leaned forward to catch Dan’s eye. “So even though she’s home now, evidently you’re not talking with Jenny that much, if you didn’t know I’d lost my job.”

  “No.” Dan shook his head. “We’ve been talking, but not often, and not much. She’s doing her standard shutdown thing she does when she’s upset, and I’ve been trying to give her some space, but this has gone on too long. We just sort of circle each other at home. We don’t talk, and she acts like she’ll combust if I come too close. It’s been, what, almost two months since she’s been back? I can’t take it. It’s like she wants to believe I cheated on her.”

  Dan put his pencil down. He rubbed his eyes with the thumb and fingers of one hand, then looked at Molly. She was taken aback by the sadness she saw in his eyes.

  “I hate it, Mol. I was so excited to have her back, but she might as well still be at her parents’ house for all that’s changed. I love Jenny more than I love tacos, but we’ve never not gotten along like this. I don’t know if this job thing has her depressed, or if it’s wanting a baby or what, but it’s like she just took this as an excuse to block out me and anything that could hurt her anymore.”

  “Hmm. Jenny in shutdown mode. That’s never good.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  Molly looked at him. “You know I’m dying to ask you about that night.”

  Dan gave her a withering look. “You’re kidding me, right?” Molly shrugged her shoulders.

  “Here. Look at this. Do you remember reading Romeo and Juliet in ninth-grade English?” He pushed an open book across the table to her.

  “Shakespeare? Oh, I don’t know, buddy. Sorry to say I hated English, and that guy William right there was a big reason. You may have to translate.”

  “Ah, you just didn’t have the right teacher.” Dan nodded at the page. “See, Mercutio starts making fun of Romeo for falling in love with Rosaline—you remember he loved her before seeing Juliet, right?”

  Molly nodded, mainly to keep him talking.

  “When Romeo tells Mercutio that he’d had a dream about her, Mercutio launches into this huge speech: ‘I see Queen Mab hath been with you. / She is the fairies’ midwife; and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate-stone.’”

  Dan looked at Molly, who shook her head in confusion. He continued.

  “‘On the fore-finger of an alderman / . . . she gallops night by night / Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; / O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight; / O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; / O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream . . . ’”

  Dan sat forcefully back in his seat and looked at Molly, triumphant.

  Molly held up her hands, palms to the sky. “Sorry to disappoint you, bud, but that all sounded like Russian to me,” she said.

  Dan sighed in bemused exasperation. “Mercutio thought that love was fickle. Queen Mab was famous for being this tiny little enchanting fairy who could grant people’s wishes through their dreams. She had the power to make them happy. Get what they want. She could do whatever she wanted simply by dancing into their heads”—Dan paused—“and working her magic.”

  “And this tells me nothing. Could you break it down in real-world terms for me?”

  “Molly, c’mon,” Dan said. He pushed aside the book. “What do you think? You think I really could cheat on Jenny? I’ve been in love with the girl since the first day of phys ed in the ninth grade. She spiked a volleyball straight into my head. She knocked me out.” Dan shrugged his shoulders and blushed a little. “Literally and figuratively. She’s my tiny little fairy who made my wishes come true. I’m enchanted by her; always have been. There’s just no other way to put it.

  “Of course there’s never been anyone else. All I did was talk to that girl because I found out we went through the same master’s program. I don’t know what Scott was thinking. Jenny’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  He paused again. “I’m not her father.”

  Molly leaned back in her chair. “Yeah. That’s what I figured.”

  “So now what?”

  “I don’t know, bud. I don’t know. Wait for her to come around? Stand outside your bedroom window with a boom box Say Anything–style?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered that, except that she hates that movie,” Dan said. “She never thought Diane was good enough for Lloyd Dobler.”

  Molly smiled.

  “Can I just tell you, Molly? Do you know how hard it is to come home every night to a quiet house? Jenny’d always have the radio on, and I’d walk in to see her dancing to ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday,’ singing at the top of her lungs in what has to be the worst impression of Morrissey I’ve ever heard. It was freakin’ adorable. She and I used to cook dinner together—”

  Molly kept a straight face, but was secretly choking back a sad smile. The only thing Scott ever wanted to do in the kitchen with her was open a bottle of beer or fool around on top of the island counter. Or both at the same time, if he could manage it.

  Dan’s voice had gotten quieter. “Now I can’t stand to listen to any band with an English singer anymore.” He used the fingers of one hand to twist the napkin beside his coffee cup. “And I used to really like The Smiths.”

  Molly raised her eyebrows.

  “But it’s awful,” Dan said. “Climbing into bed without kissing her good night. Watching TV in separate rooms. Not talking over coffee in the morning. It’s like she died, and I’m living with her ghost. There’s just a hole.”

&nbs
p; Dan’s voice had grown a little jagged, and he shook his head as if to snap out of it. “But she’s not dead. She’s sitting right there in our living room, watching Wheel of Fortune and pretending I’m not there right beside her, even though there’s nowhere else I’d rather be . . . Have you talked to her?”

  Molly shifted in her seat and uncrossed her legs. The doctor had warned her to not restrict the circulation to her ankles.

  “Yes, but she doesn’t give me much. She mainly focuses the conversations on me and the baby and avoids talking about you altogether. But I’m trying. I think you’re right about the possibility of depression, though. Do you think this baby thing has really gotten to her?”

  Dan nodded. “It’s her own Queen Mab.”

  “And how are you with that? Can I ask?” Molly tilted her head to look at Dan’s face.

  “How do you think I am? Shitty. This hasn’t worked out quite how I imagined.”

  Molly pressed her lips together, remembering the reason why she’d come out tonight in the first place.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’ll try to get her out more—go to the gym, job-hunt together. Anything to get her out of the house and attempt to place her head squarely back on her shoulders. She’s too smart to lose you. I know that, for sure. She does, too. She’s just taking a little longer this time.”

  “Thanks, Mol. I appreciate it.” Dan patted her knee in his brusque, affectionate manner. “Hey, you should get home to your baby daddy and make up. Make him rub your feet or something. You look like you could use it.”

  “Hey, that’s not nice!” Molly playfully swatted Dan against his shoulder. “You’re my friend. You’re supposed to tell me I look beautiful and have that certain glow. Not that I look tired with nasty feet.” She grinned at him.

  “Hey, you said it. I wasn’t going to say anything about your feet, Captain Cankles. But pretty soon your fool fiancé’s going to have to get a stroller just for you. Those things look painful.”

  Molly glanced down at her pathetic-looking ankles. She wished she’d changed into something longer so that Dan didn’t really have to see the worst of the swelling on her legs. And the veins. Molly thought the varicose veins were the worst of the hidden curses of pregnancy so far. They hurt, and they were ugly. She hadn’t been prepared for them.