Molly scooped the first bite of the low-cal fettuccine Alfredo onto her fork just as the initial murmurs rose from the baby monitor. She held her breath and waited when it grew quiet, and then felt her whole body sag into itself as Dylan’s wails started up again in a fury, bouncing through the speaker and echoing down the stairs. Molly took a deep breath, tossed the fork into the dishwasher, and set the full tray of food in the refrigerator. Dylan’s cries filled the house now, pushing past the worries and to-do lists and pangs of hunger to stand front and center. Molly headed up the stairs.
“Seriously?”
Jenny was standing on the corner of 9th and Wharton, holding a sandwich in both hands, staring at the flashing neon lights of the restaurant that stood directly across the street.
“We couldn’t go to Geno’s?” she asked. She looked down at her cheesesteak with resignation, as if it were some salesman who’d come to her door at dinnertime and kept knocking. She sighed and took a tentative bite of her hoagie. “Geno’s meat is so much better than this stuff,” she said.
“No way!” Dan mumbled. His lips were wide open around the steak and onions he’d shoved into his mouth. He hadn’t noticed the Cheez Whiz dripping onto his Converse high-tops. “Thif iv awesome!”
Molly looked back and forth between her friends. She was sitting at a table under an overhang at Pat’s King of Steaks, rocking the car seat on the concrete floor beside her, even though Dylan had already fallen asleep. She was so tired it felt like her eyes were burning holes into their sockets, but she’d jumped at the chance to meet up with her friends, pulling on clean yoga pants and sneaking out of the house while Scott took a nap in their bedroom. He didn’t like her going out as much anymore, saying it wasn’t healthy for the baby to be out in the chill and that Molly should stay close in case she needed to be fed. But it’d been almost two months now. The air inside her home had grown stale. Molly unzipped the car seat cover to peek inside. Dylan was quiet, dozing in the warmth of her fleece cocoon. Molly turned her attention back to her friends, who were pretending to squabble like squirrels in a park.
“Do you see this?” Jenny was holding the dripping remains of her cheese steak in her husband’s direction. “This is how much I love you. THIS. This sorry hunk of meat in a roll? Proof, okay?”
She winced at the sight of a line cook glaring at her through the glass. Not one of them had noticed that a window was propped open.
“Proof of your love?” Dan was laughing. “Jenny, this is payback. Delicious payback, of course.” He winked at Molly over the top of his sandwich, bringing her into the conversation. She’d never cared either way who won the war between the two rival cheesesteak establishments that anchored the busy South Philly intersection, but smiled at Dan’s enthusiasm. She was just happy to be out of the house.
“You know this is the only way I would’ve gotten her here, right, Mols?” he asked. “Jenny had to leave me for a month, put me through the wringer a little while longer, then come crawling back feeling awful enough to agree to eating on this side of the street.”
“Well,” Jenny said, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, “guilt is a powerful motivator.” She, too, looked at Molly. “I’ve pretty much signed myself up for a lifetime of Pat’s steaks, I’m afraid.”
Molly watched Dan, bent over a basket of French fries with a content smile on his face. There was a fleck of Cheez Whiz caught on the corner of his mouth. An image of Liam appeared in Molly’s mind—how they used to sit beside each other here, too, joking around just like Jenny and Dan were doing now. She thought about how the skin around his eyes had formed those laugh lines when they focused on her in the middle of the noisy pub a few months ago, their easy conversation after years of separation. Molly looked at her daughter and shook the thought out of her head.
A vintage Camaro pulled up to stop at the light on the corner beside them, its radio blaring Joni Mitchell through the open sunroof. After a childhood of listening to her father’s vinyl albums, Molly recognized “Both Sides Now” almost before the first chord had finished playing. A breeze scattered some paper napkins across the table, and she gathered them into a tidy stack, concentrating on getting the folded edges lined up in perfect order.
Dan nudged Molly’s leg with his knee. “Hey. Earth to Mols. What’s up with you? How’s life with Mr. Darcy?”
He imitated Scott’s come-hither smile, complete with a toss of his spiky hair. Jenny didn’t laugh.
“Mol, you look exhausted,” Jenny said, and placed the rest of the cheesesteak in its paper on the table. Dan pulled it over in front of him and began eating again.
“Are you getting any sleep?” she asked.
Molly swallowed. “Not so much.”
“Is he helping you out at all?”
Molly shook her head, lips clamped shut. The traffic light had turned green, and the Camaro paused for a split second before accelerating. The driver of the truck behind it lay on the horn, the sound a sudden, angry burst through the cool fall air, drowning out the delicate harmonies of the song. Molly heard Dylan whimper and rocked the car seat again.
“Is that what you were expecting,” Jenny pressed, “when all of this began?” Dan had stopped chewing to listen.
“No, not at all,” Molly said, keeping her gaze on the sidewalk. “In the beginning, no. Scott was always trying to impress me. I guess I figured that all the flowers and Sixers tickets would translate into dishwashing and diaper-changing once we got serious.”
She looked up, but didn’t like the expressions of pity she saw reflected in both of her friends’ eyes. “Pretty stupid of me, huh?”
“You’re not stupid, Molly.” Jenny’s voice was sharp.
“Okay,” Dan said. “Let’s say that either he changed, or he’s just not the guy you thought he was. Say he’s not Mr. Darcy so much as Mr. Homer Simpson.”
“Mmm,” Molly conceded.
“Listen, Molly,” Jenny said, taking control of the conversation. She spoke firmly, but her voice was soft. “When I was being an idiot about Dan, you set me straight.”
Dan nodded.
“And?” Molly felt herself stick her chin a little higher in the air. The evening breeze had picked up and changed direction, blowing now at their backs. Molly’s oversized sweatshirt, one of the few pieces of clothing that fit her still-wide middle, did a poor job of blocking the chill.
“And I think you need to look at your situation with Scott. I’m concerned about you and a little worried for that sweet baby of yours.”
Jenny was quiet for a long moment. Dan placed his hand on her back and rubbed a small circle there, as if working courage into her lungs.
“Look, Molly.” Jenny sighed. “You gave me the bottom line, so I’m going to bounce one to you. I made a mistake by almost leaving a relationship that was good—”
“I’ll say,” Dan said.
“—so why aren’t you getting out of one that’s bad?” Jenny asked.
“It’s not that bad, Jenny.” Molly swallowed. “We’re just going through a rough patch.”
“You said that months ago, Molly,” Dan replied. He’d finished both cheesesteaks and wiped his hands clean of their grease. The napkins lay in front of him in a crumpled, stained heap. “Don’t you think it’s a sign that you haven’t set a date yet? At this rate Dylan’s going to grow up and get married before you two do.”
“Well, having a baby is hard on a relationship. We have some growing pains to work out.” Molly cringed as soon as the sentence was uttered. She knew how she sounded, and she watched Jenny’s lips pull into a straight, hard line that told her she wasn’t the only one. “I mean, that’s what they always tell you.”
“So, that’s a reason for him to walk all over you?”
“I don’t have a job, Jenny.”
“So get one.”
“Paying as much as S&G did? Enough to cover child c
are?”
“Is this you saying this, Molly, or what Scott’s told you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Molly, think about it. So you’d have to make some sacrifices. Maybe ask your parents to help out. Lose that cool silver bullet of a car and get something a little cheaper.” Jenny was leaning forward. “But you can do it, you know. If you wanted to.”
Dan nodded in echo. “You could do it, Molly.”
She shook her head. “She can’t have just a single mom as her family. It’s not how it’s supposed to go.” Molly felt tears press against the backs of her eyes, weeks of the same conversation she’d been having in her mind now playing out in real time. “She needs a father.”
“But she doesn’t need an inept one, Mol. C’mon, you know that. And you can’t think that getting married is going to change that.” Jenny moved to Molly’s side of the table and placed her arm around Molly’s narrow shoulders, still muscular beneath the softness the pregnancy had added. She squeezed her tightly, and was slow to let go.
“Dude,” Dan interjected. “Your relationship is like bad insurance.”
Molly shook her head and pulled away from Jenny’s arms. “What are you talking about?”
Jenny sighed. “Insurance. You know how an insurance company will weigh each case? They analyze an entity’s liability versus its assets.”
“In this case, look at Scott,” Dan said. “It’s all very logical. What is he bringing to your life, to your family? What is he taking away? Sometimes you need to compare one list to the other and make a choice.”
“Jeez, you guys. You’re ganging up on me here.” Molly laughed and wiped her eyes with a free hand. “And who’ve you been hanging out with, anyway? Accountants?”
“Nah,” Jenny said. “It’s just a little something we picked up dealing with the bills for our new fertility treatments.”
Molly avoided her friends’ eyes, looking down at the car seat, and was serious again. “I can’t have failed, Jenny. Not again. Not at this.”
“Molly Sullivan, you will drive me nuts. You have a beautiful baby. You have your master’s degree, and years of quality PR experience, and, of course, us. What more do you possibly need?”
Molly laughed again, and this time the sound was lighter, more genuine. But she felt Jenny’s words slowly move into a pocket of her mind and settle there, locked away until she needed them again. The breeze had turned brisk, sending a shower of decaying leaves dancing among the tables, and she shivered in the sudden cold.
“Hey,” Dan said, as Molly started gathering their discarded wrappers and napkins for the trash can. “Jenny and I were going to go to Yards later. Do you want to come?” Yards Brewing Company was one of their favorite stops in Manayunk, a hill-filled neighborhood on the far outskirts of Philadelphia where the condos were former paper factories and the bars drew professionals like the three of them out from the city on Saturday nights. Molly shook her head. Going out wasn’t even an option.
“Homer won’t let you out?” Dan asked. His voice was flat.
“It’s not that. I’ve never left the baby for that long before.” What she didn’t say was that she’d never left the baby alone with Scott before. “Maybe next time?”
The question hung in the air like a helium balloon forgotten after a birthday party. The three friends gathered up the rest of their belongings in silence. It was time to go back home.
Molly shut the door behind her, giving Jenny and Dan a final wave as she did. Dylan was in desperate need of a change and feeding, so Molly carefully unclipped the harness of her car seat and lifted the tiny infant out. Her daughter, draped over her shoulder, helpless and reliant on her mother, felt small and fragile in her arms. Molly inhaled the scent of the skin beneath the soft down of her hair and kissed her head right above the ear. Never had she held anything more worthy of her love. It was terrifying.
Molly was surprised that Scott wasn’t in front of the TV until she heard voices coming from her dining room. She hadn’t seen one of Monica’s cars out front, or she would’ve tidied herself up before walking in.
“Molly, hello!” Monica’s voice rang out like the false trill of a mockingbird. Scott sauntered into the living room behind her, casual in bare feet and worn jeans. Both had smiles on their faces that seemed stale, as if they’d been wearing them for a while.
“Hi, guys,” Molly said. She tried to sound excited to have an unexpected guest, especially one like her future mother-in-law, but she knew her voice betrayed her. She’d been hoping to lie down with the baby for a nap. The excursion to South Philly had worn her out.
“Hey, I was worried about you.” Scott’s voice was silky, and he wrapped his arms around her as he kissed her lightly on the lips. Molly noticed that he didn’t move to touch his daughter.
“Where were you all afternoon?” His mouth was close to her ear. “My mother’s been waiting.” Molly pulled away.
“Excuse me, Monica,” Molly said, and without thinking smoothed down the wrinkles of her yoga pants with her free hand. “I didn’t know you were stopping by, or I would’ve come home sooner.” She looked around the living room. It was spotless.
Monica laughed, her voice high and loud, and walked over to kiss Molly’s cheeks. She scooped Dylan out of Molly’s arms before she could react and rubbed her finger against the infant’s tiny nose and mouth, trying to make her smile. Molly almost cried out when she thought of the germs crawling into her daughter’s mouth. “No need to apologize, darling. I was actually hoping to surprise you, anyway.”
“Oh?” Molly looked from Monica to Scott. She twitched with the urge to snatch her daughter out of Monica’s arms.
Scott scratched at the back of his head.
“My parents decided they wanted to give us a set for the dining room,” he said. “Mom picked it out special for us and everything.”
Molly stood very still.
“Well, we couldn’t have you starting out together with an empty dining room, now could we?” Monica laughed. “I mean, now that you got a little jump on expanding your family, darling, we couldn’t very well wait to give it to you for your wedding. You’ll need it now.”
Molly cleared her throat.
“Besides,” Monica continued, looking back and forth between Molly and Scott with the benevolent eyes of someone used to people showing her gratitude, “your future father-in-law and I now have an excuse to get you a better gift once you do get married. Something that’s more of an . . . investment.”
She looked around at the house they were standing in, making sure they caught the hint.
“Something, say, to go along with the dining set.” Monica was grinning now, her glossed lips stretching so wide the rouge on her cheeks folded into the wrinkles of skin. She held the baby aloft, as if in triumph. Molly saw her daughter wriggle in protest.
For a moment no one said a word. The air in the living room was hot in Molly’s lungs.
“Well, shall we?” Monica clicked her tongue against her teeth, bringing them all to attention. “Don’t you want to see your new dining room, Molly?”
They stepped toward the room, Monica’s platform stilettos clicking against the polished wood of the floor. Molly cringed when she saw the small nicks the heels left in their wake.
“Voilá!” With a flourish of her free arm, Monica stopped at the entranceway and let Molly walk ahead of her. Molly was no more than a step into the dining room when she stopped with a lurch, her body coming to a halt moments after her brain registered her shock.
Her dining room had shrunk while Molly was gone that afternoon. It had to have gotten smaller, she thought, for there was no way the furniture inside of it could possibly be that big. What sat in front of Molly was one of the most ornate dining table sets she’d ever seen. The chairs, all eight of them, were crafted in the Queen Anne style, ornate backs and engraved legs th
at had been covered in layers of varnish until they could be used as mirrors. They were set with plush off-white cushions, fabric so elegant and expensive Molly couldn’t imagine how she’d ever clean them once they became covered in tomato sauce and pureed prunes in another year. The table was large enough to feed a high school economics class, which, Molly realized, was the exact course Monica and Scott needed a refresher in right now. She and Scott lived in a townhouse filled with furniture from IKEA. Molly highly doubted that Queen Anne had ever had a hankering for a self-assembled bookcase and carry-out Swedish meatballs.
Monica and Scott stood in place on either side of the doorway, staring at Molly in expectation of a reaction. Monica was waiting for something positive: glee, or unabashed excitement, possibly a fainting spell. She wanted her usual feedback, and Molly knew the routine by now. She caught Scott’s expression out of the corner of her eye. He looked nervous, and Molly knew he didn’t want her to disappoint his mother.
“Monica.” Molly set her shoulders square and took her squirming baby out of her future mother-in-law’s arms. “This was so kind of you. All of it. Truly. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t have to say a word,” Monica replied. Her tone was warm. “Edward and I just wanted to give you something nice you wouldn’t necessarily buy for yourself.”
Molly heard Scott muffle a snort.
“Besides,” Monica continued, “now that you’re at home and will have time on your hands, you’ll need a place for dinner parties, right? We couldn’t have you entertaining around the kitchen island anymore.” She looked around the room and inhaled, as if holding the smell of polish and upholstery in her lungs would give her the high she’d need to power through her next board meeting.
All the Difference Page 21