Mommy Tracked

by Whitney Gaskell

  “It’s supposed to be a mess. You just had a baby. It would be freakishly weird if your house looked perfect…,” Grace said, her voice trailing off as she looked around. “Um…your house looks perfect. Okay. Just ignore that whole freakishly weird part.”

  “It’s not perfect,” Chloe said, hurrying to move a pile of books—Secrets of the Baby Whisperer; The Happiest Baby on the Block; What to Expect the First Year—stacked on the front hall table. “I would have picked up if I knew I was having company.”

  “First of all, your house is immaculate. And second, we came here to spoil you, not make you clean for us,” Anna said.

  “Exactly,” Grace said. “If you want to see what a real mess looks like, come over to my house. I swear, the kids just fling Cheerios all over the place. Wherever I step, it’s crunch, crunch, crunch.”

  “Go ahead and sit down. I’ll bring out some drinks,” Chloe said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Anna said. “We’re waiting on you, not the other way around.” She held up the plastic grocery store bag she’d been carrying. “We have cake.”

  “And more important, champagne,” Juliet added.

  “That’s just so nice. I don’t know what to say,” Chloe said. She held a hand to her chest, feeling so overwhelmed that the tears welled up in her eyes again. Chloe wiped at them. “Oh, no. I’m sorry. This is embarrassing.”

  Crying seemed to be her immediate reaction to everything these days. She’d expected it while she was pregnant but had assumed the tears would dry up once William arrived. But, if anything, it had only gotten worse. Her emotions were always so close to the edge, ready to bubble over at the slightest provocation. She cried when she was tired, overwhelmed, emotional—which was pretty much all the time.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Grace said, touching Chloe’s arm. “It’s totally normal. It just feels like you’re losing your mind.”

  “You mean I’m not?” Chloe asked, with a soggy smile.

  “Oh, no, you probably are. But just give it a little time, and you won’t even miss it,” Grace said.

  Chloe laughed. It was the first time she could remember really laughing in…how long? Since William was born? Before then?

  “Go ahead and sit down. We’re here to wait on you hand and foot,” Anna said. “Juliet, you keep Chloe company. Grace and I will get everything ready and bring it out.”

  Chloe thought that she saw a flicker of panic in Juliet’s eyes. Despite her embarrassment, she found a glimmer of humor in Juliet’s obvious discomfort at being trapped with a weeping, hormonal new mom.

  “Come sit down,” Chloe said, leading Juliet to the living room at the back of the town house. William had begun to make mewling sounds in her arms. “Do you mind if I nurse while we talk?”

  “You know, I did witness you giving birth. In vivid detail. It’s probably a little late to worry about your modesty around me,” Juliet said, sitting on the edge of the gray armchair. From the kitchen, there came the popping sound of a champagne bottle being opened.

  Chloe laughed again. “Thank you again for staying with me that night. You and Anna were amazing. It was really above and beyond.”

  Juliet shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it. We couldn’t exactly take off and leave you. Not when your husband was curled up in the fetal position, weeping softly.”

  “He wasn’t that bad,” Chloe protested, although she had no idea why she was defending James. He had been pretty useless at William’s birth.

  “I think at one point he actually fainted,” Juliet said.

  “Yeah, well, James has never been great with blood,” Chloe said. She grinned suddenly. “Can you believe he was premed when I met him in college?”

  “No, I can’t,” Juliet said, with a snort. But she smiled back at Chloe, and it felt like a barrier had suddenly fallen away.

  Chloe fumbled with her nursing bra and then winced as William latched on, her entire body tensing with the momentary pain. For someone who didn’t have any teeth, William had a fierce bite.

  “I’ve been meaning to call you. Mothering magazine contacted me. They want to come and take your picture to run with the article I wrote,” Chloe said.

  “They do? Oh. Okay, I guess,” Juliet said.

  “They’d like your husband and daughters to be in it too, if that’s okay,” Chloe said apologetically. “I gave them your office number, so they’ll contact you there to set up a time.”

  Before Juliet could reply, Anna and Grace appeared with the champagne, glasses, the cake, and a stack of plates.

  “We just went through your cupboards and helped ourselves. I hope you don’t mind,” Grace said.

  “That’s fine,” Chloe said.

  “Your kitchen is so neat,” Anna said. “Even your pots and pans are perfectly lined up.”

  “I know, I’m sort of anal about it,” Chloe said.

  “You’d probably have a heart attack if you saw what my house looks like right now,” Grace said cheerfully.

  Grace poured out four glasses of champagne, while Anna sliced the cake. It was chocolate with white buttercream frosting and topped with a baby rattle outlined in blue icing.

  “No champagne for me,” Chloe said apologetically. “I’m nursing; I can’t drink.”

  “So? I am too. A single glass won’t hurt,” Grace said.

  “Well…okay,” Chloe said, feeling like a naughty schoolgirl as she accepted the champagne flute.

  “It was so nice of you all to do this,” Chloe said. She balanced her plate on the armrest of her chair and took a bite of the cake. It was delicious, and so sweet, it sent shivers down her back. William had his fill of milk, and he popped off her nipple, looking contentedly milk-drunk. Chloe pulled her shirt down.

  “Of course we had to celebrate. It’s not every day you have a baby,” Anna said warmly. “It’s a really big deal.”

  “Which is why we got presents for you, not for the baby. I’m sure he has three of everything he needs already,” Grace said. She handed the white gift bag to Chloe. “So these are just for you.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” Chloe exclaimed, as she pulled out a Philosophy Amazing Grace gift set. “This is too much! Shampoo, shower gel, bubble bath…Oh, it smells so good!” she said, sniffing at the bottles.

  “Don’t forget the firming cream,” Grace said. “Because every new mom needs firming. And if you don’t, I don’t even want to talk to you.”

  “No, I definitely do,” Chloe said, with a rueful laugh. Everything that had once pointed up on her body had fallen down since having William. She hoped it was a temporary state of affairs.

  “And along with that theme, here’s my gift,” Anna said, handing over the box.

  “It’s too pretty to unwrap,” Chloe exclaimed.

  “I’ve never understood women who say that,” Juliet said. “It’s just wrapping paper. Whatever’s underneath is pretty much guaranteed to be better, unless the person giving it to you is complete crap at picking out gifts.”

  Chloe tore off the tissue paper, opened the box, and pulled out a pair of pink toile pajamas from Victoria’s Secret.

  “When you first have a baby, you spend all of your time in your pjs, so I thought you should at least look pretty while you’re doing it,” Anna explained.

  “Yes! That’s so true! This is the first day I put real clothes on!” Chloe exclaimed, causing everyone else to giggle. “Thank you so much, Anna.”

  Juliet opened her handbag and pulled out a white envelope. “And this is from me,” she said gruffly, handing the envelope over.

  Chloe opened the envelope. “A gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure at the Gloss Salon and Spa,” she read aloud. Chloe gaped down at the gift certificate for a moment before turning her gaze to Juliet, who looked sheepish and yet proud of herself. “Juliet! This is…oh…it’s so nice! Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome. Just please don’t start crying again,” Juliet said.

  “You did such a good
job picking out a present!” Grace exclaimed.

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m five. I am a grown woman. And an attorney. And a mother. I’m capable of picking out a shower gift,” Juliet said irritably.

  “Did you help her?” Grace asked Anna, ignoring Juliet.

  Anna grinned, while Juliet rolled her eyes. “Nope. She did this all on her own.”

  “Hello, family!” James said, bursting through the front door.

  Chloe looked up from what had become her favorite chair to nurse in, yet again feeding the seemingly insatiable William.

  “Hey, you,” she said, brightening as her husband bounded into the living room. He was grinning and jingling his keys in one hand. His other was behind his back. “How was your day?”

  “Excellent. And these”—James produced an enormous bouquet of coral tulips, the stems wrapped in cellophane—“are for you!”

  “For me?” Chloe asked excitedly. She turned her face up toward James, and he kissed her warmly. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For the kiss or for the flowers?” James teased, resting his forehead against hers so that their eyes were only an inch apart.

  “Both. Would you mind putting these in a vase for me?”

  “Consider it done,” James said, turning and heading back to the kitchen.

  Chloe smiled after him and snuggled William toward her. She couldn’t remember the last time James had bought her flowers. Oh, wait, yes, she could. It was back when they were still living in Austin, and James had gone out carousing with some of his college friends. He’d lost his cell phone at the bar and so didn’t get any of Chloe’s increasingly frantic calls. When he finally rolled home at four a.m., he was so drunk, his friends had to carry him in and put him to bed. He’d stayed there for nearly thirty-six hours, groaning and asking Chloe to bring him Diet Coke and aspirin. When James finally got over his hangover and climbed back out of bed, he’d bought her a dozen red roses as an apology.

  The time before that was when he’d forgotten their two-year anniversary and hastily sent a huge basket of Gerber daisies the next day. And the time before that, a vase of simple white lilies, when he’d neglected to meet her at a restaurant where they’d had dinner reservations. James had gone to happy hour with his coworkers, forgotten all about his plans with Chloe, and she’d sat alone at the table, sipping her white-wine spritzer and feeling incredibly stupid and self-conscious, imagining that the other diners were whispering about how pathetic she looked.

  Remembering this, she felt a prick of apprehension about the tulips.

  “What’s the occasion?” she called out to James, who was clattering around in the kitchen.

  “Where are the vases?”

  “In the cupboard to the left of the sink,” Chloe replied, as she shifted William to the other breast. She waited, feeling the sharp pain as William’s mouth pulled at her nipple and the responding tingle as milk flooded into her breast.

  James came back into the room, carrying the tulips, which had been rather artlessly arranged in a vase. It wasn’t the vase Chloe had wanted him to use—a gorgeous crystal Mikasa one they’d gotten as a wedding gift. Instead, he’d stuck the flowers in a cheap glass urn, the sort that comes free with flower arrangements.

  It was, Chloe suddenly realized, the very vase the apology lilies had arrived in.

  “So what did I do to deserve flowers?” she asked again.

  “It’s not every day my wife gives birth to our first son,” James said proudly.

  “No. But it wasn’t today either.”

  James smiled sheepishly. “I meant to bring you flowers in the hospital, but then…Well, I sort of lost track of the idea,” he said apologetically.

  Chloe relaxed. The tulips were apology flowers after all, but at least not harbingers of bad news.

  “That’s so sweet,” Chloe said, her face relaxing into a warm grin. “I love them. The perfect end to a perfect day.”

  She was about to tell James about her lovely surprise shower, but he was too impatient to tell her his own news.

  “I had a great day too. Joe Mackie”—Joe was James’s boss, the department head at the securities firm he worked at as a broker—“invited me to his house on Key West this weekend. It’s right on the golf course, and I’ve been dying to play there. He actually invited both of us, but he understands you just had the baby.”

  “Understands?” Chloe repeated.

  “That you can’t come. No one would expect you to travel with a newborn.”

  “You mean—wait, you aren’t going, are you?”

  “Of course I’m going. I have to. I can’t turn down an invitation from the Big Guy.”

  “But…but…,” Chloe began. What she wanted to say was: How could you even think of going? We just had a baby! I need you here to help me. I can’t do this on my own. You’re already gone all day, every day during the week. Don’t leave me alone for the weekend too.

  “What’s wrong, hon?”

  Chloe opened and closed her mouth, then opened it to speak, and then changed her mind and closed it again.

  “Nothing. I’m just…tired. I’m just really tired,” Chloe said slowly.

  James yawned. “I know. The no-sleep thing is tougher than I thought it would be.”

  Chloe stared at him. James hadn’t gotten up once with William. Not once. She’d been the one startled awake by the sudden high, fretful cries, the one to drag her bone-weary body out of bed every time, while James slept right through it all. But she hated the feeling of anger, hated the way it tightened in her stomach and caused her cheeks to feel too hot. She pushed it back down, struggling to gain control against it.

  “This is great news. You know how this business works. It’s all about who you know. And my boss taking me under his wing like this could be a really big step for us.” James leaned over and kissed Chloe on the head. “I’ll get you stocked up on food and diapers and everything you could possibly need before I go, so you don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll take care of everything.”

  And even though James had been taking a hands-off approach with William, leaving all of the diaper changes and nighttime wake-ups to Chloe, the idea of being home on her own with the baby for three full days frightened her. She was still getting used to being a mom, still trying to figure out why William’s poop was sometimes neon green, or whether it was normal for him to start so violently when he was waking up, or whether the red spot on his bum was just standard diaper rash or something more serious. It was all so overwhelming.

  “Wait, James,” Chloe said.

  But he didn’t hear her. Or he didn’t stop if he did. Whistling jauntily, James bounded upstairs to change out of his work clothes. And, tied to the chair by her nursing baby, Chloe couldn’t chase after him.

  nine

  Grace

  The turnout for the March meeting of Mothers Coming Together was the best ever. Grace stood in the back of Tapas and looked out over the crowd of women, which included at least a half dozen faces she hadn’t seen before. Membership had picked up briskly after the blow-job seminar. Apparently, all it took to drum up interest in MCT was one woman with a bag full of dildos. And tonight was going to be even better. Or, at least, it would be if she could shake her headache. Grace pressed her fingers against her temples and willed the dull ache away.

  “Excuse me, are you Grace Weaver?”

  Grace looked up blearily at a woman standing in front of her.

  Thinner than me. Thinner and younger.

  In fact, the woman was quite young, with light-blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail, glossy pink lips, and funky black plastic glasses. She was wearing a white lab coat over a slip dress and was pulling a metal suitcase on wheels behind her.

  “Yes, I’m Grace. Are you Ivy?”

  The woman nodded and chewed on a wad of gum. She looked like she was about fifteen years old. Grace stared at her doubtfully.

  “Do you have a lot of, um, experience with this sort of thing?”


  “Waxing parties? Uh-huh. I’ve done, like, tons.”

  “Oh, good. I should warn you: This is a surprise,” Grace said, leaning forward and whispering so that she wouldn’t be heard. “It may take the group a little time to get used to the idea of getting a bikini wax in front of everyone.”

  “Oh, yeah. It always does. It helps when people have a chance to down a few drinks before I start waxing them.”

  “Where are you going to set up?” Grace asked, with a sudden not-so-pleasant vision of having to stand up in front of an audience of half-naked women with wax dripping off their genitals. Or, even worse, having everyone see her without her skirt on.

  No way. No one is going to see my thighs, she thought, with no small amount of panic. She was starting to realize that she hadn’t thought this idea through.

  Ivy glanced around the restaurant’s banquet room. “Hmmm. Well, I usually set up in a separate room, for privacy and stuff, but you don’t have one here. So I guess I’ll just hang a sheet in the back corner of the room. Once I’m set up, you guys can just, like, take turns coming back. I’m booked for two hours, so I’ll wax as many of you as I can during that time,” she said, tossing her ponytail back.

  “Great. Let me know if you need anything,” Grace said.

  Ivy wheeled her suitcase off to the back corner of the room and busied herself setting up the white privacy drape she’d brought with her—a portable version of the ones hospitals use—and getting out her waxing paraphernalia. The moms, noticing that something was up, abandoned the platters of tapas and hurried to their chairs, wineglasses in hand. Everyone was seated and looking up at Grace expectantly by the time she reached the front of the room and set her notes down on the lectern. She wasn’t as nervous about speaking in front of everyone this time, although a jolt of adrenaline did shoot through her when she felt everyone’s brightly interested eyes focusing on her.

  “Hi, everyone, thank you all for coming. At tonight’s meeting, we need to brainstorm ideas for our new fund-raising project. We’re going to hopefully raise enough money for the Starfish House—which, as you all know, is a shelter for abused women and children—to redecorate the common rooms. Right now the living areas are depressing, to put it mildly. So we want to help them create a more pleasant, soothing environment to live in. And while you’re all thinking up fund-raising ideas, I have a little surprise for you. In the past, we’ve gotten some feedback that many of you would like to see your membership dues go toward doing something fun. So at tonight’s meeting…we’re having a waxing party!” Grace paused while the women reacted to this news. There were exclamations of surprise and a tittering of nervous laughter. Grace waited a few beats and then continued, raising her voice to be heard above the excited buzz. “I’d like to introduce you to Ivy.”