Mommy Tracked

by Whitney Gaskell

  “That’s right. Although I don’t think we officially met,” Chloe said.

  “No, but you’re the chick who went into labor. That makes you pretty easy to remember,” Patrick said, grinning.

  “I’m never going to live that down, am I?” Chloe said with a laugh. She smiled down at the twins. “Hi.”

  “What’s your baby’s name?” Emma asked.

  “This is William,” Chloe said, smiling softly down at the sleeping baby in the sling, and for just a moment, as her eyes lit upon her son’s sleep-slackened face, she really did look lovely.

  I’ll be damned. She is glowing, Juliet thought.

  “Let’s get going, people,” Simon called out, clapping his hands together. “Mom, Dad, kids, come over here.”

  “I guess that’s us. It was nice to meet you, Chloe,” Patrick said pleasantly. Holding the girls’ hands, he started over to the makeshift set.

  “Are you coming over?” Juliet asked.

  “No, go ahead,” Chloe said. “William and I just stopped by to watch. I don’t want to be in the way.”

  “That guy, Simon, wants me to unbutton my shirt,” Juliet said. “But isn’t the whole point of the article supposed to be that I’m a working mom? Lawyers don’t go around with their shirts unbuttoned down to their navels. It’s not exactly professional.”

  Chloe looked her over, furrowing her brow as she thought. “True. Although it might photograph better. And you might want to take your jacket off too. It’ll give you better contrast.”

  Juliet hesitated, but then nodded. “Okay,” she said, shrugging off her jacket and popping open the top two buttons on her shirt. “How’s that?”

  “Much better. Now you still look like a lawyer—but a hot lawyer. The one all the guys in the office are lusting after,” Chloe said with a mischievous grin.

  Juliet knew Chloe was joking, but she had a sudden flashback to Alex’s ankle resting up against hers, warm and questioning. She shivered at the memory.

  “Are you cold?” Chloe asked sympathetically. “It’s freezing in here, isn’t it? I had to put a sweater on William.”

  For just a moment Juliet felt an odd impulse to confess to Chloe what she’d really been thinking about. Why, she had no idea. It would be totally unlike her. But then she saw Patrick standing just across the room, looking back at her, his eyebrows raised in question: What’s the holdup? We’re running late as it is! Apparently they’d reached the point in their marriage where words were no longer necessary, and they could communicate everything that needed to be said by giving each other exasperated looks. She swallowed back the impulse to tell Chloe about Alex.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said.

  “Mommy!” Simon called out importantly. He’d found a clipboard and a headset—why he needed a headset in a tiny studio, Juliet wasn’t sure—and was happily bossing Patrick and the girls on where to stand and how to pose.

  “See you later,” Juliet said to Chloe.

  “Good luck!” Chloe called after her.

  “We have to talk,” Patrick said later that night.

  Juliet was sitting on the couch, a file propped open on her lap. She was skimming through a motion that opposing counsel in the dead-baby case had sent over earlier that day—apparently, the defense was not going to offer a quickie settlement—while she half-watched the late news. Juliet had once read a news article about how researchers had discovered that when a woman gives birth, her brain chemistry changes, most notably expanding the woman’s ability to multitask.

  I could have told them that, Juliet thought. She was probably the only one among her office of male colleagues who had actually managed to bill even as she changed diapers.

  She glanced up at Patrick, who was glowering down at her. Big surprise, she thought wearily. That’s all he seems to do these days. He practically radiates disapproval every time he sees me.

  She ran a critical eye over her husband. Patrick was wearing a pair of stretched-out blue sweatpants, the ones with bleach spots on one knee that he’d owned when she met him, and a white V-neck undershirt. His beard was heavy, even more so than usual.

  “Did you shave today?” she asked curiously.

  “What?” He stared at her as though she’d spit at him instead of asking a benign question.

  “I was just wondering if you’d shaved. Forget it.” Juliet shrugged, already losing interest. “What did you want to talk about?”

  He sat down heavily at the end of the couch and sighed. Drama queen, Juliet thought, freshly irritated. She had too much to do tonight and didn’t have the time to indulge his moodiness.

  “This isn’t working. Our arrangement. Me staying home full time. You always at the office,” he said. He looked straight ahead of him as he spoke, staring at the perky brunette newswoman on television, the one with the retro Dorothy Hamill haircut.

  Juliet’s head immediately began to hurt. She closed her eyes against the throbbing ache. She didn’t have time for this. Not now, not when she still had a pile of work to get through before she could go to bed. It was her punishment for leaving work early.

  “I want to go back to work, at least part time. And I want you to cut your hours back,” Patrick continued.

  “That’s not what we agreed to,” Juliet countered. “We can discuss your starting back to work eventually, but I’m not going to be able to cut my hours until I make partner. And maybe not even then.”

  Patrick’s eyes darkened, and he shook his head. He finally looked at her. “This isn’t open for discussion. I’m telling you what I decided.”

  “You decided that I’m going to work less?” Juliet asked. She laughed humorlessly and shook her head. “You don’t get to decide that, Patrick.”

  Sometimes Patrick reminded Juliet of her mother, Lillian. Not that Juliet would ever share this with her husband, since he knew damned well how she felt about her mother, who had lived in a near constant state of agitation, flitting around the house nervously, never able to sit still. Her parents even used to have the same fight that she and Patrick were now having, only it was her father, Evan, who had worked the long hours, and her mother who railed against his absence from the house. When they were little, Juliet and her younger sister, Angie, would hide in Angie’s closet, letting the darkness cocoon them, while they listened to the muffled screams of their parents.

  “You’re never here! I’m always alone!” Lillian would scream.

  “Stop acting like a child,” Evan would reply, his voice softer but scornful.

  And the two sisters, who had never been close, would sit together and wait for it to pass. As they got older and the fights continued with a dreary repetition, Juliet and Angie eventually learned to tune their parents out and stopped hiding when the shouting began. Juliet would turn on her radio as she did her homework, and Angie would yak on the phone to one of her friends, and the shouts would subside into background noise.

  Juliet had always assumed that her parents didn’t love each other. Or, more accurately, that her father didn’t love her mother. How could he? Lillian was such a weak, hysterical woman.

  But then Lillian died when Juliet was in her second year of law school. Aggressive uterine cancer. It killed her three months after the initial diagnosis, when she’d gone to the doctor complaining of cramps, expecting to hear that she’d need a D&C. And, after Lillian’s death, Evan withered like a neglected plant. He abruptly stopped practicing law, gained weight, and spent all of his time zoned-out in front of the television. A year later, he was dead too. Heart attack, the doctor said.

  But Angie had other ideas. “He died of a broken heart,” she’d said sadly on the phone one night, a few weeks after their father’s funeral. Juliet normally avoided her sister’s phone calls—her sister had inherited their mother’s chronic anxiety—but there was paperwork to discuss.

  “That’s not even possible,” Juliet had scoffed.

  “Of course it is. Dad wasn’t like you, Jules. I know you always thought you two were so al
ike, but you really weren’t. He was a romantic at heart.”

  He was? Juliet wondered. Since when?

  “God damn it! Will you listen to me? I’m not happy!” Patrick now shouted suddenly, startling Juliet away from her memories. She stared at his angry face, at his hardened eyes, furrowed brow, and flushed skin, and was shocked at the sudden transformation in her husband. Where was the gentle, soft-spoken Patrick who never yelled, who never lost his patience?

  “Why are you yelling? You’re going to wake up the twins.”

  “Because it’s the only way I can get your attention!”

  “Okay. You have my attention,” Juliet said calmly. “But I don’t know how you’re proposing this would work. What do you suggest we do with the twins while you’re at work? Or are you going to take them with you? Enlist them as mini-firefighters and let them ride around on the fire engine?”

  “I thought we could work out a time-share arrangement. I’d go back part time, maybe take the evening shift. You could get home from work early,” Patrick said.

  “I told you, that’s not going to happen.”

  “We could get a nanny.”

  “We could. But we looked into that before. It doesn’t make financial sense to get a nanny. The extra income you’d bring in would hardly cover the cost,” Juliet pointed out.

  At this, Patrick flinched visibly. He stared down at his hands, which he balled into fists. Juliet knew that she’d probably damaged his fragile male ego, but Christ, he wasn’t being reasonable.

  “Besides,” Juliet continued, “what about the girls? You’d rather a stranger came in and took care of them?”

  Patrick stared at her as though he’d never seen her before. His eyes were so blank, so devoid of any of the warmth and love she was used to seeing there, that Juliet suddenly felt a little frightened.

  “No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to put me on a guilt trip,” he said quietly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve been raising those girls for four years, basically as a single parent.”

  “Bullshit,” Juliet said, raising her voice for the first time.

  “It’s true. Tonight was the first night in a week you were home before they went to bed,” Patrick said.

  “When you were growing up and your father worked late, did you consider your mother to be a single parent? No, of course not. She was just doing what moms did back then, and your dad was just being a dad. So why is it different when the wife is the breadwinner in the family?” Juliet asked.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t lawyer-argue me,” Patrick said.

  “I’m not lawyer-arguing you. I’m pointing out the fundamental sexism of your argument.”

  “So now I’m a sexist?”

  “You’re the one who’s troubled by taking a nontraditional role,” Juliet said.

  “I’m not troubled by my quote-nontraditional-unquote role. I’m troubled that my wife is never home. I’m troubled that my daughters never see their mother. I’m troubled that you think your obligation to this family begins and ends with a fucking paycheck,” Patrick said, his voice rising again.

  Juliet opened her mouth, ready to argue back, as she always was. Patrick was right about that: Being a litigator was an inherent part of her now. But before she could speak, Patrick stood up abruptly. The anger had disappeared from his face as quickly as it appeared. Instead, he just looked tired, as though all the spark had drained out of him.

  “Don’t. Just…don’t, Juliet. I don’t want to hear it. Fine, I won’t go back to work just yet.” Patrick shook his head and turned to leave. “You win. Big surprise.”

  He stalked out of the room. Juliet pressed her fingers to her temples and waited for the wave of rage swelling inside her to pass.

  Should I go after him? she wondered. That’s what he wants, for me to chase after him and apologize and then talk all of this out with him.

  But this angered her even more. It was already late, and Patrick knew she had work to do tonight; that was the trade-off she had to make to leave the office early. Why did he have to get into this whole debate now, tonight? And he didn’t just confront her—he dropped an ultimatum on her, started a fight, and then sullenly withdrew before they’d resolved anything. It was manipulative. Worse, he’d done it to her before—he’d pick a fight, then run off, and she’d be stuck chasing after him, trying to coax him into making up with her.

  I’m not going to do it, Juliet thought resentfully. If he wants to make unreasonable demands and then walk off in a huff, that’s his problem.

  Patrick hadn’t always been like this. He used to be so much fun, and so funny. He’d always been able to make her laugh, get her out of her own head, and stop taking herself too seriously. They’d balanced each other out back then—Juliet crackling with energy and purpose, Patrick laid-back and gentle.

  He’d even been old-fashioned, in a way; Patrick had been the first man Juliet had been with who had actually set out to court her. He’d cooked her lasagna on their third date, would stop by her office with a latte just because he was thinking of her, and told her that her hair smelled like the lilac tree that had grown outside his childhood bedroom window.

  Above all, he’d always made her feel loved and treasured.

  Now…now he was turning into her mother. When had that happened? And how? Wasn’t she supposed to be the one to gradually morph into the weak and brittle woman Lillian had been? Juliet shuddered at this thought; it was the worst fate she could imagine. Or was it? What was worse; to become Lillian—or to be married to Lillian?

  Now, that was a truly chilling choice.

  Juliet gave herself a mental shake. Work. I have to get back to work. The dead-baby case could clinch her bid for a partnership.

  She breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. And once her temper had cooled and her mind had cleared, she switched off the television and turned her attention back to the file she’d brought home.

  twelve

  Chloe

  Chloe! I’m so glad I got you! I know you just had a baby, like, five minutes ago and all…”

  Chloe immediately recognized the rapid-fire voice on the other end of the phone. It was Maia Bleu, an editor at Pop Art, the entertainment magazine she’d done a few pieces for over the years.

  “Hi, Maia,” she said warmly. “Thank you so much for the rattle you sent William.”

  “I’m glad you liked it. Although I can’t believe you already sent me a thank-you note. You must have written it, like, the day you got it. Aren’t you crazy busy doing baby stuff?”

  “Well, yes, but William takes long naps,” Chloe said modestly. She didn’t mention that she had a hard time falling asleep when she had unwritten thank-you notes hanging over her head. Her mother, ever the Southern lady, had long ago drilled the rules of etiquette into Chloe. But she knew just how hopelessly suburban and uncool that would sound to someone as hip as Maia. “What’s up?”

  “We have a bit of a situation here. Is there any chance you’d be interested in doing a piece for us?”

  “Well—”

  “And before you say anything, I have two words for you: Fiona Watson.”

  “Fiona Watson?” Chloe repeated, impressed. Fiona Watson was the current Hollywood It Girl and had been considered a front-runner for an Oscar after her recent turn as Fanny Price in a remake of Mansfield Park. She was too old for the part by at least ten years, but—thanks to her Crème de la Mer and a soft-focus lens—she had managed to pull it off to critical acclaim.

  “She’s agreed to do an interview with us, which is a huge scoop, but only on the condition that the interview take place in person, not over the phone. Said she doesn’t trust a reporter she can’t see. You know, typical actress bullshit. She’s staying at the Breakers on Palm Beach, but only until tomorrow morning, so you’d have to do the interview today. This afternoon. It’s so last-minute, we don’t have time to fly anyone down. You’re our only hope.”

  “Today?�
� Chloe hesitated. It was impossible. It was already ten a.m. There was no way she’d be able to do the background research in time. And who would she get to watch William? She couldn’t exactly leave him at home alone, with instructions to make a peanut butter sandwich if he got hungry. Besides, she was exhausted—William had his days and nights mixed up and had been up every night, all night, for the past week. Chloe seriously doubted she’d be able to drive all the way down to West Palm without falling asleep at the wheel.

  But Fiona Watson. It was easily the biggest story Chloe had ever been asked to cover. And even though she was tired, the idea of spending a few hours as a professional in the company of other adults was hugely appealing. A whole afternoon where she could function as something other than a human milk dispenser, where she could wear her dry-clean-only clothes without fear of getting them covered in hunks of cottage-cheeselike baby spit-up; where she could recapture her premom self, if only for a few hours.

  “It has to be today,” Maia repeated. “I know, it’s short notice, so if you can’t do it, I totally understand—”

  “I’d love to!” Chloe blurted out, even as she wondered, What am I doing? There’s no way I’ll be able to pull this off! I haven’t even showered today, and I haven’t shaved my legs in a week, and I still can’t fit into any of my prepregnancy clothes….

  “Great! I knew I could count on you. You’re always so dependable,” Maia said brightly. “I’ll have my assistant fax over all the background we have.”

  “Right,” Chloe said, trying to sound professional and worthy of Maia’s praise. “I’ll get right on it.”

  Twenty minutes later, Chloe was sinking fast into a panic spiral. She couldn’t find anyone to watch William.

  “Normally it’d be no problem, but we’re dealing with the flu here,” Grace said apologetically. “Hannah and Molly are both sick, and I know it’s just a matter of time until Nat gets it too. The whole house is crawling with germs. I’ve never seen so much vomit in my life. I keep expecting their heads to start spinning around, Exorcist-style. Did you try Anna?”