Mommy Tracked

by Whitney Gaskell

  “She’s at the office today. Anna gave me her mom’s phone number, but Margo isn’t answering,” Chloe said.

  “Oh, shit. Molly just threw up all over the couch. I’m so sorry, Chloe, but I have to go.”

  “No, that’s fine, I understand. I hope the girls feel better soon,” Chloe said.

  She hung up and dialed James.

  “Hello,” he said. His voice was clipped and businesslike when he answered. He always sounded so different when she called him at work.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Hey, babe.” James’s tone immediately softened. “What’s up?”

  “Well…what are you doing today?” Chloe asked him. She tucked the phone under her chin and began to pace nervously around the living room, William cradled in her arms.

  “Working,” James said. “Why, is everything okay?”

  “Fine. Only…is there any possible way you could take the rest of the day off? I just got an assignment to interview—you’re not going to believe this—Fiona Watson! But it has to be today. This afternoon.”

  “No way,” James said immediately. “Not today. I have a meeting with my boss right after lunch. I can’t miss it.”

  Chloe could feel the thud of disappointment hit her. James had been her last hope.

  “I thought you were taking some time off work, anyway,” James continued.

  “I was, but I don’t want to pass this up. Are you sure there isn’t any way you can do it? Can’t you tell your boss you’re sick and need to go home early?”

  James laughed his easy, warm chuckle. “Nah, that dog won’t hunt. I already saw the big guy, so he knows I’m not sick. Sorry, babe.”

  “No, I understand,” Chloe said. She looked down helplessly at William. He cooed and blew a spit bubble at her. “It’s just…getting to interview Fiona Watson is a really big deal.”

  But James wasn’t listening to her. Instead, he’d moved the phone away from his mouth and was talking to someone in his office.

  “Yeah, I got that memo…. I know it’s total bullshit…. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Hey, Todd and I are heading over to Nemo’s for lunch. Want to come with us?” he said.

  “James?”

  “I’m here,” he said, as he returned to the phone. “Look, I’ve got to run. I have a ton of work to get through today.”

  Chloe suddenly had an idea. “Hey—what if I dropped William off at your office?”

  “Chloe—”

  “He won’t be any trouble! He’ll just sit there quietly the whole time,” Chloe said. She looked down at her son, who was lying placidly in her arms, blinking sleepily. “You won’t bother Daddy while he’s working, will you, sweetie?”

  Unfortunately, William’s face suddenly purpled and crumpled up, and his tiny body went rigid with fury.

  “AHHHHHHH!” William screeched. It was a surprisingly loud sound for one so little. Chloe could feel her breasts tingling in response as her milk rushed in to soothe. She tucked the phone under her ear and lifted William to her shoulder, patting his back softly.

  James said something, but she couldn’t make it out over William’s screams.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, it sounds like you’ve got your hands full. Hey, I’ve really got to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “So can I drop William off at your office?” Chloe asked, raising her voice to be heard over William’s screams.

  “Sorry, babe, but there’s no way that’s going to work. Give the little man a kiss for me.”

  “No, wait!” But James was gone.

  “What am I going to do now?” Chloe wondered aloud. “It’s not like I can show up to an interview with a baby in tow—”

  But then she stopped. Why couldn’t she? It wasn’t that crazy of an idea—was it?

  “What do you think, buddy? Do you want to go down to Palm Beach with Mommy and hang out with a movie star?” Chloe cooed.

  William began snuffling around at her neck, crying piteously.

  “Okay, okay,” Chloe said, sitting down to feed him. She positioned her horseshoe-shaped nursing pillow on her lap and rested William against it, while she fumbled with her nursing bra. He latched on with the enthusiasm of a drunk on a dry spell, his eyes wide open with relief as he gulped down the milk, his fingers splayed against the side of her breast.

  It was only then that she remembered hearing the fax machine spitting out the background on Fiona Watson that Maia had sent her. Chloe should be reading while he was nursing.

  Well, too late now. Good thing I’ve seen all of Fiona’s movies, Chloe thought, running a finger over the curve of her son’s cheek.

  Chloe had never been to the Breakers before, although she’d seen it from a distance on the few occasions when she’d ventured down to Palm Beach. As she turned onto Breakers Drive, she realized the hotel was even more gorgeous than she’d imagined, like something out of a movie.

  A long, palm-tree-lined drive, surrounded by extensive manicured grounds, led up to the hotel. The whole place radiated the smug confidence of money, and Chloe immediately felt underdressed. She glanced down at her straining blue oxford shirt and too-tight black trousers, purchased before she’d gotten pregnant, which meant Chloe practically had to shoehorn herself into them. And even then she couldn’t fasten the top button. She’d had to loop a rubber band around the button and thread it through the hole, and leave her shirt untucked to cover it. Chloe glanced into her rearview mirror, which was lined up with the mirror hanging over William’s rear-facing car seat. She could see William’s reflection—he’d finally drifted off, his head lolled over to one side. His sweet round face was slack with sleep.

  Maybe he’ll sleep right through this, she thought hopefully. He’d been awake for most of the hour-long car trip, looking solemnly out the window, and so was due for a nice long nap.

  She drove under the arched entrance to the portico, parking her car between the round pillars. A small army of valets milled about to the left of the front doors, which were manned by two extremely good-looking uniformed doormen. One of the valets sprinted up, eager to take control of her car.

  “Just one minute,” Chloe said, as he opened her car door. “I have to get my baby out.”

  She slid out of the car, popped open the trunk, and heaved the baby stroller out. One of the doormen hurried over to help her.

  “I’ve got it,” Chloe said, struggling with the unwieldy stroller. “I just have to push out this lever…”

  “I think you’re supposed to press one of those buttons first,” the doorman said, looking down at it doubtfully.

  They both fidgeted with the stroller, each getting in the other’s way, while the valet stood patiently to one side, watching them. Chloe felt ridiculous, especially once they’d finally gotten the stroller open and she lugged out her enormous black nylon diaper bag. Small as William was, he required an extraordinary amount of paraphernalia to get out of the house: hats, diapers, wipes, two kinds of diaper balm, a changing mat, blankets, burp cloths, a change of clothes, another change of clothes, three pacifiers, and a brightly colored Manhattan Whoozit, which all of the baby magazines had insisted was the toy of the moment and which Wills mostly ignored. She shoved the bulging bag into the bottom of the stroller, pushing it down to fit, and then grabbed the leather binder containing the background notes on Fiona Watson.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “I think I’ve got everything.” She smiled at the valet.

  “Your baby,” he said, pointing at the car, where William was still sleeping in his car seat.

  “What? Oh! William!”

  Blushing furiously, Chloe yanked open the car door and fumbled with the lever that released William’s infant car seat. She was so embarrassed at having nearly forgotten her son—was it her imagination or were the doormen smirking at each other?—that she jostled the seat in her haste to pull it out. William woke up with a start and looked at her with wide, unblinking eyes for a minute. Chloe recognized th
e expression darkening his small face.

  “Oh, no,” Chloe said. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Please don’t, honey. Please—”

  But it was too late. William stretched his mouth open wide and began to howl in fury at the rude awakening.

  “Shhh! It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay, Mama’s sorry,” Chloe gabbled at him, desperate not to make a scene in this elegant place. But William wasn’t having any of it. Warmed up now, he began to scream even louder, gripping his hands into round fists, which he held up by his head, looking like a very tiny, very irate old man.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have woken him up,” the doorman said unhelpfully, as he peered down at William over Chloe’s shoulder.

  Like I did it on purpose, Chloe thought, gritting her teeth.

  “Excuse us. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry,” she said, as she struggled to latch his car seat on to the stroller. Finally, she pushed a still-wailing William and the stroller packed full to bursting with his assorted gear through the front doors of the hotel into the opulent lobby.

  It was a long space, and elegant in a hushed way that made you feel like any noise would be a trespass. Couches and tables lined one wall opposite a row of square columns. Overhead, crystal chandeliers hung from the decorative plaster ceiling. It was the sort of place to walk through when you were wearing crisply ironed linen and high heels and meeting someone special for lunch.

  It was not at all the sort of place you wanted to hurry through in too-tight clothes, wheeling a screaming baby, especially one who seemed to be taking a fiendish delight in the echoing quality of the high ceilings.

  There were at least a hundred people milling about in the lobby, some sitting on the posh couches, others passing through the front doors into the sunlight. Chloe felt marginally better when she saw that she was actually more dressed up than most of the patrons, many of whom were wearing sweat suits or tank tops over shorts.

  Chloe glanced at her watch. She was already running late, but she couldn’t bring William upstairs while he was in the middle of a fit—and why had he been crying so much lately? she wondered with a twinge of anxiety. William had never been colicky before, but now he seemed to be fussing most of the time he was awake. She looked down at him, undecided whether she should pick him up and cuddle him or just wheel him around outside until he fell asleep, when thankfully—amazingly—he blinked, yawned, and then his eyelids snapped shut, so that his feathery eyelashes spread against the soft pillows of his cheeks. It always amazed her that he could do that, just fall asleep in mid-scream, as though an off switch had been pressed.

  Thank you for that small miracle, Chloe thought. Maybe I’ll make it through this interview after all.

  The living room in Fiona Watson’s suite had a stunning view of Palm Beach’s white beaches and the blue-gray ocean beyond. It was exactly the sort of place Chloe would have imagined a movie star of Fiona’s stature would stay. The furnishings were tastefully expensive—a low cream sofa, two pale-blue wing chairs monogrammed with white Bs, a carved armoire, a sleek mahogany desk—and the living area alone was bigger than the entire first floor of Chloe’s town house. Clearly, Fiona needed the space; the room was full of people, including two personal assistants buzzing around importantly, a stylist who had brought a selection of gowns for the actress’s appearance that night at a charity ball at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago, and a hairdresser, a manicurist, and a cosmetician, who were chatting among themselves while they waited for their turn with Fiona. Just after Chloe arrived, a young woman with a caramel-colored tan also came in, shepherding Fiona Watson’s two young sons, who looked as though they’d just come inside after having a swim, considering their damp hair and Hawaiian patterned trunks.

  Chloe sat in the chair one of the assistants had pointed her to, parking William’s stroller next to her. William was, thankfully, still asleep.

  The assistant—who introduced herself as Nanette—was a tall, pretty girl with a shock of short pale-blonde hair. She looked at the stroller doubtfully.

  “She’s not going to like that,” Nanette said.

  Chloe didn’t have to ask who She was.

  “Right—sorry. I didn’t have a choice.” Chloe smiled apologetically. “My sitter fell through. I hope Miss Watson likes children.”

  Nanette looked horrified. “You’re not going to bring it into the interview with you, are you?”

  “It?” Chloe asked, confused.

  “The baby.”

  “Oh…my son? Well, um, yes. I can’t leave him alone,” Chloe said.

  But Nanette was vigorously shaking her head from side to side before Chloe had even finished speaking. “Absolutely not. It’s out of the question. She doesn’t like having babies around her.”

  “But she has two little boys,” Chloe pointed out.

  “Chloe Truman? She’s ready to see you,” a second assistant—this one an impossibly good-looking young man with a square jaw and heavily highlighted hair—said importantly, as he swept into the room.

  “Thank God you’re here. You have to help me get rid of this baby,” Nanette hissed nervously at the second assistant.

  Chloe stared at her and took a step closer to William. She didn’t know what this woman meant by “get rid of,” but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “I don’t think—” Chloe began to say, but Nanette wasn’t listening to her.

  “Baby? What baby?” the second assistant asked.

  “She brought a baby with her!” Nanette said, nodding in Chloe’s direction.

  “Well, she certainly can’t bring it in there,” said Assistant Number Two, looking scandalized. “Get Katie to watch it.”

  Again with the it, Chloe thought, her irritation and frustration mounting.

  “His name is William,” Chloe began.

  “Katie,” Nanette called out. The nanny had been trying to talk the two little boys into sitting still long enough for her to towel-dry their damp hair. The larger of the two boys—he looked to be about six—kept hitting the nanny’s hand away, while the younger one, around four, was poking her in the bottom with the plastic shovel from a pail set.

  “Quincy, stop it. Satchel, please sit still. You know how cross She gets when your hair doesn’t dry right,” Katie was saying, in a thick Australian accent.

  “Katie! Quick!” the assistant hissed again.

  Katie looked up, her expression wary. “What?”

  “You’re going to have to take this baby,” Nanette said.

  “A baby?” Katie asked, looking exasperated. “Nanette, I can’t possibly take care of a baby on top of these two.”

  “Look, he’s probably going to just sleep the entire time. I promise he won’t bother anyone,” Chloe said, standing up. She put a possessive hand on the handle of the stroller.

  “No,” Nanette snapped.

  “Absolutely not,” Assistant Number Two echoed.

  “Fine, give him here,” Katie said wearily. She left behind the two boys—who promptly ran over to the pristine white couch and began jumping up and down on it—and pulled William’s carriage roughly away from Chloe.

  “Um,” Chloe said. Watching the nanny wheel her son away, toward the rowdy boys, made her incredibly uncomfortable. All of her mommy instincts were on high alert, whistling an alarm.

  “Come on. We’re running behind schedule,” the male assistant snapped.

  I’m only going to be one room away, and Katie is a professional child-care provider, Chloe tried to reason with herself. Finally, reluctantly, she turned and followed the bossy male assistant out of the living room, although she couldn’t help casting one final worried look back at her sleeping baby before she left.

  Fiona Watson was smaller than Chloe had expected her to be. Chloe knew the actress was thin—Fiona was known for her sticklike figure, which she claimed to maintain through a macrobiotic diet and four hours of yoga a day—but she hadn’t known how short she was. The movie star looked like a little pixie curled up on the white chaise longue on one side of t
he master bedroom, an open script on her lap, her long blonde hair piled up on top of her head. Fiona had on a thick white terry-cloth robe, and her feet were tucked up underneath her. She looked delicately, ethereally beautiful.

  “Fuck me,” the actress muttered, not looking up when Chloe and Assistant Number Two entered the room. “This fucking script sucks. There’s no way in fucking hell I’m going to play the cute little ingenue anymore.” She mispronounced the word ingenue as in-genuine. “I’m fucking sick of it. I’m sick of wrinkling my nose and smiling, and sick of everyone thinking I’m the fucking prom queen. I want to be taken seriously!”

  “Fiona,” Assistant Number Two said, shooting Chloe a worried look. Suddenly, he seemed to realize that she was the Press and therefore someone they should tread lightly around. Chloe wondered why he hadn’t thought of that before he and Nanette had referred to William as it. “This is the reporter from Pop Art, here to interview you.”

  “I’m Chloe Truman,” Chloe said. She smiled uncertainly at Fiona Watson. It was surreal coming face-to-face with such a huge star.

  For just a scant moment, Fiona Watson looked dismayed. But then suddenly her face transformed, lit up by her world-famous smile.

  She’s so beautiful, Chloe thought wistfully, as she took in the finely boned face, the perfectly straight white teeth, the clear pale skin.

  “Thank you so much for coming. I’m a huge fan of Pop Art,” Fiona said sweetly, tilting her head to one side fetchingly. “Please, sit down. Faber, get our guest a drink. What would you like, Chloe? Iced tea? Freshly squeezed juice?”

  Chloe gratefully sank down on the white linen wing chair. She’d once read a gossip piece that claimed Fiona Watson always insisted that her hotel and dressing rooms be all white—white furniture, white flowers, white everything. And, actually, the bedroom was decorated in a white palette—a white upholstered headboard, white duvet, whitewashed armoire—although the walls were a pale blue and the patterned carpet was tan and gray.

  “No thank you, I’m fine,” Chloe said, smiling at Assistant Number Two. What had Fiona Watson said his name was? Faber? It didn’t sound like a real name, and Chloe wondered if he’d made it up.