She, Myself & I

by Whitney Gaskell

  “Or you get married, find out your husband is gay, and end up going through a gut-wrenching divorce,” Paige said.

  “Zack isn’t gay,” I pointed out.

  “I know. But something else could happen that would ruin everything. The way we are right now feels good. And safe. Taking the next step, any step, just seems like I’m risking a lot for nothing.”

  I thought of how it felt when Aidan took me into his arms, rubbing his cheek against my wavy hair. And then I thought of Ben, and how after he finished nursing, he’d stretch his neck out like a turtle and then snuggle up into a round baby ball. And how even on the days when my shoulders were stiff with tension and the thought of facing one more overflowing poopy diaper was enough to make me run out of the room screaming, and when Aidan bristled with tension until my stomach curdled, that it was hard to imagine a life that didn’t revolve around my two guys.

  “It’s not nothing,” I said.

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  This made me sit up in the tub.

  “What? Why? Did you take a test?”

  “No. But my period’s late. And I’ve been feeling really tired lately, which is exactly how I felt when I got pregnant the last time,” Paige said.

  “Go get a home pregnancy test. Go now,” I said.

  “I don’t want to. I’m afraid.”

  “Wait . . . I thought you wanted to get pregnant. A while ago you were talking about going the single-mom-sperm-donor route,” I reminded her.

  “I know, I know. But that was before. Now there’s Zack, and our relationship, and shit, Sophie, I don’t know what to do. What if I were pregnant and then Zack and I broke up? I’d have to deal with him for the rest of my life,” Paige said.

  “Now you’re breaking up?”

  “It could happen! A baby is a big responsibility, and a lot of stress for a new relationship.”

  “But you want the baby.”

  “Of course. Yes. I think so.”

  “Then go take a test. There’s no point in worrying about the long-term consequences when it could just be nothing,” I said.

  “And if it’s not nothing?”

  “Then it’ll be okay. You’ll have Zack, and me, and Mickey. And if Mom and Dad ever stop acting so insane, you’ll have them, too.”

  “I know, but still. And there’s something else . . . I’ve been thinking about leaving my firm,” Paige said.

  “You mean not being a lawyer anymore?”

  “No. I just don’t want to handle divorces anymore. It’s too toxic. I was thinking of starting a practice that focused on child advocacy. The only thing is that it’ll be financially risky, and even if I could get it off the ground, it would never pay as well as divorces,” she said. “That didn’t matter so much when it was just me, but add in a baby, and I don’t know if I can afford the salary cut. Especially if I end up doing this on my own.”

  “What does Zack say?”

  “He’s been really supportive of the idea, but that was before. I haven’t told him yet that I might be pregnant,” Paige said.

  “Paige! How can you not have told him?”

  “What’s the point until I know for sure? I don’t want to scare him or get his hopes up if it just turns out to be early menopause,” she insisted.

  “No way, you’re too young for that.”

  “I guess. I don’t know what to do. It’s too much to think about. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It’s sort of exciting. The very idea that there could be a little person growing inside of me,” Paige said.

  When I swiped at the tears, I rubbed verbena bubbles into my eyes.

  “There’s nothing more wonderful in the world,” I agreed.

  “Guess what?” I said to Aidan later that night. He was already in bed, dressed in pajama pants and no top. My skin was still flushed red from the hot bath, and I was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of Aidan’s red plaid boxer shorts.

  “What?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

  Aidan put down the sports magazine he was reading and looked at me.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you,” I said, and I climbed into bed next to him. Paige had sworn me to secrecy, but I think she was more concerned about my telling Mickey or our parents. Surely she hadn’t meant Aidan, even if she did say “Promise me you won’t tell anyone, not even Aidan.” Because I had to tell someone. There was no way I could keep it in.

  “Paige might be pregnant. She’s not sure yet, she hasn’t tested or anything, but she thinks she might be,” I announced.

  “Oh yeah? That’s nice,” Aidan said. And then he picked his creased copy of Sports Illustrated back up.

  “Are. You. Kidding. Me?” I said. Gone was the cozy good fun of sharing a secret. Rage erupted inside of me.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean what? I tell you that my sister is pregnant, and your response is ‘That’s nice’?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing specific. But some sort of a reaction would be nice. God! Why can’t we ever just talk anymore? Why does everything always have to be a fight?”

  Aidan put down the magazine.

  “Do you really want to know?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been acting a little nutty ever since Ben was born. Before then even. Ever since you got pregnant. You freak out at the smallest little things. Look at tonight. I’ve been working all day, and then I took care of Ben this evening to give you some time off, and this is the first moment I’ve had all day to relax. And you start screaming at me because I didn’t react the way you expected me to when you told me some family news,” he said, sounding irritatingly reasonable.

  “It’s big news!”

  “What? The news that your sister may or may not be pregnant? So basically you’re reporting that what, your sister’s period is late? Tell me—what would be the appropriate amount of enthusiasm for me to show? Should I pump my arm in the air and yell ‘Way to go, Paige’? Or are you waiting for me to ask for a more in-depth analysis of her menstrual cycle? Because I have to say, hon, I’m just not ready to go there. And I don’t think you’re going to find many guys who would,” Aidan said.

  “Now you’re making me feel stupid,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, well, the one thing you’ve made clear lately is that pretty much whatever I do, it’s wrong,” Aidan said.

  “That’s not fair. I don’t criticize everything you do,” I protested, stung at this accusation.

  “This morning you accused me of burning your toaster waffle on purpose. Last week when I had a sinus infection, you insinuated that I was faking it to get out of taking care of Ben,” Aidan said.

  I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling fan circling above me. It went round and round and round, so fast that I couldn’t count how many blades were on it. Aidan turned over on his side so that he was facing me. He reached over and poked me in the side.

  “Don’t poke me.”

  “Then say something,” he said.

  “I know I’ve been touchy lately. I don’t mean to be, I just can’t help it. Between the hormones and the lack of sleep and taking care of Ben—as much as I love him, it can be really hard. Like today. He didn’t nap, and he was crying on and off all day. All day! It’s hard to deal with,” I said.

  “But you don’t have to deal with it by yourself. When I’m home, I help,” Aidan said.

  “I know. You’ve just been working so much lately.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t help that. It’s not like I’m working for fun.”

  “I know. But it’s like that song, ‘Cat’s in the Cradle.’ You need to spend more time with Ben.”

  “I am not a ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ dad, and I spend plenty of time with Ben. What I need to do is to spend more time with you. We used to laugh and hang out together every night, and I can’t even remember the last time we slept together.”

 
; “When I was six and a half months pregnant with Ben,” I said.

  “You came up with that answer pretty quickly. How do you remember?”

  “Because I had to beg you. Wait, though . . . are you saying that you wish Ben hadn’t been born?” I asked.

  “No! Of course not! But I think we need to spend some time together on our own, too,” Aidan said.

  “I tried to set that up last week. Remember? You made plans to have dinner with your family instead,” I said.

  “Don’t remind me,” Aidan said. “Can we try again? Maybe see if one of our moms or sisters will babysit this weekend? What are grandmothers for, anyway?”

  I nodded and took the hand that he was extending to me. “Maybe we should ask your mom. I think Paige has her hands full right now, and I’m trying to avoid my mom.”

  “Your parents are dating,” Aidan teased me.

  “Ugh, don’t remind me. And don’t joke about it.”

  “Your parents are dating. Your parents are dating,” Aidan sang out obnoxiously.

  “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you,” I said, and clapped my hands over my ears. “Nananana, I can’t hear you.”

  “Not only are they dating, they’re probably having sex,” Aidan said.

  “Ack! How can you say that?” I shrieked, and I rolled on top of him, straddling his body. “Just for that, I’m going to tickle-attack you.”

  I dug my fingers into his ribs and tickled him until his eyes watered up and he begged me to stop.

  “Okay, okay, I give up. I promise, I’ll stop talking about your parents having S-E-X,” he said, and then he reached up and grabbed my wrists. “Speaking of S-E-X . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you feel like having it?’

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Come here,” Aidan said.

  And he pulled me toward him, and we kissed. He struggled to get my T-shirt off over my head.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Oh no,” Aidan said.

  “No, I want to, it’s just . . . I don’t want you to see me naked,” I said.

  “Well, I know it’s been a while since we did this, but if memory serves me, I think that nudity is sort of a requirement.”

  “Can’t I just leave my shirt on?”

  “Why? I love seeing you naked,” Aidan said.

  He log-rolled me over and began nuzzling my neck.

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “I have seen you naked before, you know.”

  “But my stomach is all flobby now.”

  “I don’t think that’s a real word.”

  “The skin is all loose and pouchy. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Let me see.”

  “No!”

  “Come on, let me see.” Aidan pulled my T-shirt up, exposing the jiggling looseness of my stomach. He leaned over and tenderly kissed it. “I think it’s beautiful.”

  “No you don’t. I have stretch marks, and my belly button is black from all of the dead skin cells. And I’m fat,” I said, and I tried to stretch the T-shirt back down, wanting to hide the disgusting mess that was my body.

  “Hey,” Aidan said softly. He reached over and placed his hand on mine. “That’s where you carried our son. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  I rested a hand on the side of his face, trying to remember what it was about him that had been irritating me so much lately.

  “Okay,” I said, sitting up and peeling off my shirt.

  “Hot damn!” Aidan said.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Thanks for coming over,” I said, opening the door for Cora and Beatrice.

  “No problem. She’s asleep. Can I put her down somewhere?”

  “Sure. Ben is napping in his room, but I have a Pack ’n Play set up in the family room. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Wow. Your house is gorgeous. Who took these pictures of Ben for you?” Cora asked, stopping by the matted, framed black-and-white photographs I’d hung in the front hall.

  “I did.”

  “Are you serious? They’re amazing! Are you a professional photographer?”

  “God, no. I majored in photography in college, but I never did any real work. Just artsy stuff for class. Most of it’s awful—extreme close-ups of leaves, and pretentious stuff like that,” I said.

  “Well, I think you’re really talented. You know, people would pay you a lot of money to take pictures like this of their kids,” Cora said.

  “No. Really? You think so?”

  “Yup. In fact, I’ll be your first customer. Would you photograph Beatrice? In black and white? I’ll pay you.”

  “Of course! But you don’t have to pay me, silly goose,” I said.

  “Yes I do. And then you can use Ben’s and Beatrice’s pictures to start a portfolio. They’re having a baby expo at the convention center in a few months. I went last year when I was pregnant, and there were a ton of photographers there displaying their work, and none of them were as good as these,” Cora insisted.

  “I don’t know. That sounds like a lot of . . . trouble,” I said.

  Cora shrugged. “It’s up to you,” she said.

  I felt the regret catch in my chest. Why had I said it would be too much trouble? My hesitation flowed from a wild-eyed fear that if I did try to make something of what had once been my passion, and had in recent years dried up to a part-time hobby, I would fail.

  “Well, maybe I should try,” I said lamely, but Cora just smiled, and it seemed like the moment—and the opportunity—had passed.

  After Cora had settled Beatrice into the Pack ’n Play, and accepted the coffee I’d made especially for her—I’d never seen anyone ingest as much caffeine before in my life—I said, “The computer is upstairs, in Aidan’s office.”

  “Okay, cool. I just can’t believe you don’t know how to use the Internet.”

  “I don’t. I don’t even have e-mail.”

  “You do know you can shop online, right?”

  “You can?” I asked. “No, but if I had, I would have done this sooner.”

  We walked up the open staircase, and once upstairs, I pushed open the second door on the right.

  “Sorry it’s such a mess in here. This room sort of became the dumping grounds for all of our random stuff when we moved in,” I said, waving my hand to indicate the boxes of files, Aidan’s golf clubs, the treadmill I’d insisted on buying and had only used three times. “I don’t even know how to turn the thing on.”

  Cora settled in behind Aidan’s desk and hit a button on the computer. I stood behind her, leaning over her shoulder. The computer began to whir and beep, and a minute later, the blue desktop screen appeared.

  “You have a high-speed Internet connection, so all you have to do is open the browser—that’s this button here—and voilà! Here’s the Internet.”

  “You make it look so easy.”

  “It is. Now, to research something, you just have to type it here in the search box. What did you want to look up? Cruises?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to surprise Aidan with a trip. There are some weekend cruises that depart from Houston, and I thought it would be fun for us to get away together,” I said.

  “Are you going to bring Ben?”

  “I’m not sure. My mom said she’d watch him, but I’m nervous at the idea of leaving him. Do you think I should take him with us?”

  “Hell, no. Have a romantic weekend, you guys probably need it. Ben will be fine. Okay, here are some websites where you can book cruises. This one here is a discount travel website, where they have cruises that have been marked down, and this one is a general travel site, which is going to have everything,” Cora explained.

  “How do I find these websites again?” I asked.

  “You right-click on ‘Favorites’ and then scroll down to ‘Add to Favorites.’ There, it’s right . . . oh.”

  “What?”

  “Um. This is your husband’s computer?”

  “Yeah, why?
”

  “Well. This is really none of my business, but most of the websites he has marked as favorites look a little . . . porny,” Cora said.

  “Porny? What do you mean?”

  “Look: pussygalore.com, boobweb.com, Hustlervip.com, cumshots.com . . .”

  As she read the list of websites, nausea began to roll and gurgle in my stomach. I closed my eyes, wanting to blot this moment out of my memory. But I could tell by the way everything seemed too bright, too loud, too in focus that it would stick, just like the night when I was a freshman in college and walked in on my roommate, Meryl, giving my boyfriend, Brad, a blow job. On my bed, so that her sheets wouldn’t get sticky.

  “I take it you didn’t know about this,” Cora said.

  “That my husband’s a porn freak? No, I did not know that,” I said thinly.

  “It’s not a big deal. Jason buys Playboy every once in a while. I found one in his briefcase, and he trotted out that lame-ass excuse about only being interested in the articles,” Cora said.

  “Are there articles on those websites?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s look and see.”

  Cora scrolled the mouse down the list of marked websites and clicked on one. Immediately the screen was full of naked women—naked women masturbating, naked women kissing other naked women, naked women performing blow jobs on faceless men, naked women posing in fuck-me heels with come-hither pouts stretched over their plastic faces, all set against a bright pink background with coy captions in a juvenile bubbly font: Blonde hotties work a cock! College girl spreads her pussy! Big titted girl sucks and fucks! The copy for the site depended heavily on multiple exclamation points, the letter X, and advertised videos, photographs, a live chat, and something called a “dorm cam.”

  “What’s a dorm cam?” I asked faintly.

  “Erm. I think it’s where they put some cameras around a house, filming the women 24/7. You know . . . having sex, showering, going to the bathroom,” Cora said.

  “Ew! Going to the bathroom? Aidan watches women going to the bathroom? I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  “No, I’m sure he doesn’t. He probably just watches the movies and looks at the pictures,” Cora assured me.