by Mary F. Pols
“So,” Matilda said. “I am just going to take down some facts about you if you don’t mind. Your full name?” She pointed to me, and then to Matt.
“You are not married?” she said.
“No,” I explained. “We’re not actually together.”
If she’d been a dog, her ears would have pricked up. “But you are here for couples’ counseling?”
I tried to sum it up for her, as best I could, and swiftly. Her eyes fell on Dolan. He was kicking in the car seat. I stooped over to extract him and started nursing.
“He’s a beautiful baby,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “We’re here because although we’re not a couple, we are going to share some parental duties, and I want us to learn how to work together as a couple. And right now I am very, very angry at Matt, because he slept with someone else, right before I gave birth.”
Her eyes swiveled to Matt, sitting there in his work clothes, which were, as always, neat, tidy, and professional. He looked as mild-mannered and sweet as a man could look. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, I thought bitterly, then started to parse the phrase. What did that mean, anyway? Didn’t that imply you must have some sort of internal refrigeration? I was angry enough to think maybe that was apt for Matt—passionless, inert.
“You were a couple then?” Matilda was asking.
“Not declared as such,” I said. “But we were sleeping together, and I assumed it was monogamous. Because who would be indecent enough to go screw someone else in between nights at my house?”
Then I went off. Waving my hands, occasionally wrestling the baby onto the other breast, trying to explain why I was so outraged and why she ought to be as well. What I wanted was for Matt to be sent to the gallows. By a professional.
“You look very nice together,” she said, when I was done. “A very handsome family.”
I stared at her.
“I would not call us a family,” I said. “Not now that he’s done this to me.”
“Matthew,” she said, turning to him. “Tell me how you feel about this.”
“I fucked up,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I did something very stupid. I guess I thought we weren’t really together so it was okay, but I regretted it right away and I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Weren’t there a few clues in there to tell you it wasn’t okay to fuck someone else?” Matilda waved an admonishing hand in my direction. But I wasn’t done.
“Especially some stalker,” I said. “She’s calling him all the time and giving us baby gifts, and coming to his stupid lame-ass barfly softball team games on the weekends, as if they were worth seeing. It’s not even baseball!”
Matilda was not coming over to the side of the raving lunatic.
“Tell me about when you and Mary met, Matthew,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “Well, there was a physical attraction, of course,” he said.
She smiled.
“But we barely knew each other, and when Mary told me she was pregnant, I thought we should just try to be friends. I thought that would be easiest.”
“What about these last few months?” she asked.
“They’ve been nice,” he said. “We’ve gotten to know each other better, which I think is important. But I still think we should just be friends. Otherwise, it’s too confusing.”
I couldn’t get my head around Matt’s emotional obstinacy. Or stoicism. Or whatever it was. Did nothing ever sneak up on him? Or, if and when he ever fell in love, would it be because something flashed in the calendar of life he carried in his head, giving him the green light to go ahead and let go?
“So were your actions with this other woman—” she began.
“Hosebag,” I muttered.
Matilda waved me off again. Her focus was on Matt. “Were you acting something out with this girl?”
“I guess I was.” He sighed. “Trying to say, I’m not in a relationship.”
“This must be very stressful for you,” she said, looking at him.
“Pretty stressful,” he said.
Matt had recently revealed that in the first few months of my pregnancy, he’d had dreams in which snakes were biting his penis. “I thought you never remembered your dreams,” I’d said. “These you’d remember,” he’d said.
“I think we should schedule another session,” Matilda said. “Mary, you are going to have to work on forgiving Matthew; otherwise you are not going to be able to move on.”
“I don’t want to forgive him,” I said. “This was unforgivable.”
“Eventually,” she said, “you will have to, for your son’s sake.”
I gave Matt a dirty look. “It would be nice if, for his son’s sake, he hadn’t felt compelled to screw someone else.”
She ignored me. Looking back and forth between us, she seemed to like what she saw.
“You know,” she said, “in a few years, while raising your son together, you may find that you end up loving each other. You may decide that for”—she checked her notes—“Dolan’s sake, you want to be together.”
Matt remained neutral, but I gaped at her. Was this couples’ counseling or the dating game?
“You do make a very handsome couple,” she said again. “You look very nice together.”
Then she turned to her calendar. “I could see you next month. I don’t have anything open before that, I’m afraid.”
We made the appropriate noises of agreement and took the date she offered us. In the car on the way home, we passed my old apartment. Life was so much simpler when I lived there. If I’d never met this jerk, I’d still be up there, I thought, maybe making myself a nice cup of tea or getting ready to go out for the evening. Then I looked in the rearview mirror. Dolan’s car seat was facing the rear, but I’d hung a mirror back there so I could see his face. He was sleeping again, his pink lips pressed together in a tiny pout. “He’s got your pout,” Sara had said on the day he was born.
“I don’t think we’re going to get much out of Matilda,” I said to Matt.
“Yeah, I don’t think so either,” he said. “She didn’t seem to get our situation. What was all that stuff about how we could fall in love someday?”
Matilda’s focus on a happy ending had also struck me as absurd, given the way we’d spelled out our problems to her. She seemed like a clueless amateur. But he didn’t have to be so dismissive.
“It’s not such a crazy proposition,” I said, glaring at him. “People do fall in love unexpectedly, you know.”
“I know they do,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s in the cards for us.”
“Neither do I,” I said grimly, getting on the freeway to go home. I wondered whether I was capable of forgiving Matt. I already knew him well enough to know it wasn’t cruelty that made him sleep with someone else. It was certainly an effective way of establishing that we weren’t in a relationship. But probably all he wanted, just for a few hours, was to feel free of the strange burden that another one-night stand had left him with.
CHAPTER 11
Reality Doesn’t Bite
A WEEK OR SO AFTER our trip to the couples’ counselor, I picked up Matt at BART on a rainy afternoon. I was still wearing my pajamas, with a sweatshirt over them, and I was cursing Matt for calling to ask for a ride. In general I was cursing his presence in my life. I’d gained enough confidence with mothering to feel certain I could manage the day-to-day caretaking on my own. Moreover, I felt entitled, as the woman burned, to give him the cold shoulder. But if I pushed him away from me right now, I’d also be pushing him away from the baby. I feared doing so would damage his relationship with Dolan. If he felt unneeded and useless, he might want to stay away. Then Dolan might ultimately think fathers were the people who showed up when it was time to start playing baseball in the backyard. I wanted my son to have the best possible experience with his father that he could, no matter what his parents’ circumstances were.
Matt walked across the parkin
g lot, and I realized his eyes were glued to the backseat, even from a distance. He was trying to see the baby’s face, which at that moment was red with rage; Dolan had been crying ever since we left the house. I popped the locks and Matt tossed his bag into the front seat, then swung his lean frame into the back, next to his son.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. “I missed you.” Dolan kept on fussing and I watched as Matt tried to entertain him with a stuffed red monkey. It wasn’t working.
“Do you think he’s hungry?” Matt asked.
“I just fed him,” I said. “I think he probably was ready for a nap and wasn’t psyched to go on a car ride.”
My tone must have said, Neither was I. Take the freaking bus.
“Sorry, little guy,” Matt said. The squalling continued, unabated. “I am so in love with you, little one,” Matt murmured. His voice was as tender as I’ve ever heard a man’s voice. “But you have got to stop crying.”
I kept on driving and said nothing. But my heart, bruised as it was for myself, sang for Dolan. His father was in love with him. I didn’t forgive Matt on that day, nor did I forget what he’d done. But something in me knew then that I’d survive and that this love, the love Matt had for Dolan, was what mattered.
BIRTHDAYS ARE WORSE than New Year’s Eve, when at least you have a world of company in feeling disappointed. That balance of wanting attention and knowing how to handle it had always eluded me. My mother wasn’t one for giving her children birthday parties. Other than when I was five and the neighbors’ kids came over, I can’t remember a party that wasn’t exclusively family until I demanded one in fourth grade. I remembered that event only for what went wrong. My mother made spaghetti and left too much water in the pasta, and as I was presenting it with what I thought was an elegant flourish—emulating Rose, my favorite character on Upstairs, Downstairs—the noodles slid across the plate and into one unfortunate girl’s lap. I can’t conjure up their faces, but I can still hear the sound of everyone’s giggles.
Before my life took this crazy turn, I had been actively dreading my fortieth birthday. Every day that passed after that would be one less day of fertility. If I were still treading water, all by myself, at forty, I figured I’d be doomed to miss out on marriage with children; there just wouldn’t be enough time. I’d even begun planning to compensate for whatever misery I’d be experiencing on that big day by looking at houses to rent out at the beach, someplace with a hot tub, where I could gather all my friends for a weekend party. Essentially I’d started battening down the hatches for what I was sure would be a storm of self-pity.
But here was Dolan. Five weeks and three days old on my fortieth birthday. I felt as though I’d slid under a closing gate in the last few seconds, like Indiana Jones escaping the tomb. I’d beaten the biological clock, the thing that had been tormenting me, but I didn’t feel like gloating. I’d imagined besting that clock might be like finishing a marathon, high on adrenaline and ready to mount the podium and pump your fists in the air. Instead I felt something so much softer, something I couldn’t quite define.
My dad had sent me a check and I’d spent it on lobsters, inviting some friends over to share them. John came through the door with bottles and bottles of prosecco, April with a stack of gourmet chocolate bars, Karen with flowers. The women all made an immediate beeline for Dolan.
“God, he might not be a girl, but he’s as pretty as one,” Karen said, running her fingers across his downy head. Then she leaned in, closer to my ear. “You let Matt come?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I kept imagining looking at pictures from this night, years from now, and Dolan noticing that his dad isn’t in them, and then I’d remember why, and that almost seemed worse.”
“That’s good,” Karen said. “Forgive and forget. So, how’s being home? Do you miss work?
“No,” I said. “Not one bit. I’m sure I will at some point, but days are so full right now. We don’t do anything, but even that seems to take a lot of time.”
“And how’s he sleeping?” she asked, fussing with Dolan’s blanket. He was sideways in my arms, eyes open, looking around curiously.
“He’s up to about four hours at a time at night,” I said. “I thought it would be so much worse.” I leaned closer, afraid to say it too loudly in case I put a hex on it. “I think he might be an easy baby.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said, opening up her arms. “Not until you’ve lived with a colicky baby. Now go get yourself a glass of prosecco while I get some Dolan time.”
The doorbell rang. It was Liza and Hugh. They were officially back together after more than a year apart. No one understood exactly why, except that Hugh had started dating and Liza hadn’t liked it. John and I were laying bets that the reunion was temporary. They’d just returned from spending Easter week in the Bahamas with the boys. Hugh was glowing with love. Liza was glowing as well, although it could have just been her fresh tan.
She handed me a yellow silk bag. “It’s a piece,” she said. “From the Bahamas. I think when you turn forty, you need a piece.”
I opened it up. It was an aqua necklace, made of chunky, uneven stones. It was the kind of jewelry I don’t even look at in stores because I know I can’t afford it. I put it on, and it was heavy, lustrous, and cold against my neck. Liza’s taste is exquisite. I’ve never been anywhere with her when she wasn’t the most stylish woman in the room.
“This is what the water is like in the Bahamas,” Liza said.
“Oh my,” I said, touching it. “It’s spectacular. I feel like such a grown-up. It’s too much, though, Liza.”
“Well, this is a big deal,” she said. “Your first birthday as a mother. You deserve it. And little mister is going to love looking at this. And playing with it.”
I could picture that, so easily. And I could also picture the decades ahead, wearing my “piece” when I turned fifty, or sixty. Or seventy. It would look good with silver hair. The necklace was warming on my neck.
“Now where is that baby?” she demanded.
Dolan went from one friend to another, all evening. Every time Matt or I tried to put him into his bassinet, he cried. He seemed to want to be a part of the party. Eventually he fell asleep in Hugh’s arms, head back, mouth open, arms flopped at his sides, and I went looking for Liza. She and Matt were out on the back steps, smoking. He tended to gravitate toward her in social gatherings. It made sense; she was so gracious, she always made an effort to make him feel comfortable. Some of my other friends were still stiff with him, maybe because they weren’t sure what to make of him. Was he going to be a regular part of our social scene, or would he fade into the background?
Liza, it turned out, had some privileged information in this regard. She had mentioned Matt’s and my situation to her psychic. Little Deer—who lived in Montana and could, for a fee, interpret Liza’s cosmic state of being by telephone—had told her Matt and I “would be in and out of each other’s lives for a long time.” Liza had passed this information on to me very gravely, as if it were a state secret I might find helpful. “Well yeah,” I’d said. “We’re having a baby together. I think it’s a safe bet we’re stuck with each other on some level.” But even as I scoffed, I appreciated that she was always kind to Matt.
She stubbed out her cigarette and headed back into the house when she saw me coming out. Matt and I hadn’t talked at all that night, except about baby logistics. “Keep it light,” she whispered in my ear as she went by.
I hugged myself against the chill of the April night. Matt was using his foot to prop himself up against the wall. He was drawing hard on his cigarette.
“Shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, holding the butt out to squint at it. I couldn’t tell whether Matt actively tried to do a Marlboro Man thing when he smoked or whether it came naturally. Either way I knew it was fucked up to find it at all attractive.
“That Liza,” I said. “She could talk Laura Bush into having a cigarette with her.”
We stood there together,
me upwind of his exhales. In my dress-up clothes and high heels, I felt for a minute as though I’d followed the cute guy at a party outside. I had to remind myself of the fact that the two of us had a baby inside, passed out in Hugh’s arms. Our levels of intimacy didn’t track like any normal relationship. He’d watched me being cut open five weeks before, but still, he often felt like a complete stranger. For instance, who was this guy who could have had sex with someone else a few weeks before? What did they talk about? What did they do? I couldn’t imagine. Well, that wasn’t true. I’d been tormenting myself with images of it. But I couldn’t fathom it.
“Thanks for inviting me,” he said. “It was a really nice party.”
“I am still mad at you,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“But I’m glad you came,” I continued. “It would have been weird not to have you here.”
“I would have felt weird not being here,” he said. “I just want us to get along.”
I think when you’ve been cheated on—although this wasn’t technically cheating, what Matt had done—a lot of us believe makeup sex is, while not a cure, a fine Band-Aid for hurt feelings. At least that was the wicked thought chasing around in the back of my wine-fogged mind until Matt trotted out the Rodney King-ism. That’s right: friends. We were going to be friends.
“Let’s go for a hike tomorrow,” I said. “I would really like to breathe some fresh air into my forty-year-old lungs.”
John poked his head out the door. “Birthday girl, some of your guests are getting restless,” he said. “Let’s cut into that cake.”
As I got ready to blow out the candles, I looked across at Dolan, awake again and now in Liza’s arms, looking entranced by the flickering lights. That soft feeling I hadn’t quite identified earlier was, I realized, a kind of contentment I had never felt before. The worries I’d had about turning forty had evaporated, and that astonished me. I’d gotten so used to worrying, I thought it was as permanent as a scar. I owed it all to Dolan. I smiled at him and then blew hard. Extinguishing forty candles takes a lot of work, even if all the angst I’d associated with the age was gone.