by Mary F. Pols
When it came to Matt, though, I admit I did not always feel lucky. I swung between gratitude that he’d stuck around, that his participation in Dolan’s life had ceased to be a variable and become a certainty, and trouble accepting that there was this person in my life whom I could find no easy description for. Lover? Off limits. Friend? Not quite. Little brother? Disturbing on so many levels. Co-parent? “Co” implied an equal share, and in my mind, Matt didn’t pull enough weight to qualify. I suppose I thought of him as my quarter-parent. To be more accurate, that was what I had decided he was. From the moment I’d told him I was pregnant, my goal was to make it possible for him to be a vital part of his child’s life. But his purpose in my life was far from resolved.
WHEN I GOT BACK to California after my father’s death, I had a week to pack up my apartment in Alameda and get it ready for my subletters. I had movies to see and reviews to write because the fellowship money wouldn’t start for another month. And I had to get us moved into the apartment I’d rented for the year down at Stanford.
“I just can’t believe how much I have to do,” I said to Matt. I was sorting through Dolan’s toys looking for things to leave behind, trying to pare down, to live a simple life for the year.
“It’ll all get done,” he said.
“I don’t want to be organized and energetic,” I said despondently. “I just miss my father.”
“I know it’s hard,” he said. “You’ll get it done, though. You always do.” He picked up an enormous talking frog I’d just tossed in a cardboard box destined for storage. “Wasn’t this from Aunt Rose?” he asked. “Did we ever send her a thank-you note?”
“We?” I said. “We?” I stared at him until I had his attention. “No, we didn’t. We got sick of sending thank-you notes to your family because we are not your wife. Have you ever sent a thank-you note to anyone in my family?”
“Okay,” he said, dropping the creature back in the box and holding up his hands against me. “Okay, okay, okay.”
The lights on the frog’s chest began flashing. “Hello,” it chirped brightly. “I’m Baby Tad! Do you want to sing a song with me?” I left the room. Matt had missed his cue, the one where he was supposed to come and put his arms around me and let me cry on his shoulder. He was always missing his cue, but then again, he’d never asked for this part. He’d had a front row seat on the spectacle of parental sickness and death I’d endured and he had given me sympathy, although mostly when I was so desperate for it I asked. Because he was the main witness to my grief, it was easy for me to start expecting him to say the right thing. But I was not his wife. He was not my husband. It wasn’t his fault that his heart did not break for me. He didn’t even know my parents. He had no idea how great they were.
Matt had met my father just once. I’d asked him to come home with me for my mother’s memorial service. With my father’s poor health, I had worried we were running out of time for introductions. However unusual the situation between Matt and me was, it seemed only right that my father should meet the man who had fathered his grandson. Nonetheless, I had felt chagrined, traipsing into my father’s hospital room with a stranger, the man I had sex with two hours after I met him and accidentally made a baby with. This awkward introduction had seemed an affront to my father’s dignity, already compromised by all the indignities of serious illness. But he looked at Matt with interest. Matt was holding Dolan against him, and as always, he looked just right holding Dolan. He looked like a man who found something that belongs to him and will never let go.
My father surveyed Matt and then spoke slowly, raspily.
“You’re a fine-looking fellow,” he said.
Another man might have joked. Another man might have made small talk. Matt acknowledged the statement with a nod and a slight smile. It was, after all, a statement, not a compliment. It said, dryly, I see now why my foolish daughter took a fancy to you. She always liked pretty things.
I think it’s safe to say my father never hoped for a happy ending for us. Individually, certainly, but not as a couple. “Good,” he’d said a few months later when I told him Matt and I would never get married. “Of course, if he marries someone else and has more children,” he added, “he may lose interest in Dolan. He’s young.”
“He could,” I acknowledged. “Although I don’t think he will.” I couldn’t make promises for Matt then or now. It is not my place and I’d hate to be wrong about it. But there have been only a few times when Matt has been absolutely emphatic with me. Once was when I had suggested that if someday he had a wife and other kids, a “real” family, Dolan would be less significant to him. He had answered immediately, and with unwavering conviction. “That will never happen. I will never lose interest in him.” This he said before he ever looked into those blue eyes and long before Dolan started stroking his hair and saying, “I need my daddy.”
There was a soft knock on my door. I hadn’t felt up to going back to Matt and the talking frog and had flopped down on my bed instead.
“Yeah,” I said, reaching for a tissue. “Come in.”
Matt had his über-neutral face on, the one that says, Hello, stormy sea, I am a placid pool and I’d like to stay that way, so can you keep your waves to a minimum?
“Are there any boxes I can carry out to the garage?” he said. “Anything I can get out of your way before I go to sleep?”
I’d bought a twin bed for Dolan’s room the previous winter. It was intended to be Dolan’s whenever he was ready to graduate from the crib, but in the meantime, it was where Matt slept when he stayed over. I’d gotten sick of coming home from night screenings to find him in his makeshift bed on the couch. The sight depressed me, reminding me that he still didn’t have a car and that he was still in the same lousy apartment in the city where we’d conceived Dolan. The twin bed was serving as an hourglass for us; I told Matt he had to be in a better situation by the time Dolan was ready for his big-boy bed. “I am not buying the two of you bunk beds,” I had told him. “My psyche cannot handle that.”
“No, thanks,” I said now. “Nothing is ready. Maybe next time you come over.”
“Just stack them by the door,” he said. “I’ll take care of them when I come on Tuesday.”
I nodded through a fresh load of tears, and reached for another tissue. Even a small kindness is such an invitation to lose it.
“I just peeked in on him,” Matt said. “He’s out solid. Down at the bottom of the crib, with his butt up in the air.” He laughed. “It looks pretty comfortable. I’d kind of like to sleep that way.”
He hesitated in the doorway. “Should I close this?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to packing.”
“He kept telling me, ‘I so happy to see you,’ tonight,” Matt said.
“We were in Maine for almost two weeks,” I said. “He missed you.”
“I missed him too,” he said. “I missed both of you guys.”
Poor Matt. Emotionally, he might not be in tune with me, but it wasn’t just Dolan who was important to him. He and I spent more time together than we did with anyone else, except for Dolan. There were so many contradictions in our relationship. I wasn’t Matt’s wife, but I knew I was the woman of primary significance in his life. “He never uses your name,” Benet observed after he met Matt. “He always calls you ‘she.’” “I know,” I’d responded. “It makes me feel like he thinks I’m the alpha bitch.” But in a way, I liked being his “she.” Even I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him.
THE TRUTH WILL ALWAYS OUT on a spa date with your girlfriends, though. Karen arrived to pick me up that weekend as I was issuing the last directives to Matt about dinner. I’d set him up with a roast chicken and mashed potatoes. All he had to do was keep an eye on the bird, take it out at the right time, and steam the broccoli.
Matt waved the head of broccoli at me. “Do I cook this whole thing?”
“No,” I said. “You just cut off a chunk of it. Enough for the two of you.”
He looked vaguely unsettled. “Here,” I said, taking it from him and whacking off a two-person portion.
“Bye, sweetheart,” I said to Dolan. “Be good for Daddy, okay?”
“I don’t want you to go,” he said, grabbing my leg and starting to whimper. “Stay.”
“Can you walk me out to the car?” I coaxed. “Wave good-bye to me outside?”
He nodded. By the time Karen and I had gotten into her minivan and were buckling our seat belts, he was smiling from Matt’s arms and waving cheerfully.
“Whew,” Karen said. “Good-byes are hard. But what a little trouper. And what about Matt and that broccoli? He’s like a vegetable virgin.”
“He’s gotten much better about eating them,” I said. “But cooking is the new frontier.”
She pulled away from the curb and turned to look at me. Her tone became conspiratorial. “So did you bring a swimsuit?”
“I did,” I said. “A roomy one-piece. I hope you did too. The pool is tiny, but so nice.”
“I brought one,” she said. “But the idea of being in a bathing suit with Kir and Liza is kind of terrifying.”
“It’s genetic,” I said. “They can’t help it. I used to think I didn’t look like them because I was lazy and loved chocolate. But when I was living with Kir she ate enormous bowls of ice cream every night. She’s like a whippet; just burns it off. As for Liza, I haven’t seen her exercise in at least two years.”
Liza had found this spa in one of San Francisco’s posh hotels during one of her many tiffs with Hugh. Never one to scrimp, she’d spent a few nights there. When she dropped by the spa for a facial she discovered the indoor pool, which was high up in the hotel and faced a wall of windows looking out over the city skyline. It was a perfect way to start a girls’ night out.
“Ah,” Liza said, turning her head as a white-clad waiter approached. She assumed her faux French accent. “We have some champagne coming. A leettle refresh-monte to toast our new Stanford student.”
“Ooh,” Karen said. “You know how to celebrate.”
“I’m an expert celebrator,” Liza said. She handed out the glasses and then raised hers to me. “Here’s to us,” she said.
“And those like us,” I added. We finished the toast together, “Damn few left.”
“Is that some sort of Maine thing?” Karen said.
I laughed. “Actually, it is. Here’s to new beginnings as well,” I said.
Liza had officially begun the divorce process. She and Hugh had tried, but the reunion had not lasted. She’d moved into her own apartment, a two-bedroom in an old brick building high up in the hills, with a rooftop deck that had views of San Francisco Bay. Her boys would be going back and forth between her place and Hugh’s. Karen started grilling her about the apartment. Kir listened, but I suspected that her distant smile masked disapproval; she’d been pulling for the marriage to last. This was the struggle Liza faced constantly when she socialized with those of us who knew both of them. Although she was convinced Hugh was not the right good man for her, there was no denying that he was a good man. As a result people tended to treat her as if she’d tossed a cashmere coat into the garbage. (Liza was far more likely to press the cashmere coat upon someone she knew couldn’t afford it—as her former babysitter now in possession of a black Max Mara overcoat could attest.) I hoped she didn’t notice Kir’s lack of enthusiasm for her plans to divorce. Fat chance. Liza hated to be judged, but nature had cursed her with an uncanny ability to pick up even the smallest current of judgment, like a weather vane shifting direction when you haven’t even felt the wind on your face yet. I just wanted everyone to get along and talk about fascinating things. On these rare occasions when I got a chance to check out of baby mode, I wanted to get right back into life as I once knew it, or rather an idealized version of what I’d had. I wanted to hear stories of adventures I wasn’t having. The sooner we got to the anal sex and blow job discussions, the better.
A phone rang. Mine. I’d put my cell in the pocket of my spa robe, just in case. I got out of the hot tub and flipped it open, walking away from the group. When I rejoined them, they looked up at me expectantly.
“Matt,” I said. “Asking where the diapers are. I guess the middle of the coffee table wasn’t obvious enough.”
Karen nodded her head. “Just like a husband.”
“It often feels that way,” I groused. “Except of course for my conjugal rights.”
“Anything going on there?” Karen asked. She poses questions with such a light and pleasant touch that to hold anything back seems unsportsmanlike. Before she became my editor, she’d had my job, and I pictured her in celebrity interviews twinkling at, say, Matt Damon—“So what about these rumors about you and Ben Affleck being gay?”
I hesitated.
“Mare,” Liza said. “Not a good idea.”
Kir’s wide eyes were on me. “I thought that was over,” she said, in a voice that implied, It ought to be.
“It is,” I said. “But before I went to Maine, I did make a pass at him. We haven’t slept together in months. And he said no. Which made me feel wonderful.”
No one said anything.
“I just needed some comfort,” I said. “Just some affection.”
Karen patted my shoulder. “It’s been a rough time for you.”
“There’s that,” I said. “But also, if you had this hot young guy hanging around your house a few times a week, and he had the perfect ass and sometimes he’d lift his arms up above his head and then you’d see his flat stomach…”
“This is like Penthouse Forum,” Karen said.
“You just can’t go there,” Liza said. “Trust me. I know.”
“And he’s the father of your child and he looks so good holding your baby,” I continued. “And your baby loves him. It’s sexy. You guys know what I’m talking about, right?”
They all nodded. There really was nothing like witnessing that father-son closeness, seeing Dolan fresh from his tub, nestled against Matt’s shoulder. He was as comfortable with his father as he was with me, and that was powerful. It made me feel as though we were a unit of love. I had no idea if Matt ever experienced a similar feeling when I was holding his son, but for me, the image of him as a father was a turn-on.
“But let me tell you, that feeling can fade,” Liza said.
In my moments of weakness with Matt I’d think, Oh come on, I know we’ve agreed we aren’t going to be in a relationship, but couldn’t you just scratch my back, so to speak? I guess I was angling for what they call friends with benefits. Couldn’t platonic co-parents have an occasional benefit? But Matt was not interested in allowing such a gray area in our relationship.
“I know, it’s pathetic,” I said. I waited for them to tell me it wasn’t. They didn’t. “I don’t want to be with him. It’s just that I feel as though I’ve got this husband around, that I do so much for, you know, I cook for him and I take him to the doctor and I worry about him and he watches sports in my house and I’d just like some payoff. You know what I mean?”
“I really admire him for resisting,” Kir said, evenly. “He’s trying to keep it clean and simple. He’s being smart.”
I felt deflated. Admiration for Matt. “So I’m being stupid.”
“More like not smart,” Karen said.
“You’re being Mary,” Kir said. “Looking for a connection. And affection. And sex. Which I don’t blame you for, but honestly, you’d be better off screwing just about anybody other than Matt.”
Some of this attraction I needed to shake was hormonal too. I’d realized that whenever I started eyeing Matt, it was typically when I was ovulating. This put that whole night at Finnegan’s Wake into new perspective. My body was on a biological quest, and on that June night, it had led me out of the house. When my father had asked me if the pregnancy had been accidentally on purpose, I’d denied it. But now I was convinced that on a purely subconscious level, there was some truth to that.
“I know that,” I s
aid.
“You’re absolutely sure you guys couldn’t be together?” asked Karen. Ever the romantic optimist.
“She’d get bored after a few years,” Liza said. “And then she’d be so nasty to him. Even nastier than she is now.”
“I’m so nice to him,” I said.
“You are,” Kir said. “Except when you’re mean to him.”
“I’ve been cooking without gluten for him,” I said, defensively. “Do you know what it means for me to give up gluten?”
“So wait, is it celiac disease?” Karen said. “That’s the gluten allergy, right? I thought he had colitis.”
“He does,” I said. “Ulcerative colitis.”
Matt’s digestive system was a shambles; there were open sores all over his lower intestines and colon. It’s a stress-related condition, one that started soon after Dolan was born (yet another way that things became different that year). Matt told me about it a month or two after my mother died. He’d asked if I could pick him up after a colonoscopy because he’d be too groggy from the anesthesia to get home on his own.
“Why do you need a colonoscopy?” I had asked. “Is this a regular thing?”
“I’ve had some problems,” he’d said. “I’ve been bleeding.”
“Bleeding?” I’d said. “For how long?”
“A few months,” he said. “Maybe four.”
I was aghast. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“I didn’t see the point,” he’d said. “I didn’t have health insurance yet, so I couldn’t go to the doctor. But as soon as I got my insurance all set up, I made an appointment.”
Once, early on in our relationship I’d been irritated with him for being so nonreactive. “Are you made of stone?” I’d said. “I keep it inside,” he’d answered. “My mother and I both do.” But this was ridiculous—four months of not knowing what was wrong with his body and he’d never breathed a word to me. I had thought he’d spent an unusual amount of time in the bathroom after every meal we had together, but I’d just assumed he was trying to dodge dish duty.