Crooked Branch (9781101615072)

by Cummins, Jeanine

  He took her cue, and whispered back. “In the stables, after the house goes dark.”

  She nodded, just as Roisin swept back into the room with the empty dinner tray, trailing Katie behind her.

  “Ah, you met our jarvie, then,” Roisin said.

  Katie’s whole shape changed when she saw Seán there. She straightened herself, and her face went pink with joy.

  “I did,” Ginny said, squeezing a wet rag out over a bucket. She started to wipe down the worktable.

  “Katie, fix four plates, then, for us, while Ginny tidies up,” Roisin said, inspecting the cheese-and-fruit platter, picking off a piece here and there that failed to meet her standard. “I’ll bring this up, and then we’ll eat.”

  Seán stole a grape off one side, while Roisin slapped at his hand. Katie was stretching to reach some plates from a high sideboard. Roisin turned back to the stairs. Seán swiveled on his stool, caught Ginny’s eye, and winked.

  Chapter Nine

  NEW YORK, NOW

  “Hey, honey, look at this.” Leo is at our office desk, clicking around on the computer. He swivels the flat-screen monitor so I can see it through the doorway, from where I’m sitting on the couch breast-feeding Emma.

  “I don’t think I can read it from here,” I say, and if he has any response to my sardonic wit, he doesn’t show it. “What is it?”

  “There’s a mommy meetup group right here in the neighborhood,” he says, swiveling the monitor back around to face him.

  “I really prefer the word mama,” I say thoughtfully, adjusting Emma’s weight on the Boppy, and sitting up a little straighter. “Or even mom is fine. Mommy just sounds so . . . I don’t know. So enthusiastically infantile. Like the mothers have just completely identity-dived into the brains of their bald-headed little spawn.”

  Leo leans around the monitor to look at me.

  “Anyway,” he says, settling back into his chair, “it says they meet up at least once, sometimes twice a month, always at a local venue, usually a playground or a library. And there are like forty-three members.”

  “Huh,” I say, tipping my head back onto the pillows behind me.

  “You should go to this,” he says, pushing his chair to the side, so he can talk to me through the open French doors. “I really think the hardest part is probably just that you’re on your own, here, and most of your friends are still in Manhattan.”

  “And they don’t have kids.”

  “Right, and they don’t have kids,” he says.

  “And they have jobs.”

  “You still have a job, you just have to do your job.”

  “Ouch,” I say.

  “I’m not rushing you,” he says. “But don’t complain about it when it’s your own choice.”

  I pick up the remote control and attempt to mute him, but he rolls his chair back to the desk and keeps talking.

  “It would be good for you to meet some new people, local people, who are in the same boat as you. Some women who can relate to what you’re going through.”

  I close my eyes. “Read me the group description part.”

  He scrolls and clicks for a minute, then clears his throat.

  “Welcome! I’m Tanya, mommy to Tabitha and Toby, the cutest toddler girl and baby boy in the whole universe, at least to me! Come meet up with other Glendale mommies and our cutest baby boys and girls in the whole universe. We don’t do much, just talk and laugh and play. Who says playdates are just for the kids? Mommies need fun times, too.” Leo pauses to look at me.

  “Shoot me in the face,” I say.

  “Just try it,” he says, standing up from the desk, and coming into the living room. He sits down on the coffee table across from me. “If you hate it, what are you going to lose, except an hour of your time?”

  I can’t explain why Leo’s painfully reasonable logic makes tears spring up behind my eyes. It’s like when I was in seventh grade, and my dad used to sit with me over my prealgebra homework for hours, and I would be so frustrated and angry that even after I’d have the breakthrough to understanding, I would refuse to admit it. I would sit and glower. For some reason, I never could meet an epiphany with joy. How dare he try to steal my despair? I’m entitled to it, dammit. Leo lifts my feet onto his lap.

  “They’re having a meeting on Friday afternoon,” he says, massaging my foot, trying to entrap me. “Just think about it?”

  I sigh as heavily as I can with Emma on my boob and my stitched-up belly.

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”

  • • •

  On Friday, Leo leaves early for work. It’s one of his busiest days of the week, so he’s gone by nine o’clock. The lunch chef will do all the early cooking, and Leo won’t even step foot into his kitchen until midafternoon. But it’s autumn now, and the holiday season is approaching. There are banquets to plan, clients to meet, schedules to make, bills to pay. We’re getting close to the time of year when Leo makes his best money. The restaurant will be packed every day from Thanksgiving until January. I lay out one of Emma’s blankets on the thick carpet in our bedroom, and spread some toys around her. I don’t know why I do that, with the toys, because she can’t reach for them yet, but I know there’ll come a time when she can, and I want to be prepared.

  I open my closet door bravely, like a mercenary, and I stride up to my hanging clothes almost as if I were not terrified. I choose several of my roomiest prepregnancy outfits, and lay them out on my bed. These were my fat-clothes once, the ones I would reserve for periods of severe bloating or eating at a churrascaria. I pull off my tank top, wiggle a blue jersey dress free of its hanger, and slip it over my head. I step out of my stretchy maternity jeans, and gingerly approach the mirror.

  “Oh good God,” I say out loud at my enormous fun house reflection, and I slam the closet door, almost hoping to hear the mirror shatter to the ground inside, just so I will never have to meet with such a sight again. The mirror rattles, but holds. Emma is startled, and looks up at me, so I smile, but she only blinks back. “Maybe it will be better if I can wash my hair?”

  Emma moans.

  “Yeah, can’t count on it,” I say. “That’s a good point.” I peel the dress off over my head, and stand over the bed, reviewing the options. I shake my head. It’s better not to even try them on. Trying them on is just an exercise in anguish. I step back to my maternity jeans, and yank them back up over my hips.

  “Maybe a cute top,” I say, gathering up all the hanging clothes to go back in the closet. I open a dresser drawer and pull out a flattering purple top from late in my first trimester. I hold it up to me. “What do you think, Emma?” She doesn’t answer me. She’s so unsupportive. I wriggle into it, step back to the mirror. It’s not terrible. I can be seen in public like this. A little mascara, some lip gloss. I’m hardly glamorous, but perhaps I can be presentable, with the right shoes.

  Three hours later, I am ready. My toenails are painted, my shoes are open-toed and platformy, but not so tall as to risk falling. My hair is clean, if somewhat damp. Emma is dressed in polka dots, and has extravagant, multicolored ruffles on her bottom. We look good. We are not stained or smelly. At the bottom of the steps, I strap Emma into the car seat and stroller, and then drape a blanket over her. We’re running early, so we stop at a deli on Myrtle Avenue for a coffee. “Half decaf, please,” I say, because I don’t need Emma getting all hopped up on my caffeinated breast milk.

  I sip while we walk, and I’m half wondering if Emma can sense my nervousness, because my mom has mentioned that babies can feel their mothers’ tension. In fact she says this whenever I tell her that Emma is fussy. She says, “Well, she can probably sense how uptight you are, and that makes her uptight, too,” which is obviously a very helpful observation.

  But now Emma has fallen asleep, so I feel like the babies-feeling-their-mothers’-tension thing is probably horseshit
. I’ve left some sticky red lip gloss hickeys on the rim of my paper coffee cup, so I stop on the sidewalk to wipe them off with a napkin, because that’s not the kind of first impression I want to make. It’s a glorious, chilly, blue-sky autumn day, and we crunch through leaves as we walk. Before we reach the playground, I fish my Food & Wine magazine—the July issue, with my story about pears—out from my diaper bag. I tuck it nonchalantly under my arm as a conversation piece.

  I feel like a kid on the first day of a new school—excited and terrified. I hope I meet someone nice. When we reach the playground at Eightieth Street, I try not to appear too eager. I glance through the bars as we skirt the fencing, and I notice that there are already several moms with strollers chatting by the monkey bars. There’s another small group sitting at the benches. I find the gate, open it, and push Emma through. I’m trying to decide which group to approach first, when I notice that all the moms at the benches have fallen silent, and are staring at me. I try a smile.

  “Are you going to close that?” one of the mothers asks me, in the bitchiest voice I have ever heard. And holy cow, it is like the first day of school—junior high school—when that nasty peroxide-blond Nicole Davis, who was a year older than me, threw an apple at my ass when I bent over to get something from my locker. Before I can even answer the evil mom, she stands up, strides past me, and slams the gate I’ve just come through.

  “Forget it,” she says, shaking her head.

  My mouth is still hanging open when she installs herself back on the bench among her troop of mean mommy-friends and starts talking loudly about “amateur mommies, whose children, thank God, are still too small to run through an open gate and into traffic, because God help that kid when it can walk.”

  I am so shocked at this moment that I respond with a sort of reactionary coma, exactly like I did with Nicole and the seventh-grade apple. I shut down completely. I can’t leave yet, not with any degree of dignity. I have to stay at least a few minutes to prove to myself that though I might be a chubby, whiny, angry, despondent, drippy mess of a woman, I’m not also completely spineless. So then why do I mumble, “Sorry,” as I scamper past the mean bench-mommies? Fuck.

  I approach the monkey bars, and no one really looks at me. These are mommies of newborns—I can tell. They are disheveled and unsure of themselves. More than one is leaking through her bra. There are spit-up stains and maternity pants everywhere. It feels like an outdoor ward—you can almost smell the desperation. Plus, they all have small babies with them.

  “Hi,” I venture, when there’s a big enough gap in the nervous conversation. Several of the moms turn to look at me, and one steps aside to make room for me to join their circle. I want to kiss her, to make a sticky red lip gloss hickey on her mouth.

  “Hi,” they all say at once, as if we’re at an AA meeting.

  “Is this the meetup group?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” one of the cleaner-looking moms says. “I’m Amanda,” and she sticks her hand out to me.

  I shake it. “Hi, I’m Majella.”

  There are “nice to meet you’s” and a couple of “that’s an unusual name’s.” And then we all just stand around smiling uncomfortably at one another for a few minutes, until I have the brilliant idea to start asking about their babies.

  “How old is your little one?” I ask Amanda, who is wearing her baby strapped to her chest like an enormous tumor.

  She strokes the top of his head, which is covered by an aggressively striped hat. “He’s eight and a half weeks.”

  “Oh, he’s adorable,” I lie, because I can’t really see him in there, but he’s probably cute, right? “Is he your first?”

  “Thanks,” she says. “Yeah, little Henri is my first.”

  She pronounces it Awn-ree, like a Parisian.

  “Oh, Henri,” I repeat, “what a lovely name. Are you or his father French?”

  “No,” she says, and offers nothing more, so I stop asking.

  I pull back the hood on Emma’s stroller a little bit, hoping that the light will wake her, just so I’ll have an excuse to pick her up, to give myself something to do. Maybe she’ll even be fussy, and we’ll have to leave. I have never hoped she would be fussy before. The mom standing next to me leans down to look at Emma in the stroller, but she stands back up without saying anything. Weirdo.

  After a couple of awkward minutes, the bitchy mom from the benches stands up, and walks toward us. I’m horrified. What the hell could she possibly want from me now? I haven’t even looked in her direction since the gate incident. Hasn’t she berated me enough already? If she attacks me again, I will stand up for myself. I will let her have it. Fuck her. I square my shoulders. Maybe I can pretend that all these meetup moms are my friends now. Yeah. I have friends, too. Yeah!

  There is a blondie kid hanging almost upside down from the top bar of the slide, dangling dangerously. “Tabitha, get down from there,” the bitch mom yells. Then she stands at the edge of our little circle, and her mean-looking cohorts from the benches approach, too. It’s like a scene from West Side Story. Like there’s going to be a musical, hyperchoreographed fracas. We’re about to throw down. But now she is smiling. A big, fake, ugly, toothy smile.

  “Welcome to the Glendale Mommies Meetup!” she says, in a singsong, cartoon version of her bitch-voice. “I’m Tanya, the group leader.”

  Holy shit.

  “And this,” she says, grabbing the blond monster from the slide as it tries to rush past her, “is my daughter, Tabitha.” She leans down to give Tabitha a kiss, but the kid shrieks and wriggles away, and is back hanging upside down at the top of the slide before I can even blink. “And this is my little man, Toby.”

  She produces a stroller from behind her as if by magic, and there is an enormous, pie-eyed, fuzzy-headed baby sitting up inside. He blinks at us like a benevolent overlord. The mommies awwwwww respectfully. I feel like I’m going to throw up. Please wake up, Emma, please wake up. Now is the time to scream.

  “I see we have a few new mommies joining us today,” Tanya says, looking at me with her eyebrows pointing up into her forehead, “and a couple of very new mommies.”

  The newbies giggle nervously and turn to smile at me, as if we’re all in on the joke. We are totally not in on the joke. This woman is a witch, why can’t you all see that? My cell phone makes its text-message noise, and I’m delighted for the distraction. I take it out of my pocket and read Leo’s message: How’s the meetup going? I type back with my thumbs: hell hell hell. But my iPhone corrects me to: he’ll he’ll he’ll. Annoyed, I jam it back in my pocket without hitting send.

  In the short time I was distracted, the women have begun taking turns introducing themselves.

  “I’m Rebecca,” says one of the harried new moms. Her red hair is threaded with gray, and it has a moplike quality. She has deep purple rings under her eyes. “My little Jayden is three months old, and I’m a SAHM.”

  I notice a lot of the other moms bobbing their heads enthusiastically, and I whisper to a nearby mom, “What’s a SAHM?”

  “Stay-at-home mom,” she whispers back.

  There is almost nothing I hate more than people who talk in acronyms. I make a mental note not to get too friendly with Rebecca, despite the rings under her eyes.

  “It’s so much better for the children,” Tanya is saying, “to stay at home with them full-time.”

  I can see panic in the eyes of a few of the other moms, the guilty, job-having moms. They immediately begin to fuss over their babies. One little man is beginning to whimper loudly in his seat. His mom reaches into her diaper bag, and retrieves a bottle with water in it. She dumps the premeasured powdered formula into the bottle, and begins to shake it up. Her eyes are glued to her crying baby, and she doesn’t notice that everyone else has stopped talking to stare at her. She’s unstrapping her hungry little boy; she’s lifting him onto her shoulder.

 
Tanya points to the bottle. “You’re formula feeding?” she says.

  The mom looks at her bravely, stares straight into her eyes. She’s not scared of Tanya. The baby boy in her arms is content now, sucking happily on his formula bottle.

  “What’s it to you?” the brave mom asks. She’s like a firefighter, an astronaut, and a midwife all rolled into one—that’s how fearless she is. I watch in awe. Tanya purses her lips, and exchanges knowing glances with some of her underlings.

  “Just curious,” Tanya says. “You know, with all the research about how much better it is to breast-feed, I just find it peculiar when mothers choose to feed their babies chemicals instead of the real thing.”

  The courageous mom straightens herself up tall. Well, as tall as she can—she’s only about five feet two, with cascading black curls, and gorgeous skin, and Latina hips. I think she’s going to lay into Tanya. I think I’m about to watch a bona fide smack-down. Who knew there was so much potential violence in suburban parenthood? But what the brave mom does is so much better. She drops her voice to a near whisper. She takes a step forward, to make sure Tanya doesn’t miss a word.

  “Some women can’t breast-feed,” she says.

  Tanya tries to interrupt. “Anyone can breast-feed, if you try hard—”

  But the brave mama plows ahead. “Some women are on experimental drugs for cancer, you nosy, judgmental bitch. And it’s none of your business what anyone chooses to feed, or not feed, their kid.”

  We are watching like it’s a tennis match, me and all the other moms. We turn back to Tanya, to await her stunned, apologetic retreat, but it doesn’t come. It does not come! Instead, she snorts.

  “Well, there’s no need to get all bent out of shape about it,” she says. “I was only asking.” And then she waves her hands in front of her, as if to erase the whole ugly incident from our minds. “Anyway,” she says.

  But the brave mom isn’t done.

  “Fuck this,” she says, slinging her diaper bag into her empty stroller. “What a joke.”