Ilene Porter. 120 Fifth Avenue. New York, NY 10011.
I stare at the information so long that it becomes fuzzy and spins on itself.
Porter. 120. Ilene. 10011. New York. Fifth Avenue.
I try to make sense of it, but I cannot. Porter isn’t her maiden name, and it’s certainly not her married name. And then it hits me so clearly that I can’t believe that it didn’t dawn on me to begin with: My mother has remarried. She has rebuilt her life, and perhaps her family, with someone new, someone who is not my father, children who are not me or Andy; it wasn’t a family she didn’t want, it was our family she didn’t want.
I gasp for a breath of air, like that might cleanse me or erase the knowledge of my new discovery, but it does nothing, other than leave me heaving deeply for more. Feeling queasy, I push my chair back abruptly, and it tips on itself and rattles to the ground. Then I hurl myself out of the office, down the elevator, and into the storm-swept streets. It’s raining so hard that I think I might suffocate from the unrelenting sheets, which, I suppose as I fly down the block, is all the better, because then, no one will be able to see my tears.
Chapter Fourteen
The weather refuses to relent. All weekend I hear the tap-tapping of drops on my air conditioner, which juts out of my living room window, a window I spent an inordinate amount of time gazing out. This slow time, this time with no one to satisfy but myself—no husband to foster, no toddler to clean—still feels off, even two months after I’ve returned to my old life, like a slippery skin that doesn’t quite fit. I consider darting into the office but worry that I might run into Josie, and I’d be too embarrassed to face her and admit that I might be evolving into a second version of her: all work, no life.
In Westchester, in our grandiose house, there was no such thing as downtime. There was always laundry to be done or diapers to be restocked or Cheerios to wrestle from under the couch. At nights, when Henry would travel, which was almost all the time, I’d try to sink into bed with a new book, after I’d bathed Katie (bubble bath!) and tucked her in for the night (Goodnight Moon). But I never quite figured out how to turn it off, the button that said “full-time mom,” so mostly, I flipped through magazines or sped over websites, concocting new recipes to be tested or new art projects for upcoming playdates or worrying about hosting the best birthday party in the neighborhood, even if her birthday was four months out.
And now, there is literally no one to answer to. A quiet so profound that it is almost tangible. Jack is tending to his mother; Meg and Tyler have retreated to their beach house for, as she whispers from her cell phone, “baby-making sex.” Ainsley has already moved north to Rye. I realize, as I stare out at the expanses of water tumbling from the sky, loneliness isn’t something that materialized when Henry and I married or when Katie was born. It’s followed me my whole life, like a shadow I’m unwilling to shake.
A therapist might tell me that this stems from my mother’s abandonment, but I’m not so sure. Aren’t there traits that we’re simply innately born with? When Katie arrived, she was feisty from the start. Her screams were enough to pierce glass, and her colic was seemingly endless. For weeks, I operated on autopilot in a revolving haze of utterly exhausted delirium, in which I’d wake to her shrieks, attempt to comfort her with my breast, then clutch her close and rock her to stop the crying. When that wouldn’t work, we’d walk through the neighborhood, me, desperate with the hope that the hum of her stroller would calm her; her, utterly refusing to be calmed. Henry tried to help; it wasn’t that he didn’t offer. But he wasn’t the one nursing her. He wasn’t the one who had grown her for the past nine months. “He’s not her mother,” I’d mutter when he would try to soothe her and fail or change her and put the diaper on backward or make any tiny misstep that I so prided myself on avoiding. It would have been a miracle, I supposed now from my perch in my shared apartment with Jack and seven years earlier, not for me to resent him.
The days when Katie was a newborn dragged on endlessly. I would sit on our front porch and try to urge the sun to go down; the sooner that nightfall came, the sooner we would be putting this wretched day behind us, I’d think, ignoring the obvious fact that I’d have to wake up and do it all over again. I would rock on our porch swing and think, No one tells you that it’s going to be like this. No one says that this will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. That it’s not just puffs of pink and baby coos and sweet rosy cheeks. Why didn’t anyone warn me? But then, when Katie would quiet herself, and I’d rub her back while she dozed in her crib, I’d palpably feel it—the absence of loneliness that too often plagued me—and my face would flare with shame, as if crawling with tiny fire ants, that I ever had moments of regret. And then I’d push all of it aside and wrap myself into the package of a perfect mother. Above everything, that is what I did best.
So now, whether or not a therapist would blame my own mom for my feelings of alienation, part of me just knows that this is how I came out. That the damage she did to me had its impact, sure, but that wasn’t the beginning, and now, I’m not sure where it ends. How it ends.
It ends here! I want to tell myself. With your second shot. Get out there and do something about it, with this good fortune and this second chance and the knowledge that you have to repair yourself and Jack.
I stare out into the monsoon and will this to be the truth.
Finally, for a brief moment, the skies shift from angry gunmetal gray to a whitewash, and energized by the turn, I frantically lace up my sneakers and head for a run. It will be, I realize with surprise, the first time I’ve left the apartment all weekend.
I amble out into the downtown streets, unsure of a particular destination. Though I normally head straight to a running path near the river, today, inexplicably, I head east, winding through the sloshy city streets, nodding at the lone passerby who has also seized this rainless window to rush from his or her apartment and gasp in some fresh air. I fly past dilapidated delis and hipster boutiques and coast over puddles that threaten to break my stride but never do. My legs are crying out for pumping blood and coursing adrenaline, like a baby colt who needs to break free, and refuse to be thrown off their rhythm. I tread through the East Village and up the avenues, until it becomes clear where I’m headed, where my body was leading me this whole time, even if my brain pretended that it wasn’t so. Denial. No one ever accused me of being anything less than an expert.
I stop suddenly on the street opposite the building, her building.
The awning reads 120 fifth avenue. It’s a looming white limestone structure that, even just peering in from the outside, reeks of wealth, the sort of building that you can’t move into without lofty tax returns and a cushy job on Wall Street. At the entrance, a uniformed doorman sweeps aside some leaves that have fallen in the storm, then snaps to attention and tips his hat as a blond woman, elegant in an olive overcoat and knee-high boots, exits the glass doors. I watch her turn the corner of the street and wonder, even though I know that my mother is raven haired, if it could have been her. If, perhaps, her hair color is just one of many things that she’d changed about herself. I watch the doorman as another song cycles through my earphones but then am literally jolted from my stance by a loud clap of thunder. With seemingly no warning, the skies unfold themselves, and within seconds, I’m soaked all the way through.
“Shit,” I say under my breath, as I flick drops off my forehead and pick up my pace to a near sprint. Three blocks down, I spot a Starbucks and throw myself inside, my shoes slopping and my clothes ready to be wrung dry. I am standing in the entrance, shaking water off my arms, like a dog after a dip in a lake, when I hear my name being called from behind me.
Of course, I think, as I turn to greet him.
And there he is, Henry. Following me nearly as closely as my own shadow of loneliness.
“WE HAVE TO stop meeting like this,” he says, grinning.
I force my face into something of a smile, but I fear, with my smeared mascara and my matted h
air, that I look more akin to a grotesque slasher film character than the best version of myself.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asks, then hands me some napkins as if they might be of any use in drying off. I dab at myself but realize it’s futile: It’s like I’ve just gotten out of the shower and am wiping away the water with nonabsorbent toilet paper.
“N-no, thank you,” I stutter. “I can’t stay.”
That’s right, you can’t! I tell myself. You have a boyfriend who, though he is currently more enamored with his mother than with you, still seems relatively enamored with you. And you already KNOW what happens next with Henry! Give yourself the chance to find your new path! Do. Not. Stay. Three beads of water trickle down my nose, then dive to the floor. I feel my blood race, and I’m not sure if these beads are remnants from the storm or are now from the rapidly increasing flow of sweat that I feel overtaking me.
“You’re going back out there?” Henry says. “Just to get away from me?” I stare at him a second too long before I realize that he hasn’t read my mind and is, in fact, joking, flirting, even. I can’t remember the last time Henry flirted with me.
“No, no, nothing like that,” I say. “I just, you know, have things to get done.”
At this exact moment, a clap of thunder booms so loudly that several people behind us scream and I jump six inches in the air, clutching my chest in fear. When I land, my shoes make an audible squirt.
“Jesus Christ!” I shout.
“Well, good luck to you,” Henry says. “Though it sure seems to me that you might be better off here than out there.” More flirting!
I look him straight in the eye and feel like I’m trapped in one of Katie’s episodes of Sesame Street. The one where Big Bird keeps running into a wall over and over again because he can’t seem to figure out that he needs to go over, not through it. Only, this time, I’m Big Bird, and the walls have closed in on all sides.
“Fine,” I say reluctantly, just before another ear-shattering crack echoes outside. “I guess my to-dos can wait.” No! I hear my brain screaming. Flee! Flee as fast as you can, thunder be dashed, lightning be damned! Let me repeat, I tell myself. Do. Not. Stay.
But when Henry sizes me up and says, “Don’t tell me, let me guess what you want.” And then follows up with “I got it, you’re a chai tea sort of gal.” It unnerves me to the point where I can’t even consider leaving. Because he’s right: He’s nailed me; without even knowing anything about me, it already feels like he does.
We settle on a table in the front. Henry folds his New York Times, running his fingers over the creases until the pages lay perfectly and seamlessly flat, the way that he would every weekend for the next seven years of our lives, and I try to ignore the sense of panicked familiarity that it brings. Then he runs his hands through his hair, like he always does when he’s nervous, and a tiny part of me slowly opens up, a part that feels like it had been hibernating and is ready to face the spring anew.
And still, I remind myself, this could not, in any way, be a good idea. Do! Not! Stay!
“So Jillian, this is what I know about you,” Henry says, sipping his double espresso. “You do advertising for Coke. You ride the bus. You have a boyfriend, who, best as I can tell, is now nowhere to be found. You appear to like jogging. And . . .” He cocks his head and pauses, mulling over what to say next. “You look adorable, even when you resemble a drowned rat.” He smiles triumphantly, and I chew on my inner cheek to avoid doing the same.
“All correct,” I say, then add on second thought, “though the boyfriend is very much still in the picture.”
“Duly noted,” he answers. “So what else is there to know about you?”
“That’s about it.” I laugh. “That’s the exciting version of me, all wrapped up in a ten-second summary.” And it’s true, I realize. The me of my past isn’t all that different from the me of my future: patterned, boring lives that, if necessary, can be wrapped up with a tidy bow, tucked under the bed, and forgotten about entirely unless someone mistakenly stumbles on them while cleaning for dust.
He holds my gaze, then says much more seriously. “There’s no way that this is all you’ve got.”
“It feels like it is,” I say with a shrug, then remember where I’d landed at the end of my run. Before I can even think to retreat, I say, “Well, then there’s the fact that my mother abandoned me when I was nine, and now she wants to reconcile.”
My eyes widen in surprise at the statement, and I immediately wish that I could reel it back in. Who are you, the crazy girl who overreveals on the first date? The girl who guys share horror stories about because she can’t shut up! I scream internally. But this isn’t a date! I remind myself, then grow irritated that I’d even consider the notion. I swig my tea to compensate and hope that he doesn’t notice. A tiny dribble leaks out the left corner of my mouth, and I mat it with the back of my hand.
Rather than recoil at my far-too-intimate disclosure, or act repulsed by my less-than-meticulous table manners, however, Henry furrows his eyebrows and looks at me with sympathy.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That must be scary.”
I want to leap across the plush burgundy sofa and clutch him, hug him so closely that I can feel his whiskered cheek against mine.
Because through all of this, no one, not Jack, not Megan, not my father, not even me, has tapped into what is truly the most excruciating part of this entire ordeal: that my mother’s reentry into my life isn’t just nerve-racking or emotionally uprooting, it’s horrifically terrifying in a way that I’ve never tasted before. That discovering the true reason that she left us might be worse than never knowing, and now that I have the chance to uncover these truths, the fear is nearly paralyzing.
And so suddenly, I spill out the story of my mother, of my history, of how she left us on a cool fall morning, and how she came back in the same manner, and how I feel as if I’m the infantry who was hit by mortal shells with no warning. The words rush out of me, tumbling on themselves, and when I’m done, I feel purged. And while I’m sure that Henry made me feel this way more times than I can count back before we grew stale, I sit on the couch in Starbucks and try to remember when anyone, either in this life or my other one, made me feel so reborn.
Finally, as if on cue, the thunder stops and the rain tapers to a dull trickle, and my senses jolt, reminding me that Henry is a slippery slope and one that I’ve already tumbled down before.
“I should go,” I say and stand abruptly.
“Oh, okay.” His face floods with disappointment. “Well . . .” He lingers. “I would like to hear how this ends. With your mom, I mean.”
“I have a boyfriend, Henry.” Yes! You! Do!
“I know,” he says without a trace of regret, without missing a beat. “It’s just that it’s not often I find someone I can talk to. And with you, it’s like . . . something that I can’t explain.” There isn’t even a hint of embarrassment as he says it.
I nod because I feel it, too.
“Friends,” I say, and extend my hand to shake his. “How about if we settle on friends.”
“Friends,” he echoes. He grasps my palm, and I hope he doesn’t notice me flinch as a tug of electric familiarity courses
through me. I turn to leave and push open the dripping glass door. “So I’ll see you around,” he calls after me. “Well, you’ve been following me pretty well these days.” “Then there’s no doubt I’ll catch you soon.” He smiles. “Catch me if you can,” I answer before I realize that I probably
shouldn’t put myself out as Henry’s bait.
KATIE
Henry was promoted to “youngest partner ever at the firm” when I was seven months pregnant. Thirty-one weeks, to be exact. I remember because I had my first internal exam earlier that day. He came home with a bottle of champagne and convinced me that a few sips wouldn’t cause permanent damage, and I was so grateful for a literal taste of prepregnancy life that I had an entire glass. Though, truth told, I was so f
raught with panic of the damage I might have done that I couldn’t sleep at all that night.
“This won’t change anything—a little more work for a much bigger bonus,” Henry assured me, after we’d made love for only the third time since conceiving Katie. He ran his fingers over my basketball-sized stomach. I nodded, awash in postsex chemicals that can convince even the most rueful of spouses that her relationship isn’t plunging into doomed waters.
Two weeks later, when I was thirty-three weeks along, Henry shipped off for what would evolve into an unending business trip: They stacked on top of one another like playing cards, and his little time at home would be cluttered with sleeping, laundry, and repacking. Ainsley, whose due date was eight weeks ahead of mine, gave birth while Henry was in Hong Kong, so I filled my days pitching in at her house, watching her carefully and hoping that what appeared to be innate mothering skills would somehow transfer to me via osmosis. Or something. Ainsley’s competence was surely compounded by the fact that her husband was home; he’d happily cashed in his paternity leave to dote on both mother and son.
“Paternity leave?” Henry scoffed when I mentioned it after he returned. He still smelled of stale airplane air. “Seriously? That’s just about the lamest thing I’ve ever heard of. No one would do that at my firm.”
I shrugged and wondered why I’d bothered to bring it up in the first place. It’s not like I really believed that Henry could—or would—be able to set aside three weeks to stay with us. Maybe I should have just asked for three days. Probably. Yes. I should have asked for that, at least. Three days to help me adjust to my fear and my nerves and the excruciating shadows that stayed with me, hinting in the background that I’d screw this mothering thing up. But instead, I said nothing. It seemed easier that way, I suppose.
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