Rajid laughs—You never change, my possessive little Baba—and he’s so goddamn happy lately, which is why he’s open-minded, finally willing to experiment with a neti pot. For twenty years, Shelby pushed him to try it every time he had a cold. He always refused, and that is who they are, who they were. He’s stubborn. She’s possessive. But now his world expands as hers shrinks, and if she allows it, he will discover the wonders of her neti pot while she treads water, running errands, overthinking “Modern Love.” But then he squeezes her shoulders, and she is not allowed to resent him. “Sorry,” she says. “But I think I threw it out when we moved.”
Rajid knows she’s lying. The first time they’d had sex, he had noticed the neti pot on her nightstand. She’d told him she loved it in that florid, melodramatic way that you do when you’re falling in love, when every moment is an opportunity to show him the quirky depth of your soul. She would never throw it out, and this is the worst part of marriage. Being seen for the petty person that you’ve always been. He knows the old Shelby, but he has a blind spot when it comes to the present. She feels far away from him, as if the oars are slipping off the boat. She’s not grabbing them before they sink into the water, but why isn’t he in the boat? When did he jump off? He hugs her. “Baba,” he says. “Don’t worry about the piece. You’re a rock star, and everyone’s gonna see what you can do. This is your time. I know it, Baba.”
“Love you too,” she says. But he didn’t say he loved her and she didn’t call him Baba and she’s doing it wrong, all of it. It isn’t fair to lie to your husband and she has to tell him the truth and she blurts, “Rajid, wait.”
He sneezes—he really is sick—and this isn’t the time to tell him, and who knows? Maybe today she will finish “Modern Love,” and here comes Mommy, all smiles, holding the Baba, orchestrating his hands and talking on his behalf. “Hello, Mommy! Hello, Daddy!”
It’s still shocking to see Mommy in this house: little, Catholic, homemaker Mommy, asking Shelby if she read the manual for the new Crock-Pot yet. Shelby smiles—Nope, but I will after I make my deadline—and she reaches for the Baba. It feels good to hold him. He is perfect. He is hers. Rajid and Mommy like it when she coos at him, and she breathes him in and laughs. “Okay,” she says. “I know I’ve said it a million times, but I swear. He smells exactly like my Cabbage Patch Kid.”
She shouldn’t have said it. Even if it’s true—it is—she knows that Rajid and Mommy don’t like it when she jokes about her Cabbage Patch Kid. Rajid is the baby’s father, and their baby is alive. The last small living creature that was in this home is dead because of Shelby, and maybe that’s what she should write about, but nobody wants to hear about an innocent black Lab that died because of a selfish woman.
Mommy can always tell when Shelby is drifting, and she reaches for Henry. “Give him to me,” she says as she rescues the Baba and puts him in his chair. Now Shelby can’t smell him. She can only see him, and he really does take after Rajid. He was happy in her arms, and now he’s just as happy in his chair. He’s not fussy. It’s easy to picture him casually quitting comedy to go to law school and never losing sleep over it. After Shelby left City Woman, she pitched The Cut an essay about the sense that her son didn’t feel quite like hers, that he was a doll, that he was all Henry, but the editor didn’t like the idea—A little . . . narcissistic, yes?—which was fine, because what would Henry think if he grew up and read that article? All Shelby’s ideas about motherhood accidentally reveal faulty wiring in the female part of her brain. What she needs to do is find something insightful and viral to say about Hallmark movies, and Mommy touches Rajid’s elbow. “Do you want me to make you some eggs, dear?”
That was a dig at Shelby. She’s not cooking, and she was never much of a chef. If Mommy hadn’t moved in, she would have learned, but Mommy did move in. Rajid shakes his head. “Thanks,” he says. “But I have no appetite. No taste buds.”
Mommy glares at Shelby. Rajid’s cold is Shelby’s fault. Like everything that is amiss in this kitchen, in their life. “Rajid,” Mommy coos, “you work too hard.”
Oh, please. Rajid doesn’t work too hard. He works! People catch colds, and it isn’t because Shelby is a bad wife and it isn’t 1957 and Rajid says he’ll be fine as soon as Shelby locates the neti pot she quote-unquote “can’t find.” Mommy is cracking eggs, and Rajid is teasing Shelby. Only you can get possessive about a cracked old neti pot, Baba! The kitchen smells like Mommy’s eggs, and the Baba pounds his little Baba hands on his tray table, and Shelby picks up her son. He’s fussy—so he is part hers—and he wants his chair again, so she puts him down. Mommy fastens the belt on the high chair, the belt that Shelby didn’t fasten, but side note: the Baba doesn’t need the damn belt, and look at Rajid by the fridge, no dog in this fight. Shelby’s shoulders drop, and she is the Incredible Hulk in reverse, shrinking. “Look,” she says. “I’m sorry, you guys. I’m underwater with deadlines, and I know I’m not pulling my weight around here. I know I should be happy I’m in demand, but I might need to remind these editors that I’m a new mom.”
It feels good to declare her own intellectual desirability, as if she’s ordering them to see her as a good writer, but Rajid just nods and Mommy rolls her eyes and folds a bib. “You catch more flies with honey, Shelby.”
Mommy never worked. And she’s dead wrong. You don’t get anywhere with sweet talk—Would you please believe in me? Thank you so much!—and Shelby’s blood runs hot. Can the Baba feel the fire? Is he soaking up her rage? Mommy preaches that Shelby’s “writing” is more trouble than it’s worth and Rajid plays peekaboo with the Baba and Mommy won’t quit. “Shelby, you don’t need the money. Take some time to focus on taking care of your home.” Mommy picks up a bottle of Dawn. She squeezes. “Maybe you can even do something about the old dog closet.”
There’s a beat of mourning, all eyes on the dog closet. Rajid sneezes. Was that even real? And why don’t they do the right thing and remove all traces of Scrumptious from that closet?
Shelby’s phone buzzes, and Mommy sighs. “Tell those people to back off!”
But it isn’t a work text. Shelby doesn’t get those anymore. This is a weird text from a 555 number and everyone knows 555 is fake, so maybe Shelby is losing her mind. She blinks. Nope. There it is—555, just like in a Hallmark movie—and maybe the world has turned the last corner and all things fake are real. She reads the message.
Hey there, Shelby. Can we talk? I think I can help.
Shelby blushes. What is this? Who is this? Rajid whistles at her. “Baba, someone’s waving at you.”
Shelby didn’t feel her son’s eyes on her, but she goes into full-throttle mommy mode, playing peekaboo—“Where is the Baba?”—and Mommy slams a spatula on the counter. “Enough,” she says. “You both need to stop it with this Baba talk. His name is Henry, not Baba, and he needs to learn his words, names.”
Shelby sighs. “Mommy, please.”
“And no more talk about this neti pot, kids. Those are dangerous, you know. People catch parasites, all kinds of things. They’re germ carriers. I saw a whole thing about it on Dateline.”
Mommy is the one who needs to mellow out with Hallmark movies, and Shelby is calm but also patronizing. “Mommy, I’ve been using one since I was in college. Perfectly healthy people use them every day.”
Rajid could jump in here. He’s the one who wants the neti pot. But he just tickles the Baba, and Mommy asks Shelby not to be so mean to her, as if Shelby is mean, and when Shelby leaves the room, Rajid calls the baby Henry and Mommy won and are the three of them better off without her? Why does Shelby so often hate all the people she loves and why do her mother’s eggs taste better than hers and why can’t she stop watching those damn Hallmark movies?
Downstairs, in the guest bathroom hallway, where she told Rajid she went to find the neti pot, Shelby is officially in a funk.
She grabs her phone. She takes it out on 555. Delete my number or I will report you to the better business bureau. I
am a journalist. I can destroy you.
It’s so satisfying to hit “Send,” and then her phone buzzes. 555: There it is! That fire in you! I felt it the first time I laid eyes on you. I know you worry, Shelby. You care. You’re trying to do it all, be it all. But sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to walk away from it for a little while. Maybe I could convince you to take a walk with me . . .
Well, she has to be imagining this and she’s officially crazy. She’s always had an overactive imagination. And lately she’s been living more in her head than in the world, and this is what happens when you hold it all in. Your imagination overtakes the rational part of your brain. She pockets her phone and grabs the neti pot from the shelf in the linen closet. She’s overthinking everything. Until recently, she’s always believed that Rajid gave up his dreams for their “security.” But lately, his decision seems stealthier, and she’s starting to resent him for that “sacrifice.” It’s true. She thought she really might want to go to law school when she held on to that LSAT book. But looking back, she feels like she had no room to explore the possibility because his mind was made up about what he wanted. Maybe he didn’t mean to trap her, to kill her dream, but sometimes she feels he did. This is why she can’t finish her “Modern Love” piece, because now, when she looks back at that critical moment in their lives, she wishes he’d said something like, Well, maybe we should both go to law school? But she really might be going crazy, because who is she kidding? She liked seeing her name in the magazine. She wasn’t gonna leave that world behind. Bylines were addictive, and they were real. Like Hallmark movies.
She hears them upstairs. The Baba did something funny and they’re laughing. They’re just fine without her, and her phone buzzes. 555: Okay, Shelby. Easier question. How are you today?
She’s just down enough to write back: Perfect. Never better.
He gives her an LOL, and just like that he has a pronoun. He is a he. A man. A handsome man? She should go upstairs and rejoin the Baba. She thinks about that word, how it grew into something bigger, their own term of romantic affection—Baba, I’m so tired, can you turn off the TV?—and it became their version of love, the three of them enmeshed in a soft place together—Baba Baba Baba—but when her phone buzzes, and it’s 555, she forgets about the Baba.
So I realize this is out of nowhere. I saw you online. Permission to gush about your resplendent beauty and ask if you’d consider running away with me?
Shelby exhales. She types. Tell me who you are.
I’m someone who likes you, someone who wants you to take a leap of faith and hold my hand and jump into the water because you want to, because it feels right.
But you know who I am. Tell me who you are.
I’m someone who wants to know everything about you. What makes you happy?
Shelby gulps. What if this is a prank? She ran into a City witch at a yoga class last month. It was awkward, polite. Shelby never went back to the class, and the City witch probably went into the office the next day and told them all about bumping into Shelby. Maybe that got them started. Maybe this was a practical joke, and they were all huddled in the conference room peeing their leggings over poor, pathetic Shelby? Shelby doesn’t want to have an affair. She would be happy taking care of the Baba if she finished an essay. Instead of texting with a man who doesn’t exist, she should be writing about the man she lives with, the man she loves. The Baba isn’t a wild animal scratching at the door, stopping her from writing. The wild animal is 555. Waiting in silence.
Rajid shouts down the stairs, “Did you find it?”
Shelby screams back, “Not yet!”
The neti pot is right here, in her hands. She got this neti pot when she was at that age when you didn’t go online to solve your problems. You had a cold, so you went to the drugstore and you were a zombie and then some old woman with a walker ordered you to buy a neti pot and you listened to her because of her swollen knuckles, her authority. Then you used the neti pot and it worked—Old people: What a miracle! Then you were healthy, breathing easily, so you had your best friend come over, and the two of you got drunk on peach schnapps and stayed up all night discussing the absurdity of American education, the way you had to sign up for a women’s studies class to learn about women, and you were a genius, your thoughts mattered to this world, and there was no need to share them beyond this room, no platform on which to dump them, no chance of being ignored. There was nothing but the mild hangover and the confidence of having discovered the truth and lost it, sure that you would find it all again tomorrow night.
What makes Shelby happy?
The answer should be the Baba, but the question pushes her deeper into her past, late nights when you could find the meaning of life with a friend from Psych 101 while Dave Matthews just kept singing on the CD player and a few hours later you couldn’t remember the meaning of life anymore and wasn’t that the best part of every night? You forgot so much of it. You had no photograph of that night, of any night. There are so few pictures of you and your friends loafing. There was no pressure to take a picture, and who would interrupt all that good talk with a camera? She misses that way of life so much she could scream, and now Rajid is texting. Again, from inside the house.
Got neti pot, Baba? I gotta go to work soon.
She is a bad wife, a terrible partner, and Rajid deserves better. Last night, he offered to stop by the grocery store on the way home. She didn’t have it in her to thank him, to ask him for celery and potato chips. She didn’t feel like telling him he’s the best. She was tongue-tied with frustration, so she deflected with a picture of the Baba and an All good, we just need you! He came home with celery and her favorite potato chips, because he is the best, but his love made her feel worse. She ate the whole fucking bag of chips, and now she marches upstairs with her neti pot, and Rajid offers the Baba. “Trade?”
Mommy laughs, and Shelby remembers a couple of nights at comedy clubs when Rajid was relaxed, in a groove. He should have tried harder. She thought she was supporting him by letting him quit, but sometimes she sees a glimpse of this other life: Rajid sticks with stand-up. He makes it. Shelby goes to law school. She saves the world, and years later, right now, she writes a legal thriller, and now they’re both creative.
Shelby smiles. “Trade.”
She exchanges her neti pot for the Baba and Mommy hovers, as if Shelby can’t hold her own son, and Mommy says Henry should be napping and Shelby’s phone buzzes. It’s just a friend this time—playdate this week—and she can’t think about playdates right now. She opens that other text, the one from 555.
“Give him to me,” Mommy says. So Shelby does it. She gives him to her mother.
And then she writes back to 555: Well, this makes me happy, oddly.
555 asks questions about her life and she’s typing a mile a minute and telling him about college, about her neti pot. The carefree Dave Matthews part of her soul is alive again, and she looks at the Baba, happy in Mommy’s embrace. He has no idea what Shelby’s up to on her phone. Mommy and Rajid are also oblivious. Her husband is not a monster—though he is touching her neti pot—and Mommy is not a monster—though she is hogging Henry—but is it so bad to want to be happy? Mommy’s happy. She’s changing Henry’s diaper—she wants to do it—and Rajid is happy to have the neti pot. She writes back to 555. Why me?
He is quick. It’s cheesy but the heart wants what the heart wants.
His tone is familiar. You still didn’t tell me who you are.
He deflects: Question. Have you ever been apple picking? The first time I saw you, I thought, I want to go apple picking with her. I know I sound crazy. Feel free to ignore me. I know you have a life. I just had to try.
She remembers this moment with Rajid, when the attraction became magnetic and tidal.
Rajid blows her a kiss—Have a good one, Baba—and Shelby blushes. “Love you!”
All day she and Mommy run errands, and Shelby searches for 555 in the grocery store, in the menswear section of T.J.
Maxx. She’s searching now as she waits in line at the drugstore. She’s staring at the pharmacist. Could it be him? He’s always nervous. Packed into his sad plaid shirts, as if he’s apologizing for existing. He is Ironed Man and what’s left of his hair is brushed forward. Semi-Caesar. Kind of pervy. And would he use the store’s phone system to rig a 555 number? Maybe.
She smiles at him, holding his eyes longer than normal. “Hello, Jeff.”
She’s never thought about Jeff, but they do always make eye contact and they do use their first names and she’s overheard him with other women her age. It’s different—quieter and quicker.
Mommy elbows her, disgusted by Shelby’s flirtatious tone. “Shelby, get your card out.”
“I don’t need to, Mommy. I can just give him my phone number.”
Jeff nods—Ready—and Shelby is relieved that Mommy is holding the Baba. Shelby feels free and important, like a porn star or a schoolteacher or maybe both at the same time in some alternate universe where you can do porn and also finger paint with children—and Shelby leans over the counter. Her voice is husky. She is slow with her digits. As if Jeff doesn’t know—it’s him, it has to be him—and Jeff is playing along, typing the numbers one by one as if he doesn’t know them by heart. Shelby wants him to jump over the counter and whisk her into his truck—he must have a truck—and she sees them returning to a B and B (not an Airbnb), and he runs a bath for her because her back is sore from being flat on the ground while he ravaged her atop all those hard, inedible apples in the scene you don’t ever see in the movies.
“Huh,” Jeff says. “You’re not in the system.”
The world is cold and common. A woman sighs aggressively behind them—Hurry up, idiots—and Mommy reaches into Shelby’s wallet—no boundaries—and slaps the card on the counter. “I don’t trust the computers,” she says. “Try this.”
Sweet Virginia (Out of Line collection) Page 2