I didn’t really understand what he meant then. But I realize now that Ray was letting her off the hook. He was cutting the apron strings himself. It was brave of him, but, I think in part, it was also his way of taking on all of the blame.
Now, we all stand around looking at him like we’ve spotted a ghost.
Mom moves her hand like she’s going to reach out to him, but she hesitates.
“Good morning, Ray,” Lola says and hugs him.
He doesn’t put his arms around her, but she doesn’t let go. He looks at me over Lola’s shoulders, and I nod at him. He wraps his arms around her, but just for a moment. She turns him loose. He picks up a book titled Contacting the Dead for Dummies.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“I love you, Mom,” Lola says and gives her a hug, too.
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
Mom is one paper flower away from being committed. She picks up the book from Dad’s spot, flips through it, and asks Ray, “Do you want to be a werewolf for Halloween?”
“I’m forty-four years old,” he answers.
“Ok, then,” Mom says. “A mummy it is.”
It’s funny and I want to laugh, but I find that I can’t give her the satisfaction. I don’t like that I’m withholding it from her, even if she doesn’t know it.
“I’m going to go into the office,” I say and move dramatically—maybe overly so—away from the table of insanity. “I really should get some work done today.”
“I thought you took the day off,” Mom says. “What about Cassie? When is she coming back from Jack’s?”
“I did,” I say. “But I’ll go crazy just idling around. Too many things to think about. And I don’t know that she is coming back from Jack’s.”
“Oh, don’t be melodramatic,” Mom says.
“Happy daydreaming,” Lola says.
On my way out the door, I hear Ray ask Lola what she’s talking about. I don’t hear what she tells him. If I’ve provided a way for them to start talking I won’t even be mad.
Reaching for the door handle, I’m reminded of Oliver standing next to me last night, holding me close and kissing the tears off my face. I touch my cheek and think that I can still feel the warmth of his lips against my skin.
At work, I call Cassie and get her voice mail.
“Just call me back,” I say, trying not to sound desperate. “You can stay at Dad’s if you want to; I just want to talk to you.”
I hang up and wait for her to call. I figure she’s screening—mostly to avoid me—and try not to be too heartbroken over that. I fail. Her phone is a light blue, glittery extension of her hand. I know she’s seen that I have called.
When all else fails, I work. I read over way number sixteen to make lemonade. It involves fresh ginger root. Since the recipes are simple enough, I’ve decided to actually make them. I’ll photograph the ingredients, the process, and finally the finished glass. I’m outside in the “garden,” a space the company built for us to go and meditate. Translated: a place to storm off to when the stress is too high. But it is beautiful, and I have this idea to shoot the lemonade as if it were being made in the midst of a lovely, impromptu picnic.
“So, this is what you do all day?” Jack’s voice says behind me. “Pour me a glass?”
I turn around to face Jack but all I can see is Oliver. I know I’m blushing, and I have no idea how Jack reads that. I get nervous and drink the glass of ginger lemonade that I’m supposed to photograph. Jack tilts his head at me.
“Let’s go inside,” I say and hurry Jack out of the garden.
“What about your camera?” he asks as I’m pushing him up the stairs.
I don’t really want him to come to my office. I want him to go back out into the street and go away. I feel like I’m going to blurt out what I did and how fantastic it felt—even if I did end up a teary wreck. I need the florescent lights of an office, the whir of the printer, and the low mumble of voices to distract me so I don’t spill my guts.
Inside my office, Jack walks around the room. He picks up a knickknack here and there and turns over an award I got last year for a sushi book. Why couldn’t they assign me another one of those? There are only so many lemons one person can stand.
“Did I go to this?” he asks, holding out the award to me.
“No,” I say. “You were at that conference in Atlanta.”
He nods. I don’t think he was in Atlanta. I think he was with Ashley. Jack sets the award down and wrinkles his face. I want to hate him. I want to rant about “for better or for worse,” but our vows didn’t actually say anything about “for sex or for no sex” so I may have to let him off on one of those technicalities. Sure, I had a valid issue with it, as my therapist said, but psychological cause or not, Jack needed physical affirmation from me that he was loved and worthy and I couldn’t give it to him. So he got it from his receptionist, Ashley, and his boss’s assistant, Sarah, and that so-cute-you-want-to-punch-her hippie chick from the dry cleaners.
Ok, maybe Lola has a point too.
“So, what’s Ray been up to?” Jack asks nonchalantly like the answer to that isn’t usually “jail time” or “I don’t know, no one has heard from him in years.”
“What are you doing here, Jack?” I ask. My voice sounds cruel though I don’t mean it to. “Where’s Cassie?”
He sighs and comes closer to me. He smells nice, and I hate that I notice.
“She’s at home,” he says. “Your place. I think she just wanted to prove a point by calling me. I don’t know what that point was. If you’re going to be at your mom’s for a while, I can drive her back over there.”
“No,” I say. “I’ll get my stuff after work and go home. I want her to be comfortable. I think she just wants to be where things are familiar.”
“I think she’d have to go back in time for that,” Jack says, and smirks wistfully. “Look, Nina, can’t we try this again? That apartment I rented is crap.”
“I thought you were at Bruce’s,” I say.
“They’re coming back soon, and I can’t have all my stuff over there getting in their way,” he says. “Besides, it’s lonely. I miss having someone around.”
“Someone,” I say. “But not me?”
“I meant you,” he says. “Of course you, Nina. You and Cassie. I hate this.” He raises and lowers his arms in a frustrated huff.
“Being alone?” I ask. “I hated it, too. I was alone, and you were right there.”
“Yeah,” he says, his eyes hard and his brow furrowed. “Ditto.”
I feel the same old argument coming, and I know the best way to shut him down.
“I’m sort of seeing someone,” I say, shocked at myself. It’s not true, really, but it could be.
“Yeah, you told me,” Jack says, deflating my attempt to stick it to him. “You kissed some kid in the parking lot at the old folks’ home. Don’t be ridiculous. Is this about the divorce? I gave you everything you wanted.”
“Really?” I ask. It’s a low blow.
“Nina, I know the whole baby thing has been hard, and I’ve tried to be supportive, but I’m tired of it all. I just am. I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say and look away from him. “Like I said, I’m moving on.”
I forgot that I told him about kissing Oliver in the parking lot. Jack had called me once I was in the car and I felt so silly and ashamed that I had blurted it out. Like I needed to confess it to him even though we were through.
“Is this about the baby stuff?” he asks. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Don’t,” I say, and that’s all I can manage on the subject. I know we’re both recalling the same conversation. I know he didn’t mean what he said.
“I didn’t mean it was all for the best,” he says anyway. “I said that. But that’s not what I meant.”<
br />
I sit at my desk and focus on memos and paper clips, the phone, my empty coffee cup. Anything.
“We could try again,” he says.
“You know there’s no need to,” I whisper.
“We could adopt.” He comes back to me, sits on the edge of the desk. “Cassie would be thrilled, I sure. Or at least, she’d try to be. I can get the money together, and we can get a little Guatemalan baby. You can be like one of those celebrities who adopt a bunch of kids. We’ll adopt ten of them. Give those Hollywood types a run for their money.”
“I think we’d lose that race,” I say and almost smile.
“Are you sure?” Jack asks.
“It’s too late for that,” I say. “For us.”
“Is it? Nina, not having another baby isn’t the end of the world. We haven’t even tried to be ‘us’ in forever. We have Cassie, and she’s more than enough, isn’t she? I really don’t know what happened. I don’t understand.”
“You slept with other women,” I say.
He slams his hand down on the desk. “I didn’t. I told you that.”
I shake my head. “I saw you leaning in against that girl who works at your office, Jack,” I say. “I answered the phone a dozen times and someone hung up. Lola showed me the photo of you and the dry cleaner chick on Facebook. I know there were other women.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “What does it even matter what I did or didn’t do? You’ve put forth your evidence and convicted me. You’re the one who kicked me out.”
“Don’t blame this on me,” I say. I’m doing enough of that on my own.
He stands up, frustrated and irritated. “I see what this is. I get it. I was bad. Now I’m supposed to apologize.”
“You don’t get it at all,” I say. I stand and walk to the door, opening it for him.
“I just apologized,” he says, getting angry now.
It’s easy to push buttons when you know right where they are. He meets me at the door.
“No, you didn’t,” I say. “You said you were supposed to apologize. That’s not an apology. It’s even worse. It’s telling me that you know you’re supposed to, but you’re not going to.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” he asks. “I’m sorry about the other woman.”
“Women,” I correct him.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have another baby.”
“We did have another baby. I just didn’t get to take him home. You didn’t even care that we lost him. You think it was for the best. You said so.”
“Don’t do that,” he says, angry. “Don’t you dare make me out to be a monster. I didn’t say the miscarriage was for the best. I said not getting pregnant again after that was.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” I yell at him so that I don’t cry.
“No, it isn’t,” Jack says. “I know how much losing that pregnancy hurt you. I know how much it made you crazy for another baby. You can’t get him back, Nina. But you know what you can get back? Me. I don’t want this!”
“Please go,” I say.
This is the first time we’ve talked about the miscarriage since the days after we lost the baby. Nineteen weeks in. Miscarriage is an inadequate word. I had felt him move inside me. We had seen him on the ultrasound. We had named him. Then he was still. Then he was gone.
I couldn’t talk to Jack about it. I stopped talking to Jack about anything—except getting pregnant again. He didn’t want to talk babies. He didn’t really want to try again.
“You’re still wearing your rings, Nina,” Jack says and reaches out to me, but I pull away. “Think about this. There may still be a way for us to be happy. There may be a way to come back from this.”
I’m not sure I want there to be.
7
At home, Cassie meets me at the door in her bathing suit.
“I knew you’d forget,” she says with her hands on her ever-developing hips. “I don’t see why I can’t go to the pool by myself. That’s what the lifeguard is for, Mother.”
Mother. Ouch.
“Is that why you came back from Dad’s?” I ask, setting my suitcase down by the couch as I walk through the living room. “The pool thing?”
I don’t know what I expect her to say. No, sweetest Mummy, I came home because I missed you so very much. British accent and all.
I actually hadn’t forgotten. It was the dreaded, weekly Teen Swim. An evening pool party for all the kids in the building. It was supposed to be a way to build community and keep the teenagers out of trouble. I personally didn’t see how teenage girls in bikinis were going to keep anyone out of trouble.
“Let me get myself together and we’ll go,” I say.
Cassie flops down on the couch with a huff.
Thanks ever so much, wonderful Mum, for taking time out of your life to sit in the dank and humid indoor pool whilst I gallivant around with my mates. Bloody good fun.
I hate the pool. It’s indoors for crying out loud. I wish I could be one of those mothers who just drops her teenagers off for the day, lets them swim and giggle and flirt. But I can’t. Maybe I could have been a mother like that if I’d been able to bring my other baby home from the hospital. If I thought I had any control over anything. But I don’t, and that scares me to death. So I end up hanging around places like the indoor pool, growing gills against the thick, moist, chlorine-saturated air.
There’s always another mother or two with separation issues of their own, so I’m not alone at least. I think the Teen Swim was supposed to be a chance for the parents to interact as well, but we don’t. Mostly, the mothers just keep to themselves, spaced out at socially acceptable distances from each other, talking on the phone to someone more important than the people around them.
I take a book to read, or pretend to. Cassie pretends she’s at the pool without me, and I deal with it. I watch her for a bit and then actually read a few pages. We’re not there long, when from over the top of my book—pages wilting in the wetness—I catch the frightening sight of my fifteen-year-old daughter talking to a boy. I startle upright in the plastic pool chair and fumble the book into my lap. I know it’s a melodramatic reaction, but it just happens that way.
Across the pool, down at the deep end, Cassie is with some teenage boy. Cassie, who has hips and curves and has figured out how to shift her weight from one leg to the other while tossing her perfectly wavy chestnut hair “just so,” has an allure that even the swampy air in the indoor, condo pool cannot stifle.
I pick up the book with nervous fingers and place it into my pool bag. The oversized, thick plastic, transparent pool bag with polka dots in a rainbow of colors. It’s one of the many shields that a mother tries to wield. That bag of preparedness and protection against any unforeseen event.
Except for this.
I find myself searching through the bag. I have sunscreen—albeit unnecessary indoors—bug repellent, bottled water, an extra towel, a set of dry clothes, Band-Aids, a box of raisins, wet wipes, ChapStick, tampons, a hairbrush, some Tylenol, an empty box of Tic-Tacs, but nothing whatsoever that can do anything about that teenage boy.
Trying to remain calm, I set the bag back on the damp, concrete floor of the pool deck and stand up. I have a choice to make, and I’m pretty sure I will make the wrong one, no matter how it plays out. I should be ok with this. It’s totally normal. This is what teenagers do. It’s what I did. That’s what scares me.
I know calling out to Cassie will be embarrassing for us both, so instead I start waving my arms around wildly in the air in an attempt to get her attention. I roll my eyes at myself, but I don’t stop waving my arms around like a fool. It works, to Cassie’s obvious annoyance. I point to my wrist in an exaggerated motion to indicate it’s time to go—even though we just g
ot there. Across the length of the pool, Cassie twists her mouth and shrugs her shoulders. I repeat the “time to go” mime with bigger and more pronounced movements.
Cassie rolls her eyes at me too and says some words that I can’t hear to the boy. I’m being ridiculous. Which is probably what she said to Swimming-Pool Boy. I think of him like that as if it’s a superpower, which I guess it is. Cassie stalks over to me; her feet making angry flapping noises on the wet deck.
“What was that about?” Cassie says and repeats the motion I had done—pointing to her own wrist but in a much more petulant way.
“It means it’s time to go,” I say.
“How does that mean it’s time to go?” Cassie asks. “Besides, we just got here.”
I realize I haven’t actually worn a wristwatch in a decade or more and how the outdated motion doesn’t work in the cell phone age. I feel old, and I hear the tick-ticking of a clock in the distance.
“So what do you want, Mother?” Cassie asks.
“Who is that?” I answer with my own question, trying to gesture nonchalantly at the nightmare at the deep end of the pool.
“A guy,” Cassie answers with the typical and infuriating teenage combination of stating the obvious while being intentionally vague.
I pick up the pool bag. “Well, he’s too old for you.”
“He’s fifteen,” Cassie says, doing that jerky little back-and-forth head bob that they do. “I’m fifteen.”
“Well,” I stammer, but finish confidently, “he’s too tall for you.”
I bob my head back and forth too.
“Too tall for me?” Cassie challenges. “What does that mean?”
I turn to look at the kid who is standing and talking to a group of other boys. I clutch the pool bag to my chest with one hand, and with the other, I gesture toward him, moving my hand up and down trying to think of something to say. Words fail, and I just stand there motioning to the boy. The kid has pecs, biceps, and a six-pack, for crying out loud.
“Yeah,” Cassie says, a little too swoony. “He’s totally hot.”
The Lemonade Year Page 10