6
special sauce
A Wednesday in August 2016, 3:25 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506
I wake up, surprised I fell asleep, surprised another few hours have passed. My phone vibrates. A text from Stacy. What time is it in New York? About 9 a.m.? 10? Melissa and Amber are on the TV, tan and glossy after the Florida trip, having cocktails and a heart-to-heart. They’re being filmed from behind the bar and I feel like I’m their bartender. I pour another glass of wine for myself as I listen in on their conversation, and when they get their bar food I look over at my pizza, congealed now on the little table, untouched. The phone vibrates again.
Stacy:
Jeej it’s the worst I’m so upset, I missed it, he took a step and I missed it
Do I answer her? How do I answer her? It’s a crisis and she needs an answer. She knows it’s the middle of the day here, that’s why she chose me, because Danielle and Sharon will be at work and won’t be able to talk. I need to answer her but it feels like she’s communicating from a parallel planet, one where I’m still normal and not flipping out. It’s hard to type with shaking fingers. I check to make sure the words seem casual, like this would be the right thing to say if I weren’t locked in this room, losing my mind.
Me:
What happened? Did day care call you?
Stacy:
Yes, right in the middle of a meeting. I thought it was an emergency because they’re calling and not just sending a text or whatever, and she just said he took a step just wanted to let you know because the last time when he rolled over I made such a big deal out of them not telling me. I went back to my meeting crying. I missed another thing
Me:
You didn’t miss it
Stacy:
Of course I missed it
Me:
No Stace you forgot the rule
Stacy:
What rule?
Me:
It’s only the first time when the mother’s seen it for the first time. Everything else is rehearsal. It doesn’t count as a first until the first time you see it
So normal. Such a me thing to say. I’m still in here somewhere.
Stacy:
Really? Oh my god you’re right
Me:
Yes
Stacy:
Do those f’ing girls at the day care care if it’s his first time? They don’t care. I CARE
Me:
Exactly. They don’t get his firsts
Stacy:
OMG I’m going to do a bunch of videos at home and say it’s the first time like I’ll make him roll and say look it’s the first roll! And then we’ll do one for his steps and be like hey it’s the first steps!
Me:
OK you don’t have to lie on camera to the child just don’t feel guilty. You work hard for that kid
Stacy:
My parents lied to me my whole life
Me:
See how that turned out though
Stacy:
Ha ha. Love you
Me:
Love you
I should tell her. If Stacy knew I was here, in this hotel, what I did this morning, she’d help. I know she would. I just have to tell her and Danielle and Sharon, Hey, I’m struggling. But it’s hard to find the right time. They got jobs and kids and there’s the time difference and there’s only so much you can say in a text. You can’t say in a text, I think I’m too sick to go back to work. I think I’m too sick to take care of these kids. That’s not a texting conversation. You don’t drop that on your friends when they’re thousands of miles away.
I got Johnny when he was six months old. I took four weeks off and then I went back full-time. There was no adoption leave and I didn’t give birth, so no maternity leave. I took my vacation and some unpaid family leave. But without a husband with an income, with no support from Mrs. Costello and my parents always short on cash, unpaid time wasn’t an option with a baby to raise and bills to pay. And I did it, alone. Where is that woman who worked her ass off all day and took care of a screaming baby all night and then got up at dawn and did it all over again? And so what if I quit law school, so what if my job was just a job and never a career, look at that kid. What a beautiful kid he is.
Of course, I’m not alone now. Like this mother said to me at the school gates once, “You don’t need to work, though, do you?” As if it was any of her business. As if having a purpose to every day isn’t a need. Yes, Harry takes care of us. But people die, marriages fail, banks collapse, shit gets bombed, babies show up in your kitchen and I needed to know that I could rescue us. That, if it came down to it, all me and Johnny needed was me. Because I was a mother before I was a wife. But now—I keep waiting for the switch to flip so I’ll be me again. On, off, on, off. I keep switching it but the room stays dark. And we’re dependent. The one thing I swore I’d never be.
I light another cigarette, take a drag holding my hand out the window, scroll through my emails. School, more from Harry, you can guess what they’re like, and then there’s the one from Aneela, my boss, that I haven’t opened yet because I can’t handle the disappointment, hers and my own. She sent it two days ago. [email protected]. Catching up. That’s the subject, Catching up, except that the subject really is, Are you fucking coming back to work it’s been almost nine months and you said you’d be back at six and I thought you were American and don’t you guys go back to work three days after you have your babies?
Just before I left Aneela said that the firm would pay for my law courses and they’d give me a training contract so in a few years I could be a solicitor. She said I was good. But I knew I was good. I’ve always been good, I’ve just never had the chance or the money to get the piece of paper to prove that I could be just as good as any lawyer I ever worked for. And here she was, giving me a stepladder; finally, someone saw in me what I knew I could be—or could have been. Past tense.
I should have written back sooner. Let’s try.
Dear Aneela,
It’s so nice to hear from you. I’ve just left my children and my husband today so now I find that I have a lot more time to devote to working. I’m ready to start on Monday, does that suit you?
How about this:
Dear Aneela,
Unfortunately, due to an unforeseen mental breakdown I’ve had to return to America. Thank you and I really enjoyed working with you.
Or this:
Dear Aneela,
I just finished reading Lean In. Thank you so much for sending it to me along with the beautiful baby blanket. Sheryl Sandberg is so wise. Unfortunately, I’ve done the math and leaning in with my full-time salary is less than the cost of the childcare we would need for two kids so there’s actually no financial point in me working. That makes me feel worthless and powerless because my professional contribution to the world amounts to an economic loss for my family. But I’m grateful for the opportunity. I really enjoyed all the times I got home too late to see Johnny awake and wasn’t paid for it.
Too harsh. That’s too harsh. Let’s try this:
Dear Aneela,
I don’t know why you can do it but I can’t. You have kids too and you’re really successful and nice and you believed in me but I’m sorry, I have no explanation for why I used to be a competent, smart, hardworking, ambitious person but now I stand in the pasta aisle of the supermarket too overwhelmed by all the different shapes to pick one. I always seem to manage alright in the wine aisle, though.
I put the phone down, put out my cigarette. On the TV, they show the news footage of Teresa and Joe’s federal fraud sentencing in between scenes of their crying family members following the news on their phones. Teresa will serve a year while Joe takes care of their little girls,
then he’ll “go away” and do four years when she gets out. It’s devastating. Some asshole reporter shouts at Teresa, “Have you been watching Orange Is the New Black?” as she walks with her husband, head down. They cut to Rosie, Teresa’s cousin, in the kitchen with her family reading a prayer off her phone: “God, my family needs your help today. Give us strength and compassion to help one another…”
“Help me too,” I say while she prays, reaching for my wine bottle, crying for Teresa.
Crying for myself.
London, September 2015
I put my tray with the Big Mac and large fries down on the table of the two-person booth in the back corner of McDonald’s. It’s a small, out-of-the-way McDonald’s, with counter space for some stools and a few booths near the registers within earshot of the fryer.
Charlotte’s on the other side of the table with her usual black coffee and today it’s one—no, two—apple pies. Something’s up.
“Charlie, you OK?” I ask her, sliding my way into the booth.
“No.” That was the answer I expected. That’s how we always opened our proceedings at McDonald’s.
“Bad night last night?” I ask, knowing what the answer will be as I unwrap my burger with morning sickness rolling over me. Looks like I have the kind that’s going to last the whole pregnancy and persecute me every day. Just like the Duchess. I try to draw strength from the Duchess.
“I was up every hour from 12 till 4, and then the baby was up for the day at 5:30.”
“Fuck. Didn’t Pete help?” I say, taking a sip of my lukewarm Coke.
“Oh, please. Fuck Pete.” She bites off half an apple pie, smearing the cinnamon sauce off her face with the back of her hand. “You look terrible,” she says.
“Threw up three times already today, and it’s only eleven,” I said, stuffing fries in my mouth.
“Fuck. Did Harry not do the school run for you today?”
“Oh, please. Fuck Harry.”
And now that we had gotten our reasons for being there out of the way and did our usual fuck-Pete/fuck-Harry routine, we sat there quietly, eating shitty food, each knowing how precious a moment of quiet here was for the other woman.
Even before I discovered that McDonald’s was the only food that I inexplicably didn’t throw up with my morning sickness, I would come here whenever I got tired of being the foreigner in the office and I couldn’t keep up with the banter and the references anymore. I just wanted to sit somewhere familiar and American, where I understood how shit worked. Except for the warm soda without ice. No ice in your drinks in England. It’s not like I loved McDonald’s in America. It’s just one of those things I do sometimes, like wearing a Yankees cap even though I never owned a baseball hat before or standing over the Oreos in the cookie aisle just to look at the logo.
About a year ago, when I was still new in the office, I had a whole conversation about how nice Scotland was with a client whose Liverpool accent I mistook for Scottish—and sidebar, if we can just be honest here, neither one of them can speak English in any kind of way that the outside world can understand so what the fuck’s the difference—and everyone in the office had a huge laugh at my expense. After performing my self-deprecating, wisecracking New Yorker routine and shrugging my shoulders good-naturedly to reaffirm everyone’s opinion that Americans are lovable but ignorant, I came here, to my usual booth. And there was Charlie. One of the brightest young associates at the firm.
I said, “Hey, are you OK?” She was sitting with two apple-pie wrappers on her tray and a chocolate-chip cookie on standby.
“No,” she said, not looking at me, sipping her coffee.
“Neither am I,” I said.
“Sit down, then,” she said, so I did. And we sat there, in silence, sharing our understanding of the sacredness of this place. The noise of the kitchen. The click of cups pressed against the soda dispenser. The smell of french fries. The bright lighting. We were here because we knew no one else from the office would ever find us. We worked in a liberal-leftie-Whole-Foods-Oxbridge-vegan-Guardian-reader kind of office. Everyone was friendly, kind and socially conscious but their deep concern for the problems of the proletariat meant that they could never lower themselves to actually crossing the threshold of a McDonald’s. But not me and Charlie because we’re both mothers. And we know what all mothers know, which is that—unlike husbands or your family or even your friends—McDonald’s is always there for you when you need it.
Charlie is five years younger than me. She has a three-year-old boy and a little baby. Unusually for a British woman, she went back to work after only three months of mat leave because she’s ambitious and driven. She’s also the only associate at the firm who isn’t white and I wonder how much that had to do with it too. Charlie’s half Jamaican, half French, tall, beautiful, smart and serious. She married the very English and very white Peter, who loves her very deeply, although, like everyone else’s husband, he never does enough and doesn’t know it.
I asked her once if she felt pressure to come back sooner because she was the only Black associate. Actually, first I said, “Uh, mixed race,” and then I said, “Uh, um, I mean bi-racial?” with a question in my voice and she said, defensively, “What do you mean by racial?” My face dropped and I went red before I got the joke and she laughed and said, with a smile, “Relax, darling, I’m Black. My mum’s white, she taught me French. My dad’s Jamaican, I look like him. My husband’s white, my kids are mixed like me, people think they’re Black. We’re all OK. You should be too, so stop being so American, talking about race all the time. This is the UK, you know, we’re not all racists like your lot.” She was only half-joking, sliding past an uncomfortable conversation that she didn’t want to have, using humor to disarm in that way that British people are so good at.
Still, in the office, I knew it was visible but unspoken: her skin color, the extra scrutiny it brought, both unconscious and very conscious; expectations others had of her and she of herself; assumptions made about her in the office, or barristers’ chambers or the courtroom; worries about her children and what they would face and how it would be different and how it would be the same. Hoping things would move forward and knowing they wouldn’t move forward enough. It was all there in the crumpled-up wrappers of her apple pie.
She and I don’t get to socialize much in the office because we both have our heads down, working as fast as possible so that we can leave at five on the dot to pick up the kids. We understand what it’s like when you’re trying to do a good job and your children are constantly lighting up the background of your mind. We see what other people don’t notice about us. The blouse turned inside out and then covered with a jacket to hide the stain before the client shows up. The skirt that used to fit that still almost does if you don’t button it at the top but instead hold the waist together with a safety pin. The massive crack in the screen of the phone because your kid dropped it. She always has an emergency cardigan on hand and a Sharpie for coloring in scuffs on our heels. I always have a few spare tubes of mascara in my desk for brushing into my roots before big meetings. We’re both just making it work, every day, like most moms.
When I saw her at McDonald’s the first time, because she also knew that no one from the office would ever be seen there, our friendship was sealed.
I break our usual code of silence and I say, “Is it just the bad night?”
Charlie, staring at the lid of her coffee cup, chipped manicure toying with the pie wrappers, says, “This is hard. Much harder than I thought it would be.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m doing it.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It’s much harder with two than it was with just Noah.”
“Sure it is,” I say, looking up at her, involuntarily putting my hand to my belly.
Without loo
king up from her coffee lid she says, “I don’t know if this is worth it, you know? I did it, I’m successful, but I feel like shit. You know what happened yesterday? They shut down the nursery. A water main broke and they shut the water off for the whole street. So I’m standing there with the baby and Noah, their bags, my files and nowhere to go. I had twenty minutes to get to court, counsel wasn’t picking up his phone, Pete had a board meeting and couldn’t get out.”
“Your parents weren’t around?” I ask, already knowing the answer but giving her a chance to get the frustration about them out.
“Fuck no. I didn’t even call because I knew they had my sister’s kid, who needs the undivided attention of two adults. So there I was, in the middle of the high street, and then Noah stepped in dog shit and I just gave up. I mean, why do people have dogs if they don’t want to fucking look after them? Don’t they realise that they are putting actual shit on my children’s shoes? It’s so fucking offensive.” Charlie leans back with a thump, shaking her head, infuriated, exhausted, exasperated by humanity.
I say, “Oh, sweetie, I know, people are monsters. So what happened?”
“I went home and put them in front of CBeebies and fell asleep on the sofa during Waybuloo. And now Aneela wants to meet with me because she said I lacked professionalism. Can you believe that? Granted, I didn’t call the office until 10:30 because that goddam Waybuloo gets me every time but I have never, never put a foot wrong until yesterday. I have left my children in all kinds of shady childcare establishments, left them at nursery until they were the last ones there at night, I have…so many things I’ve done and I had one bad day, one crisis, and I’m lacking—lacking?—professionalism…”
“Wait, that can’t be right, I’m sure she’s just going to give you a pep talk. She has kids, she knows,” I say, trying to make her feel better.
Charlie looks at me, pushes her tray away. “Aneela knows fuck all. She knows about her parents living next door, and her live-in nanny, and her cleaner who comes three times a week. She’s going to say I can’t use childcare as an excuse, that I’m supposed to have it sorted, that associates without children are expected to be here and I can’t expect special treatment, that there are plenty of parents in the office and maybe I can’t handle being on this track…”
When I Ran Away Page 12