“Yeah, it’s harder than it looks. It was really hard when I was working and I had Johnny on my own. It’s not easy.”
She looks off in the distance. I shouldn’t have interrupted. There’s a long pause, a silence I don’t know how to interpret, space I don’t know how to fill. This happens to me a lot. My speech has a different rhythm, a beat too fast but a thought behind, or sometimes ahead, but either way I get cues wrong for when it’s my turn to talk. So I wait. I think she needs me to just sit here.
I have a little exchange with Rocky. A single tear makes a slow march down her face. She says, quietly, “We couldn’t conceive and then when we did, they didn’t survive. One went early on and one at twenty-two weeks. And then one day I was thirty-seven, then thirty-eight and it had been years and no baby. We started IVF. It was brutal. I couldn’t focus. I fumbled and made mistakes. Cost the firm money. I was signed off for a while and then came back again but then another round of treatments failed. I couldn’t cope. When we finally were pregnant with Humphrey, I rebounded. Redeemed myself. But it was all a bit too late by then.” I lean forward to touch her hand but then pull back because that’s not the right thing to do. That’s not what she wants. She takes a long drink.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. You never said anything at tea when Becky talked about her fertility stuff.” I bounce Rocky on my knee and pretend to fuss with his clothes while I wait for her to speak. I try not to look at her directly because she’s skittish; like a bird that you want to see up close but if you move too quick she’ll fly away. She doesn’t like being so personal.
“Well, it’s private, isn’t it? I can’t bear the way Becky goes on about it. It was painful and horrid for me. It brought me Humphrey but everything I went through…” She waves a hand like she can’t bring herself to say the words. We both take another drink, contemplate our glasses. All these months I thought her life was a page in the Boden catalogue. A slim thirty-something woman leaping from the curb onto the street in coral heels swinging an azure, leather shoulder bag on her way to buy flowers at the market. She has that white British skin that thirty years from now will be thin as paper, but her wrinkles will be pleasant, symmetrical. She’s pretty. But if you look at her long enough the sadness of losing her babies is there, in the faint lines at the edge of each eye. Poor Sukie. I thought she was one of those naturally thin people who never had to wrestle with her body, but her struggle was with injections and doctors’ offices and lost children instead. They drained her body and left her like this: fragile bone and muscle with no reserves.
“I’m sorry. That must have been really hard. Really hard. I get why you want to stay home with him. And you should if that’s what you want. Fuck everybody else and what they think.”
Her eyes get wide. One corner of her mouth rises in a sad smile. I probably shouldn’t have said “fuck everybody else” in reference to her sisters.
“Well, that’s one way of putting it.” She sniffles and dries her eyes, almost laughing.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you’re right, Gigi. I’m doing what I think is best and they should all bloody well fuck off.” We clink glasses. She’s surprised that she likes me. So am I.
We talk to Rocky, chat about baby stuff, food and sleep schedules and baby classes to take the pressure off the moment, but I don’t have much to say on any of those topics. Then she says, “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”
I don’t say, Sukie, no matter how much you love your job and how good you are at it, you’ll cry every day when you leave for the office and kiss the baby goodbye. Then you’ll cry in the bathroom before your first meeting. And sometimes on the train home. In the middle of the night too, when everyone’s asleep and you walk into his room just to watch him breathe, feeling guilty about what you’ve missed.
I don’t say, Sukie, if you stay home everyone will start to assume that you don’t do anything. At parties, no one will talk to you after they ask, “What do you do?” and you say, “Oh, I’m home with the baby.” They’ll talk only to your husband and you’ll slowly get drunk on your own in the corner while the employed people comment on the housing market. Your kid will literally shit on you for years. And a day will come when you would take any job—drive a garbage truck, call people about mis-sold PPI, work in a soft-play center—anything, if it means you could just get out of the goddam house and away from that fucking kid.
What I say is, “I think you’re a great mom and you’re going to be OK,” because what she will hear, all she needs to hear, is: You’re right, you’re beautiful, you’re a good mother.
“Gigi,” she whispers, and I see a wave of grief breaking over her again. She thought she was done crying and had pushed it all back down where it belongs in the bottom of her Gucci Soho Disco cross-body, but the tears come again. “He’ll be our only one. He would have been the fourth and I would have had a house full of children. I don’t want to be anywhere that he isn’t. They don’t understand, they think that’s mad, do you think that’s mad?”
“No, sweetie. That makes perfect sense to me.” Poor girl. I pick up Rocky and pass him to her across the table. She talks to him and holds him like he’s Humphrey. She’s not what she seems—well, a lot of her is, but not all of her.
After a while she says, “I should be getting back now. I left him with Mum for a bit because Tamsin and Imogen said I needed a break—so they could chastise me more easily, I suppose. But I don’t need a break, do I, Rocky?” And just like that, she starts her metamorphosis. She passes Rocky back, leaves half her wine undrunk, brushes down her blouse, shakes her hair, blots her tears. In an instant she’s back. “Really, Gigi, you must come over again soon. It’s always such a tonic having the ladies round for a natter. May I have the bill, please.” She motions to the waiter, stands up to throw on her coatigan, the kind of sweater that would make me look like a queen-size bed but is flattering on her. I wonder what “tonic” and “natter” actually mean and infer they have something to do with tea at her house as she leaves a £20 note on the table.
I want to say, “Do you want to walk the babies on the common?” or “Could you order another glass of wine and listen for a while?” or “Could you stay for ten more minutes so that it’s ten minutes less that I’m alone today?” But before I say anything she says, “Well, lovely to see you. I must be getting off now.” She gives me double Euro cheek kisses and sashays out the door, leaving a trace of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir in her wake. I didn’t even say bye.
Too bad, she could use a friend like me. I finish my wine and drink the rest of hers before I pay the check. Shit. I could use a friend like me.
London, July 2016; Baby, 7 months old
“So how’s the GDL going, then?” Aneela looks at me from across her desk with bright eyes that don’t mean to pressure me but are really pressuring me. Rocky’s starting to fuss. GDL, shit…oh, shit! It’s the first law course I’m supposed to do, Graduate Diploma in Law, to convert my degree, the first fucking piece of the whole goddam puzzle, oh, shit…
“Gigi, the GDL? How’s it going?” There’s a flash of concern across Aneela’s face, and a hint of annoyance. I started it part-time last September, before I had the baby, and I said I was going to keep it up over maternity leave, and then I got fucked-up, and didn’t go to class, and after enough weeks of not going and not studying and not doing it, I stopped thinking about it, and I meant to call Aneela and tell her, but I kept not calling, and then I forgot, and now I’m sitting here, and the last time I thought about it was so long ago and my brain is so rattled and shaken that it actually didn’t even occur to me that it would come up today and now what do I say, oh my God, oh my God…
“Ah, Gigi, you’re here, I presume this is the little one?” Lara, the big boss, the senior partner, appears at the door to Aneela’s office. Black-frame glasses, white hair, Ferragamo
s, pencil skirt suit—an icicle in heels. The only one in the office who I could never make laugh. I didn’t know I’d see her today. It’s my “Keeping in Touch” day, the KIT. It’s the law here. You get paid for two of them on your mat leave. I’m supposed to come back to work and touch base and pretend like nothing’s happened and show them that I’m the same person who left here a few months ago—if not better—and I’m ready to get back to my desk and prove my worth and show that I can’t wait to work twice as hard now to keep the same job.
I meant to get a new outfit for today. I also meant to cook Johnny a real dinner and get a haircut and stop drinking so much and have sex with Harry and deal with my new mustache. And I meant to keep at the GDL to show them, Aneela and Lara, that I was serious about what they said, that I was going to put in the work and I was going to do it and become a lawyer so my boys would be proud.
But I didn’t do any of those things.
Aneela called a month ago to set up this meeting and she said then we could have lunch with the team. No KITs in America. At home there’s just your first day back after your six to eight weeks off and you better get back at it. But Keeping in Touch days here are supposed to help you transition. They’re supposed to be friendly. Except that they’re terrifying.
Aneela really wants me to make it. That’s what she wrote on the inside cover of Lean In. To get you to the finish line, Gigi, Love, A x. And maybe I would and maybe I could if I was one of those women who was back in shape and reading the legal press to catch up on what I missed and saying things like, “Oh, I can’t wait to go back to work!” and, “Of course I love the baby but work is so much easier than staying at home!” and, “You know, I love being a mother but I just really can’t wait to use my brain again,” and all those things working mothers are supposed to say about how much it sucks to be at home raising your kids. But I’m also one hundred percent certain that when I walk out of this office today it’ll be for the last time.
“Gigi?” Lara breaks me out of my trance.
“Sorry, I had a bad night, I’m a little out of it.” Wrong thing to say.
“Yes, well, babies ruin all your plans, don’t they?” Lara says, not in the joking way people say things like that, but in the way that makes me think she eats babies for breakfast.
“Yes, sorry, I’m still just getting used to things. It’s really nice to see you, Lara. I’m looking forward to coming back.” I pick Rocky up to do something with my hands. “Do you want to hold him?” I ask her. Of course she doesn’t want to hold him. Lara is the last person on Earth who would ever want to hold my baby.
But Aneela, always good in awkward situations, breaks in, “Oh, please, me first, I want a go.” She doesn’t really want to hold him either, she wants to get back to talking about what the fuck I’m doing because they’re paying for my GDL and I’m avoiding the question.
“Yes, well, I’m sure you have a lot to talk about,” Lara says. “I’ll see you at lunch. He’s lovely, Gigi. Nice to see you.”
When she leaves I turn to Aneela. “She’s coming to lunch? Is it, like, a meeting?” I ask her as she hands Rocky back. He’s fractious, thrashing around, doesn’t want to be held so I start jostling him in my lap, waving my keys at him.
“There’ve been some changes to our structure, Gigi, she thought it would be a good idea to speak to the whole team, and since you were coming today…”
I stammer, “But, but…”
“It’s alright, it’s all very relaxed, we all understand, we know you’ve been away.” She’s trying so hard to be good to me, she wants to be the good boss who does the right thing, who supports mothers going back to work, but there’s a strain in her voice. “Of course, I didn’t realise you were bringing the baby today. Do you think he’ll manage?”
I didn’t think I was bringing the baby today either. I wanted to have my head together, be presentable, actually see if I could come back here and I got Rebecca to babysit but she canceled on me this morning due to an art emergency or a crustless quiche crisis or some other rich-lady bullshit and I was left with a choice: cancel lunch and the meeting because I had no childcare and set that precedent before I even got back to work, or bring him to show that I could handle it. And pray. Other women brought their babies to the office—it’s Europe. They do shit like that.
“We’ll do the best we can,” I say. This is going to be awful. He’s not one of those babies who just sits there and stares at stuff. He started crawling before six months, he pulls up on everything, tries to cruise and always falls down with a wail of frustration. He’s thrown himself out of his crib twice. His arms are in constant motion. He doesn’t want to be held—he wants to stand on you, to grab stuff, stuff that’s lethal to babies, like hairdryers and computer cords and staplers. He’s not the kind of baby who lets you eat at a restaurant or talk on the phone or who happily chews on a teether while you have a work meeting.
“Let’s get over to the conference room but after that I’d like to talk about the GDL,” Aneela says, as she pushes the stroller for me while I carry Rocky to the conference room.
I whisper to him, “OK Rock, c’mon, do this for Jeej, OK? It’s just an hour, do it for Jeej.” But he’s ornery, impatient, overstimulated by all the new faces and the bright office lighting. I try to get my brain to scan itself for what I could say to Aneela later, but Rocky has scrambled everything and I can only concentrate on keeping him quiet when we get into the conference room.
We walk into the room and I feel the spotlight. “Gigi, my God, how are you, darling? Lovely to see you. Really missing you around here, really. Now look, who’s this? Can you believe it? Isn’t he gorgeous?” Isla and Francisco, the other paralegals, give me double kisses and squeezes on the arm, while Charlie takes Rocky from me and coos over him. Francisco lets him clench his little fist around his finger. I relax for a minute.
A flash of a parallel me from another life. The strong me who used to put on a suit, strap baby Johnny on in the carrier, take the subway and drop him at the day care on the way to work. Work all day, pick him up, strap him on, take the subway home, bathe him in the kitchen sink, sing him to sleep, then read cases until midnight.
Lara enters the room; her turquoise eyes give Charlie a meaningful glance and she quickly hands Rocky back to me and grabs her notebook to rush to her seat at the front. People start taking sandwiches from the middle of the table and I decide to try to strap Rocky in the stroller and rock him to sleep but he’s not having it. I pull him out and stay standing in the back of the room, swaying with him in my arms.
“Gigi, we’re going to begin, are you alright there?” Lara says, and ten pairs of eyes look at me, some smiling, some supportive, some impassive, some questioning, some noticing that I’m still in the same maternity skirt I wore to the office three days a week toward the end. No one offers to make me a plate.
“Sure, please just ignore us, I’m listening,” hoping they didn’t hear the tremble in my voice. They’re restructuring our division, new teams, but Rocky doesn’t want to be swayed, he doesn’t want to be rocked, he doesn’t want to be here. Charlie gives me a quick glance to reassure me but I know I’m giving working mothers a bad name.
Lara keeps talking: “Due to the length of time it’s currently taking for appeals to be heard, there seems to be an uneven distribution…”
I keep swaying, put him over my shoulder, start pacing the back of the room, but it’s not working. I try the pacifier. He spits it out and it tumbles to an unreachable place under the table. OK, try a bottle, look competent, like this isn’t stressing you, normal mom stuff. Get a bottle. I spy the corner seat next to Francisco and sit down. OK, just lean over, get the formula out of the bag, one step at a time. I hold Rocky over my shoulder with one hand and try to steady him there while he squalls. I unscrew the cap of the formula with the other hand, then unscrew the cap of the bottle, p
ut the two bottles next to each other…
“Can I help you?” Francisco whispers, kindly, softly.
“Um, no, it’s OK, I’ll manage, thank you though,” I whisper back as I watch the open bottle of formula slide out of my grip because I have to catch Rocky, who’s slipping from my shoulder with his head about to hit the—5, 6, 7, 8—table. Which it does. Loudly.
In the moment of silence before the huge intake of breath Rocky needs to prepare his scream, there’s Francisco, wearing 200 mls of formula on his shirt and his size 32 pinstripe trousers, down to the tip of his pointy Paul Smiths. There’s the room full of people who just saw me drop my baby on the conference table during my Keeping in Touch day. There’s the turquoise eyes of Lara in black-frame glasses, her mouth taut, arms crossed, brow furrowed.
Rocky wails. A call to action. Aneela stands up, not knowing what to do first, saying, “What can I do, Gigi?” Charlie stands up, impotent arms outstretched, calling to me, “Gigi, are you alright? Should I get your bag?” Charlie, Aneela, Isla and all the others, passing napkins to Francisco, mopping up the table, I know they’re looking at me but I stare at the floor, pick up Rocky, grab my bag and just say, “Sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I run to the bathroom, holding my screaming son close to my chest, and get in a stall and sit on the floor with my back against the door. I hold him and rock, rub his fuzzy head and wonder what the fuck to do next.
“Rocky, baby, look what I have, look what I have.” I try to keep an even tone, try not to let him feel my stress, which is futile because he is my stress. And I’m his. His cries bounce off the stall walls and he’s a hundred times louder in here. I have no backup milk. I lost the pacifier under the conference table. I have a pouch of chicken, apple and parsnip puree and I try a bit of that on his lip. I still don’t know what the hell a parsnip is. We don’t have those in America. The taste interests him, he sucks on the pouch, the wail becomes more of a hiccup and a moan of protest between sucks. I realize that he’s soaking wet. Urine or formula that ricocheted off Francisco’s One Direction haircut. Could be either. But I have no spare clothes for him. They’re sitting in a neat pile on top of the radiator by the door at home, along with the three clean diapers I was supposed to bring but didn’t.
When I Ran Away Page 23