by Lea Geller
“You’re right,” I said. “They do sound a lot like preschoolers.”
I had no idea.
-5-
If anyone had ever asked me which period of schooling I’d want to revisit, my absolute last choice would be middle school. Yet here I was, hours away from my return to middle school, trying not to think about what those years were like for me. There were the big things—my parents dying suddenly, being completely without family, taking my first steps of the foster home dance. I spent most of middle school with the same foster family, a nice enough couple, who kept me until I became too much work. They gave me a free-range adolescence, not because of a particular parenting philosophy but because even though they opened their home to me, they didn’t really want to parent me. I was on my own in middle school, on my own to deal with the seemingly unimportant but devastating things like staring at a mirror full of frizzy hair and zits for the first time and having to wear clothes several sizes too big to hide my suddenly bloated, pubescent form.
That morning, almost twenty-five years after I’d started middle school in Modesto, I woke up on the first day of school in New York. I had left the countertop espresso machine behind in California. I wasn’t sure I even owned it, and I couldn’t see it making the trip with us across the country. In its place stood a cheap French press I’d bought over the weekend. I plunged a full pot of coffee—ready to drink the six to eight cups I would need to face my first day of work in several years, and my first day ever teaching someone other than a four-year-old. The coffee was thick, oily, and delicious. The first sip took me back to my college days, when I’d first learned to drink coffee with my sophisticated roommates. This was how I drank coffee before Jack, and it was how I would have to drink it without him.
I thought about Jack and started to smile, but something stopped me. I felt uneasy. It wasn’t a warm, comfortable feeling. Instead, I felt something else, something closer to sadness, frustration, and anger. But I didn’t want to be angry. Not now, anyway. Now I had a job to do—a job for which I was neither ready nor equipped. Go back, I told myself, leaning on the kitchen counter. Go back to when it all made more sense.
I remembered sitting with Beeks at the bar in the Tahoe hotel the night before my wedding. Beeks was my entire wedding party. She was my entire family by then. But Beeks was Beeks. Even if she had wanted to be restrained, she was incapable of restraint. We sat leaning over our drinks, and she came right out and asked me, “So Jack. This life. This is what you want, Aggie?”
I looked down into my glass. I knew what she was asking me. “One hundred percent,” I answered. “I want this, Beeks. I want all of it.”
“You know,” she said, “you don’t have to marry Jack just so you don’t have to eat beans from a can.”
I cut her off. “There are plenty of rich guys in LA. If all I wanted was money, I could have gone and found myself one.”
“But you did,” she said. “You did go and find yourself one. You went and got engaged to the very first rich man you found. Maybe you could wait a little, shop around, and then find a rich guy who’s a little less . . . I don’t know . . . controlling.” She paused and leaned in to me. “I get it. I get that you were tired of being ignored. I get it that you want someone who sees you. But do you really need someone who manages you?”
I reached in and fiddled with the lime in my glass. “Here’s the thing—all the stuff that irks you about him, those are the things I love. I love that he cares what milk we drink, how we grind our coffee, which light fixtures we buy. Have you ever considered that?” I looked up at her. The bartender, sensing this was a conversation he shouldn’t interrupt, quietly replaced the gin and tonics we had emptied.
“I love that he sweats the small stuff,” I said. “I love that the stupid, insignificant details like dish soap matter so much to him. I want that, Beeks. And the predictability, the routine? I love that, too.” Beeks furrowed her brow, but I pressed on before she could say anything. “I love knowing what next week, next month, even next year is going to look like. I love that Jack plans for things that I can’t even see. I love that he makes restaurant reservations weeks out. I love that he has a rule about having the next vacation planned before he finishes the vacation he’s on. All that unpredictability, the uncertainty, I want it gone.”
We never had that conversation again. We had others, and there were moments during her visits to LA when she looked at me and she didn’t have to ask, “What happened to you, Aggie?” because it was scrawled all over her face. She’d comment on how much blonder I seemed, not to mention how much thinner I looked. But Beeks knew enough to know that I wasn’t just tired of eating beans out of a can. She was on the other side of the country, and I was tired of being alone. Tired of being the only one looking out for me. Tired of watching all those preschool kids go home to families I never had but desperately wanted.
The next day, hours before our wedding, Jack found me crying in my hotel room.
“You’re not supposed to see me,” I sniffled, sitting on the edge of a very large bed, wearing the hotel robe over some expensive but uncomfortable underwear. Every time I shifted, the underwear would lodge itself in a different yet equally excruciating position. I was hoping I wasn’t going to be the first bride photographed picking out a wedgie.
“Yeah, well, you’re not supposed to be crying on your wedding day,” he said, coming over and sitting next to me. He took my hands in his and kissed them. I couldn’t look at him, though. Looking at him might only make me cry harder, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to reveal my blotchy, puffy face to him. I also wasn’t sure what tricks the makeup artist had in her arsenal, but she was going to need every one of them. It would take a trowel of makeup to make me look like someone who hadn’t been up all night crying.
“Yeah, well, a girl is supposed to have someone give her away other than her best friend. A girl is supposed to have actual family at her wedding.”
Jack slid down onto the floor and knelt in front of me, my hands still in his. “Look at me,” he said.
I could not look.
“Aggie,” he whispered. “Look at me. Look at my face.”
I looked.
“You have family now. You have me, and at some point in the future, we’ll have children, and one day we’ll dance at their weddings. I promise you, you will never be lonely again, and you’ll never have to worry about what’s coming next.” Then he reached up and took my face in his hands, kissing me until I nearly forgot why I was crying in the first place.
Jack knew. He knew that even when I wasn’t worried, I was worried that one day he would disappear like my parents. I was tired of being lonely, but I was also tired of surprises. Jack offered me love and family and an orderly, planned life that was supposed to free me from surprises. Beeks may have seen it as claustrophobic, but I welcomed it.
Now I was bathing in the unknown. I was sleeping in a strange bed, in a strange house, in a strange city. I was due to teach in a couple of hours, and I had no idea what lay before me. So much for predictability.
I drank the entire pot of coffee standing at the shallow counter, because there was no sitting in this kitchen. Eventually, I’d have to put down the coffee and put on some clothes. I hadn’t fully unpacked yet, so I riffled through the few suitcases and boxes I’d brought with me. The small collection of designer clothes Jack had bought for me—without me, without ever asking my size, in time I didn’t know he had to spare, the clothes that just showed up hanging on the closet door or spread out across the bed—those clothes were in separate boxes. I had sold my jewelry to drive here and set myself up until paychecks arrived, and the designer clothes were all I had left should stuff really start flying at the fan. Those clothes were an insurance policy.
I stared at the pile I’d unpacked on my bedroom floor, and I wished I’d saved clothes from my preschool days. Over a period of our first three months together, Jack had slowly gotten rid of all my Old Navy sundresses, the brightly colored pants
that were on sale at the end of the season at J. Crew (What? Nobody wanted tangerine capris?), the gauzy T-shirts I wore until they practically disintegrated on me like the biodegradable paper plates I would be instructed to buy as a new wife. Now all I had was a box of ridiculously expensive tight jeans that cost as much as a week’s salary, and that were off-limits, according to the school dress code. This left only a few boxes of what I quickly discovered was glorified yoga gear.
In hindsight, I could not have picked out a less appropriate outfit had I tried. I settled on a dress that, when I’d bought it, was billed as just the sort of thing you could throw over yoga clothes and wear to meet your friends for lunch. I once went to such a lunch and found that three other women were wearing the same dress, but only one of us had actually come from a yoga class. One of the women had spent the morning choosing fabric for the cushions of her outdoor furniture; the other had been watching an episode of Ellen she’d taped the day before. She explained that she was watching it because her trainer was on it, giving Ellen’s audience tips on how to stay in shape during the holiday season. She was watching out of loyalty, she said. She’d never normally watch daytime TV, she said. We knew she never missed an episode.
I looked down at my legs, which seemed precariously exposed without the requisite yoga pants. I couldn’t wear yoga pants to class under the dress, so I found a pair of faded black leggings I wore when Jack wasn’t home and threw them on underneath. Determined to do something about the mess of hair on my head, I wrapped it in a bun and made a note to ask about a nearby hair salon. When Jack came for me, I’d just have to explain that I had no time to blow-dry it and no money for highlights or keratin treatments to keep it straight and manageable.
I squeezed a packet of applesauce into my mouth and called Jack. I wanted him to tell me that I would be all right, that I could do this, that it would all be worth it. But all I got was the voice mail lady.
“Hey there, random, anonymous voice mail lady. If you happen to speak to my husband, please let him know that even though I’m completely unqualified and not at all ready, I’m about to be a middle school teacher. Tell him I need to talk to him. Tell him I need to hear his voice.” I hung up, stared at Jack’s picture, and slammed my phone down on the kitchen counter a little too forcefully.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of yoga breaths but struggled to focus. With my eyes closed, I needed something to think about. I couldn’t think about being in a yoga class or sitting cross-legged by the ocean, because I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t wonder if I’d ever be in another yoga class, or, worse, if I’d ever see the Pacific Ocean again. I quickly pictured Grace and began to breathe. I didn’t have room for sadness, and I had even less room for anger and frustration, so I breathed it all out, and when Grace called out for me, I was ready for her.
I fed Grace and packed her some formula and a lunch (pear sauce, a yogurt stick, a baggie of some sort of puffs, and a banana) as well as a lunch for myself (identical). I dressed her and strapped her into her stroller.
“You’re right,” I said to her as I tried to jam the little silver bars into the snap between her legs, “this stroller is ridiculous. Maybe we should trade it in for six months of groceries.” I knew Grace couldn’t understand me, but I could have sworn she nodded. I nodded back, and we walked to day care.
-6-
Day care for St. Norbert’s employees was conveniently located in between my town house and MacReady, the building that housed most of the middle school classrooms. As I pushed Grace across campus, I tried not to think about what was in store for her. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Day care had been a dirty word in Santa Monica. The moms talked about it in hushed tones on barstools in coffee shops and in the corners of baby group. It was one thing to have a baby and hire a team of people to care and cook for her. It was another thing entirely to drop your baby off in an infected room with forty other neglected babies, crawling around with runny noses, crusty eyes, and filthy, saggy, dirty diapers, all while playing with grimy toys and snacking on lint. There were a few moms, the ones who lived in the rental apartments down near the beach, the moms who had to go back to work and couldn’t afford full-time nannies, nannies who were forever in high demand and full of expectations. These were the day-care moms. Their kids got sicker, riding the welcome wagons for the new germs that came to town. What did they think when they looked at the nannied babies, whose fine baby hair was in intricate braids, who ate homemade food and spent their mornings in luxury strollers at Starbucks and their afternoons in the park?
This day care was in a building called Blackwell, halfway up one of the many hills on campus. It was a small, unimpressive stand-alone one-story building and looked like something of a mistake or an afterthought in a sea of buildings all trying to outshine one another with mismatched pillars, random statues, and elaborate moldings. The front door was locked, so I picked Grace up out of her stroller and knocked. I was about to knock again when I saw a woman ambling down the hallway toward us. I leaned away from the window, not wanting to look too eager. When I did that, I realized that it had been a little while since I’d tried not to look eager—and that I’d probably spent a quarter of my days in Santa Monica trying not to appear too anything—too lonely, too desperate, too afraid, too needy. Cool and confident wins the race out west, but in New York, I hadn’t given it a thought until now.
As the woman inside approached the door, I squinted to bring her into focus. She had long gray hair pinned in a bun atop her craggy face, and wore a large, shapeless, sleeveless denim dress. Under it was a long-sleeved red T-shirt. I would soon learn that the dress was a daily staple and that only the shirt underneath would change. Red shirts were for Mondays. There were all sorts of things hanging around her neck. The door swung open, and I stood back quickly to make room for her.
“Hello!” she announced, holding out both her arms. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted me to shake her hands or hug her, but I wasn’t ready to do either. I tried to take another step back, because she seemed to be unnaturally close to my face. I forced a smile and tried not to think about the fact that I could smell her breath. I thought back to my encounter with Gavin. What was with these people? Hadn’t anyone heard of personal space?
“DOT!” she said loudly, extending her arms out by her sides, announcing herself.
Dot. A perfect name. I saw not a stitch of makeup on her face. This was a woman for whom lipstick was for weddings and blush was something you did, not something you wore. I blinked away at my eyeliner, feeling incredibly self-conscious. It didn’t matter, though, because Dot had no interest in me or my eyeliner. She made a beeline for Grace and stooped down to make eye contact with her.
“Hello, Grace,” she said quietly, leaning back to give Grace space to take her all in. She lowered her voice. “We are so very thrilled to have you join us. I am Dot.” Grace gave her the same nod of faux comprehension she’d given me earlier.
Dot led us into the building, chattering to us as she showed us around. Day care turned out to be not what I had expected. First of all, Grace was only one of sixteen children, who ranged in age from eight weeks to three years old. Any older children were already in preschool. These were the babies and toddlers of teachers who were coming back to work after maternity leaves that were as short as six weeks. The children were divided into four groups so that Grace and three other babies shared Dot. Dot explained that the day care was housed in what used to be a carriage house, where the school’s caretaker had lived with his family. The building was old but scrubbed clean. The floors were dark wood, the walls mostly white with glossy moldings. The main playroom in the center of the house had sloping dormer ceilings. At either end of the room were enormous windows. Along the other two walls were handprints in all sizes and colors, with the name of the child who made the handprint underneath it. There was a small but sparkling kitchen, a bathroom, and four small rooms with cribs and mattresses for rest time. I didn’t see a square of dingy carpet,
only dark, shiny wood and the occasional brightly colored rubber play mat. Who knew day care could be so clean and appealing? Certainly not my squad of baby-group moms, who might’ve taken it upon themselves to raise funds for Grace had they heard she was headed to day care.
I kissed Grace goodbye and walked to the door, but something stopped me from waltzing out in that carefree way I’d left her so many times before. Partly, it was because I knew frightfully little about this place. I knew absolutely nothing about Dot other than her name and her love of denim. Jack had vetted Alma so carefully, you’d have thought she was applying for a job with the FBI counterterrorism unit. But there was more going on here than a lack of a background check on Dot. Even when she was a newborn, I’d left Grace at the blink of an eye—exercise classes and massages called, and I answered. Something was different now, and I felt queasy when I walked out of day care. I leaned on the outside wall of Blackwell, closed my eyes, and saw the word Grace. I breathed slowly until I was ready to open my eyes again, only to discover an enormous bug was coming straight for me. I ducked and ran to class.
-7-
MacReady Hall, or Mac, as I later heard the students call it, was a tall brick building with four white pillars in the front. My first class was on the fourth floor, and Mac, like most of the buildings on campus, had a small elevator that never seemed to arrive. Boys were running up and down the staircases.
I climbed up the four flights of stairs, not at all surprised that years of yoga, Pilates, and simulated bike riding had not prepared me for actual stair-climbing, and stopped at the top to catch my breath. My dress had ridden up and was now barely covering my backside. I yanked it down with my free hand, the other hand carrying my bag, a water bottle, and a last-minute box of yogurt chewies, which, for reasons I did not want to think about, did not need refrigerating.
