Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

  Oh, but he was so fucking good. He would take care of her and get her all the help she needed, but he’d also never be content to let her and the other women ride out their shame and recovery in private. He’d hop on the Claire train—The “You’ve Got a Responsibility” Express—and ride it all over the country, barnstorming and shouting until every mother in the land knew the dangers of TrueMommy.

  He put his palm against her face, checking for a fever, looking at her with his furrowed brow and pure love in his face. There was another reason she didn’t want to tell him. She’d fallen in love with him for so many reasons, but chief among them was how much he respected her. He trusted her judgment. He came to her with quandaries and asked for her advice. He’d never been one of those men who’d run from her ambition, from her forceful opinions, even though plenty of other guys had. Where past boyfriends had tried to diminish her, Daniel had stood right by her side, holding a microphone to her mouth.

  But how could he respect her in the same way after this, after she’d endangered the beautiful little jewel of a boy they’d made together?

  She’d been a bad mother. And that, it seemed, was the worst thing a woman could possibly be. A prostitute who moonlighted as a contract killer could be redeemed if she was doing it all so that she could tuck her child into a warm bed every night. But a woman could be charming, immensely intelligent, ambitious, strong, and head-turningly gorgeous, and if she screwed up her parenting, the world deemed her a piece of shit.

  Would the thought “Unfit mother, unfit mother” ring in Daniel’s head whenever he looked at her? Would something between them be irrevocably broken? She couldn’t let that happen.

  Maybe, over the course of even the best marriages, you acquired a collection of secrets that you walled off in a little section of your heart where your partner would never be allowed to go. And you did everything you could to keep the walled-off section small, to keep the secrets from slipping out of it and pervading all that was good and open and free in the rest of your heart, and you just made it work.

  She put her hand on top of his and smiled up at him. “I think I have a little bug or something,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 26

  On Tuesday, no one wanted to leave the house and come to playgroup, so Whitney canceled it for the first time since it had started. They’d just wait until Thursday, when they had to do the coffee-table-book photography shoot, which they’d agreed not to cancel, because that would be a very clear indication that things were decidedly not fine. Without the chatter of the other women, her apartment alternated between stifling and cavernous. Hope was being difficult, tugging Whitney’s hair, knocking over everything in sight like a cyclone given human form. And all Whitney wanted was bread, but she didn’t keep it in the house.

  She took Hope to Central Park, to the little playground not far from their apartment. An ice-cream truck had set up shop in the street nearby, blaring its incessant jingle over and over again, pausing in between repetitions just long enough that each time Whitney thought maybe it wouldn’t start again. But it always did. She bought a cone and nearly swallowed it whole, then ate two street hot dogs. She hadn’t eaten processed meats and crappy refined sugar like that in years. The binge turned her stomach to an anchor, weighing her to the park bench as Hope sat on the ground in front of her and pulled grass out by its roots.

  Whitney smiled blandly when Hope held up the grass to show her. “Ooh, look at that!” she said as, in her mind, she constructed a gigantic red countdown clock of the hours left until tomorrow afternoon, when she’d go meet Christopher for their weekly hotel date, when at least for an hour she could go be a desirable woman and not a swamp monster.

  When she wanted to scream—at family dinner when Hope kept throwing her food on the floor, when she ground up the rest of her TrueMommy pills in the garbage disposal because she wanted so badly to pop them all in her mouth, that night when Grant started kissing her in the dark—she focused on the countdown clock. The hours ticked down slowly, but at least they were ticking.

  And then, an hour before her babysitter was supposed to arrive, the stupid girl called her to cancel. That was what ruined everything.

  “I am so sorry to mess up your ‘me time,’ but I’ve been throwing up all morning,” the girl mumbled into the phone. “Probably food poisoning.”

  Probably hungover, Whitney thought, remembering that the girl had mentioned something last week about being almost finished with her finals. Unreliable bitch. “Oh, no!” she said, jiggling Hope against her waist with her free arm as Hope fussed and grabbed at her necklace. “Feel better! Do you have any friends who might be able to come in?”

  “Hmm,” the girl said. Hope pulled the necklace tight around Whitney’s neck, nearly choking her. Whitney wrenched Hope’s fist away too roughly, and the chain of the necklace snapped, sending beads to the floor. Hope’s face teetered on that jagged edge of Happy Baby Land, beyond which lay Tantrum City. Whitney wanted to take a little trip to Tantrum City herself, to collapse onto the ground and wail about the way that everything was unraveling, but that was not an option right now. So Whitney gave Hope a big smile to keep her in the happy place while the babysitter continued. “I don’t think so, but I can text around and let you know.”

  “That would be so great,” Whitney said. She hung up the phone, tempted to slam it against her marble countertop until it shattered while screaming every obscenity she knew. But that would scare Hope.

  She pulled up Instagram and messaged Christopher, Last-minute babysitter woes! Any chance we could push till Friday instead? She picked up the tiny beads and tried to calm Hope while the minutes ticked away and she waited for her phone to make a noise, any noise.

  And then her phone dinged, with a message from Christopher. I already rescheduled my meetings, so I wouldn’t be able to get away like this again until next Wednesday. Wait until then? I want you now.

  An ache started between her legs, so much better than the ache that had taken up residence in her head the last couple of days, despite the Advil she’d been swallowing. She wanted him now too. No, it was more than wanting. It was full-on need. She already had to give up one addiction, but no way in hell was she giving up the other. Not right now. I’ll figure something out, she wrote. See you soon.

  Still nothing from the terrible college girl she was never hiring again. Was there a Yelp for babysitters? She would give that bitch such a blistering review her skin would peel back. She wasn’t about to plop Hope down with some unvetted stranger from the Internet or some neighbor who might mention to Grant that, wow, Whitney sure had been jonesing for a massage on Wednesday afternoon, and it was a little odd.

  So even though it was probably a bad idea, she called Claire.

  “Hello?” Claire said after the third ring.

  “Claire!” Whitney said, struggling to keep her desperation from creeping into her voice. “Quick question. Are you by any chance free to come over and babysit in the next half hour?”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m actually on the way to one of my other jobs,” she said.

  “Ooh, busy busy!” Whitney said, then leaned her forehead against the cool silver surface of her fridge. “And there’s no way I could convince you to come here instead?”

  “Um . . . ,” Claire said.

  “It’s just—it’s so silly, but I’ve been doing this little Wednesday ritual each week where I take some ‘me time’ and go get a massage. Helps me maintain my sanity, you know? My regular babysitter just canceled on me last minute, and what with everything that’s going on now, I really could use the hour of relaxation. I could pay you more than your typical going rate for such a last-minute ask!”

  “Sorry. I just really don’t want to take the risk of getting fired,” Claire said. She hesitated. “But I could probably help out some other time this week if you can reschedule the massage?”

  “Okay, maybe!
” Whitney said. “Thanks, Claire!” This time when she hung up, she did scream some obscenities, only stopping when Hope began to whimper at the shock of it.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, sweet baby,” Whitney said, gathering Hope in her arms and bouncing her up and down, humming to her until the whimpering tapered off. She kissed her child on the top of her head and then did the only thing she could think to do.

  Chapter 27

  Claire didn’t want to get fired from her part-time gig behind the counter at a new vintage clothing place in midtown. It paid eighteen dollars an hour and was the easiest job in the world. Hardly anyone ever came in, so she had plenty of time to think about song lyrics and melodies. Plus the owner of the store seemed stuck as far back in the past as all the clothing he curated, so there was no chance of Vagabond ever coming on the store’s Joni Mitchell–inspired playlist. But after she hung up the phone with Whitney, alarm bells in her brain went BING BING BING.

  Whitney had sounded fucking bizarre, her voice higher than normal and so falsely cheerful, like she was one second away from bursting into tears. Sure, Claire thought, as she ducked around a group of tourists taking selfies right in the middle of the sidewalk, Whitney was going through withdrawal. But she’d been going through withdrawal on Monday, and then she’d been far more composed. Composed enough to convince them all to take their TrueMommy secret to the grave. So why was she now falling apart over a stupid massage?

  Claire shook her head and kept walking toward the store. She’d never gone through withdrawal—it could very well hit a person differently depending on the day. Something rankled at Claire—something she was forgetting—but she needed to shrug that off and get back to reality. Hey, if Claire was used to getting a weekly massage, she’d probably be desperate for one right now too, after the stress of the last few days.

  She stopped short on the sidewalk. A “Wednesday ritual,” Whitney had called it on the phone, which implied that she’d been doing it for a while. But a week and a half ago, in their room at Sycamore House, Whitney had said she hadn’t gotten a massage in forever. Hadn’t she? Claire concentrated, calling up the image of Whitney against the wall of their bedroom, trying to get at the knot in her shoulder.

  Still unmoving, Claire pulled out her phone, making the tourists on the street duck around her for once. She scrolled through Whitney’s Instagram, hunting for something she vaguely remembered, past the mommy-daughter smoothies, past a new photo of them all on the retreat, beaming. Yes, there it was, a month or so back, that “DIY Massage” photo with Hope, its caption also claiming Whitney hadn’t gotten a massage in ages. Whitney’s Momstagram wasn’t gospel—it was possible that she casually misled strangers on the Internet to make her own life seem more interesting. But why would she need to lie to Claire about something so small, unless it was to cover up something much bigger?

  Whitney had been so fucking adamant that they needed to forget TrueMommy, to not dig any deeper into it. And Amara had said that she was the one who brought the vitamins into the group in the first place and that she was generally the point of contact, the person who handed the vitamins out in those ridiculous goody bags. While she was handing the women their pills, was she handing TrueMommy something right back? Maybe they sent traffic to her social media, gave her kickbacks of some kind, in exchange for information.

  It was a stretch, for sure. And what was she going to do, go stalk Whitney because of some half-formed hunch? Claire had promised Amara to leave it all alone, and she wanted to keep that promise. Then she remembered Amara’s face the other day when they were talking about Vicki, how Amara’s concentration melted into exhaustion when she decided she was only being paranoid. How satisfying it would be to show Amara some proof that her instincts had been right and that she didn’t have to hide something her whole life. Because Amara wasn’t a hider. Amara was a shining fucking diamond, and keeping terrible secrets would only diminish her.

  A shoulder angel and a shoulder devil screamed opposing directives into Claire’s ears, but they had somehow switched body parts and pieces of clothing so they were all jumbled up—one with devil horns and angel wings, another with a harp and a forked tail—and she couldn’t tell which one was saying what. All she felt in her gut was that Whitney desperately needed a babysitter—not for a massage but for some other reason she didn’t want Claire to know.

  Half a block away from the clothing store, she texted her boss there that she’d thrown up on the subway and needed to go lie down. Then she turned around and headed toward the Upper East Side.

  Chapter 28

  When Whitney knocked on the hotel room door, Christopher opened it with that foxlike grin of his. “Get in here now,” he said. Then he registered the stroller by her side, and the grin slipped.

  “Surprise!” Whitney said, her heart pounding. “I couldn’t find another babysitter, and I was already all set to come, so . . . say hi to Hope!”

  Christopher stared at Whitney for a moment, then crouched down by the stroller and dangled his hand in front of her baby. “Hello, Hope. Pleasure to see you again.” Hope reached out and grabbed on to one of Christopher’s fingers, her face opening in baby joy, and he smiled back at her. “You’ve got a grip of steel! Are you a superhero in disguise?”

  Whitney exhaled. Already, Christopher acted so naturally with Hope. The perfect dad, ready with a joke or a bedtime story. “More like a super monster,” Whitney said, wheeling the stroller forward into the hotel room as Christopher stepped aside. “Wait till you see her walk around.” She unbuckled Hope and lifted her out of the stroller, placing her on the room’s soft, fibrous rug. “She’s like a drunk Godzilla!” She turned to Christopher as he came up behind her, and stroked his stubbly cheek. “Hey, you,” she said, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss him, thrilling at the warmth of his mouth. She traced his throat with her finger. “Thanks for being understanding about this.”

  Hope started toddling toward the Ethernet cable, and Whitney crouched down to the floor, pulling her wriggly baby into her arms. “No way, rug rat!” she said, then looked at Christopher, who was still hanging back. “Come closer,” she said, tugging him down next to her. “She may be a super monster, but she doesn’t bite. At least not yet. I’m hopeful we’ll skip that phase altogether.” Hope crawled between the two of them and stopped at Christopher, bracing herself on his lap, rising up to stare at him with preternatural concentration. He waved at her again, and Hope’s face opened in that contagious, wide-open smile Whitney loved so much. What a special child she had. In a way, it was exciting that Christopher got to spend that time with her. Her body started to unclench as the big red countdown clock in her mind flashed 00:00. She rested her head on Christopher’s shoulder, running her fingers up and down his leg, and watched her baby laugh. For the first time since Amara’s emergency text, she allowed herself to believe that, somehow, everything was going to be okay. This hour would cleanse her. She’d show up for the photo shoot tomorrow restored. And after that, she’d just take it day by day.

  “Whitney,” Christopher said, stroking her hair.

  “Mmm?” she answered, turning her face up to his.

  “I think I should go.”

  Whitney experienced a sudden rush of empathy for Wile E. Coyote, for that horrible, inevitable moment seconds after chasing the Road Runner off a cliff, when he looked down and realized he was running in midair. She’d done a reckless thing, and now she’d have to pedal her feet desperately not to break open against the ground. She gave a little tinkle of a laugh, her mouth gone desert dry.

  “Oh, no!” she said, widening her eyes in feigned innocence. “Because of Hope? I know it’s not exactly the usual Wednesday, but we can still have a nice time.”

  “Hope’s great,” he said. “Extremely cute baby. But when we’re together, I want you all to myself.” He gave her his sexiest crooked smile. “No distractions.”

  “Believe me, I don’t want any distrac
tions either,” she said, kissing his ear lightly. “But you know how it is with children. My babysitter canceled, and I wanted to see you. This was the only way I could make that work.”

  “I get it. I do,” he said. “But it might be better for all involved if we call this one a loss and wait until next week.”

  Maybe if she’d been feeling more like her normal self, she wouldn’t have needed to be with him so desperately. Maybe she could have made a little joke and left right then and there. She could have hired a more reliable babysitter for the next week, and who knows how their story would have turned out? But she wasn’t feeling like her normal self at all. “We’re already here, though,” she said. “And I hang out with Reagan all the time.”

  “Don’t say— That’s different. You know that’s different.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re being so weird about this,” she said. “You said you really wanted to see me.”

  “I did. I do.”

  “Well, here I am.” She raised an eyebrow. “Or did you mean just to have sex? A quickie and you’re out?”

  “Stop it,” he said.

  “Here, Hope and I will go,” she said, starting to stand up. “And you can just call a prostitute to come on by instead.”

  “Whitney!” he said, exasperated, digging his fingers into his temples. “Stop acting so obtuse. You know what it is. I feel uncomfortable . . . pretending to be a little family. We already have families.” Guilt came over his face at his own reminder, his eyes drifting in the direction of his suit jacket, slung over a chair. He was going to leave.

  “I didn’t come here to play house,” she said, and dug in her bag for the cheap iPad she and Grant had bought as their official baby screen—a small one, locked in an indestructible case, loaded with “educational” videos. She snapped it into the front of Hope’s stroller, then pulled up the first playlist she could find. A song began, with hyped-up cartoon barnyard animals dancing a square dance. She lifted Hope from the rug and buckled her into the stroller. “Look, Hope-y. Look at the cows!” The lure of the screen worked its magic. Hope leaned forward and began to point at the moving images. “This will be a treat for her,” Whitney said to Christopher, over her shoulder. “She hardly ever gets screen time.” She cast her eyes around the room, settling on the bathroom door. “And she can hang out in here.”