When It Happens to You

by Molly Ringwald

  “It’s nice that she likes it so much,” Greta said finally. She sat back at the table and looked at her husband.

  Phillip leaned against the kitchen counter and idly began to organize the various objects—prized flea-market finds, old medicine bottles, ashtrays from long-shuttered hotels—in horizontal lines. He nodded steadily as though listening to a song in his head. She watched him go far, far away from her, and then snap back.

  “Hey, I wanted to let you know that I’ll do the long-term parking. I don’t want you driving me to the airport so early.”

  “I don’t mind. If we put her in the back, she’ll fall right back asleep.”

  “No, you can use the sleep. And the company will cover it.” He walked over to where Greta was sitting and kissed the top of her head.

  “Christ, your hair smells good,” he said.

  “What does it smell like?” she asked, eager for the compliment.

  “Apples,” he said after taking another long inhalation. “Green apples.” He turned to go, but she grabbed his hand.

  “Don’t leave,” she said.

  “It’s just for three days.”

  She pulled him close, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his stomach. It didn’t seem fair that his stomach remained firm and hard while hers softened as the hormones accelerated her body into thinking it had to conceive.

  “No, I mean don’t leave right now. This second. We never have any time without Charlotte . . .”

  “And yet, you want to do it all again.”

  She drew back from him and looked up at his face.

  “ ‘You’? Don’t you mean us? Or is this divine conception we’re talking about?”

  “Us,” he corrected.

  Charlotte’s hasty steps ricocheted down the hallway and into the kitchen as she bounded into the room, stopping at the sight of her parents embracing.

  “I saw that,” she said, with a knowing look. It was a habit she had picked up the same month she had turned five. Greta wondered where. At a playdate? Did she hear someone else say it? What did the kids talk about all day at that strange neighborhood Montessori school?

  Following at a short distance behind, Theresa approached the kitchen. She paused at the doorway, shifting her weight from foot to foot as if awaiting permission to enter. It was exasperating to Greta, and straining to hide her annoyance, she motioned for Theresa to come in. It seemed to Greta that Theresa was one of those girls who spent all of her time being an imposition while obviously trying not to be an imposition. Almost everything Theresa said or did broadcast the message “I won’t take it for myself. You’ll have to give it to me.” So Greta felt perpetually obliged to invite her to sit down, offer her food, and question her about her life, only to receive the same elusive and monosyllabic answers. Their conversations inevitably dwindled into silence within minutes.

  “Those scales sounded great!” Greta said.

  “Her fingering is getting much more confident—can you hear it?” Theresa murmured.

  “I can definitely hear it,” Phillip said. He grabbed Charlotte and hugged her close as she flailed for show. “You are my brilliant girl.” He extravagantly kissed the top of her head and then opened his arms to let her free. She lurched forward and then flung herself back into his embrace as he closed his arms around her in a familiar display of their father-daughter choreography.

  Greta was anxious to finish their dinner. She had deliberately fed Charlotte early to give her and Phillip the chance to have dinner by themselves. Their daughter’s long and arduous march to bedtime was looming ahead and with Phillip leaving in the morning, she desperately wanted at least fifteen minutes alone with him before the hormone drugs put her to sleep. These days, the mere touch of her cheek on the cotton pillowcase made her eyes heavy. She knew that she should invite Theresa to dinner—it’s what she had learned in the house she grew up in, where anyone who dropped by unexpectedly was given their own place at the table before they were even asked. And knowing that Theresa would decline, there was even more reason to offer. But she might say yes. There was a chance, however minuscule, and Greta didn’t want to take it.

  “I’ll walk you out to your car,” Phillip said to Theresa.

  As Theresa quietly followed Phillip down the hall to the front door, Charlotte scrambled to her feet and ran after them. It was at this late hour, when she was punchy and tired, that Charlotte became wildly unaware of where her personal space ended. Her arms became elastic and floundering, and she ran too fast, inevitably failing to see the edge of the table, the corner angle of the hallway, or the slick bathroom tiles. Recently Greta had rifled through Charlotte’s bedroom to find her sticker collection so she could apply them to all of the plate glass windows, out of fear that, if they were left unmarked, her daughter would fly right through them one night.

  “Theresa,” Charlotte called out as she ran, “I want to hug you good-bye!”

  Greta got up and followed them, arriving at the front door just as Charlotte threw herself at Theresa. She collided against her with so much force that Greta heard Theresa take a little involuntary breath. She staggered back a step, accidentally dropping her violin. Somehow Phillip caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Easy, Charlotte, easy now,” he said, holding the violin and motioning for his daughter to disengage herself.

  “See you next week, Lottie,” Theresa murmured. It was a nickname that Greta had never used, but what surprised her the most was the lack of reaction from Charlotte. It must not have been the first time her daughter had heard it.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Phillip said, touching Charlotte on the shoulder. “You’ll see her very soon. Say good-bye now.”

  But Charlotte only grabbed on tighter. Theresa laughed nervously. She looked to Phillip with a helpless widening of the eyes.

  Greta noticed Phillip’s expression hardening, Greta’s signal to intervene.

  “Charlotte,” Greta said, her voice raised. “I’m going to count to three, and then there will be a consequence. One . . . two . . .”

  Just before Greta reached three, Charlotte released Theresa. Then she tipped forward on her toes and very quickly and deliberately kissed Theresa’s breasts—first the left, then the right. Theresa gasped and instinctively crossed her arms to cover her chest. Her face flushed as she looked apologetically at Greta and Phillip and then down, clearly disoriented by their daughter.

  Both parents were stunned. Charlotte looked at them, challenging with a smile.

  “Charlotte!” Phillip yelled. But before he could say anything else, she had raced off to her room. They heard the door slam behind her. “What the fuck?” he said to Greta.

  “I’ll deal with it,” she told Phillip. “Sorry, Theresa. I don’t know what is going on with her.”

  Theresa smiled and waved her hand dismissively “Kids love me,” she said.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you out,” Phillip said as he glanced back at Greta. “I’ll be just a minute.”

  Greta set off down the hallway, preparing to initiate the long slumbering process, calculating in her mind just how many books she was required to read before she could turn off the light and lie with her husband in their own bed.

  Phillip returned minutes later and interrupted Charlotte’s supervised teeth brushing with the news that Theresa had accidentally locked her keys in her car.

  “I don’t understand. How did she—”

  “They were in her purse,” he said. “She forgot.”

  “Does she have Triple-A or . . .” Greta trailed off, noticing that Phillip already had the keys to the Volvo in his hand. “You aren’t driving her home, are you?”

  Charlotte jumped up and down with her mouth full of toothpaste. “Can I come? Can I come?”

  Greta put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and directed her back to the bathroom sink. Charlotte cupped her little hands together, rinsed her mouth, and spat.

  “Her sister has a spare key, but she’s stuck at
the house and can’t come over.”

  “I wanna come!” Charlotte pleaded. She ran over to her father and stood on his feet with her own.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. It’s past your bedtime. Next time, I promise.”

  “Mean Daddy!” Charlotte shrieked. She ran out of the bedroom and down the hall to her own room, slamming the door once again.

  He sighed and turned off the faucet that Charlotte had left running.

  “Phillip! You’re leaving in the morning! Couldn’t she take a cab?” Greta tried to sound reasonable but failed to disguise the neediness in her own voice.

  “It’s not far. I’ll be back before you even have a chance to wash your face,” he said, and quickly kissed her. “Don’t you dare fall asleep without me!”

  Mother and daughter curled up limb over limb next to each other in the narrow twin bed. Hair had been brushed, books read, closets checked for monsters, and nightlights strategically placed around the room. Greta ran her fingers through Charlotte’s hair and tried to keep up her end of the conversation while her eyes ached with fatigue. She wondered if Phillip had left Theresa’s sister’s house yet and if he would try to multitask on the way home—use every moment wisely, as his consultant brain told him (and often told her). Pick up bread, Saran Wrap, and two-percent milk from the local twenty-four-hour supermarket. He might try to buy an early edition of the Wall Street Journal or the Times, even though he could get either of these online; for years now he still insisted on buying the print edition. “I like the dirtiness of the ink on my fingers.” She remembered him saying this to her in grad school, when he was getting his MBA, and how it would never fail to make her hot and embarrassed.

  Charlotte reached up under Greta’s arm and scratched the back of her neck.

  “And what if I grew extra arms and legs, and they were furry like a spider, would you still love me then?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yes, I would,” Greta answered, though there was really no need to. This wasn’t a game about answers but about questions. How outrageous, unpleasant, and fearsome could we become and still be loved?

  Charlotte snuggled into Greta deeper. “Okay,” Greta said, “Two more, then I’m going to my bed.”

  “Where’s Daddy? I want a Daddy snuggle, too.”

  “Not tonight, honey. He’ll come give you a kiss when he gets home.”

  Charlotte’s body went rigid for a moment, preparing for a fight, but then she yawned as exhaustion overpowered the desire to protest.

  “And what if . . . I had a nose like this?” Charlotte took her little finger and smushed her nose down and a bit to the side. “Like this all the time . . . or, no. Just on Tuesdays.” She lifted her head up for Greta’s inspection and frowned when she saw that her eyes were closed. “Mama, you have to look!” Greta opened her eyes halfway and glanced at her daughter.

  “Well, since it’s only on Tuesdays . . .”

  “No, all the time,” Charlotte emended the question.

  “Yes, I would still love you.” Greta sighed and closed her eyes again. “One more, honey, so make it a good one.”

  Charlotte was silent for a moment. Greta could feel the sleep beginning to overtake her. She tried to breathe in the same rhythm as her daughter, to make as little noise as possible so as to gently lull her to sleep. The trick was to get her to sleep without falling asleep herself. She hoped to be able to take a bath and change into something pretty. Maybe the sheer cotton lace nightgown that Phillip bought her in Spain during that long-ago year they took off from school together. He had seen her fingering the lace trim and asking the old woman the cost in her halting Spanish before putting it back on the rack. It was more money than she allowed herself to spend on clothes in those days. Not with more than a hundred grand in student loans and the cost of the wedding they were hoping to save up for. While she was at the pensione taking a nap, Phillip had found his way back through the maze of the Andalusian streets to the tiny store and bought the nightgown. He presented it to her with such boyish pride when she woke up that her heart swelled with her love of him. She put the garment on just for him to take off.

  Oh God, how she missed him. How she missed the closeness in the years before Charlotte, when they would excite each other with only a look, a word, or a promise of what they would do to each other later—after class or after a party. Those days when they would come at each other breathless from the sheer force of their desire and make love until their bodies rebelled against them, leaving the two trembling and happy and raw.

  Charlotte’s sleepy voice jarred her back to the present.

  “And what if . . . I didn’t love you? Would you still love me?”

  The question puzzled Greta. She looked at her daughter in profile. How much she looked like him! The fair skin and the freckles and even the exact same blue vein across her forehead. The slender nose and the green-and-blue sea-glass eyes and the eyelashes curled to blond tips. There seemed to be virtually nothing of her in her daughter’s face that she recognized as her own. Not that it should matter, of course. She had read somewhere that offspring resemble the father at birth so that he has visible proof of paternity and won’t abandon the child or, worse, attack it. Charlotte was living proof of Phillip’s virility. She was a carbon copy of him. Could this be an obscure motivation for wanting to do it again, to create a child that looked like her instead of her husband? Could she possibly be that narcissistic?

  Greta and Phillip had tried unsuccessfully to have a second child since Charlotte was two. Their failure was surprising to both of them since they had conceived their daughter within weeks of Greta’s stopping birth-control pills. It didn’t seem possible after all that time trying not to get pregnant to suddenly try and then fail. But as months and then years passed, they finally had to accept that they were going to be one of those statistics. They briefly considered adoption, but Greta worried about the possibility of favoring their biological child. Greta’s mother had been raised by a stepfather who treated her half siblings with far more indulgence and care, and Greta could never quite silence her mother’s voice intoning, “Better to have all adopted children—don’t mix the two.”

  The transition to assisted conception was gradual. They bought books that Phillip diligently highlighted with questions for the doctors. Greta learned about checking her cervical fluid and making fertility charts. They took her basal body temperature and made love according to its fluctuations. The doctors started Greta on low doses of Clomid, and several attempts of the “turkey baster” were all met with no success. By the time they prepared to try in-vitro fertilization, they were already so stressed-out and exhausted that they silently dreaded it. They would wait in the doctor’s waiting room like weary warriors on the sidelines of a battle that already seemed to be lost.

  “Important to keep positive outlook!” their first doctor’s Chinese nurse practitioner would tell Greta while she searched for a vein to take blood. Chin Lau Wong was fond of quoting inspirational aphorisms to keep her patients’ spirits up. “If you are in hurry, you never get there,” or “A journey of a thousand miles begin with single step.” When Greta repeated one of these platitudes to Phillip, flawlessly imitating the accent for laughs, Phillip told her that Chin Lau Wong should shut the fuck up and write for a greeting-card company. The rancor and dismissal of her husband’s reply stunned her. They had always made each other laugh in the worst of times. It was one of the things that she felt they relied upon when everything else faltered—when his parents died or when her nephew went missing and they found out he had been doing heroin since dropping out of school at fifteen. The only thing dependable in times such as these was the comfort of their love, the thing that she believed in above all else.

  She realized at that moment that she had never answered Charlotte’s question.

  “Yes. I would love you,” she whispered into her daughter’s hair. “Even if you didn’t love me. I would always love you.”

  What is it that keeps us in fear of revelation? By wh
ose design it is that we are held, suspended, hovering over our own lives? Bearing witness to it, yes, but not remembering. Choosing not to remember. The shy glances, the nervous tenor, the new gym membership, the unnecessary errands. What keeps us from noticing? Or if noticing, then not telling ourselves that these details matter. We need to pay attention. Because if we don’t . . . then what?

  What is it that keeps us safe from what we know, should know to be true? Is it really ignorance, or is it a sort of kindness that we give to ourselves? A part of us takes over. Just put it off until we’re stronger, it would say if it had a voice that we could hear. You’re not ready yet. You’re not ready. Let everyone else see it but not me. Spare me this. Please, not this.

  It was past three in the morning when Greta awoke to the sound of the shower running. She was alone in bed. Twice already during the night, she had reached her arm across to Phillip’s side and found it empty. She had thought about getting up and going into his office, where he was probably working on the case as he often did before he left on business, but the bed was so warm and Charlotte would certainly be up at six and demanding her attention. At least, that’s what she had told herself.

  She got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. Phillip was standing in the shower with his eyes closed, hot water streaming over his head. The moon shone down on him directly from the skylight above, and his pale skin looked even paler in the light. She stared at him, thinking that he looked like something holy.

  He opened his eyes and gasped at the sight of her.

  “Jesus!” he said, and put his palm over the left side of his chest, over his heart. “You’re awake.”

  “So are you.” Greta stood just outside the open tiled shower in her cotton nightgown. If he noticed that it was the nightgown, he gave no indication. He took the bar of soap, lathered it up between his hands, and then ran it over his body, turning away from her as he washed between his legs.

  “You were sound asleep when I got home,” he said to her over his shoulder. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”