Crossing the Line

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  According to the book, by the end of the first month—now!—my baby should be able to lift her head briefly while on her stomach on a flat surface (she could do that!) and focus on a face (she could definitely do that). I flat-out loved the way she looked at me as though I were the greatest thing since silicone nipples, and I don’t even think it was so much an ego thing as it was nice to have some sort of concrete validation that I was doing my job properly.

  Under the list of things she would probably be able to do, she could respond to a bell and under the list of things she might be able to do, she could vocalize in ways other than crying, for example by cooing (she was a great cooer!) and she could smile in response to my smile (I became another person when she did that). Finally, under the super-child list of things she might even be able to do, while she couldn’t lift her head ninety degrees or hold it steady when upright, and whenever I tried to get her to follow an arc about six inches above her face for 180 degrees she just stared at me, she could bring both hands together, smile spontaneously, laugh out loud and squeal with delight.

  So, from a pure happiness standpoint, Emma and I were doing just great.

  February, the second month

  “So, are you and Tolkien back to being a romantic couple?”

  The speaker was David, and the place was his apartment, where he and Christopher and I had just finished Sunday dinner together, Emma asleep in her carrier.

  Like Tolkien, the centerpiece of their living space was a CD player, plus a huge collection of CDs. Unlike Tolkien, however, there was warmth to where they lived.

  David had always been more of a nester than I was; even before Christopher, his flat had been more like a home. Then, with the advent of Christopher, the atmosphere had grown more so. Now, even though they’d only been married a couple of months, the place had the look of one they’d shared for years. The ecru velvet sofa begged to be read on, lounged on, loved on; the eclectic selection of prints on the walls—Chagall, Orpen, a soothing Frankenthaler—were all obviously things they loved rather than just things to take up space; the dining-room table, where we were seated now, was always set nicely, with real napkins rather than paper (which I supposed was easier for some when those some owned a restaurant business), the overall feel being that this was a place where real conversations were had, where greater things transpired than the mere passing of butter.

  But getting back to the point about me and Tolkien…

  “No, why do you ask?” I asked, busying myself with clearing the table.

  “Because he’s at your place nearly all the time now,” said David.

  “Because he sleeps there at night,” said Christopher.

  “Although he’s not there now,” said David.

  “That’s probably just because he’s working at the moment,” said Christopher.

  “Yes, he is working right now,” I said. “And no, we’re not a romantic couple.”

  “It certainly seems that shoe fits to me,” said David.

  “Well, it doesn’t fit Tolkien,” I said.

  “Whyever not?” he asked.

  “Because I’ve hurt him so much?” I asked-answered. “Because he doesn’t know if he can trust me not to hurt him again?” I shook it off. “Besides, haven’t you two been paying attention? It was last month that he stayed over every night, and I think that was mostly because he was worried I might do something stupid with Emma, like toss her up in the air or try to feed her a steak or something.”

  “And now?” asked David.

  And now…

  I remembered the first night I’d been all alone with her. Tolkien, with no warning, had announced, “It’s time, Jane.”

  “But—”

  “You’ll do fine,” he said. “You’re Emma’s mother.”

  “But what about you?”

  “Well, I’m not Emma’s father,” he smiled ruefully.

  “I think she thinks you are,” I said.

  “Yes, well…”

  “I thought we might…”

  “What?” he asked. “Get back together again?”

  I didn’t say anything. Of course, for me to think that was foolish.

  “I’ll be honest, Jane, I don’t know what I feel for you anymore. The way you deceived me and everyone else…”

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “But now I see you with Emma and…”

  “Yes?”

  He shook his head. “I just don’t know.” Then he grabbed his bag. Apparently, he’d done his packing when I wasn’t looking.

  “It’ll be okay, Jane,” he said. “I’ll still be your friend, I’ll still help you out, no matter what. But she is your baby. To give her the idea that I’ll always be here, for the rest of her life, would just be wrong.”

  And then he was gone.

  That first night, I was terrified. It was far worse than that first scary night we’d brought her home together, when I was worried we would crush her, when I was worried that if I fell asleep even for a second she would cease to be.

  But, somehow, she and I got through it together. For such a tiny thing, there was great strength in her. Look what she had survived already! I took her strength as my own model, put one foot in front of the other, and moved on.

  “And now we’re friends,” I at last answered David and Christopher, thinking that with all I’d put Tolkien through, all the lies I’d told, it was no wonder he was reluctant to resume a romantic relationship. “Like you, he’s my friend.”

  The look they gave me said they didn’t believe that one for a second, but they were gracious enough to let it drop.

  “And what about work?” Christopher asked, changing the subject.

  “What about work?” I asked.

  “Are you ever going to do any again?” teased David.

  “Raising a baby is full-time work,” I said. “You two ought to try it sometime.”

  “I’m serious, Jane,” said David, laying out dessert.

  I tucked in to the chocolate mud cake. If I had enough sugar, maybe I’d go into some kind of food-clot fugue state where I wouldn’t need to make any more momentous decisions.

  “This is really good!” I said, mouth full.

  “Jane,” David warned, full stop, as he always did whenever he felt I needed reining in.

  “I don’t know,” I whined. “You decide.”

  “You want him to decide whether you should go back to work or not?” asked Christopher.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” said Christopher. “But which job is he supposed to be deciding for you about—Churchill & Stewart or being a writer?”

  “C&S, of course,” I said. “Once you’re a writer, you never retire from it. Whether you write again or not, you’re still a writer until the day you die. It’s who you are.”

  There. I was extraordinarily pleased with that statement, which sounded exactly to me like the kind of pronouncement one might hear Martin Amis make; in other words, provocative, labyrinthine and, yes, quite probably wrongheaded.

  “I think you should go back to C&S,” said David.

  “But why?” I whined.

  “Hey,” said Christopher, “I thought you wanted someone else to decide this for you.”

  “I did, but—”

  “You should go back because it will be good for both you and Emma,” David said.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Because you’ll be a more well-squared person.”

  “Rounded,” Christopher said around a mouthful of cake. “He means well-rounded.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, although I do think a square would do as well.”

  While Christopher and I tried to figure that one out, confused frowns on our faces and everything, David went on.

  “You’ll be better for Emma if you have more in your life than just Emma—”

  “There’s no such thing as ‘just Emma’!” I objected.

  “—and Emma will be more appreciative of her time
with you if she has something to weigh it against,” he continued, ignoring my outburst. “Plus, she won’t grow up terrified of other people or of losing you.”

  He made a weird kind of maternal sense for a gay guy who’d never had any kids.

  “But will she still realize how much I love her if I’m not with her all the time?”

  “Yes,” said David, “because you love her so much whenever you are with her.”

  “But how will I work the childcare thing? I won’t leave her with a stranger!”

  I will admit here, by the way, that whenever I wasn’t feeling totally serene because of Emma, being a new mother was bringing out the more strident sides of my personality. It felt like my life was full of exclamation points all of a sudden.

  “You’ll leave her with us,” said David.

  “Of course,” said Christopher.

  “But you both work! You have the restaurant!” There were those exclamation points again.

  “So what?” David shrugged. “We could let George,” he added, referring to the sous chef, “run lunch so we don’t have to go in until five.”

  “Or we could just play around with our hours a bit,” said Christopher.

  “You mean work different shifts from one another?” David asked.

  “Sure. Why not? That way, one of us can be here for Emma all the time,” said Christopher, evading David’s gaze, which was odd for him.

  “You think that will be good for our relationship?” asked David.

  “Yes,” said Christopher, still evading. “Like with Jane and Emma. Too much togetherness can be a negative thing. It’s best if you can always find ways to keep an old thing new.”

  “True,” David admitted.

  “Besides,” said Christopher, looking at me now, “tons of people telecommute for at least part of the workweek now. I’d think that, with your book coming out and its undoubted success, it would add a little cachet to old C&S to keep you on staff, even part-time.”

  They’d thought of everything.

  I exhaled. “Well it looks like you two have made up my mind for me.”

  “Looks like,” they said.

  “Now, then, the next question…Will Churchill & Stewart want me back?”

  Even though it had been months since I’d been over there, Dodo’s apartment was unchanged. It was still the Architectural Digest retreat of a sad lonely princess: beautiful and sterile, untouched. All it needed was a man, or any kind of mate really, to make it come alive, but none was forthcoming.

  A mate is not the answer to life for every woman, but it would have been for Dodo. Despite the soft lighting, the chenille throws and carpet, the presence of much-loved books encased in beautiful cherry wood barrister’s shelves, where David’s and Christopher’s place soothed “warmth,” Dodo’s place averred “cold.” I dunno. Maybe it was just the glass coffee table that was putting me off.

  I sat on Dodo’s plush moss-colored velvet sofa much as I had those months before, only this time, I didn’t have a fake baby wrapped around my belly.

  When I’d rung Dodo up, asking if I could come over for a chat, I’d said I wanted to bring Emma with me. I’ll admit it: I was scared to face Dodo alone. I had, in a sense, let her down more than anybody—she had invested more interest and more sheer goodness in my “pregnancy” than anybody, and I was using my beautiful baby as armor. If a train were to come barreling down the tracks one day, I’d do what any self-respecting parent would do: I’d push my baby out of the way and take the hit. But take the brunt from a wounded Dodo?

  I made sure Emma was between us at all times.

  “So you feel as though you’re ready to return to work,” she said, pouring tea.

  “You did say before I went on maternity leave that whenever I was ready to come back, a job would be waiting for me.”

  “I also said you’d be returning to a new job as an editor in your own right, since Constance is now my assistant.”

  “You did say that.” I tread carefully, not wanting to rock her boat.

  “Of course—” she stirred her tea “—that was before I learned that your maternity leave was not your typical run-of-the-mill maternity leave.”

  “I realize that, Dodo, but I thought I explained already—”

  “What? That somehow the reason you continued with your charade of a fake pregnancy was somehow for my benefit?”

  “For your benefit? No, I guess not. But because I didn’t want to hurt you by having you learn the truth after how you’d helped me so? In a very real sense, yes, Dodo.”

  “But I found out anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m hurt anyway.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And now you want to come back to work with me anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  Coo. Emma, of course.

  “And—” Dodo tried to continue.

  Coo. Emma, again.

  “And—”

  Coo.

  “And, my God, but she’s the most beautiful baby who ever lived, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is, Dodo, she really is!”

  “Can I hold her?”

  “Of course. Here, let me help you.”

  Dodo carefully took her from me, beaming at her all the while.

  “Just be sure to support her neck,” I said. “That’s really the big thing you need to worry about.”

  “She really is beautiful, Jane.”

  “Thanks.” I blushed, feeling inordinately proud, even though I had nothing to do with the making of her. “David says she has my mouth.”

  Dodo looked at me sharply.

  “David’s right,” she said.

  Then her gaze returned to Emma and she caressed her cheek with a finger, cooing back at her.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Dodo asked.

  “How so?”

  “Don’t you think she deserves to be raised by her real mother, or at least her own people?”

  “Oh, no! Not you too!”

  She looked up. “Who else has said this to you?”

  “My mother.”

  “Oh.” She was silent for a minute, clearly flummoxed by that news. “Oh,” she finally said again. “Well, I’m not sure that’s a category I want to find myself in.”

  “Then don’t!” I implored her.

  “But what other choice do I have? Because the truth is, I firmly believe a child is better off growing up in the culture he or she comes from.”

  “Whoever gave birth to Emma was able to just walk away from her, Dodo. However painful it might have been—and I can’t imagine it being anything but—the woman was able to walk away from her.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And. I. Love. Her.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Don’t help the world to hurt her more, Dodo. Help me to help her.”

  “How?”

  “By, oh, I don’t know, instead of telling me what I don’t know, helping me learn what I should know.”

  “For example?”

  “Food, music—whatever might have been in Emma’s background that I might not know about.”

  “But what music, what food?”

  “I’m thinking Caribbean, specifically Trinidad. That’s where I think Emma’s ancestors came from.”

  “Why?”

  “I dunno…hunch? Statistics, at any rate.”

  I was pretty sure I had read that somewhere.

  “So you want me to research Caribbean food and music, and you think that will somehow help Emma?”

  “It will certainly add richness to the life I can give her, yes. What else is there to life, besides food and music and love?”

  “Language?” she suggested.

  “I’ll get that for her somehow. Just watch me.”

  “I’m good at research,” she said.

  “I know that.”

  “And you’ll probably want me to sit for her sometimes, right? I mean, after all, I will be the one who will know all
about the food and music.”

  “Emma and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “When do you want to come back to work?” she asked.

  “You mean you’ll have me back?” I asked, not daring to believe it.

  “Well,” she said, “you did discover Mona Shakespeare, after all,” Mona Shakespeare being the crazy but brilliant American author I’d discovered about halfway through my fake-pregnancy days.

  “In that case, I’d like to come back next month,” I said, caressing Emma’s other cheek and thinking about what a truly fine woman Dodo was. “I’m in no rush to leave her just yet.”

  Then we talked for a moment about the practical details, about David’s and Christopher’s idea that I could work from home part of the time, which she agreed with.

  Just then, Emma spit up a bit, but Dodo blithely smiled as she gently wiped Emma’s mouth before dabbing at her own expensive blouse.

  “Of course, you’ll need an assistant,” she said.

  “I will?”

  “Of course. All editors need an assistant.”

  Dodo had decided to throw me a shower.

  True, I’d already had one shower, given by my mother as a matter of shocking fact. Not to sound like an ingrate, but it had hardly been a treat. When I tried to object to the notion of a second shower, Dodo objected, “But that was during the fake pregnancy! Now you have a real baby here! We must do something to mark the occasion!”

  Perhaps her new role in Emma’s life, as cultural ambassador, had gone to her pretty little well-meaning head? Regardless, she must have realized that my mother, feeling as she did about Emma, wasn’t likely to throw a second shower. As for Soph, what few times she and Dodo were in the same room together, there was always some kind of Battle of the Blondes thing going on that led me to believe each found the other in some way intimidating, so I supposed Dodo didn’t feel she could prod her into doing it.

  Dodo, being Dodo, wanted to do things in a genteel way. So she’d rented out a tearoom not far from her place. Extreme? You may well wonder. But the way I looked at it, Dodo was probably reckoning that she’d rather pay for what breakage and spitting up a small herd of people plus a baby or two might cause in a public place, than seeing her own designer flat ill-used.

  Realizing that it would be best not to surprise me, she’d even consulted me on the guest list.