Crossing the Line

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  I nearly smiled—that seemed like a fine honor to win from his quirky parents—but then I realized the conversation was causing him discomfort.

  “Naturally, I never told them the reason for the breakup.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “I’m not sure really. I think I didn’t want it to reflect badly on you.”

  He took my breath away. After everything that had happened, he was still so protective of me.

  I thought back to all the boys, all the men I’d dated in my life, right up to and including Trevor. Every single one would have jumped at the chance to tell a story that reflected badly on me, if it meant saving face with their mates and kin. And who could blame them, really? Most people, when faced with the short end of the stick of romantic loss, are all about saving face.

  “Then what did you tell them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I told them we just hadn’t been able to work it out.”

  “And now,” I pressed, “since the night I showed up on your doorstep with Emma?”

  There was that shrug again. “I haven’t even told them we’re back in touch again,” he said.

  I had to ask it again: “Whyever not?”

  “Because I don’t know what the future will be. Because they had a lot invested in you, in the idea of us.” He looked at me hard. “They liked you, Jane. I don’t want to get them started thinking that there might be an ending to the story that just may not be possible.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. On one level, I knew I was hearing one of the most serious truths he’d ever spoken to me. On another level, I was aware that, despite his ambivalent feelings toward me, toward any future we might still have together, he had yet to send me away, he had yet to tell me he no longer wanted to be a part of my crazy life.

  For all the seriousness of our talk, it was nice to finally be alone with him again. Much as I loved Em—was obsessed nearly every breathing moment with Em—it was nice to be talking with him about something other than baby for a change.

  I finished off the last of my own sandwich and tried to put a bright face on it as I reached into the basket for the mousse. “There’s no need for us to solve the entire problem of our futures right this second.”

  Just then, there was a knock on the door and the guard I’d encountered earlier poked his head around the door.

  Seeing us as we were situated on the blanket on the floor, me on my knees as I was about to serve Tolkien dessert, he gave Tolkien an amused smile.

  “Right, guv,” he said, “just wanted to make sure you were doing okay in here. You know—” he nodded at me “—that one really does look dangerous.”

  I rang the bell, then waited with Emma in my arms. As I waited for the door to be opened, I glanced at my watch—ten minutes early! I was that nervous, I was actually early for an appointment.

  The door swung open and there was Mary Jr., baby Martha all snuggled in her arms.

  “You found it! Great!” she enthused. “Well, come on.”

  When I’d attended—er, crashed—Mary Sr.’s funeral the month before, after thanking me for coming, Mary Jr. had asked how I knew her mother, her mother whom I had claimed to love so well.

  Not able to think of anything better, and remembering from the obit that Mary Sr. had been a cleaning lady, I’d said, “From my office, of course. She used to do the offices where I work. And your mother was so, well, you know what your mother was like, that we all just loved her so much, she was more like family than someone who cleaned up after us.”

  “I felt the same about her,” she smiled ruefully and it took me a minute to grasp what she meant.

  “Yes, I guess she would be more like family to you, because she was family,” I said, wishing I could stop feeling as though I were putting my foot in it.

  “It’s strange, though,” she said.

  “What’s strange?”

  “All the people my mother did for over the years and you’re the only one to show up.”

  “Yes, well,” I said, “you know how white people are.”

  “Come again?” she said.

  “It’s just that I think some of them might feel awkward, like maybe they’d be intruding or something.”

  “You do realize you’re white, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, but…” I said, tilting Emma’s face toward Mary Jr. so she could get another look at her.

  “Where’s her father?” Mary Jr. asked, seemingly out of the blue, although I suppose it could have been one of those just-trying-to-be-polite-by-making-conversation-with-the-whacko gestures.

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

  “You mean you don’t know where he is at the moment, as in ‘He could be doing the shopping or out with his mates’ or do you mean it like ‘He’s gone and I don’t know his whereabouts or if he’s ever coming back’?”

  “Both,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “Well, since the second is most definitely true, the first fits neatly inside that, doesn’t it? If I don’t know where he is in London, England, the United Kingdom, Europe, planet Earth, the universe, then I don’t really know if he’s shopping or with his mates either, do I? I guess he could be, but there’s no way for me to know that, is there?”

  “Ah,” was all she said, “one of those.”

  From there we turned to talk of our babies. Hers, Martha, was her first, and she was just a month older than Emma. Mary Jr. was also a single mother, only she’d had to return to work almost right away.

  Before I got to ask about what she did, though, her brothers indicated that she should be spending time with some mourners other than me. For myself, I was surprised she’d spent so much time with me, but I supposed that maybe it was a bit of a relief, talking about something other than loss.

  As she turned to go, I said, “Hang on, please!”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t suppose…I mean, well…that is…you see, I don’t know many black people, not any in fact now that your mother is gone—”

  “Well, you do know Emma’s father.”

  “Right. But, er, as I thought we’ve agreed, he’s nowhere to be found. Anyway, I don’t want to rob Emma of her rightful cultural tradition—”

  “What about the father’s family?”

  “His family? Um, no, I don’t exactly know his family…”

  “That’s a real shame,” she said. “The older generation always has so much to share.”

  I thought of my own mother and how little she had to share that I thought worth having. Mary Jr. couldn’t have made that statement to a less sympathetic listener.

  “Right,” I said. “Anyway, I was thinking it might be good to get Emma involved in some kind of play with other kids—”

  “You mean like a playgroup?” she brightened.

  “Sure. I guess that’s what you’d call it.”

  She juggled Martha, reached into her purse and extracted pen and paper, commenced scribbling on her lifted knee; it’s amazing what mothers can do with one hand.

  “Here you go,” she said. “Ring me. I’m in a group with four other women. We meet at my place, Saturday mornings because we all work during the week. Everybody brings a bit of food and a toy to share, so it’s not the same stuff all the time, but I suspect that as the babies get bigger, they won’t be so satisfied with just a ball or two.”

  And she was gone, moving on to speak with the other funeral attendees.

  It had taken me nearly a month to get over my nervousness and now here I was, at her home.

  As she led me through the flat, I asked, “What did you say you do again?”

  “I’m a secretary to a lawyer,” she said.

  I tried not to look shocked at the meager place she lived in: a single room bedsit in Brixton with kitchenette and a shared bath down the hall.

  “What can I say?” she shrugged. “I never said he was a good lawyer.”

  On a small table by the window, there were pictures of Ma
ry Jr.’s family, nearly all of whom I recognized from the funeral. There was one girl, however, a teenager with haunted eyes that I didn’t recall having seen there.

  “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Mary Jr. sighed, “that’s Sarah. She’s one of Luke’s girls. She went missing several months ago and no one’s heard from her since. That was her last school picture.”

  Then the doorbell rang and it was time for me to meet Jade, Chantelle, Marisa and Charmaine, not to mention their babies.

  Surprisingly, at least to me, they took my presence there in stride. I supposed Mary Jr. must have warned them about me, perhaps something along the lines of, “I met this weird white woman at Mum’s funeral who has a black baby and wants to see if we do things any different—hope that’s okay,” but there was no way of knowing and no polite way to ask. What with all the comparing of babies’ progress, and voiced concerns over things like cradle cap and Charmaine’s personal concern that her husband’s strictly Spanish language approach might put her daughter at a learning disadvantage, I quickly forgot the distances between where I was and where I lived, and just about everything else for that matter.

  God, what I wouldn’t give for a cigarette, I thought, leaving Mary Jr. and her friends behind me as I closed the door.

  Correction, I wouldn’t give Emma for a cigarette—and I wouldn’t give Tolkien or David or Dodo (or Kick the Cat or Christopher on their good days)—but, well, pretty much everyone else was up for grabs.

  I’d been a casual smoker since I was something like ten, which may be a bit of a Jane exaggeration…but not by much. I’d also been a casual drinker for nearly just as long, ever since I’d nicked some Blackberry Schnapps from Mum’s liquor cabinet and got Sister Soph drunk. Even during my pretend-pregnancy days, I hadn’t quit either habit, which had been David’s main argument as proof that I wasn’t really serious, at the time, about being a mother.

  Not that I’d indulged in either all that much. If I smoked more than five cigarettes, it had to have been a pretty shitty day at work. If I smoked more than ten, it meant I’d got drunk. As for the drinking itself, it wasn’t like I was an alcoholic; and yeah, I do know that all alcoholics say that, but I really wasn’t. Every now and then I’d have a glass of wine with dinner, if there was a party I’d have a few with everyone else, if life really sucked I’d get drunk with David. Sounds pretty normal, right?

  Of course, a lot has been made in the critical press about the drinking/smoking habits of women of a certain age: mine. Particularly when referring to books, they like to point out those habits, in addition to a propensity to shop, as being prime indicators of shallowness.

  As if.

  I’ve never been a big shopper myself, but I applaud the women who do; after all, they’re the ones driving the economy, right? As for the other vices, smoking and drinking, I just could never see the need to demonize people. I mean, there’re a lot worse things a person can do, right? Incest, rape and world leaders who lie being just a few things that spring readily to mind.

  Of course, since I’d had Emma, my thinking had changed a bit. Oh, I don’t mean I was ready to tell everyone else how to live their lives. But the day I’d brought her home, I’d tossed the remainder of a pack of cigarettes without thinking twice. Not that it was easy, mind you. But I couldn’t see blowing smoke around her and, frankly, she didn’t give me the time.

  Hell, babies don’t even give you time to masturbate.

  I couldn’t imagine what it was like having a new baby in the house for women who’d borne their own children, their bodies feeling tired from performing a miracle. All I’d done prior to having my baby was to spend the evening feeling sorry for myself and then I’d taken a little walk, until I found a baby on a doorstep. No need for a doula there. But imagine trying to care for a baby after, say, a sixteen-hour labor or tearing or stitches. I couldn’t.

  I supposed that there might come a time when Emma kept me less busy, that I might someday smoke the odd cigarette or two outside the house, since it was something I enjoyed. And I was sure I’d have wine again with friends, although I couldn’t ever see getting drunk unless someone else was taking care of Emma for the night. But yes, I would drink again. After all, just because I wouldn’t do those things right now, it didn’t mean I’d ceased wanting to.

  So, since I was no longer a smoker or a regular drinker, did this all make me A New Jane?

  I looked down at Em in my arms.

  “Bollocks,” I said to her softly.

  I was The Old Jane + Baby.

  I’d just put Emma down for her nap, thinking to get a load of laundry in—again, it’s amazing how little you get done with a small child in the house!—when the phone rang. I snatched it up, hoping it wouldn’t wake Emma before she’d got the chance to properly start sleeping.

  “Hello?” I whispered.

  “Jane Taylor?”

  “Yes,” I replied cautiously, thinking if it was yet another person calling to offer me a new credit card or life insurance, I’d hang up.

  “Stephen Triplecorn here.”

  Drat! I’d been wondering when his other shoe was going to drop on me. Then I went into a panic. Barely daring to breathe, I asked, “Have you found Emma’s birth mother?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, “not that we haven’t tried, but it would appear, at least for the moment, that the baby you found has no history at all. At any rate, I’ve been going over your file in my computer here and I’ve noticed something troubling.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. Even though your name is on my list of approved homes, I don’t seem to have a Home Study here.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, I don’t.” He sounded exasperated.

  I tried to tell myself that he was an easily exasperated man, but my guess was that it was just me.

  “How can you have been approved without a Home Study?” he demanded.

  “Must be one of those bureaucracy glitches you read about happening all the time.”

  “Well, I haven’t read about them. At any rate, something will need to be done about this.”

  “Such as?”

  “We’ll have to do one now.”

  “And what exactly does a Home Study entail?”

  “Oh, you know, looking into every corner of your life, checking all your records, financial and otherwise, interviewing your family and friends. It’ll be kind of like a proctologist’s visit, only without the rubber glove.”

  This couldn’t be good.

  “And who,” I swallowed, “will be doing all of this looking? I assume you’ll assign it to one of the women in your office.”

  I was pretty sure I had seen other people in his office when we’d been there, although I couldn’t for the life of me remember any.

  “Oh, no,” he said, and I felt as though I could actually see his sinister smile through the phone. “I’ll want to handle this case myself.”

  “Are you the only worker in that whole office?” I asked with some asperity.

  There was that audible nasty smile again: “Sometimes it seems so, doesn’t it?”

  According to What to Expect the First Year, Emma was right on target. She could do everything she should be able to do, plus she could grasp a rattle, reach for an object she wanted and pay attention to a raisin (even though the book said “raisin or other very small object,” I’d gone out especially to purchase raisins, which I despise, for this purpose). She could also say “ah-goo” and other similar vowel-consonant combinations, so she had strong verbal skills; no surprise, really, given her talkative mother.

  March, the third month

  My return to the offices of Churchill & Stewart, now as an editor, began rather ignominiously.

  “Who the hell are you when you’re at home?” said the woman who could only be the new receptionist, because of where she was sitting, as I tried to walk past her on my way to Dodo’s office.
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  Dodo had mentioned that there was a new receptionist, and that her name was Hilda; what she’d neglected to do was couch her mention as a warning.

  Hilda looked to be about the same age as Constance, meaning ridiculously young, but all similarities ended there. Having effectively stopped me in my tracks, she returned to her typing while obviously expecting an answer from me and expecting I wouldn’t dare take a step farther until granted permission, her typing clipping along at something like a gazillion perfectly spelled words a minute. Clearly, the Constance days of letters typed with fyuu;tig/fd in the middle of them were over with.

  Hilda also had short-cropped blond hair and must have been wearing a conical bra, the tips so pointy that they looked as though they’d impale even Colin Firth if he ever dared to come too close.

  “I’m Jane Taylor at home and here,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” she said not bothering to look up, “the crazy lady who used to work here and is now back again. Well, go on then. Don’t keep Dodo waiting any longer.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Jane!” It was Dodo, coming out of her office to greet me. “Come on in!”

  Seated across from her, we discussed how best to slide me back into things, particularly since I had a new position now.

  Behind Dodo, on the wall, were oversized pictures of book jackets of titles she was most proud of having published. Looking at them, I longed to have my own display like that one day.

  Dodo briefed me on the manuscripts C&S was currently excited about acquiring and she even asked about the progress of my own book, The Cloth Baby.

  “You know how slowly publishing can grind,” I said. “Even though I’ve already delivered it, it won’t be out until October.”

  “Are you and Alice editing it now?”

  “Yes, and I must say, it’s a rather novel experience for me, having someone else insist that I improve on something I thought was just fine to begin with.”

  “You’ll be getting a lot of that experience from the other side of the equation soon. Now, then, we need to talk about an assistant for you.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that before, when I came to visit you. I assumed you’d need to hire someone new for me.”