The Barter

by Siobhan Adcock

  “I know. You hate them. I know.” Again, Bridget can’t help but appreciate Martha’s baldness, her forceful heart, although her own thoughts, her heart, are elsewhere, far away—sometimes it feels as if she’s far beneath the earth, looking up at everyone she used to look in the face. “I know, I know, I know.”

  And now Bridget finally sees Mark, on the perimeter of the gathering, near the hydrangeas that mark the border of the green central square. He is talking to a beautiful woman holding a child: Gennie. And Gennie is actually holding not Miles but Julie. The three of them are serious, not laughing, but still, it’s like seeing him kissing someone else.

  What could they possibly be talking about?

  Her. Of course. They’re talking about her. Gennie is concerned. Mark is bemused. Julie looks worried, as if she’s trying to follow the conversation but can’t quite. As Bridget watches, she sees her daughter’s mouth shape the word “Mama,” and she sees Julie strain away from Gennie’s arms, not toward Mark but rather as if she wants to be set free to waddle in the grass. Which does look delicious and cool and green and fine right now, as Bridget stares down at it in an attempt to regain her composure, blinking back the strange series of emotions that seem to have overtaken her. This isn’t panic, this isn’t jealousy, this isn’t humiliation, this isn’t love. This, this, what is this? She wonders where Miles and Charlie are. She scarcely knows Charlie, Gennie’s husband. She knows that he works like a dog and makes piles of money and takes Gennie and Miles on three insanely great vacations every year with an au pair for Miles: Paris, Anguilla, Greece.

  She thinks of Gennie’s question. Is he cheating on you, Bridge?

  How would you know, Gen?

  She looks back up, across the park, to where her husband and her friend stand with her daughter.

  “Oh, she must be the pretty one,” Martha chooses that moment to say, following Bridget’s gaze. “Hey, are you all right, hon?”

  But Bridget is now striding across the grass toward them, her eyes trained on Julie like a searchlight.

  * * *

  Perhaps she is crazy after all.

  Her father, even before he disappeared into the desert, had been a little bit not all there. On the rare occasions when Bridget still wonders whether the ghost is actually real, she speculates about whether her father’s strangeness has finally begun to manifest in her. Here it is at last, the bad case of the crazies you were born to inherit sooner or later, and here is what it causes to happen: arguments, accidents, insomnia, neglect, divorce. Sound familiar?

  There’s something about having a ghost in the house that truly is familiar to Bridget. In some ways it reminds her of nothing so much as her father. Like the ghost, her father left traces of himself around the house even when he was nowhere to be seen: the trailing scent of a joint, a cabal of empty bottles, a run of bad checks. Like the ghost, her father had a way of standing still and appearing to retreat into himself; he’d open the refrigerator and stand looking into it forever, or he’d swing open a window and lean perilously far out, seeming to search the parking lot below their apartment for a visitor. He took up jobs and left them, took Bridget and Carrie-Ann to the playground and wandered off. It hadn’t taken Kathleen long to understand that whatever charisma she’d loved in him was bound up in his vagueness and his dangerousness, but that making him leave—really leave, and for good—would in the end be harder than enduring either. It was all the more ironic that the accident that had killed Carrie-Ann was in no way her father’s fault—if it had been his doing, it was the kind of thing that might have seemed inevitable to a cruel observer. The accident was not his fault, but it meant the decisive conclusion of her father’s attempt to live like a normal person, with a family and a wife and a job and a roof. All of that ended, to the extent that it had even begun. Her father slipped away into what really seemed like a hovering, insubstantial world, one that, like a harmless planet, drifted occasionally into a neighboring orbit, throwing Kathleen and Bridget’s tides into brief disarray before moving off again on its inelegant route.

  Given what her father had been like, Bridget supposes it’s little wonder that she’s preprogrammed to believe the worst about her own husband whenever he gives her the opportunity. But then again, Mark could give her fewer opportunities, right? He could be a lot less shady and remote. Mark is not all there, either. Mark has some ghostlike qualities of his own, oh, certainly—for instance, where is he, half the time? Who is this disembodied voice she keeps having these frustrating conversations with? Like the ghost, he comes in and out of view without any perceivable pattern, leaving mostly an impression of bitterness and things left undone. Even the product of his work, the work that keeps him from appearing fully real to her anymore, is insubstantial—it’s technology, but it might as well be magic for how real it seems to be in the world. What does he do all day long? Where is he?

  Bridget marches up to them, the three of them, and Julie lights up. Mark notices and follows Julie’s smile to Bridget’s face, which she knows is not exactly set in a welcoming, loving expression. Mark moves a step closer to Gennie in order to help her with Julie, who is now squirming like a seahorse, entwined against another body with no knowledge of how she got there. Bridget knows it is her imagination, but he also seems to move toward Gennie as if to protect her. There’s something in Bridget’s face, perhaps, that he’s not familiar with.

  Mark is too handsome, too funny, too nice. Like Gennie, he can be indiscriminate in his gifts, without exactly realizing it. Without exactly realizing that after what she’s given up, given away, everything that’s him—the loose-limbed stance, the warm skin and straight, intelligent gaze, the extravagantly furred forearms with the texture she loves—all of that needs to belong to her, and only to her.

  Gennie meets her eyes, but barely—it’s exactly as if Bridget is the wife she’s heard Mark talk about. Martha is trailing her. Bridget ignores them all and simply plucks Julie out of Gennie’s arms. Partly because Bridget is still holding her drink and partly because she doesn’t so much as acknowledge Gennie, the transition comes off a little wobbly. Julie’s leg swings out and just misses clocking Gennie in the face.

  Mark says to Bridget, “Be careful.”

  You be careful.

  “I’m Martha,” “I’m Gennie,” and the two of them shake hands. Bridget isn’t sure what she’d been expecting—maybe a thunderbolt—but Martha seems content to behave herself now, having had her fun with Sandra.

  “Gennie and I were just wondering where you two got off to.” Mark steps into the middle of the rough circle they’ve formed in the grass, bringing himself closer to all of them but particularly, as it happens, close to Gennie, who does not shrink away. In one of his large hands he is holding Julie’s sandals, the sweet, chubby little sandals that he brought home from work one day in April, having ordered them online based on a coworker’s recommendation, and they are great sandals, sturdy and pretty and waterproof, so he’s not completely not all there, is he. “Jujubee is super tired, Bridge. Do you want to take her home?”

  “Do I want to take her home?” Bridget echoes, flustered. “But Martha and Graham are still here!”

  “Fine, I’ll take her.”

  “Wait, you actually meant for me to take her while you stayed?”

  “God! No, I meant we could both go,” Mark says defensively, which is how she knows she was right. He works all week, she does not; ergo, he deserves to have fun more than she does.

  Gennie puts her hand on Mark’s arm, and Bridget has to restrain herself, physically restrain herself, from giving the smaller woman a shove. “It’s okay, I can take Julie home and sit with her for a while—you guys stay out and have fun. Miles and Charlie are home tonight because Miles has a cold. So I was going to go home early anyway. I feel like a bad mama being out when he’s sick.”

  “What a lovely person,” Martha remarks, without, it seems to Bridget, much
of a motivation to do so.

  “Where’s Julie’s stroller?” Gennie persists. “I can take her home and put her to bed. You guys stay out. Your friend’s here, Bridget. You guys have a good time. I wish I could stay, too.”

  For an inflated moment Bridget feels herself staring at Gennie in disbelief—it really feels as if she has time to read all the way through her, her pretty, funny friend, the only other mother she hangs out with regularly who has a sense of humor, and who seems to do everything right without taking anything too seriously, who always knows what to say and how to give comfort. Despite all the kindnesses Gennie has showed her, despite the essential goodness and uniqueness of this person she’s staring at, Bridget suddenly hates her—she can’t help herself. How else can a person, a flawed normal person, possibly hope to feel with Gennie around?

  It’s Mark who finally says, “Gennie, thanks so much for the offer. But we couldn’t make you do that. We’re going to hang out for a little while longer and then we’ll take Julie home.”

  “Well, I’m digging in,” Martha announces grandly, with a yawn. “I’m digging into this damn party for the long haul. I’m going to be here until midnight. Midnight still exists, right? I haven’t seen it in a while, but I hear it’s still out there.”

  Gennie laughs. She’s never heard anything so funny. Good old Gennie. Even Martha can’t help but be gratified.

  Mark says ruefully, “Yes, Martha, midnight is definitely still happening. Every night.”

  “You would know.” Gennie nods, all exquisite sympathy.

  “You know, when I had my kids, I just stopped being available for the late-night bullshit. I just delegated,” Martha says to Mark, eyebrow cocked high. “And it was hard, but you know what? The sun continues to rise and set, the shit still gets done, and I get to have dinner with my kids.” She pauses for effect. “Every damn day. The little filthy hellbeasts. So lucky, lucky me.” Gennie is laughing helplessly. “All I’m saying is, I want a job at PlusSign so I can eat dinner at my desk again like a civilized human being. Better yet, why don’t you give Bridget and Julie both jobs at PlusSign and you can all have dinner and whatever the hell else there together. It’s one of those offices with, like, a fro-yo machine, right? Babies love yogurt.” Gennie is wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, the only one of them besides Martha who finds this remotely funny.

  “That’s a great idea,” Mark says with a slight smile. “There are a hell of a lot of diapers to change around that place, that’s for sure.”

  “That would be my job? Changing diapers?” Bridget demands.

  “It was a joke, Bridget. I guess I could change the diapers if you would do my job for me,” Mark says, holding his hands up in a mock-surrendering gesture.

  “I guess that’s a joke, too, right? You think you could have done my job? The one I left right when I was about to be making more money than you?” Bridget snaps. Mark doesn’t have a reply to this. He just looks at her.

  “I take it back, I don’t want a job at PlusSign, I want a job at Bridget’s old firm,” Martha deadpans. Gennie snorts.

  “Because I could never get it back, right?” Bridget turns on her. Yes, maybe I am a little crazy after all.

  “Well, no.” Martha looks at her calmly. “You probably couldn’t. I wish you nothing but good things and good luck and all the rest of it, but after a year or so you probably couldn’t.”

  Bridget feels gut-punched, and this sensation, on top of feeling as completely out of control as she almost always feels these days, is enough to make her want to sit down in the grass. So she does, with Julie in her lap.

  “Are you all right, honey?” Gennie asks immediately. She is the first to kneel down, the first to touch her shoulder. “Do you feel sick? I’m probably giving everybody at this party Miles’s cold. I’m the Typhoid Mary of Texas.”

  “I think she’s just sick of standing,” Martha says neutrally. “So am I, for God’s sake. I’ve been on my feet at this party forever—where are the damn benches? Isn’t this a park?” She plops down heavily in the grass next to Bridget and leans back on her elbows, surveying the violet hour of the cookout party with an appraising air. The children and the ice are beginning to melt down, the adults are beginning to shift on their feet, the dog has drifted away into the night, and the human figures collected beneath the young trees overhead are now draped in shadow, all half-glimpsed, half-disappeared, half-real. More than one adult has a sleeping or squalling child in his arms, or in a stroller that’s being rocked absently back and forth, back and forth across the short grass.

  “I just think we’re all ready to go home,” Mark says, already moving away. “I’ll go get the stroller. Martha, do you and Graham and the kids want to come over? We’ve got beer. I think. Right, Bridge? We’ve got beer?” This is all called over his shoulder.

  But Bridget is looking at the little girl sprawled comfortably in her lap. Julie has been busy working with the braid that Bridget has worn her hair in today, a side braid that she did quickly and tightly over one shoulder this morning while her hair was still wet, rushing to get them out of the house. Julie plays with her own hair when she’s tired and has been known to reach up to twirl Bridget’s hair sometimes, too, while nursing or working on a sippy cup or just trying to keep her eyes open.

  It’s past nine o’clock by now, and Bridget sees that Julie is painfully tired. Her small pale face is still and expressionless, and her sea-bright eyes are ringed with dark purple. Her mouth is slightly open, and Bridget can smell her sweet milky breath, tinged with a vinegary hint of ketchup, her favorite vegetable. Julie is focused on the tip of Bridget’s braid, squishing it between her fingertips, using it as a paintbrush on Bridget’s collarbone, smoothing it down against Bridget’s shoulder. Bridget kisses the corner of Julie’s hot, dry mouth. “Like a horsey’s tail, right?” she whispers.

  Julie glances up at her briefly. “No,” she breathes. Her expression does not change.

  “Hey, Bridge, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to be a jerk,” Martha says without looking at her.

  Gennie sits in the grass across from Bridget, who has momentarily forgotten that Gennie is still there. “I’m sure Bridget can do whatever she wants to—she’s so smart,” Gennie says faithfully.

  “Anything except get back into law with any hopes of being a partner after taking time off,” Martha agrees, deadpan.

  “I bet Bridget could convince them,” Gennie insists. “She’s analytical, she’s ambitious, she cares about making things right. And anyway we’re not living in the nineteen fifties—women have power now.”

  The compliment feels so nice it’s almost painful. Martha looks at Gennie and then Bridget with some real amusement, but declines to pursue the subject. Bridget would like to think that this is out of deference to her own feelings, but she suspects it’s just because Martha is feeling mellowed out and bored. She would have felt the same way once—most lawyers love a good argument and loathe a pointless one.

  Martha had once told Bridget (probably right before Julie was born, that would have been like her) that her three months of maternity leave with Harriet were the hardest thing she’d ever done, harder than the bar exam, harder than her parents’ divorce, harder harder harder. She had hated being away from work that much—it was one of Martha’s irrationally passionate things, whereas Bridget had liked her job well enough but it never even occurred to her to resent three months away, even if half of them were unpaid. Martha liked to joke about how she would never survive in “one of those godforsaken real first-world countries like Scandinavia where maternity leave is more like a year.” The way she told the story had made Bridget laugh, almost against her will, as was often the case with Martha: “Once upon a time, a queen with bad hair and a good job decided to have a baby. This queen wasn’t lucky enough to live anywhere near her parents and didn’t have a support network of any kind other than her other childless fri
ends and her husband, the king, but they decided to have a baby anyway because they were stupid horndogs and thought it would be fun to spend a few months trying really, really, really hard to have a baby—on the couch, in the kitchen, in the car, all over the place. And of course because they knew children were amazing and made life meaningful and all the rest of it. So. After all this the queen gets pregnant and everybody at her job starts treating her different. Like, immediately. Cases are reassigned; the single women start shooting her dirty looks—which the queen recognizes perfectly well, having shot a few nasty looks of her own at other women at the firm who got pregnant, because everybody knows that an attorney with a baby means extra work for everybody else, and believe it or not the queen used to like to go out and get drunk after work. The queen’s coworkers throw her a shower and give her a bunch of expensive shit, and then she has the baby princess and they throw her out of the office and now she’s On Maternity Leave, which for the queen means sitting in her castle, stapled to a chair, trying to learn to breast-feed, not showering, unable to walk right, not sleeping, freaking out about how this little princess is going to survive being her daughter. For three months. There was a ferocious fucking heat wave that summer, and every time the queen thought about leaving the house with the little princess she got freaked out about infant heatstroke. Anyway, two months of this go by—the queen has like two visitors this whole time and no help because the queen and king’s parents are useless balls of wax—and finally the queen goes to the king, ‘Lo, this maternity leave shit is bullshit. I want to get back to work ruling the country forthwith.’ And the king, who is no idiot, and a nice guy besides, says, ‘Girl, I hear you, because lo, they would never ask a guy to be happy sitting around the house for three months nursing a cute baby but not doing much else.’ And for that the king got his first postnatal fuck, and then a month later the queen went back to work and the princess was cared for by a really kick-ass nanny she’d spent the last month of her maternity leave finding and they all lived happily ever after. The end.”