When I'm Not Myself

by Deborah J. Wolf

  “Mel,” Paige nudged her. “Have a little decorum. It’s no reason to throw a party.” She reached across the round terra-cotta-tiled bar table and took Cara’s hands, holding them tightly. Paige’s fingers were long, delicate, and her hands were warm. Genuine concern washed over her face and her forehead crinkled at the temples. “Cara, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? My God, what in the world did Jack have to say for himself? He only just moved out.”

  A wicked smile formed across Cara’s lips. “Actually, Paige, Jack wasn’t the one to tell me. And you can’t tell anyone else, for that matter.” She wagged her finger at each of them, warning.

  “Then who?” Leah looked at her, confusion washing over her round face. “Did one of the kids tell you? Katie?”

  “No. I ran into Barbie. At my annual, if you can believe the chances in that. What do you think, couple hundred gynecologists in all of the Bay Area, and I wind up at the same doctor, at the same time, in the same office, as the girlfriend of my ex-husband. Oh, no wait; I beg your pardon. We’re still married, right?” Cara looked to Mel for confirmation.

  Mel shrugged her shoulders, nodded her head and quietly muttered, “Technically, yes . . .” under her breath. “Oh, Cara,” she said and rubbed her hands together again, smiling broadly. “Honestly. You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “So, what? How far along? Could you tell? What did she say when she saw you?”

  Cara recounted the story, the fact that Barbie’s perfume still clung to the fabric in her van despite a second trip to the car wash where they doused her carpets and upholstery with jasmine air freshener. She had sulked on the details for two days, dour and morose and mourning, before she found the courage to shrug off the way Barbie had made her feel. Once she did, it was as if she had been freed, a first tiny baby step in reclaiming her independence. She wondered if Barbie had come clean with the news, if she had told Jack yet, and if so, what his reaction had been. He had never wanted four children, never mind five. He would have been perfectly content to stop after Katie. So Cara had no doubt that it would be more than just a bit of a shock for him. She wagered that he might have even been angry, pissed. Maybe even enough to pack his bags and move home. Maybe.

  “What do you think they’ll do, Cara?” Sitting across the table studying Paige’s deep blue doelike eyes, Cara had no doubt that Paige was already considering the future of this unborn child, when she said, “Your poor kids, Cara. I’m so sorry they’ll have to go through this.”

  Cara considered Paige’s comment carefully, imagining the reaction from each of her kids. Would Katie be angrier and come out swinging? Would Claire be happy at the thought of a real, live baby doll to play with? Would the boys slink further into despair, pull back and cower, feeling unloved, unwanted?

  “I have no idea what they’re going to do. I can’t imagine a baby was in Jack’s plans when he moved out. He sort of had that taken care of at his previous residence. But I can assure you of one thing, Paige: I’m not the one who’s going to tell the kids. Not this time. I’ve done that. He can explain his way out of this one.”

  When Jack finally called, Cara was fighting evening traffic, weaving her way through a particularly hilly area not far from the home Jack still paid the mortgage for, and the cellular reception wasn’t good. The phone line cut in and out, but despite the static Cara could make out the high pitch in his voice, the abandonment to joy.

  “Cara? How are you?” he boomed.

  “Fine, Jack. And you?”

  “Good, good. I’m great, actually. Well, Barbie said she ran into you a couple of weeks ago.” His words came quickly, as if he was bursting with a great, giant secret he couldn’t contain.

  “Oh. Right, yeah.” Cara was careful not to let on too much, still unsure of what he knew.

  “Well, c’mon Cara, what do you think?”

  She considered her answer; baiting him, wondering how much he really knew. “What do I think about . . . ?”

  He never let her finish. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? A new baby. I mean absolutely insane. Maybe the most out-of-this-world thing I’ve ever done, you know? But here’s the thing, Cara. I really think I can do this this time. I mean I know I wasn’t always there for you and the kids, but I think I can be different about it this time around. The thing is, I think I might be really great at it.”

  Anger flooded Cara’s every nerve, the blood pulsing throughout her brain. Cara let the silence burn its way into the receiver until Jack was forced to ask, “Cara? Are you still there? Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” she answered him, flatly, her voice dead.

  “Um, well,” Jack sensed the change in her voice, deflated.

  “Well, what do you think? I mean isn’t it just crazy?”

  He laughed then, sending a shiver down her spine. Was he serious?

  Silence.

  “I really wanted to share this with you, Cara. You know, I thought maybe you would understand that this was just meant to happen. I mean, after all, why else, why now? Why would something this crazy come along if it just wasn’t meant to happen that way?”

  Silence.

  “Cara?”

  Silence. Was he looking for her approval?

  “Cara? Can you hear me? Cara?”

  “Yeah, Jack. I can hear you.”

  “Well, isn’t it great? A father, all over again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah. Again.”

  The silence did little to rattle him, let alone break him. Cara counted slowly, holding her breath, careful not to explode.

  “I didn’t know you were done being one.”

  “Huh?”

  “A father. I didn’t know you were done being one. You know, in time to start all over again.” In the dead air between them, Cara could make out the sports report on his radio, the college basketball scores rattling off one by one.

  “Goddammit, Cara, you know that’s not what I meant,” he said, finally, frustration seeping into his tone.

  “What did you mean then, Jack? ’Cause, correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember four kids you aren’t done with yet. Or have you forgotten?”

  Cara knew what she was doing wasn’t fair. Since he’d moved out, Jack had not been a bad father, not by a long shot. He’d kept his end of the bargain, and been as much of a father—maybe even more—than he was when he was living in the same house with them. But it was all Cara had so she used it. Wedging this new child between the two of them bought Cara little; wedging it between him and his kids filled Jack with contempt. Cara figured he’d hate her for it later but she didn’t much care.

  “I’d have thought you’d be happy that I was moving on, Cara. You always struck me as a woman who could see through to find the bright spot in something.”

  “Is the sun shining, Jack?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, anyway, I just wanted you to know.”

  “I did know, remember? Surely Barbie told you about our little chance meeting? Our little talk?”

  “Uh . . .” He seemed perplexed, confused.

  “The doctor. Imagine how much fun that must have been.”

  “Right.”

  “So . . .” She waited for him to offer an apology. She thought, perhaps, that was the least he could do.

  “So?”

  At a stoplight she pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. Was it possible that he’d lost his mind and all of his senses with it? “Will you be telling the kids soon?”

  “Oh, right. I guess so. Soon enough, anyway. I’ll let you know when.”

  “You do that.”

  “Bye, Cara.”

  “See you, Jack.”

  4

  Katie was late. Katie was nearly always late, lumbering down the stairs with her backpack slung over one shoulder and her headphones hanging from her ears into an iPod buried somewhere inside her Hollister sweatshirt. Cara laid on the horn loudly, wait
ing for her daughter to appear through the garage door. When Katie finally arrived, Cara had already backed out of the garage, left the car idling and was stomping her way back into the house. Cara tapped her watch pointedly and threw Katie a look, which her daughter promptly ignored.

  Cara was used to the constant banter; the pitch of four voices, each trying to outdo the other with a concern that they thought required Cara’s immediate attention. Katie sat in the front seat, slumped low as if she could barely tolerate being seen with her mother, never mind her little brothers and sister. And in a van. A van. It was so uncool.

  “So,” Cara said, interrupting the chaos, “how was the weekend with your dad?”

  “Lame.”

  “Boring.”

  “I made cookies with Barbie, but she threw up twice when we were making the batter. She said it has something to do with the raw eggs making her sick.” From the backseat Claire offered exquisite detail, a blow-by-blow description of Barbie’s current condition.

  Cara knew that Jack had broken the news to the kids; their reaction had been resounding juvenile disgust, which Cara secretly cheered. Only Claire had shown a remote bit of interest in a new sibling, and Cara had a sneaking suspicion that would pass once the new arrival made his or her presence known.

  “Yeah, Claire got to make cookies. The rest of us spent most of Saturday hauling crap out of the house and cleaning the garage to make room for the baby,” Will offered.

  Cara raised an eyebrow at her eldest son. “Crap?”

  “Sorry. Garbage. You know, Barbie’s stuff. And, man, Mom, she’s got enough of it to fill an entire dump. We should know; we took three loads.”

  “How ’bout you, Katie?”

  Katie shrugged her shoulders and hid behind the thick binder she held in front of her chest.

  Cara waited to see if Katie would continue on her own without any prodding, but her older daughter remained silent, brooding. She circled the parking lot at the elementary school and put the van in PARK. On cue, her three youngest children unbuckled and collected their things, scampering out of the van and into the fray of the schoolyard.

  “Bye,” Cara called and they waved her off, Claire stopping to blow her a kiss before skipping off to find her friends.

  “Was it that bad, honey?” Cara asked her after they had pulled out of the parking lot and the van grew quiet.

  Katie shrugged her shoulders again and stared out the window. “It was like every other weekend there. Dad gushing all over Barbie and pretending like everything is normal; Barbie acting like we’re one big, happy family, like she’s actually interested in what’s going on in our lives. It’s totally lame, Mom.”

  Cara took a deep breath. It had been like this for a while now, Cara taking stock of the time the kids spent with Jack as if she was tallying up the war wounds she would have to deal with later. Katie’s scars were particularly visible from the explosion.

  “Once that baby comes I doubt he’ll have time for us anymore, anyway. His old family.”

  “What do you think, Kitten? A new baby? Maybe it won’t be so bad.” Cara tried to sound upbeat, just to see if she could engage her daughter. Maybe Jack’s new baby was something they could share, if only to dismiss it as a bad idea.

  “Oh, c’mon, Mom, it’s disgusting. Dad’s way too old to have a baby. God, he could practically be a grandfather. I don’t know what he thinks he’s trying to prove. He barely sees the four kids he’s got. Not that I need to spend any more time with him than you already make me.” Katie’s dark eyes were circled in too much eyeliner, her mascara thick and chunky. She was hard, tough-skinned, which was a good thing. If she risked crying, she’d have been one black mess.

  “I don’t make you spend time with him, Katie. He’s your dad. You can let him know that you’d rather stay home than spend time with him and Barbie. That’s your choice.”

  “Right, Mom. Like I actually have any choice in any of this,” Katie said, and opened the door when they pulled up to the high school. Kids in low-slung jeans and oversized sweatshirts swarmed the parking lot, dashing around the van. Katie zipped up her pullover and grabbed her backpack, slinging it over her right shoulder. She slammed the door hard and never looked back at Cara.

  Cara hadn’t watched her kids so closely since they were infants, when nearly every move they made left her paranoid, afraid that they might take a tenuous step and fall the wrong way, crashing into the corner of a coffee table or the fireplace hearth. Now she was not only protective but possessive. Part of her relished the fact that Katie wanted nothing to do with her father, that her boys found themselves bored spending an entire afternoon cleaning out Jack’s girlfriend’s garage. Their weekends in purgatory became a source of entertainment for her. Still, even after all Jack had put her through, put all of them through, she couldn’t bear the thought that his own children would want nothing to do with him.

  The boys had lost the sweet part of themselves, the part she’d always loved most about both of them. Avid sports fans, tough and tumble, true boys through and through, they’d always had a soft side, a gentle nature that made them special in Cara’s eyes. But lately, that part had simply disappeared, replaced in Will with a sarcastic, snippy attitude and a mouth to match. Superseded in Luke by a lackluster desire to do much of anything. Just last evening she’d pinned Will down, forcing a thin line of liquid soap over his tongue in response to his off-handed comment to Claire.

  “You little shit,” he’d exclaimed confidently, standing over her with his fist raised in the air as if it might come crashing down under her eye or across her chin at any moment. Sure, she’d pulled the bottom card from the house he’d been building, practically a fortress in the making, and sent the entire castle folding in upon itself. But that gave him no good reason, certainly no authority, to threaten his little sister, half his size. She stood boldly in his shadow, her eyes glaring back until she couldn’t stand it anymore and she crumbled herself, dissolving into tears. Will had always been her prince, her hero. Never had he taken such a tone with her.

  Cara didn’t think he’d really strike her, not really. But for a split second she wasn’t so sure, and perhaps that’s what frightened her the most.

  “William,” Cara whispered harshly. She hadn’t raised her voice, she hadn’t needed to. He unclenched his fist, dropping his arm to his side, but he continued to stare her down, his top lip trembling in anger. “I think you owe Claire an apology.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered, his shoulders still stiff, his body rigid.

  “Oh, Will, me, too,” Claire wailed and threw herself at him, wrapping her tiny arms around his waist, wanting all at once to be forgiven for the mean prank she had pulled. She hadn’t really meant to do such harm; she hadn’t realized the impact that removing one small piece of the base would have on the entire structure.

  Will pushed her off, unwrapping her arms from his waist and stepping back from the table. And Cara had moved in, a translucent dab of liquid soap on the end of her index finger. She ran it across his lips and when he opened his mouth to spit it out, forced her way to find the tip of his tongue.

  He pushed past her, reaching the sink and spitting over and over again, saliva dribbling down his chin. “God, Mom,” he choked out, coughing and wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Geez, sorry. I didn’t mean to say it.”

  Cara stared at him, guilt washing over her as it had the first time she’d used the same variety of punishment years earlier when Will had come home from school exposed to an entire new dictionary of expletives. She gripped the back of the chair and swallowed back her disgrace, praying to stay strong. Since Jack had left, discipline had taken on a whole new meaning for her; she was playing both roles.

  “I won’t have you using language like that. Not in this house.” She worked to steady her voice. “And keep your hands off your sister, too. Do you hear me? Keep your hands to yourself, Will.”

  Will rinsed his mouth for the second or third time. When he was finish
ed he threw the kitchen towel across the countertop, glaring at his mother, and stomped out of the kitchen without another word.

  But for all his bravado, it wasn’t Will that Cara was most concerned with; it was Katie.

  Katie had always been Jack’s favorite. Oh, sure, they weren’t supposed to have favorites; no one was. But it didn’t take much to detect Jack’s preference for his eldest daughter, his selective nature when it came to just about anything Katie was involved with. Jack had always been over-the-top proud. He delighted in her successes; he mourned with her when she failed, and he had always been there to pick her up and brush her off. Always, that is, until now.

  No doubt, Jack had cheated on Cara. But the thing she feared even more was the way he had deceived Katie. She was their time bomb, set to go off at any moment.

  Katie had started drinking a year or so earlier. It hadn’t started particularly slowly; she hadn’t worked her way into it. Katie had simply poured her first drink—a tall Grey Goose on the rocks from her father’s bar—and never looked back. At first, Cara and Jack were too busy arguing to admit there was an even graver problem, a product of their own issues, brewing right under their noses. They chose instead to look the other way, to chalk it up to teen exploration.

  Not even Mel confronted Cara about it at first, and Mel hardly ever let something go. She and Leah and Paige had seen pieces of the bad when Katie’s drinking had gotten so out of control that it had become painful for Cara; so burdensome that Cara had no choice but to confide in her friends. There was the Monday morning when Cara couldn’t wake Katie up, couldn’t even get her to move. Cara was so shocked by how shallow Katie’s breathing had become that she called 911. There was the pool of vomit Cara had found her lying in one night; blood caked around her nose and mouth. When things got really bad, there were DUIs, phone calls from the police station, the impounded car. There was the vodka Cara found stashed in Katie’s dresser, the gin in her water bottle, the beers she had stuffed into her backpack. Katie didn’t have a favorite flavor. It wasn’t the booze she fancied; it was what the drink did for her.