He called Chloe while Keisha was in the shower because it irritated her when he thought his sister had the answer to everything. He didn’t think Chloe had the answer to everything, he just knew that he and Keisha had none themselves, and it didn’t hurt to put another mind to work in their favor.
Postpartum depression sounded scary, especially given her family history. Her mother had been clinically depressed and committed suicide when Keisha was young. So, the notion that ‘depression’ might be what Key was going through was unwelcome.
After putting down the phone, Jay went back to Lee’s room to check on him. He had left him in the crib after changing him, given him a bottle and propped him against the baby lumbar pillow. Lee was right there where he left him and smiled around the nipple of his bottle when Jayson came back into view.
“It’s you and me today, kid,” he said.
Lee gurgled at him as if endorsing the plan, still not taking the bottle out of his mouth.
“Was that you on the phone? Or was someone at the door?”
Keisha came in, toweling her hair dry, wearing only panties. She still had the body of a woman who hadn’t even thought of pregnancy let alone experienced it. Of someone who worked out every day, though she never did. Good genes. And all of them passed on to their perfect boy.
“Phone. I was talking to Chloe. Look, I was thinking … you take the day and do whatever you want. I’ll take Lee with me.”
“To Chloe’s?”
“No. They need me at the store after all.”
“And you want to take Lee with you?”
“Yeah. I have that play-yard set up in the back. Ashley’ll be there. He’ll be fine.”
Jay could see the impulses warring in her eyes. She wanted to accept the offer, but part of her—the part that in the first few months after Lee was born, couldn’t stand to be separated from him—was resisting.
“He’ll be fine,” Jayson said again.
“You won’t … let a whole bunch of people hold him, right?”
“Promise.”
She hesitated a moment more then nodded. “Okay,” she said, in the same somnolent voice she’d had for a while. “You can take him.”
But behind it all, Jay thought he heard a little something else. He heard relief.
Everybody wanted to hold the baby. And how could he refuse when Lee ate it all up? He was happiest when he was in someone’s arms, women especially. If they reached for him, he reached back, and Jayson handed him over.
Women who came into Shutterbug, only intending to browse the prints but determined not to buy, softened right up at the sight of a smiling, gurgling, baby. This latest customer, who Jay had seen around town was named Celia.
“He looks just like you,” she said, making kissy-faces at Lee as she held him. “Is he your only one?”
“For the moment, yes.”
Celia’s eyes fell briefly to Jay’s left hand, and he saw her take in the wedding band.
“Make a girl next time,” she said. “I bet she’ll be beautiful.”
“I’ll pass that order on to my wife,” he said.
Celia smiled. “Is she beautiful?”
“Who?”
“Your wife.”
Jay nodded. “Very much so.”
Celia held his gaze for a few moments.
Flirtation was part of the gig, unfortunately. Flirtation without intention, though. That was the key.
Jayson knew that remaining too aloof turned his female customers off and sometimes even made them a little pissy, or irritable with him. If they found him attractive, they wanted to know that he thought they were attractive, too. And there was no harm in that, except that he didn’t want them to think there was any possibility beyond that. So, he kept his ring on always, and even did things that would help bring it to their attention in case they’d missed it, like reaching for something with his left rather than right hand or resting his left hand on the counter if they leaned in too close.
A year earlier, he had had a close encounter with just how possible, how easy it could be to walk into adultery and miss all the steps along the way. He told himself he was making a friend, when what he almost made, was a mistress. Betty still lived in town, and was the town’s resident family physician, but Jay and Keisha made it a point to take Lee to another doctor one town over.
When Jay ran into her on the street, and occasionally in the drugstore, they waved from a distance, and called out warm ‘hellos’ but never stopped to chat. It had taken him a little while to be able to say to himself, with complete honesty, that he had no inclination to do more than that.
But he’d learned his lesson. He no longer played with fire.
“While your son is scrumptious, you may now have him back …” Celia handed Lee over and offered him one last smile. “And I think I will take that framed seascape print, after all.”
“Cool. Thank you,” Jayson said.
He turned to Ashley, his assistant manager, who had been watching the entire exchange with a cynical smile on her face. She was used to this routine, even when Lee wasn’t there to grease the wheels.
“Got it,” she said, before he could ask. “The seascape. Ma’am, I’ll get that wrapped and ring it up for you right over here.”
For the rest of the day, Jay mostly hung out in the back unless more than two customers were in the store. That was a rarity unless it was a holiday weekend. There wasn’t a lot of retail action in Shutterbug, and if he didn’t do events and classes, he would have long ago been on the skids. The purchase of the store had been a simple transaction by most standards, and the opportunity had come at a time when he otherwise would not have known what to do with his life. Even so, he wouldn’t have made the leap on his own. Keisha had been the one to push him that extra mile to get it done.
As the afternoon turned to evening, and he was just beginning to think about going home, Jay realized he hadn’t spoken to her at all. Not since he and Lee left the house. It had been hours, and she hadn’t called, or texted to see how the baby was doing. And he hadn’t called or texted her either.
Jayson scooped up a sleeping Lee from the play-yard and pulled a knit hat over his head. Going out front, he arranged his son in the car seat and grabbed it.
“Ash, you’re cool to lock up here?” he asked, taking his keys off the hook under the front counter.
“Yup. I’ve got it.” Her eyes fell to Lee in the car seat. “Makes sense that he’d be worn out. He had a busy day. Seducing all our customers.”
“See you,” Jay said, not bothering to laugh at Ashley’s joke, and now feeling a sense of urgency to get home.
It hadn’t begun to snow yet, but the air was the kind of weighty cold that told you snow would be around the corner. He drove home, faster than was advisable with a baby in the truck, but Lee didn’t wake up. When he took the car seat out to walk the few paces from the driveway to the door though, the baby gasped at the brisk air on his face and opened his large grey eyes.
“Hey little man,” Jay said, hoping the sound of his voice would dissuade him from crying.
It did, but he still whimpered a little bit, the way he always did when he realized he was confined in something and could not move freely. Jay got inside as quickly as he could, unstrapped his son from the car seat, and unzipped him from all the excess clothes.
The house was dark, except for a soft glow at the top of the stairs. He went up, heading slowly, quietly toward the bedroom, not knowing exactly why his heart was beating as hard as it was. He wasn’t sure whether he thought Keisha might be hurt, or that she might be gone. But he knew that either option was terrifying, and that they shouldn’t have been options that came to mind at all.
She was on the bed, lying on her side. The television was on, but the sound was turned all the way down. Jay thought at first that she might be sleeping, but she wasn’t. She was staring, sightlessly at the flickering images onscreen.
Wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, she had fixed her ha
ir into one long, neat braid. She was wearing mustard-colored Timberland boots atop the covers. But Jayson couldn’t tell whether she had been out and come back or hadn’t managed to leave the house at all.
“Key?”
She turned onto her back, then sat up. She smiled a tired smile that didn’t reach her eyes. And then immediately, she outstretched her arms.
“Bring him here,” she said quietly.
Jay did as she asked and watched as she took Lee’s little hands in hers and rubbed them to get them warm. She snuggled against him, and he seemed to want to burrow into her, making cooing noises that sounded like pigeons.
“I missed my baby,” Keisha said, closing her eyes and brushing her cheek against the top of his head. “I missed you so, so much.”
3
Maybe you just need to go back to work. D’you think that might be it?”
“Maybe. No. Because I don’t give a shit about work, either,” Keisha said.
“I don’t like hearing you say you don’t give a … shit about things,” Kat said.
Keisha smiled, hearing her friend use the word ‘shit’. Kat was a literal farm-girl from Iowa, from one of those towns that are so small that calling them a town at all was a stretch. To hear Kat tell it, it was more like an expanse of fields and barns, and homes set about a quarter of a mile from the road.
She said that their idea of a social life out there in the cornfields was when the church had a dance. And because the dances happened so rarely, everyone would go, from the folks in their eighties down to the little kids under ten-years-old. Being so small and having the church be the nucleus of society meant it wasn’t a community with a lot of room for bad behavior, debauchery and casually using words like ‘shit’.
Now, though, Kat lived in Manhattan in a tiny apartment with two other girls. Their place was so tiny they practically had to treat it like a time-share. All three of them couldn’t comfortably sleep there at the same time since there was one-bedroom and two pull-out sofas. They had a rule, that if one of them brought a guy home, they could have the bedroom, so long as they washed the sheets the next day.
Kat worked on Broadway, so she was often out late, but she never brought guys home, and consequently hardly ever got to use the sole bedroom. One of the other girls was a hostess in a high-end restaurant midtown restaurant where according to Kat, she met lots of guys and “hooked up a lot.”
But when she did, she slept out because the guys were from better neighborhoods and had better apartments. She would come straggling home in the morning, carrying her shoes and with sooty soles from having walked barefoot (ugh!) in the city streets, and babbling about what a great time and life she had.
The third roommate neither worked late, nor stayed out with guys she met. When she hooked up, she brought the guy to their place, and as a result defaulted to using the bedroom more than anyone else.
Keisha thought the stories of “hooking up” were quaint. She had done so much more that was so much worse in her day. But “her day” was done. She was a small-town wife and mother now.
“And my job was barely even a job to begin with,” Keisha pointed out. “I don’t think there’s anything for me to go back to after this.”
“People will always need someone to sew things,” Kat said. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just put in a good word for you on my show, or one of the others.”
“Kat, people never need someone to sew them things. Not anymore. Not unless you work in theater or the movies or something.”
“So, we’ll find you a job in theater or the movies. This is New York. That’s completely do-able.”
“I’m not even that great of a seamstress.”
“That’s not true!”
“You’re such a liar. Most of what I know I learned from you, and from Mama Faye,” she said referring to her mentor. “And I didn’t even learn it that well.”
“Where’s Lee?”
“Sleeping. Can’t you tell? That’s why I’m whispering.”
“What does Jayson say about all this ‘don’t-care-ism’?”
Keisha sighed. “He doesn’t notice.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“No, it’s true. I think he thinks I’m happy but just tired. He doesn’t know I’m just tired of being unhappy.”
What Keisha didn’t say was that Jay’s obliviousness made her feel far removed from him. Every day that passed that he didn’t know she was drifting away, just made her drift farther.
“So maybe you need some time away. Just the two of you.”
“We can’t do that. Not with the …”
“I’ll get you tickets to something really good. Leave Lee with Chloe for the weekend. You said she’s always asking, and you’re always telling her ‘no’. This time tell her ‘yes’ and go away with Jayson and figure stuff out.”
That would be great, if only she knew what there was to figure out.
“I’ll think about it. But look, I have to go. If I don’t get a shower now, I won’t get a chance to shower at all until Jayson’s home.”
“That’s romantic,” Kat laughed.
“Kat, I’m serious, I should go before he wakes up.”
“Okay. But I’m getting the tickets.”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever. That’s fine.”
In the shower, Keisha let the water course through her hair, unconcerned about how it would look afterward. Lately, appearance had fallen way down on the totem pole. She didn’t go to professional stylists any longer, so her hair was long, and ropy, but that made it easier in some ways. Most days she just twisted it, and pulled it back while wet, and then just left it at her back where it blossomed into a curly mass when dry.
Sometimes, Lee would reach for it, and get it tangled in his fat little fingers, or try to eat it before she tugged it away. He always let loose an outraged shriek when she pulled her hair from him. Like he was telling her that she belonged to him, and if he wanted to tug her hair, he would doggone well tug it.
Thinking of Lee made her pick up the pace, and sure enough, when she was out and toweling dry, she heard him give a little squawk, calling her to him.
I’m pregnant.
The thought came out of nowhere, but Keisha was convinced it was true. She’d read online when she suspected she was pregnant with Lee where lots of women said they knew the absolute moment they had conceived, and now Keisha was joining their ranks. She was sure of it. She was pregnant.
Watching from the bed as Jayson headed for the bathroom, she waited until he was out of view and looked down between her legs as if there might be some clue there, about his little guys’ likely success reaching a waiting egg.
Across the hotel room on the small dinette table, a half-empty bottle of wine mocked her. She had never been one to handle alcohol really well, but tonight she handled it very poorly. It was just that it was one of those nights where plans got abandoned, and you threw every caution to the wind. Since they had been given the rare chance at a couples’ night out, Jayson got them a hotel room in the city and they drove down for the afternoon to shop, with plans to later see a show and then have dinner. The show Kat got them tickets for was one of the hottest on Broadway. Still, Keisha was only mildly interested in seeing it, and Jayson, not at all.
But it was a proper grown-up date, like people went on in the movies, and Keisha was excited, and felt silly for feeling excited because she was Brooklyn-born and bred, and a night in Manhattan shouldn’t have been some big whoop. But it was, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise. Brooklyn-born or not, her life had taken a one-eighty since those days of being a creature of the big city. Their small circle of local friends—all of them young couples themselves, and most of them also with young children—thought “a night out” meant a movie two towns over and dinner at the Chinese restaurant.
So, the night in the city was a big deal. It meant Keisha could get dressed up, wear make-up, high heels. And she could sleep through the night without waking up for a feeding; and
most of all, she could enjoy sex with her man without trying to keep her voice down lest their son hear them and summon them with a cry.
They spent the afternoon shopping as planned, getting things mostly for Lee, because Jay didn’t care about clothes or shopping, and Keisha, since becoming a mother couldn’t make herself buy anything unless she also bought something for the baby. So, she got herself a nice lipstick and some translucent powder from MAC Cosmetics, and then spent a mint on baby clothes that Lee would outgrow in a matter of weeks.
Jay carried the bags and looked proud that he could just hand her the credit card without even looking at the cost of anything. His business had been doing well, because he was flexible about doing custom and event shoots, photography classes, or any other trend that hit. Recreational spending didn’t cause the anxiety it used to.
Later, at the hotel, while they dressed to go out, Jayson turned to her as he was tying his tie.
I don’t even care about seeing this show, do you?
He said it while cringing, as if it might disappoint her. But Keisha was relieved. She already knew that she liked the idea of them doing dinner and a show more than she was going to like the reality of it.
So, what should we do, then? she asked, already mentally undressing him in her mind.
Jay grinned and advanced toward her. Let’s think of something.
And then he had shoved her back onto the bed.
Now, in the aftermath, she was counting weeks in her head, trying to figure out whether her intuition could be true. Unfortunately, with her it wasn’t always as simple as a mathematical exercise. Since Lee, she had short, spotty, and sometimes non-existent periods, and so hadn’t bothered to get back on any kind of contraceptive. And also, because … well, she and Jayson had been having a dry-spell.
It was hard to say how it had begun, or who was responsible. But after Lee was born, sex was impossible for a few weeks, and then somehow became irrelevant since they were so exhausted all the time. But now, with a kid old enough to crawl around the living room floor, they still only had sex maybe twice every six weeks, and even then, perfunctorily, and unimaginatively.
Four: Stories of Marriage Page 51
