“Ah.” He purses his lips in surprise. “All right then.”
I slip into bed. “Good night, Adam.” I try not to sound resentful. But I am. I resent Adam’s choice to change our future. If I’m not careful, I’m going to resent him, and that, ironically, is the very thing that would terrify me about having a child. If I start resenting him now, I might as well buck up, have the kid, and go on with my inescapable resentment. That’s the worst thing I could do, I know, and a child would never deserve to bear the brunt of such resentment. (God knows Charlotte and I can attest to the hurt a child feels when it knows it’s unwanted.) How selfish it would be to have a child to keep Adam, how selfish to do that to an innocent person. If only Adam could understand this. If only he could see my side of things.
Perhaps, though, he’s not supposed to. Perhaps—and I hate thinking this—this separation is the catalyst for his moving on without me, and me without him. After all, isn’t that what happens when a couple separates? Who am I to have faith that what Adam and I have can somehow let us transcend what so many separated couples cannot? Just the same, a separation to save our marriage is worth a try. Because if you don’t have hope, what the hell have you got?
“Is that it?” Marian says in disbelief. She cranes her head out her front door and looks left and right.
“I wish I traveled this light,” I say, my purse slung over one shoulder, a tote bag over the other, and a large duffel at my feet. “The rest is in the car.”
Marian helps carry the rest of my belongings up the stairs to her town house, located on the second and third floors of her building, a ten-minute drive from my condo. To my delight, and certainly to Marian’s, who’s got a very sleek, sophisticated, and minimalist approach to interior design, I don’t have much stuff. Her luxury midcentury-style town house is quite spacious, in any event. Complete with a guest room with its own en suite full bath, Marian’s place will be more than sufficient while Adam and I spend a while—whatever a while is supposed to be—apart.
Once the last of my luggage is brought up and added to the heap in the center of what is now my new bedroom floor, I walk out onto the enormous balcony. It wraps around, like an L, with access from the kitchen, which is straight from an upscale magazine with its very clean lines, glossy white cupboards and drawers, and smoky-grey granite countertops. The balcony extends around the living room, whose walls are mostly floor-to-ceiling windows and doors, and ends at a large sliding glass door that opens into Marian’s master suite.
I grip the top of the glass balcony and close my eyes, letting the rays of the golden early-evening sun warm my arms and face. I briefly considered going to college up north—San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle, for a change of pace—but I couldn’t imagine giving up the near-constant shine of the Los Angeles sun, her expansive blue skies, her endless palm trees that wave hello.
“It’s not a beach view, but it works,” Marian says from the living room. She joins me on the balcony and drops onto one of her two chaises, slipping on her oversize designer sunglasses.
The view may not be of the beach, but the residential street below is lined with palm trees, and along the other side of the balcony is a view of the lush town house community’s garden and courtyard, set against the backdrop of the striking San Gabriel Mountains. Street noise is minimal. You don’t come face-to-face with your neighbors on the balcony, as Adam and I do if we’re out on our small one off our kitchen. The sun bathes this balcony in light, spilling on into the large living room. It’s absolute perfection. Adam and I have a beautiful and nicely sized condo (as well as a nicely sized mortgage), but it pales in comparison to Marian’s swanky digs.
“I can get used to this,” I say.
“Get used to it. You’re here for as long as you like, Halley. However long you need.”
However scenic the view is, however luxurious the town house, and however fantastic the company, I hope Adam and I won’t need very long. It hasn’t been more than five minutes since I’ve settled into my new place, and I’m already missing my husband. Who am I kidding? I’ve been missing him for weeks. But with Marian’s spare key—my key—snug in the back pocket of my jeans, the missing him hits harder than ever.
I’m grateful for Marian’s step-up-to-the-plate attitude tonight when she insists we go for a run. I can’t remember the last time we ran together—could it really have been back in college? I love the route she leads us on. We find a lengthy stretch of sidewalk uninterrupted by stoplights or crowds waiting to cross the street—no small feat in the heart of Pasadena—and cross through Central Park before concluding with a few trips up and down the stairs of a pavilion that’s quieted in its after hours. It’s in the tranquil town house courtyard, where we take the opportunity to stretch and hydrate, that Marian gets to the heart of the matter.
“So,” she exhales, “you’re on some kind of a timeline thing?”
“Huh?” I ask, stretching my hamstrings with the assistance of a bench.
“You and Adam. Do you have a certain date for when you’re supposed to figure this all out?”
She adjusts the lower rim of her teal sports bra. Marian never ran in more than a sports bra up top back in college and, like her flat, toned abs, some things don’t change.
“Not exactly,” I say. I use the hem of my tank top to pat away the sweat around my eyes.
“Well, I think you should.” She, too, begins to stretch her hamstrings.
“Sick of me already?” I tease.
“You need a plan.”
“You’re saying magical words to me, Marian.”
You’d think someone who strives to have her act together and be prepared would have nailed this one. It’s been a messy few weeks, with days going by that I can’t even string two sentences together with Adam, much less sit down at the table with a red pen and a calendar.
“There has to be some goal, something you guys have to achieve from this separation,” Marian says soberly. “Right? Or why the hell else are you doing it?”
“A big reason is that it’s toxic when we’re together. We need our space.”
“I get that. And then what?”
It shouldn’t surprise me that I’ve surrounded myself with direct friends and family. They clearly make up my deficit. I vacillate some as I tell Marian I’m not exactly sure . . . time will tell . . . yada yada. All fluff, no substance.
“We haven’t really talked about it,” I say.
“Okay.” Marian waves her hands, halting the aimless conversation. “How’s this? Your goal in this separation, however long it lasts, is to focus on you. Do you. Do what makes you happy.”
“Adam—”
“And don’t say Adam makes you happy.” She wrinkles her nose. “Because honestly, honey, he doesn’t right now.”
I nod at the harsh reality of her words, and she continues, now stretching her quads.
“I’m not saying you should try to forget about Adam,” she says. “That’s not going to help. But I don’t want you to mope or dwell on him and the problem. Constructive thinking is one thing, a river of self-pity and tears another entirely.”
“Right.” I give one strong, affirmative nod. God, what would I do without Marian?
“You find yourself,” she urges. “He, hopefully, finds himself. And I think you guys should still talk, maybe even see each other now and then? Don’t completely ignore each other.”
“Just give each other space.”
“Yes.”
“I like that,” I say, even though I can’t picture how we get from here to there.
“Aaaand,” she trills, “maybe, when you feel a little more clearheaded, like you’ve been doing you, have your space, and babies and marital dramas are not all that’s on your brain, see Adam. Maybe even have a date. Or at least a hookup.”
I burst out laughing. “If sex couldn’t fix things before, I don’t think it will now.”
“All I’m saying is you’re still married. Don’t shut each other out. Because then y
ou might as well just call for a divorce now.”
The power of this unspeakable word hits like stone, and Marian recognizes its weight immediately.
“I’m sorry, Hals.” She’s quick to apologize. “That came out wrong.”
“I know what you mean.” I wince, then say, “Don’t shut each other out but give each other space. Get clear heads again.”
“Precisely. But first, set a date. An actual date, a week, a weekend in some month, something when you two talk about where to go after the separation. Plans are good.” She plants a hand on her hip. “I know they don’t always pan out, but they’re good to have.”
“Yeah,” I say with a small smile. “Speaking of plans, Adam and I are supposed to go to Maui for Thanksgiving.”
“Omigod, that’s right! And?”
I shake my head. “Again, it’s something we haven’t really talked about.”
“Well then, there’s another thing you need a plan for. One”—she holds up an index finger—“a timeline, a date. And two”—she holds up a second finger—“vacay plans. And then, before you know it, you and Adam will be all made up, and you’ll be basking in the sun on the white-sand Hawaiian beaches, getting tanked, tanned, and screwed.” She winks. “The good kind.”
“Oh, Marian,” I say with a needed laugh. I grasp for some more levity. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ll have a Miranda-and-Steve moment on the Brooklyn Bridge?”
“Omigod, totally romantic!” Marian presses her palms to her heart and swoons. “A Brooklyn Bridge kind of makeup, and then off to Maui!” She flies a hand through the air before returning it to her heart.
As much as Marian embraces the single life, she’s a hopeless romantic. She’d never admit as much, but you’d have to be blind not to see what a fan she is of big romantic gestures. Every rom-com, every chick flick and chick lit book, every grand proposal and sappy reunited-lovers story on the Today Show gets her heart all aflutter. She says she isn’t holding her breath for her own fairy-tale romance, but I know she’s got her fingers crossed behind her back.
“It’s a fun thought, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say, leading the way out of the park and toward her—our—home. “We don’t even have a cool place like the Brooklyn Bridge to meet.”
“What are you talking about? The bridge over the Long Beach Freeway on Colorado Boulevard,” Marian jests.
“Oh god, how totally romantic,” I joke back. “And while we’re at it we can stop by Starbucks for a celebratory Frappuccino.”
Marian laughs. “Hey, it could happen.”
I shrug. “Could happen for you, too.” I can’t help myself.
“Ha! I’m a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of girl.”
I look over at her when she says this, and there’s a look of compunction on her face. It’s quickly washed away when she says, “Sun’s setting. It’s officially evening.”
Immediately I’m prepared for Marian to suggest we call for a ride and hit up one of LA’s hottest clubs or change into our sluttiest clothes and hop some nearby bars. She surprises me when she suggests we stop by Vroman’s Bookstore and grab all the celebrity gossip and beauty magazines we can find.
“Not to support your competition,” she adds. “Competitor research, we can call it.”
“Or just the medicine a girl could use right about now,” I say.
“To Vroman’s it is!” Marian says, excitedly bounding up the stairs to our town house. “God, we’re going to be great together, Halley. Not that I ever doubted it.” She pauses for a moment, key turned halfway in the doorknob. She looks over her shoulder at me and says with a bright white smile, “I know it isn’t the best of situations for you for why you’re here, but it’s really good for me.”
“Everything okay?”
She finishes unlocking the door. “Of course! I’m fabulous and on top of the world, Halley! I’m just really happy to have a roommate. To have you as a roomie again. It’s really nice. Really nice.”
That it is.
Six
The unusual and light summer rain that surprised Pasadena this early evening lets up. The sun is shining its farewell rays for the day, and the pavement and sidewalks are glistening. The scent of wet concrete wafts all around. When I look up into the sky, I can make out a fraction of a faint rainbow peeking from behind the mountains, the buildings, the dispersing clouds.
At long last I decide to give my sister, Charlotte, a ring. Not just a call like the ones we usually have where we catch each other up on the little things in record time so she can get back to fighting the fires little ones like to start. Rather a lengthier (and no doubt weightier) call, wherein I confess the marital drama that I’ve been worried she’d be hypersensitive about, and wouldn’t want to believe or process.
I pull up Charlotte’s number on my phone during my walk home from work. Living with Marian means being able to walk to and from my office. It’s a slow-paced fifteen minutes, and something I figure I’ll be able to do for only a limited time, from my new residence. It is also a small way to do me, as Marian suggested. A lot like my jogs, these walks are a way to seize the peace, gain clarity, and think through my predicament.
When Charlotte answers, I am not surprised to hear her kiddie circus shrieking in the background. At ten, six, and two, Alice, George, and Leah make up a full choir in the Miller house. There is never, and I mean never, a moment of silence when Charlotte and I talk on the phone. Rarely there may be thirty-second interludes of uninterrupted conversation, all while one child snatches a toy from another’s hands. Then as soon as the toy robbery is complete, there’s the predictable chorus of crying, whining, and protesting, followed by Charlotte’s combined efforts to scold, soothe, and make right. Jockeying for Charlotte’s attention is a game at which I declared myself a loser a long time ago.
Adam asked me once if my not wanting children had anything to do with the inability to hold an honest, uninterrupted, one-on-one telephone conversation with Charlotte. Like my mother’s inability to snag a Mother of the Year award, perhaps on some level this reinforced my childless choice.
I’m rational enough, though, to acknowledge that life largely is what you make of it, and the choices you make are symptomatic of who you are, your beliefs, your personality. I am not Charlotte and she is not I; therefore it follows that my personal portrait of motherhood could be something else entirely. It would be unfair to have decided kids aren’t for me based on the difficulties I watch my sister go through.
So in a straightforward answer, no, my choice of a childless life is largely independent of what I witness with Charlotte, just as it is largely independent of the way my mother chose to raise—er, not raise her daughters. Though Charlotte and I may share our father’s slight overbite, a love of frozen chocolate bananas, and an appreciation for Bette Davis films, we are quite different, and therefore would most likely be very different mothers with very different households.
I was the daughter who, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, answered at various stages in life dancer, writer, doctor, artist. Charlotte’s answers included teacher, singer, lawyer, chocolate maker. Both very typical answers from kids who would eventually discover that a degree in the liberal arts guaranteed a teacher’s position as much as it guaranteed a spot on the Rockettes’ lineup (especially in a wayward economy). It was during college that my childhood idea of writer began to take hold as I pursued my degree in English literature (still as much a guarantee of landing a writing job as of landing that teaching position). It was also during college that Charlotte’s childhood idea of lawyer began to take hold. It was Charlotte’s plans to become a mother someday, however, that also took hold and changed everything.
Charlotte and I were always encouraged by our father to follow our dreams, whatever they might be. Chocolate maker included. (Even though he could never hide his hopes of our following in his footsteps and pursing the sciences.) As determined and hardworking women, we were told we could become a writer and a
lawyer, and that’s exactly what we set out to do.
Charlotte also studied English literature, but she had the desire to attend law school afterward, and, in her words, see if she was any good at fighting for the little guy in the legal world. She and Marco, her college sweetheart since freshman year, married a few weeks after graduation, and come the fall semester, Charlotte was geared to begin her legal studies. Weeks before the semester started, though, Charlotte found the second part of her life aspirations met. She was pregnant. It was a blessing that came a few years too early in their marriage (their words, not mine), and one that changed the course of Charlotte’s career and life. She’s never outright said that she regrets having a baby much earlier than she and Marco planned, but she has said that she regrets never having gone to law school. I don’t know if saying one automatically means implying the other. The correlation is blindingly apparent, if you ask me.
I say all of this not to point out that Charlotte chose to be a mother and not follow her career path, and that I chose not to be a mother and have therefore followed my career path. I am writing, but I’d hardly call what I’m doing my passion. I say all of this to point out that Charlotte knew what she wanted; she had a goal. She’s a brave woman who does what needs to be done and will find the joy in it, even during the roughest of days, the most interrupted of phone calls. Charlotte’s also the woman who, exactly because she chose motherhood (or, rather, because motherhood chose her), has had to make concessions. She’s had to put part of her dream aside. I suppose there’s beauty in that because she always wanted to become a mother. Like Nina, she’s always seen herself as a mother as much as, if not more than, she’s seen herself as a career woman.
Yet no matter how you slice it, motherhood has made Charlotte’s path trickier. It changed everything. Because once Alice was here, the question became, what about baby number two? Because she and Marco didn’t want a giant age gap between the children, even if number one had come earlier than planned. And then, since they had always planned on having three children, they didn’t want to put off their youngest for too long, either. They considered it, but then, as Charlotte says, after a night of too much chardonnay and not enough precaution, baby number three came along.
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