She, Myself & I

by Whitney Gaskell

  “I’m not. Okay, maybe I am a little. I’ve been a bit irritable lately,” I admitted.

  “Well, that’s normal, right? The hormones, the lack of sleep. Do you think that maybe you’re dealing with some postpartum depression?”

  “No! No. Absolutely not.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I don’t feel depressed. Grouchy, yes, but not suicidal or anything. And I don’t feel like running away from Ben . . . although right now I wouldn’t mind getting some time off from Aidan,” I said.

  “Is it that bad?”

  “It’s pretty bad. We’re fighting a lot, and he’s always working, and then when he is home, he spends all of his time in his office upstairs.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that fatherhood is stressing him out, making him feel like he’s under more pressure to be a provider? That could be why he’s working so hard,” Paige suggested.

  I considered this. It was true, Aidan had gotten freaked out when I first told him I was pregnant. Within days, he’d purchased additional life insurance and was poring over college savings plans. And then he insisted that we leave our rehabbed cottage in central Austin and move out to the suburbs, claiming it was safer and the school districts were better. I still resented the move. I hated the cookie-cutter neighborhood we were in, and having to check with our omnipotent homeowners’ association before I could do something as simple as plant bougainvillea down by our mailbox. Not to mention the exorbitant mortgage that made Aidan’s eye twitch whenever the monthly bill arrived.

  “I suppose. But even if he is stressed out, that doesn’t give him the right to take my head off over every little thing,” I said.

  “Maybe you guys just need some time together, so that both of you can decompress. When was the last time you two had a romantic night together?”

  “The night Ben was conceived. And I’m only halfway joking,” I said.

  “Why don’t you plan a date for Saturday night, and I’ll come over and watch Ben,” Paige said.

  “Oh . . . well. I suppose we could,” I said. My stomach rippled with anxiety at the idea of leaving Ben at all, even with someone as trustworthy as Paige. “I haven’t been away from Ben since he was born.”

  “Really? Never?”

  “I made a quick run to Babies “R” Us for breast pads once while Mom watched him, but I was only gone for about a half an hour.”

  “Then it’s time. Saturday night. Zack and I will come over, armed with popcorn and movies, and you and Aidan can go crazy. Go out to a nice dinner, catch a movie, fool around in the backseat of your car,” Paige teased me.

  “Maybe. I’ll ask Aidan. But I think what I’m feeling is more than just not spending time with Aidan or being tired from the baby. It’s bigger than that. It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “My life isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “How so? I thought this was what you wanted—marriage, kids, day trips to IKEA.”

  “It is what I wanted. It’s just . . . different. Some of it’s better than I ever imagined, like having Ben. I thought the first few months after he was born would be awful, like baby combat duty. But it wasn’t like that at all. Some days are hard, but really, not as bad as I thought it would be. But then other parts . . . like my marriage . . . it’s not all bad, but it’s hard. Harder than I thought it would be,” I said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Paige said. “Relationships, and marriage especially, are never clear-cut. What did you think it would be like? Your wedding day?”

  “The day Aidan and I got married, Mom got tipsy at the reception, dirty-danced with each of Aidan’s groomsmen, and then told Daddy—who spent the entire day telling anyone who’d listen, including my new husband, that he thought marriage was a sham institution—that he was ‘damaged,’ ” I said wryly.

  “God, I’d forgotten about that,” Paige moaned.

  “So, no, not my wedding. My romantic expectations were set high by the movie Say Anything. John Cusack playing “In Your Eyes” underneath my bedroom window,” I said.

  “Great scene,” Paige sighed. “But completely unrealistic. You expect Aidan to dig out a boom box and play old Peter Gabriel songs for you every time you have a fight?”

  “One time. I’d settle for just once. And maybe flowers once in a while. Or making an attempt to actually seduce me, rather than just rolling over in bed and pressing his erection against my back,” I said.

  “That’s really more information than I needed to know.”

  “You know what I was thinking about today? I love Ben more than I love Aidan. If I was forced to choose between the two of them, you know, a scenario where one would live and the other would die, I’d pick Ben,” I said.

  Paige went silent.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’ve thought this through? And how exactly would this scenario come to pass?”

  “It happened in Sophie’s Choice,” I said.

  “That was a fictional story set in the Nazi concentration camps. I don’t think it’s something you’re going to have to worry about in present-day Austin,” Paige said.

  “Well, just say that it did happen. An armed crazy man could break in, or maybe a terrorist,” I said. “And he’d tell me I had to choose, one or the other. I wouldn’t even have to think about it, that’s how easy the decision would be for me. It would be Ben.”

  “This is what you think about during the day?”

  “I have a lot of time on my hands. I spend most of my day sitting at home with milk leaking out of my boobs, lucky if I can fit in a shower, while everyone else is out living their lives, all of them filled with a sense of optimism and hope and a greater purpose.”

  “Soph, don’t be so maudlin. No one goes through life always filled with optimism and hope, it’s just not normal. Everyone has a hard time, everyone struggles. And I think that if you’re feeling down all of the time, then you should really talk to your doctor about it. Postpartum depression can be treated, you shouldn’t just let it go,” Paige said.

  “No, because then they’ll just prescribe me an anti-depressant,” I said. A sickly feeling spread through me at the idea.

  “But if it would help . . . ,” Paige said.

  “No, I can’t take anything. I’m breastfeeding. And I know they say it’s safe to take medications while you’re nursing, but how do they really know? Besides, I’m fine, I’m not depressed,” I said.

  “You just said that you sit at home, feeling like life is passing you by. How is that not depression?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “I think you should at least call your doctor. Do you want me to call for you?”

  “No! Stop being so bossy,” I said.

  “I’m worried about you. You don’t sound like yourself,” Paige persisted.

  “Let’s just talk about something else. Anything else. Have you and Mom had The Talk yet?”

  “You mean the one where she tells me that she wants us to be supportive of her insane decision to get back together with Dad? Yup, we had it yesterday. She’s upset that none of their children are happy for them,” Paige said, snorting.

  “Can’t imagine why she’d think that. Just because they dragged us all through a horrible divorce and made nasty little comments about the other at every possible opportunity, and then refused to show up at any function the other was attending, so that we had to do two celebrations for every single holiday, birthday, and graduation for the past ten years . . . and now we’re supposed to be thrilled that they’ve ‘reunited, ’cause it feels so good,’ ” I said, breaking into the old Peaches and Herb song.

  “I’ve always hated that song,” Paige said, and we both laughed.

  “What are you doing?” Aidan asked, sticking his head in the bedroom door.

  “Talking to Paige,” I said, and then—forgetting that I was supposed to be freezing him out—I smiled at him.

  “Say hi for me,�
� Aidan said, and he blew me a kiss before withdrawing his head and disappearing from sight. I felt that old rush of affection I used to feel every time I saw him. It had been dwindling lately, but apparently it was still there, hibernating.

  A date night. Who knows, maybe it would help.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You did what?” I asked, hoping that I’d misheard him

  “I told my parents we’d have dinner with them Saturday night. Why are you getting so mad?” Aidan asked.

  We were sitting at the round cherry table—another point of contention, I’d bought it to match the new kitchen cupboards, and Aidan had fumed over it, insisting that we couldn’t afford it, although he shut up when I pointed out that we’d somehow been able to afford the new golf clubs he’d just purchased—eating dinner. Or I was eating. Aidan was unenthusiastically poking at the tuna noodle casserole I’d made.

  “Because Paige said she’d babysit Ben Saturday night, and I thought that you and I could go out on our own. Do something romantic,” I said. Tears began to sting my eyes at the enormity of how unfair he was being.

  “How was I supposed to know? You didn’t say anything to me about it before, so when my mom asked us over, I said sure. Besides, I think we should go. My parents haven’t seen Ben in two weeks,” Aidan said.

  “And that’s my fault, I suppose.”

  “Jesus, Sophie, I wasn’t criticizing you. But you never want to go over to their house anymore, and my mom’s been bugging me about it,” he said. The cross look had returned to his face. It made me want to kick him in the ankle.

  “I don’t want to go over there because your mother constantly criticizes how I take care of the baby. And why can’t they come over here if they want to see him? Why do I always have to go over there?”

  “God, Soph, do we have to fight about everything? All of the time?” Aidan asked, and suddenly he didn’t look cross at all. Just tired. Which made me a little nervous. I figured as long as we were fighting, at least we were still emotionally engaged. The fights that stopped only because we’d run out of energy were a bleaker reality.

  I sat on the vinyl-upholstered bench in the pediatrician’s waiting room, with Ben strapped to my chest in his Baby Bjorn carrier. He was facing outward and smiling his gummy grin at everyone who made eye contact with him. Ben was a gregarious baby—one of his many nicknames was Mr. Vegas—but this sometimes freaked me out. I kept worrying that some baby-snatching nut job was going to think that she (maybe this was sexist of me, but I tended to think of baby-snatching as a female crime) had a special connection with Ben, and would grab him when I wasn’t looking.

  “Mrs. O’Neill? Come on back,” the stout, clipboard-wielding nurse who guarded the door said.

  I struggled to my feet—even at four months, Ben was chubby—and followed the nurse back through the door. She showed me into the patient’s room, and after I unsnapped Ben from the harness and undressed him down to his diaper, she measured and weighed him. He was seventeen pounds and twenty-seven inches.

  “Is that normal? How does it compare to his two-month visit?” I asked.

  “Everything is fine. But Dr. Prasad will go over all of it with you,” the nurse said.

  “Dr. Prasad? Who’s that? We see Dr. Madden,” I said anxiously. Finding a pediatrician had been a laborious effort—I’d interviewed five before I found one that I felt comfortable with. Now they were pulling a bait-and-switch on me?

  “Yes, I know, but Dr. Madden is out sick today, and so Dr. Prasad, who just joined this practice, is taking over his appointments. If you’d like to reschedule . . . ,” she said, her voice trailing off disapprovingly, as if to say that only the most neurotic of mothers would insist on having a specific doctor handle a well-child visit.

  I was annoyed and yet chastened at the same time.

  “No, I guess it’s fine,” I said, and the nurse bustled out of the room.

  I lifted Ben up to look at the mobile hanging in the corner of the room. Blue squares, red triangles, green circles, and yellow moons dangled from lengths of string. Ben reached his hands toward it and cooed.

  “Look at that, Ben baby,” I said.

  There was a short rap on the door, and I spun around to see a tall man of Indian descent entering the room.

  “Hello, I’m Vinay Prasad. And you must be Mrs. O’Neill,” he said, smiling, holding out his hand to me. He spoke with a British accent. “And who is this young man?”

  I froze. Good God, he was gorgeous. He had almond-shaped tortoiseshell eyes, a long aquiline nose, and the kind of high cheekbones and Cupid’s-bow lips that a silent-screen starlet would lay down and die for. I reached for his hand, and as we touched, a warm rush flooded through me.

  It was just how I’d felt the first time I met Aidan.

  “Sophie. Please, call me Sophie,” I stuttered, desperately—stupidly—wanting to distract him from the “Mrs.,” although the one-and-a-half-carat diamond engagement ring twinkling rebelliously from its position on my left hand treacherously threatened to give me away. “And, um, this is Ben.”

  “And hello to you, Ben. You’re a handsome little fellow, aren’t you?”

  Ben beamed at the doctor and stuffed his chubby hand into his mouth. Dr. Prasad smiled back, and I quickly sat down and held Ben in front of me, hoping that my son would camouflage the jiggling baby flab still parked on my ass, hips, and stomach.

  “Are you having any problems? Is he sleeping well?” Dr. Prasad asked me.

  “Well. He sleeps, but he’s still getting up a few times a night,” I said.

  “He’s getting old enough that he should be able to sleep for longer periods of time. Oftentimes with babies this age, they’re not getting up because they’re wet or hungry, they just want to socialize with their mum,” the doctor said. “Are you still breastfeeding?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said, flushing red and hoping he wouldn’t notice. It was, after all, a normal topic for a pediatrician and parent to have. But I’d never before had a conversation about the fluid leaking out of my breasts with a man I found attractive. Other than Aidan, of course.

  “How is that going?”

  “Fine, fine. It’s going fine. Normal,” I said, and decided I’d just save all of my blocked-milk-duct questions for my ob-gyn.

  “Good. We normally advise you to hold off on solids until about six months, although it’s up to you. If you want to start him on some rice cereal or mashed banana in a few weeks, that would be fine. Just take it slow, and let him guide you. All right now, let’s see. His height and weight are excellent, he’s in the ninetieth percentile for each. And his head circumference is in the fiftieth percentile,” Dr. Prasad said, consulting the charts attached to Ben’s file.

  “What? But his head was in the seventy-fifth percentile at our last visit. Is that normal for it to shrink?” I asked. I peered worriedly down at my son. Did he have a freakishly small head, and I’d just never noticed?

  “No, it didn’t shrink,” the doctor said, laughing gently. “See here, this is where we chart his growth. See how it went up from his two-month visit?”

  “So he isn’t abnormal?”

  “No, he’s absolutely perfect,” he said, resting a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I was startled by the sudden contact and flinched nervously. Surprise registered on his face.

  Oh no, I thought. He’s going to think that I’m repulsed by him. Maybe he’ll even think that I’m bigoted against Indian people. What can I say to make this less mortifying? The reason I jumped is that I know we just met and all, but I think I already have a massive crush on you.

  Hardly. Gah.

  “Thank you, I think he’s pretty special,” I simpered, hating myself for how stupid I sounded.

  “Is it all right if I look him over now?” Dr. Prasad asked.

  I held Ben out, and the doctor took him from my arms, laid him down on the padded waist-high bench covered with thin paper, and checked him over from head to toe.

  “He has a bit of a
skin irritation here, underneath his armpit,” the doctor said, showing me the bright red spot, the size of a penny, under his left arm.

  “He does? I hadn’t . . . noticed,” I said.

  I was the worst mother in the history of bad mothers. How could I not have noticed my son had a rash? Oh my God, would the authorities take Ben away from me? And then I remembered . . . I hadn’t been the one to give Ben his bath. If anyone was neglectful, it was Aidan, not me.

  “I didn’t bathe him last night, my, er, husband did,” I said. “I’m sure that if I had, I would have noticed that he had a sore spot.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s very minor, easy to miss,” Dr. Prasad said. His voice was cool and deep, and very reassuring. It was a good tool for a doctor to possess. If I weren’t so attracted to him, I’d probably find him a very calming person to be around.

  Suddenly I imagined what life would be like if I were married to him instead of Aidan. I bet Dr. Prasad didn’t return home at the end of the day in a bad mood, squirreling himself away in his office to surf the Internet or zone out in front of the television. He was probably the kind of man who liked to savor a glass of wine with his partner while they—although to be honest, I was thinking “we”—talked about work, and then enjoyed a simple, gourmet meal involving fresh pasta and cilantro. He would probably even offer to do the dishes afterwards, so that I could take a bubble bath.

  I wondered if he was married. He wasn’t wearing a ring, but not all husbands do.

  “Are you married?” I asked abruptly, and then died inside as I heard just how inappropriate this sounded. “I’m sorry, I don’t meant to be intrusive. . . .”

  “No, no, not one bit. And no, I’m not married,” he said, and smile his wonderful smile at me. His teeth were straight and white.

  Dr. Prasad handed Ben back to me, and then turned to the sink to wash his hands before writing out a prescription of hydrocortisone cream for Ben’s rash.

  “Just apply this to the irritated area twice a day, and it should take care of the rash. The nurse will come back to give Ben his vaccinations. There are three shots this time, and I like to be long gone when she comes in wielding her needles. Sophie, it was so nice to meet you and your charming son,” Dr. Prasad said, and he extended his hand.