by Kate Hewitt
Kevin sighed and raked a hand through his hair. He’d been taking care of the girls around the clock for three days, while I was in the hospital, and he was tired and I knew his back hurt. Stacy hadn’t been able to help as much as she’d wanted to; my mom had had one of her turns. ‘Do whatever you want,’ he said, and it sounded like defeat. ‘I know you will, anyway.’
I didn’t think that was fair but I didn’t argue. I’d won, and that’s all I’d wanted.
But now, as I sit in front of the computer, I wonder if I’d really won all those years ago. If I had, I didn’t win much. I think of the vacation we took to Disney World last year, the huge, huge hopes I had for that week. I’d wanted Grace to let Isaac come on his own, but of course she didn’t, and I understood that, even if I didn’t want to. He was little, and he didn’t know us all that well. But even with her there, especially with her there, I wanted us to bond. To get along in a way we never have been able to. I wanted Grace to understand and accept that I was a part of her son’s life. An important part. That definitely didn’t happen.
Kevin couldn’t go on the rides because of his back, and Amy found it all boring and kept trying to lose us in the park so she could go flirt with boys, and Lucy whined and Isaac kept clinging to Grace. That was what hurt me the most. It was as if he was stuck in an elevator with strangers, just enduring the awkwardness. It was a relief to get home, away from the constant cycle of expectation and disappointment.
‘Mom?’ I look up from the computer to see Emma standing there, a textbook clutched to her chest. ‘What are you doing?’ Her eyes move to the screen and back to me, and I know she’s read the search results. Probably figured it out faster than me.
‘Nothing.’ I click the mouse to minimize the browser, even though I know it’s pointless. Emma’s gaze moves over my face, searching for answers. Of all the girls, she looks the most like me – blonde hair that will turn mousy as she gets older, light blue eyes, pale skin, freckles. She’s like me too in the way she moves quietly about, always working hard, keeping to herself. I was the same at her age.
No one expected me to get pregnant at seventeen and not even finish high school. No one ever noticed me, except Kevin, and that was only because we were assigned to work on a chemistry project together, two mousy misfits who bonded over our inability to operate a Bunsen burner. We used to laugh about it, but right now it makes me feel sad. I glance at Kevin, his gaze fixed determinedly on the TV. He’s watching some mindless game show like it holds the answer to life.
‘Is this about Isaac?’ Emma asks in a low voice. ‘Did Grace say something to you?’
Even Emma doesn’t sound surprised, like she expected this. I push the keyboard away, restless. ‘Maybe.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know what I can do. I bet Grace is banking on me not contacting a lawyer, knowing a messy legal battle will hurt Isaac. When I consider that, I realize even I’m amazed at how long she’s let Isaac visit. She could have pulled the plug at any moment, but she didn’t. But if I’m supposed to feel grateful, I don’t. I still want more.
‘What do you think, Em?’ I ask, trying to sound practical. Strong. ‘Do you think I should give him up?’
‘Mom,’ Emma says softly, and she sounds sad, ‘you did that seven years ago.’
I blink, startled. ‘Is it hard, having him visit?’ I ask, the words tearing my throat. ‘Do you wish he didn’t?’
Emma doesn’t answer for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she says finally. ‘It’s weird. I don’t like thinking that he’s my brother, so I don’t.’
I jerk back a little at that admission. ‘Why don’t you like thinking it?’
Emma shrugs, her gaze sliding away. She doesn’t want to hurt me with her answer, but suddenly I want to know. I need to.
‘Tell me, Emma.’
‘Because you gave him away.’ Her voice is so small and soft I almost don’t hear the words. ‘And it feels wrong somehow, that you were able to just do that, so I just pretend he’s some distant relative or an old friend. Nobody who matters. Or at least no one who matters that much.’
I try to keep my face neutral, try not to show how devastating her words are, how they cut to my heart and tear it right open. I’m bleeding out, right there, and I don’t want to show it. Emma must see something of it in my face because she says, ‘Mom, I’m sorry…’
‘No.’ The word is ragged but sure. ‘No. You have nothing to be sorry for, Emma.’ But I can’t look at her; I’m afraid I’ll break down.
‘Okay.’ Emma stands there for a moment and then uncertain, she drifts away. I stay where I am, my heart like a stone within me. I don’t know how long I sit there, staring straight ahead, but eventually I take a deep breath and then I pick up the phone.
Seventeen
GRACE
We need to talk. Heather sounds grim, but I am determined to remain hopeful. At least we have something to talk about, and I’m praying she isn’t going to tell me she’s consulted some pro bono lawyer who is going to go apeshit on me. That’s the last thing I need.
‘Okay, Heather.’ I try to pitch my voice somewhere between friendly and practical, but I think my tone is a little off. ‘Do you want to talk now?’
‘Not over the phone.’ She sounds hard, almost angry. I feel a tremor of fear. With Dorothy leaving, I am not up for a big legal battle. I am just not.
‘Okay, then,’ I say, and I am really trying to hold onto my accommodating tone. ‘When is a good time for you?’
She’s silent for a long moment. ‘I can’t get time off work easily…’
No kidding. ‘On the weekend?’ I suggest, although I really don’t want Isaac there for whatever she’s going to say. The trouble is, I no longer have the childcare for him.
‘Not the weekend,’ she says decisively, and I hold onto my temper.
‘So when are you thinking?’ I ask as pleasantly as I can. I’m bending over ass-backwards but she doesn’t see it. She never does.
‘Next week, I guess,’ she says finally. ‘I get off early on Fridays. How about next Friday, around… two?’
Two o’clock in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Like that will be easy for me. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘That sounds great.’
I try not to think about Heather for the rest of the evening. Instead I go into Isaac’s bedroom, lie next to him on the floor where he’s playing his iPad, his precious hour of screen time. Outside it’s starting to get dark, and I know I should tell him to get ready for bed, but I don’t want to go into good-mother mode. I just want to be.
Eventually Isaac puts the iPad aside and flips over onto his back. The glow-in-the-dark planets and stars we stuck to his ceiling a year or so ago are coming out as twilight settles outside, fluorescent yellowish-green and fluorescent twinkles above us.
Isaac’s room has changed a lot from the pristine elephant-themed nursery of seven years ago. He grew out of the elephants by age four, asking for race cars, and then a year ago I redid his room in a more age-neutral scheme that I hope will last through the teen years – varying shades of blue with red accents and a fairly subtle solar system theme with a lava lamp that has stars showering through its glass base and a framed, antique map of the solar system on the wall. And of course the stars above us.
‘Where’s the Big Dipper?’ Isaac asks as we look up at the stars together.
‘I’m not sure.’ I tried to follow a pattern of constellations when I put them up, but some have peeled off and it’s hard to tell now. ‘Where do you think it is?’
‘There.’ Isaac points straight above us, and I can make out the vague dipper-esque shape.
‘I see it, Isaac.’
He shoots me a grin, and my heart expands with love. I feel so grateful for this moment, for every tender, little, unimportant exchange that matters more than anything in the world. And for a second my mind flicks to Heather, to how few moments like this she has, and I feel a pang of guilt. Am I being cruel, taking Isaa
c from her? Am I being selfish, demanding more when I know she has so little?
And yet I know, I absolutely know, I can’t go on the way we have been. Isaac can’t. Maybe if Heather wasn’t so needy, or I wasn’t so paranoid, but the way we are, the way it’s been… I can’t do it any more, and I don’t want Isaac to suffer through it, either. Something has got to give.
The next evening I pick Isaac up from Stella’s apartment on Eighty-Sixth and Park. Close enough, I’ve thought more than once, for them to walk to each other’s apartments when they’re a bit older. I picture him riding his scooter down Park Avenue, kindly doormen casting a benevolent, watchful eye, and it makes me smile.
‘Grace.’ Stella throws open the door with an expansive gesture as soon as the elevator doors open onto her floor. She lives in huge, sprawling apartment with her husband, Eric, who works in corporate litigation, and her two boys – Will and his younger brother, Jamie, who is a lovable terror.
‘I’m making cocktails,’ she says as she ushers me into their hallway, which is a welcoming mix of clutter and style. ‘Since it’s Friday. And you must need one, since you’ve had this childcare nightmare.’ Stella has a tendency to talk in italics, but I love her warm-hearted enthusiasm, so different from my own cool containment. Perhaps that’s why we work as friends, why we hit it off from that first play date in early September, spending forty minutes chatting by the elevator, exchanging our life details along with knowing smiles, while Will and Isaac raced around us.
Now I follow her into the huge kitchen, which is a happy mess in a way my kitchen will never be. Mixing bowls are out, and kids’ artwork is papered all over the walls, and Justin Timberlake is singing about the sunshine in his pocket, blaring from her phone stuck into a set of speakers.
Stella dances around to it as she fetches a large glass and salts the rim with a flourish. ‘Margaritas,’ she says, ‘because it’s so warm out.’ She takes a sip from her own as she pours mine from a pitcher she’s made up, and then garnishes it with a wedge of lime. ‘Ta da!’ She dances over to me to hand me my drink, and I laugh, heartened by her exuberance.
I take a sip. ‘Oh, this is fantastic. Thanks.’
‘Come sit down.’ She pats one of the high bar stools around the huge marble island. ‘Tell me about it. So she just quit?’
‘Yes, but she kind of had to.’ I slip onto the stool and take another sip of the margarita, which is delicious, and heavy on the Patron.
‘Had to?’ Stella wrinkles her nose. ‘Couldn’t she have given you some notice?’
‘I guess it came up kind of suddenly.’ I don’t want to be disloyal to Dorothy, whom I still miss and love, but a tiny dart of bitterness fires through me all the same. She knew how difficult leaving so quickly would be for me.
‘So have you found anyone else yet?’ Stella slips onto the stool next to mine, her half-started dinner preparations forgotten. It looks like she was making some kind of paella, with pink, unpeeled shrimp lying in a fat pile on the island, along with a bag of Arborio rice.
Since having Isaac I have tried to cook a little more. A couple of times a week I manage to make something healthy and fun – homemade pizza with a whole-wheat crust, a colorful stir fry. But the other nights I’m late home from work or I’m too tired, and so we have take-out or something simple, pasta and sauce from a jar. I try not to feel guilty about that, but inevitably I do. Motherhood feels like constant tug-of-war between guilt and love, fear and joy.
‘No, I haven’t found anyone yet.’ I take another sip of my margarita, which is going down nicely. ‘I was thinking about putting him in the after-school club, actually.’ We both grimace, as if I’ve said I want to stick him in a Romanian orphanage.
‘Surely you can get someone. You used the same agency as I did, didn’t you?’
I nod. I used the same elite agency just about every mother on the Upper East Side uses. Not that Stella has a nanny any more; after ten years as a human rights lawyer, she quit work after Jamie was born, and is a happy and satisfied stay-at-home mom.
‘It just takes such a long time. Reading the applications, figuring out the ones I want to interview. It’s such an important decision.’ I think of Dorothy with a pang. I miss her so much – her comfortable confidence, the way she filled my apartment with her presence, her belly laugh, her easy manner. I’d interviewed six prospective applicants before I found her, and when I found her, I knew. It felt like coming home.
‘You were lucky to hold on to Dorothy for so long,’ Stella says with a knowledgeable nod. ‘So many nannies quit when the kids start school, don’t they? I’m lucky I never had to go down that route.’
‘Do you miss work?’ I ask impulsively, and Stella pauses to seriously consider her answer.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ she says at last. ‘How could I not? But I still wouldn’t change a thing.’
‘And when Jamie starts kindergarten?’ It’s always the million-dollar question for the moms who were lucky enough to be able to stay at home. When do you go back to work? What kind of job do you get? Back into the eight-to-six slog (nine-to-five doesn’t exist in the corporate world) or do you let yourself be shunted into part-time purgatory? It’s a choice I’ve never had to make, and never will. If I want to stay in New York and see Isaac through school, I’ll be working full-time until I retire.
‘I’m not rushing into anything,’ Stella says after a moment. ‘We don’t need the money, and I’m enjoying everything.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘To tell you the truth, I actually like being class mom.’ Which makes me laugh. ‘And we couldn’t go to France in the summer if I had to work.’
Stella and her family rent a villa in the south of France every year for three whole months while her husband Eric telecommutes. It makes Isaac’s and my one week on Cape Cod look a little pathetic in comparison. We go to the same weather-beaten cottage my dad and I used to go to, and in truth I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Those seven days on the Cape are the pinnacle of my year – lazy days on the beach, games of Pinochle by the little woodstove, a week of relaxation and remembering how much I love my son, how grateful I am for my life. I remember how I’d imagined those vacations before Isaac was born. Before I even knew he was a boy I saw us there, lying on the beach, looking up at the stars. Toasting marshmallows, building sandcastles, and savoring every single moment.
‘You know I’ll have Isaac over here,’ Stella says. ‘We have karate on Monday and swimming on Wednesday, music lessons on Friday…’ She grimaces, acknowledging, at least a little bit, how crazy and ridiculous the Manhattan child’s overscheduled life is. ‘But Tuesdays and Thursday, it’s no problem. At all.’
‘That’s really kind.’ I’m hesitant to take her up on such a generous offer, even though I know she means it. There’s absolutely no way I could repay her in kind, ever. ‘I might take you up on it.’
‘I mean it, Grace.’ Stella leans forward, her expression turning intent, her voice urgent. ‘Look, I know how easy I have it. How lucky I am.’ Another grimace. ‘I’m sure some people look at me and think I don’t realize it, that I’m a spoiled princess of a Manhattan mother, and I probably am, but…’ She sighs and spreads her hands. ‘Let me help. I want to.’
I believe her, and so I smile and hoist my margarita. ‘Trust me, I will.’
Sitting there, sipping my drink, I feel light with happiness despite the childcare worries. I am grateful for these simple moments – friendship, motherhood. No matter how difficult it all feels sometimes, I know I’m lucky, just as lucky as Stella, but in a different way. I have more than I ever thought I would. More than I ever thought was possible.
Stella looks like she’s going to say something more; she pauses, her glass halfway to her mouth, and I tense, sensing something big. ‘What?’ I finally ask with a little laugh, and she gives me a slight abashed smile.
‘It’s just… I hate to seem nosy because I know how tricky these things are… but is Isaac’s father involved in any way?’
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The questioning smile freezes on my face. I haven’t told Stella Isaac is adopted, and he obviously hasn’t mentioned it either. I decided a long time ago to be completely open with Isaac about his adoption; even when he was a baby, I made it into a bedtime story, pointed to photos of him as a wrinkly newborn, explained how he was special, how I’d chosen him. And, in truth, I didn’t have any other options really, with Aunt Heather in the picture from day one, although in those cozy stories I didn’t always mention her. Mostly I didn’t. And obviously I didn’t advertise his adoption, either. It’s always felt personal. Not a secret, but… private.
‘Isaac’s adopted,’ I say now to Stella, keeping my tone easy and matter-of-fact. ‘There never was a father in the picture.’ Which feels a little unfair to Kevin McCleary.
‘Oh. Wow. Sorry, I didn’t know.’ Stella absorbs this information as she sips her drink. ‘That’s wonderful, though. Did you go international?’ she asks, which makes it sound as if we’re talking about a shopping trip to Paris.
‘No, domestic. Actually…’ With Heather’s phone call still in the forefront of my mind, I find myself admitting, ‘His birth parents live in New Jersey. We see them once a month.’
‘Once a month?’ Stella looks incredulous, as well as both admiring and slightly horrified. ‘Wow. That must be so… well, how is it? I mean, I can’t even imagine.’
‘It’s a bit difficult.’ I want to confess how completely awful I’ve found it, how I’m longing for it to end, but something holds me back, maybe even a weird loyalty to Heather.
‘Why do you…? I mean, did the birth parents suggest it? They must have… and did you have to agree?’ She shakes her head, still seeming disbelieving, and I feel a satisfying little pinprick of validation. Yes, it is weird and difficult and I’ve been enduring it for seven years. Thank you, Stella, for getting that.
