Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  “What are you doing?” she screamed. “What is he doing?” The nurse held her hand and patted her hair and couldn’t look at her. “WHAT IS HE DOING? HE’S NOT EXAMINING ME. HE’S DOING SOMETHING!!” She screamed as a lightning pain tore into her body, and still his hand was up inside her, needling at something and manipulating, until finally he pulled his hand out. Rachel realized the nurse was still holding her hand and it made no sense to her that she was screaming as if being attacked and this woman just wouldn’t do anything to help her.

  Toby understood immediately what had happened. Romalino had ruptured the membrane inside her uterus, the one thing keeping her water from breaking. Hospital policy dictated that women with ruptured membranes couldn’t leave, nor could their inductions be halted once the water was broken.

  The rest of the delivery went as Bartuck predicted: She was given a few hours to progress, and the stress of having to progress in a certain amount of time made her clench even harder, as if any of this were up to her, as if her entire world and sense of control in life hadn’t just fallen apart in a fifteen-minute span.

  At midnight, a baby girl was removed from her body. The baby was offered to Rachel behind the blue curtain that kept her from seeing her own organs splayed across her chest, but she said she felt too unsteady holding her in her supine position, paralyzed from the chest down. Even a half hour later, though, out of surgery, she wouldn’t hold the baby. She kept saying she wanted to wait till she could feel her feet again. The nurse said it would be good for her to hold her baby, and Rachel started crying, saying, “Did you see what just happened? You want me to hold a baby?” So the nurse held the baby while Toby stood between his wife and child, unsure what to do. They had budded. They had turned into three. He was responsible for the third. She could handle herself. This new baby girl could not handle herself. The nurse stood, rocking the baby, until Toby came over and took her.

  “It’s time for you to hold her now,” the nurse said to Rachel.

  “It’s only been a minute since you said that! I still can’t feel my legs! How can I hold my baby if I can’t feel my legs?” But then she looked from Toby to the nurse and back again and saw something alarming. She saw in their eyes that she wasn’t acting normal and something bad would happen if she didn’t start, so she held her arms out.

  “Give her to me.”

  Hannah was ninety minutes old by the time her mother held her, and over the years, Rachel would tell Toby that she thought that everything that went wrong with Hannah—which was what? Tantrums sometimes? A refusal to eat pizza with a vegetable on it? Not liking ballet as much as Rachel had wanted her to?—was a result of the fact that she hadn’t immediately bonded with her. Her own mother, refusing to hold her. What kind of person does that? That first night, Rachel lay awake, afraid to go to sleep, staring at the baby in the plastic bassinet beside her, Toby asleep in the cot at the end of her bed. When he woke up in the middle of the night, unaware of where he was for a moment, he just heard her whispering into the bassinet, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Later Rachel would retell the story of her delivery—she would tell it over and over, both to process what had happened to her and to punish her husband for leaving her when she was most vulnerable—but she would add a detail. She’d say that as the doctor was removing his hand, she’d kicked him in the chest, causing him to fly against the back wall. This wasn’t true; it couldn’t have been true. And yet she seemed to really believe it, enough so that she’d say it in front of him, even though he knew the truth—that she had turned not into a warrior after he did what he did, but into ash. This detail would always remind him that what happened to her that day had loosened something in her, maybe permanently broken it. It would make him worry that she was beyond repair.

  Toby filed a complaint within the hospital. He took an extended paternity leave to see to his wife. They went to psychiatrists and psychologists. She went to a postpartum depression group, which, she said, was filled with sad, flat women with no affect whom she couldn’t relate to, whom nothing happened to except their mysterious new sadness. They went to a fifth psychiatrist, one who worked in the hospital, who told her that she had PTSD, and this made her very ashamed. All she’d done was have a baby. She hadn’t gone to war. Everyone has babies. Everyone has been born. Why was she a person to get traumatized by it? She wasn’t the traumatized type. She was the trauma! Then they passed a sign in the lobby of the hospital after her six-week checkup with her actual doctor (whom she was very mad at) that said RAPE TRAUMA COUNSELING HAS BEEN MOVED TO FIFTH FLOOR. She told Toby to go home and she brought Hannah inside and sat in the group.

  “But you weren’t raped,” Toby said when she got home. “It was bad, but it wasn’t rape.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been raped,” she said. “This man did something awful to me. They get it. They understand me. No one else does.”

  They interviewed approximately ninety-two women and one man (Toby’s suggestion) to be their nanny. None were good enough, and Rachel was convinced that a man who wanted to be a nanny was a pervert. Finally, in came Mona, a forty-year-old Ecuadoran woman with hair that was long and uneven with a severe middle part and who had just been discharged of her duties when the Alexander Schmidts moved to Switzerland to run a new bank. Rachel had at first gone through an agency, but she felt like she wasn’t getting the best candidates because she didn’t have the higher-tier offerings of an Upper East Side family: a car just for the nanny’s use, a separate suite, credit cards, gifts.

  Mona had a son of her own who was twelve, back in Ecuador, and all she needed was two weeks a year to go back and see him. Rachel knew Lala Schmidt from barre class and thought she really had her shit together. Mona was slow and spoke like a crocheted blanket. She was the only person they interviewed who asked if she could hold Hannah. She took her into her squat, dense, velvet body, and Hannah, who could not yet see clearly, seemed to make eye contact with her. Maybe it was seeing her baby in someone else’s arms, calm. Maybe it was seeing the confidence and authority Mona had. Rachel began to cry in a way that Toby had never seen, sobs that overtook her. He put his hand on her back. Rachel nodded.

  “I think you have the job,” Toby said.

  Mona began work immediately, though Rachel wasn’t set to go back to the office anytime soon. She spent days at the apartment, cleaning bottles and getting to know Rachel and Hannah. She sent Rachel to a postnatal yoga class for women who’d had C-sections—Mona had heard about it from someone inside her network of nannies, a shadow group that knew all the secrets of these apparently poised women of the Upper East Side. Rachel went, and when she came back, she told Toby that she cried the entire time and felt unbound to the earth, like she was not subject to the rules of gravity if her baby wasn’t with her. But it got better little by little, this feeling, and she went back until finally she wasn’t crying all the time.

  One Wednesday, he came home and asked her about her day. She said she’d decided to stop going to the rape group.

  “I’m fine now,” she said.

  He noticed a spiral notebook at the end of the table, filled with notes in her small, tight handwriting. She seemed placid and undisturbed for the first time in weeks. He decided to ask no questions.

  At the end of the first day of his second week back at work, Toby raced home late to see Rachel and Hannah. He had an emergency consult on a hemochromatosis case. It was eight when he walked through the door. There he found Hannah, but no Rachel. Just Mona.

  “Where’s Rachel?” he asked as he washed his hands and took Hannah from Mona’s arms. Mona had been feeding her with a bottle of thick, white liquid—thicker than any breast milk.

  “She’s out for the evening. She said she’d be home by midnight.”

  “Is that formula?” He hadn’t realized she’d stopped breastfeeding.

  Toby sent Mona home and sat in Rachel’s glider, rocking
Hannah and watching a Cops marathon on TV.

  It turned out that earlier that morning, when Toby left for work, Rachel had called Alejandra Lopez and asked if she could stop by her apartment to ask her something. Rachel had called her two assistants and four of the associates who worked under her and asked them to dinner at the Green Kitchen Diner on First Avenue, where no one would see them. She told them she was going out on her own, that she was taking her clients with her—that Alejandra Lopez was one of them—and who would like to get in on the ground floor of Super Duper Creative? She stayed out that night, drinking and celebrating, until four A.M., when she tiptoed into their apartment, where she found Toby waiting up for her.

  * * *

  —

  NOW TOBY STOOD in the middle of his apartment, clutching a jar of peanut butter like it was a baby. He had picked up the peanut butter as soon as he walked away from Miriam and Cyndi so that he wouldn’t look like some psychopath who just window-shopped at Whole Foods. He held it in both hands against his chest, like someone was trying to take it away from him. He wanted to tear the flesh from his face. He wanted to rend his garments. He wanted to smash this peanut butter jar with his bare hands but actually it was just hard plastic.

  Focus, Fleishman. He turned to the kitchen, and his computer. He looked up Sam Rothberg’s name on Facebook. His last post was the Funny or Die video that everyone had passed around ten years before. He scrolled down through more: a Tawny Kitaen meme, some craft beer blog posts, a picture of him and Jack at STEM Night at the school, a picture of him and Miriam at the fundraiser for scleroderma that Miriam’s mother had bought a table at (said the caption). Then, most recently, two weeks ago, a picture of a pizza restaurant called Baba Louie’s with the caption “More like Baba booey, am I right? [crying-but-laughing emoji] [crying-but-laughing emoji] [crying-but-laughing emoji].” He typed the name of the restaurant into his search bar. It was in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He then searched Kripalu. Twelve miles away. What a dumb fucking joke. Rachel was fucking a Howard Stern listener. He sat back in his chair, staring at the screen. Cripple you.

  Last year, Toby and Rachel had invited the Hertzes and the Leffers for Friday night dinner. Toby had cooked the entire night before, and then he served dinner, and the women were oohing and making pointed jokes toward their husbands over how nice it was to be waited on by a man, and to have a man who participates. The understanding at the table appeared to be that Rachel had cooked, and Toby, in thanks, had let her sit throughout the meal. But it wasn’t true. He’d made chicken Milanese, one of his favorite recipes, and when Cyndi commented on it—“Mmm. Is that oregano?”—he’d said, “No, it’s tarragon.” He’d seen Rachel’s face darken at this, and he wondered what crime he had committed. How was it possible that he could work so hard so that she could impress her stupid friends and still disappoint her so deeply?

  Later he was in the kitchen plating the dessert the Hertzes had brought, and Rachel came in and snarled into his ear that he could, ostensibly, have more self-respect than making sure everyone knew that he’d made the meal. “I could make a meal if I didn’t have to work day and night.”

  There were so many ways to respond, Toby thought. Should he tell her that he hadn’t even thought about it when Cyndi asked? That he was sure it hadn’t registered with her because she was only making polite small talk? That she was making a fool of herself leaving her guests at the table while she stage-whispered a tantrum that everyone could hear?

  “Do you need some help in there?” Roxanne called from the dining room.

  “You know what?” Rachel said. “I’m sick of this.”

  Toby looked at her and put the plate down with a slam. “You do this. You contribute to this.”

  He walked into the dining room and sat down, trying to keep his face neutral. He didn’t give a shit about these people. But Rachel did. This was how he could punish her. He could punish her by reminding her that none of this mattered to him, that he was doing this absolutely, devotedly, for her. But that one day he could cut that cord and see where she drifted to. Yes, he should punish her by walking out. He should punish her so that she would never ever do this again.

  “We’re just talking about free passes,” Roxanne said, as he sat down. “Rich and I are allowed five in our marriage each.” Roxanne’s husband was a hedge fund manager and his name was literally Rich.

  “Oh, we only have one between us,” Cyndi said. “Mine is George Stephanopoulos. His is Naomi Campbell.”

  “Whoa,” Todd said. “Still? She must be in her sixties.”

  “Late forties,” Rich said. “Nothing wrong with experience.” They all laughed.

  “Mine is Mark Wahlberg,” Cyndi volunteered.

  “Gross,” Roxanne said.

  “See what I’m dealing with here?” Todd said.

  “There’s just something about him that makes me think I could save him.”

  “Mine is Ariana Grande,” Rich said. “I like a sexy, glammy type.”

  Toby laughed. “What’s a sexy, glammy type?”

  “I don’t know. Someone who looks like she’s a little too good for me? Like my beautiful wife here, of course.”

  Roxanne made a pretend angry face. “You’re just saying that so that I forget your free pass is with an actual child.”

  “She’s in her twenties! At least!”

  Rachel walked in with the plate of desserts arranged in a fan.

  “Who’s your free pass, Rachel?” Roxanne said.

  Rachel sat down. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s who would you sleep with if Toby gave you a free pass.”

  “This is what we’re talking about?” Rachel asked.

  “Come on, we’ve all answered,” Rich said.

  She thought for a half second. “Sam Rothberg.”

  “Sam Rothberg?” Roxanne almost fell over. Todd nose-burped his drink. Cyndi’s eyes opened so wide Toby could see into her skull. Toby closed his eyes.

  Silence fell on the table. Rich and Todd looked over at Toby, who might have been sad to see his wife so humiliated had the implication of what she’d just said not faulted to him being the world’s biggest loser.

  “What?” Rachel asked. “What did I say that’s wrong?”

  “You’re not supposed to pick a person who you know, Rachel,” Cyndi said. “God. You’re supposed to pick a celebrity.”

  The room became so uncomfortable that Rich tried to get a round of Drather going on the school’s teachers, but Roxanne shut that down immediately. Toby opened his eyes. Rachel narrowed hers in a way that would have been imperceptible if everyone at the table hadn’t known they had just been arguing in the kitchen. They sat on opposite ends of the table, staring at each other while their guests grasped desperately for a neutral subject.

  * * *

  —

  SAM ROTHBERG WAS everything Rachel wished Toby were: ambitious, successful, tall, at home among the wealthy. But he was also vain, vapid, superficial, ostentatious, an idiot bro who played in fantasy leagues. Sam Rothberg was all that Toby felt he needed to protect his family from. Sam Rothberg was who he pictured when Solly said he wanted to go to golf camp and Toby’s blood ran cold from the implications of this place where he lived inside but felt he existed outside—this place he was in but not of. His children were of it, though. He realized that now. They never stood a chance. What had he been thinking?

  But while Toby was fighting the pull of this soft, stupid life, Rachel was opting into it on every level. He realized suddenly, looking at this dipshit’s Facebook page, that it wasn’t just more money and more success Rachel had wanted out of Toby. She wanted him to be a different person. She had outgrown him. She was ready to level up. She didn’t want to renovate Seventy-second Street. She wanted to move on up. She wanted Seventy-fifth Street. She wanted the Golden.

  She’d been gunning
for him the whole time, he thought now. Did she orchestrate the entire misery of their lives just to get a divorce? Or wait. Unless. Unless unless unless unless unless unless unless. What if this had started before? It couldn’t have, right? The job at Fendant—but why? Why would a man try to get his lover’s husband a job at his own company? Why would she want him to work for her boyfriend? What kind of masochistic mindfuck was that? Or did they fall in love over the plotting of it? Or did they fall in love when he was finding her an apartment to live in? Or did he find her an apartment because they were in love? He closed his laptop as if that could make the questions stop.

  So they, Toby and Rachel, they never stood a chance, either. Rachel—his beautiful, smart, successful wife—had dabbled in this world too much to be able to resist it. She had jumped into the pool and was wondering why she was so wet. Or no! She was not wondering! There was no more wondering. There hadn’t been any wondering for years. You couldn’t go to the private school without wishing you were one of them. You couldn’t go to buy a house in the Hamptons and then wonder who you were. You were one of them. How had he missed all of this? God, what an idiot he was.