Life and Other Inconveniences

by Higgins, Kristan

  “Looks like I stuck my head in a lawn mower,” I murmured. “My daughter says I should buzz cut it.”

  “Think Natalie Portman,” Sophia said. “Erykah Badu. Charlize Theron.”

  “Okay. I’ll be totally badass. Maybe I’ll get a tattoo while I’m at it.”

  Sophia smiled. “Can’t help you there, but we’ve got clippers.”

  I didn’t look like Charlize or Erykah when she was done. I looked like a baby bird, featherless and freaky. I texted a picture to Riley, who responded with OMG, you’re so beautiful, Mama! and I felt better. If I didn’t have hair, I did have the world’s kindest child.

  When I went into Tess’s exam room, she was sitting on Miller’s lap, a bandage on her chin, another on the inside of her elbow. She looked groggy.

  Miller did a double take. “Uh . . . wow. It looks . . . you’re stunning.”

  “Thank you. That’s the only appropriate comment in these circumstances, so really, thank you. How’s our little pal here?”

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “I’m Emma.”

  “Your hair all gone.”

  “I know. And you have stitches in your chin.”

  “I very brave.”

  “I bet you were.” I looked at Miller, who was staring at my head. “I’m totally on fleek, okay? Which means supercool to you old folks. When can we get this girl home?”

  “Right now,” said the doctor, coming in with a prescription and a sheaf of papers. “She should sleep well tonight. Tylenol for any soreness tomorrow, but don’t be surprised if she doesn’t complain. Kids are tough.” She glanced at me. “Love your hair. Even better than the beaters.”

  “You think? I wasn’t sure.”

  She grinned. “Have a good night, you two. Take care of your little girl. Bye, Tess! You did great!”

  Our little girl. Neither one of us corrected the doctor, who’d obviously assumed I was Tess’s mother. Miller was quiet on the drive home. Tess was sleepy in her car seat, and when we got back to his house, he carried her in and brought her upstairs, then returned with a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and handed them to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded, went back upstairs, and after a second, I heard the bath running and his deep voice.

  Best make myself useful. I Googled “how to clean up corn oil,” found that my instinct to use kitty litter had been spot-on, and went down to the cellar to see if I could find some.

  “Emma?” Miller called. “Tess is in bed, but I found Luigi and have to wash him. If you want to go, feel free.”

  “I’m good,” I said. “I’ll hang out till you’re done.”

  By the time Miller came back down, I’d swept up the kitty litter and mopped the floor once and was starting a second time.

  “Emma, please, stop. Don’t.”

  “It’s fine. I like to clean.”

  “It’s not fine!” he almost yelled. “Why are you being so . . . great about this? My kid is a sociopath, I’m a horrible father, I picked a pirate restaurant for our first date where someone almost died, you started off the night with beautiful hair and now you’re bald, we’re both covered in blood and corn oil, and Kimmy just texted me to say she forgot to mention that Tess put her own feces in the DVD player. My life is literally shit and blood these days.”

  He took a shaking breath and looked at the floor.

  “Well,” I said, “who really watches DVDs anymore?”

  “Emma,” he began, and I hugged him.

  My head felt strange against his shoulder. After a second, he hugged me back, his hand going to my head.

  “Does this hurt?” he asked, stroking the stubble. God. I had stubble on my head.

  “Nope.” The truth was, the back of my scalp was still sore, but I wasn’t going to add to this guy’s burdens.

  “It feels kind of nice.”

  It did. “You’re not a terrible father.”

  “My only child hates me.”

  “No, she doesn’t. Stop the pity party or I’m not gonna make out with you on the couch.”

  He pulled back and looked at me. “Oh. Well, then. I’m a great dad. A saint, really.”

  I smiled, took his hand and led him to the living room. There was only the light from the kitchen shining in, hiding the old scuffs and new oil stains on the wall. It was a beautiful room, a fireplace on one end, built-in shelves and funky windows gracing the space. I sat on the rather battered leather couch, pulling him with me, and waited for him to make a move, suddenly feeling unsure of what to do next.

  He looked at me, studying my face. Took my hand.

  “I like you, Emma. A lot. There’s something about you that . . . I don’t know. Lights up a room.”

  My careful heart swelled. It had been a long, long time since a man had said something so lovely to me. My throat was suddenly tight. I had always been so focused on Riley, on getting through work, school, being a good mom, not screwing up. I never thought of myself as lighting up anything.

  I thought I saw his cheeks flush, and he looked at our joined hands. “I’m sorry. Was that a dumb thing to say? I haven’t had to figure out how to talk to a woman since sophomore year of high school.”

  I cleared my throat. “It was a great thing to say. Maybe the nicest thing ever.”

  He nodded slightly. “Good. Good.” He looked at me again. “Guess I should kiss you now.”

  “Guess you should.”

  He leaned in, and the kiss was gentle and warm and solid.

  Just like the man.

  An hour later, I walked home, turning down his offer to pay for a cab. I was horny, happy and kind of glowing, really (maybe that was the corn oil). I hadn’t felt like this in a long, long time. Jason had always been tainted with the knowledge that he was content to let me do all the hard work of raising our child. The other guys I’d gone out with barely warranted a mention.

  But Miller . . . Miller was different.

  There was nothing more appealing than a man who loved his child. Especially when that child was as challenging as Tess. The image of him carrying her inside, Tess too exhausted to protest . . . well.

  Seemed like I might be a little bit in love.

  CHAPTER 31

  Genevieve

  The day Emma told me she was pregnant had been, until that conversation, a rather wonderful day.

  She had graduated from high school two weeks before with a 3.75 GPA and the award for excellence in French. Her peers had voted her “nicest girl,” which was irritating; I’d have preferred “most likely to succeed.” However, she’d done well, gotten into Smith (I was pleased at the choice of an all-women’s college) and would be close enough to come to Sheerwater whenever she wanted.

  During her junior and senior years of high school, I had pictured her future often—Emma, more mature, more independent, not linked to that vapid boy, surrounded by intelligent, dynamic young people who would inspire her. How she and I would get along better because, with a little distance, we wouldn’t grate on each other as much. Perhaps she’d come to admire me a bit more . . . Perhaps her friends would help her with that. “Genevieve London is your grandmother?” I’d imagine them saying the first week of school. “She’s amazing! I read that profile on her in Vogue!”

  In my fantasy, Emma would get into the best sorority and be as happy in college as I was. She had mentioned spending her junior year in Paris, and I heartily approved. After college, perhaps an MBA or other advanced degree. She would have a job waiting for her as my protégé or, if design and management didn’t suit her, in marketing. She was clever, unlike her father.

  I was proud of her. Yes, she could’ve done better in high school. Yes, her attachment to that boy made me want to grind my teeth. But she was leaving for college (and apparently he was, too, though I tended to tune out his mother every
time she cornered me at a function). More than anything, I was relieved. Ten years prior, I had been flabbergasted the day Clark dropped her off and told me he “just couldn’t do this anymore.” I had been fifty-seven years old, expected to raise a shell-shocked, grieving child I barely knew, putting everything else to the side.

  Which I had. I had done it, and she was finally going out into the world to find her potential.

  I even remember what I’d been wearing that July day—I’d spoken at a Women in Business luncheon in the city and had worn a sleeveless black jersey dress with a lightweight leather motorcycle jacket and a modern garnet and diamond pendant from David Yurman. Tiffany diamond studs. Black and leopard-print kitten heels from Christian Louboutin. A red clutch of my own design.

  I’d even mentioned Emma in my keynote, saying how we must be role models for the younger generation, that my own granddaughter was well on her way to becoming a force to be reckoned with and would be attending Smith College in September. At the end of the speech, the women had given me a standing ovation.

  In a word, I was feeling fantastic.

  Charles had driven me home, and I was looking forward to a drink and dinner and telling Emma about the speech.

  Instead, I found her cowering in the front parlor with Jason. “Gigi,” Emma said the second I walked in, “we need to talk to you.”

  Those six words told me everything. Just like that, the future I’d carefully built for my granddaughter turned to ash. I put down my bag, slipped off my coat and handed it to Donelle, who was acting like a housekeeper for once, and closed the parlor door.

  Took my time sitting down in a wing chair. I crossed my legs and, though I could feel my blood pressure rising, kept my voice calm. “Do go on.”

  Jason went first, ineloquent and fumbling. “Mrs. London, we totally didn’t mean for this to happen, but it looks like, uh . . . well, we, uh . . .”

  “I’m pregnant,” Emma said, and her voice was firm and steady.

  I let that sit for a few beats. Turned to Jason and said, “Get out of this house. You are no longer welcome here.”

  He looked at Emma; she didn’t argue.

  I’m sure you can imagine the conversation that followed. There was nothing unique about it—a foolish young girl who thought she could raise a child; the older, wiser person crushed with disappointment and betrayal. I pointed out all the opportunities she would throw away. I listed the only two options I saw before her: termination or adoption.

  I may have raised my voice to her. I did, I acknowledge that now. I didn’t cry. I didn’t slap her, though I wanted to.

  She was so . . . smug! So steadfast, as if having a baby was special and miraculous (which was true, under the right circumstances) and not idiotic and reprehensible, as it was in this case. She was utterly unflappable, and I hated her for that, because I’d given a decade of my life to her, sheltering her, shaping her, creating a path for her, that dirty little motherless girl who’d stood so forlornly in my foyer ten years before. She had been a wreck, confused and filled with mixed messages from both parents, and I’d undone all that! I’d been clear and firm and strong for ten entire years, once again rising to a situation I never wanted.

  She simply sat there, a self-satisfied teenaged Madonna, so complacent and even happy because she’d been stupid enough to let an egg get in contact with a sperm. As if she were the first female ever to get pregnant.

  I spoke a great deal. I gave her an ultimatum—if she planned to have and keep the baby, I would no longer support her.

  “That’s fine, Gigi,” she said. “I’m not asking you to.” She had the audacity to put her hand on her stomach. “I want this baby.”

  “Fine!” I said. “Have your baby and join the ranks of uneducated teen mothers and see how good you’ve had it your entire life, which, by the way, has been entirely funded by me.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “You’re even more stupid than I thought, in that case.” And then I said what I wished I could take back from that moment on, one of the few things I’ve ever said that gave me shame. “You have no skills for this. No preparation. You will fail, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you ended up like your mother.”

  She left the room then, quietly. I didn’t see her leave the house later. Indeed, I didn’t see her for seventeen more years.

  If she had ever called, I would have apologized. Well, perhaps not. But I would have set things right. But with each week, then month, then year that passed, the words were increasingly walled in, festering.

  That was my punishment for Clark, I suppose, though being Clark’s mother was punishment in itself. I had lost Sheppard and failed Clark, and then circumstances took Emma from me, just as Sheppard had been stolen away.

  Emma hadn’t forgiven me. I could hardly blame her. But all these years later, she’d brought her daughter here and let Riley get to know me and even love me a little.

  Sometimes, that gift was almost too generous to bear.

  CHAPTER 32

  Emma

  The first week of August was thick with humidity and mosquitoes. Though Sheerwater had central air-conditioning, the house felt close and still. Every day, we were promised evening thunderstorms, and every day, the sky stayed white and flat. The flowers drooped by mid-afternoon, and the pool was too warm to be refreshing. Jellyfish had found their way into Long Island Sound, so there was little respite from the heat.

  I was kind of loving having a shaved head. It certainly made prep time easier. Genevieve kept giving me the side-eye, murmuring about odd style choices and women who could pull certain looks off, and women who couldn’t. She didn’t seem too interested in just how I’d come to have a shaved head, but that was my grandmother for you. It was always about how things appeared.

  I’d been doing more and more counseling with Rose Hill families. It was the best work I’d done as a therapist yet, and I’d been Googling similar facilities back in Chicagoland. Four more of my online clients were winding down, scheduling their next appointments for weeks out, rather than days. Three of them seemed to be doing well, and I suspected that Jim, the guy with the fascination for tall women, had found himself a girlfriend. He’d met her for coffee three weeks ago, and while he’d said it was hard to be with a woman who was only five ten, he was generously giving her a chance.

  Dirk and Amy, the angry couple who’d been trying to find a way back from Dirk’s cheating, decided to get a divorce, and honestly, I thought that was best. Dirk had never seemed truly regretful about his affair, and Amy didn’t seem like the forgiving type. She’d already put up a dating profile, then had complained about the “losers” who wanted to go out with her. “I want someone way better than Dirk ever was. A surgeon, maybe. Someone really rich,” she’d admitted in a one-on-one session, and all my advice about healing and investing in herself fell on deaf ears.

  Riley was not quite dating Rav. She went to his house for dinner once or twice a week, and he spent a lot of time at Sheerwater, dutifully playing board games with the three of us older ladies and my daughter. Even Helga joined in once in a while.

  Speaking of romance, I seemed to be dating Miller. Every other night or so, I’d walk over to his house under cover of darkness, breathing in the smell of verbena and petunias from the well-tended gardens of Stoningham, and sit on his porch, maybe have a glass of wine or iced tea. We hadn’t managed another proper date (which, given how the first one went, was just fine), but the porch nights were lovely. Sometimes, we held hands, sometimes we kissed, but mostly, we just sat and listened to the crickets and cicadas, the soft laughter from the family next door, and talked about our girls and life.

  He mentioned Ashley often, his voice still a little wistful for their old life. I didn’t mind. Why would I? It was absolutely lovely to hear a man talk about marriage with a sense of awe that it had been so happy.

  “Do I
talk about her too much?” he asked one night as we sat side by side on his porch.

  “No,” I said. “It’s nice to get to know her.”

  His voice was husky when he answered a minute later. “Thank you. She liked you, you know. Said you could do better than Jason.”

  “Did she?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t bad-mouth my cousin. He’s just one of those Peter Pan types.”

  “So I’ve learned,” I said. “What do you think of him and Jamilah getting back together?”

  “She could do better,” he said, and laughed again, a low and smoky sound that made my lady parts hum. “So could’ve you, but at least you got Riley.”

  Dating like this . . . it was pretty fantastic.

  On Friday night, Riley and I sat in the conservatory. The promised thunderstorms were rumbling over Long Island, and we were waiting to see if they’d come our way. Helga, Donelle and Gigi had all gone to bed, and we’d opened the windows to the conservatory so we could hear and smell the rain.

  The thunder boomed, louder now. “One, two, three . . . ,” we counted in unison. I didn’t know if there was any truth to the seconds between thunder and lightning indicating how far off the storm was, but . . .

  “My mom and I used to do this,” I said. “Not here, obviously, but back in Chicago. Sometimes, she’d get me out of bed so I wouldn’t miss the storm, because I could sleep through anything.”

  “She sounds like she was so nice. Pancakes for dinner and stuff.”

  “She was great.”

  “You must miss her. I’d miss you, Mommy. So much.” She tucked her head against my shoulder and rubbed my fuzzy buzz cut with her hand.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  Riley was quiet for a minute. “Did you ever think about it? Committing suicide?”

  “No. Not once. I swear on your life, Riley. I would never do that.”