All the Difference (24 page)

She put the last of the dishes away and checked the clock to see if she should just give up on the day and get ready for bed now. Molly's body ached, and she leaned against the countertop for a minute. She couldn't fathom going through the motions of taking a shower. She thought about being a kid in the springtime, years ago, when she'd play outside and a sudden rainstorm would pop up, soaking her to the skin. She remembered the awful chill, how it felt like she could feel the shivers of cold right down to her very bones. That's what this kind of tired felt like: like her insides were just rubber, her eyes fogged over with mist. Her head felt heavier than her belly had at the end of the pregnancy. But she had to keep going. Moving. She wiped down the countertops and poured water into the coffee machine, setting it up for the next morning. She had to keep nursing and diapering, folding the laundry and sorting the bills. Sleep would have to be something she fit in when she could.

And Scott? Well, Scott could play basketball.

Molly peered into the freezer and decided that her best option for dinner at this point was to pop a frozen Lean Cuisine into
the microwave. It was only eight o'clock, but she knew she was going to go to bed after the baby's next feeding. She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, looking around the kitchen. The floors could use a good scrubbing. She added the task to her mental to-do list.

The microwave timer binged, and Molly took the plastic tray out with her fingertips, instantly singeing her skin with some spilled sauce. As fastidious as she was about everything in her life, Molly still could never remember to pull on some blasted oven mitts.

“Damn it,” she muttered, and threw the container onto the butcher block island she still used as a casual table. She lowered herself down onto the bar stool with a heavy movement and placed her face in her hands.

It's not fair,
she thought. She loved that baby so much her heart sometimes felt like it was too big for her chest. But it wasn't enough for Scott.
They
weren't enough for Scott, and Molly found herself wondering what was so wrong with her that disinterest had replaced any love he may have once felt. Molly had dared to ask him to help a few times, but nothing had changed. Not Dylan's diaper. Not the dirty sheets on the bed. Not the empty roll on the toilet paper holder. She wanted to go back to work. She wanted to take control of a conference call, and meet clients, and wash her hair on a regular basis. Molly's world as she knew it was falling apart around her, and she was too tired to put it back together.

Molly scooped the first bite of the low-cal fettuccine Alfredo onto her fork just as the initial murmurs rose from the baby monitor. She held her breath and waited when it grew quiet, and then felt her whole body sag into itself as Dylan's wails started
up again in a fury, bouncing through the speaker and echoing down the stairs. Molly took a deep breath, tossed the fork into the dishwasher, and set the full tray of food in the refrigerator. Dylan's cries filled the house now, pushing past the worries and to-do lists and pangs of hunger to stand front and center. Molly headed up the stairs.

“Seriously?”

Jenny was standing on the corner of 9th and Wharton, holding a sandwich in both hands, staring at the flashing neon lights of the restaurant that stood directly across the street.

“We couldn't go to Geno's?” she asked. She looked down at her cheesesteak with resignation, as if it were some salesman who'd come to her door at dinnertime and kept knocking. She sighed and took a tentative bite of her hoagie. “Geno's meat is so much better than this stuff,” she said.

“No way!” Dan mumbled. His lips were wide open around the steak and onions he'd shoved into his mouth. He hadn't noticed the Cheez Whiz dripping onto his Converse high-tops. “Thif iv awesome!”

Molly looked back and forth between her friends. She was sitting at a table under an overhang at Pat's King of Steaks, rocking the car seat on the concrete floor beside her, even though Dylan had already fallen asleep. She was so tired it felt like her eyes were burning holes into their sockets, but she'd jumped at the chance to meet up with her friends, pulling on clean yoga pants and sneaking out of the house while Scott took a nap in their bedroom. He didn't like her going out as much anymore, saying it wasn't healthy for the baby to be out in the chill and
that Molly should stay close in case she needed to be fed. But it'd been almost two months now. The air inside her home had grown stale. Molly unzipped the car seat cover to peek inside. Dylan was quiet, dozing in the warmth of her fleece cocoon. Molly turned her attention back to her friends, who were pretending to squabble like squirrels in a park.

“Do you see this?” Jenny was holding the dripping remains of her cheese steak in her husband's direction. “This is how much I love you. THIS. This sorry hunk of meat in a roll? Proof, okay?”

She winced at the sight of a line cook glaring at her through the glass. Not one of them had noticed that a window was propped open.

“Proof of your love?” Dan was laughing. “Jenny, this is payback. Delicious payback, of course.” He winked at Molly over the top of his sandwich, bringing her into the conversation. She'd never cared either way who won the war between the two rival cheesesteak establishments that anchored the busy South Philly intersection, but smiled at Dan's enthusiasm. She was just happy to be out of the house.

“You know this is the only way I would've gotten her here, right, Mols?” he asked. “Jenny had to leave me for a month, put me through the wringer a little while longer, then come crawling back feeling awful enough to agree to eating on this side of the street.”

“Well,” Jenny said, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, “guilt is a powerful motivator.” She, too, looked at Molly. “I've pretty much signed myself up for a lifetime of Pat's steaks, I'm afraid.”

Molly watched Dan, bent over a basket of French fries with a
content smile on his face. There was a fleck of Cheez Whiz caught on the corner of his mouth. An image of Liam appeared in Molly's mind—how they used to sit beside each other here, too, joking around just like Jenny and Dan were doing now. She thought about how the skin around his eyes had formed those laugh lines when they focused on her in the middle of the noisy pub a few months ago, their easy conversation after years of separation. Molly looked at her daughter and shook the thought out of her head.

A vintage Camaro pulled up to stop at the light on the corner beside them, its radio blaring Joni Mitchell through the open sunroof. After a childhood of listening to her father's vinyl albums, Molly recognized “Both Sides Now” almost before the first chord had finished playing. A breeze scattered some paper napkins across the table, and she gathered them into a tidy stack, concentrating on getting the folded edges lined up in perfect order.

Dan nudged Molly's leg with his knee. “Hey. Earth to Mols. What's up with you? How's life with Mr. Darcy?”

He imitated Scott's come-hither smile, complete with a toss of his spiky hair. Jenny didn't laugh.

“Mol, you look exhausted,” Jenny said, and placed the rest of the cheesesteak in its paper on the table. Dan pulled it over in front of him and began eating again.

“Are you getting any sleep?” she asked.

Molly swallowed. “Not so much.”

“Is he helping you out at all?”

Molly shook her head, lips clamped shut. The traffic light had turned green, and the Camaro paused for a split second before accelerating. The driver of the truck behind it lay on the horn, the sound a sudden, angry burst through the cool fall air,
drowning out the delicate harmonies of the song. Molly heard Dylan whimper and rocked the car seat again.

“Is that what you were expecting,” Jenny pressed, “when all of this began?” Dan had stopped chewing to listen.

“No, not at all,” Molly said, keeping her gaze on the sidewalk. “In the beginning, no. Scott was always trying to impress me. I guess I figured that all the flowers and Sixers tickets would translate into dishwashing and diaper-changing once we got serious.”

She looked up, but didn't like the expressions of pity she saw reflected in both of her friends' eyes. “Pretty stupid of me, huh?”

“You're not stupid, Molly.” Jenny's voice was sharp.

“Okay,” Dan said. “Let's say that either he changed, or he's just not the guy you thought he was. Say he's not Mr. Darcy so much as Mr. Homer Simpson.”

“Mmm,” Molly conceded.

“Listen, Molly,” Jenny said, taking control of the conversation. She spoke firmly, but her voice was soft. “When I was being an idiot about Dan, you set me straight.”

Dan nodded.

“And?” Molly felt herself stick her chin a little higher in the air. The evening breeze had picked up and changed direction, blowing now at their backs. Molly's oversized sweatshirt, one of the few pieces of clothing that fit her still-wide middle, did a poor job of blocking the chill.

“And I think you need to look at your situation with Scott. I'm concerned about you and a little worried for that sweet baby of yours.”

Jenny was quiet for a long moment. Dan placed his hand on
her back and rubbed a small circle there, as if working courage into her lungs.

“Look, Molly.” Jenny sighed. “You gave me the bottom line, so I'm going to bounce one to you. I made a mistake by almost leaving a relationship that was good—”

“I'll say,” Dan said.

“—so why aren't you getting out of one that's bad?” Jenny asked.

“It's not that bad, Jenny.” Molly swallowed. “We're just going through a rough patch.”

“You said that months ago, Molly,” Dan replied. He'd finished both cheesesteaks and wiped his hands clean of their grease. The napkins lay in front of him in a crumpled, stained heap. “Don't you think it's a sign that you haven't set a date yet? At this rate Dylan's going to grow up and get married before you two do.”

“Well, having a baby is hard on a relationship. We have some growing pains to work out.” Molly cringed as soon as the sentence was uttered. She knew how she sounded, and she watched Jenny's lips pull into a straight, hard line that told her she wasn't the only one. “I mean, that's what they always tell you.”

“So, that's a reason for him to walk all over you?”

“I don't have a job, Jenny.”

“So get one.”

“Paying as much as S&G did? Enough to cover child care?”

“Is this you saying this, Molly, or what Scott's told you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Molly, think about it. So you'd have to make some sacrifices. Maybe ask your parents to help out. Lose that cool silver bullet of a car and get something a little cheaper.” Jenny was leaning forward. “But you can do it, you know. If you wanted to.”

Dan nodded in echo. “You could do it, Molly.”

She shook her head. “She can't have just a single mom as her family. It's not how it's supposed to go.” Molly felt tears press against the backs of her eyes, weeks of the same conversation she'd been having in her mind now playing out in real time. “She needs a father.”

“But she doesn't need an inept one, Mol. C'mon, you know that. And you can't think that getting married is going to change that.” Jenny moved to Molly's side of the table and placed her arm around Molly's narrow shoulders, still muscular beneath the softness the pregnancy had added. She squeezed her tightly, and was slow to let go.

“Dude,” Dan interjected. “Your relationship is like bad insurance.”

Molly shook her head and pulled away from Jenny's arms. “What are you talking about?”

Jenny sighed. “Insurance. You know how an insurance company will weigh each case? They analyze an entity's liability versus its assets.”

“In this case, look at Scott,” Dan said. “It's all very logical. What is he bringing to your life, to your family? What is he taking away? Sometimes you need to compare one list to the other and make a choice.”

“Jeez, you guys. You're ganging up on me here.” Molly laughed and wiped her eyes with a free hand. “And who've you been hanging out with, anyway? Accountants?”

“Nah,” Jenny said. “It's just a little something we picked up dealing with the bills for our new fertility treatments.”

Molly avoided her friends' eyes, looking down at the car seat, and was serious again. “I can't have failed, Jenny. Not again. Not at
this
.”

“Molly Sullivan, you will drive me nuts. You have a beautiful baby. You have your master's degree, and years of quality PR experience, and, of course, us. What more do you possibly need?”

Molly laughed again, and this time the sound was lighter, more genuine. But she felt Jenny's words slowly move into a pocket of her mind and settle there, locked away until she needed them again. The breeze had turned brisk, sending a shower of decaying leaves dancing among the tables, and she shivered in the sudden cold.