Baby Proof (30 page)

“How so?” he asked me as he skimmed a particularly brutal query letter over my shoulder. “You like the idea of boring storylines and scads of grammatical errors?”

“It’s hard to explain,” I told him. “It’s just that slush is so democratic . I like the idea of giving a shot to the struggling writer. I like the idea of the underdog overcoming the odds and achieving greatness.”

“Well, it’s a good thing for me you feel that way,” Ben said, kissing me. “Because I sort of came from the slush pile of blind dates.”

I laughed and told him that was very true. “Just look what I would have missed if I had blown off that date.”

From that day on, whenever Ben wore mismatched socks, or burned toast, or did anything haphazard, I’d call him my slushy husband. It was one of our many inside jokes.

So it is very fitting that Ben finally e-mails me as I am perusing a few slush manuscripts that Rosemary screened for me as the most promising of the dismal lot. I glance up when my notifier dings, and am shocked to finally see his name in my in-box. My heart races, and I sit there, my mouth slightly agape, paralyzed with fear. Something about his bolded Benjamin Davenport looks so ominous. Or maybe it’s the no subject that follows. I am suddenly convinced that his words will be terse and grim: I don’t see any point in getting together; I have nothing to say to you .

A full hour passes before I work up the nerve to open his e-mail. I read his three sentences twice, searching for meaning: Next week is hectic. How about after Thanksgiving? Does Monday work for you ?

Nothing. I can glean nothing from his e-mail, but it certainly doesn’t seem promising that he bypassed my name or any sort of soft closing. And I simply can’t believe I had to wait four days for three ambiguous sentences. But by and large, I feel relieved. It’s better than what it could have been. I still have a dash of hope as I send my response: Sure. Pete’s Tavern at 12 ?

As New York’s oldest pub in continuous operation, Pete’s is a bit of a tourist trap, but Ben and I never minded. We spent many a late night cozied up at the bar, so as soon as I hit send I worry what he’ll think of my sentimental choice of venue. But his response comes nearly instantaneously. See you then. Have a good-Thanksgiving .

Highly doubtful , I think as I scratch a big red reject across one writer’s treasured manuscript.

Later that night, as I’m returning home from work, I spot Maura and Zoe scurrying along the sidewalk toward Jess’s apartment. Maura is holding Zoe by one hand and carrying her Dora the Explorer sleeping bag and monogrammed canvas L.L. Bean bag in the other. Both of Zoe’s pink Keds are untied, the laces dragging behind her on the damp pavement. When she finally sees me, she squeals, “Aunt Claudia!” as if I’m famous. Zoe does wonders for my self-esteem.

“Hey, Zoe!” I call out. “Are you coming to spend the weekend with me?”

“Uh-huh!” she yells back. “And Mommy said I can stay up as late as I want and eat whatever I want.”

I look at Maura to make sure this is accurate. My sister shrugs wearily. She looks drawn and forlornlike she doesn’t have the energy to fight about bedtime and sugar cereals. I wonder if this is the beginning of the divorced-parents “pay off your kids” phenomenon. All kids know that the only fringe benefit of having parents who split up is that you can play on mom and dad’s guilt, exhaustion, and competitive spirit to extract maximum benefits from both camps. I remember how my own Christmas presents doubled in number and value after my mother left.

Zoe lets go of Maura’s hand and scrambles toward me. I bend down to double-knot her laces. Then I kiss her cold, rosy cheek and whisper in her ear, “Guess what I got you?”

“What?” Zoe says excitedly.

“Pop-Tarts!”

Strawberry Pop-Tarts are Zoe’s favorite food, but she’s only allowed to have them on special occasions. Until now, Maura’s been all about organic foods.

“What flavor?” Zoe asks excitedly.

“Strawberry. With frosting and sprinkles,” I say. ” Dub !”

Zoe beams. It’s so nice to be able to please someone so easily. I just wish I could fix Maura’s problems, too. I stand and put my arms around my sister. I can feel her ribs and the sharpness of her shoulder blades through her Burberry trench coat. “You’re so bony, Maura,” I say. “I’m worried about you”

Maura sighs and touches her cheekbone. “I know. I look haggard, don’t I?”

“You don’t look haggard,” I say. “Just too thin. You need to take care of yourself”

“It’s funny,” Maura says. “Until this week I always believed that you could never be too rich or too thin Now, I’m not so sure I’d rather be poor, fat, and happy”

Zoe interrupts and says, “Is Jess home, too? Can I try on her shoes?”

“Why, of course! All one hundred pairs!” I say, thinking that if I’m a B-list celebrity in Zoe’s eyes, Jess is Madonna. Even a six-year-old can sniff out gradations of beauty and style.

Maura glances at her Cartier watch and sighs. “Okay. The boys are at Daphne’s Scott’s expecting me at eight I better get home.”

“Good luck,” I say. Then I touch her arm and tell her I love her. It’s something Maura and I rarely say to each other, although we never question it.

“I love you, too, Claudia. Thank you ,” Maura says. Then she kneels in front of her daughter and brushes her hair away from her face. “And I love you, pumpkin.”

“I love you, Mommy,” Zoe says, hugging her mother around the neck.

“Be good for Aunt Claudia,” she says.

“I will, Mommy.”

Maura smiles at her daughter. Then she stands and faces me.

“Call me when you can,” I say.

She nods, turns, and walks swiftly toward her silver Range Rover, her high-heeled boots clicking on the sidewalk. I watch her for a few seconds, feeling overwhelmed by worry. Her weekend ahead makes my upcoming lunch date at Pete’s Tavern seem like a trivial encounter. I guess that’s the impact three innocent children have in the equation.

When I look down at Zoe, I see that she, too, looks concerned. She is squinting as she watches her mother start the car and pull away from the curb. Maura waves and gives us a little honk. Zoe waves back and mouths, “Bye, Mommy.”

I’ve never seen my niece look so sad and wonder if it’s because she senses that something is wrong, or if it’s only that she’s still a little young to be away from home for two nights. I tousle her hair and say, “Ready to get out of the cold, Zoe Doughy?”

She nods and says, “Aunt Claudia?” Her voice rises into a high-pitched question.

“Yeah, honey?” I say, nervous of what she might ask.

Sure enough, she asks one of her trademark questions: “Why is Mommy so sad?”

So I give her one of my stellar answers: “Mommies get sad sometimes. That’s all”

Zoe sighs and then says, “She said the s-h word in the car yesterday. And then she cried.”

“Mommies say bad words sometimes. And they get upset sometimes,” I say. “But she’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

“Do you promise?” she says, her blue eyes big with worry.

I panic, wondering what the right answer is. Is it right for me to make such a promise? What constitutes fine ? I certainly don’t want to lie to Zoe. I have a sudden memory of one troubling Family Feud episode I watched when I was about seven. The final, bonus-round question was “Top five lies your parents told you.” I remember racking my brain, trying to come up with something, while the Johnson family ripped off answers with ease. Survey Says … Santa Claus! Easter Bunny! Tooth Fairy ! It was a devastating moment. In part because I had discovered a sad truth about my favorite trio, but also because I had just received a handwritten letter from the North Polea letter I now knew to be bogus. I ripped it off my bulletin board and confronted my parents about their lies.

Still, I think carefully about Zoe’s question and decide that things will be fine. So I say, “Yes, Zoe. I promise you.”

She gives me a hopeful smile. Then she slides her small hand into mine and says, “Can we go eat Pop-Tarts now? For dinner?”

“Great idea,” I say. “Pop-Tarts for dinner. And Pop-Tarts for dessert!”

“And for appetizers?” she says.

“Yup. For appetizers, too,” I say, smiling. “What could be better than that?”

As Zoe and I are finishing our elegant three-course meal of strawberry Pop-Tarts, Jess returns home from work. She and Zoe hug and kiss hello as I discreetly ask her if Michael will be coming over later. She shakes her head and says she wants to hang with us. I am happy about this as I wasn’t sure how to explain an unwed sleepover to Zoe. To this point, Zoe turns to Jess and says, “Who’s Michael? Your boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Jess says, smiling. “He is.”

Zoe fires back with, “Do you love him?”

Jess looks at me and laughs.

“She cuts to the chase,” I say.

“What’s that mean?” Zoe says.

“You ask very good questions,” I say.

“Oh,” Zoe says, and then returns her expectant gaze to Jess.

“Yeah,” Jess says. “I do love him.”

“Why?” Zoe says.

“Well. He’s smart. And nice. And funny. And very, very handsome.”

Zoe’s pale brow furrows as she processes this data. Then she asks the question we all have wondered. “Are you going to marry him?”

Jess finally looks stumped. “Hmm. Well, Zoe, I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“When will we see?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.”

“Why is it hard to tell?”

“Well, because sometimes you love someone but they might not be the right person for you. That takes some time to figure out,” Jess explains, much better than I could have.

“I hope you marry your boyfriend,” Zoe says. “That would be really romantic.”

“That would be romantic,” Jess says. “Let’s make a wish for a happy ending.”

Zoe closes her eyes and makes a silent wish. When she opens them, she is solemn. “Uncle Ben and Aunt Claudia got a dee-vorce,” she says as if I’m not in the room.

“I know,” Jess says, without looking at me.

“But she loved Uncle Ben,” Zoe says and then looks at me. “Right, Aunt Claudia?”

“Right,” I say. Then I go out on a questionable limb and say, “And I always will.”

Zoe brightens. “So maybe you’ll marry him again ?”

There it is , I think. My one great hope unearthed and put out there by a child. I consider my responses. I consider saying that it’s a possibility. That I want that very much. That I miss Ben with my whole heart and believe that I made a huge mistake in not considering having a baby with him. That I was too stubborn and rigid and vindictive and proud for my own good. That I hope I’m not too late.

But I am afraid to say any of this out loud. I don’t want to jinx myself. Instead I just offer up a vague and halfhearted, “Well, Zoe, I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one.”

Always literal, Zoe inhales dramatically and holds her breath, her cheeks puffing out and her face turning red.

” Breathe!” ! say, laughing.

She shakes her head, a smile straining at the corners of her mouth.

“Zoe! Breathe !” I say again, tickling her until she releases the air in fits of laughter. When she finally gains her composure, she says, “Aunt Claudia?”

“Yeah, Zoe?”

“If you do marry Uncle Ben again, I hope you do it soon. You know why?”

I watch her anxiously, concentrating on an itch in the small of my back. Surely the child doesn’t know about aging eggs. Surely she doesn’t know that I am going to have to offer Ben a child for the mere hope of getting him back. I finally say, “Why’s that, Zoe?”

” ‘Cause. If you wait too long, I’ll be too old to be your flower girl.”

I smile with relief. “Hmm. That’s a really good point, Zoe. You are getting up there in years.”

“So don’t wait too long,” she says. “And don’t ‘lope this time.”

“E-lope,” I say.

“E-lope,” she repeats.

“Ohh, right. Hmm. Well. We’ll see about all that,” I say, wondering how long Zoe can keep up her barrage of questions. If I’m not careful, she might have me talking about my e-mail exchange with Ben, our lunch date, and my earnest hope that my ex-husband hasn’t fallen madly in love with a girl named Tucker.

I brace myself for her next inquiry, which turns out to be blessedly innocuous: “Can we try on shoes now?” she asks me.

“Absolutely,” I say, relieved that I don’t have to tell my niece about Tucker, the fast-running, pretty-haired, fertile doctor who can’t possibly love Ben like I do.

twenty-eight

The next morning I awaken to the sight of Zoe in her lavender polka-dot nightgown, standing on her tiptoes with her nose and palms pressed against my bedroom window. I study her earnest profile and the way a patch of her hair is spiked with static electricity.

I finally break her concentration and say, “What’s so interesting out there, Zoe?”

She turns, runs over to the bed, and says, “It’s snowing, Aunt Claudia!”

“Really?” I say.

“Yeah! Come look,” she says.

I follow her over to the window, remembering how thrilling snowfalls were as a child. Now snow simply signals inconvenience, particularly in a city that quickly turns into a dirty, slushy, slow-moving mess. But I forget all of this as I look outside with my niece. I even feel a twinge of disappointment when I see only a few scattered flurries and no accumulation on the ground.

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to stick,” I say. “Just your standard November tease.”

Zoe looks crestfallen, and I think of how my sisters and I felt when our hopes soared on a snowy morning, only to have them dashed by the man on the radio announcing in the most chipper tone, “All schools open!” Or even worse, when he’d give you a string of schools that had closed, but then announce that yours was the exception, without so much as a one- or two-hour delay as a consolation. One of the happiest days of my childhood was when my mother informed us that she was overriding one such poor decision. “I’m not taking any chances with you riding that bus. I hereby declare a snow day!” There were some fringe benefits that came with having a non-rule-following mother.

“If it sticks, can we go sledding in the park?” Zoe asks.

“Sure,” I say, as I think of how emotions seem so magnified when you’re a child. Joy is more all-encompassing, disappointments more crushing, hope more palpable. “You want to do a snow dance to help it along?”