I hold my eye roll.
She is pretending to be enamored with the baby, but I know better than that. Public doting is what she does to spunk up her image, and when her audience is gone — so is the love. I remember being a child, having her stroke my hair, kiss my face, comment on how pretty I was — all in front of her friends. After they left, I would be sent back to my room to study or practice the violin — basically get out of my mother’s hair, until the next of her ‘good mommy’ performances.
“Really, Mother?” I say through my teeth. “How will you hear her after you’ve taken your sleeping pills?”
Her face becomes splotchy. Caleb elbows me in the ribs. We’re not supposed to talk about her addiction to sleep aids.
“I won’t take them tonight,” she says decidedly. “I’ll do the feedings so you can rest.”
Caleb gives her a quick side hug before we all go downstairs.
I watch suspiciously from my barstool in the kitchen as she carries Estella around and sings show tunes to her. We small talk, or they do. I pick at my split ends.
“We’re going to have a wonderful time while Daddy is gone,” she coos to the baby. “You, Mommy and I.”
Caleb shoots me a warning look before going upstairs to get the last of his things for the trip. I am itching to make a snarky comment, but I remember my promise to him and hold my tongue. Besides, if she wants to play ‘Grandmother’ and take care of all of Estella’s needs while Caleb is gone, so be it. It would save me the trouble.
“Her hair is red,” my mother says as soon as he’s out of earshot.
“Yes, I noticed.”
She clucks her tongue. “I always imagined that my grandchildren would be dark like Charles.”
“She’s not,” I snap, “because she’s mine.”
She shoots me a look out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t be so touchy, Johanna. It doesn’t become you.”
Always critical. I can’t wait until she’s gone.
But, then it hits me. When she’s gone, Caleb isn’t going to be staying home with the baby. I am. This business trip is the first of many during which I am going to have to pull all-nighters and change … human excrement … and — oh God — give baths. I almost fall off my barstool. A nanny, I have to break Caleb on this and make him see how much I need the help.
“Mother,” I say sweetly — almost too sweetly because she looks at me with her eyebrows raised. “Caleb doesn’t want me to get a nanny,” I complain. I am hoping to get her on my side enough to talk to him about it.
Her eyes dart to the stairs where Caleb disappeared only moments before. She licks her lips, and I lean in to better hear what nugget of wisdom she is going to impart. My mother is a very resourceful woman. It comes from being married to a controlling manipulator. She had to learn how to get her way, without getting her way.
When Court was eighteen, she wanted to go to Europe with her friends. My father had refused. Well, in actuality, he’d never verbally refused. He slashed his hand through the air as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The SLASH. It was a common occurrence in our Greek home. Didn’t like dinner? SLASH. Had a bad day at work and don’t want anyone to talk to you? SLASH. Leah crashes her fifty thousand dollar car for the fifth time? SLASH. At the end of all the slashing, Court had gone to Europe.
Remember when you were a poor boy? How much you wanted to travel? My mother.
She’s still a child. My father.
It’s good that she goes while we can still control her. We pay for the trip, the hotels, and the safest travel … much better than her going when she’s in her twenties, sleeping her way through France. My mother.
My father hated the French.
He’d looked thoughtful. Mother’s logic was appealing. He booked everything a week later. Court was under careful, controlled watch, but by God she got to go to Europe. I went to community college. She gave me a small painting that she bought from a street vendor. It was a red umbrella suspended in the rain like an invisible hand was holding it. I’d pulled aside the paper and had immediately known what she was trying to say. I’d started to cry and Court had laughed and kissed me on the cheek.
“Don’t cry, Lee. That’s the point of this painting, yeah?”
Two months in Europe and she was saying yeah at the end of all of her sentences.
Court is … was … so cute. I want to bring her up, ask Mother about her last boyfriend, but the subject is still touchy.
“What your husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” My mother’s voice snaps me back to the task at hand.
That’s it? I stare at her blankly. How am I supposed to translate that nonsense into full time baby help?
She sighs.
“Leah, darling … Caleb is away on business trips much of the time, is he not?”
I catch her drift and nod slowly, my eyes becoming wide at the possibility. Could I do it? Hire someone to come in and take care of the baby on the days that Caleb is gone?
My mother is an expert in the art of deceit. Once, before Caleb and I were married, we took a break at his request. He had just been in a terrible car accident and suffered major memory loss due to a blow to the head. To my absolute horror, he didn’t remember who I was. I remember thinking, How could this happen to me? I was about to get engaged to the man of my dreams, and here he was, looking at me like I was a perfect stranger. I had quickly gathered my wits and resolved to be supportive until his memory came back. It was only a matter of time before he would remember how much he wanted to be with me and placed the huge Tiffany’s rock I had found in his sock drawer on my finger. But, instead of getting closer to me as we waited for his memory to come back, he pulled away, opting to spend more and more time alone. Soon, he announced that he was … seeing another girl, if seeing is the right word for the shadiness that was going on, and girl is the right word for the cunning, worthless tramp that almost ruined my life. I called my mother right away to report what he had told me.
“Follow him,” she said. “Find out how serious it is, and make him end it.”
I had done just that, following him one evening to a tacky apartment complex in an even tackier neighborhood. The blocky buildings were painted a bright salmon color. I glanced at the pitiful attempt at landscaping that did nothing to cheer the place up and parked my car a block away from Caleb’s Audi. I was an emotional mess, knowing that he was probably going to see the girl. Through my rearview mirror, I watched as he walked right up to a door and knocked. He hadn’t consulted a piece of paper or his phone to find it. It was as if he knew exactly where to go. The door opened, and though I couldn’t see who was standing inside, I knew it must be her, because his face immediately broke out in a grin that was usually directed toward me; flirtatious and sexy. God, what was going on here?
I waited for several minutes before climbing out of my car and approaching the door. Just to make sure I was doing the right thing, I texted my mother, who responded with a firm: Go in there and get him before he does something stupid!
— Which was followed a few seconds later by a single word: Cry
I did both, and Caleb left with me that night. But, it was a short-lived victory. The girl he was seeing was an old girlfriend from college. Unbeknownst to both Caleb and me, she was pretending to have just met him, trying to squeeze her way back into his life for another round. I found this out after breaking into her apartment. I went straight to his condo with the evidence clutched in my fist, ready to out her scheme. She looked like trouble. I should have known the minute I laid eyes on her that it wasn’t a casual thing by some unsuspecting girl he’d met. It took me some time to figure out. He wasn’t home when I got there. I let myself in with a key that he didn’t know I had and studied the mess he left behind like I was fucking CSI. He had obviously cooked dinner for two. There was still the unmistakable smell of steak lingering in the halls. Had she been here with him? I felt sick. I found two wineglasses in the living room, and in a panic, I rushed to the bedroom for evidence that they had been together. His bed was unmade, but I saw no sign of sex anywhere in the room. What traces would he leave behind anyway? Caleb didn’t — wouldn’t use condoms. I’d gone on birth control shortly after we started dating because of this. He said the sight of them turned his stomach, so I wasn’t going to find any wrappers lying around.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I went to his dresser and opened a drawer, running my hands along the back of it until I found the square Tiffany box that held my engagement ring. I cracked it open and felt tears spring to my eyes. It had almost happened. He was getting ready to propose when that damn accident wiped me from his memory. I deserved to be with him, wearing my two-carat, princess cut diamond ring.
I got rid of her.
For a while.
After I drop Caleb off at the airport, I go shopping. Seems sort of shallow, like I should feel guilty … but I don’t. I want to feel the buttery silks beneath my fingers. I decide that since I no longer have a basketball attached to my waist, I need a whole new wardrobe.
I pull my new SUV into a spot at the Gables and head right for Nordstrom. In the dressing room, I avert my eyes away from my belly. It feels good to slide into dresses with cinched waists. By the time I head for the doors, I am carrying over three thousand dollars in merchandise. I toss everything on the backseat and decide to meet Katine for a drink.