Vintage Contemporaries, page 10
They skipped the closing credits; Emily had timed their evening precisely, and if they hurried to the theater across the street they’d make it into the second movie in the middle of the trailers. The honks of the cabs on Forty-Second Street seemed just a component of the summer air, thickening it as flour might thicken a sauce. Emily had only been down to Midtown once since the baby had been born, for an unsatisfying visit to her office during which Peter, her boss, had commented on how easy a baby Jane was, how she was lucky, because she’d be able to get back to work sooner than the other women at St. Martin’s who’d had babies.
The second movie was a nature documentary about penguins: penguins perching on cliffs, penguins gaily slipping over the ice, penguins shitting literally everywhere. Penguin mothers raising penguin chicks so soft and round they looked like Koosh. It quickly became clear that for all their frolicsome waddling about the surf, penguin chicks were at every instant in mortal danger. “This chick can’t find his mother,” the narrator intoned, “and he’s in trouble if he strays too far from the group.” The baby penguin peeped with alarm as it scampered across the rocks. A great gull wheeled overhead. A walrus lurked in the dark sea.
As one, Alan and Emily stood and fled down the aisle. Instead of watching the end of the film, they bought Häagen-Dazs.
“Did I choose that movie?” asked Emily on the train back uptown. “Why wasn’t there a warning?”
“Three months ago that wouldn’t have bothered me even a little bit,” marveled Alan.
“A whole new world has opened up,” said Emily. “A whole new world of things that will upset us.”
Alan took her hand. “I’m really happy,” he said. It was true. Emily knew that Alan viewed this essential transformation of himself as a great gift. “I know you’re having a hard time, but I’m really happy about us.”
“Go team,” Emily said wearily. “We should have probably just gone to one movie.”
She rested her head on his shoulder from 145th all the way to 207th. She thought about the small life, not exactly a person but possessing definite person-like qualities, that awaited them in their apartment. She couldn’t believe she had let her out of her sight for even a moment; she couldn’t believe their escape was already almost over. She was having a hard time—she felt as though her emotional volume had been turned up two or three notches, so that what might have once provoked a smile now caused a rush of delight, and events that might have once slightly annoyed now made her, for wild moments, unspeakably sad. It didn’t help that she’d stopped taking her meds while breastfeeding. She’d need to talk to her doctor about that.
But she also felt as though underneath the messy soaring and diving melody of her emotional state was a steady undertone of—happiness? For the past ten years or so, happiness had often been something she felt she was wearing, not feeling, but she guessed that’s what it was. Contentment, maybe. It was solid as Alan’s shoulder under her cheek, his leg pressed against hers, rocking with the train’s motion.
Their apartment was in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan island, a neighborhood that was in the city but was woodsy and quiet. They lived there because when the broker Alan’s old firm had recommended had asked her what neighborhood she wanted to live in and what her budget was, Emily had said “Manhattan” and “maybe $150,000?” and the broker had laughed. He referred them to a junior broker, who also laughed, but said, “Well, there is this one neighborhood.”
Emily loved it. From the 207th Street station they climbed the stairs into the park, walking from island to island of light. This late on a summer night the park still had a few families running around, the kids working off the last of their energy before bed. Emily watched the moms, watched them watch their kids, tried to imagine Jane turning, as one girl did, clumsy cartwheels across the grass. Could Jane ever be her? Could Emily ever be one of those moms? It seemed impossible, yet just a year ago the idea of having a baby at all had seemed absurd, and here she was.
When they opened the apartment door, Alan’s brother greeted them with a chipper hello. The baby, he reported, was great. Everyone said it was so hard to take care of a baby, but actually it was a piece of cake. Jane had drunk nine ounces from her bottle and then slept the entire time they were gone.
“The entire time?” Alan asked.
“Nine ounces?” Emily asked. From the next room, the baby made a noise like a balloon deflating and started to cry.
Emily felt the milk rising at the sound and went into the bedroom, where Jane wailed in the dark. Derreck or Eric had made a game attempt at a swaddle, but Jane had wriggled almost all the way free, except that one arm was trapped against her body while the other, fist closed, stood up in a pose Emily smiled to see resembled a Black Power salute. She picked her up, freed her arm, changed her amazingly heavy diaper, sat in the glider, maneuvered Jane into place, watched with the same wonder she always felt as the baby found the pencil eraser of her nipple and latched on. Mostly she hated nursing, hated how hard it was, hated the blocked ducts and supply problems and the little scale that now sat on their dining room table, as if she were measuring dry ingredients for baking instead of checking every day to see whether she was starving her own child. But when it worked, the first moment was often sweet. She sang a song about all the people who loved Jane. Mommy, Daddy, Grandma. Grandpa, Pop, Julia. Derreck, Eric, Lisa. By the fifteenth verse, Jane’s eyes still bright, Emily was reciting people from years before who’d never met this baby. Louis, Lucy, Emily.
She woke to Alan touching her shoulder. He’d placed Jane in the crib, where she breathed deeply. “Ah fuck,” she whispered, “I’m drooling.” She followed him across the hall and crawled under the covers. As she nestled against him, she murmured, “You exceed expectations.”
* * *
She would, later, never forget the roller-coaster ride she embarked upon every time the baby fell asleep. The pleasure she felt at knowing the baby was sleeping soundly was tainted by her anxiety at the baby’s encroaching waking-up. And why was she wasting this precious time, say, watching The Wire rather than doing something useful or benevolent (yoga?). By the ninety-minute mark concern for herself was replaced by concern for the baby, and she could no longer think about anything other than her bone-deep knowledge that the baby was dead. During one particularly grim afternoon when the baby napped for two hours, she heard herself say, out loud, before getting up to check on her: “Well, this is it, the last time I’ll ever be happy.”
Her mother had told them, when Emily was still pregnant, that there would be times when they would want to throw the baby out the window. “No one ever tells you that, but it’s true. It’s perfectly normal.” When her mom had left the room, Emily had wiped her hands on the kitchen towel and told Alan, “I can’t believe she would say that to me. I would never feel that way about this baby.” Now, with the baby three months old, Emily understood exactly what she had meant. Just today Emily had wanted to throw Jane out the window after she refused her bottle, screaming all the while. Her face was so red she looked like a cartoon. She flailed, with intent it seemed to Emily, and knocked the bottle to the floor. Eight ounces of pumped breast milk—forty minutes of Emily’s life—splattered over the circular rug.
Luckily, Alan was in the living room. Anyway, the windows all had bars on them. She handed the baby to him and said, “I am going to lie down and cry for a while.” This was a thing they said to each other sometimes, as a joke, but a joke that was true.
* * *
They knew one other family in the building with children, Liuba and Nate upstairs. They had Sadie, a baby Jane’s age, but also Martin, a five-year-old who loved Star Wars and who seemed never to do what his parents asked him to do. Liuba texted Emily sometimes after they both got home from work to invite her over for a glass of wine, after which they would both pump and dump. So every week or so she brought her monstrous pump to Liuba’s apartment and sat there, her on the couch and Liuba in her glider, all their boobs out, their pumps honking and wheezing like hydraulic ducks.
“Nate wants a horse,” Liuba said to her one afternoon.
“A horse?” Emily said in disbelief.
Liuba shouted to be heard over the pumps: “NATE WANTS A DIVORCE.”
Martin came into the living room, wearing his Darth Vader robes. He finished eating a banana and dropped the peel on the floor in front of his mother. “MARTIN,” Liuba said. “WOULDN’T IT BE MORE POLITE IF YOU PICKED THAT UP.” With a look of steely concentration, Martin thrust his arm out toward his mother, his hand gripping the air like Darth Vader using the Force to choke a hapless admiral. Liuba smiled at him sweetly, resolutely refusing to be strangled to death. Finally he grunted in exasperation, picked up the banana peel, and carried it into the kitchen. Later they found it on the counter next to the garbage can.
In the end, sense was talked into Nate by his best friend from college, who flew out from Chicago for an emergency weekend. It turned out what Nate had needed, at least for now, was a few days without children and with a large number of cheeseburgers. He came home chastened, emitting meat sweats and sincere apologies. “Maybe he’ll leave me later,” Liuba said to Emily the next time she came by. “Anytime but now.”
“Will you get a weekend with cheeseburgers?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” said Liuba. “It’s been agreed. Next month. It’s my sister and my best friend from high school. Do you want to come?” And thus it was that upon arriving with Liuba at an awful bar in Cobble Hill Em saw, for the first time in six years, Emily.
Her hair was short and she was behind the bar. She had a nose ring, and the first thought that went through Em’s head was an unforgivably hilarious thing Emily had muttered to her, long ago, as they sat by the Astor Place rotating cube and a goth girl stalked past them, her nose ring connected by a chain to an earring: “Gonna grab that and lead her to the feed bin.” Em could hear her voice in her head as clear as anything, and then she heard Emily’s current voice, the same but just a bit more ragged. She was arguing with a guy at the bar about what was showing on the TV. Then she saw Em and grinned at her, conspiratorially, as if they were still friends.
They were not still friends, of course. I’m Emily, she thought. Not Em. She accepted Liuba’s offer to buy the first round and retreated to a booth where she couldn’t see Emily at all. She texted Alan:
How is she?
all good!
Did she eat?
like 3 oz
What are you two doing now?
You need to enjoy your night out!
Emily is the bartender at this bar
Liuba came to the booth, carrying drinks and a newly appraising look. “I gotta say, I’m impressed,” Liuba said. “I would not have guessed you knew the bartender in an actually cool bar.”
“This place is not cool,” said Emily.
“I mean, it’s in Brooklyn.” Liuba set a glass in front of Emily. “I tried to get you a cider like you said, but the bartender said she knew what you liked.” Emily knew without having to sip it that it was a martini, and that it would taste delicious. She sipped it and confirmed. Her phone had buzzed a couple of times and after Liuba introduced her to her sister, Emily excused herself, weighed the option of walking past the bar to get outside, and then called Alan from the bathroom. Maybe things would be okay at home, she thought, but they weren’t. Alan was polite and sympathetic but after a few sentences told her, “I’m sorry, babe, I gotta go,” which hurt her feelings, even though she could hear Jane crying in the background.
She stared at herself in the mirror. How many times in her old life had she stared in a mirror in a bar bathroom, wondering just exactly how drunk she was gonna get that night? It seemed unfair that on an evening she wished to get well and truly wasted, the person who was the cause of that feeling was the person responsible for making the drinks. But then of course she couldn’t get really drunk. When she got home she would have to feed the baby, and then wake up, and then feed the baby again, and so on until the morning, and even in the morning she would need to be awake to feed the baby. To lead her to the feed bin. Was it possible she would never get stupid drunk again? It had never occurred to her, before she got pregnant, that this freedom—one she didn’t even enjoy that much—would be taken away from her.
She considered how she’d changed since she last saw Emily, the ways she would look different to her. Her hair was longer. Eight years of summer beach vacations showed at the corners of her eyes. She tried not to think of her baby weight, because that was a construct of the patriarchy. (In that glimpse, Emily had appeared to be exactly as thin as she’d always been.)
She gripped the sink, noticed how gross the sink was, ungripped it, and stared at herself. “Just be a grown-up,” she said. “For once.”
Then she went back into the bar and drank so many martinis that years later Alan would still refer to the rest of that weekend as “the Aftermath.”
* * *
On Monday an email from theopenheart@gmail.com appeared in Emily’s old Hotmail inbox, the one she used now for online ordering. Where someone else might have used the subject “you” or “Friday night” or “from your former friend,” Emily’s former friend had employed the subject line as the place for an opening gambit:
Subject: I hope you got home OK because you were TRASHED! Do you remember the
This was Emily’s email style, she recalled; once she had gotten an email with the subject, “Meet @ 8pm at Kim’s, that’s when I’m done, then we can go get” and then the actual body of the email simply read “pizza.”
Do you remember the . . . what?
Emily was in her office, in her third week back from maternity leave. Jane was at home with a nanny, a woman named Merle who was so wonderful and loving she filled Emily with unjustified resentment. Jane had only recently developed a personality, was now roly-poly and cute rather than a squalling, pooping meat loaf, and Emily hated to leave her. But on the other hand, she really, really enjoyed sitting in her empty office, absolutely alone, simply doing work.
She clicked away from Hotmail, into her work email, and occupied herself answering questions for next week’s sales conference. Yes, this book had sold in Germany, do you remember the—Yes, marketing should focus on the author’s fame, because God knows it shouldn’t focus on the writing, do you remember the—Actually, this blogger had upward of do you remember the—one hundred thousand readers, so surely they could justify a first printing bigger than ten thousand?
She turned off her monitor and pushed herself away from her desk, casting about for something, anything that wasn’t do you remember the. There, on the windowsill, next to the photo of Alan and Jane: the self-help manuscript she’d owed notes on since she returned. She picked it up, ruffled the pages, carried it to the coffee machine, poured another cup, told her assistant Lane she was going to be reading, so please, no calls, closed her office door, plopped herself down on the couch, read the first page, and hated it so much she had to write I HATE THIS on her hand just so she wouldn’t write it on the paper.
On her first day back from leave, Peter had given her the book, asking her to take it over because the editor who’d acquired it had left for HarperCollins. “Starting you off with a tough one,” he said. “No more sitting around at home eating bonbons.” She despised the author, Cynthia Margalit, a former Clinton administration mover and shaker who now made her living peddling modesty and self-respect to young women on the lecture circuit. The company had spent nearly half a million dollars on the proposal, so in a way it was a mark of Peter’s trust in her that he’d put it in her hands—trust she’d spent years slowly building, dealing with his whims and thoughtlessness so that he understood she was steadfast. She knew that disappearing for months with a baby might have damaged that relationship, so she was heartened to be given the task. But also, she despaired.
Do you remember the what?
Emily shook her head. What did this book need? It needed not to suck shit, obviously, except that wasn’t exactly it. It was totally fine for it to suck shit in certain kinds of ways. Her job, then, was to fix the things that needed to be fixed without wasting time fixing the things that didn’t matter at all. And she needed to do it—she thought forward, toward sales conference and then to publicity launch and then to the book’s spring pub date—in the next week.
So. Fixable: These chapter titles. Too cutesy by half, each of them needlessly alliterative. “The Prim Professional: What You Wear to Work Tells Your Coworkers Why You’re There.” Ugh. She crossed it out with a careful red line, wrote CHAPTER TITLE TK, then chewed her pencil and wondered what it was Emily was asking her if she remembered. Shit! She imagined crossing that out with a red line, got up, felt herself leak a little, and said “Thank God” out loud when she realized it was time to pump. When she was pumping, she couldn’t make edits; she could only read, and it would do her good to just make her way through this book so she could figure out what she actually should be editing, instead of editing everything because everything was bad.
So then she trekked to the kitchen and took her little cold packs out of the freezer and carried them, shamefaced even though she knew there was nothing to be ashamed of, back to her office. Kindly Lane became overly interested in the contents of his file drawer as she carried them into her office and locked the door. She unbuttoned her top, feeling, as she always did, a thrill of disbelief at disrobing in the same office where she’d edited manuscripts and talked to agents and hosted brainstorming meetings for years. Feeling, also, cold in the air-conditioning, as always. She plugged in the machine, hooked the tubes into the cups, attached the deflated storage bags, turned the machine on—felt the breath of the suction on her sore boobs—and at that moment could no longer take it.
