The first two weeks of Dylan’s life were a slushy, happy, terrible mess. Bailey was delirious with her love for him, besotted with his tiny face, singing him nonsense pop songs about kissing and grand romance, but plagued with intrusive thoughts that arrived like dark smog, terrified he might seize or stop breathing at any moment. The nights were long, Bailey sleeping in snatches, but no sooner had she closed her eyes than Dylan was crying to eat again. She changed a wet diaper, she fed him and scrolled her phone, she clicked through her social media accounts and could see that she was truly alone, the only one awake, by herself at the end of the internet. She counted the hours until eight when her mother would arrive, drop her keys on the counter, wash her hands, and spread a cotton burp cloth over her shoulder, taking Dylan away for three hours so that Bailey could sleep.
Her mother insisted that it was unhealthy to spend all day in pajamas, and she dressed Dylan like her doll, in elegant velvet overalls and soft collared shirts. Bailey dutifully followed orders, keeping her hair clean and pulling on fresh leggings, the idea of jeans still abhorrent. In the evenings Van would stop by after work, bringing along premade dinners that he bought at the Little River Store or the Green Grocer. Together they puzzled over Dylan’s tiny-baby strangeness—the slight crust on the top of his head, the skin peeling from his little hands, the horror of the umbilical cord drying like a dark worm on his belly.
When Van shyly asked if he could bring Caroline to meet Dylan,Bailey was abashed that she hadn’t thought to offer it herself. She took special care with Dylan’s outfit that day and spent ten minutes in front of the mirror blending concealer under her eyes and spraying down the tiny flyaways, the “baby bangs” that had suddenly appeared along her hairline. Caroline brought thoughtful gifts, a signed children’s book for Dylan and a box of cookies from Sandpiper Bakery. Bailey tried to leave them alone with the baby in the living room, making herself busy in the kitchen with the coffee machine and a plate of muffins nobody wanted. It was horrible. Or maybe it was fine. Bailey didn’t even know. She couldn’t trust her own feelings, hormones coursing through her body making her cry about the T-shirt shrunk in the laundry, the flowers sent from Mac Maker. When they left and Bailey was once again alone with the baby, she brought him into her bed and cried as he nursed, then felt stupid and embarrassed and put music on the living room speakers and made herself sing to him until she felt better.
In some ways, becoming a mother turned Bailey into a child all over again. She needed her parents in a way she hadn’t since she was in grade school, needed her mother to come watch Dylan so that she could shower, needed her father to heft the stroller from the trunk, to pick up pads at the pharmacy, to winterize the barn for Hissy and Prissy before the weather turned cold.
Augusta helped a lot, and Bailey’s sisters stopped by with champagne and sushi, wonderful things she had missed for nine months but felt weirdly unenthusiastic about actually consuming. Instead, she wanted beer, thick and skunky, calorie-dense bread, and bagels heavy with cream cheese. She was aware that every single ounce Dylan gained was delivered by her own body and she ate with the abandon of a marathon runner or a teenager both drunk and high.
The fall passedin a blur, Dylan dressed as a tiny avocado for Halloween, Hale dressed as a “sexy ladybug” because for some reason the child-sized costume Fran had ordered him online came with fishnets and sequins. Bailey and Augusta took all the kids to pick apples at Russell Orchards with Dylan asleep in his car seat, they mulled apple cider with cinnamon sticks for the children and bourbon for the adults, and then somehow Bailey had agreed to fly to Florida to her parents’ condo on the beach. Flying with an infant was a disaster, like trying to calculate the tip at a restaurant while being attacked by a wild squirrel, there were just too many things to think about. She packed a diaper bag with a change of clothes for him, a clean T-shirt for herself, diapers, wipes, burp clothes, pacifiers, and for one delusional moment she even added a magazine, thinking she might read it at the gate, before taking the magazine back out and tossing it on the bed.
Bailey couldn’t figure out how to carry the car seat, the suitcases, and the diaper bag all while pushing Dylan in the stroller, so her parents agreed to travel with her to the airport, booking a car service and arriving at her house with so much luggage that Bailey could barely close the trunk. How many golf clubs did two people need? While Jay sat up front with the driver, Bailey and Clara sat in the back with Dylan, cooing over his tiny basketball sneakers, as pointless as they were adorable. The driver dropped them off at the terminal, and as Bailey wrestled the car seat into a carrier bag Clara tried and failed to unfold the stroller. They traveled as one big, galumphing herd to check-in, dragging suitcases and hanging bags filled with dresses and blazers. At security Bailey had to collapse the stroller while seventy people watched, had to carry Dylan through the metal detector in hersocked feet, had to reassemble herself—coat, phone, ticket, handbag, stroller, baby—while those same seventy people scowled at the slowdown. It wasn’t until they reached the gate that Bailey realized two things: Dylan had pooped, and the diaper bag was still in the car.
In Floridashe spent long afternoons in the swimming pool, holding Dylan over her shoulder and occasionally dipping him in, watching his face tense and relax with the sensation. She wanted Van to see him in the pool, so she texted him videos, Dylan’s mouth pursing as the water tickled his feet. The family went out to dinner every night, her sisters, Kylie and Madison, in cropped tops and flowing skirts, their husbands in linen shirts unbuttoned a bit too far. Jay shook hands with the bartenders and ordered round after round of top-shelf spirits. Bailey would bring Dylan’s car seat to the restaurant and perch him on the banquette and then Uber with him back to the condo before dessert, too tired to make conversation amid the bustle of servers popping champagne and patrons picking crab and shrimp from ice.
Bailey found herself watching her sisters and their husbands with fresh interest, the way Madison brushed the children’s teeth while Mitch played on his phone, the way Kylie rolled her eyes every time her husband made a joke. Together, they made a poor case for the traditional family.
Kylie’s husband, Jeff, had one of those heads that looked too big for his body. It wasn’t that his body was small—he was probably six feet tall and went to the gym religiously—it was that his head had the sort of round and oversized look of a doll or a Hollywood celebrity, one who looked normal on-screen but slightly alarming in person. More than that, Jeff was a dick. Jeff and Kylie were engaged before Bailey ever found out how he and her sister had gotten together, and Jeffprobably wouldn’t ever have told her if he hadn’t been day drinking on the golf course one Sunday afternoon. Kylie and Jeff had worked together at a family investment fund in Boston, Kylie the office manager, in charge of a small fleet of assistants who answered phones, ordered lunch, and complained bitterly about how much of their day was spent calling the dry cleaner. Jeff was a portfolio manager, only a few years older than Kylie, but outearning her tenfold. When Jeff first asked Kylie on a date she flatly refused. She didn’t date guys from work, she explained, and she was casually dating a Bruins hockey player. Jeff asked her again every few weeks, flirting relentlessly, writing notes on her message pad, asking to borrow her tape when he had his own, spelling out his name in paper clips on her desk. Kylie laughed and told him she was out of his league, which, of course, made him even more desperate to have her. They were joking around one day, Jeff sprawled on the leather chair across from her desk, when he made the proposal: He’d give her five hundred dollars to go on a date. No kissing, nothing, just a date. They were messing around, he didn’t mean it, but then he sort of did, and just to see how it felt, Kylie said yes. He took her to Craft, then the next week to Catch, weeks of dates that each ended with five crisp hundreds. Then one ended in a kiss, then a sleepover, then they were a couple.
“How long did you keep paying her?” Bailey asked, incredulous.
“It went on longer than it should have,” Jeff said, frowning darkly, and Bailey stopped asking questions because she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know anything else.
When it wastimeto fly back to Boston, Bailey cried. Her parents weren’t coming home, they were staying in Florida until April. “You’ll be fine, sweetie. You go back to work, and you’ll put Dylan in day care,and everything will go back to normal,” her mother said. Her brief season of helping with the newborn was over, and Clara was happily setting up golf foursomes and dinner parties with her Florida friends. Bailey was bereft.
Kylie helped with Dylan on the trip home, but when they got to Budweiser Manor she and her family drove off, leaving Bailey and Dylan all alone. No, Bailey didn’t want to be married to Mitch or Jeff, but she felt a strange longing for another body in the house, and she understood why someone would pay five hundred dollars just so they wouldn’t be alone.
Ten
Caroline
Sweet Home
When Van had taken Caroline to meet Dylan for the first time, she had felt like a nine-year-old on Bring Your Child to Work Day. Van was employed by this small creature, he had mastered the art of infant care, and he wanted to show Caroline what it might look like to one day grow up and hold down the job. “I’m super excited to see your office,” Caroline teased. “I hope I make a good impression on your new boss.”
“I guess I should warn you, the guy’s a bit of a screamer,” Van cracked.
“It’s generational.” Caroline sighed. “They just have a different understanding of the workplace culture.”
The whole visit was fascinating. Caroline had never been inside Budweiser Manor, and she could barely keep herself from wandering room to room, exclaiming over the chandeliers, the mirrored side tables, the white sashes tied into bows on the back of each dining room chair. It looked like something out of a ’90s gangster movie or like the home a little girl would draw for herself. How could one house have so muchwhite furniture? What would happen once Dylan was old enough to run around and smear Dorito dust all over everything?
Dylan himself was lovely, though, and as Caroline had held him, she realized that she could see parts of Van in his face—the way his mouth pooched out when he frowned, the roundness of his eyes. When she and Van had their own baby would he look like Dylan? Or would her genes mix differently, taking away the poochy mouth but letting Van’s nose break through? She had texted Nina in the car on the way home.
I met my stepson! Jk jk
Imagine if Bailey heard you calling him that
Ha ha someday she could tho! Crazy to think about.
Do B and V have a legal custody agreement?
I don’t know?
You need to figure that out.
I think it’s more an informal thing between them, super chill
Well if you and Van are serious you need to know. And please say you’re still on birth control.
