Then we all get quiet. “How long will it feel like this?” Olivia asks.
“No clue. I’ve never done edibles,” Audrey says.
“No. Not the drugs. How long will it feel likethis?” Olivia asks.
“I think this is it now,” Brit says.
“Oh my God,” Audrey gasps.
“Sorry,” Brit says.
“What if we actually died, like, in childbirth?” Olivia says. We groan, brushing her off. She hushes us. “Wait. Wait. A lot of women do. And we’re all dead and this place is actually heaven? And this weird hollow pod-people version of ourselves is actually death and our babies are down on Earth, but they’re really just ourselves but reborn?”
We all stare at Olivia.
“No more drugs for you,” I say.
Everyone laughs. Tear-wet laughter. A release. Then, movement in the next room. Daisy watching, then slipping out the front door. To the penthouse?
—
The next day, my last before I have to go back to work, I get a yoga mat and walk onto the mezzanine. I haven’t felt that ripple of doom since before I found Daisy. I curl up in a ball, just like Carleigh told me to. But this time, I am not doing it to strengthen my insides; I am doing it because I want to crawl into a tiny ball, so tiny that Kathy in HR forgets about me. So tiny that I don’t exist.
“ ‘You’re maudlin and full of self-pity. You’re magnificent.’ ” Irecognize the line fromAll about Evebefore I even see Daisy standing there. “Somebody’s calling you.”
She looks at my phone with a flash of jealousy. It’s Penelope. The selfie of the two of us, cheek to cheek, the time we went to her family’s house on the Vineyard. Penelope sent me out to buy oyster crackers and a container of lobster salad. I took the bicycle with the brown woven basket and came back two hours later with the lobster salad. Penelope, in a sun hat, leaned in for a selfie. “What do I do with the lobster?” She looked at me like she’d forgotten about it entirely, and then she said, looking bored, “I guess put it in the outdoor fridge?” We looked like a couple of friends just back from the beach, not like I’d just been sent on a twenty-dollar-an-hour errand for three hundred dollars’ worth of snacks. I hit dismiss.
I let out a dramatic groan. “Uhhhhh. I can’t believe I have to go back to that office. I can’t do it, Dais.”
Daisy sits beside me. She gives me a little back rub. I expect her to give me her energy, her life, her love. Or at least some sympathy. But instead she says, “Buck the fuck up. We all have to work in this world.”
For the first time, I don’t need what Daisy is offering. I need more time with my baby, my baby who has learned to hold his head up and sit up by himself and will be crawling soon, and when he does, I will not be there. Maybe one of the qualified multilingual childcare providers will send me videos. Or maybe I can live stream his milestones on an app. Daisy can always pop downstairs and tell me about the whole thing. I turned pretzel croissants into a boy and almost died giving birth, but he will see some other woman’s face, some other woman’s smile, when he grasps a ball and makes his little body scooch across the floor for the first time.
I slump downstairs to the faux Swedish day care. I tell the Miss Iowa of a receptionist, in her pink scrubs and French-tip nails, that Ineed to sign Holden out. She gives me a couple of Polaroids of Holden throughout the day. Dozing in his starfish-shaped sleep sack; staring at an old-fashioned jack-in-the-box in abject horror; wide-eyed and jubilant in an outdoor swing. But I do not want photos. I do not want meditation rooms or pressed juice. I am able to walk again. I’ve skipped three PT sessions and am somehow able to do the pelvic-floor exercises. I am getting used to being this other person. Now I want a luxury not even 527 Park can provide.
I want more time.
Chapter Twenty-Four
• • • • •
“Don’t you think Ishould, I don’t know, meet the person taking care of my son when we’re at work all day?” Roman says. There it is, “my son.”
He flips through the mail, mostly medical bills and another Melbourne postcard, this time sunbathers on St. Kilda Beach. Always addressed to Holden and signedLove, Grandma Sue* (*Until we meet and you come up with something better).
Roman sniffs the air. “Did you start smoking again?” I pretend I don’t hear him. I knew Roman’s patience had a limit. He had a point. I talked nonstop about Daisy, and Roman still hasn’t met her. But why did everything in my life need to also be a part of his life? Why couldn’t I have anything that was just mine? Before we’d had Holden, he went for pints at the pub, I went to see a seven-hour dramatic reading ofThe Great Gatsbyat the Public, and we’d both come home and have sex and go for breakfast at B&H Dairy in the morning. We had our own lives and we had each other. But now it felt like he had his own life. I had a BabyZen Yoyo Connect collapsible stroller with a bassinet adapter. Okay, so I hadn’t exactly told Roman about the edibles or our community in a vacant luxury tower, but I had told himthat Daisy lived in a fancy building with a play center and a nice playground, and that we’ve been spending a lot of time there. Wasn’t that enough? Why did my mom brain have to be an open cavity where the whole family dwelled?
But it wasn’t just that. I worried that if Roman ever met Daisy, if he ever learned that my shelter was actually an oligarch’s tax shelter, he would put his foot down. He would declare that Daisy is a New Age grifter porn star who can’t be trusted around “his son.” I don’t want him to audit Daisy. I don’t want him to find out that we day drink and microdose to Sofia Coppola movies. I don’t want him to find out that Daisy had a three-way with the governor of Pennsylvania. Or that her last boyfriend (patron? boss? john?) was an international fugitive who pillaged the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund. I don’t want him to put a stop to the special thing we have going at 527 Park.
“Um. Yeah. Y’all should totally meet. It’s crazy you haven’t yet,” I say as I unpack the Lucky 456 Chinese food I picked up when I walked Holden thirty-eight blocks downtown. It’s early September and, confronted with either collapsing the Yoyo on a bus or betting on the humanity of strangers to help me carry it down the subway stairs, we decided to walk. And the only thing better than a long walk with Holden on a September night in New York is a long walk on a September night that includes soup dumplings. There was a time when I’d be afraid to tell theJuju Beanmoms that we eat dim sum. Can you imagine the blowback about sodium? MSG? But now I am bursting with pride that Holden, at six months old, relishes wonton soup. I put on a subway voice, spooning rice into his mouth. “The next stop on this F train is Chubs Cheeks Station. Please stand clear of the closing cuteness.” It’s the last night before I go back to work. Roman got home by seven so we could have dinner together.
His schedule is finally easing up. He offers to take an afternoon off, say he has a doctor’s appointment or something, and meet up with Daisy and Holden in the park.
“Yeah. That could totally work,” I say. No. No. That can never work. “When were you thinking? I’ll let her know.” I take out Roman’s favorite pork buns. I walk to get him an IPA, which means I am either hiding something or want something, or both.
Roman comes up behind me, pops a dumpling. “I dunno. Maybe Friday?” I feel his breath and get a rush of fear and something resembling horniness.
“Holden has gymnastics on Fridays.”
