“I have it.”
He has Daisy’s cell? “You do?”
“Obviously. We text all the time. Who do you think sends me all the pictures and videos of Holden when I’m at work?”
I figured Miss Iowa or one of our army of caregivers sent him photos. He and Daisy are texting? How long have they been texting? Has she told him about us? About the moms? About the shrooms? About what goes down at 527 Park? My quesadilla arrives. A flash of Daisy giving a lap dance to my boyfriend, Todd, in college. I didn’t really like Todd. He had a Proust collection on his bedside table. He put me down, dismissed my dreams.Hewas the writer in the relationship.Onepoem published in theOxford Americanand suddenly he’s Seamus Heaney. But still…it was my birthday and Daisy was my best friend and she was giving my boyfriend a giant boner. Todd had acted above such things. Too literary for a boner was a new one.
I was a loner who finally got a boyfriend. Not just any boyfriend but a boyfriend who looked vaguely like a young Elvis. Wait, maybe that explains the Graceland dream? A boyfriend who (allegedly) readProust and who had a poem published in a major literary journal and who reminded me of that fact every time he got the chance. I’d started to sleep over a lot at Todd’s garage apartment. One night, he rubbed a finger on my nipple and told me that he’d been reading a lot of Hemingway and decided the only way to truly be in a relationship was to ruin each other, over and over again. I should have broken up with him then, but he was very good at sex. I went home to Tuscaloosa with him for Christmas and met his mom. Then Daisy gave him a lap dance at my birthday and we decided to ruin each other. Until he dumped me. He didn’t love me and didn’t think he ever could, so what was the point?
Roman notices that I am somewhere else, picking at a loaded quesadilla. “Hello, wife? You in there? Why are you getting all weird?”
“It’s nothing,” I say, smiling.
Of course, Roman is right. Why did I marry someone who was not only so male but also (almost) always so right? It’s infuriating. Obviously, he should be in touch with Holden’s caregiver. If this had been a regular nanny situation, Marcela or Priscilla, I would not have thought twice about Roman texting them. This is my issue, not his. “No, totally. I’m so glad y’all are in touch. Maybe we can meet up next week for lunch? Tuesday?”
Roman is pulling up his work calendar. It looks like a game of Tetris. He’s moving calls and team meetings and all-hands around. “Tuesday is a shit show. Wednesday? Somewhere downtown? Is there a park or a library or something?”
Is there a park or a library downtown? It was a throwaway question, but it reminded me, again, that New York, that life, had not changed much for Roman. Because if you don’t have to take care of a baby in New York, you have almost no idea that the city is bursting with them. But I don’t want to fight. I just want to finish my margarita and enter the weekend in a quesadilla coma, so I grin and say, “Sure. That works.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
• • • • •
We decide to meetat Pier 25. The autumn air is cool, but the Tribeca moms are all in workout sets, chatting and drinking iced coffee.
Holden and I are waiting for Roman. I hand him the Itzy Ritzy rattle teether with a red fox on the end. “Don’t these bitches know it’s Joan Didion’sBlue Nightsseason? Time to put on a tweed blazer, take in the draining of the light—or I’m gonna knock that cold brew right out of your hands.” Holden glares at the Tribeca moms. He lets out a groan, clearly agreeing with me. According to Dr. Brooke, “At thirty-two weeks, your baby is busy, busy, busy, trying to talk with gestures, facial expressions, squeals, even stringing together some vowels and consonant sounds.”
One of the best things about having a baby in New York is that you can have entire conversations with yourself without anyone looking at you like you are crazy. Even better, pop in your AirPods and people don’t even wonder. I was just a new mom, keeping my baby stimulated with steady conversation, or talking on the phone to another mom between playdates and true-crime podcasts.
“Hey,” Roman says, breaking the spell. I look up. Holden squealsat the sight of his dada. He’s saying it all the time now, “Dada, Dada, Dada.” He still hasn’t said “Mama.” Dr. Brooke says this is normal. “The baby still thinks that you are the same person.” Cyclops and all. Why would you need another name for your own self? Still, I tore my twat and had to suction my boobs into a torture device eighteen times a day, and Holden lights up and says “Dada.” The world just works that way.
“Hey. You look handsome.” If Roman had not been my husband and I saw him walking down the West Side Highway on a Wednesday afternoon, amid a sea of men in their flat, well-fitted pants, button-down shirts, no tie, I would think that somebody else’s husband was handsome.
He pecks my cheek and lifts Holden out of the Yoyo. Holden rubs a hand along Roman’s jawline. “Thanks. Where’s Daisy? I have to be back by two.”
Hello? What about your wife and baby, whom you never get to see? Who share a small apartment with you and your turtle, who smelled particularly reptilian this morning? “I don’t know. I’ve texted her, like, five times. Let me call.” First ring, voicemail. Her velvety voice (me with strep), “Hey you’ve reached Daisy. You know what to do…”
“Should we just get lunch? Since we came downtown?” I ask. He checks the time. He’s anxious to get back. I wonder if I would need 527 Park if he’d had more than two weeks off work after I gave birth. In those first weeks, when Sue broke it to us that she wouldn’t be able to come help, Roman had taken care of me. We put Holden in his doughnut pillow between us in bed, binged aVanderpumpmarathon as he slept, marveled at him when he opened his eyes, moved his fingers, as small and sweet as Tic Tacs. I’d never needed Roman, or anyone, like I needed someone then. All I remember is screaming in the bathroom, folded over my knees. Holden screaming in his bassinet. Feeling unable to take care of him. Dr. Weatherstone’s office tellingme to just hold off until my six-week checkup. They’ve already explained that the doctor can’t prescribe Percocet. At night, I’d cradle Holden with one arm, attempt to breastfeed with the other, and browse websites, statistics. Mothers die all the time in these early weeks. They are mostly not white or privileged. Article after article. Heavy bleeding. High blood pressure. Infection. Sepsis. Self-harm. Psychosis. Critical Window. Danger Zone.
Roman puts Holden back in the Yoyo. They have the same nose, sturdy and solid, the same sweep of sandy hair. But Holden has my eyes, my essence, which is to say he is restless and marvels at everything and enjoys Barry Manilow and would never drink iced coffee in late October. “I could get a quick lunch,” Roman says. “Chopt?”
I grab the Yoyo out of his hands. “Veronica is already on my ass. I had to sneak out. I don’t want the same nasty-ass salad I eat every day.” Nasty-ass. I must have gotten that phrase from Daisy. I liked that we’d started to speak the same way.
Roman tries to be cool, but keeping your head down means not taking a long lunch with your family or taking personal calls. “Babe, I don’t have a lot of time.”
We end up at Le Pain Quotidien. I get an open-faced tuna sandwich. Roman just points to a bowl, too harried to care if it’s quinoa or goat cheese. I break up tiny pieces of a chocolate croissant and Holden’s baby mind is blown. He’s got two front teeth coming in. It’s absurd how cute they are. The world starting to happen to him, one bite at a time.
“Daisy is usually very reliable,” I say. “I don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t know, babe. She doesn’t seem that reliable.” He’s pissed.
“So she flaked on lunch—”
“It’s not just the lunch.”
“Are you trying to imply something?”
“I’m not trying.”
