...where Addison keeps the baby and she and Mark aren't as different from their parents as they thought.
Potential Life
The first time she realizes she dislikes her daughter, she's twenty-two weeks along with a sonogram wand pressing cold goo into the drum of her belly when the doctor says still breech. Addison studies the monitor and swears she can see a smirk on the undeveloped face.
"She could still move," the doctor suggests. "I know you want to deliver vaginally, but..."
She won't.
"But no abnormalities?" Addison asks quickly.
"Not that I can see."
Too bad.
Mark doesn't understand. "What's the difference how you deliver, as long as the baby's okay?" he asks, pouring himself a scotch and raising his eyebrows at her scowl.
"You could at least not drink in front of me."
"Fine," he says, and turns his back so she can't see him drain the contents of the glass.
She glares at him, breasts swelling out of the larger bras she hated buying, fingers swelling under the rings on her left hand. It's possible they'll actually burst off. Then maybe he'll stop complaining.
"Give me a sip?"
"Have a smoothie or something, Addison."
A smoothie. He still doesn't know how close she came; she was dangling from an exam table with late afternoon sun slashing painfully through the blinds, debating medical versus surgical - there was something poetic in the thought of expelling their joint mistake into Mark's ultra-efficient marble toilet. Maybe leaving it there for him to find. God, this pregnancy was messing with her head, and when another wave of nausea washed over her she vaulted from the table and made it almost to the sidewalk before she vomited. Mark came home that night with a bouquet of roses for her, begged her to reconsider, and Addison realized he'd confused the day of the appointment. Let's be a family, he said and like the needy child she still was, falling for it every time, she took it. Took all of him: the flowers, the offer, his body. He moved slowly inside of her and said I love you in a way that made her wish she could have killed both of them that afternoon.
After her twenty-four week sonogram she heads alone to the brownstone. They've got to sell it at some point but her collection is still here. She selects a bottle carefully, drinks a fairly small glass - totally acceptable in Europe - then pours another. God, she's missed this, the lip-burning calm that washes over her. She breathes deeply.
"What the fuck?"
Mark's glaring at her, at the half-empty - okay, more than half - bottle next to her. Maybe she had a little more than she thought.
"How much have you had?"
"None of your business." She blanches a little at his expression. "Grow up, this is my field, I know my limits," she chants each excuse in a row. "You think Bizzy gave up her G&Ts for a single day when she was pregnant with us?"
"And look how you turned out."
She takes a long, insolent sip. "Just walk away, Mark."
"So you can kill the kid? You had your chance."
"And you talked me out of it!"
"Everyone makes mistakes."
"And you're my biggest," she snaps back, but it's a lie. The biggest one is is growing inside of her.
"Give that to me-" he reaches for her wineglass, which still contains a substantial amount of cabernet. Without really stopping to think she hurls the liquid into his face. For a minute they just stare at each other, his pale eyes comically blue under dripping streams of red. She's silent, daring him to strike back. She'd like him to hit her, she thinks, even just shove her. Give her some ammunition to leave. But he just takes the bottle from the low-slung coffee table and walks into the kitchen. She can hear him rustling around, presumably pouring the rest of it down the drain.
"That was expensive," she snaps when he walks back through the living room, face clean, wearing his coat. "Where are you going?"
"Out."
"Mark-" she extends a hand, considering an apology, and her wedding rings flash in the low light. He looks angrier than he did at the wine and she shrinks back into the couch. "They're stuck," she bleats. "My fingers are swollen, and-"
The door closes loudly behind him.
Randa's the first one she finds out about. In addition to having a stupid name, she's the peppiest personal trainer at Mark's ridiculously overpriced gym. Addison's gone with him once or twice but it's not her sort of place: smoothie bar in the lobby, six floors of mirrored walls and grunting men and a low, throbbing techno beat that gives her a headache. But she's sensitive about her weight gain so she stops in a few mornings to try it and hears some of the trainers chatting in the locker room. She doesn't pay any attention, focusing on applying Kiehl's moisturizer as diligently as she can to the curve of her hips, to what sounds like standard issue twenty-something kiss-and-tell chitchat. Their uptalk is irking her.
"Who wouldn't, right? I mean, he's totally hot? A sexy plastic sur-" then she suddenly looks over at Addison, who's gone cold, and says "sorry."
When Mark comes home from the gym late that night, hair wet, and crawls into bed beside her, she rolls away from his kiss.
"What's the matter?" He pulls her close to him, one hand working its way under her silk pajama top. "Still sore?" he asks, palming one swollen breast, and she pushes his hand down.
"Don't touch me."
"Now what?"
"Did you at least shower afterwards?"
He doesn't even blink. "You know I always shower after my ... workouts." He flicks the buttons of her top open and brushes his lips against a nipple. She winces.
"They're still sore."
"Stop me when it hurts," he suggests, sucking pebbled flesh into his warm mouth. His fingers find their way inside of her and her thighs fall open, just as they always do. Poised above her, he spreads her apart with one hand. She runs her fingernails down his back, scratching her engagement diamond against his shoulder blade.
"Shit." He pulls back before he can enter her. "I'm - am I bleeding?"
"Just a little."
"How about taking those goddamned things off before you kill someone?"
She could have killed someone but she didn't.
"How about if you stop fucking other women?" she asks calmly, almost conversationally.
"Don't take it so personally."
"How can you-" but the words are lost in a sigh as he pushes into her. Damn him for being so good at this. For a few moments she's lost in sensation, letting him fill her.
"You. Are. Still. Married." He grinds out the words in time with his thrusts. "Don't talk to me about other women while you're wearing his fucking rings, Addison."
She lets him come inside her, then pulls one of his hands onto her belly so he can feel the fluttering kicks. "You woke her up."
Her lawyer calls, unprompted, to tell her she can't get a divorce without a hearing, not without waiting another year. Derek's lawyer must be pushing it. Maybe he wants to get married again. Addison takes a taxi to Centre Street alone; she's at thirty-two weeks, lumbering on the heels she won't give up, sweating through a tasteful maternity wrap dress. Derek doesn't look at her once until the gavel bangs out the end of their marriage and then he scans her bulging body and says: "You must be so pleased with yourselves."
"Derek-"
"Don't." He holds up a hand. "Really, things couldn't have turned out better. I have Mer - I have the love of my life, I have a better life out there, and now I never have to come back to New York again."
She hates Mark for not coming with her. She hates even more the feeling of the flipper kicks inside of her. She rests a hand on her belly, hoping some of the gathered lawyers will pity the poor pregnant damsel bullied by her unfeeling ex. But no one pays them much mind; she supposes divorce lawyers have seen worse.
When all else fails, she falls back on her manners: "Well. Travel safely."
"Thanks," he says shortly, and then he surprises her by leaning over and kissing her cheek, lips dry. "Good luck with the adulterous love child."
Her pulse is fast all the way back to the hospital and she's grabbing a blood pressure cuff from the supply closet when she sees two of the nurses whispering behind her.
"What?" She turns around and their expressions are nakedly obvious.
She bangs open two on-call rooms before she finds the tangle of naked limbs on a bottom bunk, the back of a tousled blonde head and two large hands she recognizes all too well pinioning two slender and stretch-mark-free hips while his head is buried-
"Is he doing that thing with his tongue?" she asks loudly, announcing her presence. "That's my favorite."
"Jesus, Addison!" He sits up so fast he hits his head on the top bunk, and the blonde nurse rolls away from him fast enough to make the cheap mattress squeak.
Addison lounges against the doorframe, resting a hand on her swollen belly, enjoying the little bitch's discomfort.
"I'm- I'm- " the blonde stammers, looking desperately for her clothes.
"Here." Addison kicks lacy red panties toward her with the pointed toe of one stiletto.
"Nice, Addison." Mark says after the hastily dressed nurse has scampered out. Of course he's still naked and not bothered to hide. "Very nice."
"Do you have ANY shame?"
"Says the pregnant adulteress who didn't even want a divorce."
They glare at each other for a moment.
"I hope you were planning to use protection," Addison snaps finally.
"It shouldn't bother you - it's not like we're doing anything."
"Is that supposed to be an invitation?"
He spreads his hands, obviously still ready. "You know you have an open invitation."
"You're disgusting."
"You're divorced." He stalks over and kisses her hard, without warning, having to lean over her bulging midsection. "Fucking finally," he spits and she tastes unfamiliar tang on his tongue and shoves him away with both hands.
At thirty-six weeks Mark prods her to get a 3-D ultrasound - privately, she's always found them rather distasteful and her own is no exception: a squashed, troll-like thing in disconcerting shades of sepia.
"It's a little girl, but you already know that," the technician beams at them. "She looks beautiful."
She doesn't. She looks monstrous, some tiny vengeful god of her mother's many mistakes.
Two weeks later she's pulled, protesting loudly, from her parasitic cocoon and Addison's disappointed to see she actually is beautiful.
One disappointment after another: Addison's spent her career coaching other women through delivery - no one does it better - but she never gets to do it herself. A planned cesarean lacks the urgency and warmth a laboring mother is promised. She doesn't even have contractions, doesn't get to grab Mark's tie and threaten him adorably with castration for putting her in this situation. She still whispers I hate you as they inject her with local anesthetic, but Mark, who assumes she's talking to him, just rolls his eyes. "You're doing great, Addison," he tells her - like they tell patients, but with even less investment.
"C-section babies are always the prettiest," the nurse coos unprompted and Addison wonders if her epidural will wear off in time to kick that smiling masked face between the eyes. She focuses on the squalling thing in the nurse's hands, Mark's chin and a tiny version of his nose, smooth and unmarred by the birth canal. She feels nothing as they stitch her up. Mark holds the baby, swaddled in white.
Addison's gown practically falls open of its accord at the shrill cries, breasts swollen with milk, but the baby can't seem to nurse. Deprived of nourishment, she gums sensitive flesh roughly, chomping desperately, until Addison pushes her away. "It's not working."
"There's the lactation consultant-" Mark offers.
Addison shakes her head. "Just get a bottle." Get one of those father-nursing contraptions and let her suck the life out of you instead.
She feels like she's been ripped in two as the anesthesia wears off, orders Mark to get her something strong. "I'm not nursing," she reminds him. "It doesn't matter."
"Is there anyone you want us to call for you?" the nurse asks hesitantly, glancing around the big empty birthing suite.
"No, thank you," Mark says at the same time Addison says: "There isn't anyone else."
They name her Maeve at Mark's suggestion.
"Someone you fucked on your semester abroad?" Addison asks.
When Mark says "actually, it was my grandmother's name," that seals the deal. The idea of calling her daughter after a penniless potato famine immigrant pleases Addison - privately - to no end. She agrees without fuss to Sloan as the lone surname - why would she want another Montgomery? Her own mother hasn't spoken to her since before Derek left, but Bizzy's social secretary sent word she was displeased with Addison's choices. Addison makes sure to send her a birth announcement, creamy card stock with MAEVE SLOAN in large letters. For kicks she also sends one to every member of the Shepherd family. Only Amy sends a gift - inexplicably, a harmonica.
"Think she's using again?" Addison asks, noting the spidery handwriting on the box. Amy's misspelled Sloan.
Mark just shrugs: "Who knows with her?"
Mark's Chelsea bachelor loft is surprisingly easy to baby-proof. There was never any question of where they'd live - the brownstone's on the market, Addison and Derek having both washed their hands of it. Renting a new place seemed silly. The guest room holds the crib, changing table, and coordinated bits and bobs the decorator installed.
"What kind of vision do you have for the nursery?" the beaming brunette asked brightly the first day. Addison just shook her head, passed over her AmEx without a word. That platinum AmEx is the key to her survival: the baby nurse, highly recommended by the hospital and almost as highly compensated as her employers, is a godsend. Maeve's on a schedule within days, while Addison sleeps off her stitches and waits for her stomach muscles to recover. Mark sleeps at home a few nights a week - when he's not at the hospital, or at least that what he says. The baby nurse brings Maeve in to see them, swaddled in a blanket or dressed in clean cotton sleepers. Addison looks into her bright blue eyes - Mark's shade - examines her from her little curving ears to the ten tiny toes that are just miniature versions of Mark's, tries to find anything of herself.
"She's cute," Mark affirms. Once in a while he straps her to his chest in an infant pack and walks her to the park. Addison doesn't ask if he's picking up women there and he doesn't tell her.
The nurse leaves after three months.
"Can't you stay longer?"
"I'm an infant nurse," she says, almost apologetically.
They find the nanny nearly by chance, Addison overhearing in an elevator that a family is letting theirs go when they move to London. "She's so fantastic I forget the kids are there," the woman trills, tossing perfectly highlighted hair over one silk-scarf-covered shoulder, and Addison, who's dying to get back to work, is sold.
Maeve screams the entire week the nanny is visiting her family in Guatemala. This from the kid who doesn't blink when her parents leave for work, benefits or two-week vacations. Addison learns her lesson and starts paying for Rosa's family to visit New York instead. By Maeve's second birthday Addison's sponsored most of the clan to New York and settled them in a sunny two-family house in Queens. She finds jobs for the able-bodied ones and calls the house an investment. Mark calls it the stupidest use of her trust fund yet.
"What do you care?" she asks him. "Were you hoping for palimony?"
They're still living together, nominally, under the domestic version of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Everyone knows Mark's sleeping with that intern with the dark curly hair, Jenny or Jessie or something like that - she's pretty bright but has a shy stammer that drives Addison crazy. Neither of them is home much anyway; Chief Nesbit is finally retiring and both of them are vying for his spot. Addison sees Nancy at the ACEG conference in Chicago that spring, for the first time in years, and Nancy eyes her with a combination of distaste and distrust when someone brings up the competition for chief.
"Do you ever see your kid?"
"That's not very feminist of you," Addison responds icily. "You're not exactly a stay-at-home mother yourself."
"I'd never apply for chief of anything with a toddler. And my kids have a father," Nancy points out. "Not a ... Mark. Come on, Addison, we kind of understood you sleeping with him, but having his kid?"
Addison pastes on her debutante smile. "Great seeing you, Nancy."
"Derek and Meredith have a little girl," Nancy calls as Addison turns her back. "They adopted her last year."
"Good for them."
She's breathing fast for some reason as she rounds the corner, ducks into a breakout room and dials Mark from her cell.
"Addison? What's wrong?" He sounds slightly out of breath.
"Nothing, I'm just - checking in," she says stiffly. "How's Maeve?"
"Fine, I guess. I'm - cut it out!" he whispers and she hears a torrent of giggling in the background. She counts to ten before she says anything else. Ten choices: the barista down the block, the German au pair from downstairs - and she's done at two when she hears the accented voice. She recognizes the tone and can imagine what Mark's doing with the hand that's not holding the phone.
"Jesus, Mark, is she even eighteen?"
"She's twenty-two, and very mature. She speaks three languages."
"When her mouth isn't full," Addison retorts crudely, pleased with and even a little excited by her own vulgarity.
"Addie, did you need something or did you just call to hassle me?"
"Are you sleeping at home tonight?"
"I don't know," he says slowly. "Does it matter?"
That's answer enough for her.
He moves out first, shortly before Maeve's third birthday. Nesbit surprised everyone by giving chief to neither one of them. Mark was pissed and took his practice, and his privileges, across town. Addison stayed, as she was wont to do.
Mark says he needs a place closer to his new hospital, and Addison knows he'd like more flexibility to bring home that intern - now resident. She doesn't seem to care about his peccadilloes - which at this point include Addison, because now they're taking turns shoving each other across a living room stripped bare of furniture and readied for the movers. By the time he pins her to the wall where a Rothko reproduction used to hang - in shades of red, it inevitably made her think of abortion - she's panting for release. He still knows exactly how to touch her, how to make her ask for it, to want it. She hates herself for it, every inch of the body she doesn't really recognize anymore. Her skin has fit more loosely everywhere since Maeve's birth, like a soft extra suit of clothes. She hates the way the flesh folds gently at her waist, the silvery serpent stripes at her hips and belly where forty extra pounds used to sit. Self-conscious of the way her breasts hang, she tries to fold an arm artfully across them, but Mark presses her wrists to the cool plaster and covers her body with his. Afterward they slide down the wall and sit for a moment on the bare hardwood floor. The rugs are rolled up and stacked against a wall. The apartment looks strange empty, even vulgar. Like a crime scene. She's panting, still trying to get her breath. He rests a hand between her legs almost affectionately, fingers sliding through the moisture.
"Don't forget me," he says.
She looks away.
Addison moves out too, into a penthouse duplex with a full nanny suite between Maeve's wing and hers. Rosa moves expertly between the two apartments. "She's a gem," one of the other mothers at Maeve's preschool sighs wistfully. Addison agrees. Maeve doesn't seem bothered by the move. As she always has, she treats Addison with a certain vaguely interested neutrality. If Addison's home during Maeve's dinner or her bath, her daughter will occasionally show her a picture or tell her something she did with Rosa that day. There's no urgency to their communications; Maeve's reasonably self-sufficient, relievedly so, not the kind of child to throw herself into your arms or beg for attention. Addison assumes it's just her personality; admittedly, some days, she worries vaguely that their lack of connection is due to her cesarean section. And on the worst days, she knows her daughter has sensed her dislike all the way back to the womb. That she somehow remembers the abortion - itself aborted - and the wine and the way Addison let Mark fuck her without questions or protection no matter where else he'd been that day.
Rosa takes a day off in June and Addison brings Maeve to the park. She screams when Addison refuses her an ice cream, hurls herself to the grass by the Alice statue and howls. Addison stands there wondering if it would be illegal just to walk away. That night, after parking an exhausted Maeve in front of a DVD, she corrals Rosa. "What do you do when she throws tantrums?" she asks.
Rosa just shakes her head. "She never throw tantrums with me," she admits.
"Rosa!" Maeve shrieks, having heard her voice from the hallway. She jumps into her nanny's arms.
"I missed you, mija," she coos and Maeve snuggles close, then lifts her head toward Addison.
"Mommy, go to work," she says, so Addison does.
Maeve wakes her up, whimpering, at four in the morning and it's all Addison can do not to slap her - she was delivering high-risk twins until two and has barely shut her eyes.
"I want Rosa," Maeve whines.
"She's not here." Addison grits her teeth. "She doesn't sleep over anymore, you know that - because you're a big girl who can sleep through the night without a nanny. Go back to bed."
Maeve, five and a half now, scrubs tears out of her eyes with balled up fists. "Tell her to come. I need her."
"I told you she doesn't stay overnight anymore."
"Just give her more money," Maeve whimpers and Addison is grudgingly impressed that her daughter has figured things out so quickly.
"I'm not calling her in the middle of the night. Go back to sleep, Maeve, you're not a baby."
"Can I sleep here?" She's pulling at the duvet on Addison's king-sized bed. Addison tries to remember whether she had the maid change the sheets the last time the new head of cardio slept over, then gives up and decides it won't kill her either way.
"Fine." She helps Maeve climb in. "Just this once."
Maeve snuggles next to her with atypical warmth. "I had a bad dream."
"You can tell me about it in the morning." Addison closes her eyes, willing herself back to sleep.
"It was scary."
"Maeve..." Addison rolls onto her side, spoons herself awkwardly around her daughter. It's as much comfort as she can muster. "Please stop talking."
"I dreamed Daddy was hurting Anya again."
"What?" Her eyes open again. "Who's Anya?"
"Sutton's nanny. She has two ponytails. Mommy, where are you going?"
"Stay here," she says sharply, closing the door behind her. To Mark, in the hall, she whispers ferociously into the phone.
"She walked in on you? Seriously? What were you even doing there?"
"It was a playdate," he says easily. He doesn't even sound embarrassed. "Maybe you could go on a playdate sometime, Addie, instead of just sending Rosa everywhere."
"Maybe if there were more male nannies for me to fuck, you mean." She pauses to gather steam, hoping to hurt him. "She's having nightmares about it, you know. She's probably going to need therapy."
"She's our kid, she would need it anyway." His light tone irritates her to no end.
"Lock the door next time, Mark. You'd think after all these years you'd've figured that out."
"You sound tired, Addison." His low, rumbling voice is almost amused and she hates herself for - just briefly - missing him.
"I was asleep until your daughter woke me up!"
"Oh yeah? What were you wearing?"
"Good-bye, Mark." She clicks off the phone, then turns to see Maeve standing in the open doorway, thumb in her mouth.
"What are you doing out of bed?"
Maeve shrugs, and Addison reaches to push her thumb out of her mouth, then thinks better of it. Maeve's pretty, heart-shaped face is a mirror of Mark's, with none of her mother's awkwardness, and Addison thinks a little dental displacement might give her daughter some character.
Her teeth stay perfect, though. Maeve has turned out to be, as the ultrasound technician predicted, quite beautiful. Addison finds herself annoyed with this fact; it gives the child too much power, she thinks, too much confidence. In the sea of plaid-skirted little girls in her first-grade class, Maeve stands out. The others try to please her, to get her attention. This is what her teachers tell Addison while she taps a four-inch heel during the only parent-teacher conference she hasn't been able to get out of. She's checking her blackberry - you'll have to forgive me, I'm a surgeon - when they tell her that Maeve is sometimes aggressive.
"She's six," Addison says in response.
"Yes, well." One of the nuns intercedes. "She occasionally picks on the ... less socially adept children."
"I'll talk to her," Addison lies. She stands up and hoists her briefcase onto her shoulder. "Thanks so much for your time."
When she gets home Rosa's putting Maeve to bed. "Don't come in, we're busy!" Maeve calls. Addison opens the door anyway.
"I met your teacher today."
Maeve's blue eyes, so much like Mark's, look uninterested. "Mommy, we're reading now."
"Do you like school?" Addison asks, ignoring her.
"I love school," Maeve responds immediately. "Go away so we can read, okay?"
Addison sits down on the edge of Maeve's fluffy duvet instead and her daughter kicks at her with one foot.
"Stop it." Addison covers the foot - larger than she expected - with her hand. "Are you a good girl at school?" she asks in a serious tone.
Maeve struggles to pull her foot free. "Let go," she whines.
"She is a very good girl at school," Rosa intercedes, looking slightly nervous. "Is everything okay, Doctor Montgomery?"
"Everything's fine." Addison stands up, releasing Maeve, who promptly covers her ears with her hands. "It's just - no, never mind, everything's fine. Good night, Maeve."
Maeve ignores her.
"Say good night to mama," Rosa instructs gently, smiling fondly at Maeve. Without uncovering her ears, Maeve mutters "good night."
As she closes the door behind her Addison can see Maeve thrust her little foot out, towards her mother, one more time.
Addison's in surgery when she gets the first call - and the second - so by the time she's scrubbed out and headed to the Convent of the Immaculate Heart in a taxi it's been nearly two hours since the school called her. Mark meets her outside the gates. He tosses an empty cappuccino cup as she approaches. She hasn't seen him in a couple of months - Rosa's been doing the exchanges - and he looks barely shaven and a little tired. Or maybe he's just older than she remembers.
"Do you know what this is about?" he asks as they walk in and she shakes her head.
They find Maeve in the headmistress's office, sitting on a leather desk chair far too large for her, her little feet dangling in shiny black shoes.
"Doctor Montgomery, Doctor Sloan - we've been waiting..."
"What happened?" Mark asks. Maeve wriggles in the chair but doesn't get down; Addison supposes she's been told to sit still. She jerks her head in her daughter's direction and the little girl clambers down from the chair and runs to Mark.
"Hi, Daddy!"
He picks her up and gives her a quick squeeze. When she's on her feet again, Maeve looks from Mark to Addison curiously. "Why are you together?" she asks and for a fleeting moment Addison thinks it's the wisest thing her daughter's ever asked.
It is, of course, a natural question since she's been shunted from one of them to the other for as long as she'll be able to remember - more than half her life. Before Addison can think of an answer Mark is crouching down in front of Maeve, turning over her little hand.
"What the hell?"
Addison sees the nun wince at his language.
"We called you here because of an incident-"
"Why is her hand bruised?"
"Let's talk privately," the headmistress suggests. "Sister Clara, would you take Maeve-"
"I want to know what happened to my daughter!"
The headmistress waits until the door closes. "Your daughter punched another little girl in the face."
Mark shakes his head. "Maeve wouldn't do that."
"We've discussed her bullying..."
"Maeve isn't a bully," Addison intercedes.
"We need to protect our students."
"She is one of your students!"
"Not anymore, I'm afraid," the headmistress says gently. "I'm so sorry."
The next few minutes are an embarrassing blur of Addison's threats - mainly financial - Mark's tiger-growl pacing and the headmistress's infuriating implications that Maeve's anti-social behavior might be inherited. Addison storms out first, Mark on her heels.
Maeve is waiting for them in the imposing stone foyer, a watchful nun by her side and an icepack on her bruised knuckles. "Am I in trouble?" she asks tremulously as they approach.
Mark holds her on his lap in the taxi and manipulates each finger of her left hand carefully. "Does that hurt?"
"No." Maeve bends her own fingers experimentally, with interest. "I can still color, right?"
Addison realizes, with a start, that she didn't even know Maeve was left-handed.
"Yeah. You can color."
"Because tomorrow is art class and we're doing pastels," Maeve chatters.
Mark meets Addison's eyes over their daughter's head. He doesn't say anything else until they're at Addison's building and then he shoves his hands in his pockets, looking awkward.
"Well..."
"Come inside, Daddy," Maeve beckons him, so he does.
Rosa's waiting for them in the foyer. "Doctor Montgomery, is everything-" Addison shakes her head in Maeve's direction, then whispers what happened while Maeve is distracted by Mark.
"Oh, no." Rosa's pressing her fingers to her mouth. "Oh no, Doctor Montgomery, Maeve loves her school."
"We couldn't change their minds." Addison checks her blackberry. "Can you stay a full day tomorrow, Rosa? We won't be able to get her transferred that quickly."
Rosa nods as Maeve asks: "Get who transferred where?"
"Little pitchers," says Addison.
"Just tell her," says Mark.
"What?" Maeve whines, looking to Rosa, who puts her arms around her.
Addison glares at Mark. "So, Maeve, you're, um, going to go to a different school from now on."
Maeve lets out a piercing wail and Mark shoots Addison a dirty look. "You want to do this?" she hisses to him and he shakes his head.
"No! I'm going to go to my school!" Maeve yells.
"Lower your voice," Addison snaps and Maeve cries harder. Rosa picks her up and holds her and Maeve clings with arms and legs so that Addison finds herself talking to the back of her daughter's sandy-blonde head.
"Look, Immaculate Heart says you broke their rules." It's the most diplomatic phrasing Addison can muster. "We'll find you a new school and I'm sure you'll like it and - Maeve, would you please stop making so much noise?"
Maeve is sobbing piteously, the skirt of her plaid uniform hitched up.
"I can't stand when she cries like this," Addison says to no one in particular. "Rosa, can you please..."
Rosa carries Maeve upstairs, murmuring to her in Spanish.
"Well, that was pleasant." Addison leans against the archway. "Thanks for all your help."
"She didn't take it very well, huh?" Mark walks into the dining room like he belongs there, finds the bar and pours himself a scotch. "Want one?"
She accepts a tumbler and lets the liquid warm the back of her throat. She can hear the faint echoes of Maeve's screams wafting down the stairs.
"I didn't realize what a little hellion she is." Mark sounds almost impressed.
"They said she's a bully." Addison drains her scotch and pours another.
"Potato, po-tah-to," Mark says casually and helps himself to a second drink too.
"Where are we supposed to send her now?" Addison sinks into a leather club chair.
Mark shrugs.
"Bizzy's on the board at Spence," Addison ticks options off on her fingers. "Nightingale's a nightmare for colleges."
"Brearley?" Mark suggests.
"You want her to be a lesbian?"
"Sure," Mark says. "Chip off the old block."
She laughs in spite of herself. "Forget it. Let Rosa home school her. Rosa's the only one she likes, anyway."
"She likes us," Mark says automatically.
"Not me," Addison counters, and for the first time she knows it's true.
Mark shrugs. "All kids hate their parents."
"True."
Addison takes a long draw of scotch then and wonders if the fact that both of them think that is part of the problem. She closes her eyes briefly and when she opens them Mark's face is close to hers; he's kneeling in front of her chair and he's not holding his scotch.
"Oh, no," she says quietly. "No, Mark."
"I didn't do anything," he protests. He's just being, breathing near her, warm air making gooseflesh rise on her bare wrists. That's all it takes for the heat to rush between her thighs and she swears she can see in his blue eyes - the same shade as Maeve's - the exact moment he catches the scent of her.
"Mark-"
"Tell me no," he says, one big palm coming to rest on her bare calf, sending shockwaves up the rest of her leg.
She can't; she never could. She melts under his touch; as it has so many times before, her blouse seems to fall open of its own accord as he approaches and she falls into him. He shoves her black pencil skirt high on her hips, covers her body with his. It's been so long but he feels exactly the same, expert fingers yanking apart the flimsy lace of her panties and twisting inside her until she cries out. She's grabbing for purchase at the familiar muscles of his back; he's leaving beard burn down her neglected decolletage. She hisses when he bites her clavicle, wraps her fingers around him harder than he likes.
"I have you in the palm of my hand," she rolls the words on her tongue, enjoying their play.
"What else is new?" He sucks an earlobe hard and she feels it deep inside her; it's like he's everywhere in her body at once. When he finally pushes into her she's soaking with need, exhausted thighs trembling. He props her bare leg on his shoulder and drives deeply enough to bring tears to her eyes. Stop me when it hurts, he said once, but she never did. He collapses on top of her and she ignores a cramp in her calf to wrap both arms and legs around him as tightly as she can, pretends it's just aftershocks.
He's half-laughing into her hair, pulls away. "God, I forgot how good you are," he growls.
"Yeah." She sits part of the way up. "That's what happens when you date children. You forget what it's like to be with a woman."
He swats what he can reach of her bare ass in response and she squeals appropriately, enjoying it for just a moment before she grows pensive again.
"What?" Mark sounds hesitant; he's still tracing a hand over the red mark he's no doubt imprinted in her flesh - not for the first time - probably enjoying its heat.
"If I'd had the abortion-" she feels him stiffen beneath her. "If I'd had the abortion, maybe we'd be together in Chelsea right now. We'd be together. And I'd have a family instead of a house of Guatemalans and a daughter who hates me."
"You didn't want the abortion," he says uneasily. "You wanted to punish me for - you wanted to win."
"Don't make this my fault. You wanted a baby."
"I did want a baby, Addison," he admits. "Or I thought I did, but - you're rewriting history. We wouldn't still be together. We weren't a great couple."
"And I'm a terrible mother," she says. Speaking it out loud is, oddly, somewhat freeing.
"I did want a baby, Addie, I just - didn't realize I didn't want one with you," he mumbles.
Both of them are silent for a moment, then Addison nudges Mark.
"Listen," she says, indicating Maeve's room upstairs with her eyes.
He does. "I don't hear anything."
"Exactly," she says. There's a burning ache deep inside of her still, and a wasted bit of him slides down her leg. A potential life. "It's like she was never even born."
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