A/N: All hail Jan, Barbara, and Alison, my wonderful betas.
Chapter 8
late December 2012
Lizzy and Will spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in one prolonged, intense discussion about the last eleven weeks and about the future. It continued through their weekend routine of taking Emma to the park, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and to their favorite deli for Reuben sandwiches, and on short trips to the market and the drugstore for an emergency baby-wipe infusion. Will didn't have any athletic events scheduled for the weekend because everyone was off for the holiday, so he didn't have anywhere else to be. The only time he and Lizzy were apart was when she took a two-hour nap each afternoon, while he and Emma went out to look at very expensive and frilly baby clothes at various boutiques in the neighborhood. He came back with a lot of Christmas presents for Emma. He also bought a few things for Aiden and Tyler, since they were going to Jane and Charlie's for Christmas on Tuesday.
Intertwining themes and questions wove in and around their conversations. What was going on? How had they gotten where they were? Where were they going to go from here? How would things change for her personally and for them as a family if she resigned from her job?
It all began while Lizzy cooked eggs and toast for breakfast on Saturday. She said,
"I know this is crazy, because it's only been a few weeks. But I feel like we're edging closer and closer to living in a '50s sitcom. How did we turn into the Cleavers? I feel like that's what's going to happen if I quit my job, and it really scares me."
Holding onto Emma, who was trying to grab his nose, Will said, "It doesn't have to be forever. And I don't think we're turning into the Cleavers. You swear way more than Mrs. Cleaver ever did."
"Well, fair enough. I can't imagine Mr. Cleaver ever changing a diaper, either."
Will mumbled his agreement, as he kissed Emma's sweet baby cheek.
Later that day as they sat in the deli eating their Reuben sandwiches, Emma strapped onto Will's chest, Lizzy said, "Here's what I feel is the basic issue. I feel like having a baby has ended up being framed as being my problem, and only my problem. My whole life has been turned upside down by having a baby, and it will be even more if I quit my job. But yours hasn't changed at all."
"How can you say that? That's not true. I hardly see you, we don't have a chance to talk, we haven't had sex in forever, we don't sleep in the same bed. It's like there's no 'us' anymore." Will leaned to the side to take a bite of his sandwich, trying to keep Russian dressing from dripping on Emma's head.
"That's true. All those things have changed for me, too. But look how many things in your life have stayed the same. You haven't changed your workday or commitments at all, and you know what a big part of your life they are. My workday is totally shot to hell. I'm doing the vast majority of taking care of Emma."
"No, Elena is doing that, and I'm helping, too, especially on weekends."
Lizzy couldn't believe her ears. "Seriously? God! How can you say that? I have her all evening until you get home, and I have her all night and most of the morning, and I have her all the hours on the weekend when you're playing squash or going off to the driving range. When was the last time I had five seconds to myself, or time to visit a friend, or time to exercise? Except for last Saturday when I went to the hotel?"
"Hmmph," said Will, putting down his sandwich. "Well, I have to do all of those things on the weekends, and in the evening. It's part of doing business."
Since they were in public, Lizzy restrained her fury as much as she could. "Does it have to be that way? Why do you have to play squash with investors on the weekends? Can't you find other ways to spend time with them?"
"It's what they expect. If I want to keep this company afloat, that's what I'm expected to do. What can I do about it?" He threw his hands up in the air in frustration.
"How do you know it's what they want? Maybe they want to spend the weekend with their families, too. Look, you're the boss, you're the guy with the money and the name. Why can't you make them do things differently?"
"You know I can't mess with the investors. I have to do things their way, so that they'll invest, for God's sake."
She guessed that was probably true, at least for the most part. "So, what about inside WPD? Can't you more or less do what you want there?"
"Within limits. I'm responsible to the board, of course."
"OK, so why don't you see what you can do? I mean, you make it sound like you don't have any choice here, but is that really true?"
They sat and thought about this for a minute. He pushed his sandwich away.
"I don't know," he finally muttered. "I hear myself talking sometimes, and I sound just like my father. I don't want that."
"And I sound like Betty Draper, or Wilma Flintstone or...God, my mother."
They sat in silence some more. Emma fussed, and Will stood up for a minute to rock her till she calmed down. He sat back down again. He and Lizzy both picked up their sandwiches and started to eat again.
Finally, Lizzy asked, "How did this happen? Is biology really destiny? I guess with my maternity leave, I just started to do all this stuff without really thinking about it because I had time away from work. I wanted to protect you from the not sleeping and all of that. But then that set the pattern for how we did things after I went back to work. I guess we should have thought about that more before I went back, huh?"
"I don't know," replied Will, shaking his head. "Things were simpler when it was just the two of us. I'm not sure we could really have understood all of this before Emma was born."
Lizzy laughed a little sourly. "Man, Charlotte was right about that, as much as I hate to admit it. But the thing is, we just kind of followed the rules—like I got a leave and you didn't—and this is how things turned out, at least partly because of that. I guess you have to try pretty hard not to let that happen. Looking back on it, I think I just assumed that we'd be equally affected by having a baby because we would both be working, same as before. But we're not. The same rules affected us differently."
He pondered this for a while as they ate. "So, are you saying you want to challenge the rules? Like you want me to take a leave from my job now, and you'll keep working?"
"Well, no. With all the sleep and nursing and travel issues, and the volume and intensity of my work, I don't really think that's possible." She paused. "But just for the sake of argument, is that something you would want to do?"
He didn't answer directly. "I don't want to feel like you're quitting your job because I made you do it, because of something I did or didn't do. That's the last thing I would want. I know how important your work is to you."
"Well, frankly, you haven't been making things any easier for me, going back to work."
"Oh, shit. I'm sorry." He looked like he really meant it, and he didn't apologize easily as a rule. That made Lizzy feel a little better. "Why didn't you say something before?"
"Because you just tell me to hire help every time I try, that's why!" She realized that wasn't completely fair, though. Before he could retort, she went on, "I know, I know. I also think...I thought I was supposed to be able to handle it all myself, and then when I couldn't, I didn't know what I needed to make things better."
"What do you need?"
"I don't know, still, if there's anything that can make things work the way they are right now. Anyway, no, I don't feel like you're forcing me into a position where I have to quit. Like I said, the sleep, and the nursing and travel and the work itself, I think that's probably enough right there, no matter what you did or didn't do."
They sat in silence for a moment before Lizzy continued.
"I think for both of us, work has always been the most important thing. We've limited it in some ways so we could spend time together, but, you know, if there was a work thing, then we'd let that take precedence."
Will nodded. "Yeah, and I thought that was the best way for me to show you how much I respected you and your work, to help you be the best you could be. We talked about that before we got married. That's what I've been trying to do since Emma was born, too. I thought that was what you wanted, the career."
"Yes, you're right, I do. Thank you for understanding that. But I think...things just look a little different now that Emma is around. I'd like us to think about this, take some time to re-evaluate whether we're still going to let work be, sort of, this trump card that beats everything else, family, every time."
"I see what you're saying, but you know, I have to work these hours. It's part of the job. And in answer to your earlier question, no, I don't think I could take a leave. At my level you can't just walk away like that. Not to sound conceited or anything, but the company doesn't run without me." He sounded really frustrated.
"Yeah, I know. Although of course I did just take a leave, and I thought I was indispensable, too. Turns out I wasn't, right? Because the litigation group at HRI didn't fall apart when I was away. But I think this kind of thing is what we have to think about, at least. Does it have to be that way? I don't know. I don't have any answers."
They had finished their sandwiches, and Emma was working up to an expert-level fuss, so they stood up to go back to the apartment for her feeding and Lizzy's nap.
Will smiled a tiny smile and said, "Well, we've had the airing of grievances a little early this year. Shall we put up the Festivus pole after we get back home?"(1)
That evening, as they were both kneeling on the bathroom floor giving Emma a bath in her little tub inside the big tub, he said, "I don't want to sleep in the guest room anymore. It's not that I'm some horny teenager or anything like that, but..."
She nodded, reaching for the baby shampoo. "I know. Sleeping apart all the time is awful." Sleeping apart meant that they didn't have the ability to fall asleep in each other's arms, to end the day in togetherness. It wasn't that they weren't affectionate at other times—they were. They hugged, and kissed, and held hands, and snuggled with Emma on the sofa all the time. But it wasn't the same.
She continued, rubbing shampoo into Emma's hair, "I don't even remember the last time we made love. Do you?"
He shrugged and filled up a cup with water to rinse Emma's hair. "Um...I can't remember, either. After I came back from Copenhagen that time, maybe?" Whenever it had been, the fact was that it was weeks, or maybe even months, before Emma was born. And how could they now, when Lizzy fell asleep with Emma every night? They'd always made love at night or in the morning when they first woke up, and that wasn't going to happen again the way things were going.
"I really miss it," she said, taking the cup and rinsing Emma's hair. "I miss us. I miss you." It wasn't that he wasn't around, of course, because he was there at night and on weekends. But she missed the closeness that they'd had before Emma. Making love with Will was fun, and it felt great, and sometimes when she looked at him she just couldn't wait to hit that. Or at least she'd felt that way a lot before Emma. But Lizzy also knew that what was even more important for them as partners was where they got to after they had made love. It was a place of deep connection, all their barriers down, where they could really see each other, where they could talk about things and feelings that the cares of daily life obscured or drowned out. It had always been like that with them, from the beginning. They needed to get there again.
"I miss you, too," he said, as he lifted Emma out of the little tub and put her into the towel in Lizzy's waiting arms. "A lot."
That evening, Lizzy nursed Emma to sleep on the big bed, and managed to stay awake afterwards. She went into the entertainment room where Will was watching SportsCenter and sat down beside him on the sofa. He put his arm around her shoulders and she pressed closer and slipped her arms around him, too. She whispered in his ear, "Do you want to go give it a try?"
He immediately turned off the TV and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. He looked over at her. "Really? Yeah."
He stood up and lifted her up in his arms, cradling her, which of course wasn't as easy as it once was.
She laughed quietly. "What are you waiting for, then? Shhh, don't wake Emma."
By their pre-Emma standards, it wasn't a great success. They fumbled around, and they were both nervous that Emma would wake up and interrupt them. He came too fast, while Lizzy required some extra coaxing and half a bottle of lube. Various of her previously trusty erogenous zones seemed either to have taken a short hike or disappeared altogether. Things had evidently not magically rebounded right back into place following Emma's not-so-graceful exit.
But none of it really mattered. When Lizzy had slid into bed, naked, next to him, and felt his familiar, beloved body next to hers, she had sighed and felt like she had finally come home after a long, long absence. She hadn't cared that her belly still stuck out and had angry red tiger stripes on it, or that her huge boobs kept getting in the way. Will hadn't seemed to mind any of that, either. To the contrary, he had appeared to appreciate that her assets had been accumulating a lot of interest in some fantastically profitable growth fund all those past weeks.
Indeed he expressed rather excessive admiration for all of her new topography, as did she for his more familiar terrain. They had to navigate some new streams, explore some new routes, draw up some new maps, but eventually, together, they got to their promised land. The journey's greatest joy was in having the right traveling companion.
Afterwards, Lizzy realized she hadn't felt so calm, nor had her mind felt so quiet, in weeks. The cacophony of deadlines and crying babies and trying so hard not to disappoint anyone was finally, finally gone. All that remained was this golden silence, the peaceful connection that she knew could heal many hurts, make forgiveness easier, and get them through difficult times. A reservoir of goodwill at the end of a long, winding journey.
"God, I love you," she said as she held him fast and basked in his gaze.
"I love you, too. More than I know how to say." He softly kissed her closed eyes, the tip of her nose, her lips.
They clung to each other, replenishing what had been lost. They fell asleep, entangled, as close as they could be. It was heaven.
Ten minutes later, Emma started crying and Lizzy got up and pulled on her pajamas to go feed her. But she felt all right about it. One problem down, one million more to go.
Will followed her into the bedroom and joined them in the big bed that night, and every night after. Emma wiggled and kicked and snorted and cried all night long, but they were happier anyway. In the morning they shoved the bed over against the wall, the gap between bed and wall carefully blocked. They put Emma's little "safe sleeper" co-sleeping mattress thingy on the bed next to the wall. Now Lizzy and Will could fall asleep in each other's arms again. The length of his morning showers and the frequency of his squash games decreased noticeably after that.
Sunday morning they took a walk in the park after brunch. As they walked along, he said, "I feel like you want and need new things from me, but I don't know what they are. I feel like no matter what I try to do, I haven't done it enough, and it isn't good enough."
Lizzy sighed. "I don't know what I want from you, either. But I don't know what I want from me, or what you want from me, either. I think that's what we need to talk about. But what do you mean about what you do not being good enough?" she asked.
Hands in his jacket pockets, he looked off at the trees. "I mean, I try to help take care of Emma when I can, but you're always correcting me and telling me I haven't done it right."
She tugged on his arm. "Now, right there in what you said is one basic problem: you're helping me take care of Emma, you're not taking care of her yourself. I'm the one doing it, or Elena, and you're the helper. We have a child, together! It's not just me, my job, to take care of her, and you show up to lend a hand when it's convenient!" She was starting to get pretty exercised, but she knew he didn't respond well to that. And who would, really? So she took a deep breath and looped her arm through his. "But, OK, tell me more about this other thing. The not good enough thing."
"OK. Just for example, at the restaurant the other night, you told me that I wasn't burping Emma the right way, and you took her away from me." He sounded hurt. She had had no idea.
"I did?" She thought about it. "Huh, I guess I did. But I spend so much more time with her, sometimes I know what she wants or needs more than you do. What should I do?"
He looked down at her. "If you want me to do more, then you need to let me do it. Maybe I'll screw it up, but maybe I won't. I'll figure it out in the end. Plus, it's not the end of the world if she cries."
"No, I know it's not. But sometimes it feels like it. It tears me up when Emma cries. I know that's not rational, but it does."
"Do you really think I'm going to break her or something?" Will asked incredulously.
"No, I'm pretty sure you won't. But doesn't it get you right here"—she pointed at her chest—"when she cries?"
"No. Not in the same way. Maybe it's a mommy thing. You know, a special bond."
"Don't you want to have a special bond with her?"
"I don't think I can, not in the same way. No boobs."
Lizzy stopped, aghast, and turned to look at him. "Do you really believe that? That it's all about biology, and there's nothing you can do about it?"
He shrugged, jiggling Emma up and down.
"Oh, come on. You can at least try. If you don't spend more time with her, of course you'll never have that bond. But if you do, you might. You could be missing out on something really good. I can't believe you're not even interested in trying."
"I am. But you know what my job is like."
Lizzy sighed in exasperation. She knew it was time to change the subject when he got like this.
They walked in silence for a while. Finally, she asked, "OK, what else have I been on your case about, besides the burping?"
"Diaper changing. I know how to do that. I used to change Georgie. And laundry. Don't make fun of me because I don't know how to do stuff I never did before."
"Wait, so now you're anxious to jump up and do all these things?" It was Lizzy's turn to be incredulous.
"No, I wouldn't say that. But if you want me to do stuff, don't criticize me for doing it wrong. Why would I even want to try if you're going to do that?"
"Huh," said Lizzy. She knew that she was hardly the expert on all this household stuff, but if he thought she'd been on his back about this, then she must have been. What was more important to her, anyway, having something done just the way she liked it, or not having to do it at all? If she put it that way, the answer seemed obvious.
"OK," she said. "I'll dial it down. I do want you to do what you can without feeling criticized. Please nudge me if I do it again. Believe me, I don't want to be the person who is charge of everything domestic. That is definitely not my forte."
He nodded his agreement. "OK, I will."
They turned up a hill and stopped at the top to enjoy the prospect.
"Can you do something for me, too?" she asked.
"I'll try. What is it?" he said.
"Please don't assume that I'm some kind of omniscient domestic goddess who knows where everything is. Because I'm not and I don't."
"OK. I guess that means you don't want me to ask you where things are all the time." She nodded. "So what should I do if I don't know where something is?"
"Um, I don't know, look for it?" That hadn't come out sounding very nice, she realized. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. What if you say, uh, 'You don't happen to know where the blah-blah-blah is, do you?'"
"All right. I'll give it a try."
Later, after Lizzy's afternoon nap and Will and Emma's second Christmas shopping spree, they sat down at the table in the breakfast nook to eat some chicken soup and heavy brown bread that Will had brought home for dinner from the organic market. When Lizzy insisted, Emma grudgingly consented to lie in her car seat instead of sitting on Lizzy's lap and knocking over everyone's hot soup.
Suddenly, Will said, "I want to be a good father. But I'm not sure what a good father is. I'm pretty sure it's not just someone who brings home the bacon."
Lizzy looked him in the eye and said, "Sweetheart, you're already a good father. A great father. You love her, you—"
He shook his head and broke in, "But I feel like you want something more than that from me."
Lizzy jumped back in, waving her hand. "Please don't keep saying that. Talking about what I want from you is not going to get us to a productive place. Like I said before, I have no idea how to work all of this out. I just want us to think about things instead of defaulting to a status quo that doesn't make us happy." She took a piece of bread and put some butter on it. "I guess I need to ask, then, does the status quo make you happy?"
"I don't know. One thing I am sure of, though, is that I don't want to be the kind of father my dad was. Sometimes I saw him to say goodnight, but mostly he was a special-occasion kind of dad. Busy on weekends with business stuff, and travel, and all that. I can see myself slipping into that kind of thing, like you said. But I don't know how to do better given the demands of my job."
"Hmm." She thought about this as she picked Emma's butterfly chew toy up off the floor, brushed it off, and gave it back to her. "Well, please just consider this for a second. As CEO, do you have to keep working like this? I mean, you know you could hand day-to-day operations over to Carmen"—his executive VP—"any time and everything would be fine. You don't actually have to work if you don't want to."
And that was, in fact, the elephant in the room: neither of them actually had to work, at least not for the money.
Maybe she'd actually just come out with it. "If we wanted to, we could just buy an island in the Caribbean and sit around on chaises longues sipping fruity drinks out of coconuts for the rest of our lives." There.
"No...I don't really like rum that much," he said wryly. "But seriously, no, I don't think I could live like that. When I see how screwed up my cousins are, and what it's done to them to have nothing to do except play around, and Georgie, too, I just... No. I like working. It gives my life structure, and meaning, and especially now with what we're doing at WPD, it makes me feel useful and like I'm doing something to make the world a better place. Building a legacy, sort of."
"Yeah, that's how I feel about my work, as well. But, you know, Emma is our legacy, too. And look, our little legacy has her pooping face on."
He laughed. "Yup. I'll get this one." He picked Emma up and carried her into the formerly soothing white living room, now a tumult of brightly-colored baby gear fighting it out with the lovely objets d'art that the interior decorator had carefully selected long ago. The green changing station from Emma's all-but-abandoned bedroom loomed over everything else from the corner.
As he headed out of the breakfast nook, Lizzy could see that Will wasn't holding Emma's head quite right, and that he'd left behind the butterfly toy, which Emma liked to play with when she was having a change. Lizzy opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped herself just in time before any corrections or suggestions could slip out. The journey of a thousand miles began with a single step.
The longer they talked, the more the rightness of resigning began to settle on Lizzy. And it was largely a feeling, or at least it wasn't all rational thought. There were practical reasons, yes, why it would be difficult to continue. And she was also well aware that if circumstances had been different, if money had been an issue, she would definitely have kept going to work and trying to make a go of it. But money wasn't an issue. She was miserable, exhausted, feeling like a failure, and it was what she and Emma needed for her to do. Still, it went against just about everything she'd built her life on to this point, and it scared her deep in her bones.
Sunday evening, after Emma fell asleep a little earlier than usual, Lizzy and Will both needed a break from their intense conversation. So she called her aunt Maddie from the living room while he fooled around on his computer in his study. She needed some advice from someone who had been in the trenches. She told Maddie what was going on and asked for her take on things.
"Oh, you poor thing," Maddie commiserated after hearing her story. "Isn't anyone taking care of you? Who's watching out for Lizzy?"
Lizzy suddenly felt tears coming on. "Nobody, I guess. I'm trying so hard, but I just can't do it all on my own."
"Of course you can't. Nobody can. Do you need me to come bail you out?"
"No, no. I'll be all right. I know how busy you are. Everyone is busy. My whole, you know, village is stretched to the limit all the time."
"And it sure doesn't help that you're not getting any support from your family. Or Will's, right? In all our dysfunctional splendor." Maddie had never come this close to directly criticizing either her husband's family or Will's before.
"No. But there's not much I can do about it."
"Unfortunately, no. Does Will not see what's going on, how hard a time you're having?"
"Maybe he's starting to, finally. You know, he sees everything from an economic point of view. Hire more help, and the problem is solved. I don't know. He's been making noises about wanting to be a better father, but I don't think he has figured out what that means to him. He doesn't seem to grasp that there's this whole other world of emotions and feelings involved in it."
"What the hell is wrong with these smart men? Don't they ever read any psychology?" Maddie very uncharacteristically began to mutter obscenities under her breath.
Lizzy chuckled a watery little chuckle. "What, you've heard this before? And no, Will only reads The Economist and The Wall Street Journal."
"Yes, of course, I hear it a lot in my family therapy practice. I really think we're at this tough place for men in our culture right now. Women have been in this spot forever, torn between family and work, and men, some men, anyway, are just starting to feel it, too, and they don't know how to deal with it. Well, never mind. You don't need a lecture about this right now."
"No, it's OK. It's only, I have this tough decision to make, and I—" she broke off. She wasn't sure what came next.
"Lizzy, what do you really need to feel better?"
"I need sleep. I need to spend time with Emma. She's freaking out. I'm freaking out. I need to work less, but I can't do that in my current job. So I think that means I need to quit my job."
"That sounds about right to me. Look, you've devoted your adult life up to now to trying to make the world a better place for other people. It's OK to take care of yourself and to make things better for yourself, too. Do what you need to do."
"And damn the consequences?" Lizzy felt a little panicked about this part.
"What are the consequences if you don't do it? You're going to fall apart, and there are too many people depending on you for you to let that happen. Most especially Emma."
Lizzy sighed. "OK, I see your point."
"And what about Will? What are you going to do there?" Maddie would never tell her directly what to do. Damn therapists.
"Well...I guess I have to figure out what I need, tell him what that is, and hope he can come through."
"All right. How will you present it? What words will you use?"
"Hmm. Will takes things best when they're, uh, when they sound rational, I guess. Dispassionate. And he takes some time to process things, and think about how he might change. So I think I need to be really matter-of-fact, and not expect immediate results, even though I might want them. And no yelling!" Five years of marriage had taught her that much. He just dug his heels in when she yelled.
"Good. See, you know all this."
"Ha. It's like pulling teeth, I know. You are just that good, Maddie. You're wonderful."
"The feeling is mutual. Look, I have to hit the hay. You OK now?"
"Yeah, much better. Thank you. I love you. Love to Uncle Ed and the girls, too."
"Love you, too. Kiss Emma and Will for me."
On the way in to see Will in the entertainment room, Lizzy caught sight of herself in a decorative mirror in the hallway. Her face was drawn in exhaustion and she had huge dark circles under her eyes. She couldn't see even a spark of the energy that had driven her so far so fast all her life. She couldn't go on like this, she knew. She moved away from the mirror as fast as she could.
By Monday, Christmas Eve, Lizzy had decided that she would definitely quit her job, although she still had fears and reservations about what the long-term consequences were going to be for her career. She said as much that evening to Will as they were walking around at Rockefeller Center so that Emma could enjoy the lights around the skating rink and the giant Christmas tree. Emma was in the baby carrier on Will's chest, and Lizzy was pushing around the stroller, empty except for the giant baby car seat perched precariously in it. The sidewalks were crowded, so it wasn't easy to navigate with all this stuff.
"Are you sure?" he asked again, as they stopped to look down at the skaters going around and around on the ice.
"Yeah, I think so. I have to admit I'm very worried, though. How will I get through a month more of working, even part time? What will a gap on my résumé say to a prospective employer? Am I going to get stuck on a mommy track? Is staying at home going to drive me crazy?"
"You still think it's what you want, though?"
"Yes. I feel like it's the best thing for me to do given the options I have."
"OK," Will nodded his agreement. "Then that's what we'll do. But this raises a question, and I really don't know the answer to it."
"Go ahead," she prompted when he didn't continue.
"Well, it seems to me that a lot of what we've been talking about the last few days is how to be more equal as parents. Isn't that right?"
"Yeah, in a nutshell."
"So, how are we going to do that if you're at home taking care of Emma, and I'm at the office all day? I don't see how that works out, exactly."
"I don't know, either. I think we'll have to feel our way through that."
"Lizzy, no," he protested, "That's just kicking the can further down the road again, and it's how we ended up right here in the first place."
She heaved a heavy sigh. "You're right, you're right. But I just don't know the answer. I don't know how we can talk about equality if we end up having a really extreme division of labor between us."
They turned away from the skating rink and walked along in silence for a few moments until they got to a vantage point where Emma could look down at the big gold statue of Prometheus bringing fire to humanity. She kicked and gurgled.
Lizzy went on, "Well, I guess one thing we can do is agree that the work we do at home is work, too, and it's something our family values."
"OK," he nodded. "What follows from that? Do you want to get paid for doing it?"
"Oh, come on. I'm serious."
"I'm being serious, too. If it's work, you should get paid, right?" Apparently Will's inner economics major was cutting loose, Lizzy thought.
"So you're going to pay me to do your domestic work, like a maid? No, thanks. What I want is, when you come home from work and I hand you Emma, you don't refuse to take her and say, 'I've been working all day, I need a break.' Because I'll have been working all day, too, and I'll need a break as well."
"All right. I'll do my best. But if you're not getting paid, what about the question of, um, financial independence? Before we got married that was really important to you."
"Yeah, it was. Is. That's a scary thing. And it does really freak me out to think about being totally financially dependent on you. It feels like we're turning the clock back 50 years, like The Feminine Mystique never happened."
"OK, I see your point. But I don't...I mean, some of those concerns may not apply in our situation. Let's talk about what freaks you out specifically, in our specific situation."
They turned and faced the giant Christmas tree, all lit up with white lights. Emma seemed interested, and she looked at the lights with wide eyes for some time.
"Because...if something happens to you, or if you run off with your secretary—"
He chuckled, "Don't worry, I'm not going to run off with Ahmed, or anybody else."
"I don't know, he's pretty cute with those brooding dark eyes—"
"Oh, so you're the one who's going to run off with him, huh?" Will teased her. Ahmed wasn't running off with anyone. He and his husband Phil were the image of mutual devotion.
"Not likely. The point is that if you're out of the picture, for whatever reason, and my career is in freefall because I stopped working, where does that leave me financially?"
"According to the terms of our prenup and our will, it leaves you set for life. You know that." That was true. If he died, she inherited everything, and if they divorced, she still got more money than she could quite get her head around, especially now that Emma was alive. When they had been negotiating the prenup, she had argued it was too generous, but he had insisted.
"Yeah, you're right. I just worry, I guess. Anyway, my salary is so insignificant compared to your income that I'm basically living off you already. On my own I'd never have been able to afford 90% of the things we do together."
"I wish you'd stop looking at it that way. We're married! It's yours now, too."
"I know, I know. Well, I guess I'm OK with the financial thing, then. I still think there's more to this, symbolically, though. It's not just a financial question. Why is it me, the woman, who's giving up her career, and not you, the man? I know I said before that this time I'd just take one for the team, you know, and not sleep or whatever, so that you could go to work. But when are you going to take one for the team? Are we going to alternate somehow? Or what?"
He looked taken aback. "You mean like, I'll take the hit on baby number two? Or we'll alternate every other week or month or something?" Impossible, his expression seemed to say.
"Well, then, why does it always have to be me? That is deeply, deeply unequal." She was very careful to say this in a calm, rational voice.
"Umm..."
"If you say it's because I'm the girl, the woman, I'm going to...I don't know what, but something awful. And don't say it's because I earn less, or because I have less responsibility, or whatever. Then we'd have to talk about why all that is."
"And you're saying...?"
"All roads lead to gender. And maybe class. That's what I'm saying. You know it's true."
"Can't we just look at this objectively, as just the two of us, without bringing in all this, uh, structural stuff?" Apparently he didn't want to say the "F" word, feminism. God forbid.
"No, we can't. Because it's all there, all the time. Look at it this way. What job could I possibly have that would be so important that you'd quit yours to raise our kid? President? Anything less than that, and there's always going to be some reason it's better for you to keep working, not me. Your job will always be more important, less flexible, earn more money...Oh, wait, you earn way more than the president, so never mind that!"
Naturally, this pissed him off. He put his hands on his hips, which made Emma squeal with delight and kick her legs. "So, what exactly do you want me to do?"
"I want you to think about it. Examine it. Decide whether you're ever, ever going to take one for the team. OK, enough with the sports metaphors. Whether you are ever going to put your career second, behind the good of our family. And, whether you can ever put my career before yours."
"Lizzy, the company is my patrimony. I don't think you understand that."
That was a good one, thought Lizzy, laughing ironically to herself. So true. "That's an interesting choice of words. Puts a whole new spin on things."
"What do you mean?" he asked crossly.
"It's a nice metaphor for this thing passed down from father to son. Patriarchy. Duty and responsibility and honor-thy-father, all diametrically opposed to any insignificant airy-fairy stuff like love and feelings, of course."
"Hmm, well, if you want to put it that way—" He was just working up a good head of steam when he stopped, and said no more. He turned away.
Lizzy took a step toward him. "Don't go all grave and silent on me again."
Emma squawked to let him know she wanted to turn back to see the lights. To soothe her, he did turn back, which left him facing Lizzy again, as much as he apparently didn't want to.
Eyes downcast, he said "I just don't see why you have to make such a big deal about this and turn it into a big theoretical thing."
"Because it matters to me, that's why. And I hope it matters to you, too. You have a daughter now, and if you can't or won't understand this gender stuff for my sake, at least try to do it for her. The choices we make now create the world she's going to grow up in."
He thought about this for a moment. "All right. I'll think about your question, the one about if there's any circumstance where I might quit my job. I don't know the answer. I don't know who I'd be without it."
"What, and I don't feel that way?"
"OK, OK, point taken."
They stood again in silence for some time. Emma fussed again, so they walked back over to the side of the skating rink to watch the ice skaters go round and round.
Finally, Lizzy said, "Anyway, changing gears here, my other big concern is Elena."
Will asked, perplexed, "What about her? Aren't you happy with her so far? I thought you were."
"Yeah, I am. She's great. But what's up with you two? Did you have some kind of an argument the other night?"
"Well...let's just say she was not very pleased with me when I walked in the door. I didn't think that was very professional," he said with a little sniff.
"Will, we made her miss a special dinner with her family."
"Oh." Now he sounded embarrassed.
"We can't just ask her to stay late like that, with no warning. She's hourly, not like your staff at work, and part of the reason she wanted the job was that it ended at 6. We have to have some kind of backup system to fill in the gap between 6 and whenever we get home. Especially since I'm going to have to travel again, even when I'm working part-time in January. Anyway, the real issue is, when I stop working altogether, aren't we going to have to let Elena go?"
They debated this for some time. Lizzy's reasoning was that if she were going to be at home full time, what did she need a nanny for? She wanted to be all in. Will disagreed. If they'd learned anything from the previous weeks, he said, it was that she needed sleep and breaks, and having Elena's help would let her do that.
"I don't need a nanny if I'm going to be staying home! Taking care of Emma is going to be my job. I don't want to be some kind of lady of leisure like those women at the club. I just can't do that. I need something to do, and, as I keep telling you, I think there are some things that people have to do for themselves."
"Please, give it a rest with that! Why are you so hung up on this idea that it's not OK to pay people to help you?"
"Because there have to be limits! Look, I understand how you were raised, or at least I think I do. But you have to make a little space here for my...middle-class values, or something, OK? Doing things for yourself. It's what you do. I feel like it's part of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I mean, obviously you work very hard, but there's not a lot of bootstrapping going on, right?"
"OK, yes, but you're already, umm, bootstrapped now, so what's the point? I don't get it."
"The point is that there is still something of value in that to me, OK? But anyway, that's kind of a minor part of it, I think. The other thing is that I want to do better than Mom."
"Well," said Will, dismissively. He still wouldn't criticize Lillian directly, but his "well" was laden with meaning—"of course," and "obviously," and "gee, I sure hope so."
"I know, duh. I think that both Jane and I are trying to make up for that in one way or another. Mom's always been like that. She's all about the house, and her art and stuff. When Jane and I and Mary were little, she was a little more, I don't know, present, but things got bad after Lydia was born."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I think she was never really into young kids, so maybe she was relieved when we got a little older. And then Lydia came along kind of unexpectedly when I was about ten. I think it was too much for her. She seemed to lose interest completely in the whole parenting thing. Maybe it was post-partum depression or something. But anyway, she kind of turned inward after that, and into this, well, huge narcissist, like she is now. We were on our own in so many ways. Honestly, I think Jane kind of overcompensates by trying to be the perfect mother. I don't want to be like that, but I want to be there for my kid. Being there, physically and emotionally—that's really important to me. Do you see that?"
"Yeah, OK. I think that's a pretty rational response to her behavior."
Annoyed, Lizzy snapped, "It's more than 'rational,' it's important psychologically. It's what kids need to grow up healthy and whole. It's called love."
Will gave her a funny look. "Love can be expressed in a lot of different ways. I mean, I knew that my mother loved me, even though I didn't spend a lot of time with her, and even though she didn't say it in so many words."
Lizzy sighed, exasperated. "But you like to hear me say it now, don't you? And you tell me and Emma you love us all the time. You seem to see some value in that."
"Yeah, sure. But there are cultures where you never say 'I love you,' and everyone seems to be fine."
"Oh, come on! Look, here's my point. One of mom's things, or maybe something that happened because she didn't want to do it all herself, was how important it was for us to learn how to take care of ourselves. If you're not taking care of yourself, you're not pulling your weight in the household. It's part of working hard and being a good person."
"I'm confused, if you think that's so important. There's a lot of housework you farm out already. And it sure doesn't look like your dad does anything to pull his weight in the household."
That got her dander up. "First of all, we farm it out. Housework is not my thing."
"OK, all right." He backed off from that third rail fast.
She calmed down and continued, "But, otherwise, you're right. I think...like I said, it's a question of values. I have rejected a lot of what my mom taught me, and I know I don't do most of the stuff that she made us learn to do: cook, clean, garden. And you're right about my dad. So, I guess that all of this is actually more about being a good woman than about being a good person. I'm really bad at doing all that womanly stuff and honestly that makes me feel, um, embarrassed, and deficient sometimes."
"But why? You do all this other great stuff! You're totally amazing."
"Well, I just...I sort of feel like maybe I can let the housework stuff go, even if it makes me feel kind of inadequate, but if I completely give my child over to someone else to take care of, I am a complete failure as a woman and a mother." She paused. "There you have it. Simple as that."
All business, he said, "Wow, you see, I just wouldn't look at it that way. To me, there's, you know, just so much work to be done, and you distribute it to the different members of the team to get it done. There's no emotional attachment involved."
"I know. And the less housework or caregiving you do, the more manly you are. It's not fair. But don't you see, taking care of the baby is all about emotional attachment? That's what we're supposed to be doing, creating emotional attachments with her. Nobody loves her more than we do, nobody. That's why taking care of her is not just another chore. Maybe this isn't rational, but it's how I feel."
He looked perplexed again. "OK. I didn't understand that before. I'm not sure I know what to do with that. What does that mean we should do, especially with Elena?"
"I don't know. But the other thing is that Elena is great, and I really don't want to let her go. If I do go back to work eventually, I hope she'll still work for us. It would be really great for Emma to have one caregiver all along. That's what the studies say is best."
Will thought about this for a bit. "All right. Then, how about this: we'll ask her to stay on, but you can ask her to work on a limited basis, to come over when you need her."
Lizzy protested, "But we hired her on a year-long contract, and we have to pay her for three months full-time no matter what if we break the contract before then."
"Right. We'll pay her to work full time, but she'll come in when you need her."
"That's ridiculous! What a waste of money."
Will threw his hands up in the air. "Lizzy, we have enough. It won't even make a dent. We could pay her to do nothing for the whole year, just basically be on reserve until you want her help, and that would still be a good use of our money. You have to quit fighting this. We have a lot of money, and we can use it however makes most sense for us."
She knew that. The money gave them the freedom to do what they wanted, and she had certainly enjoyed spending some of it, in moderation, on travel and eating out and that kind of thing. But it also made her feel ashamed sometimes, and definitely undeserving, when she saw how little other people had, especially people who were working really hard for it. She hated that it put barriers between her and Charlotte, and between her and her parents. She tried to give it away whenever she could.
She also knew that she should have gotten over this a long, long time ago. She had been able to push it aside and not think about it when it had just been the two of them, working like more or less normal people. But she really had to face up to it now. The money had been part of her life since she had decided to be with Will, since she had abandoned her old way of life to move in with him. It was about time she accepted the money and really started to think through what they could do with it, rather than trying to pretend it wasn't there. Talk about a First World problem! Oh, no! I have too much money! God.
So she took a deep breath and said, "OK. I see what you're saying. This makes me uncomfortable. The, um, opulence of our life still makes me uncomfortable. I have to admit that. It's not how I was brought up, and I hope you'll appreciate that. But I can see how this will solve some problems for us. I'll talk to Elena about it and see if we can work something out."
She paused and then went on, "Actually, we should talk with Elena about it. We have to do this together. You need to fix your relationship with her, and we all need to be on the same page about this if she's going to be such an important part of Team Emma."
"All right. I'll try."
"I'm cold, and I bet Emma is, too. Shall we head back?" He agreed, and they threaded their way through the crowd toward Fifth Avenue to find a cab home. Lizzy only gave four or five people flat tires by accidentally rolling the stroller up the heels of their shoes.
Tuesday was Christmas. Lizzy and Will were exhausted from the intense talking of the previous three days, but as planned they headed out in the late morning to Westchester to see Jane and Charlie. They picked up Lydia and Susanna from their place in Brooklyn on the way. They were in the hybrid SUV because it was their only vehicle big enough to hold all the presents, plus all the baby gear that even a one-day trip apparently required. Will had wanted to buy the Porsche Cayenne hybrid (21 mpg—what the hell kind of hybrid was that?) and she'd wanted the Toyota Prius V (40 mpg—but so downmarket!), so they'd compromised on a Lexus (about 30 mpg).
Will had really gone overboard with Christmas this year, in Lizzy's opinion. Besides all the frilly dresses he'd bought for Emma, he had also purchased loads of toys and books for her, in anticipation of watching her eyes light up with joy on this, her very first Christmas! He just couldn't wait! He'd even bought a new iPhone with the best possible camera so he could document it all. Lizzy was more sanguine about it. Emma was still barely focusing her eyes, so Lizzy doubted she'd get too excited about anything, plus it wasn't like she would remember any of this anyway.
Lizzy had argued that they should only have presents for the kids that year, because Lydia and Susanna had so much less money than the other families. She was afraid that Lydia and Susanna might feel obliged to buy gifts they couldn't afford, and that it would all be awkward and uncomfortable. But Will wouldn't hear of it. That would be so tacky, he had said. Lizzy had told him she didn't have time to shop for so many people, so he'd said he'd take care of it.
Of course what that meant in the end was that Will had had Ahmed hire a personal shopper. Will asked her to buy some nice hand-made wooden toys for Aiden and Tyler, and also whatever tasteful, expensive things she thought were appropriate for the other grownups based on a short questionnaire he had filled out. Lizzy, on the other hand, had only managed one item of shopping. She had sneaked off to her computer on Saturday to buy Will some gold cufflinks. She had taken a look at what they had on Amazon, quickly realized that wouldn't do, and ended up buying something from Tiffany's. They'd arrived via Fed Ex on Monday. The whole thing took 11 minutes, and that was the sum total of the Christmas cheer and energy that she could summon this year.
On the ride to Westchester, Lydia sat in front and made Will laugh with her comments about the kamikaze drivers on the parkway. She also talked about the big project she'd been working on, the one that took up all her time and had kept her from offering Lizzy much help. She felt bad about it, she said, but what could she do? She was a freelancer, and she had to take what work she could get when she could get it so she could pay the rent. Lizzy and Susanna, who loved babies, sat in the back and tried to keep Emma, resplendent in her red velvet dress with big black bows, from screaming quite so loudly in her much-despised car seat.
Susanna was a computer programmer in her late twenties. She and Lydia had met at a mutual friend's art opening, and they'd dived right into something serious immediately. Lydia, who was now 24, was definitely the wild one in their relationship, but she had toned things down considerably since her days in art school. She thrived on sitting back and making detached, acerbic, spot-on observations about the things and people around her, while Susanna laughed till she cried at the comments and made generous allowances for people's shortcomings and foibles. Lizzy thought their shtick was interesting to watch, and also was amused at how well Will's dry sense of humor complemented Lydia's more out-there sensibility. She never would have predicted that the two of them would hit it off back when they'd first met. You never could tell with in-laws.
By the time they got to Jane and Charlie's, Lizzy's ears were ringing from Emma's howls, so it was a relief to stumble out of the car and toward the house. As usual, the outside looked like it had been hosed down with Christmas lights. The inside, on the other hand, looked as if someone had dumped a truckload of gilded, distressed-wood, antique Country French Christmas decorations all over it and then sprinkled them all with fairy dust and snow. Jane and Charlie were very, very big fans of Christmas. Naturally it was all perfect in every way.
Aiden and Tyler, decked out in precious little suits, had just waked up from their naps when the visitors arrived, shouts of 'hello' and 'Merry Christmas' echoing loudly in the huge entryway. Aiden hid behind Jane's leg sucking his thumb and stared, apparently afraid of Lydia's spiky black hair with magenta tips. 100% organic pacifier in his mouth, Tyler staggered over to Will and held up his arms to be lifted up and tossed in the air. This was their special game.
Lizzy thumped the car seat down and unbuckled Emma as fast as she could to stop the yelling. When she reached under Emma to take her out, she discovered that, once again, Emma's cloth diaper had leaked. The red velvet dress was ruined. The car seat cover was soaked. "Shit!"
"Lizzy!" Jane scolded. "Not in front of the kids!"
"Sorry, sorry," Lizzy said, clapping her hands over Emma's ears too late. "I'm going to need to throw the cover and her dress in the washer, OK?"
"Oh, of course, here, let me," said Jane, bustling over to take care of things while Lizzy headed for the nursery to wrestle Emma out of her sopping finery. Emma spent the rest of the day in a white romper with green ducks on it.
When she came back into the living room with Emma over her shoulder, Lizzy saw Aiden eyeing a sideboard that had a big display of luscious, ripe-looking grapes and apples and pears in a large wooden bowl surrounded by cotton snow, and big antique wooden nativity scenes on either side. Lizzy knew that the fruit was made out of wood, too, because it had bits of gold leaf and paint on it, but she wasn't sure Aiden did. She wondered what kept him from eating the fruit or yanking the table runners off or knocking down the Christmas tree in this immaculate, perfectly ordered house. An electric fence of some kind? As soon as he saw her looking at him, he turned away and went to play with his blocks in the corner.
Jane had prepared a delicious mid-day meal for them. It was a beautiful roast leg of organic, humanely raised lamb—"lightly killed," quipped Lydia—with rosemary and new potatoes. It was all very healthful, of course, because Jane had used organic fat-free yogurt instead of sour cream, and sun this and soy that instead of butter, and it was completely sodium-free because the delightful herbs from her kitchen herb garden gave it all the flavor it needed. Somehow everything tasted fantastic, rather than like the cardboard it should have resembled.
"This is incredible, Jane," said Lizzy as she sampled the wonderfully caramelized roasted root vegetables. "This wasn't one of mom's recipes, was it?"
"No, no. I took a class. You know, I still use some of her techniques, but we just can't eat the way she and dad do."
Lydia turned to Susanna and said, "Butter. Cream. Heart disease."
"Techniques? What techniques?" asked Lizzy. "Mostly I just remember browning things in a stick or two of butter."
Jane said, "Oh, yeah, there was a lot more to it than that. She's a really serious cook, you know."
Cutting up her lamb, Lizzy said, "Yeah. I guess that's a lot of lost hours I spent not paying attention while she was trying to teach me something. And all the hours trying to teach me to clean, too."
Lydia laughed. "She'd given up on all of that by the time I came along. How do you think I had time to get into so much trouble? Compared to you two, I had it easy."
Susanna smiled and said, "Aha, I guess that's why you look at me so helplessly when I hand you the vacuum cleaner."
Charlie laughed. "Our mom never even bothered to try with me. She was just happy when I didn't track too much mud in the house. That's what it's like with boys, right, Will?"
Will chuckled what Lizzy recognized as his fake, uncomfortable chuckle. "Ha ha, right."
Still laughing, Charlie barreled onwards, oblivious. "I know for a fact from our days in Dunster House that you can't cook to save your life. I don't think that in the entire time I've known you I've ever seen you do anything that could possibly be construed as being housework. Just think of all the extra time that freed up for you!"
Will shot him a dirty look.
Lydia chimed in, "Right! Just imagine how much further in life Lizzy could have gotten if she hadn't had to spend all those hours learning to cook and clean! God, she'd be freaking president by now! She'd have taken over the world!"
Lizzy knew that Lydia was just joking around, but it struck her that what she'd said was true. Lizzy had spent hours of her childhood doing household chores, and Will had gotten to spend those same hours fooling around, going sailing, playing squash, learning how to rule the world. Charlie, too. Man.
A little defensively, but trying to hide it, Will said, "I do stuff. I take care of Emma."
"Yes, he does. He's the diaper-changing champ," Lizzy confirmed, squeezing his hand.
Charlie laughed. "I don't know how to do any of that stuff. I just leave it all to Jane. I don't know what I'd do without her." He smiled at her affectionately.
"Well, a lot more cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids, apparently," said Lydia acerbically, taking a sip of her sparkling water. They were all drinking sparkling water in deference to Lydia's sobriety.
"You should talk, Lydia, the Takeout Queen," smiled Susanna. "Every couple has their way of working these things out. We all find a way to manage."
Lizzy supposed that was true. But she was pretty sure she wouldn't be happy for very long with how Jane and Charlie had divided things up. Still, that was their choice, and they seemed happy enough with it.
Conversation turned to Charlie's family. He told them that Caroline was spending the holiday at home with her husband and child, and Louisa and Gil had decided to head off someplace warm to shake off the winter blues.
Jane said, "Also, Caroline is recovering from some minor surgery she recently had, and she's not ready for company."
"Really? I hope she's OK. It wasn't anything serious was it?" asked Susanna, who had never met Caroline.
Jane cleared her throat before replying, "Well, as I understand it, one of her cheek implants, um, became displaced, and she had to have it, uh, re-anchored? Isn't that what she said, Charlie? I think it caused some, uh, discoloration."
"Right," agreed Charlie happily, "and I think she decided to take advantage of the situation by having a, uh, what do you call it, an eye tuck? An eye bob? at the same time."
Lydia snickered and Lizzy heard her whisper to Susanna, "Caroline is the horror that is heterosexuality."
Lizzy hoped that Charlie, down at the other end of the long table, hadn't overheard, but privately she really had to agree with Lydia.
At the end of the meal, Lizzy and Susanna followed Jane into the kitchen and helped her wash up while Will took Emma and Charlie did something manly with the boys. When Susanna left the room to go get some more of the dirty dishes, Lizzy said, "Jane, I have something to tell you." And she told Jane that she'd decided to leave HRI.
Her own hand covered in soap suds, Jane grabbed Lizzy's hand and said, "Are you sure, sweetie? It's a big decision."
"Yeah. It was just too much, with Emma not sleeping. I couldn't make it work."
Jane nodded and went back to the dishes. "I know. I thought about that a lot when I was pregnant with Aiden. I didn't see how I could make it as a lab scientist and still see my baby. So I decided not to go back to work after my maternity leave. That, and I had such a short maternity leave, because the lab's grant didn't cover it. Anyway, I'd rather watch my kids grow up in real life than study other peoples' kids in a lab setting. This is much more fun."
"You're happy with your choice, then." Lizzy said this with certainty as she dried off one of the crystal wine glasses.
"Oh, yeah. Definitely the right thing for me." She didn't say it, but the way she raised her eyebrows told Lizzy she had her doubts about whether it would be the right thing for Lizzy.
Susanna came back into the room, so Lizzy decided to lighten the mood.
"Well, we'll see. Anyway, the most important thing is to try to get Emma to sleep. That's going to get us all more back on track, I think."
Jane laughed and shook her head. "Well, you know, they always say that the smart ones don't sleep."
Lizzy rolled her eyes and said, "Then I guess Emma must be a fucking genius."
Susanna looked confused, but Jane smiled beatifically and kept on scrubbing.
After everything was washed and put away, they all went back out to the high-ceilinged living room to open presents. Charlie pulled the gifts out one-by-one from under the two-story-high tree groaning under its heavy load of ornaments, and everyone watched as each gift was opened and appreciated in turn. Jane had, as usual, bought scads of thoughtful gifts for everyone, and Will's personal shopper had, it seemed to Lizzy, gone totally nuts on their behalf.
"Oh, thanks, it's really cool," Lydia said when she opened her gift of an obviously very expensive sterling silver...something. It was swirly and arty and the size of her fist. Was it jewelry? Was it a paper weight? She looked at Lizzy, who shrugged and grimaced. Whatever it was, it would probably have paid Lydia's art studio rent for the month.
"Look at the tag. It's a Fleming," explained Will, naming a New York artist who worked in metal.
"Fantastic, thanks," answered Lydia a little tightly. So that's what it was, art!
Later, when the others opened the gifts from Lydia, really interesting abstract black-and-white photos of the city that she'd taken and framed herself, Lizzy thought Lydia looked apologetic that that was all there was.
Lizzy scooted over on the floor next to Lydia and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you. I love it. I'm going to put it up in our hallway so I can see it whenever I come in the door." And then she whispered in Lydia's ear, "I'm sorry about the silver thingy. I didn't know what it was. Will was in charge of gifts this year."
Lydia whispered back with a smile, "Don't worry about it. Fleming is a hack. I'm already thinking about how I can sell it and use the money for this awesome new installation I'm working on."
Lizzy grinned at her. "Great. I'm glad it was just what you wanted."
Lizzy and Will dropped off Susanna and Lydia at their place. On the way home from Brooklyn, Lizzy sat in the back seat watching Emma follow the lights flashing by out the back window. "Well that was interesting, as usual."
"Yeah, but fun," said Will. "Better than what the stiffs in my family do for the holidays. Dinner at a hotel or something."
"Yeah, I could see that." She thought about it for a while.
"Quite a display of feminine prowess, don't you think?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" he asked, turning onto Fifth Avenue.
"The meal, the decorations, the Christmas pudding with the Frozen Charlotte dolls in it. The whole shebang."
"Well, that's Jane's thing, right?"
"Yeah, Jane's thing. Just don't expect me to turn into Martha Stewart even if I'm a full-time mom, OK?"
He laughed. "I would never presume," he said, stopping in front of their building and shutting off the engine. The doorman came out to help them unload the car.
Lizzy laughed, too. But she also wondered, what other kind of full-time mom could she be? She could never be like Jane, and she didn't want to be like her mother, at least the way she was now. But she didn't know what that left her with. She'd just have to find out for herself.
That night as as they lay together in bed in each other's arms, she felt his chest rumble as he said, "It's back to work tomorrow. I—how—what do you need me to do, to do differently, now? Specifically."
She whispered, "I need you to be there for us."
"OK," he replied, his voice very soft. "OK. I'll talk to Ahmed about my schedule."
The next day, Wednesday, Lizzy went to work as usual. Before she left, she asked Elena if they could have a chat at the end of the day to talk about a change of plans. After lunch, she turned in her letter of resignation, accepting Ian's offer to reduce her workload to half-time, effective January 1, as she phased out over the next month. During that time, she would come to the office from 10 to 3:30, and she wouldn't take on any new projects.
She called a group meeting and told her staff about her plans. They listened, stunned.
"I'm sorry," said Lizzy, wiping her eye surreptitiously, "I know I haven't been pulling my weight since I came back to work. You don't know how much I regret that. And I'm sorry that all of this is going to make things difficult for all of you and slow things down, with so much uncertainty in the organization. I'm not sure exactly how my position can actually be cut back to half time, and I'm afraid it's probably going to mean a lot more stuff for you to do, Kyle. Again, I'm so sorry. What we do here is so important, and I feel terrible walking away with so much still left to do. I just can't go on like this."
Gina said, "Lizzy, I'm sorry, I had no idea. I really thought that if anybody could make it work, it would be you. Don't worry about us, we'll be fine."
Lizzy thought they probably would be, but she wasn't so sure about herself.
Footnotes:
(1) Festivus is a parody holiday, "the festival for the rest of us," from the TV show "Seinfeld." Festivus traditions include putting up a festivus pole, which is just a plain, bare aluminum pole; a Festivus dinner during which everyone is expected to participate in a ritual called the Airing of Grievances wherein they complain about how everyone has let them down in the previous year; and Feats of Strength, in which the head of the household wrestles people at the dinner until he or she is pinned, thus ending the holiday for that year.
Well, not a lot of solutions yet, but the grievances have been aired at last. Please drop me a line below if there's something you'd like to add to the discussion.