A/N: Thanks as always to my betas, Jan, Barbara, and Alison.
Chapter 9
late December 2013
Lizzy stumbled her way through the last two days of that week and the following Monday working full time. During the weekend in between, Will took Emma out for a couple of hours each afternoon so Lizzy could sleep and work. He was trying, she could see.
On Saturday, Will's cousin Richard and his wife Eleanor came to visit. They had spent Christmas with her family in Ohio and had decided they needed to say hello to Emma before heading back to Washington.
When Lizzy opened the door for Richard and Eleanor, at first all she could see was a mountain of Christmas presents where people should have been. But two people were indeed under these piles of wrapping and bows, and they came bursting through the door, a whirlwind of exclamations and greetings and kisses. Within seconds they had handed over the gifts, all for Emma, including an unwrapped life-sized stuffed gorilla, held Emma, blown bubbles on her tummy, helped themselves to something to drink in the kitchen, and begun a tag-team recounting of some outrageous goings-on on the Hill. They were notorious in certain circles for their energetic, risqué, and always scandalous tales.
All the while Lizzy and Will stood, a little stunned, where the foyer met the living room.
Richard said, "And so that's when the Speaker asked him, 'So this iswhat you wanted the House Gallery for? My God, man!'"
"No! No! You forgot the best part!" Eleanor broke in, gesturing wildly. She had different sources of gossip from his. "He was wearing a Peter Pan hat when he opened the Gallery door! And he had a quiver of arrows on his back! Can you believe that? An actual quiver full of arrows, in the House Gallery!"
"Oh, right, I forgot that part," Richard nodded. "So then the Capitol police had to chase this whole gang of strippers dressed in Tinkerbell costumes right down the Capitol steps..."
"And there was an alligator, too! On a leash!"
"Thank God Emma can't understand what they're saying," Will leaned over and whispered to Lizzy.
"Not as far as you know," Lizzy whispered back, as Emma's eyes moved intently back and forth between her aunt and uncle.
They had some Chinese food delivered and sat in the living room eating off the coffee table while Emma lay on the floor on her baby gym and batted at the little animals dangling down from above. While Eleanor and Lizzy talked about mutual acquaintances in Washington, Richard got a serious look on his face and took Will aside.
"I thought I should tell you as soon as I could. Georgie called me yesterday," Richard said in a low voice.
This was big news. Will hadn't heard from Georgie for almost three years after a terrible, terrible phone conversation. She had sounded really bad. She had said she was still in Los Angeles, still crashing on friends' sofas or living in the guest houses of friends of friends, and she needed money. He had, as usual, refused to release any additional funds unless she agree to go into rehab, which she still hadn't been ready for. She had sworn she would never talk to him again, which probably explained why she had contacted Richard instead of him this time. Now, all these years later, Will knew she was alive because she was still signing for her quarterly trust fund allowance payments, but she hadn't asked for any extra money since the last time they'd talked.
Will sighed and looked down at his discarded chopsticks and bowl on the coffee table. "What did she want?"
"Well, she didn't say. But she did ask if I'd meet with her. She's in the city for the weekend."
"Did she say where she's been living?"
"She says she's been staying in friends' guest houses in the Hamptons for a while," Richard said dismissively.
"God. Like Kato Kaelin or something," derided Will.
"Who?" Richard was puzzled.
"You know, that guy who lived in O.J. Simpson's guest house...? Oh, never mind." Will laughed. Richard was always on top of the latest political gossip, but he was hopeless when it came to celebrities.
"Well, anyway, I agreed to meet her for coffee tomorrow afternoon before we head back to Washington. I'll let you know what she says."
The next day, Richard called to let Will know how his coffee with Georgie had gone. Strangely, she wasn't asking for anything. It seemed that she was just interested in re-establishing contact.
When Will reported this to Lizzy as they were sitting on the sofa in the living room, she asked, "What do you think it all means?"
Will heaved a big sigh, which he seemed to do a lot when he talked about Georgie. "I don't know. Maybe nothing, or maybe she's working on some new angle."
"What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. Just wait and see what happens, I guess."
Lizzy put her arms around Will and held him. She didn't know what else to do.
Monday evening, New Year's Eve, they went to Charlotte and Liam's place in Brooklyn to have dinner and ring in the new year. Lizzy had convinced Will to knock off work early, so they arrived at around 7 o'clock.
Charlotte and Liam and their daughter Chloe lived on one floor of a brick rowhouse in Windsor Terrace. It had been pretty run-down when they bought it, which was the only reason they'd been able to afford it. So, construction permit permanently affixed to the front window, they'd spent the last five years tearing it up and re-doing it themselves a room at a time. They were currently working on making a decent-sized playroom for Chloe out of one tiny room and a closet by knocking down a wall between them. As a result, there were sheets of plastic hanging in doorways to keep the dust down, a sledgehammer and a giant container of spackle just inside the front door, and various other signs of construction everywhere. Will looked askance at these items when they walked in, until Lizzy glared at him and he snapped out of it.
Charlotte told them it would be a few minutes till dinner, and she, Lizzy, Chloe and Emma went into the kitchen to finish things up. Chloe, who was now three, had a little play kitchen in there, and she banged around some pots and pans while Charlotte started to boil water for the pasta.
Will and Liam had nothing in common, but they had now known each other for long enough that they had found a few safe topics of conversation. Will asked Liam about one of them, namely what art project he was currently working on, and they headed to the back of the flat to Liam's art studio. He was carving something out of a chunk of old telephone pole using a chainsaw.
"What can I do?" Lizzy asked Charlotte, "Do you want me to slice the bread or something?"
"Yeah, sure, if you can do it without cutting Emma's arm off. Liam cooked most of this," Charlotte said, gesturing at a big pot of red sauce bubbling away and some sausages frying gently in a skillet. "I'm just doing the pasta."
"Oh, is he still doing most of the cooking, then?"
"Yeah, we had a long negotiation about that. I do all the daycare pickups and dropoffs, and it really wears me out. Plus we eat too late if I cook after I get home. So finally I told him that his choices were: A. start doing the cooking, or B. eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every night because I'm too tired to cook." Charlotte made a face and Lizzy laughed, but she also felt acutely how lucky she was that she and Will could avoid a lot of these struggles because they could afford to eat takeout all the time.
"That's great. He's a good guy," Lizzy said approvingly.
"Tell me if you still think so after you try the pasta," Charlotte smiled.
Lizzy pulled a serrated knife out of the knife block and started cutting up a baguette. "So, Charlotte, I have some kind of big news to tell you. I've decided to leave HRI."
Charlotte peeked under the pot lid to see if the water was boiling yet. It wasn't. "Really? I thought you were pretty happy there. Do you have something new lined up?"
"No. I guess that's really the big news. I'm going to take some time off from work to take care of Emma. I just couldn't do it, Charlotte. It was too hard."
Charlotte turned and glared at her, hands on her hips. "Oh, come on. You have all the money in the world, a supportive husband, and a full-time nanny, and it's too hard? I don't think you have any idea what the rest of us go through, just trying to get by. What the hell?"
Lizzy stopped cutting and glared back at her. "Yes, it's too hard. My damn baby needs me every damn minute, she never sleeps, I'm falling asleep all the time so I can't do my job, my job is eating me alive, and my supportive-in-theory husband is never around. You have no idea about my life, either."
Charlotte took a deep breath and looked more closely at Lizzy, who was pale and shaking. "OK," she said more calmly, "Please tell me about it." And Lizzy told her about the trip to Washington that had been the last straw. Charlotte nodded and said the right, compassionate things after that, but Lizzy couldn't forget the look on her face earlier that had said, you rich, privileged whiner.
Which reminded her, sooner or later she would have to tell Paula and the other women in the lawyers' support group about her decision, too. Damn it. So much judgment and condemnation from so many different directions, so little time.
They managed to pull it together enough to have a pleasant dinner. By 9:30, though, Lizzy was so exhausted that they decided to call it a night. She was at home and in bed giving Emma her midnight feeding when the ball dropped in Times Square.
Lizzy and Elena had had a long conversation one morning right after Christmas about the changes that were coming. Will had sat and listened, but he hadn't had much to add. Lizzy had explained that although she'd be working part-time during January, she would like Elena to come 8 to 6 as originally agreed. After that, when she had completely stopped working, they would need to discuss a different schedule, although Elena would still be paid for full-time work.
At first Elena had objected. She had said she wouldn't feel right taking their money if she weren't doing the job. But, she had said, she also needed a full-time position, implying that she'd have to quit if she weren't paid the full-time wage.
"Elena, we really, really want you to stay with us. Emma loves you, and I really appreciate everything you have done for us already. Let's think about it like being on call, OK? That means you get paid for being available when you're needed, not just for work that you do. Doctors do that all the time."
Elena had looked doubtful. "Well...would that mean you would just call me when you wanted me to come? I like to have a schedule, I like to plan things."
"Yeah, I can understand that. We'll work out a regular part-time schedule. Does that sound all right?"
Elena had raised her eyebrows as if to say, "Whatever, it's your money," but what she actually said was, "Yes, that sounds OK."
So, with Elena's full-time help, January flew by in a sort of haze for Lizzy. She was working from 10 to 3:30, as promised, finishing up old business. At the end of every day, she sneaked back into the apartment around 4 o'clock, slinked down the hall to the bedroom, slapped on her sleeping mask and jammed in her earplugs, and slept until Elena went home at 6 o'clock. This was definitely better than working full time, but she wasn't sure it would have been sustainable for much longer. Even if HRI had been willing to give her a longer-term part-time position, it might not have been a good outcome for anyone, HRI or her. As it was, the extra couple of hours of sleep was keeping her sleep deprivation from getting worse, but it wasn't getting better, either.
Just after the new year, she called her parents. Her dad answered the phone, and when she told him about her decision, Tom harrumphed, "What a waste of a good education." Then he handed the phone over to Lillian before Lizzy could get in a word edgewise. Not that she knew exactly what she would have said, anyway. In response to the news, Lillian said, "Well, good. I didn't want to say anything before, but a baby really belongs with her mother. I never thought it was the right thing for you to go back to work." Lizzy quietly smacked her forehead against the table for a while after that.
During January, she had to go down to Washington a couple of times, but Elena had made it clear she really couldn't stay late if Lizzy came home from her travels after 6. Elena suggested that maybe her niece, Gabriella, the one who lived with her, might be interested in some occasional work. She was a child development major and she loved kids. They met, Gabby seemed great, and it worked out well for all involved.
After their long days of talking around Christmas, Will seemed to be trying to make a contribution with household affairs. Most nights he was home by 7 so they could share Emma duty during dinner and bath time, and he had asked Ahmed to avoid scheduling weekend events whenever possible. But he looked stressed out, and little pained expressions on his face now and then gave Lizzy the feeling he was mostly doing all this because she wanted him to. When she tried to ask what was going on, he just told her he was doing his best given what was going on with all the projects at work. Still, she supposed that a spouse who cooperated with a low level of enthusiasm was better than one who didn't cooperate at all.
Charlotte called Lizzy in mid-January, and they patched things up, more or less. Lizzy didn't have time to see her in person. She figured their friendship would weather this storm, eventually, and in any case she didn't have the emotional energy to get worked up about it.
Finally, finally, the end of January came. Lizzy felt like she had been stumbling toward the finish line and only crossed it because it happened to be there when she fell down. Ian still hadn't found a replacement for her, but she couldn't worry about that. So, on the last Thursday in January, she cleared out her desk and took down her photos. Ahmed arranged for someone to come and pick up the boxes and send them home the next day. The staff had a little goodbye lunch for her, with cake and everything. She got a little teary as she made a brief farewell speech. She only barely restrained herself from saying, "Andrew, I think I'll miss you least of all."
On her way out the door for the last time, she handed over her laptop, keycard and keys to Gina. It all felt very final.
And so it was that at 3:45 she found herself out on the street with no obligations, no work for the evening, nowhere to be except home if she wanted. It was very, very weird. She took a taxi to the little tea shop close to home for a cup of peppermint tea, and sat staring, unseeing, at a photo of a Japanese zen rock garden on the wall next to her for a quarter of an hour or so. Then she picked up her breast pump in its briefcase-looking bag, her portfolio, and her purse, and walked the rest of the way home. Elena and Emma were out, so she fell asleep on the sofa, still in her suit, until they came home a little before 6.
And that was it. It had taken her 35 years to get here, but it only took one day to turn Lizzy Bennet, staff attorney at HRI, possible future White House Counsel, candidate for multiple positions at the State Department, into Lizzy Bennet, stay-at-home-mom.
The next day, Friday, was the first day of the new schedule. From now on, Elena would come on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons, and Lizzy would be with Emma the rest of the time.
Emma woke Lizzy up a little before 6 o'clock, rooting around for a breast. Lizzy rolled over and gave one to her. She could just make out Emma's face in the pre-dawn light, and it looked so little and perfect, eyes closed and mouth moving rhythmically. Lizzy was filled with love for this little creature. She also felt profound relief that today she didn't have to get up and go to work. They could take it easy today, feel things out, enjoy being together.
This was the first day of a new chapter in her life, she thought, smoothing her hand over Emma's sparse, soft hair. A new adventure. That was great. It was going to be fun to have the time to show Emma new things, and to watch her learn and grow instead of just hearing about it from Elena. She could hardly wait to get started.
Will took off for work as usual at a quarter to 9, and Lizzy and Emma waved goodbye to him at the door. It felt very strange to stand there and watch him go, knowing she wouldn't be doing the same thing herself.
Lizzy wished she could take it slow that morning and just hang around in the apartment, but she had to pick up the mess and get out by 9 so the housecleaners could do their job. Emma cried at the sound of the vacuum cleaner and at the smell of bleach, and Lizzy felt horribly embarrassed by the fact that the cleaners were doing the job that she should be doing herself but didn't want to do. So all told, it was the best thing to leave.
They headed out happily just before 9, Emma strapped to her chest and the enormous diaper bag leading the way from the stroller seat like a figurehead on a ship, headed to the tea shop a few blocks away. It was below freezing, so there wouldn't be any outside destinations today. They walked past the community center, and Lizzy was reminded she could now go to the mothers' group meeting there every Wednesday if she wanted.
And that made her think, how did she want to spend her time now? When she'd been home on her maternity leave, she had known it was a time-limited thing, and that had colored her approach. This was different now. She wasn't racing against some imaginary clock to get baby time in before she had to go back to work. Probably she'd need to pace herself with Emma or she'd wear herself out. Will had been right that having Elena's help would be a good thing. How would she spend her days? This was an interesting and fun thing to contemplate. She was used to having clear goals and deadlines and objectives, and to having the clear structure of a working day. Now her goals were general rather than specific, it seemed: making sure Emma was happy and safe, helping her grow into a well-adjusted, confident, compassionate, happy adult. It was strange.
So, what did other women who didn't do paid work do all day? She really didn't know. It was time she found out.
They got to the tea shop and, as usual, she ordered peppermint tea at the counter.
The woman behind the counter cooed at Emma and said, "I notice you always go for the herbal stuff. You're breastfeeding?"
Lizzy nodded. "Yeah, no caffeine allowed." She raised her eyes to the ceiling in mock despair.
The woman laughed. "Isn't it crazy? They don't let you eat or drink anything interesting in this country when you're pregnant or nursing. The poor little babies can't eat anything good, either."
"I know. No eggs, no honey, no nuts, nothing! I guess there must be some scientific reason for it," Lizzy said skeptically.
"Who knows," the woman said, shrugging. "My mother-in-law sent me a baby book from Japan, and all it said was, 'no alcohol or really chewy things like octopus for at least the first year.'"
Lizzy looked down at Emma. "Sorry, kid, no booze or octopus for another eight months. You'll just have to suffer in silence till then."
They settled in at the table by the photo of the zen rock garden again. Emma was almost four months old now and she was doing pretty well holding her head up, so Lizzy tried putting her in the wooden high chair that she'd dragged over to the table. Emma wasn't having it, though, so back into Lizzy's arms she went. There would be plenty of opportunity to try again later. Anyway, it was time for her to eat, so Lizzy held Emma on her lap and nursed her. Emma's little arm flailed around in the air until she fell asleep and Lizzy could finally drink her tea safely.
Now that she had a minute to think, Lizzy tried to look at her situation objectively. What was she going to need to thrive without the daily structure of work and the social world it had provided her? One thing was, she needed to be around other people. She enjoyed that, and it wasn't going to happen sitting around in the apartment. There wasn't a ready-made community for her to walk right into in the building, either, since the other residents were all rich elderly widows, washed-up TV actors, young socialites, wrinkly old leather-clad rock stars, and other assorted people with loads and loads of money. Unfortunately, she didn't have any friends who were staying home with their kids, so she didn't have a social group to fall back on or people to ask for ideas. Oh, right! the mothers' group, they would be a good resource. She'd have an appointment every Wednesday morning, and might make some new friends there, more than just the passing acquaintances they'd been during her maternity leave. Good. What till Wednesday, then?
She pulled out her phone and searched for...what, exactly? Family activities? Mommy-baby something? There were so many results she didn't know where to start.
Jane! She would know. Jane always took a lot of classes with her kids, she remembered.
She called Jane speaking quietly so that she wouldn't wake Emma.
"Hi, Jane. I'm calling you from a tea shop! How about that?"
"You're home today? Wow! That's a big step for you." Lizzy could hear Jane clanking some things around, presumably in the kitchen.
"Can you talk now?"
"Yeah, sure. The boys are napping." Of course they are, thought Lizzy.
"Emma's asleep right now, too. Can you believe she's almost four months old? Next week."
"Oh! That's right. Now you're just getting into all of the good stuff. So many interesting developmental milestones at this age." Jane proceeded to quiz Lizzy about whether Emma had started holding up her head, sitting by herself, getting any teeth, or rolling over by herself since they had last spoken three days before. Lizzy started to worry when the answer was no to all of those things, but Jane assured her that that was well within expected parameters.
"So," Jane said, "You can start introducing solid foods. That's fun. What are you planning to feed her? All organic stuff, I hope."
"Well, I guess I was thinking I'd start with some rice cereal, and some yogurt. Maybe mashed bananas. The book said that was OK."
"You have to get the organic stuff! You don't know what kind of pesticides are on the other foods. No genetically modified foods, either, of course. Babies' brains are developing really rapidly, and so you don't want to introduce any contaminants into Emma's system, or you could damage her cognitive capabilities irreversibly. Oh, and if you give her rice cereal and bananas, she'll get constipated. So here's what you should do—"
Jane gave her a long list of the foods she needed to feed Emma, and in what order to introduce them. They all had to be made at home, with organic fruits and vegetables and grains, with a special food processor that Jane recommended. It was a piece of cake to put the food in these special little jars it came with once you had peeled, chopped, cooked, mashed, strained, and whipped the fruits and vegetables!
"Well, I'll give it a try," Lizzy replied, a little doubtful. That seemed like an awful lot of work.
"So, Jane, I was thinking," she continued, "I was thinking about stuff that Emma and I might be able to do together, you know, to get out of the house. I don't know what kinds of things are out there. Got any ideas?"
Jane told her about a website called Uptown Mommies that listed all kinds of activities and get-togethers and classes for moms and kids. She had found out about a lot of cool stuff to do with Aiden on that site before they had moved to Westchester.
"OK," Lizzy said. "What kind of classes?"
"Mommy-baby music, mommy-baby dancing, mommy-baby pottery..."
"Oh, be serious. I know you're making that last one up." Lizzy could just picture Emma jamming a big handful of clay into her mouth.
"No, no, it's true. OK, maybe the pottery class is for slightly older kids. Anyway, give it a try. They're nice people."
Lizzy took that bit with a big grain of salt because Jane thought that everyone was nice.
"Oh, I know!" said Jane. "I think I still have a guest pass for a mommy-baby yoga class at the maternity place where Aiden and I took some classes. I'll put the pass in the mail right now so you'll have it on Monday. I liked the teacher. Maybe you'll find some other moms to connect with there."
Lizzy thanked Jane and rang off.
Emma woke up needing a change, and enough time had passed that they could go back to the apartment, anyway. So they packed up, did a quick diaper change in the bathroom, and headed for home. She tried to look up the Uptown Mommies website on her phone as they walked. She had to put the phone away after she walked the stroller smack into a lamppost, but not before she had spotted the yoga class on the website. It looked all right. Maybe she would give it a try.
Just down the block from the tea shop was one of the expensive baby boutiques that Will liked to go to. In the shop window, she spotted the special baby food processor Jane had mentioned, so they stopped in and bought one. She was appalled at the cost, but Jane had said it was what she needed, so she got it anyway.
Elena came around 1 o'clock and took Emma into the living room to play, while Lizzy skulked off to the bedroom to put in her ear plugs and eye mask. She slept and slept and slept.
That Saturday, Lizzy went to a nearby organic grocery and bought some organic fruits and vegetables to make baby food. She opened up the food processor and set to work while Will, bemused at the whole thing, played with Emma. Including milk breaks, she spent six hours on it, peeling and chopping and cooking and straining and puréeeing, and all she got in the end was four little jars of strained carrots and four little jars of strained prunes. It was totally not worth it. She was definitely going to have to re-think some of Jane's other advice, too. She put the machine away in the kitchen cupboard and went down to the grocery store again to buy some baby food in jars. At least it was organic.
After all that work, she was too tired even to think about more cooking, so she also brought home dinner from the hot table at the grocery. It was some weird casserole that looked like it was made of sweet potatoes and quinoa and kale, maybe. Will wasn't very enthusiastic about it, but he was pretty happy with the organic vegan gluten-free flourless chocolate cake, at least until he found out what was and wasn't in it.
Lizzy thought she was probably supposed to be taking Emma out for exciting outings on the weekends, having playdates with friends, and the like. But she was still too tired. Next week, maybe. It was too cold out for outdoor activities, anyway. So for the rest of the weekend, she and Will stayed in and rested, napped, played with Emma, watched a little TV, and talked.
Emma delighted them by coming so, so close to rolling over onto her tummy on her own in her baby gym. She got that little leg over all right, but couldn't quite get her hips over. She was smiling a lot and laughing now, and seemed particularly entranced by the recent discovery of her right foot.
They decided, in spite of the food processor fiasco, to try giving her her first solid food since she would be four months old in just a couple of days. They pulled out her as-yet unused high chair and set it up in the breakfast nook. Once she was belted in, she sat up fine. As the book suggested, they tried first with some organic rice cereal mixed with breast milk, and she seemed to think that was OK, but she really loved the mashed bananas, which she rubbed all over her entire head.
"How soon before we can give her that five-bomb tofu from the Thai place?" Will asked with a happy smile.
"Give it a few days," Lizzy beamed back. "Let's see what happens when I eat it, first."
On Monday, Lizzy's and Emma's day went much like the previous Friday: they went out in the morning, and Elena took Emma in the afternoon while Lizzy slept for a couple of hours and then, joy of joys, actually read a novel for the first time in God knows how long. It felt so luxurious. Also, Jane's guest pass for the yoga class arrived in the mail that day. Lizzy checked her exercise clothes and found that nothing fit her, so she ran down to a shop a few blocks away and bought a top and some yoga pants, as well as a yoga mat.
The next morning, Lizzy, with Emma strapped on her chest and the diaper bag in the stroller as usual, found herself outside a storefront a few blocks from the apartment. It had a tasteful lavender sign with an abstract drawing of clouds, maybe, that somehow managed also to look like a pregnant woman. It said "Goddess Maternity: Clothing, Toys and Classes for Healthy, Happy Moms and Babies."
She signed in at the front desk. The smiling woman there pointed her down a darkened aquarium-lined hallway where the classrooms were. Tinkly New Age music played quietly on the speaker system and the hallway smelled faintly like patchouli.
When Lizzy turned the corner at the end of the corridor, she found herself standing in front of a massive stroller corral. It was like a luxury baby buggy showroom: BOBs and Bugaboos and Orbits and Stokkes and some other custom and European models she'd only ever heard about before, none under $1500. Yikes. Of course, she should talk, since there was a $3000 Ellipse languishing under dust and cobwebs in Emma's closet. She parked her $10 umbrella stroller right there along with the best of them, leaving her coat and diaper bag in it. She heard the buzz of conversation further down the hall, but headed for the door marked "Haven of Peace" instead, as instructed.
Apparently she was a few minutes late for class, which was not surprising since just when she'd been about to leave home she'd had to change her clothes after Emma had thrown up all over her first outfit, the nice one she'd bought the day before. Now she was wearing a pre-pregnancy top and bottom that no longer contained either her top or bottom.
When she opened the frosted glass door and walked in, she saw that all the other moms and babies had already staked out places on the floor and were lying on their mats with their babies, stretching out and chattering happily. The teacher had just come to the front of the room and asked everyone to quiet down.
All heads swiveled at the sound of the door slamming shut behind Lizzy, and 20 pairs of plucked, already sky-high eyebrows turned her way. They couldn't go any higher because of the Botox, probably. A little belatedly she noticed the little sign that said "please close the door gently."
"Sorry," said Lizzy, slinking over to the one remaining place on the floor that might conceivably be big enough for another yoga mat. She'd never done yoga before, with or without a baby, but she'd heard good things about it and was looking forward to seeing what it was all about.
When she and Emma had finally settled down, she got a chance to take her first long look at the others in the room. All the moms and babies were wearing matching yoga ensembles, evidently from some designer she'd never heard of before. And over in the corner was, ta da, Caroline Bingley, or whatever her name was now. Oh, God. And Louisa Hurst. Well, maybe there was some hope after all. Lizzy smiled weakly in their direction. Louisa smiled back, and she could see Caroline muttering to herself.
"Let's get started, shall we?" asked the instructor brightly, sitting cross-legged with a big teddy bear on her lap.
They started with some relaxation and stretching. Lizzy's fingertips stopped about three feet away from her toes, and she didn't find the instructor's soothing words very convincing. "You are all perfect just the way you are. Relax and feel your center connect with the earth." She continued on in that vein throughout the next 50 minutes.
Lizzy did her best to follow along. Holding Emma, she lunged and posed and tried to balance. Emma screamed as Lizzy tried to move her in concert with the teddy bear, but the other babies seemed to like the movements. And in spite of the instructor's words about everyone's perfection, she had an awful lot of corrections for Lizzy and Emma. Needless to say, Lizzy did not find any of this very relaxing, and Emma quite evidently wasn't enjoying it, either.
Just as the session finally, finally ended, Emma gave a terrible grunt, her face red and contorted, and had a giant blowout that squirted poop out the leg of her romper, and all over the yoga mat. Everybody heard it—it was impossible to miss since they were all lying there quietly listening to the tinkly music. Perhaps this explained why Emma had been yelling so much during the class. Was it the rice cereal?
"Right!" said Lizzy. She rolled Emma up in the yoga mat, her head sticking out one end in a baby burrito. Lizzy picked up the Baby Bjorn and diaper bag, shoved on her shoes, and shot out the door before anyone else could even sit up.
Fortunately the restroom had a very big and very ritzy diaper-changing station, including wipes and everything, and space for the stroller, which she'd picked up on her way out of the classroom. As Lizzy was trying to get Emma's romper off without getting poop all over absolutely everything, Louisa and Caroline came into the room. Louisa was holding her toddler's hand, but Caroline's son was nowhere in sight.
"Lizzy! How nice to see you. It's been a long time. Since Jane's first baby shower, maybe?" chirped Caroline brightly, clearly enjoying Lizzy's suffering. At the shower, Caroline had tried to steal the spotlight by showing off the three-carat diamond engagement ring she'd recently received from her beau. Lizzy remembered that he had looked sort of like Harry Hamlin, but she forgot his name. She thought it was Dudley Snootypants or something like that. Maybe Doctor Dudley Snootypants. Oh no, wait; he was a hedge fund manager, that was it.
"Great to see you, too. That sounds about right," answered Lizzy. "Hi, Louisa."
Louisa smiled and said, "Hi, Lizzy. Can I give you a hand with something?" She got her son to sit on the comfy armchair next to the changing station and then from her pocket pulled out a plastic bag that she held open for the dirty romper and cloth diaper to go in. At the appropriate moments she handed Lizzy a clean diaper, a clean romper, and wipe after wipe after wipe.
"Sorry I can't help, but I just got a manicure," said Caroline, flapping her hands around in the air.
"Oh, I understand," Lizzy nodded. "Thanks, Louisa. I'm surprised to see you here. Aren't you and Gil still out in Westchester?"
"No, we moved back to the city last year. It was too boring in the suburbs. We're on the Upper West Side now. West 84th."
"Cool. We should get together sometime."
"Yeah. Probably not at another yoga class, though. I only came because Caroline had a free guest pass. It's not really my thing, even though Junior here seems to like it."
Lizzy laughed. "That's funny. Jane gave me a pass, too."
Caroline jumped in. "Lizzy, you really should join us at the juice bar next door. A whole group of us go out together after these lessons."
"Oh, I really couldn't. I don't want to intrude." Lizzy thought it sounded like a really, really bad idea.
Louisa gave her a sardonic look. "No, really, you should come. I think you'd have a good time."
Lizzy shrugged her assent. Why not? She didn't have plans for the rest of the morning, after all.
She tossed the yoga mat into the trash as they left the restroom. So much for yoga.
The women from the class had commandeered an entire corner of the juice bar, shoving several tables together so that all of them could squeeze in. They squeezed in even more tightly to make room for Lizzy. She sat between Louisa and a woman who she thought looked familiar. Maybe she'd met her at one of Will's business things? Caroline sat on Louisa's other side.
The waitress, who looked like an aerobics instructor, came and took their orders. Except for Lizzy and Louisa, who actually ordered juice, the other women all ordered zero-calorie flavored water. Lizzy wasn't sure why they bothered coming to a juice bar in the first place.
Lizzy looked around. "Where are all the other babies?" she asked. Emma, snug in the carrier on her chest, and Louisa's son Jason, ensconced in a throne-like high chair, were the only babies at the table.
"Oh, they went home with the nannies after class," Louisa said. What? Lizzy guessed they must all have made the handoff while she and Emma had been in the restroom. Where had the nannies been hiding during the class? Was there a nanny corral around the corner from the stroller corral? Maybe that was the source of the voices she'd heard farther down the hall.
Caroline introduced Lizzy to the other women. "Angela Weatherby...Jennifer Castle-Frink...Missy St. Cloud..." She continued around the table. When she got to the last woman, she said, "And Piper Swales. Girls, Lizzy Darcy."
Oh, crap. It was Chip Swales' wife. He was the guy who'd been an associate and then a partner at her old firm, DeWitt. He also knew Will from the club. He was the one who had been such a bad sport on the squash court that none of the other men wanted to play against him.
"Bennet. It's still Bennet," Lizzy said. "Hi, Piper. It's great to see you again," she lied. Piper murmured her concurrence and smiled, but nothing higher than the tip of her perfect Diana Ross nose moved. It was hard to tell if that was because the smile was insincere or because of the Botox.
"How old is your baby?" Caroline leaned around to ask.
"She's just four months."
"Oh, really? I thought she was younger than that," Caroline said dismissively.
Oh, great. Here it came. "Why is that?" Lizzy inquired, wondering why she bothered.
"You know, her neck tone."
Lizzy found this perplexing, because Emma's neck tone was just fine. She was holding her head up and doing baby pushups during tummy time.
"What about her neck tone?" she asked, annoyed.
Caroline laughed. "No need to get huffy. Her head is just a little wobbly, that's all." She confided to the table at large, "My little Jaden was holding his head up at only two months. He has a neck like an ox."
"Right, and he's reading The New York Times now, too, at 12 months," interjected Louisa.
"Oh, stop it, Louisa." Caroline swatted at her.
Lizzy decided to change the subject. "So your son is a year old, Caroline?" Caroline nodded. "You look great."
"Thank you," Caroline preened. "It's all the Pilates."
Piper chimed in, "Oh, yes, the Pilates. Pilates is what does it."
"And the mommy tuck you had right after your scheduled C-section," Louisa added.(1)
"What's a mommy tuck?" Lizzy asked her, even though she knew she really shouldn't.
"It's a tummy tuck that they do right there on the operating table while they've already got you opened up like a watermelon. Your belly is tight as a drum the next day."
Caroline snapped, "Quit exaggerating, Lou! You know that's not true. You have to wait at least six weeks. But the results are great, Lizzy." She sat up straight and smoothed her tight spandex top even tighter over her flat belly. "See?"
Louisa smirked. "And you should see how high her belly button is now, too! Do you know how they do the mommy tuck? They cut the skin like a C-section, and they suck out all the excess fat with liposuction, and then they pull the belly skin waaaaay down tight and cut a new hole for a belly button—"
"Louisa!" Hissed Caroline. Even Lizzy thought Louisa had probably gone too far this time. Her stomach lurched a little at the whole belly button thing.
One of the other women hurriedly changed the subject and they all started talking about a new spa that some of them had recently visited. Then they moved on to hair stylists and colorists, the newest mani-pedi techniques, waxing, just how long was long enough in the tanning bed every week, and where you could get the best bikinis for your upcoming tropical vacation.
Lizzy turned to Louisa and laughingly muttered, "Wait, why are we here, again?"
"You want to go? It's cold, but we could take the kids to the park for a little while," Louisa offered.
"Yeah, Emma's getting restless."
"As opposed to you," smiled Louisa.
Lizzy laughed, slapping her $10 bill on the table, and the two of them said their goodbyes, threw on their coats, and headed out into the chilly air with the kids and strollers. Lizzy buttoned her coat around Emma in the baby carrier to keep her warm.
As they walked along toward the park, Lizzy asked, "So, Louisa, I want to know, what draws you in, makes you hang out with Caroline, when you two clearly have some issues?"
"The usual. Sisterly affection. Familial obligation. The strange allure of the absurd and repulsive. It's complicated." She smirked and hoisted Jason onto her hip.
"Yeah, it usually is with sisters." And I should know, Lizzy thought.
"Oh, and also, I'm writing a novel," added Louisa nonchalantly.
"What?! I thought you wrote children's books."
"I do. But now I'm also writing a roman à clef about pampered Upper East Side women and their obsessions and perversions."
Lizzy guffawed. "Oh, my God. So you were doing field research."
"Guilty as charged," agreed Louisa with a sly grin.
"Is this why you moved back from Westchester, too?" Lizzy kicked a bit of gravel farther down the sidewalk.
"Well, that, and I was going out of my freaking mind out there in the 'burbs. And, Gil started drinking again because he was bored, too. I quit when I got pregnant with Jason, and we figured he'd dry out better and faster here where there was more support."
"Really?" Lizzy found this surprising, considering that there was a bar about every ten feet in Manhattan. On the other hand, there was an AA meeting about every ten feet, too, so maybe it cut both ways. "So, what's he doing to keep busy, then?"
"Oh, sorry. I thought you knew. He's a poet. He's writing full time, spends a lot of time at writing workshops and readings and poetry slams, that kind of thing. He's pretty good."
Lizzy couldn't have been more surprised. Gil Hurst, a poet? Of course the few times she'd met him, he'd been drunk and hardly said more than three words at a time, those words usually being "Red or white?"
"Wow. That's cool. And what about you? You sound busy."
"Yeah, I am. Usually I hang out with Jason in the morning, and then we have a babysitter in the afternoon, and that's when I work on my book. Well, either on my novel, or else a couple of other kids' projects I have going on. Storybooks with illustrations. Watercolors, mostly."
"Sounds great."
"Yeah. It's really good. I'm happier than I've ever been, I think. What about you? I'm surprised to see you out and about on a weekday."
Lizzy explained about her situation, concluding, "So, here I am."
Louisa shot her a knowing glance. "Trying to figure it all out, huh?"
Lizzy said, "Yeah, I guess. Wandering vaguely."
"Well, 'not all who wander are lost,' or whatever the saying is."
"We'll see. It's a big change, but I think it'll be good, too. I feel like I was missing a lot of important stuff before, you know, things you can never get back."
By this time they had reached the park, and Louisa put Jason down so he could go play on the toddler slide.
"Well, if you want, you could come over to our place one morning. On Thursdays we usually get together for a playdate with a couple of my girlfriends and their kids. And when I say 'playdate,' I mean a playdate for the moms. The kids are too little to actually play with each other. Mostly they just pound on stuff with toy hammers and that kind of thing."
"Yeah, OK. That sounds like fun." Clearly Caroline's yoga class at Goddess Maternity was not Lizzy's thing, but it seemed worthwhile to check out what Louisa and her friends were up to. There was a whole new world to be explored.
That night, Lizzy and Will enjoyed a little chocolate decadence cake to celebrate Emma's four-month birthday. This one was definitely not vegan, fat-free, or gluten-free, and it was much more delicious. They let the four candles burn longer than they would have otherwise, because Emma was mesmerized, watching the flames dance and shimmer.
Lizzy told Will about the yoga class and Louisa's running commentary at the juice bar, and he laughed so hard that he had to get up to get a tissue to wipe his streaming eyes.
"Oh my God," he said, gasping. "I know Missy St. Cloud from the sailing club when I was a teenager. Believe it or not, she used to look like an actual human being."
"Well, thanks to her plastic surgeon, now she looks like 'The Scream,'" said Lizzy, lifting her eyebrows up as far as they could go and opening her mouth up in a big "O."
After they'd eaten the cake, Will took Emma into the living room to play on the baby gym while Lizzy cleaned up. After she'd finished, she walked into the room just as Emma, lying on her back on the mat, started crying and made her pooping face.
Lizzy said, "Sheesh, another poo diaper? I swear, this must be number six today."
Will, sitting on the floor next to Emma said, "It's OK, I'll get this one." He leaned over and scooped her up with one hand under her neck and the other under her bum. As he headed, cooing to Emma, over to the changing table in its place of honor in the corner of the living room, Lizzy saw his expression change from delight to disgust.
"Blowout?" Lizzy asked from the sofa.
"Yup. Bad one, straight up her back. Two-person job." Lizzy jumped up to help.
They worked together in a routine they'd developed to keep Emma calm: Will sang the "The Ants Go Marching" as he held Emma's ankles up in the air with one hand and wiped with the other, while Lizzy handed him wipes, removed and replaced Emma's clothes and diaper and walked into the bathroom to drop the diaper in the diaper pail and the clothes in the sink to be rinsed.
"Wow, a record—this one took ten wipes. She's got a bad rash, too," commented Will as he patted Emma's finally clothed body. Then he looked at his left hand. "Shit."
"What's the matter, sweetheart?" she called from the bathroom, swishing the clothes in the sink.
"Poo all over." He came in, Emma tucked under his right arm, to show her the mess on his wedding ring, wristwatch, and shirtsleeve.
"Did you get any on your pants?"
"No, I don't think so. Just the shirt. Take her?" he grumbled as he tried and failed to unlatch his watchband while still holding Emma.
Lizzy hung up Emma's clothes on the shower curtain bar, washed her dried-out, cracked hands for the millionth time that day, and took Emma from him as he surveyed the damage.
Suddenly she couldn't take it anymore. "I've really had it with these damn cloth diapers!" she cried. "I don't care what Jane says. Screw the landfill. To hell with dioxins—she has diaper rash anyway. I'm going to get some disposables. Right now. Want anything else from the drugstore?"
He barely had time to shake his head no before she shot out the door and into the elevator, Emma on her hip. This was one of the many advantages of living in the city—there was a drugstore just around the corner.
When she came back into the apartment, she threw a big bag of disposable diapers on the floor next to the changing table and went to find Will, who was still in the bathroom.
"What's going on?" she asked when she saw him holding up and staring, bemused, at a drinking glass that appeared to have his ring, his Rolex and a lot of bubbles in it. "Whaddaya have there?"
"Well, I thought I'd clean off my watch by throwing it in some soapy water." He pulled the offending item out and showed it to her. She could see that, behind the crystal, the watch face was up to the middle of the dial with water. She half expected to see fish swimming around in there, and maybe a tiny mermaid or two.
"Oh. Oops." She shifted Emma to the other side to get a better look.
"I guess it's the other Rolex that's water resistant. Ah, well," he grimaced and shrugged in resignation.
Only he could be so blasé about destroying a $30,000 watch, she thought.
"You know, according to the package, these new diapers apparently have something in them called MegAbsorbum that magically makes liquid disappear forever, like it's been sucked into a black hole." she said, nodding her head sagely. "Do you want to wrap the watch up in the diaper and see what happens?"
He got a good chuckle out of that, but said he'd ask Ahmed to take the watch to the jeweler to see if there was anything they could do to resuscitate it. Save the Rolexes! thought Lizzy.
On Thursday, Lizzy did go to the playdate at Louisa's, and it was pretty fun. Louisa and Gil had a brownstone that they had gutted and done really interesting things to, ripping out walls to make an open floor plan on the first floor. Some highlights were a mantlepiece made out of a mosaic of broken pottery and glass tiles, and Louisa's giant mural of abstract flowers on the dining room wall. She had also painted a castle and a dragon and knights and ladies on all four walls of Jason's bedroom on the second floor. It was a Bohemian dream. A Bohemian with lots and lots of money, anyway.
The two other women were educated, artistic, and interested in the world. One of them wrote a blog about parenting. She said she mostly worked on it while her kids were napping, and a couple of afternoons a week when she had a babysitter. The other woman designed, made, and sold natural cotton children's clothing from her apartment, also while her kids napped. Lizzy thought it must be nice to have kids who napped. The two women were reading a novel together with Louisa, and they talked about that a little, although not long enough to make Lizzy feel left out. They all wiped each other's kids' noses, and picked each other's kids up when they fell down, and stopped each other's kids from pulling heavy objects off the bookcase and onto their heads, and soothed each other's kids when they cried.
For three hours, the women talked, and the kids played, and napped—except for Emma—and ate. Then they all went home after lunch, the kids bound for their afternoon naps and the moms for their respective creative activities. It was fun, and they invited her back for the next week. She thought she would probably go.
As Lizzy and Emma headed home in a cab, Lizzy reflected on the morning. Louisa and her friends were relaxed, and happy, too. You could see it in their eyes. She wondered if she could be happy with that kind of life, too. She was pretty sure that Will wouldn't like it if she painted the dining room wall with giant flowers, and not only because if she tried to paint a flower it would probably come out looking like snails or a fungus under a microscope. She also had no talent for designing things, or telling funny stories on a blog. Or for home decorating more generally, or for cooking. And also she didn't enjoy doing those things. Basically she was a failure as a woman, when you added it all up like that.
On the other hand, in spite of Lizzy's inability to do things beautifully, Emma seemed to be thriving. They were doing really well together, finding their rhythm. Things were going to get easier as Emma grew and, hopefully, started sleeping more. She was glad, really glad, that they were sharing this adventure together.
Lizzy held Emma's little hand and watched her curious eyes take everything in through the back window of the taxi as they made their way across town.
Footnotes:
(1) About one in three births in the U.S. are by Caesarean section in 2013, and many of them are elective. Rumor has it that quite a few celebrities schedule them ahead of time for their own convenience and that of their doctors. A "mommy tuck" is a real (celebrity) thing, too, and it works just as described in this story.
Please let me know what your curious eyes noticed, just below.