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Sleepwalking in Daylight
Elizabeth Flock
Praised for her “haunting” (Booklist) and “tremendously touching” (Kirkus Reviews) novels, Elizabeth Flock reveals the inner workings of a modern marriage with unflinching honesty in Sleepwalking in Daylight, delivering a provocative story that Publishers Weekly calls “redemptive…familiar and melancholy. ”Once defined by her career and independence, stay-at-home mom Samantha Friedman realizes her life has become a routine of errands, car pools and suburban gossip. She deals with a husband who shows up for dinner but is too preoccupied for conversation, an increasingly moody daughter who won’t talk at all, and wonders, Is this it? Since finding out she was adopted, seventeen-year-old Cammy Friedman has felt like an outsider.Unwilling to reach out to the parents she once adored, she shields herself behind black clothing and begins to drift into dangerous territory with questionable friends and risky behavior. Mother and daughter indulge in their own respective escapism— for Sam, clandestine coffee dates with a handsome stranger, fueled by the desire to feel something; for Cammy, a furtive search for her birth mother punctuated by sex, pills and the need to feel absolutely nothing—until a pivotal moment in an otherwise average day alters their relationships forever.“Heartfelt and poignant, unique and memorable… The story is rich and resonates long after the last page has been turned. ” —John Shors, bestselling author of Beneath a Marble Sky



Selected praise for Sleepwalking in Daylight
“Flock draws astute parallels between the alienated Cammy and Sam—living in a sexless marriage, bored with driving to endless soccer practices and sick of being the devoted mom … Filled with perceptive, dead-on insights into both teenage angst and the common pitfalls of marriage in the middle years.”
—Booklist
“Elizabeth Flock offers us a haunting look at the challenges and responsibilities of raising a small family in suburban America. This is a cautionary tale about the perils of narcissism and living in denial.
Once you pick it up, you can’t not read it to the very last page. Sleepwalking in Daylight will be remembered for a very long time.” —New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank
“Elizabeth Flock’s Sleepwalking in Daylight is a painfully emotional mother-daughter story told in the voices of Samantha and Cammy, in alternating chapters. Samantha is so wrapped up in herself that she can’t fathom Cammy’s unhappiness. Cammy secretly tries to find her birth mother, certain that her ‘real’ mother will understand her as Samantha does not. Flock tells a disturbing family story in two authentic voices.” —Boston Globe
“[A] terrific novel … [Samantha] is still married but she’s fallen in love with someone else—and is desperately trying to reconnect with her goth-obsessed teenage daughter.”
—Parenting magazine, “Recommended Read”
“Elizabeth Flock is a skilful storyteller, and the suspense is genuine as we watch Cammy sink deeper and deeper into her pain. Samantha is indeed ‘sleepwalking in daylight’ and the reader wants to scream at her to wake up.”
—AuthorMagazine
“Have you ever opened your eyes and realised that you’ve been sleepwalking through your life? If so, this is the novel for you. Sleepwalking in Daylight is heartfelt and poignant, unique and memorable. Elizabeth Flock’s characters feel real, her dialogue is first-rate. The story is rich and resonates long after the last page has been turned. This novel isn’t about the perfection of life, but rather, how life’s imperfections make it all the more precious.” —John Shors, bestselling author of Beneath a Marble Sky
Also by Elizabeth Flock
EVERYTHING MUST GO
ME & EMMA
BUT INSIDE I’M SCREAMING

Sleepwalking in Daylight
Elizabeth Flock


www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For Jill Brack
Acknowledgments
The writing of this novel took place during perhaps the most wrenching two years of my life and would not have been possible without the loving support of friends and family. To say they held me up and put me back together during a nearly unbearable time would be an understatement—they did so much more. For a multitude of reasons, both personal and professional, I will be forever grateful to Mary Jane Clark, Joan Drummond Olson, Bruce Fine, Mary Chase-Ziolek, Jodie Chase, Dotty Sonnemaker, Catherine DiBenedetto, Kat Mosteller and Kim Merenkov.
My heartfelt thanks to my editor, Susan Swinwood, and to my agent, Larry Kirshbaum, both of whom patiently and brilliantly guided and shaped this novel through its many incarnations. I am deeply grateful, too, to Margaret Marbury, to Kathleen Carter at Goldberg McDuffie, to John and Fauzia Burke and the team at FSB Associates.
There is nothing like the bond between siblings, who know you best and keep you anyway. I hope Peter, Katherine, Regi and Jill know how much I love them and appreciate them daily. My girls, Emily and Lizzie, fill me with pride and happiness. I love and adore them beyond measure. As I do their father, Jeffrey. That will never change. Ever.
My parents are without question the strongest, most generous and loving human beings I have ever encountered. Their arms and hearts are open to all their children and grandchildren, but I fear I may have tested this more than the rest. My one hope is that they know how deep and profound my love is for both of them. Their marriage has lasted more than four decades and is the gold standard for how to do it right. Because of them, I believe in love.
And in the end that is what this book is about: love. Plain and simple.

Samantha
We haven’t had sex in eleven months. Just shy of a year. More time than it takes to grow a human being. I know it was eleven months ago for two reasons: one, it was on our wedding anniversary and on wedding anniversaries sex is a given and two, the next night was the incident with the family room light. I was reading a book about a missionary family in Africa I ordered after Oprah plugged it. I keep track of what I read on my calendar and plus I remember wishing it weren’t our wedding anniversary because I was at the good part but instead I had to pretend I didn’t know Bob was simply going through the motions required of husbands celebrating their wedding anniversaries.
So there we were the following night, in the second floor room that is, after the kitchen, the nerve center of our house. Bob was at the computer in the corner searching eBay for tennis rackets even though it’d end up costing more for one on eBay when you factor in the shipping and handling.
“Why don’t you just go to Sportmart?” I’d asked earlier in the evening.
“I’m looking for the old wooden ones,” he said without looking up. “The old Wilsons.”
I shrugged and went back to my book. I became so engrossed I remember looking up and feeling shock that no, I wasn’t in a civil war in the Congo, I was actually in my tidy three-story house on Chicago’s North Side. I remember smiling and thinking I love it when that happens. When a book’s so good you forget who and where you are.
I’d heard Bob sighing and pushing back from the family desk littered with half-finished homework, field-trip permission slips and school reminders on brightly colored paper. He crossed the room and flicked off the light as he left and it took me calling “hey” for him to come back, switch it back on with an “oh, sorry, I forgot you were there.” The worst part was he wasn’t doing it to prove some point. He truly forgot I was in the room with him. Which is exactly the point. We haven’t had sex since.
I know it seems like a silly thing, the light incident. But everyone has that final straw, that moment of clarity when you can’t put your finger on it, you just know there’s been a shift, a ripple in the atmosphere. The little things have added up and finally you can’t take it anymore. We’ve been quietly drifting into our own worlds for a while, Bob and I. I’ve just been ignoring it. Up until now. And I can’t take it anymore.
Just last week I got buttermilk for the pancakes I decided to make for no real reason. A special treat. I felt like making an effort for once. I got the buttermilk because I know Bob likes it when the pancakes are richer. Swanky pancakes he used to say in a tone that thanked me for going the extra mile back when something like buttermilk was considered going the extra mile. Last week not only did he not notice we were having something other than cold cereal, but when I carefully slid a stack from the spatula onto a plate waved me off and he said, “None for me. There’s that construction on Irving Park so we’ve gotta get going. C’mon, guys.”
Our eight-year-old sons, Jamie and Andrew, were still chewing when they grabbed their shin guards and soccer cleats. Sometimes I wonder if they really are twins, they’re so different in looks and personality. Jamie moves slowly and deliberately like he’s thought out every step he takes. Before breakfast he lined up his guards and shoes neatly by the backdoor. He put out two bottles of water, just to the side. He remembers the second one because Andrew never does. Jamie has freckles across his nose. His skin is so milky white you can see blue veins through it. His delicate features I think will translate into a refined face later on. He is small for eight and many people assume he is younger than his brother. Andrew is solid and stocky with thick brownish-red hair and a Dennis the Menace cowlick. He is exactly what you think of when you think of an eight-year-old boy: messy, unkempt, fearless. If he falls down and cuts his lip he spits the blood out and keeps going. He’s got a short attention span but he was tested for ADHD and came up clean. I’ve had to tell Jamie not to pick up after his brother, which he does on the sly because he can’t bear to see his twin in trouble. In trouble Jamie looks wounded. Andrew just tips his head back to roll his eyes at the ceiling and sighs at the futility of parental warnings. Nothing gets through to Andrew; everything gets through to Jamie.
“You know which field it is, right?” I ask Bob.
“I know which field,” he says, annoyed but pausing for a sneeze of a second while he considers double checking.
“I’m just saying. It’s changed this season and you haven’t been yet. Boys, you know which way to go, right? Take a right from the parking lot and go over the hill, remember? Show Dad the way, will you?”
“Bye, Mom!” Andrew calls out.
“Tie your shoes, Andrew. Bob, get him to tie them up before he gets out of the car. He’ll trip.”
“Yeah yeah yeah, tie your shoes,” Bob says. “Let’s go guys.”
The soccer ball is wedged between his arm and ribs. He drops the keys and bends like a pregnant woman to pick them up, careful not to tip the plastic grocery-store platter of doughnuts I got for halftime.
“Don’t forget the dry cleaning on the way back,” I tell him. “Hey—you want steak for dinner? I’m going to the market.”
“Yeah, fine, whatever. Jamie, get a move on, kiddo,” he says from the door to the garage.
Our backdoor opens to a stone path Bob and I laid when we first moved in almost twenty years ago. We were house poor but thrilled to own in what was then an up-and-coming neighborhood. We’d brought a boom box out back and played the only radio station that came in. Jazz music. I lost steam halfway through the job that was supposed to take only a day but stretched out over two whole weekends because the pavers we’d chosen were mismatched. There were countless trips to and from the outdoor landscaping center. The second Saturday I lay back on the grass in the sun listening to Miles Davis and Bob whistling then cursing. I remember staring up at the clouds like a kid, smiling at life. We had a great house, there was a light breeze and I was lying on land we owned, my bare feet on our grass. I remember shading my eyes to watch Bob with a mathematician’s concentration size up stone after stone over the shallow hole he had dug. His college T-shirt was new then. It was a Squeeze concert tee from when they played on campus. Our second or third date. Sophomore year. Boston College. 1981. After the concert we got drunk at a keg party at his friends’ off-campus house.
I was all over him back then. I thought it was sweet that he wanted to take it slow. He said I was different. He said he didn’t just want sex, he wanted to “go the distance.” He said he didn’t want to do anything to “mess us up.” So we took it slow. We fooled around but nothing major. We slept squeezed into my single bed under my Marimekko comforter to the smell of ramen noodles and beer. I remember wishing he weren’t so sloppy a kisser, but I figured it’d get better over time. It never did get better, but I figured there were more important things in life than having to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand after kissing him.
Our friends loved being with us because we weren’t the kind to couple off and make the single ones feel worse for being single. We were the fun ones. We went to parties and split up to talk with this friend and that—we didn’t need to be together every second. In fact, it was not uncommon for us to go a few days without seeing one another. Like during midterms. Still, we’d always know where the other one was. We had our schedules memorized. Sometimes I’d wait for him after his sports-medicine class and get coffee at the student center cafeteria filled with flyers with roommates, band members, used books, tutoring. We had so much in common there was very little learning curve. We were both from Chicago, we’d both gone to parochial high schools, we were both only children. My best friend—my freshman roommate, Lynn—became his best friend. We double-dated with Lynn and her various boyfriends. When she found herself in between boys Bob fixed her up with his friend Patel from Delhi, India, but she can be embarrassingly difficult if she doesn’t like someone and she didn’t like Patel and Bob swore he’d never fix her up again but he did because I begged him to and finally she clicked with Michael who she ended up marrying and Bob was best man and I was maid-of-honor and it was all perfect. Storybook. We got married when Lynn and Mike got back from their honeymoon. We laughed and said we were like Fred and Ethel and Lucy and Ricky. Then we’d argue about who got to be Lucy and Ricky and who had to be Fred and Ethel. I’d imagined we’d live in houses next door to one another. Lynn and I would quit our jobs to raise our kids together. We’d have coffee after carpooling. Bob would play weekly pickup games with Mike and they’d talk about how cool their wives were. I imagined Bob and me spooning every night like we’d done in my dorm room. I wanted the white-picket fence. I was sure we’d have children, but at the time, being so young, I felt indifferent about it.
But somewhere in there I had doubts. I began to worry on the honeymoon actually. We were happy in the Caribbean, Jet Skiing, parasailing, snorkeling, sunset booze cruises with other honeymooners, but I started to notice we were running out of things to talk about. Like we’d had a set amount of sentences in the bank and by the time the honeymoon rolled around that savings account was empty.
On the beach one afternoon, gloomy clouds turned day into night and dumped rain like they were punishing us. It happened so quickly we didn’t have time to rush to the car, so we waited it out under our rented Heineken umbrella that was as useless at shielding us from the tropical shower as it was from the brutal white sun.
“Are you upset about something?” I asked him. “You’ve been so quiet.”
He shrugged and stared out at the kidney clouds.
“What is it?” I asked him. “I’m freezing—will you pass me the extra towel in the bag?”
He was mechanical. His arm bent at the elbow, dipping into the bag on his right, clutching the towel, passing it across to me on his left like claw-a-stuffed-animal machines at supermarket entrances.
“It’s just …” he said, fixing his eyes at the clouds rolling away to refill themselves. “This is it.”
“Wait, what? What’re you talking about? Are you freaking out? Do you wish we hadn’t gotten married or something? Here, get under the towel.” I pressed closer into him. “Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m fine. Forget it. It’s stopping. Want to go back to the hotel?”
“What does ‘this is it’ mean?”
He said, “Just forget it, okay? Forget it,” with a rattlesnake’s venom, so I backed off. I was young and figured it’d all work itself out. I thought it was a gloomy rainy day kind of mood.
I did wonder why we weren’t in the bedroom more. Our room had a king-size bed with big fluffy pillows and equally soft robes in the closet. Turn-down service included rose petals sprinkled on the bed. The hotel catered to honeymooners. Lots of finger foods. Chocolate-covered strawberries. I chalked his mood up to being exhausted from the swirl of wedding planning. Bob’s always been an active guy so I knew going in it wouldn’t be a languid lie-on-the-hammock kind of trip. On the last night of the trip we went to a tiki-hut bar on the beach. We got a bucket of beer and listened to the steel-drum band, nodding to the beat, looking out at the ocean. Bob moved from beer to scotch. I’d only seen him drink scotch once when he was with his fraternity brothers at a homecoming party senior year. We watched the sunset. He jingled the ice cubes and drained the rest of his drink, holding up the glass to signal the waiter for another. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, looked into the mirror and thought, I think I just made a huge mistake. There was no one to talk to about this but I worried. I worried and worried and worried myself into a thick inertia that kept me canceling plans with Lynn and Mike for nearly two weeks after we’d gotten home. I hadn’t wanted Lynn reading my mind.
The stone path isn’t a straight line. We thought it would be prettier winding to the garage like a miniature Yellow Brick Road. Now we all use the direct route across the grass. Lynn and Mike bought a house two streets over in our tree-lined neighborhood that feels like the suburbs but is just a few minutes from downtown Chicago. The two- and three-story houses on our street are similarly designed with small squares of grass, front porches, patios, decks and grass out back. Two-car garages that open to a long narrow alley that requires a tap on the horn and a wave to someone waiting politely to back out. Barbecues with large spatulas and tongs. Brick chimneys. Wreaths and roping in winter. American flags in summer. Indian corn in the fall. On any given week there can be three, four visits from Boy Scouts selling wrapping paper or magazine subscriptions, clipboards held by crunchy-granola college kids wanting to save the planet, a local guy down on his luck offering to clean up leaves with a flimsy rake he carries with him from house to house. In the winter he comes to shovel snow off our short walkways up from the sidewalk. He says we can pay him whatever we think it’s worth.
By the late 1980s Mike and Bob started losing their hair and watched their midsections thicken. Bob got glasses, Mike got contacts. One day I looked at my husband and realized he looked old. Not old old but … old. Like a grown-up. It was hard to see the college kid I’d married. Lynn and I stayed in shape together, enrolling in the same health club up the street, the one with aerobics classes that were only just catching on around the country. We got the Jennifer Aniston haircut just like everyone else. Then we grew it long and straightened it. Just like everyone else.
“Bye, Mom.” Jamie turns to give me a hug before trailing off after Andrew and Bob to soccer. “Thanks for the pancakes.”
When the door slams shut I pour the buttermilk batter down the sink and run cold water to dilute it. Cammy shuffles in rubbing her eyes, smudging the leftover makeup she never takes off before bed. The cabinets bang open and closed. The jars and bottles on the door of the fridge clatter when she pushes it shut with her foot, balancing milk in one hand, a bowl of cereal in the other.
“It smells like pancakes in here,” she says. She shimmies onto a high counter stool and hunches over the bowl, shoveling food into her mouth while she stares at the cartoon riddles on the back of the box, tipping it back to read the upside-down answers at the bottom.
Cammy’s most beautiful in the morning, still soft from sleep. Her skin is olive-colored and gets deeper, more Mediterranean looking, in summer. It’s flawless. She is petite with bird wrists and a graceful neck. Bee-stung lips. Large brown eyes. Her natural hair color was a deep rich brown before she dyed it. It looked like a caramel apple. Wavy and thick with bangs she used to trim so they didn’t catch on her eyelashes like they do now. She looks younger than sixteen. Until she layers on makeup that’s more like face paint. Hard teenage edges build up when she gets dressed. Her black clothes look like Halloween costumes.
She finishes her cereal and, climbing down from her stool, she almost trips, milk almost spills. She is all limbs, lanky, knobby knees, flat chest, unsure of where her arms and hands should go when she’s standing. Her lashes curl and her teeth are straight without having had braces. Now in the grip of the rebellious stage, she is fighting anything attractive about herself. She shrinks if she thinks someone’s staring at her and is horrified when someone says, “Wow, Cammy Friedman? I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen you since you were this big. Look at you.”
When Cammy was young she had a natural impulse to hug. Like Jamie now does. When she was a little girl I was still in the habit of crying on Mother’s Day. One year—I can’t remember how old she was—I’d thought Cammy and Bob were down making me breakfast in bed but then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I sniffed back my tears and turned to her, she put her arms around me and patted me on the back saying, It’s okay, Mommy. Then she quietly left me to blow my nose and screw a smile onto my face in preparation for the lumpy pancakes coming up the stairs on a rickety wicker breakfast tray with a handful of wilting dandelions bobbing in a jelly jar.
About a decade later and she flinches at any human contact. When forced into a hug she bends forward so her shoulders and arms are the only things touching, keeping the rest of her body as far away as possible. It annoys Bob but then everything seems to annoy Bob these days.
We see things differently, Bob and I. I look at people’s eyes. Sometimes, not often but sometimes, I’ll catch the eye of a stranger by accident and there’s a feeling of depth or recognition, a strange familiarity like we’re the same breed of dog. Usually it’s people who have the same eyes I do: wide set and round and a shade of dark brown that deepens to match my pupils when I get upset.
But Bob sees everyone as feet. As in, “You mean Eddie with the Hush Puppies?” And I’ll say, “No, Eddie with the penny loafers you think have holes in the soles,” because I speak shoe now too.
To Bob, crowds are simply approaching feet. When he walks down the street he looks down. Nikes. Flip-flops. Manolos. Payless knockoffs. In winter, Uggs and L.L.Bean. When it’s someone in sneakers his eyes follow each step like it’s a beautiful woman he’s checking out but really he’s always watching heel impact. He majored in sports medicine. We had dinner with Mike and Lynn and toasted his new job at Nike and for a while he was bubbling over at the end of every day, telling me about how he was working on things that would make a tremendous difference for the next generation of runners. Somewhere in that first year he stopped bubbling and started drinking. Not too much but just enough to amplify his growing cynicism. Lynn said once that it was weird to see someone in their twenties so jaded, but I got all defensive and she dropped it. She and I both knew she was right, though.
Bob’s business is sport shoes, as they’re called in the industry, but mostly I tell people he designs sneakers. Before he started working at the top sport-shoe company in the world I never knew “shoe architecture” existed. Of course I’d read somewhere about how Nike started with a running coach and a waffle iron, but beyond that I was ignorant of all that went in to building a cross trainer.
The feet in Bob’s world can be divided into two categories: healthy and unhealthy. Healthy means equal wear and tear through from the ball to the heel. Unhealthy is everything else and to Bob most feet are unhealthy. So he speaks in declarations that sound like fortune cookies at a foot-fetish restaurant.
“Whoever thought of taking flip-flops mainstream?” he asked his bewildered dinner partner at a school fund-raiser.
And:
“That guy has no idea that in ten years he’ll be seeing a podiatrist for collapsed arches,” he said to me while we were Christmas shopping at Old Orchard Mall.
And:
“In a perfect world, we’d outlaw high heels and everyone would wear orthotics.”
He said that to the principal at Cammy’s school after a tense meeting in which the headmaster told us she was on probation again. The principal, Mr. Black, looks like the doctors used forceps when he was born. His pinched face matches his prim boarding-school Oliver Twist personality. I can’t stand him mainly because he seems not to be able to stand me. Or my family. Even before Cammy was in trouble, Mr. Black acted like we were a problem. Like we were high maintenance. When Cammy was in first grade we’d gone in to talk to him about moving her to another class with a more patient teacher and he started shaking his head halfway through our request and held up his hand. He said, “It’s a poor sportsman who blames the equipment.” I wanted to wring his neck. We tried talking to him about Cammy’s special needs and he waved us off like it was all bullshit. Bob said, “The kid’s in first grade … what could it matter?” And Mr. Black leaned across his desk and hissed, “Exactly.” Bob said, “No, I mean, what’s the big deal about her going into Miss Landis’s class. We hear she’s great with—” But before Bob could finish, Mr. Black stood and said, “We’ll see what we can do.” We were dismissed. Being new parents we actually thought he’d come through, but now that I know him I know he didn’t give us a second thought. Son of a bitch.
So, years later, Mr. Black was walking us to the front door on his way up to a class he needed to audit and I knew he was trying to mask the click of my shoes in the empty hallway when he halfheartedly asked Bob how work was going. He made me feel embarrassed to have such loud footsteps when they’re just footsteps, for Christ’s sake. Bob had us standing inside the front door for nearly five minutes talking about the latest in heel air cushioning until I saved the impatient principal by taking Bob’s arm and saying, “Honey, we’ve got to get going.” I purposely avoided what I knew would be grateful headmaster eyes because after all he’d just slammed my daughter and anyway he’d always been a son of a bitch. I guess, then, I was saving myself from having to hear Bob’s foot philosophy. Again.
“Jesus Christ, what’re we going to do?” I say on the way to the car. “I swear to God I honestly don’t know what else we can do. We’ve grounded her a million times. I’ve tried to get her to open up to me … she’s just always so angry. Why the hell is she so angry all the time?”
“Allen Edmonds shoes,” Bob says, reaching for the keys he’d given me to hold because he insists they make his gait uneven. Four keys. Like he’s running a marathon at the Olympics.
“The guy’s got good taste in footwear, I’ll give him that,” he says.
“Bob. Focus. What’re we going to do about Cammy?”
“He’s being way too harsh,” he says, starting the car and adjusting the rearview mirror even though he was the one who drove us there. “Probation? For ignoring a teacher?”
“I swear to God I can’t believe it. How’d we get to this? And Bob, she didn’t just ignore Mrs. Cummings. You know that death stare she gives. That Goth stare is crazy scary. I guarantee you she was clamping her jaw shut and doing that stare. I’d send her to the headmaster, too, if I were her teacher. When that look comes over her it’s like a cloud or something. And that’s not even the issue. She’s been cutting class. She’s smoking on school property. What the hell? I’ve never smelled smoke on her, have you?”
“I think it’s a little much to suspend someone for a death stare,” he says, looking to the right then the left before inching out of the school parking lot. “And kids cut class from time to time. Give her detention, for God’s sake, but suspension?”
Right and left again a second time. You’d think he was pulling onto the Daytona Speedway the way he looks for cars before moving. Like they’re going to whiz at him at triple-digit speeds and send him spinning into the boards.
“He’s not suspending her,” I say. “He’s putting her on probation. You’re fine on this side, by the way.”
“Suspension, probation, same thing. They both look bad on her school file.”
“Exactly my point,” I say. “It’s green, that’s why everyone’s honking.”
“Will you just let me drive?”
“All I’m saying is we’ve got to be a united front when we get home.” I turn in my seat to face him because I can’t bear to watch him drive. He’s terrible behind the wheel and the worst part is he has no idea. Completely clueless. Cars will slow down alongside him, the drivers’ faces gnarled in anger, mouthing swears, but he doesn’t see them.
“What’s the party line?” he asks.
“She’s grounded, for starters. No computer. No cell.”
“How’s she going to call if something gets canceled or she needs to be picked up from somewhere?” he asks.
“What good is taking away the computer if she still has her cell? All she does is text. We’ve got to take it if the grounding’s going to have any impact. Besides, what’s so wrong with her finding a pay phone if there’s an emergency or she needs a ride? I don’t know why you’re worried about that part of it anyway since I’m the one who does all the picking up.”
“What the?”
“When was the last time you picked up Cammy or the boys from anything other than a random weekend soccer game? They’re your kids, too, Bob.”
He looks ahead and I find myself wondering how upset I’d be if he died. I’d be worried about the kids growing up without a father, but me? I don’t know that I’d feel much.
“I think it’s about the adoption,” I say. My stomach twisting up tells me this is not a good time to bring it up, but there’s never a good time to bring it up.
“Oh, my God, so we’re blaming everything that goes wrong on the adoption? Are we going to dredge this up for the rest of our lives? Jesus, let it go.”
“You want to know what I think? I think most of everything that’s gone wrong with her is because of how she found out about the adoption.”
“Oh, please …”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. To tell a little girl the reason why she feels like she looks different from her brothers is because she’s not our ‘real’ child? Honestly? What the hell, Bob. How many years ago was that—ten years? No, eleven. For the last eleven years she’s been feeling like an outcast in her own family.”
“Stop. It’s not like that and you know it,” he says. I feel our speed increasing and we are uncharacteristically in sync with the other cars along Lake Shore Drive.
“Oh, yeah? What’s it like then? Huh? You’re saying you didn’t blurt it out? You’re forgetting that we had a plan … that we were going to talk to her together at an age-appropriate time like the books say? You just plunge in without me and say something without thinking it through and then you scratch your head in amazement like you’re surprised she remembers it word for word after all these years and then you sit here all smug and tell me it wasn’t like that? It was exactly like that, Bob. Exactly.”
Bob slows down and once again cars are swerving around us. A guy in a Prius gives Bob the bird and I wonder whether it’s because we’re the enemy now in our hateful gas-guzzling SUV or that Bob is driving under the speed limit or maybe just maybe he sees me spitting angry words at this man in my car, this man I no longer recognize, and he flips him off for me.
“Things have gotten so out of hand with her,” I say, backing off the adoption subject like I always do. “I don’t even know where to start. I put my finger on one leak and another one spouts.”
“I know,” he says. He’s lying. He doesn’t know. At least not when it comes to the kids, and frankly I’m sick of hearing how awful work is every single day. The boys crave time with him. Lately it’s taken me nagging him to get him to spend any kind of time with them. We ride the rest of the way in silence, which is fine by me.
I look at him and honestly? Honestly I am not in the least bit attracted to him. So that brings me back to my point:
Not one of my friends wants sex. Seriously. Not one. Well, not any of the ones with kids. I look around at other forty-something moms and they fall into two categories. One group has surrendered to the uniform of motherhood: sensible shoes, mom-jeans, sweatshirts, bulky full-length gray Michelin Man parkas in winter, shapeless old T-shirts in summer.
The second group is the pilates group. They’re hot. They wear jeans their daughters covet. They have defined biceps and flat tummys. Oh. And abs. Six-pack abs. Working out is a full-time job for them. It’s like there was a secret memo to do yoga, be in the best shape of their lives and shop in stores that carry tight T-shirts with plunging necklines, but the irony is there’s nowhere to go with it since no one’s having sex. I love a good crisply laundered white shirt, button-down like a man’s but formfitting. My jeans aren’t too tight but they aren’t baggy. My favorite shoes are a pair of old Gucci loafers I splurged on years ago when Bob got a great Christmas bonus. The best buy I’ve ever made: they’re well made so I’ve never had to have them resoled. The leather’s buttery and camel colored. They go with every pair of pants I own. Mostly though I wear skirts. I’ve never understood why more women don’t wear skirts. At school pickup not so long ago, Ann Slevick looked me up and down and said, “You’re always so put together,” and I thanked her but she didn’t smile. So the next day I made a point of wearing my jeans with the holes in them.
Sometimes at night when I’m changing into Gap boxers and an old Mount Rushmore T-shirt with holes and yellowed armpits, I inspect myself in our full-length mirror. I’ve got a decent hairstyle: that shoulder-length layered cut everyone seems to have. I haven’t overcolored it, so the brown looks natural, which is lucky. My ass isn’t so bad. Not for a forty-five-year-old. I’ve seen worse. It’s the front that bugs me. I hate my stomach. Lying down it feels flat if I don’t run my hands along my hips. It actually feels like it used to be before the boys. So all in all I suppose my body hasn’t started the middle-age decline yet, but it’s only because I’m tall and my limbs are long and there’s something deceiving in that. In old class pictures I would be the one standing on the side of the bleachers where all the kids were neatly sitting in rows. Our teacher stood on the other side. I cursed my height and wished I could stop shooting up like the Jolly Green Giant. It felt like a creepy magic trick, the way I grew taller and taller. It felt like Guinness World Records tall. My classmates looked like Lilliputians to me and I hunched over, folding into my chest to try to compensate. Like Cammy, I had knobby knees and clumsy bruises. With no spatial reasoning I found myself cutting the corner into another room, my whole right side hitting the door frame on the way in. I finally stopped growing at five feet nine inches and boys started reaching and then passing me and all was forgiven, but I still have to remind myself to sit up straight.
“Have you guys heard about all these sexless marriages?” I ask my book club. We’ve been together for about five years now. It started with me and Lynn and Ginny from down the street. Ginny’s sweet. Maybe too sweet, but still. She’s thirty, fifteen years younger than me. She and her husband, Don, live in a bright green house everyone calls the Traffic Light. She’s the one I call when I need another set of hands for something around the house. Like hanging the drapes I sewed. She’s always home. While I never set out to, every once in a while I end up talking to her about life and I’m reminded why I like her so much. I think we bonded when she left her job as an investment consultant at a downtown banking firm about four, five years ago. Around that time on a summer night in white wicker chairs on my front porch we talked about what we really wanted out of life. I said I wasn’t sure but I knew it hadn’t happened yet. I remember this: she seemed startled. When she said, “But you have children,” I realized why. I used to think the same way. That life would make sense once we had children. Ginny mentioned she and Don had been trying to have a baby. She talked about finding something else in her life. Something with purpose. Something she could feel proud of. I told her what I wish someone had told me. I told her not to be in such a hurry to have children. I told her sometimes it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. She nodded and sipped her wine. There wasn’t a hint, even a twinge of judgment from her. I knew this was something she’d share with Don in bed that night. “She doesn’t really love her children,” she’d marvel. “I never would’ve guessed it.”
Most people I know think the sun rises and sets on their children. They orbit around them like planets. So it was a big deal to feel open enough with someone other than Lynn about something so personal. I told Lynn we needed to let her into our friendship. She balked at first but after a little while, months maybe, she admitted Ginny’s pretty great.
So book club started with the three of us. Then Ginny asked if she could bring a friend she works out with, Leanne, who is kind of a pain in the ass but I don’t mind her. She’s funny but she doesn’t seem like she has a whole lot of depth. Or intelligence. I’ve always suspected Leanne cracks the bindings on her books to make it look like she’s not only read them, she’s studied them. She might even dog-ear them then flatten out the folded triangles on random pages. Teresa Wdowiak came in along the way—I can’t remember who brought her. Then Sally Flanders cornered Lynn when Lynn was weeding some years ago and asked if our book club was accepting new members and if so could she be one of them. What choice did we have? There’s no stopping Sally Flanders.
There are eight of us here tonight, which is uncommon. Typically it’s four or five but we’re reading The Kite Runner this month and everyone wants to weigh in. Last month someone recommended A Hundred Years of Solitude, but no one got past the first fifty pages so we canceled. Actually that’s not true. Kerry Kendricks read it and fought the cancellation, but she’s a show-off and no one wanted to sit there and listen to her lecturing us about South American literature.
We’re in Sally Flanders’s living room. I hate being in Sally Flanders’s living room. It’s like walking into Pier One through a curtain of the smell of potpourri and scented candles. I’m pretty sure I see a Glade plug-in across Sally’s living room, next to a grandfather clock that’s got an irregular tick. Sally favors floral design and needlepoint animal pillows. She tells us where to sit—that’s weird enough as it is—based on what pillows are there. She calls them her “cute critters.” Tonight I’ve got “Lucky Lassie” wedged between my lower back and the spires on the back of this, the most uncomfortable chair in the world. Lynn is rolling her eyes at something Leanne’s saying about the snickerdoodles she brought—she always wants a medal for her cooking, saying stuff like, Oh, it’s so easy, and then rattles on about how much trouble she went to for all of us. Special ingredients blah blah blah. Her cooking’s not even very good and Lynn usually finds a way to point that out. Tonight she eats one tiny bite of the cookie and leaves the rest on her empty plate, which she puts on the coffee table where Leanne’s sure to see it. I don’t know why Lynn lets Leanne get to her.
“I just read this article in MORE magazine or something—maybe it was O—that said forty-year-old women are just getting started,” I say. “It said something like we’re secure with our bodies and vocal about our needs. I can’t remember the exact wording but that was the gist.”
The laughter interrupts me.
“What?” I look around at them. “I’m being totally serious. Don’t you worry about this?”
“No, she’s right,” Lynn says. “There was something on the Today show about it yesterday. They showed one couple who had sex on their honeymoon and that was it. Guess how long they’ve been married? Just guess. You won’t, so I’ll tell you. Twelve years. Twelve years and no sex. I don’t know how she pulled it off, but I’ll have what she’s having.”
More laughs.
“What’s all the fuss about anyway?” asks Ginny. “We still have sex.”
“You’re in your thirties!” Lynn says. “Of course you’re still having sex. Wait’ll you turn forty.”
Paula, who complains anytime the conversation becomes social, mutters “off topic” in a tsking tone, hoping it will steer us back to book talk, but it rarely does. She usually sits there with her arms crossed and her lips tight. Tonight, though, she weighs in: “I’m so tired all the time.”
Everyone stops and looks at her. It’s an unspoken assumption that Paula’s asexual. She’s got a Dorothy Hamill haircut and what a doctor would definitely term morbid obesity. I’ve never seen her with anyone but her three-legged English bulldog, Freddy. I think Paula is about fifty pounds away from being housebound. She’s all business but I kind of like her for that. In the blackout a few summers ago she organized a candle drive so the elderly neighbors would be okay. She puts together a neighborhood newsletter on her computer. Birth announcements, who’s moving in or out. Want ads you can e-mail to her. A ten-speed for sale. Babysitters needed. Does anyone know a good plumber? That sort of thing. She’s the kind of person neighborhoods don’t realize they need. She’s the one who goes to the monthly Neighborhood Watch meetings and writes up safety information we already have. Lock your doors. Keep your front light on all night to discourage burglars. I respect Paula. In an emergency I like knowing she’s at arm’s length in her house with gray vinyl siding she hoses off every spring.
“I don’t know what you’re worried about.” Ginny looks at me and rolls her eyes. “You’re always so together, you know? Like you’ve got it all figured out. Plus, you and Bob are like the golden couple. I bet you have sex, like, every other day.”
I open my mouth to say, “Are you crazy? You can’t be serious!” but Lynn interrupts.
“As far as Michael knows, I have my period every day of the month,” she says. The laughter bounces off the cuddly critters or whatever they are, mixing with advice for what to say to get off the sex hook and then a juicy story about a sex-addict husband of someone we all know very well, according to Kerry Kendricks, who, when Lynn asked her if she still has sex, says:
“Who has the time?” Kerry Kendricks is on every committee at school and not once have I heard her called by just her first name.
Ginny: “Let me ask you something.” She looks at me. “Do you all think it’s the women or the men? Do women want sex and the men don’t or is it the other way around?”
Everyone’s talking at once so it doesn’t matter that I don’t answer. I don’t tell them that neither of us wants sex. Only Lynn knows I haven’t stopped trying with Bob because I think it could still save us from being total strangers to one another. I haven’t stopped trying for sex even though I don’t want it any more than Bob does.
The next morning after the kids are off to school Lynn pulls up a kitchen chair and shakes a packet of Sweet’n Low into the tea I put in front of her.
“Before I forget, will you sponsor me for the breast cancer run?” I slide the form to her. “I know, I know. I swear this is the last time I’ll hit you up this year.”
“Breast cancer, Go Green, Save the Whales …” She sighs, fitting her name into the allotted space. “Sheesh, is there anything you don’t raise money for? Here you go.”
“Thanks, and for the record it was a Greenpeace fund-raiser not Save the Whales and it was about ten years ago.” I laugh. “Thanks for this. I really do appreciate it.”
“You should’ve taken it to book club last night,” she says. “I would’ve loved to have seen how much Paula gave, since she loves breasts more than anyone, I bet.”
“I don’t think she’s a lesbian,” I say. “You heard her.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Lynn says.
“So how about what Ginny said?” I settle across the table from her and just to make it seem like I’m bringing it up casually, I brush nonexistent crumbs off the table.
“What, you mean how they still have tons of sex?”
“Yeah, that,” then I pretend to remember something else Ginny said, “Oh, and then there was that comment about me … what was it?”
Lynn narrows her eyes at me. “You actually think I’m buying your little show? You really want to talk about Ginny’s sex life?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I barely finish the sentence without laughing. “Okay, okay. You’re right, you’re right.”
This is the best part about Lynn. She’s pretty much always right. The worst part about Lynn is that she knows it.
“You know why everyone thinks you’re so together? Because you act like you’re so together,” Lynn says. She’s blowing on her tea, waiting for it to cool.
“Everyone really thinks I’m so together?”
“Yup.”
“I’m not so together.”
“I know that and you know that but I’m telling you, people think you’re so together.”
“Wow.”
“Yup—” she takes a sip “—little do they know. Shoot! There’s the recycling truck and I forgot to put the bins out. Got to go.”
“Don’t forget dinner tomorrow!” I call out to her. At a school fund-raiser/silent auction last spring, I bid on dinner for two at a new sushi place downtown thinking it’d be a good date-night thing to do with Bob. SushiMax is the hardest reservation to get according to Chicago Magazine. I forgot all about it until they called to reconfirm, and of course Bob found some excuse to get out of it until I came out and asked if it was just that he didn’t want to go and he shrugged and said, “You know how I feel about sushi,” so I asked Lynn and told Bob he had kid duty.
I have been acting. Of course. I haven’t thought of it as acting but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. But doesn’t everyone put on a good face? Is anybody my age really happy? I’ve stretched my mouth into a smile for so long it’s become natural. And sometimes it is natural … with the kids, especially when they were smaller. With Lynn. I know there are other times, too, I just can’t think of them off the top of my head. Oh. After yoga, when I make it to Imogen’s class. That’s another genuine smile. On the rare nights just Bob and I have dinner, it’s so silent I restrain myself from upending the kitchen table just to jolt us out of this stupor.
Bob once said, “The only constant in our marriage is the edge of the cliff we’re hanging on to, killing time until we tire ourselves out and give in to our inevitable collapse.”
It was fairly early in our marriage. We were reading in bed. We’d been married probably three years by then. I think it was during the fertility nightmare, but that’s a whole other story. I remember it was summer and all the windows were open because the air conditioner didn’t work. When we’d moved in, Bob had said, priority number one was central air, but the months ticked by and two, three years later there we were with a broken window unit and air so humid I was sweating just lying there.
“Listen to this,” he said. I put my book down to wipe my palms on the white sheet while he read a sentence aloud.
“‘The only constant in our marriage …’” He recited more while I was staring up at the ceiling thinking a ceiling fan might not be such a bad idea after all.
“Are you listening?” he asked. Then he read it again and that time I heard it.
I turned on to my side and flattened the pillow so I could see him, his expression. I remember wondering if he was simply impressed with the writing—sometimes he read passages aloud to anyone within earshot just to marvel at the sentence structure. Or was it something else? He’d put the book down and was staring into the room so I only had his profile. Then, almost to himself, he said:
“So I guess things could be worse.”
I waited for a laugh but there had been no sarcasm in his tone. It was as if he was comforted knowing at least we were doing better than the couple hanging on to the cliff, if only a little bit better. That’s the way he said it. Like he hadn’t realized anything could be worse than what we were living through.
I couldn’t think of what to say. I remember struggling to find words but none came. After a few minutes of dead silence, both of us lying there, our books splayed facedown across our chests, he said, “We should get a ceiling fan.” He paused to consider the idea. “I don’t think they’re that expensive. It wouldn’t be so hard to install. Probably only take me a day. Victor could come over and help me with the electric. What do you think?”
I’d shut my eyes and when he glanced over for my opinion I pretended I’d fallen asleep. I faked a few random muscle twitches. I heard him sigh then felt him shift to reach the lamp. His book fell on the floor, more shifting, and I thought maybe he’d gently lift my book off my chest, but soon there was snoring. I realized I’d been tensing every muscle to stay still until I had the night to myself to think about what Bob had just said. It was a bombshell, no doubt about it.
Around the time my eyes adjusted to the dark—I remember this part because I was staring at the ticky-tacky drapes I’d never gotten around to replacing, when it hit me. It wasn’t a bombshell. Things could be worse but not by much. I just hadn’t wanted to see it.
But here’s the rub: once he said it out loud, after that night, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I still can’t.

Cammy
This is so stupid. I’ll read this back later and it’ll be totally gay and I’ll just end up throwing it out but whatever. I’m supposed to be writing an essay on who I think is the most helpful to the environment in today’s world but fuck that. I have no idea who’s good for the environment and I don’t care anyway. Nothing’s ever going to stop the planet from going to shit so what’s a stupid essay supposed to do but show the waste of time put into writing it. Oh, and by the way, it wastes paper on top of it so isn’t that just perfect. Write about the environment and kill a tree in the process.
Will came by the other night at like two in the morning. He climbed up the tree that’s right up along the house—the tree Dad says is wrecking the foundation. I told him my mom would shit bricks if she caught him in my room but he said “she should just chillax. It’s not like we’re doing anything.” I wanted to say “oh, so putting your dick in my mouth isn’t doing anything? Then get the hell out.” But I didn’t say it and he left as soon as I finished.
This whole thing with Will makes me feel small like I want to crawl into a cave. Or onto my mom’s lap. Like I want to be a little kid again and this time do it right. I look at faces in every crowd like I’m gonna see myself staring back at me but that’s so ridiculous. Like I’m really going to see a mirror image of myself. This whole thing is ridiculous but I can’t stop looking at faces in crowds. At the mall. In line for a movie. It’s just weird knowing my real mother is out there somewhere, maybe looking for me too. I bet she’s beautiful. Graceful. Elegant. I wonder if she regrets having me. I wonder if she regrets giving me up. I picture her out there searching for me, trying to find me. Like she knows she made a terrible mistake. Pinning up Have You Seen This Girl posters on telephone poles. It was probably an impulse. Maybe it was me crying too hard. She couldn’t handle the pressure. She had postpartum depression I bet and she didn’t know where to turn so she gave me up to have some peace and quiet. I bet she changed her mind the next day but it was too late. Samantha and Bob Friedman took me away and didn’t tell her where. And she’s lived with a hole in her heart ever since. In my mind I find her and she pats her lap and even though I’m much too big for it, I crawl onto her. I want to start over with her. From the very beginning.
My parents are freaking out about me. They think I can’t hear them through the walls but in this house you can hear everything from everywhere so it’s like they think I’m deaf or something. Maybe that’s part of it like maybe they know my birth mom was hard of hearing and so I probably am too but they don’t want to tell me. Who cares. Last night I heard them through my iPod. They’re all Cammy this and Cammy that like they aren’t screwed up enough they’ve got to use me to keep from going insane in their boring lives.
I’m never getting married. Maybe I’ll be gay. In front of his friends Will calls me a dyke and I know it’s because I don’t have boobs yet, not like the sparkly cheerleader types that suck off the football players but I wouldn’t want boobs if that put me in their category. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be that pretty. Those girls can pick and choose and not have to worry about grades or being ignored. They’re never ignored. The guys all treat them like they’re made of glass, they’re all gentle and nice to them like they’re Princess Diana. Or no, idiot, she’s dead. So not Princess Diana but someone alive who’s like that, looked up to. Like Missy Delaney.
Missy Delaney’s the first one who said I don’t match my family. That’s what she said in her squeaky ferret voice: you don’t match your family. Like I’m a purse and they’re the shoes. It was like eight years ago I think and because she was around other people she made it sound like it was a compliment like I’m prettier than my family or something but she and I both knew it wasn’t meant to be nice. I think she was the first person who didn’t like me. And I really don’t know why she picked me not to like.
Now I get it. I mean, if we met today I wouldn’t blame her. It’s like we’re from different planets. Different galaxies. When I dyed my hair black she told everyone I was a dyke in training and then when I got my nose pierced she said I passed my graduation and was now a card-carrying lesbian. Not the lipstick kind, either, she squeaked to all her little worshippers. I can’t wait to forget her after graduation.
I’m totally used to the fake cough–blow job–fake cough thing they all do when I walk into a classroom. I’m used to everyone laughing. I’m even used to the knob of tongue pushing back and forth from the inside of Max’s cheek every time I walk by him to my desk. I mean, it used to bug me but whatever. They used to call me Marilyn Manson but then Monica said at least Marilyn Manson gets laid and they shut up after that. I hate my life.
Monica’s the only one who gets it. She moved here in time for the start of freshman year but since no one knew her from elementary school she had like zero friends. The thing about Monica is she doesn’t care if anyone likes her. If she does she hides it pretty well. Even then, two years ago when we were fourteen, she was talking about stuff like self-expression and artistic integrity. She’d sleep over and we’d stay up late talking about the stuff I think about all the time. Like how what we look like on the outside never matches what’s inside. She goes well, at least I’m not a hypocrite. I wear all black because that’s who I am inside: dark. I don’t buy into all this shiny happy shit. We went shopping one weekend back then and I spent all my allowance on new clothes kind of like hers even though I wasn’t copying her. I was just ready for a change. She still thinks I copy her but I so don’t. Her parents aren’t around much … I’ve never seen them … so I think she likes having someone to talk to about everything. Like at school and stuff.
It’s like my parents don’t care what I think. It’s more like they care who I come from, which figures since that’s kind of what I care about, too. I know I don’t belong to Samantha and Bob anymore. It’s so hilarious how me calling them by their first names makes them all mad. Like “oooh, Cammy’s acting up again” when it’s just their own first names. Everybody else not related to them calls them by their first names so why not me. I didn’t mean for the boys to start doing it so I can’t really do it to their faces anymore. It’s not the boys’ fault I don’t belong. They don’t care what color my hair is or what’s pierced or how much makeup I wear, they treat me normal. Like I’m their sister. I don’t want them to find out about me for a while. They’re too young for it now and whatever, like they’d really care anyway? The only people who notice the difference are Robert—Bob. Dad. Whatever.—And me. Oh, and Missy Delaney.
Here’s a poem I wrote today in class and I think it sucks but whatever. I’ll put it here for posterity, in case I blow my brains out or something. In case I go all Columbine on everyone.
Different
He looked at me with eyes that said “wow I thought you figured it all out by now”
Like I’m so dumb it never occurred to me. Puzzle pieces fitting together at last. Mystery solved only not that day.
That day felt small and dark like a cave I couldn’t climb out of. The solving of the mystery only recognized after emerging from the cave of childhood that ended there in the car on the way to soccer on a day that started like every other one before it.
The answers lying in front of me there, in the middle of growing up. I take this with me like a rock I picked up on the beach and put in my pocket so I can remember the sand even when I’m home from the vacation. Even when I’m under snow. Even when I’m in a dark cave.
That’s my stupid-ass poem.

Samantha
We’re on our way home from a new couple’s house. We met them at an open house at the boys’ school. It was set up so the parents attended mini versions of the classes their kids take and this was lunch hour so we were in the cafeteria standing over a plastic tray of grocery-store crudités with wilting lettuce garnish, dried-out baby carrots and blue-cheese dip that had a film over the top of it. That night Dave and Susan Strong seemed terrific. He looked about as happy to be there as Bob was, but she was upbeat, and because they are new parents she peppered me with questions about school. When the bell rang we shook hands and I said we should get together sometime. The next day I got an e-mail from her with a list of dates they were available and I thought it was wonderful…. I’d been planning on following up, too, because I hate those empty offers. Finally we nailed down a night. I was happy to be able to bring someone new into the mix. I’ve been trying to shake things up and what’s pathetic is that I thought something like having dinner with new people would shake things up. It took an act of Congress to get Bob to go. He never wants to go out, period.
In the car on the way home from dinner Bob turns to me at a red light and says, “Please tell me we don’t have to get together with them again. He wears man-clogs, for God’s sake. Even male nurses don’t wear those anymore. They’re the most dysfunctional couple I’ve ever seen in my life. Did you hear what he said to her about the chicken?”
“I couldn’t believe it. In front of everyone. Did you see her face when he got to the part about how she always screws up dinner?”
“They must’ve been in a fight,” Bob says. In the glow of the brake lights ahead of us, I can see Bob’s tongue sucking food particles out of his teeth. I look away when he nibbles at something he worked loose.
“Yeah, but to have it in front of people they barely know? I wanted to die. So did everyone else. You know that was a red light, right,” I say.
“It was yellow when I went through it. You want to drive?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Did you hear him when he said, ‘Oh God, not this again,’ with that sneer when she said she had a great story about the principal at their last school?” Bob says.
“He’s a jerk,” I say. “I can’t stand either one of them. She’s racist, by the way. I don’t know if you caught that, but she might as well’ve had a white sheet over her head.”
“We’re done with them, right?” Bob asks. He’s at a green light but he’s sitting there as if it’s red.
“You can go, it’s green. Yeah, we’re done with them. Boy oh boy, they bicker bicker bicker. Let’s call them the Bickersons.”
We both laugh and maybe it’s because we both realize it’s been a long time since we laughed together that Bob reaches across for my hand and gives it a squeeze before placing it back at the two-o’clock position on the wheel. Ten and two … he rarely drives with one hand.
I’d thought Dave and Susan Strong would be different. Secretly I’m kind of sick of our group of couple-friends. Except for Lynn and Mike, of course. I feel bad saying this especially because I used to be just like this, but to most, if not all, of the people I know, raising children is the greatest gift in the whole wide world. Leanne. Kerry Kendricks. Sally. If you ask how someone’s doing they’ll answer with something their kid’s just said or done. Nothing about themselves. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself and realize I’m just like them. I hate that. Hate. I’m sick of my brain going to mush, of lying in bed wondering what I’ll make for their school lunches the next day. Or whether I need to pick up another case of juice boxes at Costco. I’m sick of car pool. I’m sick of being the devoted mom. I’m tired of shuffling the kids to piano, guitar (Andrew just started weekly lessons), soccer, tutoring. The homework they bring home takes an ungodly amount of time and effort. Now that the time has changed we leave in the dark and we get home in the dark. I’ve tried making good square homemade meals but lately I’ve been throwing in frozen chicken nuggets and heating up canned peas. The kids seem fine with it (Chicken nuggets! Wow! Thanks! only makes me feel guilty for feeding them crap). But there’s not enough time. This is what we all talk about. Everyone I know. This is it. This is what our lives are.
We talk about those women who leave their kids in day care or with nannies while they work full-time. Why have kids? someone will say. And we all nod like it’s so true, it’s so selfish of them.
They’ll regret going back to work when their kids grow up to be delinquents.
Having coffee and pie at a tacky café with sticky plastic tablecloths, someone will mention Dale Harmon who was left alone a lot and ended up accidentally shooting himself with his father’s gun. Someone always mentions Dale Harmon. No one ever let their kids play over at the Harmons’ house because everyone knew Evers, Dale’s father, had guns. So there you go: if his parents hadn’t been working all the time Dale would still be alive. That was the prevailing thought. But I’m not quite sure Dale’s mother, Tally Harmon, was working at the time. I think she might have gone back to work after Dale died. To get out of the house. The Harmons’ house stayed on the market for ten months before they had a buyer from out of town who wasn’t familiar with the family. No one in town wanted to move into a house a child died in. But the thinking was, If Tally had been a good mother she would’ve been there. Once she went back to work no one really saw her anymore. I was convinced that secretly she was relieved to have an excuse to go back to work.
I used to be a pharmaceutical rep. Right out of college I got a job with a company that’d just introduced an antidepressant TIME Magazine called “The Pill That Changed Our Minds.” I was part of a massive hiring and nearly every one of my clients placed huge orders. I was voted sales rep of the month for a straight six months. I didn’t particularly like my job but I loved the money, and my dad would exaggerate to all his friends that I was in line to take over the company. I remember limping home in high heels to Bob and our shitty three-room apartment uptown, off Wilson. I’d soak my feet in Epsom salts at night, talking to Bob from the edge of the tub about how the paycheck was worth it. I ended up hating all the walking and talking and schmoozing and handing out samples or free ballpoint pens with drug names on them. Most of the doctors hit on me and it grossed me out but I couldn’t do anything about it. They were good clients. I ended up quitting just after Bob and I got engaged. It was a pain-in-the-ass kind of job, I thought. Until about a year later, I really didn’t miss it at all.
It was the late ‘80s and every place we went it felt like I was looked down on because I didn’t work and didn’t have kids. We’d go out for beer with Bob’s friends from work and they’d all ask what I did for a living. I’d say something stupid like, “oh, volunteer work and stuff,” but it was a lie. I didn’t volunteer. I sat around our suffocating apartment doing nothing in particular, wondering why I quit selling antidepressants. Wondering if I needed antidepressants. I was relieved to start house hunting. It gave us spark. Purpose. It was fun imagining what our lives would be in this or that house. Then we moved and I threw myself into unpacking. Feathering the nest. I felt—we both felt—grown-up. We’d lie in bed with our new roof over our heads, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of an unfamiliar house. We had so much to talk about back then. We chattered on and on about light fixtures and hardware-store runs and door handles and leaky faucets and catch basins and finished basements and crown molding. I knew where to find the nails at Home Depot (aisle five) and Manuel in the paint department (halfway down aisle seven, to the right) asked how the green was working out in the bedroom. Bob and I came to know which steps were the squeaky ones and we’d politely avoid them if one of us was sleeping.
I started wanting kids because I was bored. I was twenty-eight when we went to our first fertility clinic. The doctor sent us away with a laugh, saying we were young and still had plenty of time to try the natural way.
“You look like it’s a death sentence, Pam,” he said. “You’re newlyweds, for goodness’ sake! That’s all you’re doing anyway, right?”
He took a sip of his coffee and got up to show us the door. I never corrected him on my name.
Then it was 1991. Month after month I held my breath as my period approached. If I missed a day I’d pull another stick out of my economy pack of pregnancy tests. I’d gone through over a dozen by the time we were in front of another doctor asking about shots to stimulate egg follicles. In early 1992, we were talking in vitro. By then it had become a full-time job. Bob was exhausted from the emotional and physical roller coaster but I was focused and determined and a little crazed. Bottoming out every time I saw those telltale stains on my panties. Bob called this time “the door in the floor.” It got worse when people asked when we were going to start a family. No one knows the pain of that question when you’ve just had the ultrasound that shows your third in vitro has failed. By then Bob had checked out. Our fights got louder and meaner and always ended with him storming out and me crying like we were in a country-music video. He started staying away longer and longer and when he rolled back in he’d reek of cigarettes and beer. A double whammy since the doctors all said smoking and drinking decreases sperm count and motility. I’ve always suspected he was trying to sabotage the whole thing even though in the beginning he seemed happy about the idea of us being parents. Back when he’d whisper, I’m gonna make you pregnant right now, in the middle of sex and it would turn us both on. That lasted about two months.
In mid-1992 I gripped the arms on the chair next to Bob’s across from our third fertility doctor who cleared his throat, looked up from my chart and said, “You might want to start considering adoption.”

Cammy
Every once in a while Q-101 has commercial-free weekends and this was one of them and every single song was good. Not just a few—every single one. Ricky and I looked at each other by the time the Plastic Rabbits came on and it was like we were both thinking the same thing at the same time … like, why isn’t there TiVo for radio stations? If there was, we would’ve maxed it out today.
Someone should invent that, he said. Ricky was lying with his head in my lap and it felt all coupley at first but it’s not like he thinks of me that way so it’s totally fine. I used to have a crush on him but whatever, it went away in like five minutes so it’s all good. It’s not weird or anything. I almost never think anything about it. Anyway, the only bad thing about his head in my lap is whichever leg it’s on ends up falling asleep. We watched this group of old couples doing tai chi in the park and Ricky kept calling it ching dong and I laughed so hard Diet Coke came out my nose. And right then is when Missy Delaney walked by. Fucking Missy Delaney. She’s such a bitch and the worst part is no one knows it yet. I feel like I have X-ray glasses on, like night goggles or something. Like I’m the only one who sees her face when their backs turn and her smile goes right into a frown. Not a fade-out but straight to black, like a scary movie and she’s the killer. She has big boobs so all the guys like her of course. Even Ricky. Normally we agree on everything but when it comes to Missy it’s don’t ask don’t tell.
I’m wiping the Diet Coke off my nose on the shoulder of my shirt, so I don’t see the look he always gets when she walks by. He’s all cool and shit and there she is Miss Priss only she’s a total slut. Thank God I didn’t see his face get all red and blotchy like he’s been slimed at Nickelodeon. I can’t take it anymore.
“I heard she got with some Lane Tech guy on Saturday night,” I said.
I kinda feel bad about saying that because even though I did hear it I know it’s probably not true because we saw her with her family when we went for family dinner at Giordano’s. My mom stopped by their table and tried to get me to stop there too but no way. I just went to the table and waited for her to do her little social-butterfly thing.
“Bullshit, she did not,” Ricky said.
Here’s the thing—if it’d been someone he didn’t have a crush on he’d have laughed and agreed with me or he would’ve blown it off or something but he got all pissy so that’s how I know he’s crushing on her. Big-time. Plus, the minute he saw her he sat bolt upright out of my lap like we’d been caught having sex. Whatever. Of course he sticks up for her.
“Why do you even like her? I mean, seriously?” I asked him.
“I don’t like her like her,” he said.
“Yeah, right.”
“I don’t,” he said. “But I don’t hate her like you do so sorry.”
I wonder if he dreams of her sucking him like I do to Will. I wonder if he’d still be friends with me if I told him how last night Will said “go faster” and pushed himself so far into my mouth I gagged. I wonder if Ricky’d call me a bitch like Will did. I wonder if Ricky even knows about me and Will.
So I said, “I just can’t believe you buy into all her shit. Little Miss My Father’s Been on the Cover of Fortune Magazine and Yours Hasn’t. Jesus, like that’s something to be proud of. He’s like Mr. I Own the Universe and I’m Going to Save the Environment.”
“He knows Bono and shit,” Ricky says.
“Everyone knows Bono.”
“I mean he knows him. Like, personally. They’re friends.”
“Yeah, well, big fucking deal.”
“Goddamn you’re a bitch these days,” he says.
“What’re you talking about? I’m exactly the same as I’ve always been.”
“It’s like you’re in this cult with Monica or something. You, like, copy her.”
“Fuck you, I do not!”
“Yeah? Well, you always swore you wouldn’t pierce your nose.”
“That was when we were in, like, fourth grade,” I say. “Besides, you’re the one who’s all hot for Monica.”
“Whatever.”
“You know what I did last night?” I changed the subject. “I took two Benadryls. It was awesome. Seriously. Get the Severe Cough and Flu ones. It says to take one but whatever. Take two.”
“You’re a freak,” he said.
Then he tried to dummy-wrestle with me ‘cause that’s his way of saying sorry and I knew it was only because Missy was way out of sight so there was no danger of her seeing him being all over me. Then it hits me—I’ve got to go to the friggin’ movies with my mom … the last thing I want to do.
About a month ago my mom and I were in the car trapped like rats in a line at the place where they test how much exhaust your car puts out and the line was like a million cars long so there was pretty much nothing to do. Nothing good on the radio and my iPod was out of juice. I had finished my homework in study hall last period because Ricky was out sick ‘cause his parents wanted him to have a day with his grandfather visiting from Phoenix so there was no one to pass notes to and I pretty much had to do my homework because Mrs. Cummings was staring holes into my head. It was the longest day of my life, swear to God.
Anyway, there’s Mom babbling about how when she was young she and her mother would go to the drive-in movies on Sunday nights, just the two of them. I said that was what they did in like the fifties—like all Grease the movie and she said they still had drive-ins in the seventies. Whatever. She’s all we should have a mother-daughter tradition, too and I used to love Sunday nights with my mom. Then she got all quiet like she was going to lose it and I don’t know how it happened but next thing I knew I was saying yeah, sure, and she was off and running like she won the lottery. I feel bad I’m such a bitch and so hard on her—it doesn’t take that much to make her happy if she’s all freaked up about a Sunday-afternoon movie matinee. She looked at me like it was the best idea anyone had ever come up with since the dawn of friggin’ time. She’s all it means so much to me that you’re suggesting it. I didn’t suggest it but she wanted me to think it was my idea so I couldn’t take it back. Whether she knows it or not, she’s always made a show of overloving me, like she’s keeping me from noticing how her love came so naturally with the boys. She’s not so polite with them. She’s careful with me. I’ve always felt this way. It’s like she thinks I’m temporary. The boys can’t up and leave but I can. I’m not her blood. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel this way.
All my life I’ve felt them watching me. Like a rat in a lab experiment. They threw me into their mix of DNA and they’re curious about nature and nurture. We’re talking about that in school now. Nature versus nurture. They’d never in a million years admit it but they treat me differently. I’ve always felt no matter how hard they hug me, when the boys came along they hugged them closer. Their hugs lasted longer with the boys. Like they were relieved. Like they were thinking: phew—for a second there it looked like Cammy was the best we could do.
Out of nowhere, this morning I wanted to tell my mom how pretty she is. She’s so pretty it almost hurts to look at her. She never really wears makeup. She doesn’t need it. She’s naturally pretty. I really wish I looked like her. She must look at me and wonder what she would’ve gotten if she’d had her own daughter.

Samantha
The first time we heard Cammy’s voice she was screaming mo peas over and over, crying so hard she was practically choking. The social worker told us it meant “more please” and wasn’t it great, she yelled over Cammy’s two-year-old voice, wasn’t it terrific she already had manners. She says thank-you, too, the lady told us.
Cammy’s foster mother was bobbing her up and down, wrenching her bottle away so we could get a better look at her face. The more she pulled at the bottle, the harder Cammy cried. Isn’t she beautiful, she yelled over her. Here, now come on, Cammy, let them see those beautiful eyes of yours, she said. She was being patient because we were in the room. No telling what she’d be like alone with Cammy. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing the toddler, but I didn’t want to look crazed. Like a baby-stealer. On our way out of that third fertility clinic I was so hysterical Bob said I was one step away from walking into a hospital and stealing a baby.
“What’s in that bottle?” Bob asked.
I hadn’t noticed it was brown but the crying was so loud I couldn’t think of anything other than please just hand her over to me. For the love of God let me hold her. I’d read all the What to Expect in the Toddler Years books, but somehow it didn’t register that Cammy was still on a bottle. She was already underweight for her age so it was easy to forget this was a two-year-old who should probably be on solid food.
“It’s Coke,” the foster mother said. “Don’t give her the diet kind. She only takes the regular Coke.”
I felt a flush of excitement that she told us this like Cammy was already ours. Like the adoption agency had already approved us.
“You’re giving her Coke?” Bob said. I worried his tone would piss her off but then I remembered the foster parents have nothing to do with the adoption. She couldn’t stand in the way just because she was insulted. And she was insulted.
“Yeah, well, you try feeding a crack baby, how about that? If you can find something better—go for it. Be my guest if you think you know it all. It’s Coke or go deaf from the constant screaming. It’s around the clock. Say goodbye to a good night’s sleep.”
The social worker cleared her throat and said, “Yes, well, the Friedmans have been brought up to speed,” and then she leaned over to me and whispered, “As you can see, this particular foster family is a tad bit overwhelmed. They have a houseful of children. It’s really not so bad.” I can’t remember the social worker’s name, which is so weird because I had her phone number memorized back then we spoke so often. She spent every parenting class passing notes to us like this is important and that will come in handy when the group leader talked about how to raise a crack baby.
I’ve always hated that label. There must be something better. Child born addicted is what was first offered to us. The wait for healthy infants was so long. Crazy long. So we went to a private lawyer Mike found for us. Mike called him a fixer. Someone who got the job done. Greased the machine. He worked within the system. He expedited things. Bob and Mike whispered about it and I knew it meant money was changing hands under the table but I didn’t care. I just wanted a child.
We knew we’d be looking at pictures on our second appointment at the adoption agency. I was wearing my gray slacks because they were the only ones that still fit. I’d lost a lot of weight from all the stress. It was six-thirty in the morning when Bob turned to face me in bed. We blinked at each other and he touched my cheek and said let’s go get her like our little girl was waiting to be picked up from school. Which was exactly what I was thinking when he said the words. The way he said it, the smile he smiled, the feel of his hand on my face, pushing my hair out of my eyes, all of it made me cry and laugh at the same time. He was really trying to be a good sport and I knew it even then. Deep down I knew it was hard for him to muster up excitement that day. He sure did try though and I felt grateful for it. We scooted closer to each other. He rearranged the comforter over us. I ran my hand down his chest. He stopped me when I got to the waistband of his boxers. He kissed my forehead and said, “You want the first shower?”
It didn’t hurt my feelings as much as it made me sad. Looking back, I think I sensed that we’d turned a corner and we’d never find our way back to where we started. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. All I knew was that once we decided on adoption, sex felt redundant. Irrelevant. We’d come to hate sex by that time. Because of all the fertility visits. Bob disappearing into a stuffy room to “make a deposit,” they called it. Into a plastic cup. He said they had old Playboy magazines he wouldn’t touch because he said they looked sticky. They had lotion from a pump dispenser on the wall and a box of tissues and a Magic Marker to write your name on a sticker on the cup. There were the bruises on my belly from all the shots I had to give myself to boost my egg count. The ovulation kits. Having sex during surges like it was all one big science experiment, which of course it was.
We were half an hour early for the appointment at the adoption agency. The receptionist smiled and said a lot of people do that on picture day and then she said that’s a good sign it’s the right decision for you. Bob squeezed my hand.
When our adoption counselor told us there were “alternatives” to waiting on the list, however short it was thanks to our shady lawyer, Bob mumbled “alternatives are never good,” and I guess I should’ve paid more attention to that but I was single-minded. I elbowed him and he smiled across the desk like he knew I wanted him to. They look at everything, those agencies. Any hesitation could set you back. I don’t know why I was in such a hurry, but I remember it felt like time was flying by and we’d be passed over and never have children and a childless couple was something I didn’t want us to be. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t pushed and pushed us to have a family. Actually I wonder that all the time.
I was convinced we’d find her that day. Picture day. I’d gotten Bob a key chain engraved with the date so I could give it to him over dinner. The date we had our first child. I remember happily paying double for the engraver to rush the job. We’d only just gotten the call to come into the agency. Two weeks after submitting our application.
I stopped turning the pages in the photo album when I saw her. She was scowling at the camera and the downturn of her mouth looked like my mother concentrating on something. My mother made this same Charlie Brown face when she was cooking and checking a recipe or when I stayed out past curfew or if my father was late and missed dinner without calling from work.
There she was. This beautiful head of wavy light brown hair on the verge of being blond.
“That’s her,” I said. I thought when the time came I’d feel a rush of … something. I don’t know. Some kind of lightning bolt. Instead, it was as natural as looking at the sky. It was as if I’d known her all my life. Like I’d willed her to us.
Bob put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in closer to see. I slid the album over so he could get a better look. I traced the line of her face and looked at him and caught a flicker of something I’d rarely seen in him. He hid it when he felt me turn to him, but there was no mistaking it. He looked defeated. Resigned. I opened my mouth to say something but closed it because I couldn’t think of what to say. He’d folded into himself like a bat. His hands tucked into his armpits. Feeling the heaviness of the silence the adoption counselor said:
“I’ll give you two some privacy.”
She closed the door quietly behind her.
“What?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. He didn’t look at me. He pulled the book over and smiled at her picture and then turned his face up like he was trying to make up for the grimace.
“You made a face,” I said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You made a face. If you’ve got something to say just say it,” I said.
“No. Yeah. I mean, she’s beautiful. Clearly. But—”
Maybe I was too quick with the defensive/offensive “but what?” but I was upset. How could he be backing off? We’d come this far. We’d talked about adopting a child with special needs. He seemed to think it was a good idea before picture day. He told me that if it would make me happy then fine. Okay, so he was doing it for me, but is there anything wrong with that?
I think it was because he saw that I wanted it. He knew I wanted to be extraordinary. Not ordinary … extraordinary. Making a difference in a child’s life is one thing … making a difference to a child with special needs—that felt right to me. Lynn kept asking me if there was any rhyme or reason to it. Had my mom worked with retarded kids? she asked. What the hell did I think was going to happen? she’d asked. Did I think I’d win some award or have a street named after me? she’d asked. I couldn’t explain it. Not to her and I suppose not to Bob. Not well enough anyway.
So there we were staring at Cammy in a three-ring binder.
“But what? Finish your sentence,” I said.
“Nothing.”
Then he cleared his throat the way he does when he has something to say.
“It’s just—” more throat clearing “—I mean, are we sure we can take on a crack baby?”
“I hate that term.”
“You know what I mean. A child born addicted. Whatever. It’s a huge thing.”
“We talked about this,” I said. “We’ve been over this. I thought you were good with it. We were on the same page. I can’t believe you’re changing your mind.”
“Sam, we only started talking about it when we heard there was a long wait.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So … it’s only been a few weeks, four, tops. It’s a big thing. Maybe we should take a little more time …”
“But here she is! She’s the one. She’s our girl. I don’t care what she’s got in her system. And up until now you didn’t care either. At least that’s what you said. Were you lying?”
“Jesus no. It’s just that it’s … real.”
“Yeah, well, having children is real, Bob. We’ve spent how many thousands of dollars trying to make one of our own. That was real, right?”
“You know what I mean. This is a child with addictions …”
“… and they said it wouldn’t be long until it’s out of her system altogether. They said the lasting effects are minimal. So she’ll have trouble concentrating in school. We’ll hire tutors.”
“You really want this,” he said. Like it was a Christmas present that cost a little too much but that he’d be willing to buy to make me happy.
“I really want this.”
He looked at her picture, smiled up at me and touched her photo like I had.
“Welcome home, Cameron Friedman,” he said.
I threw myself into hugging him. I hadn’t asked him if he really wanted this. I figured me wanting it was enough for the both of us.
My mother used to say there’s no such thing as too much love. But what happens when there’s not enough love? What if, when you look at your husband you feel blank like a piece of notebook paper?
I remember my mother leaning over the bathroom sink applying coral lipstick, checking her teased hair to make sure the bouffant was not too big because big is tacky. I would sit on the edge of the bathtub, watching her wave wet with nail polish fingertips, getting ready to go out with my dad. Even when she wasn’t in it, the bathroom smelled like nail polish, Joy perfume and White Rain hair spray. Her closet had sachets so her clothes all smelled like roses, so that’s what she was: petals and softness and color.
Mom’d say things like, “Rule Number One, never ever leave the house without lipstick.” She put it on right after brushing her teeth and as soon as I was allowed to wear it, I did the same thing. She told me Dad never ever saw her without it. She said in a fire there are two things you need to do before you run out, lipstick and mascara. I started having all kinds of nightmares involving fire and she told me that Dad always kept fresh batteries in the smoke detectors, he’s that kind of father, she said. For a long time if someone mentioned their father I’d ask if he changed the batteries in the smoke detectors.
I remember she’d tell me I was meant for greatness and boy oh boy just wait something special was surely in store and boy oh boy would I look back and laugh at how I never believed her. I didn’t believe her when she said I would meet someone who I would love more than chocolate. I didn’t believe her when she said I would love being married just like she did or when she said just you wait, Samantha. You’ll see. The love you’ll have for your children will be beyond your imagination.
It was definitely beyond my imagination the work it took to live day to day with Cammy. Lynn’s son, Tommy, was only a few months old at the time, so we hadn’t been able to spend time together, with or without the kids. Forget babysitters. No one had the patience for Cammy. Our social worker said the more exposure Cammy had to other kids her age, the better off she’d be. I thought I’d try the Mommy & Me class at our health club.
When you have a child born addicted to drugs you notice things you never before gave a second thought to, like taking Cam to the club. I’d never heard the loud music pumping bass like a punch, coming in through the revolving doors, which alone were confusing to her, I could see. I hadn’t thought of lights being particularly bright, but they were suddenly blinding. The line of people checking in felt interminable—had it always taken so long?
All this made Cammy hysterical. Hysterical. People turned around. They stared. Some shook their heads like I was a criminal for bringing her here. I found myself embarrassed. Looking back, I wish I’d said, “Really? Really. You’re upset about the noise my daughter’s making and you don’t mind Wang Chung blaring overhead?” Deep down, though, I couldn’t blame them. I was one of them not so long ago.
By the time I signed us in, my arm was breaking under the constant squirm of frantic Cammy. My other shoulder was pinched in the straps of the baby bag I hadn’t been able to readjust. I was sweating, passing the spin studio. The pilates room. The office for personal trainers. I was walking past my former life. By the time we made it to class I was exhausted. I looked in through the window in the door and all the moms were talking with each other. So pleasant. Then I looked at their kids. The class was for mothers and their two-year-olds. They were strict about the age apparently. So when I looked in at them I was shocked to see they were nearly twice Cammy’s size. I looked from her to them and back at her. They were healthy of course. They’d been breast-fed healthy milk. They’d had carefully scrutinized pregnancies. The babies were all bobbing up and down happily on their mothers’ laps, waiting for class to start. I turned and whisked us both out of there and never again went to the health club.
Bob and I went days without talking. It was a dance. Bob somehow sleeping through the cries in the night. Sometimes I knew he was faking sleep. He was teaching me a lesson. I was the one who wanted this baby. This child born addicted. If I wanted her so badly, he snored to me, I should be the one taking care of her. I felt in over my head but I wouldn’t admit it. I couldn’t bear to hear Bob say I told you so. I also wondered if he’d suggest returning her. Picking out another. Like a too-tight pair of shoes you need a half size bigger.
We passed each other silently. He’d dress for work while I stroked Cammy’s belly, trying to calm her. The house was in a constant state of Cammy’s moods. When we did speak it was never above a whisper. And our conversations weren’t conversations but directives. Bullet points.
“How’s she doing today?” he’d whisper on his way through the kitchen to the front hall to hang up his coat and change to house shoes. He never waited for an answer. Or, “We need diapers,” I’d whisper. He’d act like this was quite the imposition. Like it was the final straw when really he did the bare minimum. Or, “Can you pop this in the mail when you go out?” He’d tap the bills into a pile.
I was too exhausted to ask him for help. I was too tired to fight with him about it. I should have said something. Maybe I did. But nothing changed.
Sometimes I’d make more of an effort.
“How was work today?” I’d whisper.
All of this while Cammy either slept or squirmed in my arms. I held her constantly. I developed biceps. Bob would try to hold her, but if she cried too hard he’d hurry her back to me and stalk out of the room.
It takes years to realize the impact an event has on your life. You don’t see it at the time. Then much later you have perspective.
Not in this case. I knew, as it was unfolding, that it was tragic. The whole thing. I’d bitten off more than I could chew with Cammy. Maybe I could’ve done better if Bob had helped, but that wasn’t in the cards. I didn’t know the man moving in and out of our house. He wasn’t even a roommate. He was a stranger. With Cammy asleep in my arms I’d look across the room at him and cock my head in wonder at his coldness. I knew he was hurt that our life had become all about Cammy, but I couldn’t have imagined he’d take it out on her. I never thought he’d withdraw completely. Many times I’d cry right along with Cammy. I remember the ache of it. I remember feeling lonelier than I ever had in my life. Lynn made efforts to relieve me, give me a break, but I shooed her off. She had Tommy to worry about. Besides, no one could handle Cammy as well as I could, I told myself. It was true. Other friends stopped by with baby gifts, but they’d back out the door within minutes, Cammy’s cries were that primal and unstoppable. Never-ending. So when the door closed behind my well-meaning neighbors and friends, I’d cry right along with my daughter.
Fast-forward in time and here I am, living a life I never imagined. I lie here in bed and I feel the sheets move to the rise and fall of my husband’s breathing. I listen to the clicking his mouth makes when his tongue gets stuck to the roof of his mouth and I wonder how long it will take him to come to the surface of sleep just shallow enough for his brain to remind itself to create more saliva. Click. Click. Click. That is the sound of our marriage. Like the ticking of a clock. His mouth makes the noise of our marriage.

Cammy
Sometimes I wish my mother was dead. I wouldn’t want her to die painfully or anything. Just, like, in her sleep. Only because … it’s just that … I mean, if she was dead no one would blame me for wanting to find my real mother. If Samantha was dead I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. My real mom would say things like I knew they’d be good parents and I know I can’t replace her but I’d like to be whatever kind of mother you’ll let me be. Bob would be fine with just the boys, and with Samantha gone I wouldn’t feel like I’m betraying them, like I sometimes do now. Bob and the boys would come over to my real mom’s house and we’d make them dinner and fill her in on all our stories.
Monica’s brother has ADD and she stole his Ritalin. The whole freaking bottle. She gave me half the pills. This stuff is amazing. I’m trying to pace myself. I’m trying not to take it too many times a day because I don’t want to run out. Anyway, this stuff helps me focus on not thinking about her. My birth mother, I mean. Also all the school shit. This tiny pill makes me concentrate on other shit. I even get my homework done, miracle of all miracles. I’ll do anything to keep from going insane wondering where that goddamn letter from the adoption place is. My biggest fear is them calling the house. I’m pretty sure I didn’t write our home number on the form but I’m not positive. I get so focused on the Ritalin and then at night I zone out with Benadryl and it’s all good. Three Benadryl knock me senseless.
I just think if Samantha left us, like divorced Bob and left us and started her own life, I could relax a little. I know I’m going to hell for saying this but whatever. I’m a bastard child so I’d be going to hell anyway. Plus, this is my diary and no one’s ever gonna read it but me. I’ll end up burning it when I move into my own place. I do wish she was dead sometimes.

Samantha
My mother died when I was in high school. Sixteen years old. She never saw me graduate. She never knew I was an honor student in college. She never met or knew Bob. She never met my children. I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish my mother had paid attention to her cholesterol and stayed away from all that fried food. I wish she’d listened when the doctor told her she had high blood pressure and should cut back on all the smoking. I got hold of her medical records from her last couple of doctor visits and there it was in writing, Patient has been informed of the risks involved with her smoking and her high cholesterol. Patient urged to begin an exercise regimen and urged to have regular physicals.
Nowhere in the file is a record of her following up with any of the doctor’s suggestions. The same recommendations were made on subsequent visits.
If I could wind the clock back, I would pick the day I first noticed her holding on to the banister. That day I could hear her raspy breathing. I could hear her sigh.
“I must’ve stood too quickly,” she said when she caught me staring.
I wish I could go back in time to explain to her that she was killing herself. I was too young to know all that at the time. It was unimaginable to me that she would disappear from my life.
“Mom, we’re going to the doctor,” I would say. “Get in the car.”
And then I would get her a health-club membership and we’d work out together.
“You’re so young,” I would say. “You shouldn’t be having so much trouble going up and down stairs. I’ve made an appointment, so there’s no getting out of it. The car’s out front. The air conditioning’s on. Let’s go.”
I don’t know if my father ever did this. He withdrew so quickly when she died and then years later I didn’t want him to feel bad about it so I never asked. I’m sure the thought, the regret, occurred to him. I wonder if it haunted him. As for me, I think about her every day. It’s a skipped heartbeat when I get to the family-history section on medical forms. To have to say yes, heart attacks do run in my family—my mother had one.
Then to have to answer the inevitable how’s she doing with oh, she’s passed.
It killed Dad when Mom died. I wonder if it would kill me in the same way if Bob died. I would feel sad, certainly, but would I die without him? Absolutely not.
Cammy was six and a half when I sat Bob down and asked him about trying for more. I’d been thinking about it for a while but we were never in one place together for long enough to have that talk.
“Oh, Jesus, not again,” he said when I asked if he ever thought about having more kids. Cammy was asleep, the dishes were done and Bob was still awake. The trifecta.
“This time it’ll be different,” I said. “We’ve got Cammy. If nothing happens it won’t be the end of the world or anything.” I truly believed that. More kids would be better for us. Bring us closer together. Yes, I truly thought that.
It only took one round of in vitro and voilà we were shopping for a double stroller for the two boys. Jamie and Andrew. I got blankets and towels monogrammed and Bob hunkered down at work and I hardly ever thought about the distance between us.
I rubbed anti-stretch mark cream on my huge belly. I bought maternity blouses with busy patterns that would help camouflage my monstrous popped-out belly button. I waddled to the baby stores, buying the tiny clothes, the bassinets, the cribs. In the sixth month I started to have the sick feeling it was all a big mistake. I wanted my mother to tell me everyone felt that way and it was only natural to be scared. I wanted her to warn me to keep track of the space between Bob and me, to make sure it didn’t widen too far.
He started going gray in my eighth month. We were young but suddenly Bob seemed weary and creaky in his movements. And he started hating work. One night I made macaroni and cheese and Cammy was uncharacteristically quiet, so as I was pouring the unnaturally orange cheese powder onto the slimy pasta, I asked him how his day was. Usually he’d say “fine” and that would be it, like a television series in the fifties.
“Yeah, how was your day, Daddy?” Cammy asked.
I smiled at her and looked at Bob, but he didn’t seem to think it was that cute. Lately she’d been echoing everything I said, so I’d started watching my swearing.
“It stunk,” he said.
“It stunk,” Cammy said.
“Don’t say that,” Bob said. He was on his first scotch, but if I didn’t know better I’d say it was number two.
“So it wasn’t a good day workwise?”
“That’s why they call it work. If it was fun it’d be called something else.”
“Remember when you used to love it?” I said.
“Yeah. So?”
“What changed?” I asked.
“The industry changed, that’s what,” he said, loosening his tie. “Shoes used to be designed. Now it’s all about athlete endorsements. If some high-school draft pick likes black stripes on his basketball shoes, that’s what we spend weeks drawing up. Straight stripes or are they angled up from the heel to the laces? Then we’ve got to send the PDF to the kid’s agent to see if he likes what a whole team of us has been agonizing over. That’s where the money is. Endorsements. Never mind that we had to switch to foam and felt inserts because the kid wants the stripes in leather not nylon. Eighteen years old.”
“I’m hungry,” Cammy said. “Is it ready yet?”
I turned the burner off and spooned the mac and cheese onto two plates for us, a little plastic plate for Cam.
“Ten years ago the kid would’ve been laughed out of the conference room and now we’re bowing and scraping like he’s the I.M. Pei of the shoe world.”
“Why don’t you quit?” I asked him.
“To do what?” he snorted. “What else am I qualified to do? And what about this little family of ours?”
“Jeez, Bob. Nice talk,” I said.
“Nice talk, Daddy.”
“Never mind,” he said. “Sorry. I just had a shitty day.”
“Swearword!” Cammy shot out.
I tried to rally back. To ignore what he’d implied.
“What would you do if you could do anything in the world, if money wasn’t an issue?” I asked.
“I’d invent a time machine so I could go back and actually design shoes instead of decorate them.”
I called Bob when my water broke but his secretary told me he was on his way to a meeting. It was 1999 and not many people had cell phones. The people walking and talking on them were considered pretentious show-offs. I called Sally, who was wearing a sweater with baby ducks and Easter eggs on it. I vividly remember that sweater. Sally has a theme sweater for every occasion. For Halloween. And Christmas. The Fourth of July one has a hidden battery to light up the flag across her chest so she has to keep it buttoned up and I’ve always wondered if she regrets the purchase on those sweltering sunny summer days. The minute the first leaf falls in September or October, Sally changes a seasonal flag that hangs over their front porch. The summer one featuring two beach chairs at the edge of the sea is switched to the fall one with pinecones the day after Labor Day.
We took Sally’s station wagon with labeled bins in the back (Soccer, Volleyball, Frisbees/Misc.) and I felt bad the whole way to the hospital because I was sure I was getting her seat wet. I didn’t know if it was bloody water or not (I couldn’t remember what the books had to say about this), but either way her car had upholstery instead of leather and I kept envisioning unspeakable stains, so as we turned into the parking lot for the emergency room, I offered to have it cleaned.
“Don’t be silly, of course not,” she said.
But I saw her glance at the seat when I hauled myself out of the car and even during a contraction it occurred to me that she would drive directly to the car wash that minute.
Bob came running in through the automatic double hospital doors that make everyone look like they’re making a grand entrance. He hurried alongside my wheelchair on the way to our assigned labor room. I ignored the fact that he smelled like perfume. It wasn’t the first time I wondered about him cheating, but I wasn’t about to bring it up on a gurney giving birth to my twins. Our twins.
A nurse named Doris was just wonderful during labor. I remember she was wearing scrubs with little teddy bears holding bunches of balloons and was the kind of person who strokes your head like she would a Labrador puppy. Doris repeatedly told me that an epidural was just moments away and she and I both knew she was lying because I hadn’t dilated enough but I appreciated her efforts to keep my mind off the pain, which was excruciating. There is nothing I can add to all the stories about labor pain. It’s terrible and mine was no different than anyone else’s. I stupidly wanted to experience natural childbirth.
“You’re doing great, just great,” Bob said, and I remember him grimacing from my squeezing his hand so hard.
“How could you have thought this was a good idea?” I screamed at Bob. “This is a nightmare I’ll never wake up from!”
The linoleum floor bounced the words up and back into the air of the hospital room and for a second it seemed as if everyone had stopped moving. It was like that game I used to play with Cammy—Red light, Green light.
“Honey, you’re in pain—she’s in pain,” he said to me and Doris the nurse. “It’ll all be okay in a little while. Just get through this and it’ll be fine.”
I think about that day in the delivery room and how I felt like the air had been pulled out of the room by a giant vacuum. Now, years later, I’m driving my regular route home from the kids’ school that insists on frequent fund-raisers and pep rallies. I steer the minivan past a long boarded-up carpet shop promising same-day service. A garage on the other end of the block advertising fast oil changes sits empty. They are two ghosts bookending a sprawling Barnes & Noble towering over the middle of the block like it’s flexing its muscles. Like it’s challenging someone to a fight. It swallows up everything nearby and for good reason: why go anywhere else when you can eat your lunch, take advantage of free Wi-Fi and play with your kids in the children’s book section that’s become an amusement park with puzzles and blocks and stuffed animals all for sale. I inch left, onto Lincoln Avenue, pausing for a man in a suit talking on his cell phone, unaware the light has changed and I have the right-of-way. He doesn’t break his stride, as if he is alone on the sidewalk and road. Waiting for him to reach the other side of the street, I glance into my rearview mirror at the boys, quietly watching a DVD. Their heads cocked at identical angles, their smooth little legs splayed open, each holding a corner of the DVD player because by now they know I mean it when I say if they can’t share it I’m taking it away. I love them. Those hours in that suffocating delivery room are long past and I cannot imagine life without these children of mine. But that space, that distance between Bob and me? It’s so wide right now it’s like a river where you can’t see the person on the opposite shore. We’re dots to one another.
I accelerate to make up time but it’s futile: I hit every red light. The radio traffic reporter is saying Lake Shore Drive is free and clear in both directions but the on-ramp from Belmont is jammed and, inching up to get onto the Drive, I can see all three lanes are jam-packed. No one’s moving.
“Shit,” I say, catching myself, looking into the mirror to see if my swearing registered with the boys. I’ve got to work on my swearing.
There’s nothing I can do about the traffic so I switch from news radio to NPR. All Things Considered. A gentle voice is quietly reading a story about carrier pigeons. It’s a miracle, really, how these birds fly distances specifically calculated by their owners. There are long pauses between sentences to better hear the coos of the pigeons and I start to feel sleepy, like I always do when I listen to NPR. I switch to the classic-rock station programmed into the number-two button on my radio. The guitar part of “Whole Lotta Love” wakes me right up. On cue the cars around me start moving like all they needed was some Led Zeppelin to hurry things along.
Saturday is nonstop. Bob takes the boys to soccer. I throw in a couple of loads of laundry and make it to Whole Foods before the crush of confused-looking stroller-dads who’ve promised wives they’ll take the kids to do chores on the weekend. Their wives aren’t sleeping in, though. They’re doing all the stuff they’ve been meaning to get to all week but haven’t been able to because of the kids. I remember to send flowers to Ginny, whose mother died of pancreatic cancer a few days ago. I call the florist as I pull in to a parking space at the Jewel for a paper towels/toilet paper run. All the non-food things that’re prohibitively expensive at Whole Foods. Do we really need ten-dollar geranium-scented organic counter cleaner? I mean, come on. I pick up dry cleaning and stop by Alamo Shoes to return Jamie’s Crocs because I accidentally bought him the wrong size. I check off all these things at a stoplight. The pen pokes through to the steering wheel, so I don’t bear down too hard crossing off.
At three, Bob breezes in with the birthday present we need to bring to Kelly Voegele’s party at Waveland Bowl at three-thirty. The one errand I’ve asked him to do and he’s acting as if he should have a laurel wreath placed on his head. The boys want to go to Kelly Voegele’s party only because it’s bowling not because it’s Kelly who they call a dork. I wrap the gift in sixty seconds and gather the boys up and we’re out the door piling back into the car. Charlie Spencer’s parents are picking them up at the end of the party, so we’ve got a break.
“Want to rent a movie or something?” I ask Bob when we get home. “It’s Saturday night, Cammy’s in her room and we both know she’s not going anywhere and the boys are eating dinner over at the Spencers’ and I give it an hour until they call asking to spend the night there. So for all intents and purposes we’ve got the house to ourselves.”
“I’m not really in the mood, sorry,” he says. “I’ve got to hop online for a while and motor through some stuff I didn’t get to this week so …”
“Aw, come on … we have the house to ourselves. It’s like all the planets have aligned and for a split second the earth is standing still.”
“Honey, I’ve got so much to do it’s crazy,” Bob says.
“I could help get rid of some of that stress for you.” I do a slinky belly-dancey kind of move toward him.
“Seriously …” he says. “I’m not in the mood.”
“But you haven’t been in the mood for months.” Bad move. Bad move, Sam.
“Months?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess it’s been a while. Maybe eight or nine months?” These words are a cartoon balloon over my head and I know we won’t be having sex tonight. Good job, Sam.
“I didn’t realize you had a calendar out. I didn’t know you were keeping score.”
“I’m not,” I say. “Forget it. I was just thinking maybe something’s wrong.” The question mark of another woman, another bedroom, threatens to clip the thread that’s holding us together.
“You know what? You saying that puts me in even less of a mood.”
“Bob, come on …”
“Come on, what? I’m going upstairs.”
I wait a few minutes and go up after him.
“Honey, please,” I say.
He spins his desk chair around. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know why you’re so mad at me, first of all. What did I do?”
“Nothing, just forget it,” he says.
“I just feel so disconnected from you,” I say. “I’m not keeping score, I swear. I just feel … okay, wait. Let me rephrase it. Sometimes do you feel lonely? Like even when you’re here at home? Like this isn’t really your life, you’re just going through the motions?”
“Nope,” he says.
“Really? Even a quick flash of a thought that maybe this isn’t what you pictured your life would be?”
“Can you get to the point?” he asks.
“It’s just,” I say. “Every once in a blue moon you don’t get the teensiest panicked when you look around at your life?”
“Panic? Jesus, Sam, where are you going with this? Our life panics you? Are you serious?”
“Okay, okay, maybe panic is the wrong word—”
“Sam …”
“Surprised! Maybe you look around and you’re surprised you have this life. Don’t you ever feel that way?”
“Not really, no,” he says. “I don’t feel that way. Obviously you do but I don’t. What’s so surprising? This is what we always wanted, right? A family, healthy kids, friends, a nice house …”
“I know, I know,” I say. “Maybe I’m just—You’re turning back to the computer now?”
“What else is there to say? You feel panicked and I feel fine. People can disagree, you know. It’s not the end of the world.”
He turns back to the screen again.
“It’s because … can’t we talk about this?”
“We just did,” he says. He shrugs and starts tapping on the keyboard again.
“What’re you looking at that’s more important than talking to your wife about your marriage?”
I look over his shoulder. “Real estate? You’re looking at houses?”
“I’m looking at comps,” he says. “I want to see what the Silvermans’ house is listed for. Is that okay with you?”
“Bob, seriously. I only want you to let me in. It’s like pulling teeth to get you to open up and I’m so tired of it.”
“Jesus, Sam,” he says. “Every other goddamn day you talk about how you feel about this or that. You’re asking me how I feel about this or that—”
“Because you don’t talk to me! And it’s not every other day.” I want to say, I bet you talk to her. That’s if there even is a her. Maybe there isn’t, I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
“Let me finish. I’m just …” He trails off, trying to form the words. “I’m sick of it. And now you’re telling me you’re panicked? I’ve told you how I feel. I feel nothing. You happy now? I feel nothing.”
That last statement throws us both into silence. He looks startled and sorry the words have come out of his mouth. WHOA! bubbles into the space between us, freakishly huge like the POW! and ZOWEE! from the old Batman and Robin fights.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for finally saying that out loud.”
“Sam, wait—”
“I’m being totally serious,” I say. “I’m not picking a fight. I’m relieved, actually. It’s a relief to hear you admit it. You feel nothing. No—don’t get huffy—you said it. I wanted you to tell me how you feel and you just said it all.”
“I don’t feel nothing like the way you’re thinking,” he says. “I don’t mean I feel nothing toward the kids. Or you.”
“No, no, no—I totally get it. I think I’ve known it all along. But I want to ask you something. Don’t shut down again, okay? Just hear me out. Do you think it’s possible … wait, just listen! We haven’t talked about it in months, so don’t roll your eyes like that. Do you think maybe you’re depressed? You don’t sleep well at night. You don’t have a sex drive—don’t get mad, I’m just saying it’s a sign of depression. Nothing makes you happy anymore. This is sheer inertia.”
“Here we go …”
“Couldn’t you just entertain the thought? Why do you have that look on your face? What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I’d like to know what the Silvermans’ house is listed for.”
I walk away and replay the sting of his words, letting them sink in and it is too big to cry about. That’s all I can think: that it’s too big to wrap my head around. This is where we are. I want so badly to know how we ended up like this. Yes, okay, sure, we never really had that spark, that chemistry, but we were best friends. Pals. Now we sit here in silence. It may be chaotic with the kids, but with us? Silence. That, or fighting. I wonder how he describes me to her. If there even is a her. Maybe there isn’t, I don’t know. Everybody argues and says things they maybe wish they hadn’t, but this isn’t that. He’s wrong—this isn’t all I think about every single day. I stay busy. Busy busy busy. I’m so busy I can barely think about what to make for dinner. Busy. I go to my school meetings and I pick up the dry cleaning and I cook and clean and do a million other things I can’t remember I’ve done at the end of each day. I am the queen of multitasking. I organize my errands efficiently. I buy flats of impatiens to plant only after May fifteenth when the frosts are guaranteed to be over. I help out with school fund-raisers. I run Race for the Cure every year. I plant mums in the front on October first. I pick out the freshest roping to swag on the front of the house for wintertime. In between I do just about everything you need to do to keep a house humming along. That’s who I am. I’m busy. I am every other mom in America.

Cammy
They always fight. They don’t think I hear it but I do. I’ve always felt like my parents adopted me thinking it might stop them from fighting.
For a long time I’d say “don’t fight” and that would be enough. They’d look at me and they’d remember the original purpose of me: to make them better. A little girl to bridge the gap between them. A trial child. Like when couples get a dog before they have a baby … to see if they can handle the responsibility. I’m their experiment. The thing is I don’t know how they could’ve thought they did a good enough job with me to move on to the real thing. They had Andrew and Jamie on purpose so obviously they figured they did something right with me. But really all they do is fight. I don’t know what that something right was.
I’d say “don’t fight.” I remember seeing my mom’s eyes fill with tears and I’d hug her to make it better. Then I started getting sent to my room or outside to play even though there weren’t that many kids my age on our block at the time. I was eight or nine maybe. They’d raise their voices, remember I was there and one or both of them would send me out of sight so I wouldn’t remind them their mission failed. Adopting me only made things worse between them. I was a walking reminder of the fact that they once had hope for something better. I was supposed to be that something better. I’d send me outside or up to my room, too, if I were them. I’m definitely not something better. I’m something worse.

Samantha
A day after the nothingness of our marriage is finally acknowledged, on Sunday night, I find myself in a bathroom stall at the deep-dish pizza place with my head against the cold metal stall, crying. Back outside, across from our table, there is a young couple trying bites of each other’s pizza and laughing at each other’s jokes and listening intently to the other’s stories. Did we used to be them? Now we are nothing, Bob and I. We are nothing. And here I am sobbing, pulling out squares of toilet paper piece by piece because the roll is locked in place. Someone in the next stall sniffs a signal that I’m not alone.
When I get back to the table Cammy of all people sizes me up and leans over and asks me if everything’s okay. It’s the first time in weeks she’s looked out from the curtain of her oily hair. I tell her I’m fine, just blew my nose. I think I’m coming down with a cold I say.
“We ordered a large cheese and a small veggie,” Bob says, folding his menu. “If you want a salad the guy’s right over there putting in our order, just go tell him.”
The next day I’m at the sink wiping the counter clean of cereal dust from the Cheerios box Jamie shook clean. I put the milk back in the fridge and slide the English-muffin crumbs from under the toaster into the palm of my hand. The air in the house is pressurized like when only one car window is cracked open. The vacuum of nothingness. Shit! Nothing? Shit. Do I feel nothing? I feel nothing. I can’t really remember what it was I thought was so great about him. Why did I marry him? I was in such a rush. Why the hell was I in such a rush? No. Stop it. Stop thinking, Sam. Just stop.
I should take the toaster apart to empty it clean, it’s been ages since the last time, that’ll keep me from nothing. The metal tray on the bottom pops off easily. I’d thought I’d have to pry it off so I used too much force and the seeds and burnt edges and shriveled-up raisins from toasted bagels scatter on the floor.
We were in such a hurry to grow up. Maybe that was it. God, what were we thinking. Stop it. Stop thinking. I sweep the toaster debris into the dustpan and it strikes me that the floor hasn’t been swept in a while. I get to the bar stools and I figure I might as well get them out of the way. Mom always used to use that cliché: anything worth doing is … wait, how does that go? Huh. Anything worth doing is worth doing well? Does that apply to marriage or chores? Maybe it was some kind of code she slipped me. Did she know she was going to die before I’d understand it? Did she hope I’d remember so it could help me at a time like this? Did she really think marriage was something worth doing? Of course she did. She of all people.

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