Confidential(63)

“I don’t want out.”

She gripped my arm. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll help you.”

“I’m telling the truth! I was mugged. I can prove it.” I wriggled out of her grasp and held up my phone. “See? It’s new. A mugger stole the last one.”

She hesitated. “I want to believe you.”

“I know you’re looking out for me. And seeing my face obviously triggered you.” Triggered. Another term I’d learned from Michael. “Maybe there are things from your past that you still need to process.”

“You’re telling me that I need therapy?”

“You’re seeing things that aren’t there. I was mugged. My boyfriend doesn’t abuse me; he cherishes me.”

I was remembering last night—how he’d accepted my apology and the lovemaking that followed. It must have helped me to sound convincing because Jeanie looked troubled, like she was starting to question herself and not me. She was wondering if she was still so damaged that she was seeing things that weren’t there.

“You amaze me,” I said. “You come out of this horrible relationship and go on to find a wonderful husband and create a family. You’re an inspiration. I want what you have, and I might have found it. Michael has been taking such great care of me since the mugging.”

And before that? Fortunately, she didn’t ask.

I hugged her. Then I wouldn’t have to look into her eyes. “I’m good. I’m in love.”

She wasn’t going to let me off quite that easily. She retracted her head and searched my wrecked face. “For some men,” she said, “this is love.”





CHAPTER 50





GREER


“I’m so sorry,” the harried-looking mom told me.

“It’s fine,” I said, smiling down at the ginger-haired little girl who’d wiped her grimy hands on my jeans and who was looking up at me with great curiosity. She sensed that I was an interloper, that none of the children running around the goat pen at the children’s zoo belonged to me.

But they could, that was the thing. They easily could.

Maybe not easily, given my age. But plenty of the mothers looked older than I did, and there was no shortage of options with my bank account.

“It’s completely okay,” I told the little girl’s mother. “She’s adorable. I know how it is.” Or I would.

She smiled at me gratefully. Then she addressed the child. “Let’s go, Livvie. We’ve got horses to brush.”

“Bye!” I waved at Livvie in an exaggerated way, and she gave me a delighted grin back. How old was she? Two? Three? I had no facility at guessing the ages of children. I’d never paid attention before.

But I could learn. I was a hard worker, and I’d become a full-time student. After all, I was already down to half days and titrating fast as Chenille had taken to her new role with alacrity. Power suited her. Power suits did, too. It was looking like I might never go back.

I would never have guessed that I could feel this way, that I could abdicate control happily. Yet here I was, in the middle of the afternoon at the children’s zoo, and I felt if not at home, then the possibility of home. There were moms who were messy and moms who were put together and those in between. I didn’t know what my mom wardrobe would be like, but the shopping could be fun.

I was observing the world of motherhood like an anthropologist in a foreign culture. In a way, it was. Typically, I went to the types of restaurants and bars for working lunches and dinners and drinks where no one would bring a child; I shopped at the same types of boutiques. I didn’t go to Golden Gate Park on weekends or to summer festivals. Unintentionally, I’d ordered my life in such a way that I ran into kids as little as one could. Now I was tracking families like they were Bengal tigers, fascinating and rare.

What I was finding was that for as many moments of irritation, frustration, and horror I witnessed, there tended to be a corresponding number that elicited contentment and joy. I watched parents help their little ones feed a goat, and sure, there was corralling (of the children, not the goat), but it was accompanied by such unfettered delight (again, the child’s, not the goat’s). If you could slow down, if you had nowhere else to be, if you could stop the world and just be there to bask in it—what could be better or more precious?

There was no reason I couldn’t be a stay-at-home mother. Devote myself entirely to the development of a human being. I could be the absolute opposite of my own parents, an idea that was enormously appealing.

It wouldn’t be forever, of course. Soon enough, the little bugger would be headed off to preschool and then kindergarten. But for a while at least, I could be all about my child. That little boy or girl would know how valuable they were to me, that they were everything, and everyone wants to move through the world with that type of assurance. When they have it, they can do anything, be anything. They don’t have to be a success, even. They don’t have to pursue it with all they have, to the exclusion of relationships, to the denial of self. They don’t need a lifetime of hollow victories.

I could do that for someone. Be that. What a staggering idea.

But first, I needed to hear from Dr. Michael. I couldn’t call him first. I’d look desperate. After an exit like mine, you couldn’t slink back. You had to wait until you were pursued. He’d come crawling. He had to. I couldn’t have been so wrong in my read of him. I read men all the time for a living. Or I did.