Mother of All Secrets(25)

I kind of liked watching him work. His brow was furrowed and he was completely focused, sitting tall at his slanted desk by the window, visibly present in both his body and brain, pausing only to push his glasses back up on his nose. He used to work from home frequently, but since Clara was born, he preferred to go to his office, or a shared work space he sometimes used in our neighborhood. Anywhere but here, pretty much. But I was glad he was here this morning because it gave me an opportunity to talk to him about something I’d been thinking about vaguely for a few weeks now.

He saw me looking at him and smiled slightly. “What’s up, babe?” His pet name filled me with guilty bile rather than warmth. I didn’t deserve his love, though I had no intention of telling him this.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. Not a strong opening. “Remember I mentioned I talked to my principal a few days ago? It’s got me thinking that I might not be quite ready to go back yet.”

He blinked. Which was fair: that was a blink-worthy comment. “Really?” he said. “I thought you were psyched to go back to work? What about Diana?”

We had already found a fantastic nanny through a referral in Upper West Side Moms. (Occasionally, the Facebook group was good for more than helping me pass mindless minutes nosily reading about other people’s problems.) She came highly recommended from someone in the group whose children were now both in elementary school and no longer needed full-time care.

“Yeah, I know. I hate to lose her. But maybe we could offer her a few afternoons a week until I go back full time—sort of a peace offering? And it would be amazing for me to get a break.”

He’d turned fully toward me now, his eyes slightly obscured behind the windows’ glare playing over the lenses of his glasses. “Yeah. I hear you,” he said, his voice carefully modulated. “But I don’t know. We’d be stretched pretty thin if we were paying for a part-time nanny and you aren’t working.”

He was only being practical. I knew that. But it felt like my options were either round-the-clock childcare with no shower breaks, or to return to a job that I simply wasn’t ready to do. “I get that. So maybe we’d lose Diana. It’d be too bad, but . . . it’s just weird to go back to school in November, right in the middle of the semester. It makes a lot more sense for me to go back in January. Or even next year. Have a clean start.”

“Next year?” He was holding himself very still, but his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed dryly. He’d leaned toward me a little, just enough so that I could see the flecks of green in his soft brown eyes. I certainly had his whole attention. “Look, I support whatever you think is best. It’s your call.” And, to his credit, he sounded sincere. “But . . . I thought you hated being alone with Clara all day? And loafing around with the Lululemon moms? I figured you’d be eager to get back to work and have someone else helping you out with Clara.”

Lululemon moms. Okay, I’d originated the phrase, but still. I was one of them, wasn’t I? And “hated” was such a strong word, and it stung. Did he think I hated being a mom? Was that how I seemed? I felt damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. If I stayed home with Clara, I would be kind of miserable—what did that say about me? But if my only reason for going to work was to avoid my baby, that made me even more terrible. And again, his characterization of the moms’ group—he was only repeating my own words, but for some reason, hearing it from his lips irritated the hell out of me.

“We don’t ‘loaf around,’ first of all. We’re actually pretty busy taking care of children. You know, like yours? And maybe the reason we’re all in yoga pants is because we’re too tired to put on real clothes—from never sleeping? And our vaginas are still healing. From pushing humans out of them.” Man, I was even more fired up about his comment than I’d realized.

“Okay, okay.” He put his hands up surrender-style, realizing he’d screwed up. “I’m sorry. Bad choice of words. Before this turns into another fight, is this actually about wanting to continue staying home with Clara? Or something else? You haven’t been . . . yourself lately. And now your friend is missing.” He’d kept his tone calm, and now it softened even further. “I’m worried about her, too, obviously. But it’s you I most care about. And I just want to make sure that more time off is part of a solution, and doesn’t end up making you feel even more stressed out, with more time to worry about . . . everything you’ve got going on.”

I made myself take a breath. What he was saying was fair. I honestly wasn’t sure if prolonging this stage—my day-to-day grind with Clara, and now obsessing over Isabel, too—would be healthy. All I really knew was that I physically could not put on black pants and a sweater, kiss my baby goodbye, and facilitate discussions about literature all day. Attend staff meetings. Grade papers. Email with parents. I wasn’t there yet: I couldn’t visualize it, couldn’t fathom it, certainly couldn’t do it.

“I’ll give it some more thought. But I just wanted to put it on your radar that this is something I’m considering.”

“Okay. Again, I support whatever you decide to do. Shit, I’m going to be late.” He started putting the papers in front of him into a folder.

“Wait, before you go—random question for you?”

“Shoot.”