Neighborly(50)

I can’t let myself think about the spreadsheet. Or about Tennyson’s preferences e-mail, or about my conduct at girls’ night. It’s all just noise. I need to focus on what’s real, on Sadie.

Mondays are already a challenge. Usually I’m like a drug addict in withdrawal, I miss Doug that potently. (Don’t think about drugs, either.) On Mondays, I bump up hardest against the reality that as much as I love Sadie, I don’t always like being with her. Not alone. She’s different when Doug is here. It could be that I’m different when Doug is here. I have someone to spot me, like when a gymnast attempts a tricky dismount, and knowing that relieves the tightness in my chest.

When Sadie and I are alone, I’m a little bit afraid of her, with her moods and caprices. She fusses when she’s bored or displeased, when she doesn’t have enough attention or the right kind. She’s like a tiny empress: off with my head. Sometimes it escalates to a red-faced, screaming tantrum. My love makes me a hostage to her moods.

Right now, she’s sitting in her car seat outside the shower. She can see me through the glass, though I hope that she’ll play with the toy in her lap instead. No such luck today. I turn the water on, and she begins to whimper almost immediately, a warning whistle before the full-force gale.

I keep up a running monologue. It’s our thing. Usually, I tell her happy things we’re going to do. I tell stories about a little girl named Sadie and all the adventures she’s going to have, the people she’ll meet. Oh, the places she’ll go.

“We’re going to Mommy and Me soon,” I say, in that upward lilting voice that she likes. “Just as soon as your mommy can get herself together. Not today, but soon. There will be musical instruments. You’ll have your own tambourine, maybe . . .”

Sadie calms a little, long enough for me to get my hair washed. Then she’s fussing again. Screw the conditioner.

I soap up quickly and decide not to shave my legs. I’m not going anywhere today. There’s always tomorrow. “There’s always tomorrow,” I tell her.

I feel another bout of nausea. By now, it’s not a hangover. It’s that Tennyson’s e-mail brought back my flirtatious behavior at the last girls’ night. I vaguely remember the dancing, the crush and the brush of bodies around me. I’m so embarrassed to have cast myself in that light, even if it is the very behavior the women were encouraging. They must think I’m going to opt in, after that display.

It might have been the power of suggestion, that we’d just been talking about freedom and indulging your fantasies, or if I was dosed with ketamine, that has a sexualizing effect. Or it might have been something that lives inside me all the time being unleashed, and that scares me the most. No matter what Dr. Morrison wanted to believe and wanted me to believe, I liked being seductive with Layton. Once, I told her I felt I’d seduced him, and it was the sharpest she ever sounded with me when she said, “No! Children are not capable of seduction. That is an adult skill.” Is it awful to admit that I felt in that moment that she was the one taking my power away, not Layton? If he’s entirely responsible, if I’m nothing but a victim . . .

Stay busy, that’s all I can do.

The regulars have bombarded me with texts. With the exception of Yolanda, they all want to know if I’ve talked to Doug, which way I’m leaning, if they can answer any questions for me. But at least I haven’t had any new notes today.

As I comb out my hair in front of the mirror, I continue, determined to stave off further displeasure. “So we can’t go anywhere today, but tomorrow, in the morning, on a beautiful sunshiny morning, we’ll go to the library for story hour. They’ll read Mother Goose or Frozen or, if I’m lucky, The Giving Tree . . .” Sadie punctuates my sentences with gurgles and various happy noises. The empress is pleased, for the moment.

Doug could never have me on a string like this. Sadie’s helplessness, her dependency, her potential to make me look (and feel) thoroughly incompetent—they grant her control.

Is that what Doug meant when he said I’m so different since having Sadie? It clearly wasn’t a compliment. But then, he’d been angry that whole day.

I can’t talk to Doug about openness, not when he already finds me so—what was his word?—unreliable. I’ve considered not telling him about openness at all, just going straight to Tennyson and opting out, but he’ll find out at some point. Someone will let it slip, and that would be yet another wedge between us.

There’s already so much that I can never let slip because I need to stay unblemished, untainted, in Doug’s eyes. If he knew about the past, he’d draw all sorts of conclusions about our sex life, and everything else.

So I can’t face Doug, and I’m not ready to face the women, either. I just want to retract my head like a turtle’s and let a day or two go by. Then I’ll be ready to leave the house again. I can figure out the least rejecting way to decline, so there’s the least social fallout. Maybe Andie can help me with that.

I can feel that Sadie’s getting antsy. Something’s not right. I run through the checklist, and it’s nothing I can detect. I thought I’d somehow diverted it, that the winds had died down, but no, the hurricane is coming.

I stoop down and pick her up, the towel wrapped around me, the moisturizer forgotten, but Sadie’s too far gone. My tolerance is nil. I could dissolve into tears at any moment, which isn’t something I want to do in front of my child. It could give her the impression the world is a scary place and yes, that’s true sometimes, but it’s too soon for her to know it. My job is to keep that information from her for as long as possible. That’s what this house was supposed to be about, this neighborhood. The AV was supposed to make me—and us—conventional in the best sense.