I'm Fine and Neither Are You(12)

Of course, this woman was Jenny and her baby was Cecily. For whatever reason, I paused in front of them.

“Sounds like your little man’s not too happy,” said Jenny with a warm smile.

I shook my head. “Nope. He’s been like this for weeks. I’ve tried everything short of an exorcism.”

“What about probiotics?” said Jenny. She looked down at Cecily, who was the sort of pretty, peaceful infant that triggered ovulation in unwitting women. “That worked wonders for Cecily’s colic.”

“I haven’t tried that yet.”

“Get the drops—it’s practically a miracle cure. Your first?” she asked, nodding in Miles’ direction.

“Second.” I pointed at my waist. “Hence my two spare tires.”

“Don’t say that. You look fantastic.”

“For someone who’s six months pregnant,” I said.

She laughed. Her laugh was throaty and bright; it was easy to imagine her cast as the ingénue in a romantic comedy. “Cecily’s my first.”

She was awfully chic for a new mother, I thought, taking in her caftan-style dress, long sweater coat, and highlighted hair, which was artfully piled on top of her head. Even more than her clothes, though, she seemed like a parenting pro. But she probably had a mom who had shown her what to do. Nick was four when my mother left; I was six. I’d been winging the mothering thing ever since.

“How old is your daughter?”

“Three months,” she said. “This little peanut won’t let her mama sleep more than two hours at a time.”

“Miles is four months,” I said.

The corners of her mouth shot halfway across her cheeks as she grinned. “Practically twins!” She stuck out her hand, which I shook, not without noting that the paint on her nails was worn but most definitely the work of a salon professional. “By the way, I’m Jenny Sweet.”

“Penelope Ruiz-Kar,” I said. “But you can call me Penny.”

“Jenny and Penny,” she said, still smiling. “We should be friends.”

And so we were. Almost as soon as Jenny came into my life, things took a turn for the better. There is something about seeing someone like you thrive that helps you to do the same. It was true that even then, Jenny and Matt were financially comfortable in a way that Sanjay and I were not. They were, well, polished—whereas Sanjay wore T-shirts and track pants most of the time, and though I tried to make an effort, I inevitably found a Cheerio stuck to the back of my pants hours after I had sat on it.

Yet Jenny, like me, was a mother in her early thirties. While I longed to return to New York, she pined for San Francisco; she and Matt had uprooted after he took a position with a financial firm run by a former business school classmate. Though she stayed home with Cecily, hiring a sitter only when absolutely necessary, she had recently started a website—though back then it was just a blog, sans sponsors and professional-looking photos—and worked constantly.

As for my loneliness, Jenny quickly put an end to that. She seemed to know everyone, even though she and Matt had moved to our town six short months before we had, and she was eager to connect me. Here was a hairdresser who knew how to turn the frizz on my head into a sleek chestnut bob; there was a yoga teacher who could fix my postpartum back problems. She also introduced me to Sonia and Jael, who were also relatively new mothers, and soon the four of us had a standing brunch date on Sundays.

“You have a crush on this woman,” remarked Sanjay as I applied tinted balm in front of the mirror one Sunday morning in preparation for brunch, which had become the highlight of my week.

“Isn’t that how all friendships begin?” I asked before pressing my lips together to even out the color. “With some degree of platonic infatuation?” What I did not say to him was that it was not so much infatuation as deep relief at having a friend in the thick of it with me—and who seemed to hold the answer to my heart’s hidden question: how to be a good mother.

Sanjay looked at me quizzically for a moment. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “But you seem good lately. Happier.”

Happier wasn’t what he really meant. At peace, maybe, or at least accepting of my lot in life.

A few days after dropping out of medical school, Sanjay had surprised me by offering to become a stay-at-home dad. He would write during the kids’ naps or whenever he could find an opportunity, he explained. If all went well, by the time Miles was ready for preschool, Sanjay would have figured out the next step of his life.

I readily agreed. I didn’t really want to hire a stranger to watch my children or drop my months-old baby off at a daycare center for all of the hours he would be awake. More important, Sanjay was offering to be the father my own father had never been. Why wouldn’t I give my family this incredible gift? My job paid enough that we could just make it work in the short term.

But after a few months, it began to sink in that for all the perks of our arrangement, it did not reduce my parenting load one bit. Sanjay was just as exhausted as I was at the end of the day—so how could I blame him for not having done the dishes or scheduled Miles’ next pediatrician appointment? And if Stevie still wanted me to make her breakfast and help her get dressed and tell her stories until my voice was hoarse, could I fault her? I was gone most of the time she was awake.