Cassie
“I commend you both for being here,” Dr. Gaul says to us. “You have your homework. See you next week.”
As always, I walk out of her office after our couples’ therapy feeling rubbed raw. These sessions are hard, because I want distance from everyone in the world and instead I have to head to work. When Grady kisses me goodbye at our cars, he holds me an extra beat.
“I know you hate this,” he says. “That’s what makes you so brave.”
I don’t feel brave. I feel exposed and unmoored. This session was spent discussing my parents and their co-dependent marriage. For opening that can of worms I deserve another week off work. In Bali.
There are times I resent Grady for his happy childhood, and although it was awful to say those words out loud I felt better when I said them during our session today. He didn’t look surprised or angry, only sad for me, which got my back up even more. But that’s something I’m working on with Dr. Gaul - my quick trigger - so it was healthy to put it all into practice. Now I slump in his arms, unwilling to leave him, even though half an hour ago I was a bitter mess who would begrudge a sweet man his well-adjusted upbringing.
I’m an awful person.
Grady walks me to my car, and when I’m buckled in he leans in through my window to kiss the tip of my nose. “I love you,” he says. He doesn’t wait for me to say it back - he knows I can’t, not yet.
That
came up in our first session, too, and surprisingly I’m the one who feels uncomfortable about not having said it. Grady is completely okay with it.
“She’ll say it when she’s ready,” he assured Dr. Gaul when she asked how he felt about his verbal expressions of love not being returned.
His confidence in me is staggering and unfounded. Watching him climb up into his truck, a lump forms in my throat. I know how lucky I am. He’s been beyond patient with me and my nuttiness since Delaware. About every other day I have a mini-breakdown about keeping our relationship hidden from the kids, wondering when and how we can actually tell them. I keep picturing Chloe’s angry face, Caden’s shock and horror, and I can’t. Not yet. But that’s limiting the amount of time we can spend together, and it’s frustrating Grady.
I get to work at nine-thirty, catch up with Jai, and start checking my e-mails. About halfway down the list I see “Sandra McSwain” in my inbox, and my gut roils. Sandra and I haven’t spoken since the night of our argument. I walked out of that restaurant pissed off, and she hasn’t made any attempt to contact me since. Our business together is finished - she sent the graphics off to the printers after we finalized it, and I had Jai send her a check for the discounted rate we’d agreed on. I haven’t gone to our yoga studio, either, preferring to just catch a class here and there at the Y rather than face her.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it was that set me off during our conversation over drinks. I should’ve been able to tell her politely to fuck off. Instead, I ran from the table. And I know I did that, at least in part, because Sandra reminded me a lot of my mother with her patent disapproval of Grady. The fact is, Sandra doesn’t know Grady. She only knows what I told her in bitter moments, which is only part of my truth. So the only person to blame for any misconceptions Sandra might have about Grady is me. She’s brash and straight to the point, and I got pissed off that I didn’t get the reaction from her I wanted.
So I ran, and then I avoided her. Just like I did with Grady. And my parents. And Adam.
Adam is happy in his new life, and we could be friendly again, although I don’t see us double-dating anytime soon. My parents are total lost causes; I haven’t spoken to them in years and have no plans to speak to them ever again. But Sandra has been a good friend to me, and I’ve missed her. I don’t know how she and I can move on from this, but I really hope we can.
Pressing e-mails from the Dragon Lady - three of them, to be exact - take precedence, and it isn’t until later that I gather the nerve to open the e-mail from my friend.
To: Cassandra D. Mahoney
From: Sandra McSwain
Subject: Apologies
Hi Cass,
I’m an asshole. I’ll grovel if you let me buy you another margarita and explain.
As Jim Morrison once said, “A friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself.”
I’m sorry I wasn’t that friend. Please call me.
S.
Her e-mail makes me smile in spite of my bad mood. The nervousness I felt about opening her message is gone as I re-read it and type my response:
You ARE an asshole, but I’ll take that margarita anyway. I know I overreacted. I’ll call you tonight.
Later, when I’m driving home from work, I call and she answers immediately.
“Thank you for calling,” she says. “How are things?”
I’m not yet ready to go into details with her about Grady, but I do want to share a little about what’s happening. “Good,” I say. “We’re taking it slow. We’re seeing Dr. Gaul every week.”
“I’m glad,” she says, and there’s only warmth in her voice. No phony cheer, no passive-aggressive bullshit. Suddenly I wish she was here so I could hug her.
“How about you? How’s the trainer?”
She laughs. “Oh, that’s been over forever. There’s a new one now.”
“Of course there is,” I tease. “What does your schedule look like next week? We should have dinner one night.”
“I’d love that.”
We pick a date and I text Grady to give him a heads-up that he’s on dinner duty that night.
Glad you’re patching that up
, he texts back.
Me too
, I reply. With my heart just a little lighter, I head home.
* * * *
Later that night I call Renée. She sounds exhausted when she answers the phone, but she brightens a bit after we start chatting. When she tells me Jacob called someone a “poop-face” last week at school and got in trouble for it, we laugh about the fact that since there are six-year-olds bringing weapons to school these days. Calling another child “poop-face” seems mild in comparison.
“He got it from Addie, which is the worst thing. She said it one day and the boys both loved the sound of it. Do you know how much of a workout our naughty step has gotten in the past couple weeks over the expression ‘poop-face’?”
“How do you make them stop when all three of them are doing it?”
She sighs. “I’ve told them all that the next person who says it gets no apple juice for a week. I may or may not have also told Noah that I will write a letter to Spiderman. That’s as good a threat as any to him. It’s been pretty ‘poop-face’ free around here for the past few days, so I’m thinking it’s done.”
We talk more about the kids, Grady, and Donna before I finally ask the tough question. “How are you, sweetie?”
There’s a pregnant pause before she admits, “I don’t know.”
Something in her voice doesn’t sit right with me. “What do you mean? Are you not feeling well?”
“I want to get back to work,” she confesses. “I have the leave time to stay home a bit longer, and Sophie’s still nursing. I hate pumping, it’s a pain in my ass, and right now I don’t have to do it at all, which I’m happy about. But I could use the money, and I miss work. I miss adult company. I sit in this house and I’m surrounded by memories of Carl
all day
, and…” She trails off in a wavering voice. “I’m not sure it’s healthy.”
“Can you go back part-time?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. I just need— I can’t—” Finally she gets her thought out. “I thought it would be better to be home, but I’m not sure it’s really the best thing. I need a new routine for myself. The kids are okay, but I feel like I’m just… not.”
“Are you talking to anyone?” I ask.
“There’s a grief and loss group at my church,” she says. “I went once. There was no one there I could relate to. There were a bunch of older women who had all lost their husbands, but they’d been married for decades. And then there’s a mother there who lost both her sons to SIDS. I can’t be around that right now, it just gives me nightmares that I’ll walk into Sophie’s room and find her not breathing.”
“Maybe a different group.”
“Maybe.” She sounds skeptical. “I don’t know, maybe I’m not the kind of person who gets anything out of therapy. I feel like I need something else. Not talking.”
“You might,” I agree. “Whatever works. Let me know if there’s anything you need. I’ll hop on a plane if I have to. In a heartbeat.”
“I appreciate that, I really do. And thank you for being real. With me, I mean. Everyone’s so weird to me ever since Carl died. I just want people to stop treating me like a piece of glass.”
“It’s just because they’re worried, sweetheart. But I get what you mean. It can get a bit…”
“Claustrophobic,” she declares. “But also lonely. And I have no idea how that makes any sense whatsoever.”
“It doesn’t have to. Nothing about grief makes sense. Our brains just get us through it as best they can. The rest is just…” I think back to the loneliness I felt when Grady left, the sharp teeth of despair that sunk into me and didn’t let up for months. Frankly, I’m shocked she’s coping as well as she is.
“Cass, sorry, gotta run,” she says abruptly. “There’s a territory war for Lego space going on in the living room right now, and if they wake Sophie up I’m going to go postal on all three of them. She’s teething and barely sleeping right now.”
“Okay, go. Love you.”
“Love you.” After she hangs up I decide to talk to Grady about visiting her again. We’ll be at Donna’s for Thanksgiving next week, but since Renée’s been invited to her sister’s house, we’ll only see her and the kids on Friday. It’s not nearly enough time, and I’m worried about her. I decide I’ll ask Chloe if she’d be willing to go out there over Christmas break and keep her aunt company.
Cassie
“So.” Chloe squirms in the seat next to me as I drive the kids to school. Instead of her usual fifteen minutes of self-scrutiny in the mirror, she’s been obsessively checking her phone in between staring out the window. I’m happy she’s not making faces at herself, but drastic change is always suspicious where teenagers are concerned.
“Hmmm?”
“Baking a cake.” She sounds embarrassed to even say it.
“What about it?”
“I need to do that. You know how to do it, right?”
I almost drive off the road with joy, because if my snarky daughter is saying
you know how to do that
it means she’s really asking - in her awkward, prickly Chloe way -
please teach me how to do that
.
“Sure,” I reply casually. “Do you need to make it tonight?”
“Next week.” She stares out the window another minute before she continues, “I think I want to do a test run tonight, though.”
“We can do a test run tonight. The next couple days are a bit hectic, but I can grab the stuff on the way home and we can put it in the oven right after dinner.”
“From
scratch
,” she emphasizes. “Not a boxed cake, they’re full of chemicals.”
I suppress a smile. “From scratch. Got it. Yellow? Chocolate?”
“Yellow.”
Caden tugs one of the earbuds from his ear. “Did I hear something about cake?”
“Your sister is going to bake one tonight,” I call over my shoulder, which elicits exaggerated peals of laughter from my son.
“Chloe can’t even make grilled cheese,” he cackles, thumping the seat next to him in his amusement.
It’s true. Chloe cannot, in fact, make grilled cheese sandwiches without burning them. But I don’t dare discourage her, and I’m so thrilled she wants my help I’d gladly stand at the stove with her every night for the next month. “Be nice,” I admonish him. “Besides, baking is different. And you’re going to be sorry when her cake is delicious and you’re not allowed to have a piece.”
He laughs again and puts his earbud back in. Next to me, Chloe turns and flashes me a look of quiet gratitude.
* * * *
Chloe is precise in the kitchen and far more patient than I am. She measures everything out carefully into ramekins like they do on the cooking shows, and I smother a smile. She’s been paying better attention than I thought, and I wonder if she’ll confide the reason for this sudden interest in baking. I’d bet my life it’s about a boy.
The recipe I use is photocopied from an old cookbook of Donna’s, one that was her mother’s in the fifties. She has some of her own notes in the margins of the page, and when Chloe sees it, she pounces on it delightedly.
“Hey, that’s Nana’s handwriting!”
“Yep.” Donna tried so hard to find me a copy of the original cookbook, but when she couldn’t she had a copy made from hers and transferred it to computer stationery with a country goose print on the top and bottom margins. I’ve had that recipe tucked behind the red and white cover of the one she bought me instead since Grady and I got married.
“You and Nana are really close, huh?”
“We were. I mean, we are, but I just haven’t seen her as much. You know I lived with her for a while.”
Chloe nods. She knows the basics, but I never told her the full story, mostly because I didn’t think she’d be even remotely interested. But now she seems curious, so I tell her.
“When I found out I was pregnant with you, my parents cut me off completely. They’d already paid my tuition for the entire year, but they took my car away and told me I couldn’t come home.”
She looks shocked. “They kicked you out? Because of me?”
And this is partially why I haven’t told her. “Not because of you, sweetie. Because they didn’t like the idea of their daughter going against their plans. They had an idea for my life that did not include marriage or babies at age nineteen. And just so we’re clear,” I say sternly, looking at her, “that’s the same idea I have for your life. I love you and I wouldn’t change the past, but things were a heck of a lot harder the way we chose to do them.”
“You’re not mad at them?”
“I’m mad at them for other reasons. I’m mad at them for thinking your dad wasn’t good enough for me, when nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m mad at them for being snobby toward Nana. And I’m most of all mad at them for not falling instantly in love with you and forgetting all about being mad at me. That’s what they should’ve done.”
She nods thoughtfully, stirring the batter.
“And just so you know,” I continue. “It’s because they’re sick people. Not bad people. My father is an alcoholic, but he was a good father when I was young. He just lost control to the disease. And my mother was always a snob, but she tied herself to him and made so many excuses for my dad’s drinking…” I shake my head. “It’s called codependency. It’s like a disease itself, really. She chose my father’s disease over me, and you, and Caden. So I’m mad, but not because they kicked me out when I was pregnant. I made the choice to have a baby and be an adult in that way, so I guess that was their right. But the other stuff…”
“So Nana asked you to live with her?” Chloe prompts.
“Well, I had nowhere to go for winter break, because my school was closed. So Nana offered me the guest room, which used to be Uncle Carl’s room, and I stayed there when I wasn’t in school and for a few months before your dad and I got our apartment in Pinewoods.”
She wrinkles her nose at the mention of Grady’s and my first apartment complex, which still stands in an increasingly rougher section of town.
“It was a little nicer when we lived there,” I say, which is true but also not saying much. “It was tiny, though. Your crib was in our closet.”
“You stuck me in a closet?” She looks horrified.
“It was a big walk-in closet and we needed the space. So we made it a tiny little bedroom for you.”
“Where did you keep your clothes and stuff?”
“In plastic containers at the foot of our bed.”
“That’s crazy…” Chloe finishes spreading the batter in the pans and looks at me. “Now what?”
“Give them each a good hard tap on the counter to clear out all the air bubbles.” She looks at me like I have three heads, so I lift one of the pans and demonstrate. “Do it with the other one.” She does it, albeit not as hard as I did, and we slide them into the oven.
“Thanks for helping me, Mommy,” she says when both cakes are in the oven. I try not to react the way I want to, which is by throwing my arms around her and squeezing the life out of her. Instead I fluff her hair and say, “Sure, Chlo. Anytime, sweet girl.”
* * * *
I’m doing a spice inventory when Chloe strolls into the kitchen to check on the cake, humming softly, her face peaceful for once.
“Smells good, huh?” she asks.
“Smells great, Chlo. Want to peek?”
We both peer through the oven window at the golden cake layers.
“Can I open it?” she asks shyly.
I shake my head. “Leave it. Cakes get offended when you watch them too hard.”
She stifles a giggle and flops into a chair at the table.
“So I was thinking…” I begin. “How would you feel about spending part of Christmas break with your aunt Renée?”
“Just me?” Chloe asks immediately, “Or Caden too?”
“I hadn’t thought about that, actually,” I admit. “When I talked to Aunt Renée she sounded lonely. I thought it might cheer her up if you went out there. The kids love when you’re there, and she’d probably be happy to have a bit of a break from Kelly.”
“No kidding.” Chloe crinkles her nose at mention of Renée’s sister.
“But Caden could go, too,” I think aloud. “I know Daddy plans to be out there at some point, so if you both wanted to be there I’m sure Renée and Nana would be thrilled.”
“I’ll think about it. Me and Aunt Renée might want some girl time.”
She sounds so grown up when she says it that I can’t help but smile at her. “Okay, Chlo. You think about Caden. But can I tell your aunt you’ll go?”
“Mind if I tell her, actually? I was gonna call her tomorrow.”
“Sure, sweetie.”
She smiles and reaches for my phone. It doesn’t even register that she’s scrolling through my photos until she says, “Hey, do you still have that picture of…”
Her voice fades to deadly silence about the same time I realize what she’s seen. When I turn to look at her, she’s staring at the screen, stricken. “What—” Her voice dies in her throat, and when she looks back at me every bit of happiness that was between us this evening is gone.