“Well, maybe I should just enroll him in boarding school,” Ayinde said, trying to keep her tone light, remembering the way Lolo had flitted in and out of her childhood. She’d breeze into Ayinde’s room a half hour past bedtime, getting ready to leave the apartment for dinner and dancing, to bestow a kiss on her daughter’s forehead, usually waking her up in the process. “Sleep well!” she’d trill, her heels tap-tapping on the marble foyer. Then there’d be the sound of her father’s heavier tread and the door clicking quietly shut behind them. At breakfast time, her parents’ bedroom door would be shut, the living-room blinds drawn. Serena would pour out milk and cereal, and Ayinde would eat quietly, set her dishes in the sink, and creep out the door.
“Well, I think you’re doing a wonderful job,” Lolo said. “But you shouldn’t take it all so seriously! It’s diapers and strollers, not rocket science!”
Ayinde looked down at Julian cradled in her arms, his cheeks working as he nursed, her perfect, beautiful boy, his mouth the exact shape of Richard’s, his long fingers just like her own, and her mother’s. “I just want to do it right.”
“You do the best you can. That’s what every mother does. Here,” said Lolo, waving another forkful of chicken at her daughter. Ayinde sighed helplessly before she opened her mouth and let her mother feed her lunch.
“Hahyahhh.”
Becky winced, holding the phone away from her ear. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and she’d finally gotten Ava back to sleep after a six
A.M.
feeding and ensuing fret-fest. It seemed that seven
A.M.
was a perfectly acceptable time for a phone call in the Mimi-verse. “Hi, Mimi,” she said, not making any effort to sound more awake than she was.
“Did I wake you?”
“A little bit,” said Becky, with an ostentatious yawn, hoping Mimi would take the hint.
Fat chance. “Oh, then, I’ll be quick. Let me speak to my son.”
Becky rolled over and poked Andrew with the phone. “Your mother,” she whispered.
Andrew took the phone and turned onto his side. “Hi, Mom.” There was silence. A disturbing amount of silence. “All right,” said Andrew. “Okay. For how long?” More silence. “No, no, of course not! Calm down, Mom. It’s fine. No. No! Well, if I did, I apologize. Right. No. Of course you do! Okay. We’ll see you later, then. Love you, too. Good-bye.”
He clicked the End button, rolled onto his back, and closed his eyes.
“What?” asked Becky.
Andrew said nothing.
“You better tell me, or I’m just going to assume the worst,” said Becky.
More silence.
“She got married again?” Becky guessed.
Andrew pulled the pillow over his face so that his words were muffled, but Becky could still make them out. “There’s something wrong with the air-conditioning in her house.”
Becky swallowed hard. “It isn’t even that hot out anymore.”
“It’ll just be for a few days,” said Andrew.
Becky said nothing. Andrew reached for her.
“Becky, she is…”
“Your mother. I know. It’s been pointed out to me. But we don’t even have a guest room! Wouldn’t she be more comfortable in a hotel?”
“She doesn’t want to spend the money.” He burrowed his face deeper into the pillow. “She’s still complaining about what our wedding cost her.”
“Oh, please,” muttered Becky, as she got out of bed. “Remember, I wasn’t the one who wanted three hundred guests. Nor was I the one who commissioned ice sculptures of the bride and groom. How long will Madame be staying?”
He got to his feet without meeting her eyes. “She wasn’t exactly sure.”
“And where’s she going to sleep?”
Andrew said nothing.
“Oh, come on!” said Becky. “Andrew, she can’t expect us to give up our bedroom! Ava sleeps up here, and I have to be near Ava…” She stuck her head into Ava’s nook to make sure the baby was still asleep, then made her way down the stairs. Andrew pulled on his bathrobe and followed her. “This is bullshit,” Becky said, measuring out the coffee.
Andrew pressed his lips together. Whether he was getting angry or just trying not to smile, Becky wasn’t sure. She set a mug in front of him. “Let me ask you something. And I want you to tell me the truth. Have you ever said no to her? Ever? Just flat-out, ‘No, Mom, I’m sorry. That isn’t going to happen’?”
Her husband stared into his cup. Becky felt her heart sink. She’d long suspected that this was the case—that Mimi ordered, Mimi demanded, Mimi threw fits until she got what she wanted, and Andrew, patient, kindhearted Andrew, was powerless in the face of her tantrums.
“It won’t be for too long,” he said. “And it means a lot to me.”
“Fine, fine,” Becky said with sigh. An hour later, when Andrew had left for the hospital and Ava had been fed and changed and dressed, the doorbell rang, and there was Mimi on the top step, dressed in skintight jeans, a denim jacket, and a halter top, with four pieces of matching Vuitton luggage, trunk included, lined up on the sidewalk behind her.
“Hahhh, darlin’!” she said, sweeping into the house and snatching twelve pounds of startled bald baby out of her mother’s arms, leaving Becky to drag her luggage up the stairs. “Ooh, is that coffee I smell?” She trit-trotted down to the kitchen, where Becky poured her a cup. Mimi sipped. “Decaf?” she demanded.
Becky considered lying. “No,” she said. “I could make some…”
“Oh, honey, would you mind?” Mimi’s eyes never stopped moving, bouncing from the kitchen walls to the floor to the sink to the stove to the shelves of cookbooks. Looking for what, Becky wasn’t sure. Possibly evidence that the kitchen was doubling as a meth lab, which would prove that Becky was every bit the low-life trailer-park queen that Mimi seemed to think she was. “I don’t suppose you’d have something for me to nibble on?” Mimi asked innocently. She rejected white bread (“I’m staying away from processed flour”), whole-wheat bread (“doesn’t agree with me”), and cantaloupe (“just never liked it”). “How about I keep an ear out for my granddaughter, and you could run to the market?”
Sure,
Becky thought.
How about I chop my hand off and feed it to the Rottweiler across the street?
And would it kill Mimi to call Ava by her name? Possibly. Ever since the morning in the hospital, Mimi hadn’t called the baby anything except “my granddaughter” and “my grandbaby.” Never once had the name
Ava
crossed her lips. Maybe she was still clinging to the hope that they’d decide to call her Anna after all.
Throw her a bone,
Becky told herself. “Okay. I’ll just jump in the shower first…”
Mimi waved her away. “We’ll be fine! Just leave me with a bottle!”
And so it begins.
“We’re breast-feeding, remember?”
Mimi’s eyes widened. “Still?”
“Still,” Becky said.
“And the doctors think that’s okay?”
“It’s the best thing for her,” Becky said. “The breast milk helps her immune system develop, and—”
“Oh, that’s what they say now,” Mimi interrupted. “In my day, formula was best. And it certainly seems to have worked with Andrew!” She cut her eyes at Becky. “And I read that breast-fed babies can have problems.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “With obesity.” A merry little giggle. “Of course, my Andrew’s never had a problem there, either!”
I’m going to kill her,
Becky thought with a kind of distant wonder.
I really am.
“I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she said, hurrying up the stairs, where she stood under the shower with her eyes closed, singing “I Will Survive” until the hot water ran out.
Down in the kitchen, Mimi was at the table with the baby in her arms and a half-eaten blueberry muffin in front of her. “She had almost the whole muffin top!” she said.
“What?” Becky said.
“She’s a good eater,” Mimi announced. “Just like her daddy was.”
“Mimi! She can’t have food yet!”
“What’s that?”
Becky’s hands balled into fists. “She can’t have food until she’s four months old at the very earliest, and then just rice cereal!”
Mimi waved her hands. “Oh, I’m sure this is all right. I was feeding Andrew when he was just six weeks old, and he turned out just fine! It’s just a fad,” she prattled. “Feeding babies, not feeding babies, breast milk, formula…although maybe you’d know more than I do. Being in food services and all.”
Becky pressed her lips together, picked up the telephone, locked herself in the bathroom, and called her pediatrician’s office, where the very nice nurse practitioner on call told her that while a blueberry muffin might upset Ava’s tummy, it probably wouldn’t do any lasting damage. Then she walked back down the stairs.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said to Ava. Ava looked at her from Mimi’s lap, then tilted her head back. The skin underneath her chin unfolded like the pleats of an accordion. Mimi stared down in disgust.
“Oh, MAH!”
Becky peered over her mother-in-law’s shoulder at the rings of grayish-brownish schmutz in her daughter’s neck.
“Aren’t you giving her baths?” Mimi demanded.
“Of course we are, I just…” Becky shook her head. She had tried to wash underneath Ava’s chin, but the baby didn’t make it easy. Half the time, she wasn’t sure that Ava even had a neck. Her head seemed to fit squarely between her shoulders, and who knew what was collecting in there? Well, she did now. She grabbed a wipe from her diaper bag and handed it to Mimi.
“I honestly don’t know where that stuff came from.”
Mimi made a huffing noise.
“I’ll go to the store now,” Becky said. “Please don’t feed her anything while I’m gone.”
Another huffing noise. Becky grabbed her keys and headed out the door. When she returned, carrying two bags of Mimi-mandated groceries, her mother-in-law and baby were settled on the living-room couch. “Who’s my princess? Who is? Who is?” Ava blinked and gave a gummy grin. Becky stifled a sigh and went down to the kitchen. Five minutes later, Mimi’s voice pulled her back up the stairs.
“And now we’ll do our crunches! One! Two! One! Two! Got to look good! So all the boys will call!”
Excuse me?
Becky hurried into the living room. “Mimi. Listen. I’m sure you don’t mean any harm, but Andrew and I don’t want Ava to grow up worrying about her body.”
Mimi stared at her as if Becky had just gotten out of her spaceship for her first visit to Planet Earth. “What are you talking about?”
“Crunches. Boys. We don’t want Ava to have to worry about any of that.” Becky attempted a smile. “At least not until her first birthday.”
Mimi’s lips curled into a scowl. “And Andrew agrees with this…this…” Becky could almost hear her saying
nonsense.
“Philosophy?” she concluded.
“One hundred percent,” Becky said and headed for the door before she succumbed to the temptation to tear Ava out of her grandmother’s arms and boot Mimi and her designer luggage back onto the street.
The backyard was Becky’s favorite part of the house. It was barely the size of a pool table, but she’d filled every inch with planters and pots in which she grew impatiens, petunias, and gerbera daisies, and the herbs and vegetables she used in the kitchen—tomatoes and cucumbers, mint and basil, sage and two kinds of parsley, even a water-melon vine. She hummed to herself as she tended to the plants, pinching off dead leaves, pulling up weeds.
Five minutes later, Mimi, with Ava in her arms, invaded her sanctuary. “Let’s see what Mommy’s doing!” she caroled, swooping Ava into the air and then down toward the ground in a manner practically guaranteed to induce spit-up within five minutes.
At least that’ll get rid of the muffin,
Becky thought.
“We’re watering plants!” she said, squirting water in the air, watching as Ava tried to grab for it and frowned as the spray slipped through her fingers. Then she raised her dripping hand and tried to stick her thumb in her mouth. Mimi slapped it away.
“No, no thumb-sucking! Bad girl!”
Becky turned off the hose and began to pray.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the patience not to strangle my mother-in-law, chop her into little pieces, and dump them down a sewer.
“Actually, Mimi, thumb-sucking’s okay.”
“Excuse me? That can’t be right. She’ll ruin her teeth!”
“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Becky said, feeling guilty for enjoying the way Mimi flinched at the word
old.
Mimi’s lips pursed. “If you’re sure,” she finally said.
“Yes, I’m positive,” Becky said, holding out her arms. “Let me change her.”
Becky carried Ava upstairs. Her diaper was dry, but she figured that one more minute of Mimi would cause her to do something she didn’t want her daughter to see.
She refastened Ava’s onesie, sank onto the rocker, and pulled up her shirt. Ava latched on eagerly. It had been less than an hour since she’d last eaten, but she seemed ravenous. Or maybe she just wanted some soothing. Mimi could put anyone on edge; why would a newborn be exempt?
Becky closed her eyes, rocking slowly, drifting into a doze as her baby nursed in her arms.
“Are you nursing?”
Becky lurched forward, jerked out of her nap. Ava’s eyes opened wide. She pulled away from the breast and started to cry.
“We were,” Becky said pointedly, pulling her shirt down, patting Ava’s back until she belched.
“Oh, excuse YOU!” Mimi said.
Becky wiped the baby’s pursed pink lips with the corner of a receiving blanket and snuggled Ava against her.
It’s the best feeling in the world,
her own mother had said the first time she’d held Ava. Becky hadn’t believed her then—she’d been so scared of hurting the baby, who seemed like such a fragile, floppy thing that she’d start sweating before every diaper change. But now that Ava was holding her head up better, looking around and noticing things, now that she’d gotten over her baby acne, Becky loved to hold her. Ava’s skin was soft and sweet-smelling, her long-lashed gray-blue eyes and full pink lips the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. She could spend hours kissing the back of Ava’s neck or nuzzling her head, still completely bald, the skin so pale that she could trace the veins that ran beneath it.
“We’re going to take a little nap,” Becky told Mimi. Without waiting for a response, she settled the baby into her crib and went to the bedroom, where she slipped off her shoes, pulled down the shades, and gazed at the skylight she and Andrew had installed during the halcyon days before Mimi had moved to town. She called Andrew’s office, then his cell phone, and when he didn’t answer either one, she did the thing she’d long resisted, the thing she despised Mimi for doing with such regularity. She paged him.
Yes, please, could you ask him to call home? No, no, not an emergency. It’s just his wife.
Thirty seconds later, the phone was ringing. Becky lunged for it. She was fast, but Mimi was faster.
“Andrew! What a nice surprise!”
“Hi, Mom. Is Becky there?”
“I imagine,” Mimi purred. “But don’t you have a minute to talk to your old mom?”
Becky hung up the phone and balled her hands into fists.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…
Ten minutes later, Mimi was screaming up the stairs. “BeckEEEE! My son wants to talk to you!”
The baby started crying. “Tell him I’ll call him back,” Becky called, and went into Ava’s room, where she spent ten minutes easing the baby back into sleep. When she called Andrew’s cell phone again, he picked it up.