The Barter (22 page)

“That's a great idea,” Mark says with a slight smile. “There are a hell of a lot of diapers to change around that place, that's for sure.”

“That would be my job? Changing diapers?” Bridget demands.

“It was a joke, Bridget. I guess I could change the diapers if you would do my job for me,” Mark says, holding his hands up in a mock-surrendering gesture.

“I guess that's a joke, too, right? You think you could have done
my
job? The one I left right when I was about to be making more
money than you?” Bridget snaps. Mark doesn't have a reply to this. He just looks at her.

“I take it back, I don't want a job at PlusSign, I want a job at Bridget's old firm,” Martha deadpans. Gennie snorts.

“Because I could never get it back, right?” Bridget turns on her.
Yes, maybe I am a little crazy after all.

“Well, no.” Martha looks at her calmly. “You probably couldn't. I wish you nothing but good things and good luck and all the rest of it, but after a year or so you probably couldn't.”

Bridget feels gut-punched, and this sensation, on top of feeling as completely out of control as she almost always feels these days, is enough to make her want to sit down in the grass. So she does, with Julie in her lap.

“Are you all right, honey?” Gennie asks immediately. She is the first to kneel down, the first to touch her shoulder. “Do you feel sick? I'm probably giving everybody at this party Miles's cold. I'm the Typhoid Mary of Texas.”

“I think she's just sick of standing,” Martha says neutrally. “So am I, for God's sake. I've been on my feet at this party forever—where are the damn benches? Isn't this a park?” She plops down heavily in the grass next to Bridget and leans back on her elbows, surveying the violet hour of the cookout party with an appraising air. The children and the ice are beginning to melt down, the adults are beginning to shift on their feet, the dog has drifted away into the night, and the human figures collected beneath the young trees overhead are now draped in shadow, all half-glimpsed, half-disappeared, half-real. More than one adult has a sleeping or squalling child in his arms, or in a stroller that's being rocked absently back and forth, back and forth across the short grass.

“I just think we're all ready to go home,” Mark says, already moving away. “I'll go get the stroller. Martha, do you and Graham and the kids want to come over? We've got beer. I think. Right, Bridge? We've got beer?” This is all called over his shoulder.

But Bridget is looking at the little girl sprawled comfortably in her lap. Julie has been busy working with the braid that Bridget has worn her hair in today, a side braid that she did quickly and tightly over one shoulder this morning while her hair was still wet, rushing to get them out of the house. Julie plays with her own hair when she's tired and has been known to reach up to twirl Bridget's hair sometimes, too, while nursing or working on a sippy cup or just trying to keep her eyes open.

It's past nine o'clock by now, and Bridget sees that Julie is painfully tired. Her small pale face is still and expressionless, and her sea-bright eyes are ringed with dark purple. Her mouth is slightly open, and Bridget can smell her sweet milky breath, tinged with a vinegary hint of ketchup, her favorite vegetable. Julie is focused on the tip of Bridget's braid, squishing it between her fingertips, using it as a paintbrush on Bridget's collarbone, smoothing it down against Bridget's shoulder. Bridget kisses the corner of Julie's hot, dry mouth. “Like a horsey's tail, right?” she whispers.

Julie glances up at her briefly. “No,” she breathes. Her expression does not change.

“Hey, Bridge, I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to be a jerk,” Martha says without looking at her.

Gennie sits in the grass across from Bridget, who has momentarily forgotten that Gennie is still there. “I'm sure Bridget can do whatever she wants to—she's so smart,” Gennie says faithfully.

“Anything except get back into law with any hopes of being a partner after taking time off,” Martha agrees, deadpan.

“I bet Bridget could convince them,” Gennie insists. “She's analytical, she's ambitious, she cares about making things right. And anyway we're not living in the nineteen fifties—women have power now.”

The compliment feels so nice it's almost painful. Martha looks at Gennie and then Bridget with some real amusement, but declines to pursue the subject. Bridget would like to think that this is out of deference to her own feelings, but she suspects it's just because Martha is feeling mellowed out and bored. She would have felt the same way once—most lawyers love a good argument and loathe a pointless one.

Martha had once told Bridget (probably right before Julie was born, that would have been like her) that her three months of maternity leave with Harriet were the hardest thing she'd ever done, harder than the bar exam, harder than her parents' divorce, harder harder harder. She had hated being away from work
that
much—it was one of Martha's irrationally passionate things, whereas Bridget had liked her job well enough but it never even occurred to her to resent three months away, even if half of them were unpaid. Martha liked to joke about how she would never survive in “one of those godforsaken
real
first-world countries like Scandinavia where maternity leave is more like a year.” The way she told the story had made Bridget laugh, almost against her will, as was often the case with Martha: “Once upon a time, a queen with bad hair and a good job decided to have a baby. This queen wasn't lucky enough to live anywhere near her parents and didn't have a support network of any kind other than her other
childless friends and her husband, the king, but they decided to have a baby anyway because they were stupid horndogs and thought it would be fun to spend a few months trying really, really, really hard to have a baby—on the couch, in the kitchen, in the car, all over the place. And of course because they knew children were amazing and made life meaningful and all the rest of it. So. After all this the queen gets pregnant and everybody at her job starts treating her different. Like,
immediately
. Cases are reassigned; the single women start shooting her dirty looks—which the queen recognizes perfectly well, having shot a few nasty looks of her own at other women at the firm who got pregnant, because everybody knows that an attorney with a baby means extra work for everybody else, and believe it or not the queen used to like to go out and get drunk after work. The queen's coworkers throw her a shower and give her a bunch of expensive shit, and then she has the baby princess and they throw her out of the office and now she's On Maternity Leave, which for the queen means sitting in her castle, stapled to a chair, trying to learn to breast-feed, not showering, unable to walk right, not sleeping, freaking out about how this little princess is going to survive being her daughter. For three months. There was a ferocious fucking heat wave that summer, and every time the queen thought about leaving the house with the little princess she got freaked out about infant heatstroke. Anyway, two months of this go by—the queen has like two visitors this whole time and no help because the queen and king's parents are useless balls of wax—and finally the queen goes to the king, ‘Lo, this maternity leave shit is bullshit. I want to get back to work ruling the country forthwith.' And the king, who is no idiot, and a nice guy besides, says, ‘Girl, I hear you, because lo, they would never ask a
guy
to be happy sitting around the house for three months nursing a cute baby
but not doing much else.' And for that the king got his first postnatal fuck, and then a month later the queen went back to work and the princess was cared for by a really kick-ass nanny she'd spent the last month of her maternity leave finding and they all lived happily ever after. The end.”

Now Graham finds them, with the children in tow. The little girl, Harriet, has a face smeared with ketchup, dirt, and the remains of a Popsicle. The little boy, also named Graham but referred to by his parents and their friends as G2 or G-Dos or sometimes just Dos, has his legs and arms looped around the tall tree trunk of his father, and his face buried in Graham's long brown neck. Harriet runs up to Martha and launches herself bodily at her mother, knocking them both backward into the grass, screaming.

“Overtired Theater presents
Harriet,
” Graham says.

“I'm concussed! I'm concussed!” Harriet yells. In Bridget's lap, Julie stares at Harriet, interested despite herself.

“Time to say good night,” Martha groans from beneath her daughter, who is all arms and golden hair and sundress straps. “Oh God, you hellbeast.” She wraps her arms around Harriet tightly and somehow swings herself up onto her knees. “Did you have fun? Were you a good girl? What's all over your face?”

Gennie looks on wistfully. “I sometimes wish I had a girl,” she says.

“Have one. They're great. Have this one!” Martha says, slinging Harriet over her shoulders and lunging at Gennie. Harriet screams “
No no no!
”
with delight.

“I don't think Charlie wants another one,” Gennie says. She shrugs. “Whatever. We'll see.”

“You're young,” Martha observes, with Harriet squirming around, trying to get onto her shoulders again. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.” Gennie blushes.

“Infant!” Martha accuses. “Babies having babies!” Gennie smiles at this; she has already fallen for Martha's odd charm, that inclusive insultingness that Martha wields, when she wants to—when she feels like letting you inside by reminding you that there's such a thing as being outside.

“Let's get a move on, ladies,” Graham says. “Harriet, stop mauling your mother.” He holds his hand out to Martha and pulls her up. Harriet wails. “No more horseplay. Let's go.” But Harriet is not done, and Martha ruefully rubs Bridget's head and then Gennie's by way of farewell.

“I got her worked up. I'll pay for it all the way home,” she says over Harriet's increasing volume. “Good night, y'all. Thank you for having me.” Martha looks suddenly friendly, as if she really means it.

“Oh, sure. Sure. Thank you for coming.” Gennie stands up and glances awkwardly down at Bridget, clearly not wanting to be left alone with her. For her many talents, Gennie is neither a great actress nor a good liar. “Bridge, should I send Mark back here for you guys? I'm headed home. I'm beat. I think maybe I'm a little sick myself.”

“Sure,” Bridget says indistinctly. She feels a little like weeping. Her friendships have sustained a breakage. Haven't they? But maybe she's just being oversensitive. It might all be nothing. Gennie might call Bridget up on Wednesday to arrange to bring the kids to the coffee shop as usual before yoga class. But then she might not. Bridget has been waiting for Mark to say simple, unforgivable black things, but in fact she herself seems to have released them, and now they're swimming in the air between her and Gennie and Martha, darting little fish with poison in their veins.

Graham says his good nights to Julie and to Bridget and to
Gennie, and he and Martha and their kids lope off across the park, G2 now picking up the thread of his sister's complaint and raising a cry about having to leave. Gennie watches them go, then looks down again at Bridget and Julie. Bridget senses her friend is looking for an excuse to get away from her, but she doesn't want to part on such a sorry, strained note.

Bridget manages a weak smile. “I think Julie would fall asleep right here if we told her a story.”

Gennie's beautiful face is suddenly alight with pleasure. She kneels next to them and puts her hand on Julie's back and rubs gently. “Okay. You start.”

As if they've done it a thousand times, as if they are sorceresses in an enchanted wood whispering ancient inherited incantations, Bridget and Gennie take turns whispering down onto the top of Julie's sweet, soft head while Bridget rocks her. The fireflies swim around them, and the grass is cool and dark.

“Once upon a time there was a little fish named Julie,” Bridget begins.

“This little fish lived in a dear little fishpond in a lovely garden.”

“But she wanted to see the ocean and meet the dolphins and the seahorses.”

Gennie is briefly silent. “Er, one day she woke up and said, um, ‘I'm going to see where that pipe leads that puts all the water into the fishpond.'”

Bridget smiles into Julie's hair. “Julie the fish swam into the pipe, and she swam, swam, swam with all her might against the current, and finally she broke free. When she reached the other side, she saw she was in a beautiful sparkling river that led through a forest all the way to the ocean.”

“And the river was full of other little fish just like her, named Miles and Ruby and Jashun and Honor and Madison and Aidan.”

“All the little fish felt brave because they had each other, and they swam to the ocean together.”

“The ocean was a little scary at first. It was so big! One of the fish said, ‘I think maybe we better swim back home. I think I hear my mama fish calling me.'” Here Gennie did a very passable timid-fish voice.

“But then Julie the fish said, ‘Let's explore! I want to meet a real seahorse and a real dolphin.' And so she and the other little fish swam to a beautiful coral reef . . .”

“And then who should swim by but a school of dolphins! They said, ‘Hello, little fish! Would you like to go for a ride? Hang on tight!' And the little fish rode with the dolphins all around the wide-open ocean. Then the dolphins brought the little fish back to the coral reef and said, ‘Time for you little fish to head home to your mamas. Thanks for visiting us. Good-bye.'”

Bridget whispers stubbornly, “But the Julie fish decided to stay in the ocean rather than go back to her little fishpond, so she gave all the other little fish a hug and then curled up to sleep in the coral reef. And from then on her life was full of adventures and beauty. The end.”