But Kate got me thinking: Sometimes my life with Darren did feel stale. And stale can lead to something worse if it goes unchecked.
lxvi
That winter, a few months after Liam turned two, our whole family got sick. It was the kind of horrible cold that had Violet out of kindergarten for a week. She was listless and clingy and my heart just about broke every time that she coughed, a deep rattle in her tiny chest. Your heart would’ve broken, too, Gabe. She was so sad and pathetic. Annie wouldn’t leave her side. Darren wasn’t feeling well either, and on top of that a deal he was handling at work wasn’t going as smoothly as he’d expected, so he was short-tempered—with the kids and with me.
After four days of that, Violet and I were curled up together on the couch with Annie watching Sparkle On! and Liam was on the floor with his favorite wooden trains. Darren was pacing the apartment holding some company’s financial report in his hands, reading while he walked. During his third or fourth circle into the living room he said to me, “Liam’s nose is running.”
“There are Boogie Wipes on the kitchen table,” I told him.
He stopped walking and looked at me. “I’m working,” he said. “You’re their mom.”
“Excuse me?” I said, as Violet rubbed her own drippy nose against my sweater.
“I’m working,” he said again.
I stared at him. Sometimes he came out with these things that made me think: Is this really the person I married? Not often, but it happened. It was usually about childcare, about my role in the family as a wife and a mother.
Without another word, I got up off the couch, lifting Violet with me, got the Boogie Wipes from the kitchen, and wiped Liam’s nose.
Later that night, I woke up to the sound of Liam crying. We’d just switched him from a crib to a bed, but he still hadn’t figured out that he could get out of it by himself in the middle of the night. I looked over at Darren. He was half awake too.
“Liam’s crying,” he said, his eyes barely open.
“I hear him.” My head felt like it was filled with cotton.
“You’re going?”
It wasn’t really a question. “Mm-hm,” I said, getting out of bed.
When I got to Liam’s room, Violet was standing in the door frame. “He woke me up, Mommy,” she said, following me inside.
“Me too,” I told her, as I lifted him out of his bed. “Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
“Can I stay?” she asked.
I was too tired to argue. “Okay,” I said, then turned to Liam. “What’s wrong, baby?”
Upright, in my arms, Liam’s cries turned to a whimper. I wiped his face, which was covered in snot. “Too hot,” he said, his breath still shuddering.
I put my lips against his forehead, the way I had with Darren so many Christmases ago. But I was sick too, and my lips weren’t reliable. I took his temperature. 101.4. I sighed.
“Okay, buddy,” I said. “You don’t like this part, but it’ll make you feel better.”
While Violet watched, I syringed Tylenol into the back of Liam’s mouth and then stuck his sippy cup between his lips. He was too sick or too tired to put up much of a fight. He swallowed, then coughed. “I know, baby,” I said. “Being sick is no fun.”
“Sick is no fun,” he echoed, his lower lip trembling a little.
Violet coughed, covering her mouth with her elbow, like she’d learned at kindergarten.
They looked as miserable as I felt. “How about we all sleep together tonight?”
She nodded and climbed into Liam’s bed. I slid in next to Violet and propped Liam’s head on my shoulder, hoping the elevation would help him breathe.
“Love you, Mommy,” he said, as his eyes closed.
“I love you too,” Violet said, as she snuggled against my other side.
“I love you both,” I told them, “to the stars and back.”
And I thought about you, then, Gabe. I hadn’t in a while, but lying there I remembered the day, not quite a year before, that we baked cookies and you fixed my washing machine. I remembered the feeling of what could have been. And I wondered how you would have reacted to two sick kids. Would you have gotten out of bed and told me to sleep while you comforted a crying child? Would you have wanted them in bed with both of us, a family of runny noses and fevers? You wouldn’t have expected that it would all fall on me, that I’d be the one wiping faces and syringing Tylenol. I know that for sure.
That night, with my babies in my arms, I dreamed about you in Darren’s place. We were making waffles for Violet and Liam. You were wearing that ridiculous crown. We were all in matching Christmas pajamas.
When I woke, I chalked it up to a fever dream. But, really, it was much more than that.
lxvii
That year, 2013, sometimes felt like a year of disillusionment. I seemed to disappoint Darren constantly with my choices. And he disappointed me with his reactions. And his expectations. It was small things—Violet started first grade at a new school and he thought I should go in to work later so I could walk her there in the mornings instead of Maria. I got invited to speak at a conference in Los Angeles, and he wanted me to turn it down because it meant I’d be gone for six days, which he thought was too long for the kids to be without their mom. He was still trying to turn me into the woman he’d imagined when he made that inane checklist. But he was not my Pygmalion. I was not his Galatea.
I’m being unfair, though. We had fun times too. We spent two weeks at a beautiful house in East Hampton in August and invited Vanessa and Jay and the triplets to join us for a week. The kids had a great time swimming and building sand castles and digging holes deep enough to stand in, and Darren and I were better together out there, without work getting in the way. We took Violet and Liam to their first Yankees game in September and had seats right behind home plate. Austin Romine signed a ball for each of the kids, and they talked about it for weeks afterward. We hosted our first Thanksgiving and invited Darren’s whole family and mine, and everyone got along wonderfully. On the balance, we were fine, but we weren’t great.
Which is probably why when I saw a woman’s name—Linda—appear on Darren’s phone the week we were both off from work between Christmas and New Year’s Day, my mind immediately went to an affair. The way people interpret a situation often says more about them than it does about the situation. Like how during our five-year reunion, when I saw that woman with her hand on your arm, I assumed she was your girlfriend, or at least someone you were interested in taking home that night. We see everything through the filter of our own desires and regrets, hopes and fears.
When I saw Linda with no last name, my body flushed hot and cold all at once. I’d never imagined Darren would cheat on me. He seemed too stable, too solid, too loyal. So I set out to prove to myself it wasn’t true. I scanned through my mental Rolodex for Lindas—someone from his office, from college, from the gym—but came up blank. Then I went onto his Facebook page to look for Lindas. The only two I could find were a cousin who lived in New Mexico and a college acquaintance’s wife who lived in Philly. I took a deep breath and decided it could be either one of them. I should give him the benefit of the doubt, even though leaving off a last name in a contact entry felt like a deliberate choice, like there was something to hide.
“Have you spoken to your cousins recently?” I asked over a dinner of macaroni and cheese and chicken cubes we were eating with our kids. For some reason, Liam preferred to eat meat in cubes, so that became our default shape. Personality-wise, he reminds me a lot of my brother.
Darren shook his head. “I should call them, though, and wish them a happy new year.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I should do that too.”
So it wasn’t Cousin Linda.
“What would you think about going out to Philly for a day with the kids this week?” I asked. “Have you been in touch with any of your college guys there? We haven’t seen them in a while.”
Darren shrugged. “It’s a long trip, and really I haven’t spoken to any of them since Josh got married last spring. Are we getting to that point where we’re trading in our old friends for newer models?”
I took a sip of the Merlot I’d poured us both, even though it didn’t really go with the mac and cheese and chicken. I never like white wine in the winter. “What do you mean?”
Liam was building his chicken into a tower. Violet was eating her mac and cheese one noodle at a time.
“Just that we’ve been spending most of our time with people in our neighborhood who have kids our kids’ ages. I can’t even remember the last time we saw Kate and Tom and their girls, and they’re only an hour away in Westchester. Maybe we should make plans with them this week.”
“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll give her a call.”
“Auntie Kate?” Violet asked. “Do you think she’ll have new dress-up clothes I can wear with Samantha and Victoria?”
Samantha was a year and a half younger than Violet, and Victoria was six months older, but the age differences didn’t seem to matter as much now as they had when the girls were smaller. “I think that’s quite possible,” I told her.