Chapter Seventeen
Call Me By My Name
Sydney
I’m cutting grapes at the counter, and Archer is at the stove making scrambled eggs when Lily sets down her crayon and holds up her juice cup.
“Can I have more?”
“Sure, babe.” I take the cup—and pour apple juice before setting it back on the table next to her drawing, which is either a dog or a very ambitious potato.
She takes a sip, sets it down, and picks up her crayon. “Thanks, Mommy.”
The kitchen goes silent.
The kind of silence that has weight—heavy and loaded.
Lily’s crayon stops moving. Her eyes go wide, and I watch the realization hit her in real time—her mouth opens, her face flushes, her whole body goes still in her chair. “I mean Auntie Syd.” Her voice is tiny.
“It’s okay, Lil.” My voice comes out steady, which is a feat of engineering because my chest has just caved in. “It’s totally okay.”
Archer is at the stove, his back to us. His hand is on the spatula, and he hasn’t moved. He heard it—I know he heard it because his shoulders went tight the second the word left her mouth, and he’s standing very still, like he’s processing something he doesn’t know how to respond to.
He doesn’t turn around.
Lily gives me a wide-eyed, panicked look. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I know, sweetie. It’s fine.” I brush the hair off her forehead and smile at her, the smile costing me everything I have. “Eat your grapes.”
She nods, picks up her crayon, and goes back to the potato-dog like nothing happened, because she’s three, and three-year-olds recover from emotional earthquakes in under thirty seconds. I… I do not.
Luke walks in from the living room holding his shark book. He assesses the room—Lily coloring, me standing at the counter, Archer at the stove with his back turned—and sits down at the table without comment.
“Can I have toast?” he asks.
“Triangles?” I manage.
“Obviously.”
I make the toast, cut it into triangles, and set it in front of him with the butter on the side because Luke likes to apply his own butter in a thin, even layer that covers every square millimeter of bread.
Archer finishes the eggs, brings them to the table, and sits down, and we eat breakfast without mentioning what just happened.
I know it was just a slip. But a three-year-old just handed me the one word I’ve wanted to hear my whole life and then took it back.
I’m thirty years old. I want kids. I’ve always wanted kids. I figured by now I’d have them—my own, not someone else’s beautiful twins whom I love so much it scares me.
Bree picks the twins up at four for her midweek overnight. I’ve dressed and packed them—Lily’s bag has Jeffrey the giraffe sticking out of the top because he goes everywhere—and I’m standing at the front door when Bree pulls up.
The handoff is usually quick. Hi, here’s their stuff, Luke had a good day, Lily needs to finish her antibiotics at bedtime. Cordial. Efficient. Two women on opposite sides of a situation neither of them chose.
Today, Lily runs to the car, and I’m buckling her into the car seat when she turns to Bree and says, with the breezy confidence of someone delivering yesterday’s weather report: “Mommy, I accidentally called Syd Mommy this morning, but I fixed it.”
The air in the car changes.
I’m crouched at the car door, my hands still on the buckle, and I watch Bree’s face absorb it.
Her jaw tightens. Her eyes shift from Lily to me, and for a second, we’re just two women looking at each other across a three-year-old’s car seat, and there is so much in that look—surprise, hurt, something harder underneath—that I have to force myself not to look away.
“That’s okay, baby,” Bree says to Lily, her voice perfectly even. “Sometimes we mix up our words.”
She doesn’t say anything to me. She finishes buckling Luke on the other side, walks around to the driver’s seat, and pulls away from the curb. I stand in the driveway with Lily’s words still ringing in my ears and the look on Bree’s face burned into my memory.
The following Monday, I’m at preschool drop-off, holding Lily’s hand in the parking lot while Luke walks three steps ahead of us with his backpack straps pulled tight because he likes them that way. A woman I’ve seen a few times in the pickup line stops me on my way back to the car.
“Hey, excuse me—you’re Luke and Lily’s mom, right?”
I open my mouth. Then close it. “No, I’m—I’m a friend of their dad’s. I help with the kids.”
She smiles. “Oh, sorry. You just seem so natural with them. I see you every morning, and the way they hang on to you—I just assumed.”
“That’s really nice. But no, I’m just their Auntie Syd.”
“Well, they’re lucky to have you.”
She walks away, and I sit in the Lexus in the preschool parking lot for five minutes with my hands on the steering wheel, not driving.
You just seem so natural with them. I just assumed.
I turn the key and drive to the senior center.
The class is a disaster.
Not for the seniors—they’re fine, they’re great.
Dolores has been practicing at home and is now adding a shoulder shimmy to the hip pop, which three other women are trying to copy.
Gerald has figured out that if he just does the opposite of what his body wants to do, he ends up going in the right direction.
The disaster is me. I’m a half-beat behind the music, my counts are off, and I lose my place in the routine twice, which has never happened. Maryann asks me if I’m feeling okay, and I say I’m great. She gives me a look that says she doesn’t believe me.
After class, Dolores lingers. She’s standing at the folding chair where I keep my speaker, pulling on her jacket. “Bad day?” she asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You were off today,” she says.
“I know. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize to me. I got my workout.” She zips her jacket. “But you should probably figure out whatever’s eating at you before Wednesday.”
She pats my arm and walks out, and I stand in the empty room, pressing my hands over my face.