Chapter 21
“Hey, girl!” Suri Hamilton weaved around other mothers at school pickup to envelope Emily in a perfumed hug.
“How are you? I heard about you and Jack. You are so lucky. I wish I could afford to leave my husband.” Suri was wearing a dress printed with lipstick mouths layered in swirls, fanned out on top of each other like a spread deck of cards.
“Sweetie, listen. It’s about our children’s education and it’s super important.
As you know, some of us are fortunate enough to have second homes in the Hamptons.
Blessed! But traffic on Fridays after school pickup makes me want to die and I am not alone.
What’s the harm in school getting out a little earlier?
Just on Fridays. It’s a modest ask. School could start earlier so no hours of education would be lost. Makes sense, right?
Well, the parents with helipads don’t agree.
They have zero sense of community. They say, ‘Why should we have to change our schedule?’ They chopper out of the city while we’re stuck in traffic.
The PTA is pretty divided! I need all the support we can get, and that’s where you come in.
Since you’ve got a weekend place upstate—you and Jack are so unconventional!
In the most inspiring way!—I thought you could sign my petition.
I bet you don’t want to be stuck on the George Washington Bridge at four p.m.”
“I can’t sign this.”
“Do not tell me you’re afraid of the helipad moms.”
“Your Friday plan might not work for the teachers.”
“ We employee them . They earn more on our tuition dollars than they would ever make in a public school. They can manage one hour earlier, one day a week.”
“What about families who don’t have second homes? Some students live in the outer boroughs. They already get up early to take the subway.”
“You mean the scholarship kids? Emily! I know things must be rough. You look withered, poor thing.” Suri rested a palm on her chest, the printed lipstick mouths smiling beneath her fingertips. “But don’t let single motherhood turn you into, like, a communist .”
“At least I don’t make other people miserable so I can feel better about myself.”
Suri gasped. “That is not nice .” She left, her petition flapping. Emily was glad. It had felt good to say what she thought. Maybe she had been a little mean, but it was a relief to know that she could be mean after years of self-censorship.
Stella saw Emily in the courtyard, ran up, and hugged her mother’s hips. “Aster’s mommy looks mad,” Stella said.
“Aster’s mommy can deal.” Emily offered a chocolate croissant, Stella’s favorite after-school snack. “Today’s an exciting day for us.”
“Are we going home to our real house?”
“No.” Emily cupped Stella’s round cheeks. “It’s our first day in our new apartment. You’ll like it. Much more room than the studio.”
“Will Daddy be there?”
“Daddy and I need time apart.”
“I know that. You said that. But I don’t need time apart. Daddy misses me too much.” Stella bit into the chocolate croissant, chewing moodily, a smear of chocolate on her upper lip. “It was better when we were all together.”
“What did you like about it?”
“We had cereal together. We had good night together.”
“You can call Daddy to say good night to him when you’re with me, and call me when you’re with him.”
“Daddy says you’re mad because I’m his favorite.”
“That’s not true.”
“He loves me most. He said so.”
“He shouldn’t have said that. He loves Connor just as much.”
Stella shook her head. “Connor’s a crybaby.”
“Don’t say that.” Emily’s voice was sharp.
Stella licked her fingers resentfully.
Connor’s fifth-grade class filed into the courtyard.
He waved goodbye to his best friend, Lucas, then ran up to Emily.
He snuggled into Emily’s side, his head at the height of her armpit.
Emily recalled the lines that Jack had marked on the walls of the playroom, measuring the children’s height and age as they had grown.
Emily’s body was marked with invisible lines—Stella at her ribs, Connor almost to her shoulder.
Those lines would shift upward until her children were adults and no longer measured themselves against her.
Connor and Stella were polite about the apartment.
They said that they liked the bunk beds and didn’t debate who got the top (Connor) and who got the bottom (Stella).
Neither complained that they had to share a room.
If they noticed that the apartment was entirely furnished by IKEA, where Emily had spent an entire dazed day followed by a night of maddening assembly, they didn’t mention it.
They liked the kitchen barstools, which spun.
They gazed out the windows and chose their favorite skyscrapers.
They behaved so well that it was as if they had colluded beforehand to protect their mother’s feelings.
Their care made Emily’s throat hurt. No one commented that the chicken she cooked for dinner was dry, which wouldn’t have happened if Jack had prepared it.
She gave Stella a bath, detangling her long hair, which darkened to copper when wet.
While the children read by their cloud-shaped night-lights, Emily looked at her calendar.
Drinks with Gen was in a few days. Tomorrow, she would meet Jack at a café near their home on the Upper East Side.
“Mommy?” Stella looked up from her book. “Why is Toad scared of everything?”
“Because it’s funny,” said Connor from the top bunk. “I like when he goes sledding.”
“He’s even scared of his bathing suit.”
“He’s embarrassed of his bathing suit.”
Stella shook her damp head. “He’s scared the dragonflies will laugh at him and they do. And the snakes. And everybody.”
“But he still goes swimming,” said Emily. “Toad is brave.”
“Even Frog laughs at him. That is not okay.”
“Toad doesn’t mind. He knows he looks silly.”
“What if he minds—on the inside?”
“Usually, he tells Frog how he feels. He would tell Frog if he minded.”
Stella looked unconvinced.
That night, Stella slipped into Emily’s bed. Her hair had dried and smelled like clean hay. “Why can’t you sleep?” said Emily. “Because the apartment is new?”
“The windows creak.”
“That’s because it’s windy out.”
Stella cuddled closer and put her cold toes against Emily’s leg. Confessionally, Stella said, “It’s okay that I’m Daddy’s favorite, because Connor is yours.”
Emily felt a stab of failure. Stella had always been the easier child, sturdy and unbothered, the one content to color on her own, who rarely whined.
She was outgoing and social. She had a carousel of playdates, whereas Lucas was Connor’s one close friend.
Since the separation, it had become more difficult to arrange playdates with Lucas; his mother often said that he was busy.
Emily had begun to wonder if Lucas’s mother disapproved of the separation, and she worried that Connor was lonely.
It hadn’t occurred to her to worry about Stella, who was typically cheerful.
Maybe she had been easy to overlook. “You are both my favorites.”
“I don’t mind,” Stella insisted.
“You should mind, if it were true, but it’s not.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I said okay, Mommy.”
“Turn over. I’ll draw pictures on your back to help you fall asleep.” Emily drew a mermaid. She described everything she drew: a wave crashing, the pebbles sifting beneath it. She drew herself and Stella on the beach, and how Stella saw the mermaid and Emily didn’t. “But I believe you,” Emily said.
“How do I know?”
“I have a smile on my face.” Emily drew one. Then she drew a long squiggle.
“What’s that?” said Stella.
“That’s you, walking your pet worm on a leash.”
“A worm!”
“Worms like to go for walks, too.”
“On the sand ?”
Emily wiped away the worm and gently pinched Stella’s back. “Your pet crab.”
“You’re weird.”
Emily tickled Stella behind her ear. She drew the night falling and the mermaid diving below the waves. With little taps, she drew the stars. Then she wiped it all away and drew something Stella would easily guess. She drew the heart over and over until Stella fell asleep.
When Jack was happy with Emily, he called her “dreamy.” When he wasn’t, he called her “spacey,” though Emily didn’t recognize herself in either word.
It was true that she had always been an interior person and became more interior during her marriage, because a good place to hide from Jack was inside herself.
Jack replaced “spacey” with “childish” when his discontent deepened.
She did feel childish the morning she was supposed to meet Jack at the café.
Connor and Stella, as toddlers, would go boneless whenever she tried to carry them somewhere they didn’t want to go.
She wished she could use the same strategy.
She hadn’t seen Jack since she put the kids into her SUV and drove back to the city from upstate, having warned Jack not to follow. He asked how she proposed to stop him.
“I will hate you,” she said. This seemed proof of her childishness: hate is the last option of the powerless.
Her threat’s effect on him surprised her.
He covered his eyes. When his hand fell, he spoke in an utterly normal tone, suggesting that she relax over the weekend.
He would see her at home on Sunday night.
“Yes,” she said, “see you tomorrow.” Instead, she found the West Village studio and moved in overnight.
His texts called her a cunning liar—an old accusation, like “childish.” In earlier years, his accusations made her muster the correct behavior to prove him wrong. This time, she ignored him.