Chapter Fourteen #2
“They won’t be alone. I’ll hang with them until I go back to work.
” Why did Roman even get a say in how I spent my days?
He hadn’t been the one who’d made a human, who’d almost died, who spent his days in the awful playroom.
He got two weeks of paid paternal leave.
He could have taken a month, but his supervisor advised that it wouldn’t be a good idea “in this climate.” You don’t want to come back from bonding with your baby to find file boxes in your cubicle, but in retrospect, it hadn’t felt like a decision at all.
Roman got to worry about taxes and layoffs and I got to worry if I would ever be myself again.
The thing is, he doesn’t feel privileged.
He feels tired and overworked. He misses his Gigi and his mom, the best mom, who is supposed to be here and whom he maybe talks to once a week now.
It’s understandable that he feels deserving, at the bare minimum, of some mushy grapes and an IPA.
Besides, isn’t it a luxury to stay home with Holden and lean on park benches on a weekday afternoon and get doors slammed in my face?
It isn’t Roman’s fault, but who else am I supposed to blame?
Maybe someday I’ll write poetry about it, but for now, I just want him to choke.
“I don’t know, babe,” Roman says, rummaging around, lifting Elmo’s ABC Book to reveal a stack of library books about the adult industry.
I’d checked them out after Holden and I had failed to arrive an hour early to drag-queen story hour and could only get a glimpse of Lil Miss Hot Mess’s platinum beehive.
There’s a coffee table book, an artsy photo of a stripper straddling a pole, her butt crack in your face and the big bold title Sex Work Is Real Work by Lauren Reynolds.
An academic research paper, “Feminist Perspectives on Pornography,” and Whores and Other Feminists by Jill Nagle.
“You really think it’s a good idea to have our baby around a—”
I freeze, rage building. “A what?”
“A stranger.”
“You mean, a nanny? Or, I know! We get on a wait list for that day care on Twenty-First Street that costs more than Harvard. Bright Smiles. Too little sunlight, too many butts to wipe.”
“I can’t make this decision right now.”
“They would totally nurture our child’s most critical period of brain development. More neural connections in the first thousand days than the rest of your life.”
Roman does the math, tries to solve the equation. But it all leads to the same answer: Daisy. “What about my sisters? They could take turns coming over for a while to help out, just until Mom can escape.”
“Where would they sleep? What about their own children? Who’s paying for the flights?”
“All right. You hate all my ideas.” He reaches for the remote. “I’m tired.”
I take it out of his hand. “Oh, you are? That’s weird. I’m so well rested.”
“Don’t you think I should have a say about who takes care of my son all day?”
His son? My fists clench. “Maybe if you were ever fucking home, we could talk.”
“You don’t think I’d rather have four months off?”
“Right. I forgot. This is an all-inclusive Carnival cruise.”
“Babe—”
“Maybe one of the ones that breaks out in norovirus and everyone eats ketchup packets to survive.”
He laughs once, harsh. “Look, I’m not saying Daisy isn’t good with him—and sex work is real work, and all that. I get it…But this isn’t a regular résumé.”
“So do you want to pay for a ‘regular’ nanny?”
“Maybe if I could work late without always getting shit, I’d be on track to make vice president instead of being on the verge of being shitcanned.”
“Oh, right. So it is my fault that they’re going to dick you around forever until some twenty-two-year-old or a bot that never sleeps replaces you. Easier to blame me, I guess, than—”
“Than what? What? Me being a loser?”
“Capitalism.”
We are going in circles again. It’s so boring, and it’s never going to get me what I want.
We both take a beat to recover from the vitriol.
Roman takes off the silver cuff links that I gave him when he got the job, when we both thought he would make partner one day.
Roman used to wear suits to work. I’d leave my job in Midtown and go downtown to meet him outside his office.
We’d walk along the West Side Highway, tell each other about our days, complain about our bosses, get a couple of glasses of wine, make out on a park bench overlooking the Hudson.
At least once, we had sex in the bathroom at the Winter Garden.
He’d go back to work until nine or ten. I’d go to my extension class in a loft in SoHo to talk about narrative storytelling, still tasting him.
We’d meet back at home late. He’d ask me to read him what I wrote.
I’d massage his neck as he vented about a bad boss named Tyler who went to Wharton and gave him a gentle ribbing in every meeting.
We never fought about who did what at home because neither of us did much of anything.
Roman loved his job then, too. Solving problems, making sense of numbers in spreadsheets, always an answer hidden in there.
He had boundless ambition, and it bolstered my own aimless drift.
I also, stupidly, thought we’d have money one day.
Not Hamptons money, but enough. We’d have a mortgage and fly economy plus.
I never thought that delivering a baby would put us into debt.
But that was before the shutdowns and the downturn and the economic malaise and artificial intelligence that will be smarter than all of us soon—but what’s the point if it never feels anything?
Before buying a home seemed like something nostalgic that only the ‘olds’ did—like landlines and forty-hour workweeks and meat loaf.
Before the future of the financial industry, politics, democracy, theatrically released romantic comedies, all felt so bleak.
Before Uber killed yellow cabs—and please, Lord, bring back Crown Vics—and before New York City’s skyline became littered with luxury condo towers that only the obscenely rich could afford.
Before Roman just wanted to keep his head down.
Before I was always so angry. Before we were both so tired.
“I can extend my leave,” I say. “It’s not like Phil misses me, and I think I can qualify for disability, get a note that the delivery had complications.
Hang with Daisy for a couple months. Please?
I need to feel like I’m doing something right.
I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was the best thing for Holden. ”
Roman knows that part is true. I think that is why he says yes. That, and because when Roman is tired, he always gives in, and when I am tired, I never give in. “I guess…as long as you’re with them, and nothing dodgy goes down, we can try…It would save money.”
Because of the nature of her work, Daisy can only hang with me and Holden during the day. Roman doesn’t come home from work until it is dark out. Some people are night people, and some people are accounting consultants who worry about layoffs.
And it is that universal truth that allows Daisy to move into our lives, first as a companion and a caregiver…and, months later, as something else entirely.