Slightly South of Simple Read online

  I patted the couch beside me, and she snuggled up under my arm, head resting on my shoulder. She had always been my most affectionate child.

  “That’s so good, Adam,” she said.

  She smelled of perfume and alcohol.

  “Aunt Emmy!” he shouted. “Watch this!”

  She looked like she was resisting the urge to cover her ears. “How can Adam bear to miss this?” she asked. “How do you do it, Sloane? You are Superwoman.”

  Sloane smiled. “This is what I chose, so I accept it. Plain and simple.” She shook her head. “But his twenty years are up in four more, and I sure do hope he chooses civilian life. This military stuff is a hard business.”

  “Do you think he will?” I asked.

  Sloane laughed. “Realistically? Not a chance. He loves it. It’s his passion.”

  Caroline came in about that time. Except that Caroline doesn’t really come in. She makes an entrance; she arrives. She was all dolled up, her hair fixed, her makeup done. It was shocking to see her in wedges and a dress after a few weeks of lounging around.

  “You look fantastic, sweets,” I said. “Where are you going?”

  She looked at me like I was dense. “To pick up Grammy, obviously.”

  “Yeah, girl. Work that driver’s license,” Sloane said, laughing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Grammy has already been in one accident this month.”

  Caroline shot me a look. “I’ll have you know that I got a perfect score on my driving test. I parallel parked for the first time with an eight-months-pregnant belly. So I don’t want any lip from any of you.”

  I was so proud that my daughter was doing something selfless. I had been dreading having to leave this quiet morning with my grandson and daughters to go to the airport alone. Even though I joke about Caroline being difficult, I would be happy to have my firstborn all to myself for a little while.

  And Mom would be thrilled. She and Caroline had always had a special bond, like Vivi and me. I don’t know how that happens, except that being a grandparent is like being a parent but with decades more perspective. I had felt guilty about Mom having to fly by herself, but Scott insisted that he couldn’t go, and Mom insisted that she didn’t need me flying there to come get her only to get right back on a plane to come home. “They have people for that,” she said. “They are paid to take care of old people like me.”

  Mom and I had had our share of disagreements in the past, the largest, of course, that she wouldn’t let me come home when I needed her the very most. I never told her how I wished she would have been there more when my girls were young, taken a greater role in their lives. But she had raised her three children. She was finished. I think it was more of an internal struggle I had, a difference in how we parented, in that she continued on with her life and we fit in on the fringes where we could. I knew I would never be that kind of parent. And I wasn’t. Not even now that they were all grown up.

  I remember thinking when I was young that there was no greater gift than losing yourself to raise your children. People complained and moaned about it, but to me, it was a privilege. I don’t regret one single day that I spent with them. I knew that this would be exactly the same thing. I would lose myself again, the self that I had clawed and scraped to recreate after Carter had died, but I would find something else in caring for my mother. Just like when my girls were young, I knew I would never regret one moment I had spent with her, would always cherish that I had been the one to get to be there for her final time on earth, no matter how long that time was. I knew already from being a mother that sometimes the days would be long. Some days would be hard, would wring me out, would lend me that tiredness I felt from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. But the years? They would be inexplicably too short. And so, even on the toughest days, I would be grateful. I had the gift of time. I had the privilege of more days to work through our differences, to say the things that so desperately needed to be said.

  Emerson, Vivi, and I had done a yoga video that morning whose main theme was surrender. Life, we had been instructed, was as much about surrender as it was about control.

  Surrender, I thought. It was a tricky thing. Letting go. Trusting another person more than you trusted yourself. Knowing he would be there for you. Believing that the universe would send you the right thing. When your husband is killed in a way so excruciating that you can’t bear to think of it, that you have nightmares of being burned, buried alive, suffocating on smoke for years and years and years, surrender is no longer in your vocabulary.

  When you find out that someone you had trusted more than anyone else on the planet hadn’t bothered to let you in on the very real financial distress that was facing your family, letting go was a tricky concept.

  But when your three daughters and four grandchildren were living under your roof, your eleven-year-old granddaughter mastering Warrior Two right beside you, and contrary to your fears, it was going swimmingly, and your old boyfriend came back and was living on his dump of a boat presumably to be near you, and your mother was coming back home and you didn’t know what to expect but you were less nervous than you thought, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, this surrender thing might work for you. Maybe you can learn to live your life in a different way, in a better way.

  My phone beeped. Sandra. It was a group text to Emily and me. It was such a shocking change from nothing but my girls over the past few weeks, I almost did a double take. Don’t kill me . . . Did you see the Ladies Who Lunch previews for tonight?

  I rolled my eyes. That was the last thing I would want to know about. That show is off limits in my house. And you know I don’t have a TV!

  Emily: Even with all the kids??

  Sandra: It looks like James dumps Edie . . . For Caroline.

  Me: What?!

  Emily: She might want to see it. Maybe.

  Sandra: We should watch first. Make sure it’s all aboveboard.

  Me: James and Caroline are going out. I’m babysitting. Can’t come.

  Sandra: We’ll come to you.

  Emily: Gary will set it all up. Livestreaming.

  I was going to be in so much trouble. Curiosity killed the cat, and I was only human. Curiosity was going to kill me if I didn’t figure out what this was all about. When Caroline burst through the door, I threw my cell phone across the counter.

  She gave me a weird look. “Mom? You OK?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I smiled, trying to look nonchalant. “I’m just nervous about Mom coming.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “About Grammy coming? Or riding with me?”

  I laughed, but really, riding with her was something to be nervous about.

  I took a deep breath and followed her out the door. And it occurred to me that being a parent is one giant leap of faith.

  TWENTY-SIX

  eligibles

  caroline

  I may be thirty-four years old. And I may love my sisters more than life. But I still like having my mom all to myself every now and then. I am the firstborn child, after all. Sometimes I want a few minutes of going back to how it was for those short, fleeting years before Sloane was born, when it was just Mom and me hanging around all day until Dad got home. As I used to call them when I was little, the good old days.

  Now, of course, I wouldn’t trade my sisters for anything. But it was difficult to transition from being an only child and having all of Mom and Dad’s love and attention.

  “So,” Mom asked, sliding into the passenger seat of her SUV. “How you farin’?”

  I smiled. It was one of those habits that even years as a New Yorker hadn’t cured her of. I kind of liked it.

  “Well, I’ll be honest.” I turned to back out of the driveway. “During all those years of fertility treatments and IVF and praying for a baby, this wasn’t exactly how I pictured things. But I have a new baby. And he is perfect.”

  “The universe has a funny sense of timing, that’s for sure.”

  I rolled my eyes.
The universe. My mother was in the front pew of the church, pearls on, the three of us in smocked dresses beside her, every Sunday morning for most of our childhood. It wasn’t like I had this strong faith or anything, but I liked that she did. It bugged me that she had lost so much of herself when she lost our dad. But I didn’t want to get into it today.

  “Do you think that’s what made James cheat?” It was the first time I had said it out loud. Because it was a reason men cheated, wasn’t it? We had spent six years, ever since Vivi was three and it became apparent that I was not getting pregnant on my own, doing every fertility treatment under the sun. From Clomid to Chinese herbs, acupuncture to IVF, the big, the small, the Eastern, the Western, and everything in between. If someone had gotten pregnant doing something, I tried it. And nothing. No baby.

  It was the most stressful time in our marriage. No doubt about it. I can’t count the number of months I cried over an EPT, the number of months James had tried to persuade me to give myself a break.

  I took my eyes off the road long enough to see Mom shake her head. “Caroline, no.” She sighed. “I want to think only the worst of him right now because I’m mad at him, but the way he took care of you and supported you through all of that . . . I’m not sure many men could have taken it.”

  It brought tears to my eyes. “Did you ever think about adopting, Mom?”

  She shrugged. “Sure I did. But your father didn’t love the idea of that.” She paused. “I hope that doesn’t color him in a negative light. It was a different time. It wasn’t even about the baby, really. It was such an invasive process. He didn’t want anyone delving into our histories, all of our financial details . . .”

  She trailed off. James had been so good about that, saying that we could adopt. And at first, I thought we should. I don’t know if it was the hormones or my basic personality or what, but once I started down the fertility road, I couldn’t stop. I became obsessed by being pregnant again, of experiencing giving birth. I almost idolized the idea. When one doctor would sense my desperation, would tell me that he or she wouldn’t let this lunacy continue, I would go to the next one and the next.

  James tried to talk to me about it, but it was like he knew this had gotten bigger than me. He knew I couldn’t hear him, not really. He had to let me do this. He was always good about knowing that.

  One night at dinner, the three of us were discussing how we would celebrate Vivi’s ninth birthday. And I said, in my usual way, “Wonder how we’ll celebrate your tenth birthday when the new baby gets here?”

  Vivi was calm but strong. She reminded me a lot of Sloane in that way. She burst into tears at the dinner table and looked at me with the most beautiful yet terrorized face I’d ever seen and said, “Do you even love me anymore? Or only the new baby?”

  She ran from the table, and I let her leave. I was stunned, as though she had slapped me across the face. No words could have cut more deeply or hurt me worse. She sliced right through me in the way only a daughter can do to her mother.

  I didn’t cry or really even react much. I just turned to James and said, “What have I done?”

  He squeezed my shoulder and said, “We understand, Caroline. It’s a hard time for you.”

  I shook my head. “I have damaged my relationship with the child I do have in favor of the one I don’t.”

  That was it. It was the last day I went to a doctor except for a regular checkup. The last time I took hormones, injected myself with drugs, anything. That’s how I am, though, I think. Sometimes something big has to happen to snap me out of it. But once it does, I’m done. It’s over.

  “Thanks for everything, Mom,” I said now. “You were so great.”

  She squeezed my arm. “I knew what you were going through. I wanted to protect you from it, but of course, I couldn’t.”

  “It was better my way. At least there was something wrong with me. I could be in control. I can’t imagine if I’d had to wait around for James to decide what he wanted to do.”

  Mom laughed. “That is what you would think about. Men can be very sensitive about these things, but your father was really fine. He was totally on board. He wanted our babies to at least be mine, and he was very grown-up and stoical about the whole thing.”

  “Mom, did you worry that Dad would love Emerson the most?” There. I’d said it. Sort of. We always used to joke that Emerson was Dad’s favorite child. But even the joke stung just a little. She was the only one who was biologically his, after all.

  She laughed again. Harder. “You need to turn right at the next stoplight.” She laughed again. “Honey, no. Of course not. I can promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that he did not love Emerson the most. It’s different for men. They don’t carry the babies. Either way, they sort of spontaneously come into the world. He was so grateful for you, because we weren’t sure we’d have any children. And then Sloane and Emerson were both just beautiful icing on a beautiful cake.”

  I smiled and turned right into pickup and dropoff, which was a comical name for a section of the tiny airport that could have easily been someone’s house. There were no cars anywhere. Just us.

  I put the car in park, and Mom said, “Whew! We survived!”

  I held up my phone. “I didn’t even text and drive. Impressive, right?”

  “You’d better not ever,” Mom said. She was very serious about three things: we were not allowed to text and drive, take shots, or skydive. Otherwise, she was OK.

  So maybe my parents didn’t have favorites, or maybe they did. But I was pretty certain, as I walked into the tiny airport a few minutes later, that I was Grammy’s favorite grandchild. When I met her at baggage claim, she was on one of those contraptions that you rest your leg on and wheel around. It was shocking how agile she still was, in her blue tracksuit, pearls, and Ferragamo tennis shoes. Her hair was whiter than the last time I had seen her, curled and set like the good Southern woman she was.

  “How do you do it?” was the first thing she said to me when I saw her.

  “What, Grammy?”

  “How do you manage to look like a million bucks right after a C-section? There is no rational explanation for it, yet here you are, stunning as ever.”

  This was why I loved this woman.

  “So,” I said, wheeling her two suitcases through the lobby, while she looked like she was having way too much fun on her scooter. “Give it to me straight.”

  She nodded. We had always had that connection, that mind meld, where we used very few words. “Well, darling. You made your bed. You’re going to have to lie in it. For heaven’s sake, that son of yours can’t grow up without a father.”

  I turned my head toward her. “But Grammy—”

  “But nothing, love. We honor our commitments. We just do.”

  Very awkwardly, as there was no one else around to help—I didn’t know how they kept this airport open—I finagled the two suitcases out the door and held it for my grandmother. “He didn’t honor his commitment. Not at all.”

  She waved her free hand at me. “Well, darling, all men are morons. You know that. For heaven’s sake, you just gave birth to one. But you have to be the bigger person. Lord knows he isn’t capable.” She took a deep breath. “It’s going to be harder than hell. But doing the hard thing, even when it hurts, is what makes you strong.”

  I thought about my sister Sloane, how she sat in her room every night after the kids went to bed and wrote her husband a letter. A real letter, detailing the events of the day. Her life was one huge sacrifice after another, and while, yeah, Adam’s calling was a noble one, it was still a choice. It was still choosing to protect your country over being with your wife and kids.

  But she loved him. So she stuck by him. Although she was quieter and calmer and more reserved, I had no doubt that she was one of the strongest people I knew.

  Mom turned, saw us, and said, “Mom!” running to Grammy.

  “Oh, it’s my favorite girl,” Grammy said.

  Mom and Grammy had had
their differences in the past. But I felt like they were in a better place. I hoped so, anyway. Otherwise, this was going to be a long recovery.

  Mom hugged Grammy and practically carried her into the backseat. It was a good thing the woman barely weighed one hundred pounds. Emerson had always had her string-bean build.

  My phone beeped, and since I wasn’t yet driving, I checked the text. It was a silly selfie of my husband, daughter, and son. We love you, the text said. The biggest of us can’t wait to take you out to dinner tonight. You looked so gorgeous when you left. I’ve been thinking about you all day.

  I didn’t need anyone telling me what to do. Not even Grammy. But it occurred to me that it was her voice, telling me it was OK, that crossed my mind when I texted back: What time?

  I might not ever be able to forgive James. And that would be OK. But if I didn’t give our family another shot, I knew I’d never be able to forgive myself.

  * * *

  I REMEMBER TELLING SLOANE when I was a senior in college that I was sick of boys. She was very supportive. It took me a good fifteen minutes to realize that she thought I was telling her I was a lesbian. What I was really trying to say was that I was sick of kegs and kids who couldn’t hold their liquor. I was ready to find someone I could really settle down with, fall in love with.

  He couldn’t be just anyone, of course. He had to be the kind of man I had always envisioned myself marrying. He had to be the kind of man who would support me, who would want me to stay home with our children like I’d always dreamed. In retrospect, I see how much I was asking for. But at the time, it didn’t feel like much. It had worked out for my mom. (Well, until the whole Dad-killed-by-terrorists thing.) Why couldn’t it work out for me?

  I was way past the time when I thought picking up some random stranger in a bar was going to cut it. And online dating back then was still for people who lived in their parents’ basements.

  So I did what many more women in my position would do if they were as crafty as I am. I combed every “eligible bachelor” list in the city for the previous few years. I figured out who these men were, where they liked to go, what they liked to do. I wasn’t trying to bag one, necessarily. But if I was ever in the position, I’d like to have a fighting chance.