All the Difference (25 page)

“Hey,” Dan said, as Molly started gathering their discarded wrappers and napkins for the trash can. “Jenny and I were going to go to Yards later. Do you want to come?” Yards Brewing Company was one of their favorite stops in Manayunk, a hill-filled neighborhood on the far outskirts of Philadelphia where the condos were former paper factories and the bars drew professionals like the three of them out from the city on Saturday nights. Molly shook her head. Going out wasn't even an option.

“Homer won't let you out?” Dan asked. His voice was flat.

“It's not that. I've never left the baby for that long before.” What she didn't say was that she'd never left the baby alone with Scott before. “Maybe next time?”

The question hung in the air like a helium balloon forgotten after a birthday party. The three friends gathered up the rest of their belongings in silence. It was time to go back home.

Molly shut the door behind her, giving Jenny and Dan a final wave as she did. Dylan was in desperate need of a change and feeding, so Molly carefully unclipped the harness of her car seat and lifted the tiny infant out. Her daughter, draped over her
shoulder, helpless and reliant on her mother, felt small and fragile in her arms. Molly inhaled the scent of the skin beneath the soft down of her hair and kissed her head right above the ear. Never had she held anything more worthy of her love. It was terrifying.

Molly was surprised that Scott wasn't in front of the TV until she heard voices coming from her dining room. She hadn't seen one of Monica's cars out front, or she would've tidied herself up before walking in.

“Molly, hello!” Monica's voice rang out like the false trill of a mockingbird. Scott sauntered into the living room behind her, casual in bare feet and worn jeans. Both had smiles on their faces that seemed stale, as if they'd been wearing them for a while.

“Hi, guys,” Molly said. She tried to sound excited to have an unexpected guest, especially one like her future mother-in-law, but she knew her voice betrayed her. She'd been hoping to lie down with the baby for a nap. The excursion to South Philly had worn her out.

“Hey, I was worried about you.” Scott's voice was silky, and he wrapped his arms around her as he kissed her lightly on the lips. Molly noticed that he didn't move to touch his daughter.

“Where were you all afternoon?” His mouth was close to her ear. “My mother's been waiting.” Molly pulled away.

“Excuse me, Monica,” Molly said, and without thinking smoothed down the wrinkles of her yoga pants with her free hand. “I didn't know you were stopping by, or I would've come home sooner.” She looked around the living room. It was spotless.

Monica laughed, her voice high and loud, and walked over to kiss Molly's cheeks. She scooped Dylan out of Molly's arms before she could react and rubbed her finger against the infant's tiny nose and mouth, trying to make her smile. Molly almost cried out when
she thought of the germs crawling into her daughter's mouth. “No need to apologize, darling. I was actually hoping to surprise you, anyway.”

“Oh?” Molly looked from Monica to Scott. She twitched with the urge to snatch her daughter out of Monica's arms.

Scott scratched at the back of his head.

“My parents decided they wanted to give us a set for the dining room,” he said. “Mom picked it out special for us and everything.”

Molly stood very still.

“Well, we couldn't have you starting out together with an empty dining room, now could we?” Monica laughed. “I mean, now that you got a little jump on expanding your family, darling, we couldn't very well wait to give it to you for your wedding. You'll need it now.”

Molly cleared her throat.

“Besides,” Monica continued, looking back and forth between Molly and Scott with the benevolent eyes of someone used to people showing her gratitude, “your future father-in-law and I now have an excuse to get you a better gift once you do get married. Something that's more of an . . .
investment
.”

She looked around at the house they were standing in, making sure they caught the hint.

“Something, say, to go along with the dining set.” Monica was grinning now, her glossed lips stretching so wide the rouge on her cheeks folded into the wrinkles of skin. She held the baby aloft, as if in triumph. Molly saw her daughter wriggle in protest.

For a moment no one said a word. The air in the living room was hot in Molly's lungs.

“Well, shall we?” Monica clicked her tongue against her teeth,
bringing them all to attention. “Don't you want to see your new dining room, Molly?”

They stepped toward the room, Monica's platform stilettos clicking against the polished wood of the floor. Molly cringed when she saw the small nicks the heels left in their wake.

“Voilá!” With a flourish of her free arm, Monica stopped at the entranceway and let Molly walk ahead of her. Molly was no more than a step into the dining room when she stopped with a lurch, her body coming to a halt moments after her brain registered her shock.

Her dining room had shrunk while Molly was gone that afternoon. It had to have gotten smaller, she thought, for there was no way the furniture inside of it could possibly be that big. What sat in front of Molly was one of the most ornate dining table sets she'd ever seen. The chairs, all eight of them, were crafted in the Queen Anne style, ornate backs and engraved legs that had been covered in layers of varnish until they could be used as mirrors. They were set with plush off-white cushions, fabric so elegant and expensive Molly couldn't imagine how she'd ever clean them once they became covered in tomato sauce and pureed prunes in another year. The table was large enough to feed a high school economics class, which, Molly realized, was the exact course Monica and Scott needed a refresher in right now. She and Scott lived in a townhouse filled with furniture from IKEA. Molly highly doubted that Queen Anne had ever had a hankering for a self-assembled bookcase and carry-out Swedish meatballs.

Monica and Scott stood in place on either side of the doorway, staring at Molly in expectation of a reaction. Monica was waiting for something positive: glee, or unabashed excitement,
possibly a fainting spell. She wanted her usual feedback, and Molly knew the routine by now. She caught Scott's expression out of the corner of her eye. He looked nervous, and Molly knew he didn't want her to disappoint his mother.

“Monica.” Molly set her shoulders square and took her squirming baby out of her future mother-in-law's arms. “This was so kind of you. All of it. Truly. I don't know how to thank you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you don't have to say a word,” Monica replied. Her tone was warm. “Edward and I just wanted to give you something nice you wouldn't necessarily buy for yourself.”

Molly heard Scott muffle a snort.

“Besides,” Monica continued, “now that you're at home and will have time on your hands, you'll need a place for dinner parties, right? We couldn't have you entertaining around the kitchen island anymore.” She looked around the room and inhaled, as if holding the smell of polish and upholstery in her lungs would give her the high she'd need to power through her next board meeting.

“But,” Molly started. Both Monica and Scott jerked their heads toward her. “Do you think, maybe, it might be a just little too
grand
?”

She meant the table, and the gift of the house. She meant the lifestyle. Monica sniffed.

“I don't feel right accepting such an elegant gift, Monica. I mean, I just fear the table getting banged up once the baby starts walking.”

Monica's lip curled up. “Molly, you just keep the child out of the dining room. Do you think Scott was allowed to play as he liked around the house?”

Molly held her tongue. Scott's childhood home was about six
thousand square feet bigger than hers. He wouldn't have been able to run though all of it in a day if he'd tried.

Scott laughed. “Yeah, right. I had a playroom, gated off from the rest of the rooms, and was constantly guarded by Bernadette. Mom, you wouldn't even let me
eat
in the dining room.”

Monica shrugged her shoulders, as if saying,
Of course
.

Molly turned to Scott. “So where did you eat?”

“Why, in the kitchen, naturally,” Monica answered for him.

“In the help's kitchen, Mom,” Scott corrected her. “Right next to the sink, and in front of a TV Bernadette kept on the countertop.” He glanced at Molly. “Ask me anything you want about
General Hospital
in the mid-eighties.”

Molly thought back to the family dinners she'd had with her brothers and parents, all of them crowded around the round oak table in their kitchen. Sometimes they ate at five o'clock, sometimes at eight thirty after they'd all tumbled in from their various practices, soccer and field hockey bags piled up in the corner. They ate meatloaf or tacos or a jar of spaghetti sauce over pasta, quick meals one of their parents could throw together in twenty minutes, standing in their work clothes at the stove, Emily still in her pantyhose or Jack covered with the smell of sawdust. They used paper plates on occasion, drank water from the tap, and rarely complained about any of it because they were too busy talking about their days.

Molly watched Scott leaning against the doorjamb, his legs splayed in a practiced pose of relaxation, his hand running through his hair. Monica was chattering into the air. At the shrill sound of her voice, Dylan stirred in Molly's arms. She began to make pleading sounds and pecked her lips at Molly's chest, searching for nourishment. Molly saw Monica glance at her in horrified
understanding, and Molly made her excuses, stepping with care up the stairs to the nursery while Scott and his mother discussed where to go for dinner that night. Molly wondered with vague seriousness if a restaurant as lovely as the luxurious Parc would allow her through the door in stretched-out maternity jeans.

Once in the baby's room, Molly closed the lid to the diaper pail, rubbed sanitizer into the cracked skin of her hands, and sat down with her fussy daughter in the glider to feed. Once Dylan quieted down, Molly could hear Monica and Scott laughing. They'd moved to the kitchen, and she could hear the faint clinking sound of wineglasses being set down on the countertop. Molly rolled her head around on her neck before pressing it into the cushion of the chair back. The ache that seemed to permanently occupy her chest had grown wider while she was downstairs, and she closed her eyes against the tired tears that, unrelenting, worked their way out.

Scott was in her kitchen, having cocktail hour with his mother before they met his father. Monica couldn't see the laundry piled on their bed, or the hospital bills that lay stacked next to the laptop in the bedroom, unpaid and ignored by her son. She didn't care that the dining room table she'd bought cost more than Molly could have made in three months, that it was heavier than anything Molly had ever owned, and that she'd given Scott one more bullet for the chamber when he wielded the weapon of money in Molly's face. Molly recognized the sharp pain in her breasts that occurred as her milk let down, and she felt Dylan relax into her meal. She was starting to accept the odd paradox that there was pain in everything, that it was as equally present in beauty as it was in hardship. She just wondered if she was still capable of telling the difference between the two.

November

No

“S
weetheart, you look wonderful!”

Before Molly could respond, her aunt Cookie pressed her warm lips to her cheek and wrapped an arm around her waist. With the other she playfully pretended to hide a plate filled with a half-eaten slice of cake behind her back before leaning toward Molly's ear.

“Tell me, you knockout, what's your secret?” She nudged Molly in her sharp ribs. “How'd you lose the baby weight already?”

A sudden burst of laughter rolled through Emily and Jack's home from the living room, bouncing off the white cabinets and sand-colored walls of the kitchen. Molly caught the sound from where she and Cookie stood beside the center table piled with tea sandwiches and deviled eggs.

“Cookie, you're sweet. I'm totally not going to admit to you that I'm wearing two pairs of Spanx under this dress.” Molly winked at her aunt.

“Oh, thank God,” Cookie said, and forked a crumbling pile of the vanilla cake into her carefully lipsticked mouth. “I was afraid you were going to give me one of those it-all-came-off-with-the-breastfeeding lines. Still, though, Spanx?” She eyed the sugar-dusted lemon bars resting on a cake pedestal. “I might have to invest in some.”

The house was filled with a joyful cacophony of old stories being passed from one person to the other, the ripping of wrapping paper and popped balloons, the thrilled squeals of cousins chasing one another around a table. Molly's family members and close friends were crammed into every corner of the first floor, drinking iced tea and chilled wine from pastel-colored plastic cups.

In the very center of it all was her daughter, lying in her godmother's arms, freshly changed out of her white baptismal gown and staring up into Jenny's face. Molly looked at Jenny, standing in the middle of an admiring throng of women, Dan hovering just enough outside of the circle to avoid being sucked into the chattering noise. Molly caught his eye, and he mouthed a plea for help. She hoped it was good practice for him, hanging around while a bunch of people admired his wife and a baby. Because it would be their baby in Jenny's arms one day. One day soon, if the pieces of the puzzle continued to click into place.

She was just about to walk over to the group and disentangle her daughter from Jenny's arms when she felt a weathered hand rest on her shoulder. Emily appeared on one side of her as Jack patted Molly's back.

“How's the baby doing, sweetheart?” Emily asked. “I haven't heard a peep out of her.”

Molly held her palms up. “Yeah, I know. She must have inherited Pop's knack for lying low in a crowd.”

“Ah, well, one of my grandchildren needed to.” Emily nodded at Molly's brothers' children, who were using plastic forks as lances in a sugar-fueled jousting match while their parents hotly debated the spread in the Eagles game being played that evening.

Molly felt Jack's chest move up and down with his silent chuckle. She noticed he'd changed out of his suit and into one of his plaid work shirts as soon as they'd gotten home from the ceremony. Even when he wasn't in his workshop, Jack had to be dressed as if he were. He acted as if he couldn't breathe in clothes that weren't made to handle sawdust and wood glue. He'd never been one to put on airs. Jack was who he was, quietly, and people accepted him for it.

Molly checked her watch. “Actually, I'm going to go feed her before she starts wailing. It's about time, anyway.”

She felt her father plant a kiss on top of her head before joining the debate between her brothers. Johnny had worn a poorly hidden Eagles T-shirt under his sport coat to church and was now thumping his chest to prove a point. Emily shook her head, smiling, and returned to the kitchen to replenish the food platters.

Ten minutes later, after Molly had finally succeeded in wrestling her baby away from Jenny's protective arms, she settled under a throw blanket onto a wicker rocking chair on the back porch, which was blessedly absent of people but filled with the crisp, fresh air of early November. The partygoers were beginning to drift out of the house now, group by group, on their way to the bars and their homes to swap their high heels and ties for the comfortable jerseys and couches and flat screen TVs of afternoon football watching.

Molly pictured Scott at home, drinking a beer in front of his own television on his living room sofa, which she remembered
was upholstered in brown leather, expensive and supple. She saw some of Scott in their daughter—in the narrow ridge of her nose, in her long fingers. Though Scott had been a presence in Molly's world for just a few years, the baby would be a constant reminder that he was once the central point of her life.

Molly played with Dylan's fingers and couldn't help thinking about the rest of Scott, the Scott she remembered from before. She could still picture the wink of his eye when he spotted her in a particular black wrap dress he liked to see her wear. She remembered the way he'd sweep a door open for her in a gesture as grand as the restaurant they were dining in that night. He had a way of looking at her, of making sure she was paying attention when he charmed friends and colleagues, that made her think her opinion of him mattered, that he was playing for her reaction. They'd gone skydiving together, about a year after they met, Molly absolutely terrified of heights but not able to turn down a challenge, and Scott laughing gently at her shaking fear, encouraging her in his own way. She'd jumped, just about fainting from an honest panic attack as she stood at the open door of the plane, the wind blowing so hard in her face she couldn't breathe. But when she'd finally landed on the ground on weak legs and saw Scott rushing toward her, exhilarated, to wrap his muscular arms around her and lift her off the ground once again, she'd been grateful. To him, for pushing her—because he did have to shove her out of the plane—and to herself, for letting herself trust that it would be okay.

Not that Molly had jumped out of an airplane since. She was stubborn, not insane.

Dylan moved her fingers out of Molly's grasp as she rooted for milk, startling her mother into the present. Molly hadn't talked to Scott much since the baby was born, except for a
couple of stilted phone calls and one awkward meeting when he came out to West Chester. He was attentive, listening when she spoke, wiping the condensation off a table where his glass had been. He was trying to step back, court her again. There were no constant texts, no Porsche driving by the house. There was just the bouquet of pink and white dahlias that had been delivered yesterday. Scott had remembered his daughter's baptism.

Molly shivered in the rocking chair and pulled the blanket tighter around her and her daughter. A small gust of wind blew through the porch, rustling the leaves on the wide stairs leading down to the lawn. Molly listened to the wind chimes make a tinkling sound as their metal tubes collided together from their perch in the corner. They seemed, she thought, to make their prettiest music when their environment was the most unstable. It was no wonder she'd never liked them.

Molly placed her warm, dozing daughter up on her shoulder and patted her back. She looked out over the backyard, at the yellow and orange mums, the carefully weeded flower beds now cleaned and mulched for the winter. Coming back to her childhood home always seemed like a vacation to Molly after spending her days and nights in such a busy, noisy city. Staying here, though, on an open invitation, felt like moving around a set in some play she had never planned to see. Emily and Jack's home, in this rambling neighborhood in West Chester, with the old stone houses and whitewashed fences and spacious, landscaped backyards, wasn't real, even in comparison to Monica and Edward's. This wasn't authentic life, at least to Molly. Not right now, anyway. It was too perfect, and separate, and took a lot of work to maintain. Molly's life was grittier, her path still filled with gravel and potholes. She wasn't ready for an easy road yet, especially one already laid out
for her. She was still content to keep walking and get to where she was supposed to go, eventually.

Later that afternoon, Molly was standing at the sink with a sponge in her hand, scrubbing the first of a staggering pile of dirty dishes.

“Molly, sit down. I can get these dishes,” Emily said. “Jenny, will you take my daughter into the living room and make her relax? She's driving me crazy.”

Jenny stood up from Emily's kitchen table and reached out a hand for her friend. “Molly, you heard the woman. Get your big ol' rear end in there and sit down.”

“Hey!” Molly cried. “My butt is not that big anymore.”

“Yeah, yeah, I realize that. And you've basically convinced me that no diet I ever go on will be as effective as the exhausted mama one. It's not fair.”

Molly dried her hands on a dish towel, folding the white rectangle before placing it neatly on the counter. Her mother had been doing so much for her. She kissed Emily on the cheek, lingering beside her to give her shoulders a quick squeeze before she grabbed the last chocolate truffle from a tray still on the table.

Jenny followed her out of the room and sat down beside her. They could hear the vague rumblings of the Eagles game Jack and Dan had turned on downstairs.

“You okay?” Jenny had been quiet since the house emptied. She took a sip from her wineglass and smoothed her skirt under her legs, which were tucked beneath her on the couch. Her red heels lay piled in the corner by her purse, but Jenny still looked polished and chic in a pale blue shirtdress with a pleated skirt.
She'd worn pearls in honor of the sacred occasion, but even those managed to throw off a bohemian vibe on Molly's friend.

“Yeah,” Molly replied right away, then paused. “No. How did you know?”

“Because you've been doing that super compulsive thing you do when you're upset and start straightening up everything in sight.”

Molly stopped in the middle of organizing the magazines on her parents' coffee table and sat up straight, feeling embarrassed. She forced herself to relax backward into the overstuffed cushions of the couch. She'd taken off the shapewear she'd been wearing as soon as the last guest had left the house and now propped her feet up on the coffee table, careful not to snag her tights against the rough pages of the magazines. The music she'd turned on for the reception was still flowing from the old stereo in the corner, and she was glad to hear a ZZ Ward song playing. Jenny started singing along. “‘Save my life, set me free,'” she sang, her clear alto softly rising over the music. Molly joined in with “‘Yes or no is all I need,'” before both women let their voices trail away.

“I'm fine. I'm just annoyed that I finally convinced myself that I could do this single mom thing on my own—actually, finally, was okay with it all, and Scott had to swoop in and make me doubt myself all over again.”

The baby called out in her sleep from the car seat in the corner, then settled back down into her nap before Molly could rise to check on her. Both Jenny and Molly watched her for a moment. Dylan was a sweet baby, easy to console when upset and content to stare at whoever held her when she wasn't. Little Dylan, with her dark reddish hair and Clara Bow lips and soft, smooth skin, whose tiny fists were curled up tight, wrapped up in whatever
dreams infants who know nothing of the world can imagine. A sudden yelling rose up, muffled, from the basement.