Best Kept Secret (3 page)

“You’re a bad mama!” he yelled.

His words felt like a slap.
He’s only three. He doesn’t mean it. Tantrums are normal for lots of kids.
Still, tears rose in my eyes and I pressed a curled fist against my mouth at hearing my child accuse me of my deepest fear.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I returned to the kitchen and
picked up my laptop, happy to see it wasn’t destroyed. I would never get anything done with him screaming in the background; I needed someone to watch him. I thought about calling my younger sister, Jessica, but she was seven months pregnant with twins so I didn’t want to bother her. My mother was more the type to visit her grandchild than to babysit him, so with this late notice, that left me with only one option.

I grabbed my cell phone and punched in Martin’s number, taking a few deep breaths as I always needed to before talking with him.

“I’m really sorry to bug you,” I began, hoping he’d give me a different answer than the one I expected. “But can you take Charlie for a few hours this afternoon? I’m on deadline.”

“Why’s he screaming?” Martin asked.

I gave him the short version of why his child was pitching a fit. “I know it’s my weekend, but if you can help me out, I’d really owe you one.”

“Sorry, I would, but I’ve already got plans,” he said.

You always have plans,
I wanted to say, but managed to bite my tongue. The role of bitter divorcée was one I worked hard to avoid.

“I can take him an extra night this week, though,” he went on to offer.

“The article’s due tomorrow,” I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. The editor had already cut me some slack; it was unlikely he would do it again.

Martin sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you, Cadee. I can’t do it. But I’ll pick him up Wednesday at five.”

After he hung up, I slammed down the phone on the table, adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Goddamn him.
So much for the concept of coparenting. I shouldn’t have bothered to call. Charlie’s cries escalated into punctuated, high-pitched shrieking. I didn’t know what to do. I started to weep, the internal barricade I usually kept high and strong crumpling beneath the weight of my frustration.

After a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself and wondering how my child didn’t sprain his vocal cords screeching like he was, I plunked back down at the table, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and thinking I might just polish off that pot of pasta after all. As my gaze traveled toward the stove, the sunlight streaming in through the window glinted off a bottle of merlot on the counter and caught my eye.

I checked the clock. It was almost 2:00. People who worked outside the home had drinks with a late lunch, didn’t they? I could have half a glass now, just to take the edge off, and maybe another before bed. Not even two full glasses for the day. Some people drank more than that with their dinner alone. And it wasn’t like I did it all the time. I needed to relax.
Just this once,
I thought as my son sobbed himself to sleep in his room.
Just today.

I swore to myself I’d never do it again.

Pulling up in front of Alice’s house to pick up Charlie, the shame is strong enough in me that I must fight the urge to drive away. I’d go anywhere to not feel this. Canada is only a couple of hours north. I could run off and not have to deal with any of it. I could start again, build a new life with our maple syrup-friendly neighbors. I could learn to say “eh?” at the end of every sentence. I could blend right in. I wouldn’t have to go to treatment. I wouldn’t have to write all those silly assignments or attend AA meetings. I wouldn’t need to find some ridiculous notion of a higher power. I could leave. I could . . .

There he is. All thoughts of escape disappear. Charlie comes bounding out of my ex-mother-in-law’s front door, his dark brown curls bouncing around his perfect, elfin face. He needs a haircut, I note. Something for us to do today, something to fill the hours we are alone. He is wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt I didn’t buy for him, one I would have left on the rack at the store. His smile is wide. His hands flutter in excitement as he races down the stairs toward me.

“Mommy!” he exclaims, and my heart melts into liquid. I throw the gearshift into park, turn off the engine, and jump out to meet him. He leaps into my open arms and clings to me like a spider monkey, his skinny arms and legs wrap around my neck and waist in a viselike grip. I bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in—his nutty, warm, slightly funky little-boy scent. This is the first time in two months that we’ll be alone overnight. Two months and four days since Martin came to my house and took him away.

“Where were you?” he demands. “I
missed
you!”

“I’ve missed you, too, butternut,” I say, choking on my tears. I nibble on the thin skin of his neck, growling playfully. It is our game.

“Ahhhh! Stop it!” he squeals.

I nibble again. My lips cover my teeth so I don’t accidentally hurt him. He squeals again and wriggles like an eel in my arms. “Let me go!”

“No, I won’t let you go! No way!” I say, holding his precious body to mine.

“Mama! Ahhh!! It tickles!!” His sturdy legs wrap themselves even tighter around me and he continues to squirm.

God, oh God, how could I ever have done anything to lose him? How could I have been drunk around this gorgeous little boy? I am sick—undeniably ill.

“Hello, Cadence.” My ex-mother-in-law’s words land like a gauntlet at my feet. They cause me to peek up from the warmth of my son’s neck. Alice stands atop her front steps, arms folded tightly across her chest. Her eyes are stone. Her silver-streaked black hair is pulled back from her face in a tight bun at the base of her neck, not a loose strand in sight. She has applied just enough makeup to avoid being mistaken for dead. She wears her standard khaki slacks and practical, scoop-neck, long-sleeved navy knit top. No frills for this woman. No fussy, floral prints. She is all business, the bare necessities.

“Kill her with kindness,” Andi said when I expressed my anxiety about having to see Alice in this first official exchange. “That’ll piss her off. “

“Really?” I asked, skeptical. “I want to piss her off?”

“No, you want to be kind.” She gave me a beatific smile. “The pissing her off part is just a bonus.”

Purely out of respect for Andi’s advice, I manage to smile at Alice when she greets me. It is a tenuous, struggling movement—my cheeks literally tremble with the effort. “Hi, Alice. How are you?”

“Fine.” She gives me a tight-lipped look, one I recognize as her version of a smile under duress. From the moment I met her, it was clear that Alice had envisioned a much more suitable partner for her only child. A lithe, Nordic blond perhaps, petite and demure. Instead, she got me—all wild brown curls and fleshy curves. Big breasts, big opinions.

“You’re late,” she says.

I twist my wrist up from my son’s body, which is still clamped around me, and look at my watch. Ten minutes after 9:00 a.m. Panic seizes me. She’ll report me to Mr. Hines, the court guardian. I’ll lose my son. I worry that everything I do goes under automatic scrutiny.
How does it look for me to do this?
I wonder, as I order a soda at dinner.
Are they wondering why I don’t ask for a real drink? A glass of wine? A vodka tonic with a twist?
I feel like I have to explain every little movement, or lack of movement.

It’s similar to how I used to feel when I’d buy wine at a different grocery store or corner market every day. “I’m having a party tonight,” I’d explain to an uninterested checker. “Eight people, so I’ll need four bottles of wine.” Like the checker gave a good goddamn.

“Only a few minutes late,” I say to Alice now, not just a little defensively. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Alice says, looking at me with cool disdain.

Charlie chooses this moment to wriggle out of my grasp. He jumps up and down in front of me. “Look, Mama! I can do a cartwheel!” Falling forward, he places both palms flat on the wet grass and does a donkey kick not more than eight inches or so off the ground. He lands on his knees with a
thump.

I clap for him. “Excellent!” He grins, causing the deep, cherry-pit dimple on his left cheek to appear.

“Charles!” Alice scolds. “Look what you did to your jeans!”

The grin vanishes. He stands, looks down at his now brightly stained green knees. “Sorry.”

I reach down, ruffle his curls. “That’s okay, buddy. That’s why God invented Spray ’n Wash, right?”

“Yeah!” he says. He looks up at me, smiling again, and then to the sky. He waves. “Thanks, God!”

Oh, my Charlie.
My eyes well up.
Would you look at that. Look at that sweet soul. I haven’t completely screwed him up.

“God isn’t doing your laundry,” Alice says lightly as she steps down the stairs.

I look at her, anger tight and warm in my chest. It’s that mama bear feeling rearing its head.

She sees my eyes flash. Her expression melts into one of supreme smugness. That’s right, it says. Here it comes. Yell at me. Give me something to tell the court.

Kill her with kindness.
The chant I played over and over in my head on the way to this moment. I take a deep breath before speaking.

“Thanks for taking such good care of his clothes. I’ll wash his jeans today, and bring them back.” And then, because I cannot help it, I continue. “Why doesn’t Martin do his laundry?”

She lifts her jaw. “Martin is busy working. Martin is busy making sure his son is fed and clothed and brought to school on time. He is very busy being a parent.”

Which is more than I can say about you,
I hear the unspoken finish to her statement. She doesn’t need to speak. Her eyes paint the words: black, ugly brushstrokes in the air between us.

“How nice for him,” I spit out. I can’t stop myself. “Most single parents don’t have someone to pick up their slack.”
Dammit. And I was doing so well.

“Most single parents don’t drink themselves into oblivion, either,”
she launches back. She speaks quietly, over Charlie’s listening ears. “
I
didn’t.”

Her words pummel me. They stop my breath. Sudden, violent guilt invades each cell in my body. She is sacred and pure. I am the evil, rotten mother who couldn’t control her drinking. I deserve her hatred. I deserve the pain that goes with it. She is right and I am wrong. I earned every minute of all I have to endure.

Charlie grabs my arm with both hands and pulls in the direction of my car. “Mama, let’s go,” he whimpers. “I want to go.”

“Okay, monkey,” I say. And then, to Alice, “I’ll have him back tomorrow at twelve o’clock.”

“Twelve o’clock sharp,” she says.

“Right,” I say. “C’mon, Mr. Man.” Any fight I had is knocked clear out of me. Round one: Alice. I let Charlie lead me to the car and help him climb into his booster seat, ever conscious of Alice’s sharp blue eyes on me. For good measure, I say loudly, “All right, you’re all buckled in,” just so she can’t tell the court I let Charlie bounce around like a red rubber ball inside my car. Anything is a threat now. Anything could be used against me. I step slowly around to the driver’s side, open my door, and then force myself again to smile at Alice and wave good-bye. “Say ’bye to your omi, Charlie bear.” This is what he calls her, Omi—the German equivalent of Nana.

“’Bye, Omi!” he chimes in. This is out of good breeding alone, I convince myself. Good breeding that I, as his mother, am personally responsible for.

I buckle my own seat belt, start the car, and look at my son in the rearview mirror. “Ready, Spaghetti Freddie?” I ask.

“Ready!” he squeals. He kicks his feet against the seat in front of him in emphasis.

I pull away from the curb, wondering if the real question is, how ready am I?

I
wasn’t looking for a
husband the night I met Martin, I was looking for a story. Two years after a summer internship morphed into a lifestyle section beat at the Seattle
Herald,
I was twenty-six and anxious to prove to my editor-in-chief that I was capable of writing more than fluff pieces on the newest trends in weight-loss programs or the yearly sand castle-building contest at Alki Beach. One of my sources—a woman I’d gotten to know during an article I did on a state workers’ successful holiday food drive—gave me the heads-up regarding a conflict between the pay increase percentage the governor had promised teachers and what the state could actually afford, so on a Friday night I showed up at a benefit dinner intended to raise money for creative arts in public schools. I figured I could chat up the teachers in attendance and see what kind of feature might evolve.

As it turned out, after two unsuccessful hours of trying to track down an educator who was incensed enough with the governor to speak to me without the presence of their union rep, I stood alone by the appetizer buffet table with a glass of wine in hand, nibbling on a cracker spread with goat cheese and caramelized onion. Discouraged, I wondered not for the first time if I actually had the determined nature it took to be a successful journalist. I was weighing the option of making an early exit when a handsome man with
bright blue eyes and short, spiked black hair suddenly appeared by my side.

“Do you like sausages?” he inquired.

I laughed out loud, hand over my mouth, trying not to spit out my last bite.

He smiled at me, tilting his head in a disarmingly adorable manner. “A server sent me over to ask if you prefer sausage or chicken for dinner since he didn’t have your preference on the list. Why is that funny?”

I touched the back of my hand to the side of my mouth, making sure I wasn’t covered in chewed-up appetizer before responding. I was suddenly conscious of my hair, happy I’d chosen to wear the flattering black dress that showed off the best thing about being an hourglass girl in a push-up bra.

“It’s a rather presumptuous question, don’t you think?” I said.

“Presumptuous, how? I didn’t ask if you like
my
sausage in particular.” His eyes flashed a wicked sparkle.