Keep Me Posted (14 page)

Singapore

July 20

Cassie—

I haven’t confronted Adrian because I barely see him. He works fifteen hours a day and travels constantly. I fall asleep with Lulu or am in the middle of a movie with River when he gets home. We haven’t had a meal alone together in weeks and never go to bed at the same time. It’s partially on purpose—I’m avoiding him because I want to delay the inevitable. I don’t have a plan for the kids and me, and he’s a non-factor in our lives. I know that when we do talk, it will be
over. I’m not going to stay with him. But I’m not anxious to throw everything into upheaval.

Cassie Sunday in the suburbs? Well, I never!

Xo,

Sid

B
y the second week in August, everyone who can afford to be is in the Hamptons or Connecticut or at the Jersey Shore. Apparently, Wendy can afford it, because she had hightailed it to Amagansett, instructing me to think through what I really want, neighborhood-wise, and to come up with a realistic budget. I think she was starting to sense that I was only half serious and possibly wasting her time on my housewife hobby.

In August, the pedicures in the city are sad and chipped, the flip-flops are dull and overworn, and all the children are pasty-white because their mothers have spent a good part of the last three months slathering organic sunscreen on their squirming, sticky bodies. The city loses its buzz when it empties out. Things don’t run as smoothly. The heat is oppressive. The garbage rots quickly. In August, if the city so much as looks at me cross-eyed, I think,
This shithole rejects
me
? No, no, no, no. I reject
it
.

Even the stamp truck wasn’t immune to the August doldrums. It didn’t bother to restock the interesting stamps, which left me
with the standard-issue Statue of Liberty ones, the ones you have to lick. The boys became enthralled, though, asking how big she was and if she was made of metal or bricks and whether she could talk. When a stroll along the Hudson River to view her from a distance didn’t satisfy them, I promised I’d get them closer.

The Staten Island ferry—which used to be my go-to tourist attraction when I had visitors—was the obvious choice: It was easy, free, only took up an hour or two, and offered fantastic views of Manhattan’s skyline and the Statue of Liberty.

The outing turned out to be a series of small disasters—a broken fire alarm in the terminal was a sob-inducing stressor for Joey; my refusal to buy candy on the boat triggered a good ten minutes of whining and begging from both of them; and then I sat down in an unknown liquid, which didn’t help my overall patience level. It was one irritation after another from then on—hardly the magical memory I’d envisioned. Still, I’d posted a selfie of the three of us smiling as we passed Lady Liberty, a brief happy moment bookended by threats (me) and tantrums (them).

During the taxi ride home, while the boys groused and bickered, I texted Leo and monitored the likes and comments on the photo.
Look, everything’s amazing! Right?
it beseeched. And with every like, my Facebook friends assured me that indeed it was.

I had two choices every time I looked back on the photo of that day in my news feed: I could believe what my friends did, that everything was great. Or I could let it make me feel like a fraud.

I wished I’d written a letter that day instead. I would have admitted that it was a shitty day, and that I’d not handled it well. And I would have mostly forgotten about it until Sid’s reply came and validated my honest and complicated feelings. I would have
been forced to reflect, and probably to forgive myself. Those letters were like therapy, only better.

I loved the physical, sensory aspects of letter-writing, too. I loved that I had to use my hands, hands that often cramped up and bore a thick writing callus. I even loved that the ugly sound of a metal mailbox screeching open and closed would probably make me smile for the rest of my life.

Who knows? Maybe if I’d written a letter, I wouldn’t have felt so restless that night, a feeling I thought might be helped by a jog.

I regretted it as soon as I stepped outside. It was as if the day’s heat were trapped under some kind of invisible bubble that prevented it from dissipating. I forced myself to run down to the river in search of a slight breeze. Passing the Pig had become second nature, so I wasn’t necessarily hoping to run into Jake as I huffed red-faced and sweat-soaked on West Eleventh Street. When I spotted him unlocking the restaurant door, I thought about turning back or attempting to jog by unnoticed, but instead I sucked in my stomach and said, “Hey.”

When he didn’t look up, I kept jogging, thinking that it was for the best we didn’t see each other right then.

But after I passed him, I heard, “Hey, Cass!”

I turned and said, “Hey,” again. He propped open the door with his foot and nodded me over with his head. “You’ve got to be dying in this heat. Come in. Let me get you a water.”

“It
is
pretty miserable out here,” I said.

It being a Monday, the restaurant was closed. I stretched a bit and wandered around, sipping my ice water and telling myself to leave while Jake futzed with some things behind the bar.

We chatted easily about nothing much—food trucks and competition and parking spaces, I think—though flashes of the kiss
kept me on edge. Maybe he felt the same tension, because soon he was lighting a joint. Without the smells of food and people, the familiar aroma of Jake’s excellent pot filled the space. When he offered it to me, I took it instinctively, joking about it not boding well to finish my jog. I wanted to take just a hit, for old times’ sake, but I have to admit it was also to show Jake that I wasn’t just a mom, that I was still cool. We passed it back and forth over the bar, me feeling lighter and freer with each puff. He offered me a beer.

“No, thanks. But do you have any chips or anything?”

“How about a sandwich?” he said, walking toward the kitchen and motioning for me to follow him. I stayed where I was on my barstool, though. I didn’t trust myself to go into that kitchen with him. Instead, I stood up and walked out.

I floated home, feeling amazing. Why didn’t I do this more often? I wondered. I wasn’t stressed at all. Maybe I should be smoking during the day. Maybe I’d be a better mom if I were a little bit high for playground sessions or music class. I’d have to talk to Monica about this. My perception of depth, space, and time was a little off, but not so much as to be unsafe. In fact, I felt incredibly focused and present. What if I could bring this level of engagement to a game of statues or freeze tag? Forget Valium. This was the perfect “mother’s little helper.”

For a moment I thought about calling Jake to say goodbye and thanks, but I felt like there was something a bit sordid about what we’d done, and also like I didn’t owe him anything. It piled on to my memories of his party, which made me feel silly and slutty and desperate, which in turn let me justify my rude exit and in a way let me feel like I had the upper hand.

By the time I got to my building, the pros list of being a
stoner mom I’d been building up in my head came crashing down in a cloud of paranoia. Leo would know I was high. He’d know I’d been with Jake. He might be packing his bags right now. What if Jake—angry that I’d left without saying anything—had called Leo and told him what a floozy I was? Maybe I should walk around the block, I thought. It was eight forty-five, and I couldn’t remember what time I’d left and whether that was so long ago as to raise suspicion. Did I smell like pot? Or like Jake’s restaurant? I didn’t have any money, or I would have gone to Amir’s for some eyedrops and gum. I should have stayed for that sandwich.

But Leo barely looked up when I walked in. I went straight to the shower, and by the time I came out, he was busy doing something online.

“I got you a pad thai,” he said.

“Ah. Perfect. Thanks.” And that was all we said to each other for the rest of the night.

Feeling tired and a tiny bit guilty about my dalliances the night before, I wasn’t in the mood to make good on my promise to go visit our old neighbor Rachel and her two-year-old daughter, Brooke. They used to live on the fourth floor of our building before they moved across the river to Hoboken when Rachel was pregnant. But we had canceled and rescheduled four times already, so I figured it was best to get it over with.

The boys and I spent a rare morning indoors, and walked outside around eleven a.m. and into a wall of stink and humidity.

The PATH station was five blocks away, on Christopher Street, and then we had an eight-block walk to Rachel’s place in
Hoboken.
Quinn helped me push the empty stroller while Joey skipped ahead. Within minutes, he’d stepped right into a big mushy pile of dog shit. I wrestled both of their already sticky and sweaty bodies into the stroller, promising chocolate milk for cooperation, took off Joey’s shoe, tied it up in a plastic bag and tossed it in the bottom of the stroller.

Since it had opened six months ago, taking the place of our favorite corner bar, I had managed to avoid the Starbucks at West Tenth Street on principle. But it was too hot to go out of our way today, and I knew they had those boxes of organic chocolate milk. Plus, I’d seen many double strollers make it through those doors, so today it was a no-brainer.

They were out of chocolate milk, so I negotiated strawberry milks, and then changed one to vanilla milk, which I didn’t even know existed until Joey asked for one, and then forgot to say “iced” when I ordered my chai tea latte. The stroller rocked back and forth as the boys wrestled, bonking each other on the head with beanbags shaped like bananas, screeching and yelping and not even hearing my hissed entreaties to stop it. The whole thing was pretty typical, but still my heart raced and my jaw clenched as I felt the line behind me growing longer. When Joey discovered that his milk box was missing a straw, he started sobbing as if he’d just watched a beloved relative savagely murdered. I asked for a new milk box as calmly as I could when the guy behind me in line exhaled loudly and muttered under his breath, “You gotta be kidding me.”

Something inside of me snapped, and I spun on my heel so that my whole body was facing this guy, who was about my height and wearing a wool stocking hat in one-hundred-degree heat, and said, “Oh, fuck you.” It was out of my mouth before I even realized what had happened, and I immediately felt shaky but powerful and a smidge relieved that I had finally done what I’d envisioned myself doing so many times and that I’d lived. An older, well-dressed woman with her five-dollar bill in hand, ready to order, was standing behind him and pretending not to notice me. I had a flash of Grandma Margie witnessing something like this and grew hot with shame.

Fortunately for me, the Starbucks worker handing me my new milk and iced chai burst into laughter and said with a flourish, “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” breaking the tension. I doubted it was a first, but the barista’s reaction made it difficult for Wool Cap to make a next move, so he plastered a thin smile on his face and locked his gaze somewhere over my head, waiting his turn in silence. If Quinn and Joey heard what was happening, they gave no indication. The poor kids could probably make it five or six years before they heard the word “fuck” if we lived in, say, Connecticut. But this was New York, and most days they hear it a half-dozen times before lunch and, sadly, sometimes from their mother. The wool cap guy got his drink and skittered around us on the way out, letting the door shut right on the stroller’s front wheel. But the barista—my new favorite neighborhood food-service worker—came out and propped open both of the doors so I could easily maneuver out.

On the quiet walk to the station, I tried my best to focus on the kindness of the barista. But I couldn’t help reliving the
confrontation with the wool cap guy, imagining more classy and intelligent ways I might have handled it.