Keep Me Posted (15 page)

Rachel Pfeiffer lived in a fifteen-hundred-square-foot ground-floor unit with a washer and dryer and a common indoor pool. I wouldn’t let her tell me how much they paid for it because I couldn’t bear to know. Not that I’d be tempted; it’s been established that I’m too superficially proud of my New York address to ever move to New Jersey. Rachel was chomping at the bit to give me the grand tour, so we left the kids playing peacefully in the living room while she showed me around. In my apartment, the tour only requires craning your neck. But for her to show me the master bathroom with its soaking tub and double sinks, we had to walk down a pleasant hallway lined with framed family photos, past Brooke’s room and the guest room, and through the master bedroom. The bathroom was a sight to behold. As soon as my bare feet touched the cool marble, I felt my internal temperature start to lower. I climbed into her giant bathtub and rested my still-sweating head on the cushy ledge designed for a Calgon moment. “This is fantastic, Rachel. It’s like a real grown-up house!” I said, my eyes closed.

“Yeah, we figured it was about time,” she said.

I was still in the tub when I heard the loud crash. I looked at Rachel and said, “What’s that?”—refusing to panic just yet, in case she had a perfectly good explanation for what sounded like a boulder being thrown through a plate-glass window. Like,
Oh, yeah. That’s why we paid only a quarter million for this place. We’re right next door to a wrecking-ball testing facility.
But she was running for the
door, so I scrambled out of the tub, and that’s when the screaming started.

Quinn was standing in the middle of a pile of broken glass that had moments ago been the coffee table. A line of blood ran from his eyebrow, alongside his nose, and into his open, crying mouth. He was shrieking and staring at his hands, one of which was bleeding profusely. Joey, not bloody or screaming, was sitting on the floor and staring into his lap, where a puddle of urine had formed. Brooke appeared to be unharmed but was screaming even louder than Quinn. My heart split in two, half of it sinking to my stomach and the other half rising to my throat as I ran to Quinn. Yanking him up into my arms, I tried to cover the bleeding spots with the first thing I could grab, a cashmere throw strewn over the edge of the sofa.

Rachel called 911, and soon Quinn and I were in an ambulance on our way to the emergency room, while she followed in her car with Joey and Brooke. The paramedic fastened a tourniquet around Quinn’s arm and carefully removed a few of the larger shards of glass from his eyebrows and scalp.

When we got to the ER and Rachel wasn’t there yet, I was seized with irrational panic that she had gotten into a car accident with Joey, who wasn’t in a car seat, and that I was going to see my other baby wheeled in on a stretcher. I couldn’t bring myself to call Leo until I saw Joey and knew he was safe. While we waited, people kept coming in and out of the room, making both of us jumpy. Quinn cried on and off, asking the occasional question about what sort of machine the doctor would use on him, having not reacted well to the paramedic’s quip that the doctor was going to “sew him up.”

Rachel finally peeked her head in, and I ran into the hall and lifted Joey into my arms.

After I gave her an update on Quinn, she said, “I’m so sorry, Cass. I feel terrible.”

“
I’m
sorry we destroyed your home. I can’t believe he jumped through your coffee table.”

“I’m sure it was an accident. I’m going to get home, though. Can I take Joey with me? He can stay with us until you’re done here.”

“No, thanks. I’ll keep him here. Just let me know how much the table is and I’ll pay for a new one.”

“Oh, stop. Don’t worry about that right now. Keep me posted on Quinn, okay?”

“Will do. See you.”

Joey climbed up onto the hospital bed beside his brother and interlaced his fingers through Quinn’s. He looked up at me with damp eyes and said, “It hurts, Mama.” It wasn’t a question. He felt his twin’s pain. I sat on the swivel stool beside them, placing my hand over both of theirs and kissing their heads before calling Leo. I helped Joey change into clean pants from the change of clothes in my bag, and then a nurse came in and did a more thorough glass extraction and cleaning, patiently answering all of Quinn’s questions.

“I have a three-year-old, too,” she said, winking at me.

Her kindness brought a lump to my throat, and I felt the big August chip on my shoulder begin to dissolve. I found myself thinking about the wool cap guy and the barista and the nurse and how I wanted to be on the side of the barista and the nurse, not the wool cap guy. When the nurse and I made eye contact, I had to look away, deeply inhaling and digging my fingernails into my
palms to stop myself from blubbering in front of the boys. Just then Leo was brought in by another nurse, and the tears started rolling down my face. Poor Leo must have assumed I had just gotten bad news, because he turned pale and searched my face for further clues, while walking quickly to Quinn.

“Bu-ud,” he said.

“Daddy, I’m sorry,” Quinn said, and started crying again.

Leo and I exchanged a look.

“I broke the table. I made a big, big, big mess,” he continued through sobs.

“Did you do it on purpose, or was it an accident?” Leo said.

“A-a-a-accident.”

“Well, if it’s an accident, you don’t have to say sorry. Nobody is mad at you—right, Mom?”

“That’s right. I’m not mad, Quinn. Not one bit.”

“Me neither,” said Joey, who still had his fingers interlaced with his brother’s.

When the doctor finally came in, he wasted no time on pleasantries. We were a long way from the pediatrician’s office, where Quinn might have been called “big guy” and asked whether he had gotten into a fight with an alligator.

“Remove the brother from the table,” was all he said.

Leo and I gave each other a
yikes
look, and Leo pulled Joey into his arms. The three of us huddled near the end of the gurney while the doctor worked in silence, the kind nurse by his side. I held Quinn’s foot in my hand and laid my head on Leo’s shoulder. It was the closest I’d felt to Leo in a long time. Knowing that he felt just how I did—full of fear and love—was a foreign and oddly thrilling sensation. All four of us, in fact, were united under a common goal.
Isn’t this how family life should be
? I wondered.
Don’t we all want the
same things all the time?
How do we replicate this feeling but swap out imminent danger for more love? Do we need to be against something to feel this solid? Or can we get it without one of us lying in a hospital bed?

The doctor said that Quinn would need surgery to reconnect a severed nerve in his hand. We were there for nine more hours in the end. Joey said he wouldn’t go home without Quinn and I didn’t push him on it. I wanted us to leave the hospital as a family. So Leo kept Joey busy—a nap in an empty bed, wrestling on the grassy area outside, two movies on his laptop, and countless visits to the vending machine for Cheetos and candy—while I sat with Quinn, my heart in my throat. I hated myself for writing to Sid that I imagined life without the boys. I take it all back, I kept thinking. Please, please never let anything happen to them, I prayed to no
one.

Singapore

July 27

Cassie,

Well, I finally confronted Adrian about the cheating. I’m not leaving quite yet, but relax, because we’re not exactly together anyway. We see him fewer than ten days a month, and the rest of that time he’s flying between Bangkok, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur. He’s cried, groveled, declared his undying love, etc., etc. I surprised myself by being unmoved by the whole display. The truth is that I do love him and I am shattered over this, but despite the temptation to believe him and give this marriage another chance, to give Lulu a childhood with a mother and a father, I can see so clearly that he isn’t really going to change. It’s almost like I’ve been granted temporary clairvoyance. I feel kind of “in the zone” about the whole thing. I got this flash of him reciting the same apology again and again, me having misgivings about his whereabouts for the rest of my life. Oddly, I feel sorry for him, which is not what I want to be feeling—good old-
fashioned
anger would be more cathartic, I suspect. I do feel bad, really bad, for Lulu and River. But I’m determined that Adrian’s wayward penis disrupt their life as little as possible. It seems selfish and juvenile to leave in a huff. So we’re staying for now, and I’ll figure out my next steps at some point. You know what they say . . . It is what it is!

Love,

Sid

I
couldn’t believe how well she was handling this. And she knows it drives me crazy when people say, “It is what it is,” so she was even making jokes.

I read back through all of the letters for earlier hints that she and Adrian were in trouble. But instead I just found evidence of my own bad behavior. I cringed as I read myself going on and on with my stupid, selfish complaints while she was enduring something truly wretched. But how do you listen better in a letter? I could have asked more questions. Perhaps waited for answers before barreling through with every shallow observation in my head.

Between this and Quinn’s accident, I had all the motivation I needed: Things had to change; I had to change.

Over the next week, I felt like Michael Keaton in the “getting stronger” montage in
Mr. Mom
. No more listlessly scrolling through Facebook while I halfheartedly played dinosaurs with the boys. No more being dragged out of bed by them at seven and placating them with TV while I had my coffee and shower. I forced myself
awake when the alarm sounded at six and was ready to greet them with hugs by the time they awoke. I tried to talk the way Mrs. Pteranodon from
Dinosaur Train
talked to her dino kids. I begrudgingly made an effort to implement the strategies Jenna had outlined in her “Zen of Parenting” blog post.
There is only now
, I coached myself. And sometimes it worked. I became completely absorbed watching Joey spend five minutes eating a single peanut M&M as if it were an apple, falling a little bit more in love with him as he carefully chewed off the candy shell bit by bit so that by the time he reached the peanut, which he licked clean and then handed to me, his face and fingers were covered in chocolate. The fact that he either hadn’t noticed or wasn’t bothered that his brother had quietly polished off the rest of the bag helped me understand him a little better. I felt love and appreciation for Quinn then too, for being wily or kind enough not to gloat to his brother about eating all the candy. If I could be so moved by this seemingly mundane episode, I wondered what else I had missed while my face was buried in my phone.

When Quinn peed his pants in the stroller, I undressed him from the waist down, and when he wiggled free and started running away, casted hand and bandaged face, yelling, “I’m make-did! I’m make-did!” (his word for naked), I followed behind at a safe distance, enjoying the laughs and even the startled and disapproving looks from passersby. I did take out my phone, but only to film him.

I had taped a list to the fridge of things I imagined good moms did with their kids. I’d made my way through sidewalk chalk in our building’s courtyard, homemade Play-Doh, and brown-bag puppets, all of which I’d proudly documented on Facebook as if they were normal activities for me.

“Make cookies” day had arrived, but I decided that cookies were a bit ambitious and switched to brownies from a mix. I set out the ingredients and measuring cups and then read the instructions aloud to the boys, forcing myself to let them do everything. I clenched my hands into fists and winced while offering encouraging words as milk sloshed out of the bowl and a good portion of the dry mix ended up on the counter. It’s possible I gave them too much freedom, because when Joey picked up the bowl and Quinn began ushering the lumpy wet mix into the pan with a spatula, the bowl shot out of poor Joey’s arms and landed upside down on the corner of the rug.

I slopped up what I could in one big swipe of a kitchen towel while refereeing a brief screaming match regarding whose fault it was. Leaving the rest of the mess on the floor, I took the boys back to the store and bought a new mix—something the Cassie of even two weeks ago would never have done.

As we commenced batch number two, I realized we didn’t have an egg. The finished brownies were to be an emblem of my improved attitude and capabilities, and I was determined to see this project through with a smile on my face, even if the vein on my forehead was about to burst through my skin. I turned on the TV to distract the boys, ran across the hall, and knocked on Jenna’s door. She didn’t have eggs either, but she offered to watch Quinn and Joey while I ran to get some.

“That’d be great. You are a lifesaver,” I said, and I meant it.

She called to Valentina, who was munching on what looked like endive while paging through a book.

“Okay, Mom,” she said, and wiped her hands and face on a cloth napkin before getting up to follow her out the door.

Jenna and Valentina stood in the doorway to my kitchen/living
room, surveying what must have seemed a foreign land—TV blaring, one boy standing on his head on the sofa while picking his nose, the other one, naked, huddled over the pile of spilled brownie mix, repeatedly dipping his finger in and licking it.

“Do you mind if I just pop this off?” Jenna asked in her best attempt to sound casual as she sidestepped the brownie spill and made her way to the TV, where she frantically groped, her fingers locating buttons underneath that I didn’t even know existed, which only caused brightness and contrast screens to pop up.

“Noooo!” Joey shouted.

I sighed and reached around Jenna to press my finger against the red dot in the bottom-right corner of the set as Joey erupted in tears.

“Oh, I am sorry, kiddo. How about we do a puzzle?” Jenna said, her eyes scanning the room for something wooden or educational.

I hated that she made me feel like a bad mother in my own house, but before I broke my new vow to not hate Jenna, I quickly forced some undies onto Quinn and then scooped up the still wailing and shoeless—but thankfully clothed—Joey, grabbed my keys from the hook, and ran out the door, calling, “Be right back!”

“I wanna watch
Wonder Pets
!” His cries echoed through the marble corridor.

“I know, sweetie,” I said, descending the stairs with him on my hip. “We can watch it later, okay?”

By the time I reached the main doors, he had calmed down enough for me to shimmy him around to my back. I let him hold a dollar and hand it to Amir in exchange for one egg. Like he does with everything, Amir put the egg in a little black plastic bag with a wad of napkins and handed it to Joey. I’d been meaning to talk to him about that. If I buy a can of Diet Coke, it does not need to be
placed in a plastic bag with four napkins. But for now I was grateful I’d yet to intervene, because it meant that Joey was able to transport the single egg upstairs without incident.

I thanked Jenna and hoped she would disappear, but she lingered for another mommy intervention.

“I forwarded you an invite for this ‘Superfoods for Kids’ workshop happening next week,” she said.

“Sounds cool. Thanks,” I said, choosing to ignore the implication that I was in need of a class on how to feed my children.

“It’ll be amazing. It’s being organized by Kendra Watts, the chef from Artichoke? And Brooke Klein, this awesome holistic-minded dietitian? Her daughter is in Valentina’s kindergarten class.”

“Will you be there?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m not sure. I think I sort of know most of what they’re going to say.”

“Mmmm,” I said, both irritated and encouraged by her response.

I did actually want to go to the workshop, which promised to teach me fast, easy ways to incorporate “superfoods” into my kids’ diets. I love food, and feeding my family delicious and healthy meals had long been on my to-do list. I’d always pictured myself as the kind of mom who would do that. Alas, food preparation and I had just never clicked thus far. So even though it fell on the coming Thursday, which was to be the first of Leo and my weekly date nights (another tactic of Operation Better Mom/Wife/Sister/Person), I RSVP’d yes.

The session—less of a workshop and more of a lecture—was at seven p.m. in the back room of the Cowgirl, a kitschy American restaurant on Hudson Street, and Leo met me there when it ended.

When I found him sitting at the bar, we decided to just get a table there. Our waiter wore tight dark jeans, a gingham shirt, and shimmery blue eye shadow, which made it hard not to smile each time I looked at him.

“How about next time we go someplace a little more adult?” I said, nodding to the stack of high chairs in the corner.

“Done. First rule of date night: no restaurants with high chairs,” Leo said. Although, with the cost of paying Wanda—eighteen dollars an hour plus forty dollars for a car service home—our options were limited.

I told him all about the workshop, and I could tell he was impressed that his non-foodie wife was making an effort to feed the kids better food.

“I’m gonna do it. I am. I’m ordering FreshDirect tonight. Those boys are eating salmon cakes with Greek yogurt red pepper aioli and kale chips for dinner tomorrow.” I pounded my index finger on the table to show I meant business.

The chef who led the workshop and who had bragged that her baby’s first food was runny eggs—eliciting a dramatic inhale from a woman in the front row—had convinced me that I could go from a dinner rotation of cereal and milk, chicken nuggets, and Chinese takeout to preparing home-cooked meals from scratch every night and that it would be supereasy. The nutritionist delivered an ode to wild-caught salmon, which, even—especially—out of a can (a can!), was basically a ticket to Harvard.

“Here’s to canned salmon,” Leo said, raising his Ball jar of beer to mine.

Leo and I had the best conversation we’d had in months. (Not that it had much competition.) Sitting across from him and just talking was unusual, and, as depressing as that realization was, we were having fun. I ordered a second beer and told him about the sweetly earnest parents in the class—most of them either pregnant or with babies about to start on solids. The vigorous nodding, the copious note taking, the unabashedly ignorant questions:
Can you freeze food in plastic containers? When can you start blueberries? Would cauliflower—organic, of course—be a good first food?
We laughed at their opposition to the show-offs in Leo’s cheese classes, who were masters at coming up with questions that aren’t really questions at all but thinly veiled attempts to demonstrate their knowledge. He has a theory that these people come to the classes with the single goal of being heard on the subject of cheese.

We reminisced about a “Mystery of the Caves” class he took me to while we were dating, where we toured the cheese caves in the shop’s Bleecker Street basement. There were a few people in the class asking such specific questions that they must have either been working on their own cheese cave—in Manhattan!—or had come in from the suburbs, or had researched the temperatures and conditions of cheese caves to the extent that they were able to challenge the instructor on optimal temperatures and number of weeks to properly age a Humboldt Fog or a Coupole.

“Oh, wait, we did have one of those,” I said. “This lady who stood in the back as if to monitor the speakers. She constantly interrupted but never had a question. She was kind of a heckler, actually. But the poor thing, her son has all kinds of food allergies—gluten,
dairy, nuts, you name it. She said she eliminated these foods one by one from their whole family’s diet, and it started curing them of all of these random ailments.”

“Like what?” Leo asked, automatically dubious of people who claim to have food allergies, as if they were making it less easy for him to refuse a food group on ethical grounds.

“Well, apparently her husband’s eczema cleared up and her older son stopped complaining of leg pain every day. So I started thinking about my restless legs, and I’m going to try an elimination diet and see what happens.”

Leo could barely contain his amusement. I was notorious for my undisciplined and dairy – and carb-rich diet; it wasn’t unusual for me to have a bagel and cream cheese and a latte for breakfast, a slice of pizza and a Diet Coke for lunch, and a beef and cheese burrito for dinner, interspersed with snacks of cereal and milk. “Oh, really. When’s this starting?” he said, nodding to the cheeseburger on my plate.