Heads or Tails (22 page)

“Yeah, well, the Hillary of a month ago also wouldn’t be so behind in her design review,” I said, thumbing through the papers on my desk, “among other things.” It was an apology of sorts.

“Your attention’s certainly been divided — I’m not going to argue.” A pang of guilt speared me in the solar plexus. “But,” he added, tapping his own stack of paper, “we’re actually doing okay. This project is on course and we’ve got more in the pipeline than we did this time last year — both thanks to your expert management skills.”

I swept the side of my fingers across my brow in an exaggerated “phew” motion. The truth was, when I returned to work after the ER scare, I felt even more discombobulated than I had even in those first few days at home with GiGi. Now, bizarrely, the familiar felt foreign. The paint chips, the moulding samples, the antique reference books. The smell of wood varnish. The sheen of saw dust. All of it.

“What?” Frank said. My discomforting feelings must have appeared in my face.

“I don’t know. It’s remarkable that this place is still running. It’s even more remarkable that I’ve somehow managed to keep an eight-month-old alive for four and a half weeks. Everything’s just been so…off.”

“By all objective standards, Hill, you’ve indeed achieved that elusive work-life balance.”

I shrugged. Frank didn’t know, of course, that I was still horrified by what had happened with Abe. No one did. The image, the memory was so distasteful that I wondered whether I’d ever be able to confide in anyone — Frank, Sarah, Margot, Jean, even Jesse someday. I doubted it. I was still so confused by what I’d felt around Abe. But whatever that feeling had been had drastically diminished. Whenever I thought of him since that one kiss, I shook a little, not unlike how Jesse reacted during the goriest torture scenes on Homeland. It astonished me that such a near miss, a brush with disaster could drastically alter my whole perspective on myself and my marriage.

With the end of my pen, I pointed at Frank. “Hey, nice hat.” A black, grey and pale yellow knit beanie covered his bald head. It was obviously new, acquired just in time for deep winter.

“Thanks. Rod knitted it for me.”

“He
made
that?”

“Yup.” He removed the beanie and tossed it over so I could inspect it. Up close, I noticed a few spots with uneven stitches but overall it was pretty impressive. “He took up knitting solely because he was concerned about my bare scalp as we approach the clutches of December.”

“Awww, good man.” I tossed it back to him.

“How’s Margot?”

I shrugged again. “No new word. Not for several days.”

“Wow. She must have been pretty sick. Between her and her mother, you took that baby just in the nick of time.”

“I didn’t
take
her.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s amazing what the baby did to her,” I said, paging through a paint catalog on my desk, creating a speedy paper rainbow. “I mean, Margot’s normally the most capable, kind-hearted person. She managed to make a boatload of money on Wall Street and at the same time, maintain a boatload of friends. And she wanted to be a mom so bad. Then she had a baby and simply fell apart. It’s still so puzzling — and sad.”

“That very same baby has changed
you
.”

“Did you know that babies don’t have kneecaps?”

Frank eyed me sideways, indicating awareness that I’d deliberately changed the course of our conversation.

“Yup,” I continued enthusiastically. “I was reading one of these parenting blogs — there are a million out there, by the way. This one gives you a week-by-week account of developmental stages from inception to kindergarten. So anyway, GiGi looks like she’s getting ready to crawl. I mean, I’m no expert, but she does this cute butt-wiggle thing on her hands and knees. And I figured she should be getting mobile now based on her age. So I read up on crawling and that’s where I learned that babies don’t have kneecaps. They actually grow as babies crawl on their hands and knees. So crawling isn’t just a mid-way point between sitting and walking. It’s an essential stage for the skeletal system.”

“You don’t say?” He turned back to his work but I could tell he was still listening.

“And while GiGi might be a little on the later end of some physical milestones — she was barely sitting up by herself when she came here — her balance and strength have grown. She rolls over now, pushes herself up, anything to get to certain toys. And she’s now saying words, I swear it. The other day, she was sitting in the Pack ’n Play after her nap and she raised her arms and said, ‘Up.’” Remembering LuLu’s command to read, I added, “Come to think of it, babies can be kind of bossy.”

I raised my forehead, waiting for him to laugh at my joke. But he just rolled his eyes and resumed typing on his computer. I attempted to return to my own work, but my mind swirled back to GiGi. It would be little more than a year before she was as big as Jorge’s daughter, walking around, wanting to hear stories, going to preschool. I should have asked Jorge’s wife about preschool, I thought. From what Sarah had told me, getting into a preschool in San Francisco was more competitive than Ivy League admissions. It was still unclear how long Margot would be unfit to parent GiGi. Should I be investigating preschools?

The other day, Jesse suggested that we turn what we’d dubbed our bedroom’s Nothing Niche — a useless set-back space too small for a closet — into a little sleeping area for GiGi. He’d already measured and a small crib would fit there. While ostensibly he wanted to move her there so we could have sex without covering each other’s mouths with our palms at certain critical moments, he’d also taken the initiative of getting lavender and yellow paint chips from the hardware store to paint the niche in a distinct feminine shade. “I’m thinking this sundance yellow,” he’d said, handing me one. “It reminds me of her. It’s sunny.”

I loved the color too. I’d just bought GiGi a teeny hoodie in the exact same shade. I could imagine hanging prints in the niche of Olivia the pig, one of GiGi’s favorite book characters. But making such plans came with an odd sense of sacrifice, of letting something go. And I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. Was it my loyalty to Margot? Or the no-kids pledge that had formed the foundation of my marriage, not to mention my own identity? Or maybe it was that a discomforting truth was quietly emerging. Perhaps my worst fear — letting down a child — was about to happen.

Either way, I sensed a deep shift, a coming and a going. In the last month, my existence had become one of staying upright amidst shifting tectonic plates, below which rested profound misfortune. I was at once joyful and terrified. I was on a precipice. A precipice of a choice — not between something right or something wrong, but between two distinct variations of right.

The following Saturday, after a lazy morning filled with pancakes (GiGi loved them) and an Elmo DVD, Jesse and I decided to take GiGi to the Blue Playground in Golden Gate Park. For years, we’d run by it on our nine-milers to the beach. Its thick metal structures, all painted royal blue, were hard to miss. It seemed like a popular spot. I got GiGi dressed and Jesse gathered our playground provisions and we headed out.

Outside, the air smelled pleasingly of pine and fireplaces. We stopped briefly into Peet’s for tea and then took turns pushing the stroller down Stanyan towards Golden Gate Park. We’d just crossed Page when GiGi spotted Truly coming out of a holistic pet store and screeched in delight. Stepping out behind the dog was, of course, Abe.

Seeing the baby, he grinned broadly. When he registered me and then Jesse beside me, his smile faded, though he tried to hide it by looking down. My heart thudded against my sternum as I wondered whether he remembered our awkward, distasteful kiss. If he did remember, I prayed he had the good sense not to let on. Not here, not with Jesse.

“Hello, GiGi, my friend,” he said, as Truly pulled toward her and she stroked his nose.

“You know him?” Jesse asked in a sideways whisper.

“Good to see you, Abe” I said stiffly, ignoring Jesse’s question.

He gave me a side hug, the bag of his pet store purchases swinging across my body as he did. Aside from the kiss, it was the first time we’d touched since shaking hands when we first met several weeks before. My head reached just to his shoulder and I had the briefest yearning to lay my head against it, to apologize for my own part in what had happened. He smelled like brunch.

With his arm still around me, he reached his right hand towards Jesse.

“Hi, I’m Abe.”

Here they were, together. Wildly different — tall and shorter, mysterious and comfortingly familiar. Both sexy, but as they stood next to each other, they now struck me as unequally alluring.

“Nice to meet you. Jesse.” There it was. That sultry, robust voice.

Abe let go of me and I instinctively rubbed my arm where he’d been next to me, like I was trying to brush off germs. He kneeled down to give GiGi a tiny fist bump, using one hand to lift hers and the other to bump it. When he let go, she reached out to touch the dark curls on his head. Jesse widened his eyes, which I read to mean, “Who
is
this guy?”

“Abe and I met in the neighborhood a month or so ago when he was walking Truly and I was out with GiGi,” I explained robotically. I still couldn’t tell if Abe remembered what had happened. “We’ve become…friends.”

A dual jolt of attraction and shame surged through me as I said the words. I finally understood that in addition to being tall, manly and rich, what Abe had most going for him was that he liked me. It was a secret thrill to enjoy with myself. A sexy, unusual guy liked me. Sarah’s profession of intense sexual attraction to Jennifer Lopez taught me that I could fantasize guiltlessly. (“Who has sex dreams about their
own spouse
?” she once said.) But in that moment, seeing Jesse and Abe side-by-side, both of them together with GiGi, I also understood that while Abe had been thrilling, it was Jesse whom I loved immeasurably. Abe was the stuff of unconscious, harmless sex dreams. Jesse was my husband, my best friend, the man who’d partnered with me through the bizarre situation I’d been swept into. Getting attention from Abe was no doubt powerful, verging on erotic. But it was Jesse who’d long had my heart and always would.

I wondered then if that’s what Jesse himself had done with Marigold, tucking her safely away in the very same manner. After years of self-doubt, I finally understood what Jean had tried to explain on the eve of my marriage: that Jesse’s feelings for her did not necessarily diminish what he felt for me. That he’d cared for her so deeply was really a solid check in the positive column, a demonstration of his deep ability to love, rather than any sort of comment on his feelings for me. In a way, theirs was a relationship that I, too, should treasure.

“We’re off to the playground,” I said, leaning over to scratch under Truly’s chin. “See you around.”

By the time we reached the Blue Playground, it was after lunch and from the two dozen people there, that was clearly prime pre-nap play time. GiGi was too young to run around the way most of the other kids were. But when Jesse placed her in the infant swing and pushed her gently, she exploded in peels of laughter, even when she leaned too far forward and practically pitched herself out of the black rubber seat. As he played with her, I heaved great sighs of relief that the encounter with Abe was over. Drawing my shoulders away from my ears, I looked up towards the sunshine.

Nearby, a woman I recognized pushed a boy of about three on the big-kid swing. She and I had chatted briefly in Peet’s a few mornings before. Both then and today, she was wearing skinny jeans, boots, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a down vest and a wide pashmina-style scarf, an ensemble I’d come to discover was the unofficial uniform of thirty- and forty-something San Francisco moms.

“I met you the other morning,” she said in greeting.

I replied with a crisp nod. “Right. I’m Hillary.”

“Allison. Nice to meet you. Is that your husband?” She pointed towards Jesse, who’d taken GiGi out of the swing and was now climbing the ladder of the slide with her. He struck me as so at ease and in control with his unhurried, relaxed movements. I caught myself in a slow, contemplative smile. Somehow we’d travelled straight into this unfamiliar parental subculture, a place we pledged never to visit, and yet we didn’t feel like foreigners.

“Yup. That’s Jesse.”

“How old’s your baby?”

“Eight and a half months.” I didn’t clarify. No one ever doubted that we were a family. Not at the zoo, not at the ER, not at the park. And shockingly, I didn’t feel out of place in the playground environment, especially when Jesse was with me. Instead, I felt an odd but distinct sense of fitting in, of belonging, even though we didn’t really belong there. When we were jointly at purpose taking care of GiGi, it was just like those races where we held hands crossing the finish line, our tradition.

She gave her son an extra big push and walked closer. “I’m a little embarrassed,” she said in a low voice, leaning toward me. “But do you have an extra diaper? Even in this winter breeze I can tell that my kid just had an epic blowout.”

“I do!” I said, with perhaps a little too much pride at my preparedness. It had taken many weeks, but I’d come to know never to leave the house without diapers, wipes, a bottle of water, Cheerios, a change of clothes for GiGi and, of course, Gavin. I pulled one out of the canvas bag I hung from the umbrella stroller. “Will it fit?”

“I’ll make it work. Jackson’s a bit on the scrawny side and your daughter is deliciously plump.”

I handed her the diaper.

“Thanks,” she said. “See ya at Peet’s.”

I pushed the stroller over to the slide where Jesse and GiGi were taking perhaps their fifth trip down. GiGi’s head jerked backwards every time they halted at the bottom. And each time she was silent for a moment before squawking like a chicken, kicking her legs and flailing her arms. “Ga!” she said and I was convinced that she was commanding, “Again!”

Jesse placed GiGi onto his shoulders and called to me. “I think she’s saying, ‘Again!’” I raised my eyebrows in agreement.