I was ready to kick something. Or cry. Or both. I gave my hair one final rinse and turned off the shower.
“Of course I don’t think that,” I said, wrapping myself in a terry-cloth robe. “But I value my own happiness too. And if I stayed home, if this was my life, I’d resent it. I’d resent her. And you.”
“I think she’s peeing?” he said, as he slipped her into the baby bathtub.
“Happens,” I answered, kneeling to take over.
“So many women would die for this opportunity,” Darren said. “You don’t need to work. I make enough money. I have this job so you don’t need to work.”
“No,” I said, shampooing Violet’s hair. “You have that job because you love that job. You love making money and having people respect you. You love the high that comes with closing huge deals.”
“That’s not the only—” Darren said.
I stopped him. “And you like being a provider, too, I get it. You like being able to take care of us. And I appreciate it, I do. But don’t pretend you work just so I don’t have to. You work because you like how your job makes you feel. Just like I like how my job makes me feel.”
Darren was quiet. When I looked up at him, he seemed to be evaluating me, assessing me.
“Would you want to give it up?” I asked. “And stay with her every day, all day, alone? I know she’s wonderful, and we both love her. But would you want that?”
“It’s not financially sustainable,” he said, while I washed Violet’s back with a washcloth shaped like a duck.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s a ridiculous question,” he said. “We couldn’t live off your salary alone.”
“Pretend,” I said, through my teeth. “Pretend it’s financially sustainable. Pretend we could live off my salary in a way that would make you happy. Would you want to do it?”
“So many of my colleagues’ wives—” he started.
“I am not your colleagues’ wives,” I said. “I’m me. And you still haven’t answered my question: Would you want to stay home with her every day and quit your job? In theory?” Violet seemed clean, so I took her out of the bath. She cried until I’d swaddled her in a hot-pink hooded towel that had bunny rabbit ears attached to it. And a cottontail.
“This isn’t what I thought our lives would be like,” Darren said. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
I looked him full in the face while holding our daughter to my chest. I felt tears filling my eyes but was powerless to stop them. “This isn’t what I wanted either.”
He opened his mouth but seemed at a loss for words.
I didn’t look at Darren again. I didn’t say anything else. Instead, I rubbed Violet dry and brought her into her room, where I gave her a new diaper and snapped her into a pair of striped pajamas. “All better?” I asked her. She smiled and gurgled at me as I wiped the tears off my cheek with a burp cloth.
I heard Darren walk into the room behind me.
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to quit my job and stay home with her every day.”
I nodded, pressing my lips to Violet’s hair, feeling her warmth against my chest, pulling strength from her, for her. She needed a mother who stood up for herself, who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted. I needed to be a role model for Violet. “You understand now,” I said to Darren.
He came over and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
“I’m sorry I’m not one of those women,” I said, “like your colleagues’ wives. I’m sorry staying at home won’t make me happy. But this is me. And I need to work.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. “You don’t have to apologize for being who you are. I should apologize.”
I wanted to ask, For what? To make sure he wasn’t apologizing just to keep the peace. But instead I said, “Apology accepted.” Though looking back I realized he didn’t quite apologize. Just acknowledged he should.
? ? ?
THE NEXT DAY we started a search for a nanny. And about a month after that I went back to work. I did miss Violet when I was there—more than I expected, actually. But I was grateful for Darren then. Grateful that we had choices, that we could hire people to help us when we needed it, that in the end, he wanted me to be happy.
liii
There are some moments of my life I can picture so clearly, as if I could slip back into the memories and relive them word for word, and then there are long swaths of time—days and weeks—that seem indistinguishable from one another. The months after I went back to work, while Violet was still an infant, are a blur. I was barely sleeping and developing two new shows and pumping breast milk in my office and making sure I spent as much time with Violet as possible. I was barely on Facebook, and when I was it was just to post those obligatory “5 months, 6 months, 7 months” photos. So I missed seeing pictures of you and Alina. I missed the whole development of that relationship. If I hadn’t been so busy, I might have noticed that we hadn’t spoken at all since the reunion, but it didn’t even register. I’d gotten back to a place where you didn’t really matter, the place I’d been in before you called the morning of my wedding.