Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [101]
I ring Henry’s buzzer three times, but he doesn’t answer. Either asleep or with Celeste, I realize as my insides drop all over again. I sink onto his front stoop and try to remember my old life, what made it so abhorrent that I might have permanently leapt from it with no hope of getting it back.
I get caught in a memory of when I was newly pregnant with Katie.
I had been ill with morning sickness and called into work to take the day off. Henry, before he rushed into the office, ran to the corner deli to buy me Saltines and ginger ale.
When he returned, he pressed a cool washcloth to my forehead and rubbed my back and then he said, “Why don’t you take the rest of the week off? You’re running yourself down.”
“Why don’t I take the rest of my life off,” I answered. “It’s not like we need the money.”
“You’d want to quit?” I could hear his surprise.
I flipped over to face him. “Would you care?”
“Er, no, I guess not,” he said. “As long as you feel fulfilled.”
“Why wouldn’t I feel fulfilled?” I asked, without a trace of foreshadowing. “I think I’d like it—being a full-time mom.” Even as I said it, I knew that part of me didn’t believe it and wasn’t sure why I suggested it in the first place. But Henry couldn’t have known that. Truly. I threw it out with such hope and conviction, that even the best of partners couldn’t have seen through something so opaque.
“So do it,” Henry said, leaning down to kiss my forehead. “Quit. Whatever makes you happy.”
From the cold stoop in front of my future husband’s deserted apartment, I’m flattened at the memory: both at how Henry hadn’t coerced me into my decision and how wrong I’d gotten it for so many years. Time can play that trick on you, I realize. Obscure some of the good things and skew some of the bad, such that they blend together and you can’t get your bearings on which is which and on what to hold on to as you wade through the muck.
I wipe the mucus from my face and the mascara from my numbed cheeks, and I pull myself upright. It is still dark, though I know that dawn will come soon, and I have to hurry, I have to be on my way. I’m not sure how and I’m uncertain where, but try I must—I have to make my way back home.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The train to Westchester is nearly empty. It’s too early for the reverse-commute crowd, and no one else needs to head to the suburbs before 7:00 A.M. I listen to the clanking of the wheels and the hum of the engine, and try to catch some sleep, but none will come.
At the station, I hail a cab, and we wind through the hushed streets, with their looming arbor trees and their shingled houses and their garages stuffed with SUVs and minivans. I remember touring our own home for the first time. Our real estate agent was lukewarm on the place, but as soon as I saw the pink nursery and the granite kitchen, I swooned. My high heels clicked on the hardwood floors as Henry tagged after me, and I turned back to him and said, “This is it, this is the one.” He was less certain but he wanted to do right by me, so we put in an offer and moved just a month later. It had been both of our doing, I realize now, staring out the window at the houses whizzing by. No one person was guilty, no one person can be blamed. Henry just wanted to please me, and I him. And we rotted ourselves in trying.
The taxi deposits me at Ainsley’s front door, which she answers with confusion, still in her pajamas and sipping a steaming mug of coffee. She shivers from the air that blows in.
“It’s 8:15 in the morning, Jill! What are you doing here?” She surveys me, disheveled and unshowered from the day before.
“I need your help.” I push my way past her and into the kitchen, where in six years, Katie would say her first word, “Mama.”
She pauses before following me in. Then I hear her slippers shuffling behind me.
“Coffee?” She raises the carafe.
“Sit down, I’ll help myself,” I say, moving toward the cabinets, grabbing a mug, then opening another