Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [22]
During my pregnancy, I read every last morsel of information that was available to the literate public. If there was a book or an article or a website on gestation (At ten weeks in utero: fingernails develop! At eighteen weeks: your child will suck his thumb!), I devoured it. And after I pushed Katie out, I subscribed to all the magazines, too: Parents, Parenting, Baby Talk, American Baby, Your Baby, Mothers and Babies, Babies and Mothers. Our mailbox was clogged with them the month through. And in my desperation, I would memorize far more than just the age-appropriate tips or stage-of-life information that applied to Katie and me. (“Silly Solids! How to Start Your Baby on Fun Food!”) No, I read articles for mothers of eight-year-olds, for divorced fathers who saw their kids only on weekends, for adoptive mothers who worried about bonding issues with their new African children. I hungrily ate them up because, really, what else did I have to do (Pilates class only met three times a week); and boredom aside, I read them with the frantic hope that Katie might turn our differently than I did. Or maybe that I would turn out differently than my mother. It was a blurry line, and one that I didn’t consider too much.
Which is exactly how I became an expert magician. Read enough magazines, and you can do just about anything. Because inevitably, on any given month, tucked inside the pages of these bastions of knowledge, there are articles on pulling rabbits out of hats and pulling coins out of noses and pulling off the perfect birthday party, as if that might ensure, or perhaps even prove, that you are the mommy dearest. The mommy best.
“It was sexy,” Jackson says tonight, slowly lifting my tank top over my head. “Seeing you with the kids today.”
“Yeah, even your mom managed a grin.” I giggle as he kisses my neck. “Not quite a smile, but a toothless grin.”
“Don’t bring her up right now,” he grunts.
“Duly noted.” I feel his mouth work its way down my collarbone.
“So, Ms. Magician,” Jack says, his voice husky and low, “how about you show me some of those new tricks?”
“How about you show me some of yours first?”
“Happy to,” he says, reaching down to unbuckle my belt.
I press my eyes closed and try to remember why I’d ever jumped off this track to begin with. Because these tiny accommodations, like placating his mother with magic tricks or sidestepping arguments about her in the first place—these small shifts—didn’t seem so seismic now that I understood the consequences of forgoing them. Last time, I asked Jack to make changes; this time, it seemed so much easier if I just made them in myself. It doesn’t feel like so much, I think. No, these compromises definitely don’t feel like too much.
Jack tugs off my pants.
What matters, I tell myself just before clearing my mind, is that I’m here, now, making new memories while the old ones are fading into dust.
Chapter Seven
This came for you.”
I look up from my loupe, with which I was poring over storyboards, at the sound of Josie’s voice, and see that her head has been replaced with a Herculean-sized gift basket.
“Ooh, goodies!” I set the loupe aside and rub my hands together. “What have you got?”
The monstrosity lands on my desk with a thud, and my pencil cup rattles.
“Well, you’ve made it,” Josie says, easing herself into a chair and shaking out her arms. “This is the official invitation to the annual Coke friends and family event, which basically means they invite all of their investors to Cipriani and pour top-shelf liquor down their throats to convince them that management is doing right by their money.”
I start to unpeel the layers of pink plastic that envelop the basket.
“Have you ever been?” I ask.
“Five years ago,” she answers. “Before they left us for BBDO. It’s legendary. And they don’t hand these invites out lightly. When I got invited, I’d already been promoted to director.”
I stand on my tiptoes and try to peer into the depths of the silo-sized gift.
“So,” Josie continues, “as I said,