My Big Fat Fake Honeymoon

Yeah, I’m one of those people . . . the ones who talk to plants and flowers. But it works, for them and for me. Especially at this stage when it’s all a blank slate waiting for my touch to make magic happen.

I’m head down, hard at it, when my phone dings. I’m surprised to see the hour when I pick it up but not surprised at who’s texting me.

Violet: You up?

Me: Yeah, everything ok?

Instead of an answering text, my phone rings with a FaceTime call. “Hey, Vi, what’s wrong?” I’m already in freakout mode because something has to be drastically off for her to call me at two a.m.

She sighs dramatically, her head thrown back against the chair she’s sitting in. I recognize that chair—it’s in baby Carly’s nursery. But I barely recognize my best friend. She’s usually impeccably pulled together, but she’s wearing one of Ross’s oversized white undershirts, her hair is piled haphazardly on top of her head in a don’t-give-a-fuck bun that looks days dirty, and I think there’s applesauce on her shoulder. Or maybe it’s spit up? God, I hope it’s applesauce.

“Nothing’s wrong, exactly. Your niece just doesn’t know day from night and she’s killing me.” Violet sounds exhausted, and I’m guessing that a middle-of-the-night call while I’m out of town shows just how tight she’s hanging on to the end of her rope.

“Sorry, honey,” I sympathize. “What’s she doing? Not sleeping?”

The guess is met with a snort. “Oh, she sleeps just fine as long as she’s got my boob in her mouth. I’m like the world’s biggest pacifier.” The bundle in her arms shifts, and I realize that Carly is nursing beneath the swaddle of blankets.

Violet sighs again, cooing to her little one. “That’s right, baby. Sleep, sleep, sleep . . .” The over-simple lyrics are soft and sweet and a little desperate.

“What’s Ross doing? Can’t he help you?” Violet is a fantastic mother, someone who took to it readily and with excitement, but she’s also a full-time career woman who needs to get some rest of her own too.

“Daddy went on a work trip for a couple of days,” Violet whispers to Carly as she answers me. “He’s working so hard, and we’re fine. Isn’t that right, little miss savage?”

“Well, if you need anything, call Mom. You know she’d be over to your place in a hot second if she thought there would be baby snuggles when she got there.” My mom might be more than a little obsessed with her first grandchild. “Or if you’re really desperate, your mom.”

Violet hisses, her eyes cutting to the screen. “Don’t you even invoke her name or she’ll show up like freaking Beetlejuice with an army of Italian grandmothers to show me how I’m doing everything wrong.”

I chuckle, certain she’s joking. She’s not doing anything wrong, I’m sure of that.

But Violet doesn’t laugh back. Her face goes a bit pale, and even on the tiny screen, I can see the panic in her eyes. “What if I’m doing it wrong?”

I put down the flower I was working into the arrangement and focus on my best friend tough-love style. “Violet Russo Andrews, you shut your pie hole. You are an awesome woman, wife, and mother. Charlotte is an amazing, well-adjusted, perfectly healthy, beautiful baby, and that’s all because of you because it sure has nothing to do with my asshole of a brother.” I throw that last bit in on purpose to distract her.

“Ross isn’t an asshole. He’s so good with Carly. I just miss him.” She presses a soft kiss to the baby’s head, and I can see the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Gah, distract me. Tell me about paradise and this whirlwind wedding. Let me live vicariously through you.”

A laugh pops out before I can stop it, and it’s too loud, disturbing Carly. Just like I said, the mother instinct in Violet kicks in automatically and she’s soothing the disruption away before she even realizes it. “What’s funny about that? What happened? Did you slip and fall into the pool and snort so much water up your nose that you sneezed it out . . . again? Or get poison ivy when you peed while hiking through the resort grounds? Or tell the bitchy wedding planner to ‘fuck off’ out loud when you meant to say it in your head? You do tend to do stuff like that.”

She’s right. I do have quite the history of fuck-ups and craziness. But this is on a whole different level.

“Actually, something did happen. Do you remember Emily Jones?”

Violet’s nose crinkles as if Carly just let a stinky one rip, but her reaction isn’t about baby shit but rather about the name Emily Jones. “Ugh, yeah. Why in the world are you bringing her up? Let the past stay in the past, especially the catty, bitchy past.”