Odd Mom Out

I nod once, bite the inside of my lip, and will the stinging sensation out of my eyes. This is so many years ago, so long ago, it’s not even news of this century.

Shey reaches out, touches one long, dark strand of my hair, and then tugs it gently. “You’d be over him if you had someone else in your life.”

“I am over him.”

“You need someone else—”

“No. I’m not—” I stop myself, shake my head, my jaw beginning to ache. “No. Not like that. Never again.”

“Marta, it’s been ten years.”

“I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.”

“Ten years and no sex, no men?”

“I have great toys, sweetheart, and they give tremendous satisfaction for a very small investment.”

“They’re plastic dildos.”

“Yeah, and the only tenderness they need is a battery change now and then.”

“You’re saying a battery-operated toy is better than a man?”

“Yeah.” I ignore Shey’s guffaw of laughter. “Vibrators don’t have wives.”

For a moment Shey says nothing, and she sits, long legs out, ankles crossed, her green eyes narrowed, expression catlike. “You told him to go back to her.”

I shake my head slowly. It feels as if she’s yanking out my fingernails one by one. “Let’s not talk about it.”

But Shey isn’t ready to drop it. “He asked about you.”

I swing around toward her, my hand shaking so much that I wildly slosh wine onto the ugly college plaid couch. “You talked to him?”

Her gaze is calm. “If it’s any comfort, I’m pretty sure Scott still has feelings for you.”

Just hearing his name jolts me all over again, and unsteadily I put the wineglass on the coffee table. I get to my feet under the pretense of getting a damp towel to mop the sofa, but in reality I’ve got to move, got to put distance between Shey and me.

She’s killing me.

And no, it’s not a comfort knowing he might have feelings for me. It’s no comfort at all.

I didn’t just love Scott, I craved him, the way you’d crave a drug like cocaine.

I knew from the beginning, too, that wanting anyone that much couldn’t be good, feelings that intense had to be bad.

I was twenty-five when I first met him, and we were together a year, and I fell hard right away. When I wasn’t with him, I missed him. When I’d be on long business trips, I’d begin to miss him so much that I felt ill, as though I were lacking warmth, light, oxygen.

But when we were together, it was heaven. When we were together, it was perfect. He seemed close to perfect, and that was good enough for me despite my crazy, passion-infused addiction for him, his smile, his voice, his skin.

But then I discovered he had a wife, who he was merely separated from, not yet divorced, when we first met, and two young kids, the youngest only eighteen months. Scott had told me he’d been married, and we’d discussed his divorce, but I’d never really gotten the whole picture until his wife showed up at my office and spread pictures of their babies on my desk.

I didn’t even look at the pictures of the kids. I just stared at her. Karen was small, slim, with a blond pageboy bob and the saddest blue eyes that watered constantly. As she talked, tears kept falling and she kept wiping them away as she told me anecdotes about baby Jordan and big boy Jason, who was all of three and a half.

Three and a half. Is that when little boys become men?

I ended it with Scott less than a week later. I actually asked him to leave after we’d had the best sex ever, and maybe the sex was so good because I knew it was the last time we’d be together.

But just because I ended it didn’t make it easy. Like an addict, I had to get him out of my system. I went through complete withdrawal. It was hell.

Those first few weeks were so bad, so unbelievably difficult, that I didn’t think I’d survive to get to the other side. The loss was so real, so intense, it felt as though I’d amputated part of myself.

I never called Scott, although I wanted to. I couldn’t let him know I missed him or wanted him, couldn’t give him an opportunity to run from Karen, the kids, and his responsibilities.

About two months after our relationship ended, I was finally able to eat and keep food from sticking in my throat. Finally able to sleep without waking up in tears. Finally able to work without feeling as though my legs were about to give way.

And when I recovered sufficiently to function, and even halfway smile again, I vowed to never, ever love anyone like that again.

And I haven’t. I won’t.

Just because I wear combat boots and black eyeliner and have a small, well-inked tattoo high on my right shoulder doesn’t mean I know how to cope with my feelings.

In the minuscule kitchen, I grab some paper towels and dampen them at the sink before attempting to clean the red wine, but the plaid is so dark, and the couch is so old, I can find only a couple of burgundy dots. But I scrub the hell out of them anyway, creating grayish brownish fuzz on the paper towel.

Shey just watches me go at the couch, and eventually I give up on scrubbing. Squeezing the damp towel into a ball in my fist, I exhale. “I’m glad they’re still together. It would have sucked to send him back to her to discover that they parted ways a few years later.”

“You never hoped he’d come back to you?”

“No.”

Shey’s voice softens. “You’d only be human if you did.”

My heart hardens. Everything is so tight in my chest, I can barely breathe.

I knew what it was like as a child to long for your father’s time, your father’s attention. I couldn’t come between Scott and his kids. I’ve got enough guilt as it is.

“I had Eva,” I say, going to the kitchen to throw away the paper towel. But it takes me a moment to locate the garbage can, which has been hidden in a skinny pantry between the oven and the wall. “I made Eva. And he had children who needed him.”

“You did the right thing. You created good karma.”

I stand up, cross my arms over my chest. “I didn’t do it for the karma. I did it for myself.” My voice is too high, too sharp. And for a moment, the old pain returns and it feels almost alive.

Shey shrugs. “The fact is, he would have stayed with you forever if you’d let him. You were the grown-up. You did the mature thing.”

Did I?

I broke up with the man I loved most. I told my soul mate to take a hike and never come back. Then I went out and got pregnant on my own.

Back in the small living room, I pick up my wineglass and, ignoring how my hand still shakes, take an unsteady sip.

I swallow and then laugh. A small, rough laugh. “Damn, girl,” I say, my voice as unsteady as my hand, “but you sure know how to throw a punch.”

Chapter Six

Shey and Eva sleep, but I can’t and I’m miserable lying in bed wide awake. Eventually, I get up and make a cup of tea and go outside to curl up in one of the Adirondack chairs on the cabin’s front porch.

The big trees cast shadows around the cabin and on the beach, but the water itself is dappled with moonlight. Leaning back in the chair, I stare up at the glittering, starlit sky and listen to the breeze rustle and whisper through the pine boughs.

I feel as though I’m losing control. And it’s not just Shey’s mention of Scott, but the morning run where I saw that guy and I felt absolutely rocked, as though everything in me suddenly wanted something different from the life I’ve planned. And then there was the afternoon meeting at Taylor’s as well as the fight with Eva in the truck. Eva seems to be changing right before my very eyes, and I want to be such a good mom and yet sometimes I don’t know how.

But even as panic bubbles, I squash it back down. I don’t want or need a man. I don’t have to be like Taylor to be a good mom. Eva’s a child, and she’s fine.

The point is, there’s no quitting, and being negative solves nothing. I’ll just keep moving forward, st

icking with the game plan, and everything will be fine. I can do this. I’ve faced tougher challenges.

Like when I nearly miscarried Eva and had to go on bed rest. And then going into labor early, in the middle of a meeting, so I had to rush in a cab through traffic-snarled Manhattan, trying desperately not to give birth there on the backseat while the foreign-born driver screamed at me, “No, lady, no baby here! No baby here!”

My lips twist. Did the driver really think I wanted to have my baby on his backseat?

But thank God, Eva hung in there, held off until I could be plopped on a gurney and wheeled into a delivery room.

Eva might be a handful, but she also has impeccable timing. If she hadn’t come early, she probably wouldn’t have made it, as she arrived with the umbilical cord wrapped dangerously tight around her neck. My obstetrician said if Eva had stayed in the womb much longer, it would have been too late.

I go back inside and lock the front door, and before I climb into bed, I lean over and lightly kiss my daughter.

This is how it’s always been with Eva. Great drama and excitement, lots of emotion and passion, and honestly, I wouldn’t have her any other way. I love my girl. I do.

We sleep in late the next morning, and when we finally wake, we go in search of breakfast, stumbling on a local coffee shop that serves enormous slices of warm homemade blueberry coffee cake with good strong coffee and hot chocolate for Eva.

After breakfast, we hike along an island trail, Eva’s long, thin legs taking long, efficient strides. When she walks she looks as if she’s attacking the trail, black ponytail swinging, brow creased, expression focused, determined.