Darren started the water for Violet’s bath while I stripped and got in the shower and Annie curled herself up on the little rug in front of the sink. Through the steam, I explained to him about Fecal Incident Levels. And while I was at it, I told him that I wanted to go back to work when my maternity leave was over. That I needed to. We’d been having this conversation since late in my pregnancy, but I’d put off making an official decision because it had felt like there were too many variables, there was too much I didn’t know. I knew what Darren wanted me to do, though.
“I thought we’d discussed this,” he said.
“We did,” I said, as I quickly shampooed my puke-stained hair. “And now we’re discussing it again.”
“But I thought you agreed that Violet would be better off with you than with a stranger. No one will take care of her the way you will.”
I leaned my head back into the shower stream. “To be honest,” I said, “I think that you’re wrong. And that’s only part of the issue. I’ve been thinking about this thing that my grandfather used to say all the time: Those who can, do. He meant it as a mantle of responsibility. If you can help someone, if you can do something good, if you can make a difference, you should. And I can. I’m capable of making more of a contribution to the world than I would be making if I stayed home with Violet every day. I made a commitment to myself on September Eleventh to live my life in a way that would give back. And I want to do that. I need to do that.”
“But don’t you love being home with Violet?” Darren asked, as if he hadn’t heard a word I said.
I took a deep breath. “There are moments that are wonderful,” I said. “But I love being an associate producer, too. I love making television shows. I’ve worked my ass off for the last five years, and I’m good at what I do. I’m not good at this.”
“You just need more time,” he said, dropping Violet’s T-shirt and soiled diaper into the trash can. “There’s no way you can think your job is more important than your daughter.”
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.
And then when I was posting Violet’s “8 months” photograph, and liking photos of Julia’s trip to Amsterdam, that little heart emblem popped into my news feed, and there it was. Gabriel Samson is engaged to Alina Alexandrov. There was a picture of you underneath it, with your arms around a beautiful woman with auburn hair, wide-set hazel eyes, and an enormous smile. My stomach flipped. This shouldn’t make a difference to you, I told myself. You’re married, you have a child, you haven’t seen him in more than a year, he hasn’t been yours in more than four years. But it did. It made a difference. In that photograph I saw my “might have been.” I saw the road not taken.
I spent the next hour clicking on your pictures and looking at the two of you on vacation in Croatia. I’d never been to Croatia. Then there you were in China, on top of the Great Wall. And in Egypt, dancing with Alina, who was wearing a belly-dancing skirt made of bright red chiffon and silver coins. I was surprised by how jealous I was of that life. I wanted to climb the Great Wall of China, I wanted to belly dance in Egypt.
You were based in Baghdad again, and it looked like she was, too, working for The Guardian. I clicked on its website and read every article she wrote. And then Googled her name and read her Wikipedia page. Then I discovered you had a Wikipedia page. And your pages were linked, with an update that someone must have recently added mentioning your engagement.
I checked myself. I did not have a Wikipedia page. Neither did Darren. Then Violet started crying, so I shut down the computer. But later that day I e-mailed you a quick note that said: Congratulations!
You didn’t write back.
liv
That September I was still in my post-Violet fog, but life was starting to enter a sustainable groove. She was sleeping through the night, finally, and we’d spent the last week of August as a family in a rented house in Westhampton Beach. Violet loved the pool, so we slathered her with sunscreen, dropped her in a little inner tube contraption that had an attached hood to block her from the sun, and let her bob around like a tiny buoy while we floated in the pool ourselves. It felt like a small slice of heaven.