So I stayed mid-level, just as my dad did, and I told myself it was fine. I still made enough money to keep my apartment, pay for a nanny, and then later the outrageous school tuition – over forty grand a year for Buckley. But it’s not a given; it’s not easy. The life I’d wanted for both of us never quite materialized, but that’s okay. We still have more than most. We still have plenty. And I have the most important thing, the best thing: my son.
When I think back to what I expected, what I hoped for all those years ago, I almost want to laugh. Either that or cry, or maybe just sigh and shake my head over my total naïve stupidity. I intended to take two weeks off when Isaac was born. Two weeks. Was I crazy? Or just completely deluded?
Losing the partnership was a mixed blessing, because at least without that tempting and expensive carrot dangling in front of me I didn’t feel too guilty about taking another two weeks off after the first two, and thanks to Jill, I let everyone know I’d adopted a son.
I’ll never forget the exhausted craziness of those first few weeks, even though the moments have all merged together, a blur of wonder and fear and intense joy. Isaac was in the hospital for three weeks, while I attempted to work, going to and from the hospital to visit him, trying to bond from behind a plate glass window. When he was eight days old they let me hold him.
Heather had signed the surrender papers five days before, and then she’d been discharged from the hospital. It was as if she’d vanished, and I was so relieved. I even convinced myself that the whole open adoption plan she’d come up with wouldn’t materialize; she’d think better of it.
Then I took Isaac home, needing one of the NICU nurses to buckle him into the car seat because I couldn’t figure out the straps. I felt totally unequipped in every possible way. I’d never changed a diaper. I’d barely held a baby before him, and I’d only held Isaac a handful of times, with nurses looking on, gently correcting me, reminding me to support his tiny head, fragile as a robin’s egg, his pulse throbbing through his skull.
I’d once imagined that when I brought Isaac home there would be an army to support me – baby nurse, nanny, competent officials to surround me and keep us both safe, guide me through it all. It didn’t happen that way. The baby nurse, who had postponed to start with, backed out completely when she learned that Isaac had health issues – a heart murmur that needed monitoring and weak lungs that haven’t given him any trouble except a touch of asthma over the years.
Dorothy was visiting her grandchildren in Chicago until the last week of May, when she was meant to have been starting, so for those first two weeks I was entirely on my own, and it felt like being launched into outer space. I wanted to bond with my boy but when I took him out of the car seat into the yawning emptiness of my apartment, I felt as if I were holding a cross between a Ming vase and a stick of dynamite.
I held him against my chest, so scrawny and small, and tiptoed into the nursery, everything feeling fragile, like the moment was a bubble – beautiful, translucent, and easily broken. I eased into the rocking chair as I cradled him like a football, terrified I was going to break him; that he was going to cry, that I wouldn’t know what to do.
Then I looked down into his face and saw how he blinked up at me, studying me so seriously, and my heart ached with love and thankfulness and a deep, abiding joy. I’d learn. This would become familiar, easy. He was mine. Of course he was mine.
I’d already decided on his name, unorthodox as it might have seemed: Isaac, the Hebrew name meaning laughter. It was a nod to my father’s Jewish mother, despite my completely privileged, Protestant upbringing. I wanted to give my son some of his history, ground him in the truth of my family, my lineage. Heather made a face when she heard his name, not the good Irish name she’d probably wanted, but I wasn’t going to back down. He was my son now.
Still, she played on my early fears during those first visits. Every laughing criticism made me flinch, doubt myself even more. Wonder if I’d ever get this right, if I’d ever be a good mom, no matter how much I tried.
It’s been a long time since I’ve struggled with how to open a stroller, or had to have Heather help me give Isaac some ant
ibiotics one visit when I couldn’t get him to take a spoonful, but I feel like at each visit with Heather still takes a little something from me. And more importantly, she takes something from Isaac. He feels torn, uncertain; as he’s grown older he’s sensed the tension and sometimes the downright hostility between us, and it worries him. More and more he’s asked why we have to go, and my answers don’t satisfy him. I’m doing this for his sake as much as my own. If these visits worked for Isaac, I’d keep them going. At least, I hope I’d be a strong and good enough person to do that.
Outside twilight is falling on Central Park in full bloom – daffodils waving their yellow-orange heads in neatly tended flower beds, cherry buds in full, blowsy blossom. I try to summon a pleasure in the sight, but I’m still feeling on edge from my conversation with Heather. I don’t want to go the way of lawsuits and acrimony, but I know I will if I have to. The knowledge lodges like a stone in my stomach.
I go to find Isaac; he’s lying on his stomach on his bed, the iPad propped in front of him, chin in his hands.
‘Time for bed, bud,’ I say gently. He looks up, blinking me into focus, and then he smiles, a grin that steals my heart every time. I’ll never get tired of it.
‘Can we have a story?’
‘Of course. Wimpy Kid or Captain Underpants?’
‘Both?’ he asks hopefully and I smile, that edginess starting to fade. It’s a whole month until the next visit, and maybe it won’t happen at all.
‘Sure,’ I say, and I toss Isaac his pajamas before reaching for a book. ‘Why not?’
Monday begins with the usual chaotic crazy of my working week, navigating school drop-off and getting to work, leaving a note for Dorothy outlining Isaac’s many afterschool activities. Since he started school two years ago, I had to reduce Dorothy’s hours; I couldn’t justify paying her for a full working week when she picks him from school at half past three. I’m not making that kind of money, not really. I made it up to her by finding a working mom from Isaac’s old school who needed daytime care for her baby. We nanny share and so far it’s worked out well, thank God, because I don’t know what I’d do without Dorothy.
As soon as I get to the office I try to put all mom thoughts to the back of my mind – the science project due next week; the yellow belt Isaac’s working toward in Taekwondo; the reciprocal play date I should have scheduled last week. So often I think of Joanne’s warning when we had dinner together all those years ago – Kids always mean time off. I didn’t believe her; I chose not to, but of course she was right.
Before Isaac was three months old I had taken four extra personal days. One for that first pediatrician’s appointment I didn’t want to miss, then when he had a febrile seizure and had to go to ER before he was six weeks old; again when Dorothy had a stomach bug and couldn’t come in, and finally because I was just so exhausted.
Even now there’s always something – sick days, doctor’s appointments, teacher’s meetings. I don’t begrudge any of it, of course I don’t, but sometimes it’s hard. There are only so many favors you can call in, so many people you can ask.
And the truth is, there aren’t that many people in our lives. Single parenthood and a demanding job make maintaining a social life a challenge. When Isaac was little I took one morning off a week for a while to join a baby group, and I met some nice moms, but our lives were so different – they all stayed at home – that in the end I stopped going.
When he started preschool, it got better. At the Hebrew Montessori I made a couple of friends; there were play dates, and moms’ nights out, and organized trips to the Central Park Zoo or the Children’s Museum. Having a child feels like an automatic entry into a club; I share knowing smiles with other moms at the playground, I catch someone’s eye as I swing hand in hand with Isaac when we walk down the street, and feel the gratitude expand in my chest that I’m finally part of something bigger than myself. Something wonderful. And now, with Isaac starting at Buckley, there are new friends. I’ve only known Stella for the better part of a year but she and her family already feel integral to my life.
There might not be a lot of people in my life, but there are enough. There’s Isaac.
I make it to the office at quarter to nine, which is late by Bruce Felson’s standards, never mind that he often breezes in at ten, only to take a two-hour lunch at noon and come back smelling like booze. That’s the partner’s life, not mine.
My corner office is gone; they claimed it was because of the full-floor renovation a couple of years back, but I knew the truth. Everyone did. I wasn’t going anywhere, not up and not out, and so I stagnated in the smallest office I’d ever been in since I started at Harrow and Heath, crouched over my computer, researching start-ups that, just like me, were destined for nowhere.