Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Read online

  “William, let's go,” I repeat, my voice louder than I had intended. Two of the mothers look at me, eyebrows raised, mouths twisted into disapproving frowns. “We're running late,” I mutter, shrugging my shoulders, as if this is an explanation, as if this will prevent the phone call to Carolyn. Not just irresponsible. Abusive, too.

  William allows himself to be zipped into his coat. I tie the strings of his hat tightly under his chin.

  “Where are your mittens?”

  He pulls them out of his pockets and I tug them onto his limp hands. His left thumb stays with the rest of his hand, refusing to go where it belongs, and for a few seconds I tried to twist the mitten around and stuff the thumb in correctly. Finally, I just give up.

  “All set,” I say, smiling falsely.

  William gives me a baleful look and sets off toward the elevator. By the time I pick up the booster seat that his mother has left in the broom closet outside the classroom, he is waiting for me, watching the elevator doors close.

  “We missed it,” he says.

  “I'll bet you ten bucks there'll be another one.”

  I never meant to feel this way about this child. My assumption was that I would love him. I love the father so very much; it seemed inevitable that I would adore the child. I longed for William to love me. Jack finally allowed me to meet William after we had been seeing each other for six months, a few weeks before we moved in together. He might have introduced us earlier, but he had determined, for a while, to leave the decision of timing up to Carolyn, to give her the sense of controlling that, if nothing else. Jack had taken matters into his own hands only when it became clear that, if the choice were left to her, William would live out his life in blissful ignorance of the woman who had come to share his father's bed. That was one of the last conversations between Jack and his ex-wife to which I was not privy, and thus I have no idea what it cost Jack to insist on the Saturday morning that he, William, and I spent at the Central Park Zoo.

  I approached my first meeting with the son with far more trepidation than I had my first date with the father. It was so important, this first moment we would lay eyes on each other. I played it and replayed it in my mind as I rode the subway uptown. It was September, but it felt more like August, muggy and hot, one of those Indian summer days where it's such an oven on the subway platform that the air is hard to breathe, as if every molecule is weighted down with something extra—some kind of liquefied dust that sticks to your lungs and the inside of your nostrils. I took the train from my apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and when the doors opened at Fifty-ninth Street, just two, too brief stops in cool, dry, air-conditioned air, it was almost more than I could do to get to my feet and leave the car.

  Jack and William were waiting for me at the entrance to the zoo. Jack had William up on his shoulders, and even at three years old, William's legs dangled down halfway to Jack's waist. Jack is a handsome man, compact and well built, like my father. He hovers somewhere between five foot six and five foot seven, depending on his mood. He is optimistic and cheerful, and when he is happy seems much taller. On the rare occasions when he succumbs to depression, he shrinks, sort of folding in on himself, as if he is willing himself to disappear. Jack once said that one of the very first things that attracted him to me is that, while I am small, I never disappear. On the contrary, I seem always to be doing what I can to be visible. Jack has never seen me doing my mouse act at William's preschool.

  Jack's mother is a Syrian Jew, and he looks like her side of the family. He has a straight, sharp nose with delicate nostrils, his hair is very dark, nearly black, and his eyes have navy blue irises. It is a color that manages to look piercing and deep and velvety soft all at the same time. This is not an eye color I have ever seen before, and from the moment I first saw it I have wondered if it is unique to him, or if it will be reproduced in his children.

  William's eyes are just plain, everyday blue.

  Jack is a runner and a mountain climber and though he is small, perhaps because he is small, he is very strong. His muscles are flat and hard, and his waist is slim. He looks wonderful in a suit, and possesses a casual, almost instinctive grace and elegance. For instance, although he cares little about clothes, he never wears ventless, double-breasted jackets. He says that they make him look like a midget. Weeks before we met, when I had just graduated from law school and had gone shopping for a life for which I possessed no wardrobe, among the pile of marked-down suits and dresses I bought was a black, double-breasted Tahari coatdress. After Jack explained his philosophy of double-breasted jackets, I could never again wear that dress without feeling like I was auditioning for the part of a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. I donated the dress to a charity that supplies clothing to women trying to make the transition from welfare to work.

  As I waded through the sluggish heat toward my lover and his son I saw Jack grab William's feet and tip backward, making as if to dump the boy off his shoulders. I could hear William's squeal of delight all the way down the path as he grabbed fistfuls of his father's hair and struggled to right himself. If it had not been so terribly hot I might have turned and run back down the path, across six blocks, and down to the chill of the subway train. They looked so happy, this father and son, standing underneath the Delacorte Clock outside the zoo. They looked so happy, and all they needed was a mother to complete the perfect picture of familial bliss. The mother, however, was in her apartment at 1010 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Eighty-second Street, maybe soaking a tissue with her tears, maybe prescribing herself double doses of Ativan or Xanax. The mother was maybe combing through old photographs and letters, trying to find some clue to the betrayal that had laid waste to the perfect triangle that had once been her family. The mother was gone, and in her place was me, a hopeful smile plastered to my lips, a crumpled FAO Schwarz bag stuck to my sweaty palm, trying to bribe this small boy to forget that I had thoroughly and comprehensively ruined his life.

  Falling in love with Jack was so easy that I had assumed that falling in love with his son would be just as effortless. I did not imagine that the boy would be equally infatuated with me; I am not that foolish. I presumed that I would have to win him over, that slowly, over the weeks and months, even the years, the force of my affection would topple his reserve, would chip away at his suspicion and resentment. He would learn to care for me, would find one day that my love had insinuated itself into his life and heart. He was, after all, a very small boy, only three years old. Soon he would not remember a time when I was not part of his life. While he might not love me as a mother, he would look upon me as a beloved aunt, a confidant, a trusted friend. And he would be my buddy, my co-conspirator, my practice baby. I love children and I always have. As a teenager, I had been a sought-after babysitter, a well-loved (and well-tipped) camp counselor. Here, finally, was a child whose right to my devotion was unimpeachable. This was the child of my beloved. How could I help but love him?

  When he finally noticed me, Jack swung William down off his shoulders. He was so nervous that his voice actually cracked. “Look, Will. Here's Emilia!”

  Had William flung himself to the ground, his legs and arms windmilling in a tantrum, it would have been easier for me to handle. Had he scowled at me, or turned his back to me, or even kicked me, I would have given Jack an understanding wink and led the way through the gates of the zoo. Had he burst into tears and begged to go home to his mama, I would have reassured my boyfriend with a sympathetic, discreet pat of the hand, and sent them on their way.

  Instead, William reached one long-fingered, limp hand toward me. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. I smiled uncomfortably and took his hand in mine. His fingers were cool and slightly damp, the nails evenly trimmed, not chewed.

  “Pleased to meet you, too,” I said. “I brought you something.” I handed him the bag. He opened it and pulled out the plush dinosaur I had bought him. Jack had told me that William was obsessed with dinosaurs, that his favorite place was the Museum of Natural History.


  The three-year-old boy held the stuffed dinosaur at arm's length. “Theropods only have three toes,” he said.

  I looked at the smiling creature with the tiny dangling forelegs. It was green, with blue velvet polka dots. “I guess it's not terribly realistic,” I said.

  “It's fine. Thank you.” William handed the stuffed dinosaur to his father, who tucked it under his arm and smiled at me apologetically.

  Now it was finally time for that rueful wink, but somehow I just didn't have it in me.

  “It's almost ten thirty,” Jack said. “We don't want to miss the penguin feeding.” He led the way into the zoo.

  Chapter 2

  It is always next to impossible to flag down a cab outside of the 92nd Street Y when I am with William. I never have these problems when I am here for a lecture, or on the rare mornings when I have to drop William off at school, so I know it is not the location that prevents the cabbies from stopping. It is the goddamn booster seat. It is the fact that they know it is going to take me an extra few minutes to wrestle it into the backseat, wrestle the kid into it, and wrestle it back out again once we arrive at our destination. I feel like I should carry a sign that says, “I promise I'll make it worth your while.” Or maybe one that says, “Look, I don't like this any better than you do. His mother insists on it, and I swear to God I'll give you an extra five bucks, so please will you just stop and pick us the hell up? Please?”

  A sympathetic or desperate Sikh in a pale blue turban pulls over and I wrench open the door and throw William's lunch box and my purse inside. William's booster seat is the kind that has a five-point harness and has to be installed in the car using the seat belt. Once, a while ago, when William first graduated from a car seat, I showed Jack a picture on the Web of a booster seat that was designed to raise a child up and allow him to be buckled using the shoulder strap alone. That seat would have saved me the three minutes on either end of the trip home from school and who knows how many dirty looks from cabbies. When Jack brought it up with Carolyn you would have thought I had suggested strapping William to the front bumper.

  Once I get the seat installed I turn to William. “Okay, up you go.”

  William pretends to be very busy staring at a stiffened turd partially embedded in a crust of snow.

  “Come on, William.”

  “I wonder at what temperature poop freezes?”

  “William!”

  “Since poop is hot, it will freeze more quickly than a Popsicle, did you know that? Hot water freezes more quickly than cold. Most people think that cold water will freeze faster because it's closer to the temperature of freezing, but it's not true. Hot water freezes faster.”

  “It's not fair to keep the driver waiting.” I am getting ready to lose it. In about two seconds I am going to pick this kid up and pitch him headfirst into the cab.

  “It's because of evaporation. Hot water evaporates faster.”

  “Get in the cab, William.”

  William sighs. “I don't want to sit in a baby seat,” he says.

  “I said get in the cab!”

  “I don't want to sit in a baby seat,” he repeats, this time more loudly, as if he is trying on one of the other children's tantrums. After all, he's seen it work for them. He's watched their mothers capitulate to their demands, no matter how outlandish—anything, anything, just please stop that screaming.

  “It's not a baby seat,” I say, through gritted teeth. I can feel my jaw starting to ache. It is not William's fault that I suffer from temporomandibular dysfunction. I have had it since before I even met his father. It began in law school, when I would prepare for exams by sitting curled up on an ugly butcher-block chair in the Radcliffe library, subsisting on Diet Coke and Raisinettes, and endlessly grinding my teeth. Now that I think about it, I believe the chair's nubbly tweed upholstery was orange.

  It is certainly because of William, however, that I had to begin wearing a mouth guard. I am not crazy; I know he didn't consciously impose this on me, although I imagine that if he were not five years old with (I certainly hope) little understanding of what it is his father and I do in our high sleigh bed, William certainly would have willed on me the bit of yellowish-tinged plastic that I have to snap out of my mouth and leave on the nightstand in a pool of slick and vaguely evil-smelling saliva whenever I want to give his father a blow job.

  “It is not a baby seat,” I say again.

  The cabbie beeps the horn, and William and I both jump.

  “Oh dear,” William says and lifts up his foot. He has stepped through the frozen crust of the dog shit to its soft and disgusting center.

  “Goddamn it, William,” I say. I say to the cabbie, “I'm sorry,” and grabbing William's leg, I scrape his foot against the sidewalk, rubbing off as much of the shit as I can. Then I pick him up and put him in his booster seat. I buckle him in and run around to the other side of the cab. As I fling open the door, I hear the blare of a car horn.

  “What the fuck, lady!” someone screams. “Are you trying to get killed?”

  I look over my shoulder at the car that has just missed ripping the door out of my hands. I shrug, either apologetically or carelessly, you choose, and slide into the cab, slamming the door behind me. The Sikh cabbie is looking at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes are very sad. He, like my doorman, like my husband, like everyone it seems, is disappointed in me.

  “Central Park West and Eighty-first Street,” I say.

  As we drive across the park, the cab warms up and I unwind my scarf from around my neck. William and I don't talk. We never do. He looks out his window and I look out mine. A faint but foul odor begins to tickle my nostrils and I wrinkle my nose. The dog shit on William's shoe has begun to defrost.

  Chapter 3

  In the Olivia books, it doesn't matter if the little white pig is not at all sleepy. She still has to take a nap. William, however, is under no such compulsion. His mother has decreed that since William's imagination is so “activated,” since he is so bright, so creative, so highly intelligent, he is in need of constant stimulation and thus cannot be compelled to sleep during the day. I cannot help but believe that Carolyn could have issued such an edict only because it is never she who has to stimulate William's activated little self. Whenever William is not in Jack's or my care, he is with his nanny, Sonia. Sonia's days off are identical to the custody arrangement—every Wednesday and every other weekend. Only then does she retreat to the bowels of Queens and drink slivovitz or play the single-stringed gusle, or is a Croatian gangster's gun moll or does whatever it is that recent immigrants from Dalmatia do on their days off from catering to the needs and whims of overprivileged five-year-olds on the Upper East Side. Actually, I know virtually nothing about Sonia other than the name of the region in Croatia where she is from, and the fact that she once told Jack that one of her grandfathers was Jewish before the war. I don't know what that means, “Jewish before the war.” I don't know how long Sonia has been in America. I don't know where she lives when she is not in the little room off the kitchen that I once glimpsed, when I was looking for the bathroom during a firm dinner in the days before Carolyn threw Jack out, before I fucked Jack in the black Aeron chair behind the desk in his office at Friedman, Taft, Mayberry and Stein, the desk Carolyn chose for him when he made partner and was given a corner office and the money to decorate it.

  Sonia takes care of William every day after school, except Wednesday, and I take care of William on Wednesdays, and thus Carolyn has no idea how hard it is to entertain her child for an entire afternoon. I understand from looking her up on UrbanBaby.com that Dr. Carolyn Soule is one of the few obstetricians in the city of New York, perhaps the only one, who does not have other doctors take call for her, who always performs her own deliveries, be they in the middle of the night, on weekends, or on Christmas morning, on any day of the year, in fact, except during the three weeks every August that she spends at her family's house on Nantucket. This makes her a very desirable and comforting doctor, and a somewha
t less desirable and comforting wife. Though I didn't get that last judgment off UrbanBaby.com. Presumably on the occasional weekends that she is not working, when she is not called to the hospital to deliver a baby or to monitor a high-risk patient, Carolyn is faced with hour after hour of William's company. Perhaps she has more resources than I. Perhaps she is as excited as her son by the project of reading the dictionary cover to cover and debating the merits of each individual definition. Perhaps she finds it as perplexing as he does that we have come to use the word “morning” for the period of time between sunrise and noon rather than the more aptly named “forenoon.” Perhaps mother and son keep matching magnifying glasses in the kitchen drawer to read the contents of every food packet, searching for the dreaded molecules of wheat, lactose, and, God forbid, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Carolyn must love it, or else she endures no more than half an hour of it at a stretch before calling in Sonia, because otherwise she would never have banned the reliable salvation of the television.

  I rarely complain about these afternoons, because, after all, isn't the weakness my own? Wouldn't a better stepmother have figured out a series of fascinating ways to pass the time, perhaps constructing a mathematically accurate replica of the Hoover Dam from sugar cubes or starting a breeding program for genetically modified fruit flies with an eye both to finding a cure for color blindness and teaching them how to ride teeny-weeny bicycles? I occasionally whine to my mother, who makes me swear that I will never breathe a word of my dissatisfaction to Jack. I grumble, but I trust her. My mother was herself a stepmother. She is my model of a stepmother, in fact, not because of her success in the endeavor but rather because of her catastrophic, her epic, her operatic failure. My older sisters hated my mother from the moment they met her, years after their own mother had abandoned them to my father's incompetent and grudging care. My mother was a young wife bursting with devotion for the forsaken, motherless waifs, the neglected daughters of the much older man who had swept her off her feet and convinced her to drop out of college and marry him. Despite the fact that my mother proceeded to devote her life to taking care of Lucy and Allison, aged eight and ten, driving them to band practice and skating lessons, making their dentist appointments, packing their lunches, washing their clothes, affixing their perfect spelling tests and SAT results to the door of the fridge, they never changed their minds about her. They never stopped despising her, and they never stopped telling her so.