Chapter 52 - The Light We Lost

When I got engaged, all of a sudden I felt like I’d joined a club, one that had a membership that went back decades, centuries, millennia—the Club of Women Who Had Become Engaged. I felt the same way about getting married, like my membership in the Club of Women Who Had Gotten Married was shored up when I put on a white dress and walked down an aisle and said I do. But nothing felt more like joining a club than having a child. There was a dividing line between the women who had babies, and the women who didn’t. The Moms and the Not Moms.

And even in that club there was a subset—the God Help Me Moms and the Expert Moms, the ones who Facebooked photos of their children dressed in pristine outfits, asleep on satin pillows, with captions like I Dream of Daddy.

I was not that kind of mom. I am still not that kind of mom. I will never be that kind of mom.

I joined the Mom Club—had to, there was no way around that—but I counted the day a good one if both Violet and I were clean and fed and had slept more than five hours total in a night. I had three months of maternity leave, but by the end of eight weeks, I felt like I was fraying at the edges. Being a stay-at-home mom was nothing like I imagined it would be.

Kate called at least once a day to check in on me, even if she could only chat for a minute or two. She’d had her daughter, Victoria, six months before and her firm had a really generous maternity plan, so she’d just gone back to the office and was working like crazy, trying to make sure she wasn’t mommy-tracked. “It’ll get easier,” she told me. “I promise.” But it didn’t feel like it was.

I was nursing, and Violet ate practically all day. Or at least that was what it seemed like. On some days I didn’t even bother putting on a shirt. And I came up with what I called the Fecal Incident Levels. Level One was no big deal. Level Two filled a diaper. Level Three leaked out through the leg holes. Level Four oozed up her back. Level Five was the worst—it basically meant there was feces smeared from her shoulders to knees. It required a bath. And often a change of clothes for me too. Between Levels Three, Four, and Five, I threw away so many onesies, it’s amazing she had enough to wear.

One day, though, Violet somehow managed to reach Fecal Incident Level Six. We’d had a great morning. She was clean, I was clean, we’d both eaten—though I hadn’t really slept more than three hours in succession in days—and since the heat in the apartment was blasting, she was wearing only a diaper and a T-shirt. She had just started to smile, and my heart melted a little each time she did.

We were having such a good day that I’d decided to make a real dinner, something that had happened maybe twice in the last eight weeks. I’d put Violet in a little baby seat that vibrated and turned it on. Then I’d defrosted some chicken and started breading it. The radio was on—a ’60s station that reminded me of my dad—and I started singing along to “My Girl.” My hands were covered in eggs and bread crumbs, but I felt great. And then Violet started wailing.

I looked over, and froze. The first ever Fecal Incident Level Six. Maybe it was because of the vibrating chair, or the angle she was sitting in, or the lack of clothing other than diaper and T-shirt, but somehow there was poop on her thighs that had gotten onto her hands and into her hair. I took a deep breath, quickly rinsed my hands, and lifted her out of the seat. She flailed her arms, so now there was poop on my cheek, on my shirt, and my wrist. And then she spit up in my hair. She was still screaming, and I started crying too.

That was how Darren found us.

“Lucy?” I heard him yell from the entryway. “What’s going on? Why’s Violet . . . ?” And then he made it to the kitchen. “Oh,” he said. “Oh my God.”

He dropped his briefcase on the floor and took off his suit jacket. “I got the poop machine,” he said. “You go shower.”

I looked at him and took a shaky breath. “Strip first,” I said. “You don’t want to get this on your suit. And she’s not just a poop machine. She’s a puke machine too.”

“Yikes,” he said, working the buttons on his shirt and dropping it on top of his jacket. “What do you think the headline should be for this one? Naked Man Saves Wife from Soiled Baby?”

I laughed a little bit. “How about Naked Man Does What Wife Does All Day Long with Soiled Baby?” I suggested.

“Really?” he asked. “This happens a lot?” He’d gotten completely naked, except for his boxer briefs, and took Violet. “Oh, gross,” he said, once he had her by her armpits.

“Well, not a Level Six,” I told him, “but Level Five isn’t that rare.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, as the three of us walked to the master bathroom. It had both a tub and a shower, and we’d put the little plastic baby bathtub in the larger one for Violet. Annie joined our parade once we got upstairs, barking her confusion.

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.