I no longer participated in our little playdate circle that Jax hadn’t liked in the first place. We’d only done it because David and I thought he needed some socialization beyond his best friend Walt who was an eighty-year-old retired screenwriter who lived across the street. I’d at first thought he was a pedophile or sicko for being content in the company of a child, but it turned out he was just a lonely, rich, old man who’d alienated his family and had no other friends to speak of. He was the grandfather that smoked cigars, spoke without a filter, drank whisky sprinkled with coffee, and talked to my son about old movies.
David had liked him. The three of them would have movie nights over at Walt’s place every Wednesday. Ryder and I would settle in for a Real Housewives marathon. As macho as my son was, he skirted almost every single stereotype about a gay teenager, except when it came to reality television shows. Which, of course, made me infinitely happy because David considered them low brow and refused to be in the room if I was watching them.
Our entire system had worked great. Jax wasn’t exactly happy to go on playdates which involved plastic action figures and ‘mediocre’ games, but he gritted his teeth through it.
Then when he lost his father, I made the decision that my son was going to have to grit his teeth through the rest of his life without his father, so if he didn’t want to play with entitled, snot-nosed kids, he didn’t fucking have to.
I might’ve said something along the lines of that to one of the pushier mothers who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d tried to lecture me on the importance of Jax having good social influence now that he didn’t have his father. So, in my eyes, she’d deserved it. In the playdate circle’s eyes, I was blacklisted and totally happy with that.
A variation of the same had happened with the rest of the bitchy moms at Black Mountain Academy except for Marley, my one non mom-group friend. Her boy was around Ryder’s age. She had only moved to Black Mountain from New York just before David died. She ran a successful cosmetics company designed for women of color after she discovered what few options there were. She was brash, fashionable, independent, and was not about to fit into any ‘cool mom group.’ I immediately liked her. We hadn’t been terribly close because I was still acting like that glossy Instagram mom that wasn’t exactly Marley’s kind of person, but she’d heard me call one of the PTA moms a cunt under my breath and she’d decided to like me.
She didn’t send flowers when David died. She sent a basket of booze, every product in her line, and the offer of company—quiet and free from any cliché placations—and no judgement if the offer was not accepted.
I did not accept the offer, but she consistently sent a basket of booze every month, even after the tasteful floral arrangements and fruit baskets from other people had dried up. That said something, that the ‘friends’ I’d had for years stopped sending such things because I didn’t return phone calls or send thank you notes, but the woman I barely knew didn’t.
It told me a lot of things I already knew. That the vast majority of my friends were fake ass bitches. It would’ve been fine, considering I was a fake ass bitch too, but then life had to get all fucking real on me.
“I do have to go,” I told Alexis. “I’ve got to get back to being the mother that I was before. Or at least learn how to pretend better.” I kissed her cheek. “I’ll try my best not to be long, and if you get a phone call saying I’ve been arrested for punching a mother, the number for a good lawyer is on a pad by the phone.”
She smiled. “Got it. Love you.”
“Love you,” I said back. It was the rule in this house, that if anyone planned on leaving, those two words were the last things uttered. Since I’d screamed quite the opposite at David before he walked out of our lives forever.
3
“You can do this,” I whispered, staring up at the collection of brick buildings. The parking lot was full because I was late. All of the cars were new, obnoxious, and expensive. Mine was no different, since David upgraded our vehicles every five years or so. Such a thing had been insane to me when we first got married, but I’d known he’d come from money, from his clothes, his watch, the car he drove in college.
I didn’t know wealth. We were never poor, although I was sure our parents had plenty of worries and arguments about money. We never heard them, though. We only saw the happiness, the love and laughter, even if some of it was fake.
Both my parents worked their asses off to send both Alexis and myself to private schools they couldn’t afford. My mother got her real estate license once they understood how much it would cost. My father worked overtime at the factory he’d worked at ever since I could remember.
They taught us the importance of manners, of looking tidy, of being respectful to our elders. How to be smart with money—we both got jobs after school as soon as we turned sixteen. In short, they were great parents who furnished our lives with love and happiness and made sure we got a good enough education to get into Ivy League colleges on scholarships.
They’d been alive to see me get into Harvard, to meet David, to love their grandchildren. They’d supported me, even if they were the tiniest bit disappointed that I squandered the years of hard work to become a stay-at-home mother.
Mother. A term, a title, an identity I’d worn for almost two decades. It didn’t exactly fit perfectly, since I always doubted my mothering skills, but I sure as shit wore it better than ‘widowed mother’.
How had I got here?
Sitting in this car full of anger and sorrow.
It came down to one singular memory, assaulting me with its clarity.
That’s what all my memories were now. Assaults. Attacks. Barbed thoughts drawing blood, showing no mercy, taunting me with the fact David only existed in my mind, in photos on the walls.
I stared at the faint but definite plus sign on the stick I’d just peed on. My hand was shaking. My entire body was shaking. My mind was blank with fear.
Pregnant.
I couldn’t be.
I was on the pill. We were careful.
Of course, we’d talked about kids as I supposed every couple did when they were in love and planning their futures from a college dorm room. But that was, of course, after I graduated and got a job, got established at a reputable paper, after David finished law school and put the hard hours in at a good practice.
We’d get married at some point, despite the fact his mother would likely have something to say about that. She’d met me once and had sniffed out the middle class in me and turned her nose up at it. Of course, she’d been the pillar of good manners and was only mean in that polite rich woman way. I hadn’t said anything to David, but I didn’t need to. He’d been seething after we left their estate—yes, estate—and had threatened to disinvite her from the wedding if she treated me that way ever again.
Wedding, as in ours.
It was so hot, his fury, his passion for me, that I’d forced him to pull over and we’d fucked on the side of the road.
And now it was six weeks later and I was staring at the plus sign that symbolized all of our careful plans going up in flames.
“I-I’ll make an appointment at Planned Parenthood,” I whispered. I didn’t want to get rid of it, this tiny little thing inside me that was created with love and passion, that would have David’s eyes. I didn’t consider myself maternal up until this very moment and a longing for that little child was almost sickening.