Leaving the World Read online

Five

  SNAPSHOTS FROM EMILY’S first eighteen months.

  Bringing her home from the hospital and me standing watch by her crib all the first night, out of fear that something might happen to her.

  Discovering that my daughter’s toothless gums were made of reinforced steel when they snapped down on my nipple.

  Emily discovering the pleasures of ice cream for the first time. When I gave her a small spoonful of vanilla at age eight weeks her reaction – after shock at the cold – was a very noticeable smile.

  A bout of colic which kept her awake all night for the better part of two weeks and had me in a state of absolute despair, as I walked the floor with her from midnight to dawn every one of those fourteen days, willing her to sleep and failing miserably.

  Finally getting back to work after twelve weeks’ maternity leave and having to drop Emily off in a crèche for the first time and expecting her to cry vehemently . . . but my daughter handling the transition with absolute serenity.

  Buying Emily a set of classic wooden building blocks, all engraved with letters of the alphabet. ‘Can you make a word?’ I ask her – and she laughs and throws a block across the room.

  Emily crawling across the living room for the first time to where I’m grading papers and picking up a book on the floor, holding it upside down and saying her first word: Mommy.

  Emily picking up a pen and scrawling lines on a blank pad and saying her second word: Word.

  Emily coming down with a virulent strain of the flu, her temperature rising to 106 degrees, the pediatrician making a middle-of-the-night house call and warning me that she might have to be admitted to hospital if the fever doesn’t break in twenty-four hours, and my daughter wimpering as the fever makes her breathing irregular and she can’t yet articulate in language just how horrible she now feels.

  The fever finally breaking and Emily taking more than a week to get back to her normal self and my exhaustion manifesting itself when I nod off in a departmental meeting.

  Theo – on one of the few evenings he is at home – actually spending time with his daughter and screening for her the original 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and giving her a five-minute lecture about the ‘contextual importance’ (yes, he actually used those words) of the film in the history of cinematic animation.

  Emily’s first full sentence some weeks later: ‘Daddy not here.’

  Because Daddy was hardly ever here.

  That was the prevailing subtext of Emily’s first year and a half: her father’s increased absences. It was a gradual yet noticeable disengagement. Within the first week of Emily returning home – and, like all newborn babies, treating us to ongoing sleep disruption – Theo began to retreat to his apartment, saying that he had no choice but to press on with the writing of his book.

  ‘Well, you could do that here,’ I said. ‘We did set up a small office for you.’

  ‘But I’ve got all my research stuff back at the apartment.’

  ‘All of your research stuff is on the internet. And since we also installed wireless here for you . . .’

  ‘The vibe isn’t right here for the sort of writing I have to do. And the broken nights are killing me.’

  ‘Emily only wakes for around a half-hour. And she’s such a wonderful child.’

  ‘I need my eight hours.’

  ‘And I don’t?’

  ‘Of course you do. But you’re not working right now and I am. And if I don’t sleep . . .’

  Why did I give in to this argument? Possibly because he was the guy going out to a job every day, while I was still staying at home, on maternity leave. So yes, I didn’t have to be as mentally alert as Theo did right now. Though I mentioned several times that I would like him to spend more time with us, I also didn’t push the issue. I was simply too damn tired to start a fight with him. But I also sensed that – with the tangible arrival of his very tangible daughter – the reality of parenthood had caught him unawares. For all his pre-natal talk about so wanting to play the dad, the very fact that Emily was now omnipresent in our lives had thrown him. Could it be that we say we want something, even if we secretly doubt that we do? As I had been guilty of this same sort of behavioral pattern throughout my life, I couldn’t point an angry finger in Theo’s direction – not just now anyway, as I was hoping that his need to run away was just a temporary phase.

  Once Emily began to embrace the idea of nine uninterrupted hours of sleep, Theo did return to the apartment. He even started taking Emily for walks in her stroller, to occasionally bathe and change her, to get down on the floor with her and play with her collection of toys, and generally make her laugh. But there was a concurrent detachment in his relationship with me. It was a subtle yet noticeable one. We still chatted, we still shared meals and kept each other abreast of stuff going on in our respective lives. However, a certain chill had crept into our time together – and whenever I asked Theo if anything was troubling him, he always dodged the issue.

  ‘There’s no problem,’ he said one evening after he had fallen silent for several minutes over dinner and I had commented that such Pinter-esque pauses were a tad unnerving.

  ‘In the theater Pinter’s pauses never last more than five beats,’ he countered.

  ‘Which is why the five minutes we just spent in absolute silence strikes me as worrying.’

  ‘I’m not worried about anything,’ he said, simultaneously avoiding my gaze.

  ‘Is something wrong, Theo?’

  ‘Why would there be anything wrong?’

  ‘I sense your detachment from this household, from us.’

  ‘That’s also news to me. I mean, I’m here every night.’

  ‘But you seem preoccupied.’

  ‘As do you.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Your mind is frequently elsewhere,’ he said.

  ‘It’s called juggling parenthood with a full-time career.’

  ‘Which I’m doing as well.’

  ‘Not as much as me.’

  ‘Oh, please, we’re not going to play the “Who’s doing more around here” game.’

  ‘Well, you did leave me completely alone during the first eight weeks of Emily’s life.’

  ‘That’s not true. I slept elsewhere because we agreed that, as I was the one who was still working—’

  ‘We didn’t agree that. You simply decided to absent yourself and I was stupid enough to go along with it.’

  ‘If you were that upset about it, you should have said something at the time.’

  Checkmate. He had me on that one. And he damn well knew why I hadn’t brought up his absences at the time – because I was terrified of alienating him, because in my postnatal, sleep-deprived zombie state I had this ever-augmenting fear that he would cut us loose if I pushed him too far. Perhaps that’s what the smile now told me: We’re not married . . . we don’t own anything together . . . I could walk away any time I wanted to . . .

  The smile moved from the supercilious to the reconciliatory.

  ‘If there’s a problem between us,’ he said, ‘don’t be shy. Just tell me. I don’t want you to feel there’s any sort of disconnection between us.’

  But the disconnection continued to deepen. When I returned to work, I dropped Emily off every morning at the crèche, as Theo was still never getting up before midday. The thing was, she had to be collected every afternoon at three p.m. As the classes I taught fell on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and continued on until four p.m., it had been agreed that Theo would pick her up from the crèche in Cambridge and bring her back to his office at the Harvard Film Archive until I arrived there at five-thirty.

  But after three weeks of this schedule he informed me one evening: ‘I can’t do the pick-ups any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said, trying to mask my surprise.

  ‘It’s just not working out.’

  ‘In what way is it “not working out”?’

  ‘She demands a lot – which I’m happy to give, but not during work tim
e.’

  ‘Define “demands a lot”.’

  ‘“Demands a lot”, as in “constant attention”, as in “having to feed and change her”, as in “crying and disturbing my co-workers”, as in “not being able to duck away for the ninety minutes she’s at the office”.’

  ‘Theo, the deal between us was—’

  ‘I know what the deal was. The thing is, deals are there to be renegotiated. I need to renegotiate this one.’

  ‘Well, it’s not that simple.’

  ‘It is that simple. You wouldn’t bring her into one of your classes, so why should I bring her into the archive?’

  ‘Because I’m bringing her to the crèche five mornings a week and picking her up from the crèche two afternoons a week. Because I look after her every evening, as you work until at least nine or ten, as well as most of the weekend. And I’m happy to have all this time with her – because she is such a fantastic kid. So the only thing I ask of you is those ninety minutes you spend with her on the three afternoons when I’m teaching. It’s a pretty good deal, Theo . . .’

  ‘It’s unworkable. What we need to find is some nice, competent, responsible childminder who’s willing to pick Emily up—’

  ‘That’s going to cost us at least one hundred and fifty dollars a week.’

  ‘We can afford that.’

  ‘You mean, I can afford that.’

  ‘Well, you do earn more than me – and you must still have some money in the bank.’

  ‘Not that much money.’

  ‘Well, you did blow all that money on an apartment.’

  I stared at him, amazed at that last comment.

  ‘Did you hear what you just said to me?’ I asked.

  He laughed, then walked out the door. He didn’t return for two days, during which time I had no choice but to approach a childcare agency and hire a very nice Colombian woman named Julia to help me out. It was decided between us that she would collect Emily from the crèche and look after her until seven p.m. every evening, during which time she’d also cook and deal with laundry. Julia was thirty-five, married with three kids and living in Jamaica Plain; an American resident for ten years who still hadn’t thoroughly mastered the English language. She was very determined to do everything possible to please me and to get as many hours from me as she could. As she bluntly told me: ‘I need the money.’ And I was happy to give her the extra hours – to hell with the cost – because it freed up the entire afternoon portion of my schedule and allowed me more time to deal with student papers and administrative trivia and also start planning the next book: what I hoped would be a major critical study of Sinclair Lewis.

  So we agreed a salary of $350 for twenty hours per week and suddenly I was freed of the hassle of having to race across town to collect Emily right after my afternoon classes. In turn, Theo was completely free of any domestic responsibility whatsoever. As soon as I had hired Julia I called him at his apartment, got the answerphone and left the message: ‘All right, you win, we have a childminder who will deal with all the afternoons. Whether or not you want to return to us is completely up to you.’

  He was back in the apartment that night, bearing flowers, a very cute denim jacket for Emily, a bottle of champagne and no apology for having left two days earlier. This was, I had come to discover, Theo’s style. He’d never raise his voice or hector or demand. If he didn’t like something or felt cornered by a possible domestic obligation, he’d react by simply vanishing from view or letting it be known through passive-aggressive means that it was pointless to argue with him.

  So when I asked him: ‘Is this sort of disappearing act going to be a feature of our domestic repertoire?’ he let it be known that he wouldn’t talk about it. What’s more he wasn’t going to explain his feelings on the matter. Take it or leave it.

  ‘So why create the hassle, Jane?’

  ‘Because this is supposed to be a partnership – and in a partnership we share responsibility.’

  ‘No partnership is ever based on fifty-fifty shared responsibility. Anyway we had a problem with the afternoon pick-up arrangements and now they’re sorted out. And by the way, I’m happy to contribute a hundred and seventy-five bucks towards the cost of Julia. That’s fifty-fifty, if my math hasn’t failed me.’

  ‘I won’t put up with you vanishing like that again.’

  ‘You know, Jane, threats do not become you.’

  When I tried to continue the conversation he simply walked out of the room and played with Emily in her nursery. When he returned half an hour later I said: ‘I can’t live this way.’

  ‘Live what way?’

  ‘You leaving the room every time we—’

  He left the room again, returning to Emily’s nursery. I stormed in after him and shouted: ‘Will you please pay me the minor courtesy of at least engaging with me.’

  The result of this angry comment was a squall from Emily. My loud voice had frightened her. Theo said nothing. He just scooped his daughter up in his arms and rocked her and gave me a quiet reproving look. At that moment I sensed that I would never be able to win with this man.

  But what exactly was I trying to win? All domestic relationships become, in one way or another, exercises in power. Even if you tell yourself you’re not trying to control another person, you are, in some way, trying to put your imprint onto the domestic situation. The maddening thing about Theo was that he would never really meet me halfway but would use stratagems that made me seem unreasonable and eventually allowed his way of operating to prevail. If I raised objections he would simply absent himself. He was playing a game similar to the one that my father practiced throughout his life: My way or the highway. Only unlike Dad, Theo got what he wanted through silence, stealth and cunning. Though I must admit that the end result in this case – a part-time nanny – was not entirely disagreeable for me.

  Once the childcare issue was resolved, Theo was very much around again. He came home most nights about eight. He’d often make dinner and always spent some time with Emily. We’d hang out until midnight and continued to make love at least twice a week. Whether or not we had sex I’d be asleep by twelve-thirty and up with Emily by six-thirty. After she passed the three-month mark she did us a great ongoing service by sleeping soundly for ten hours a night. Theo was very good about dealing with her if she happened to wake up sometime in the middle of the night, and also perfected a way of crawling into bed beside me at four a.m. without stirring me. He would always sleep with earplugs, so he would miss her early-morning wake-up call. All credit to our wonderful daughter, as she never wailed herself awake. Perhaps I’m reading far too much into all this, but what always impressed me from the start with Emily was the way she made her needs known, yet did so in a manner that wasn’t whiny or hyper-demanding. She was also a great smiler and greeted me every morning with a big beaming grin. It made all other worldly concerns fall away for a few necessary moments, reminding me that, yes, parenthood was worth all its incumbent pressures and concerns.

  Right before her birth I’d traded in my little Mazda for a VW Touareg. I bought a year-old model, but it still meant adding an additional $8,000 to augment the price I was getting for a trade-in. More tellingly it meant accepting that I was now an SUV-driving parent.

  Theo didn’t try to dissuade me out of buying the car.

  ‘Hey, it’s not a station wagon and it doesn’t have the “right on” prigginess of one of those Toyota hybrids. Fact is, it’s a sharp-looking car – and I sure as hell won’t be ashamed to be seen in it.’

  But it was me who was driving it every day as it was me who was bringing Emily to her crèche. Drop-off time eight-thirty a.m. and no earlier – and outside this upscale day-care center off Porter Square, just across the city line into Cambridge, there were always a good two-dozen professional mothers (and no more than three dads), all lined up with the kids in strollers, all dressed for work, all glancing at their watches, all ready to dash as soon as the doors opened and the children could be deposited insi
de. Then we could race to our respective workplaces and begin the daily well-paid grind – all the while fretting about the dilemma of balancing career and children, and the attendant pressures of sustaining a relationship, and telling yourself that, one of these days, you’ll actually feel fulfilled by it all.

  But my fretting was more bound up in the realization that I was dodging a basic truth about my relationship with Theo: I was very much out of love with him. Or maybe I should rephrase that sentence as an interrogative one: Was I ever really in love with him, and would I still be with him now if Emily hadn’t entered our lives?

  Perhaps this question was predicated on another: Was he actually in love with me? As Emily approached her first birthday and I was beginning to think that Theo and I had established a decent rhythm between us, he switched course and began not showing up again for several nights in a row. What made this especially maddening was the fact that he didn’t phone me to say where he was and kept his cellphone off just to infuriate me more – or, at least, that’s the way it seemed to me. After one particular stint of seventy-two hours he did deign to answer one of my increasingly frantic calls. His reaction was deadpan: ‘I’m at home, writing.’

  ‘And you couldn’t bother to simply call me and tell me where you were? I mean, I must have left you a dozen messages on your landline and your cell.’

  ‘I turned both off. No distractions, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m a distraction?’

  ‘You sound stressed.’

  ‘Of course I’m stressed. You went AWOL.’

  ‘If you had bothered to look at the message I left . . .’

  ‘I saw no message.’

  ‘Maybe you weren’t looking in the right place.’

  ‘I tore the house apart, seeing if you left me anything.’

  Actually I’d only checked the kitchen counter and the stand in the hallway where we usually left each other notes. I hadn’t looked in . . .

  ‘The bedroom,’ Theo said. ‘Your side table, underneath the lamp.’

  I put down the phone and walked briskly into the bedroom. As soon as I hit the doorway I looked directly at my bedside table. There, stuck halfway under the lamp in a way that left it half-hidden, was the note. I pulled it out. It read: