tribe of creative, diverse friends who had creative, diverse moms, for this. For a great room. The great room and the allegedly great schools had convinced me to talk Martin into moving. If we’d stayed in our tiny duplex in Sycamore Heights, I’d told him, not only would we not have had a great room; she wouldn’t have had a big yard with soft grass where she could run barefoot with friends. Or a safe, quiet street for her to ride her bike on. But the real problem, I’d said, was that Sycamore Heights Elementary was a disaster, with the worst reading scores in the district.
“What do you think?” I’d asked Martin the first time he’d set foot in this cathedral-ceilinged room. I’d already previewed dozens of houses and narrowed the choices down to two. That was two too many for Martin. Still, I’d managed to drag him out to have a look.
He’d glanced around, his expression stunned, distracted, and answered, “Good. Seems good. I guess.”
To which I had wanted to scream, Could you be any less involved? Like it or not, buddy, we’re having a child.
But since the Realtor in her navy blue knit jacket with gold buttons was hovering beside us, all I’d said was, “The schools are excellent.” I hoped Martin would see the same picture in his mind I had in mine of Sycamore Heights Elementary. The rust stains beneath the rain gutters and splintery play equipment the parents had put together themselves and set on a field of hard dirt. Parkhaven Elementary was brand-new and had a safety-engineered playscape nestled on giant, spongy, head-injury-preventing mats made from recycled tires.
Martin was not convinced.
“We can be at Gwock’s in twenty minutes.” I named our favorite Mexican dive. We loved their margaritas and guacamole. “What’s twenty minutes? A couple of songs on the radio? An NPR commentary?”
Martin had nodded and said nothing. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to have a baby. He didn’t even want to admit to not wanting those things. He wanted to read the Gnostic Gospels and Edgar Cayce and the Bhagavad Gita and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Which had become much less charming than it was on a train traveling through Morocco with all the time in the world to take a detour up to Spain and stay for weeks in a cheap hotel getting high and making love.
After we’d viewed the house in Parkhaven, our dinky duplex in Sycamore Heights felt like a cave, a claustrophobic, airless den. “Where will we put a crib?” I’d moaned. “A high chair? A swing?”
“Do we need all those things? Right away?”
“We will, and I can’t move with an infant. We need a settled place to bring our baby home to.”
Martin had nodded, still not convinced. But, at the time, high on hormones, I was sure enough for both of us. “Look,” I’d argued, “house prices are skyrocketing. If nothing else, this will be a great investment, and if we don’t like it, we’ll sell, make a nice profit, and move back to the city.”
We bought the house. We moved out of Sycamore Heights and into Parkhaven.
The drive was never twenty minutes. Traffic seemed to double every few months. Plus, after Aubrey was born and the colic kicked in, twenty minutes was all the time in an entire day that I had to myself. Twenty minutes was either a shower and brushing my teeth or reading one-half of a magazine. I had dreamed of being one of those moms who slung her baby into a piece of kente cloth, then headed out for the early show. Instead, I became a pack animal. It was a sherpa-level effort just to gather up the diapers, wipes, change of clothes, bottles, formula, ice packs for the bottles and formula, sunscreen, diaper rash ointment. Then, the few times that I could muster the energy and organization to get us out the door and put up with Aubrey—who never really made peace with the car seat—howling through the car ride, I’d arrive to discover that I’d forgotten my purse. Or the one pacifier that would soothe her. Or something. Always something.
After the colic siege ended, Aubrey and I did manage a few trips into the city so that she could clamber around on the oversize hamster tubes at the children’s museum and throw stale bread to the ducks in the lake, but we came as visitors. The city no longer felt like mine, and it had never