All Fall Down: A Novel Read online

  “Well, I have a tutu!” I squeaked next, shoving the second dress in front of the first one.

  “But I am the favorite!” I said, in the persona of dress number three, a yellow-and-orange tie-dyed number that I’d picked up at a craft fair in Vermont, where Dave and I had gone for Columbus Day weekend two Octobers ago. We’d run a race together—well, Dave had run the 10K, and I’d started off the 5K at an ambitious trot, which had slowed to a stroll, the better to enjoy the foliage and the smell of smoke in the air. When no one was looking. I’d tucked ten dollars into my running bra, and when I was sure I was the last person in the race I’d stopped at a stand and bought a cider doughnut. We’d spent the night in a gorgeous old inn, and slept in a four-poster bed set so far off the floor that there was a miniature set of stairs on each side. Dinner had been in a restaurant built in a former gristmill, at a table overlooking a stream—roast duck in a dark cherry sauce, a bottle of red wine so rich and smooth that even I, who enjoyed things like piña coladas, knew it was something special. There’d been cream puffs with chocolate sauce and glasses of port for dessert. The innkeepers had lit a fire in the fireplace in our bedroom, and left out a box of chocolates and a bottle of Champagne. I remember climbing into that high bed, and Dave saying, “Let’s do it like we’re Pilgrims.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  He gathered me into his arms, kissed my forehead, then each cheek, then my lips, slowly and lingeringly. “You lie there and don’t make any noise, like you’re just trying to endure it.”

  “So, the usual.”

  “Oh, you,” he said, flashing his white teeth in a grin, sliding his hand up the white lace-trimmed nightgown that I’d bought for the occasion. We made love, and then slept for fourteen hours, our longest stretch since Ellie had joined us, and then we ordered room-service waffles and sausage for breakfast, and made love again. We spent the rest of the day walking around the quaint little town, holding hands, buying maple candies and painted wooden birdhouse.

  This had been before the Examiner’s first layoffs, before everyone who’d been eligible for the buyout had been persuaded—or, in some cases, strongly encouraged—to take the money and go. Now, instead of three reporters covering City Hall, there was just one, just Dave. Instead of leaving the house at nine, he left at eight, then seven-thirty, and I rarely saw him home before eight o’clock at night. On weekends he’d be either hunched over his computer or pounding out miles around Kelly Drive. When we were first married, we’d had sex three or four times a week. Post-baby, that dwindled to three or four times a month . . . and that was a good month. Sometimes it felt as if I’d gone to the hospital, given birth, then lifted my head five years later to find that my husband and I were barely speaking, and that sex with him was at the very end of a very long to-do list, instead of something that I actively wanted and missed.

  Part of me thought this was normal. Certainly I’d read and overheard plenty about post-baby bed death. I knew that the passion of the early years didn’t last over the length of the union, but lately I’d started to wonder: If we weren’t talking, what was he not telling me? And who might he be talking to? The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers, or his secrets, any more than I wanted him to know mine.

  “Mommy? Oh, Mommmm-eeee.” Ellie was wiggling her fingers in front of my face, then trying hard and, so far, without success, to snap them.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She pointed at the dresses. “Make them fight!”

  “Pick me!” I squeaked, shaking one of the dresses so it looked like it was having a seizure. “No, me!” Using both of my hands and skills that would have impressed a puppeteer, I maneuvered the dresses, making them wrestle and punch. Finally, Ellie pointed at the tie-dyed dress. “I will wear she to school this morning, and she”—an imperious nod toward the purple one—“when I get home for my snack.”

  “In your face! IN YOUR FACE!” I chanted, making the winning dress taunt the other two as the losers hung their hanger heads. I found red tights and located one of Ellie’s favored lace-up leopard-print high-top sneakers under her bed, and the other one in the bathroom. “Wait here,” I said, and trotted into the bedroom for my shoes. It was 7:18. I pulled my wet hair away from my face and secured it with a plastic clip, grabbed my phone, and clicked on the link that read—ugh—LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT, IN CYBERSPACE: A NEW GENERATION OF WOMEN WRITERS SHARE (AND SHARE) ON THE INTERNET.

  Typical, I thought, and shook my head. It was an old reporter’s trick—call your subject and say, “I’m so interested in what you do!” Of course, “interested in” could mean anything from “impressed with” to “disgusted by.” Judging from that headline, I strongly suspected the latter.

  “Breakfast!” I called. Ellie slouched down the stairs in slow motion, like she was dragging herself through reduced Nutella. I grabbed a box of Whole Foods’ pricy, organic version of Honey Nut Cheerios from the pantry, and scooped coffee into the filter. The phone began to buzz against my breast.

  “Hello?”

  “Did you just call?” Janet asked.

  “Nope. I must have boob-dialed you.”

  “I feel so special,” she said. “Did you see the story?”

  “Just the headline.”

  “Well, the article’s adorable, and the picture looks great.”

  “Really?” Part of me felt relieved. Another part knew that Janet would tell me I looked cute even if the picture made me look like a manatee in a dress.

  “Yeah, it’s . . . CONOR, PUT THAT DOWN!” I winced, poured water into the coffeemaker, and shook cereal into Ellie’s preferred Disney Princess bowl.

  Ellie pouted. “I WANT FROOT LOOPS!”

  Of course she did. Needless to say, I’d never fed her a Froot Loop in my life—all of her food was low in fat, high in fiber, hormone-free, made with whole grains and without high-fructose corn syrup, with, of course, its name correctly spelled. Dave’s mother, the Indomitable Doreen, had hosted her for a weekend, during which Ellie had discovered the wonders of highly processed sugary breakfast treats. “I only gave it to her once!” Doreen had told me, her voice laced with indignation, even though I’d asked in my least confrontational tone and hastened to reassure her that it was no big deal. Clearly, once had been enough.

  “I’ll send you the link!” Janet said. I slid the coffeepot out from underneath the filter and replaced it with my aluminum travel mug. “Let me know if you need me to—DYLAN, WHERE’S YOUR JACKET?”

  “I’ll see you tonight,” I said. Janet had three kids, five-year-old twins Dylan and Conor and a nine-going-on-nineteen-year-old daughter named Maya, whose pretty face seemed frozen in a sneer and who already regarded her mother as a hopeless embarrassment. Janet and I had met in the Haverford Reserve park when Ellie was two and I was still attempting (when we could still afford for me to attempt) the life of a nonworking stay-at-home mom. I’d gone to the park to kill the half hour between Little People’s Music and Tumblin’ Tots. Janet was standing in front of a bench with her hands over her eyes, a short, medium-sized woman with light-brown hair in a ponytail, Dansko clogs, and a gorgeous belted white cashmere coat that I correctly identified as a relic of her life as a career lady (no mother of small children would ever buy anything white). “Okay, ready?” she’d called.

  Her boys nodded. They were dressed identically, in blue jeans and red-and-blue-striped shirts. Over a glass of wine, the first time we met for drinks, Janet told me that the boys shared a single wardrobe. After her third glass, she confided that she was convinced she’d mixed them up on the way home from the hospital, and that the boy she and Barry were calling Dylan was actually Conor, and vice versa.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . .” she began. The boys had dashed away and hid as Janet counted slowly to twenty. When they were gone, she’d looked around, sat down on the bench, and picked up her latte and an issue of The New Yorker. I watched for a minute, waiting until she’d turned a page. Then I cleared my throat.

>   “Um . . . aren’t you going to look for them?”

  “Well, sure. Eventually.” She closed her magazine and looked at me. She had a heart-shaped face, olive skin, and a friendly expression. She wasn’t beautiful—her eyes were a little too close together, her nose too big for her face—but she had a welcoming look, the kind of expression that invited conversation. She smiled as she watched me finish daubing Ellie’s cheeks with sunscreen, then start swabbing the bench with a sterilizing wipe.

  “Your first?” Janet asked.

  “However did you guess?” My stroller was parked in front of me. Hanging from the handlebars were recycled-plastic tote bags filled with fruits and vegetables that I would cook and cut up for the nutritious lunch Ellie would eat two bites of, then push around her plate. Tubes of sunscreen and Purell were tucked into the stroller’s mesh pocket, along with BPA-free containers of snacks and juice, and a copy of The Happiest Toddler on the Block—which I already suspected my daughter would never be—stuck out from the top of my pink-and-green paisley silk Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag.

  “All that effort,” Janet said, and shook her head. “I did all of that with my first. Sunscreen, hand sanitizer, organic everything, baby playgroup . . .”

  I nodded. Ellie and I were enrolled in a playgroup that met at the JCC one afternoon each week. Eight moms sat in a circle, complaining, while our kids splashed in the sink, and played with clay and blocks, and dumped oats and eggs and honey into a bowl, which they’d stir with eight plastic spoons while singing “Do You Know the Muffin Man”—or “Do You Know the Muffin Lady,” because God forbid the program send the message that girls could not be perfectly adequate and professionally compensated makers of tasty baked treats. For this fun, we paid a hundred bucks a session. What did moms who lacked the cash do? Suffer silently? Watch soap operas? Drink?

  “Tumbling class?” Janet asked.

  “Check.” Ellie and I attended once a week.

  “Music Together?” She was smiling, a wide, slightly lopsided grin. I liked her for her teeth—a little too big, crooked on the bottom. Most of the women I met in the various groups and lessons and Teeny Yogini classes had blindingly white veneers or teeth that had been bleached an irradiated white so bright it was almost blue. My theory was that, having given up high-powered jobs to become mothers in their thirties, they now divided all the time and energy that would have gone to their careers between their children and their appearance. I’d gotten the first part of the mandate, quitting my job at the Examiner at Dave’s urging and making sure that Ellie’s every waking hour was full of enriching activities, her meals were wholesome, and her screen time was restricted, and reading to her for one half hour for every ten minutes I let her play on my iPad.

  As for my looks, I kept up with my hair color, mostly because I’d started turning gray when I was thirty. However, my closet was not filled with the flattering, expensive, classic garments that the other mommies at Mommy and Me wore. Nor did I have the requisite taut and flab-free body to carry those pricy ensembles. I was always meaning to go to Pilates or CrossFit or Baby Boot Camp, so I could quit slopping around in Old Navy yoga pants or one of the super-forgiving sweater dresses I’d found on clearance at Ann Taylor to go with the inevitable Dansko clogs, the clumsy, clown-sized footwear of the hard-charging stay-at-home suburban mom.

  “Since I’m coming clean, we also do Art Experience,” I confessed.

  “What a cutie,” she said, bending down to inspect Ellie, who gave her a sunny grin, the kind of smile she’d never give me. “I’ll bet she’s never had high-fructose corn syrup in her life.”

  “Actually . . .” I’d never told anyone this—not Dave, not any of the mothers at the JCC or on the PhillyParent message board, not even my own mother, who wouldn’t have understood why it was a big deal—but something about Janet invited confidence. I lowered my voice and looked around, feeling like a con on the prison yard. “I gave her a McNugget.”

  Janet gave me a look of exaggerated horror, with one hand—unmanicured nails, major diamond ring—pressed to her lips. “You did not.”

  “I did!” I felt giddy, like I’d finally found someone who thought mommy culture was just as crazy as I did. “On a plane trip! She wouldn’t stop screaming in the terminal, so I bought a Happy Meal.” I paused, then thought, What the hell? “She had fries, too.”

  “Whatever it takes, that’s my motto,” said Janet. “Flying with kids is the worst. When we went to visit my in-laws in San Diego last Christmas, I bought my oldest an iPad, and brought mine and my husband’s so I wouldn’t have to listen to them fight about who got to watch what three iPads. My husband thought I was crazy. Of course, he got upgraded to first class. I told him he could either give me his seat or suck it up.”

  “So did he suck?”

  “He sucked,” she confirmed. “Like he was going to give up the big seat to come back and run the zoo. Thank God I had half a Vicodin left over from when I had my wisdom teeth out.”

  “Mmm.” On that beautiful, long-ago morning, I hadn’t had any painkillers since my post-C-section Percocet had run out, but I remembered loving the way they’d made me happy, loose-limbed, and relaxed. A kindred spirit, I thought, looking at Janet—someone with my sarcastic sense of humor and my by-any-means-necessary tactics for getting kids to behave.

  That had been three years ago, and now Janet and I talked or texted every day and saw each other at least twice a week. We’d pile the kids in her SUV and go to one of the indoor play spaces or museums. In the summer, we’d take the kids to the rooftop pool in the high-rise in Bryn Mawr where her parents had a condo. In the winter, we’d go to the Cherry Hill JCC, and sometimes meet my parents at a pizza parlor for dinner. Eloise adored Maya, who was happy to have a miniature acolyte follow her around and worshipfully repeat everything she said, and I was happy that Ellie had a big-girl friend, even if it meant that sometimes she’d come home singing “I’m Sexy and I Know It,” or tell me seriously that “nobody listens to Justin Bieber anymore.” She and the boys mostly ignored one another, which was fine with me. If Ellie had favored one over the other it would have meant I’d finally have to figure out how to tell them apart.

  Back in the kitchen, I stowed my phone, picked up my mug of coffee, and grabbed Ellie’s lunchbox from the counter. The instant I felt its weight—or, rather, its lack of weight—in my hand, I realized I’d forgotten to pack her lunch the night before. “Crap,” I muttered, and then looked at Ellie, who was busy taking her shoes off. “Ellie, don’t you dare!” I yanked the refrigerator door open, grabbed a squeezable yogurt, a juice box, a cheese stick, a handful of grapes, and a takeout container of white rice from when we’d ordered in Chinese food that weekend. I’d probably get a sweetly worded e-mail from her teachers reminding me that Stonefield had gone green and the Parent-Teacher Collective had agreed that parents should do their best to pack lunches that would create as little waste as possible, but whatever. At least she didn’t have any tree-nut products. For that, your kid could be suspended.

  It was 7:41. “Honey, come on.” Sighing, in just socks, Ellie began a slow lope toward the door. I grabbed her jacket, then saw that her hair was still wet, already matted around her neck. Steeling myself, I set down the mug and the lunchbox, sprinted back upstairs, and grabbed the detangling spray, a wide-tooth comb, and a Hello Kitty headband.

  Ellie saw me coming and reacted the way a death-row prisoner might to an armed guard on the day of her execution. “Nooooo!” she shrieked, and ducked underneath the table.

  “Ellie,” I said, keeping my voice reasonable, “I can’t let you go to school like that.”

  “But it HURTS!”

  “I’ll do it as fast as I can.”

  “But that will hurt MORE!”

  “Ellie, I need you to come out of there.” Nothing. “I’m going to count to three, and if you’re not in your chair by the time I say ‘three’ . . .” I lowered my voice, even though Dave was gone. “No Bachelor on Monday.” Ob
viously, I knew that a cheesy reality dating show was not ideal viewing for a kindergartner. But the show was my guilty pleasure, and Dave usually worked late on Mondays, so rather than wrestle Ellie into bed and have her sneak into my bedroom half a dozen times with requests for glasses of water and additional spritzes of “monster spray” (Febreze, after I’d scraped the label off the container), thus risking an interruption of the most dramatic rose ceremony ever, I let her watch with me.

  Moaning like a gut-shot prisoner, she dragged herself out from under the table and slowly climbed up into her chair. I squirted the strawberry-scented detangling spray, then took a deep breath and, as gently as I could, tugged the comb from her crown to the nape of her neck.

  “Ow! OWWWW! STOBBIT!”

  “Hold still,” I said, through gritted teeth, as Ellie squirmed and wailed and accused me of trying to kill her. “Ellie, you need to hold still.”

  “But it HUUUUURTS!” she said. Tears were streaming down her face, soaking her collar. “STOBBIT! It is PAINFUL! You are MURDERING ME!”

  “Ellie, if you’d stop screaming and hold still it wouldn’t hurt that much!” Sweating, breathing hard, I pulled the comb through her hair. Good enough, I decided, and used the headband to push the ringlets out of her eyes. Then I scooped her up under my arm; snatched up her jacket; half set, half tossed her into her car seat; and, finally, got her to school.

  THREE

  My cell phone was ringing as I pulled into the driveway. “Did you see it?” Sarah asked.

  “Just the headline,” I told her. I’d been late again. Mrs. Dale, the take-no-shit teacher who was on drop-off duty that morning, had given me a tight-lipped smile as I’d made excuses over Ellie’s still-damp head.

  “It’s mostly great. Seventy-five percent positive.”

  My skin went cold; my heart contracted. “And the other twenty-five?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

  “Oh, you know.” She lowered her voice until she sounded like Sam the Eagle of The Muppet Show fame. “ ‘Some in journalism question the proliferation of female-centric websites, and whether the issues they cover—such as sex, dating, and the politics of marriage and motherhood—and the way that they cover them, with a particular off-brand, breezy sense of humor, are doing feminism any favors.’ ”