Another Piece of My Heart (31 page)

“Liar,” he says. “I know exactly what you were doing. You were trying to sneak out because you thought it was going to be all weird and that we’d feel awkward, so you were leaving before I woke up.”

“I wasn’…” I start, then, because he pulls me close to him and nuzzles my hair, I turn to face him. “Okay. I was. Sorry.”

“S’ okay. Pull the covers up. Bet you never knew I was psychic.”

“Well, if you’re so psychic,” I tease, relief flooding my body, “how about telling me what’s going to happen between us.”

Oh, shit.

Shit!

I cannot believe I just said that. I cannot believe I just said something as pathetically insecure and needy as that. What the fuck am I thinking? As soon as the words are out, I want to inhale them back in because this is not who I want to be with Michael. This is sure to drive him away.

“Oho.” He raises an eyebrow, which is pretty impressive given that one eye is still closed. “Let’s see. First”—he nips at my upper lip and a shiver goes through me—“I’m going to make sure you have an even better time than last night, then”—he sweeps his tongue over my left ear—“we’re going to go out for breakfast. After that I hadn’t decided. Maybe a hike?”

“Do I get any say in the matter?” I am so reassured, so filled with a warm bubble of delight, I pretend to be exasperated just to try to play it a bit cool, although granted, even I know it’s a bit late for that.

“No.” He pulls me closer to kiss me, then leans his head back. “You just get to gaze at my gorgeous body. Don’t pretend you hadn’t noticed. Ow!” He grins as I hit him.

“I can only get away with saying that to you,” he murmurs after we have kissed long and hard, and before we have taken it further, although his hand is already sliding over my thigh, “because you know I’m really a geek underneath.”

“And I can get away with smacking you every time you get too arrogant because you know I’m really an angry goth girl underneath, and if you don’t stay in line, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Em?” Michael breaks off from kissing me, stroking my hair with a tenderness that makes me want to weep. “You are so beautiful.”

*   *   *

I feel like I have fallen into some sappy romantic Kate Hudson movie by mistake. Our day is so perfect, I can’t quite believe this is happening to me. We do all the things that Michael has planned: we talk, laugh, cuddle, kiss, and I’m not scared at all anymore because this doesn’t feel like something I could lose.

This feels like home.

In the late afternoon, we find a small coffee shop that is filled with the warm smells of fresh-baked cupcakes and cookies. We grab cappuccinos and a lemon bar to split, then settle in at the table by the window.

As Michael puts his head down to sip his coffee, he looks at me thoughtfully over the top of the cup.

“What? Do I have crumbs?” I wipe my mouth instinctively.

“No. It’s not that. I was just thinking. You should go home.”

I put down the napkin and frown. “Home?” I am confused.

“To California. I told you, I’m taking a year off before graduating, maybe even two. I’ve got a job in the city, and I’m going back. You could be with me. It’s time you were with your family again. And…” He pauses and reaches over to take my hand. “I know this is uncomfortable for you to talk about, because you always avoid the subject, and you never say anything about him in your letters and e-mail, but I have to ask. What about Cal?”

I look at him blankly. I feel a combination of guilt, defensiveness, doubt. No one here knows about Cal. I haven’t heard Cal’s name spoken by anyone other than my parents, and I know Michael must be sensitive about Cal given how he feels about his own birth mother. I bristle instantly.

“What about Cal?” My voice is defensive. “What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. Relax.” He puts his hands up. “I’m asking. Do you see yourself as having a place in his life? I mean, whoever’s raising him, you still gave birth to him. You
are
his mother.”

“I don’t know that I am,” I argue. “You wouldn’t say
your
mom
wasn’t
your mom, would you? She’s still your mom even though she didn’t give birth to you.”

“It’s true, she is, but there is also my birth mother.”

“Whom you’ve never met.”

“Whom I’ve never met, but not for want of trying, and you know how hard my life has been, knowing she gave me away.”

I shake my head. “You know what, Michael? This is totally different. I didn’t give Cal away, he’s being raised by family, and I could still be around if I chose.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” he says. “If you could be around, wouldn’t you choose to be?”

No, I think. That’s precisely the reason why I’ve stayed away for three years. I haven’t wanted to be around. But now … things may have changed. I’m starting to think that maybe I should be with my family. Maybe I should get to know Cal. Maybe Michael has a point.

Maybe, even, the three of us could start again? I think about finding a little house, or a garage apartment, making a home. I think about Michael coming home from work, and me working on a farm, and Cal being with my parents during the day but then me picking him up on the way home from work, making dinner for everyone. Being a family.

And it feels weird. And wrong. Maybe it’s a thought I have to play with for a while. I don’t have to make any decisions. Maybe I just need to think about it and see if I can get used to it.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s confusing. I don’t, or, I
didn’t
…” I change the emphasis because I want to please Michael; I want to do the right thing; I want to tell him what he wants to hear, but I’m not sure. Not yet. “… want to be a mother, I mean, a full-time mother. I don’t think I could handle it. I don’t feel old enough. Or ready.”

“I’m not saying be a full-time mother.” Michael sounds patient in an exasperated kind of way. “Just be in his life. I’m only saying this because I know what it’s like, and you can’t do that to Cal. It would be better for everyone if he knew you, if you were, at least, around. And, Em? Selfishly?”

I meet his eyes, only for Michael to take a deep breath, suddenly awkward.

“I think … you and I … I don’t know. It feels … right. I mean, I know that’s nuts, I only just turned twenty-one for God’s sake, but … I don’t want to just walk away from this. I want us to give this a shot. And I’m going to be back in California, and I’d love you to be there, too. And, I don’t know, maybe we can build a relationship with Cal together.” He swallows, then looks at me.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper, shaking my head, then I put down my coffee and throw myself, once again, into his arms.

Thirty-eight

Andi sits Cal down in a corner of her showroom, emptying out a basket filled with toys to keep him busy. Later today, a new interior-design client will be in to sign off on boards Andi has put together for her master bedroom.

The past couple of weeks have been frantic, getting hold of the right fabric samples, the paint swatches, having the freelance artist sketch the new bedroom, pinning it all together to look delectable.

If all goes according to plan, the client is likely to give Andi the whole house. Right now, she doesn’t think she needs to do much to the rest of the house, perhaps re-cover some furniture, she said, buy some matching pillows. Andi bit her tongue when she first went over, merely nodding and agreeing that the tables she bought from the consignment store were, indeed, fabulous, and no, no one would know they were made from MDF.

The client is wealthy enough to spend significant amounts of money on the best decorators in the area, but, as she laughingly said to Andi, “It’s just not my thing.” Her husband demanded the master be renovated to give them his and her closets and a bigger bathroom, and Deanna, who teaches the client yoga, suggested she might want to meet Andi to fully take advantage of the newly renovated room.

She and Andi had hit it off, had met again to leaf through magazines to enable the client to show her what look she liked. Andi is confident she will love what she has put together.

It has been hard only because she picks Cal up from school at one
P.M.
, and he is no longer napping. And she doesn’t have a babysitter even though there are times when she desperately needs one, because she is his mother, and endlessly grateful that that is the case, and why would she hand him over to someone else in the afternoons unless she absolutely had to?

Even those times, like now, when she absolutely has to and Sophia is busy, she won’t, preferring to try to manage it all, for isn’t that what the modern woman does?

She puts the cardboard cup of coffee from Peet’s on her desk—thank God for strong coffee, it’s the only thing that enables her to make it through the days—and sits behind the computer, scrolling through to check the e-mails.

The e-mails take her off on tangents—she looks at sales going on at various manufacturers to see if there is anything her clients might like, spends some time browsing Visual Comfort for sconces for a house she is doing in Tiburon, and responds to the numerous e-mails from suppliers, Realtors, and clients, both potential and real.

She looks up, finally, to where Cal was sitting, but he is no longer there.

“Cal?” Her voice has an edge of panic. “Cal?”

“Here, Mommy,” his little voice says. She turns the corner and finds Cal standing on the bench, both hands flat on the table. He grins in delight as he sees her and lifts his hands to show her.

“Look, Mommy! I painting!”

“Oh, shit!” Andi runs over. It is not paint. It is glue. He has spent the last twenty minutes smearing glue all over the board for her client. Her beautiful presentation board, the one she has spent hours putting together, is covered in white, viscous glue.

“Cal! Get down! Oh no!” Andi is shouting, fury and despair filling her body. Cal, scared, knowing he’s done something wrong, climbs down from the bench.

“No! Don’t touch anything. Oh, GOD!” Andi grabs him by the hand and whisks him into the bathroom, where she scrubs his hands. “Why did you do that, Cal? You know you’re not allowed to touch Mommy’s work.”

“I wanted to paint.” He shrugs, not understanding why his mother is so mad, nor what, exactly, he did wrong.

Andi dries his hands, then goes back to look at the board. It is ruined.

“I don’t believe it,” she whispers, fingering the fabric that is now sodden, the wallpaper that is transparent. And she bursts into tears.

*   *   *

This is the mothering that no one had told her about, no one had warned her about. She thought it would all be hearts and flowers, she and a darling child, laughing and loving, and sharing moments of bliss.

No one warned her of the exhaustion. Of the nights when a three-year-old would come into your bedroom, over and over again, complaining of bad dreams, so every sleep pattern would be broken, and you would never feel that you had a decent night’s sleep, that you would hit a midafternoon slump when you truly didn’t know how you would get through the rest of the day.

No one warned her that she would be ratty and short-tempered because of the tiredness. That as much as she loves her son, there would be times when she would just run out of patience, which was less to do with him and anything he had done—he was, after all, just being a normal three-year-old—and everything to do with her.

No one told her how to deal with balancing motherhood and work—that she would constantly feel guilty, stretched, unable to complete anything with the ease and detail she had brought to her work prechild.

And yet, she would not change anything. Even now, with her board ruined, with Cal’s little face looking strained and sad, she would not change a thing. Ethan has suggested, numerous times, they hire a nanny, but how can she?

Even when she is entirely overwhelmed, she refuses to leave the child-rearing to someone else. She waited too long for this baby, has him only because fate intervened, finally, when she had given up hope entirely, choosing to smile on her.

“Come here, baby.” She holds out her arms guiltily as Cal climbs onto her lap and rests his head on her chest.

“I’m sorry I shouted,” she says. “I didn’t mean to shout at you, I was just angry that something I’d worked on very hard was ruined.”

“I sorry, Mommy,” he says. “I won’t paint again.”

“Of course you’ll paint again, but you have to ask Mommy first, okay?”

“Okay, Mommy,” he says.

“All right, darling, let me just make a phone call. You sit here, and I’ll be back in a minute.” Andi walks to the phone to call the client and rearrange.

*   *   *

“Was she okay?” Ethan is calling between jobs to see if Andi wants him to pick up dinner on the way home tonight.

“She was great. She said it worked better for her anyway, and hopefully by this time next week I can get the samples redelivered.”

“How’s our darling boy now?”

“Sleeping. He crashed out on the sofa. He still really needs these afternoon naps, but he just refuses to go down.”

“What does the pediatrician say?”

“Not to worry about it. That they stop them when they’re ready and he’s obviously ready.” She sighs. “He’s not, though. The poor little monkey’s exhausted.”

“Well. It’s good that he’s sleeping now. You know”—Ethan hesitates—“you could always call Brooke. She’d take Cal in a heartbeat.”

“She’s working today, isn’t she?” Andi says quickly.

“Right, but maybe she would find someone to cover?”

“Maybe,” Andi says, although even as she says it, she knows she would never ask Brooke for help. Her experience of Brooke, at least in those early days when Brooke was drinking, was so unpleasant she still wants as little to do with her as possible.

“She’s great with Cal, you know,” Ethan reminds her.

“I know,” Andi says, but there were too many years of discord for Andi just to forgive and forget.

“Speaking of Brooke, she phoned me earlier. She wants to talk to me about something. I’m going to pop in there in a bit.”

“She needs to see you? Why can’t you just talk on the phone?” Andi hates herself for sounding whiny.