The Unexpected List (The List Trilogy) (25 page)

“Yeah, but he’s the only one who gets something out of it though, because you’re usually too drunk to feel anything.”

“Damn right about that, Court!  And, the other downside to those drunk nights is he just expects it like two nights later when you’re completely sober and all you want to do is watch your TIVO”.

It’s quiet for a minute, and I’m relieved that it looks like we’re going to change the subject.  But, they’re not done.

“It’s when you have a brand new baby that you can kiss that sex life goodbye.”

“So true, Nic!  So, what do you think?  They probably have what…like a year or two of semi-good sex left?”

I heatedly throw my hands in the air to halt the sex--or should I say--NO sex talk.

“
A baby?
  We just got a four-year-old! There won’t be any babies anytime soon!”

“That’s what you think!  You can get pretty lazy about birth control once you’re married!”

“Yeah and not to mention how forgetful you can become when you have a four-year-old!”

Rolling my eyes at my friend’s over the top scare tactics, I tell them to shut up.

“Stop worrying about my sex life and start worrying about you own!  Sounds like you need to!”

I thought I made it clear we were done with the subject, but Courtney dives in for a little more information.

“Speaking of sex and babies and stuff, what do you and Leo use?”

“For protection?  Oh, my last depo shot was…” Counting the months on my fingers, I’m shocked to realize how right Courtney was when she said a four-year-old would make me forgetful.  “Wow, it was in September.  My next one was supposed to be last month, but crap, I just realized I forgot to get it.  I’ve been so busy, I guess it just slipped my mind.”

Clapping her hands, Nicole boasts, “Oh girl!  I see a baby in your near future!”

Help!

April, 2002

So much has happened in the last few months, and at the same time absolutely nothing has happened.  Now that I’m caring for a child, my days are filled with a million seemingly insignificant tasks that make life meagerly fly by.

Before Craig died, I used to wake in the morning to a nice quiet cup of coffee, go for a relaxing run, followed by a very long hot shower.  I’d take my time picking out an outfit for the day and leisurely set off to work, arriving un-frazzled and with all sorts of ideas to move the yoga business and my life forward.  Sure, sometimes the evenings were challenging if I had to help Craig out by watching Kendall, but there was always an evening in the near future that I looked forward to.

Before Leo left on 9/11 we’d spend our nights cooking dinner together or overtly flirting at a restaurant.  If he had to work late, I’d get a pedicure or go out for drinks with the girls from the studio.  There were all kinds of options!  But, no matter what, the nights always ended with some sort of romance. Even after Leo left for New York, we’d find a way to be intimate on the phone.  It seemed that all of my days ended with me feeling satisfied and empowered, professionally and sexually.  Now, my days end with me feeling ineffective and scared to death that I forgot to do something important.  In order to get Kendall to pre-school on time, I rush out of the cottage in the morning without coffee
or
a matching outfit, and I usually trip over toys on the way because my cottage isn’t structured to deal with seven thousand of them.  During my lunch break, I quickly grocery shop or chaotically browse the Internet searching for advice on how to raise a four-year-old and then at two o’clock I rush back out to pick up Kendall from school.  I bring her back to the studio where we place a call to Leo so they can stay connected, and then the rest of the day is spent more on entertaining her than actually working.  Instead of having sweaty sex with Leo, my nights now end after giving Kendall a dinner that pretty much consists of only one food group, an hour of Dora the Explorer so I can do the dishes in peace, and a long bath…for her.  I tuck her in and then plop on my wicker couch, usually too tired to call Leo.  He’d only want me to put my hands down my pants like the good ol’ days and quite frankly I’m so tired I’d have to fake it and the thought of that makes me more sad than not talking to him at all. So, I lay in the dark and let my mind wreak havoc on me.  Millions of muddled mommy questions and concerns zip into my head like, did I remember to pack Kendall’s school lunch?  Did I RSVP to the four birthday parties she was invited to on Saturday? Did I remember to buy gifts for those four birthday parties?  Did I pick the right pre-school for her to attend?  Am I wiping her butt the way her parents did?  How long until I can stop helping her wipe her butt?  Did we remember to say a prayer about her Mommy and Daddy tonight?  Nope, forgot.  Damn it. I suck at this!

The life I had pre-Kendall was thrilling and productive.  Now I just run around like a crazy woman and feel like I have zero to show for it.   Yes, the days of my life are very different now that a child is in it and worrying about stupid stuff like pooping in my small cottage while living with Leo is a thing of the past.  In fact, I’d give anything to find the time to poop now.  Maybe Nicole and Courtney were right.  Maybe my steamy romance with Leo can’t survive all of these new challenges.  Maybe I’ve been fighting my whole life to have it all-only to realize now, when you have children, you can’t.  Maybe that’s what being a grown-up is all about…
realizing you can’t have it all.

I guess I’m about to find out.  Leo’s supposed to finally move back next month.  He reassures me he’s kicking ass and that he’s going to give me and Kendall the life we both deserve.  When he talks about our future it gives me butterflies, and when I listen in on the phone conversations he has with Kendall it makes me feel like we really are going to be a family…a fucking weird one, but a family nonetheless.  He calms my nerves about struggling with the mom stuff and reassures me that things will be easier when he’s around to lend a hand. 
I just have to make it to next month and everything will go back to good
.  It’s after my conversations with him that I feel like I’ll be able to prove Nicole and Courtney wrong and prove to myself that I can have it all.    It’s a constant ping-pong game of emotions I play with myself, but I’m determined to win.

But, I’ll tell you what I’m NOT winning at right now…the real estate game!  Just like I was shocked when I pulled into the home Kurt shared with Kayla, I’m blown away as I park in his new driveway, located in a charming gated community in Walnut Creek.  It’s Kendall’s first official visitation weekend with him.

After greeting Kendall with a balloon and a bunch of color swatches, Kurt tells her to go upstairs and pick out any room she wants and to pick a color to paint it. 

Pryingly poking my head inside, “Wow, Kurt, this place is incredible.  Tack on another three thousand square feet, a pool, and a tennis court and it could be that house in Orinda.”

“It’ll work.  It’s close to Lafayette, and I assumed since the Forever Young headquarters are there, it would make our transfers a little easier.”

“So, you moved here…
for me?”

“No,
ego
, I moved here for Kendall.”

Clearly, he’s still holding some kind of a grudge toward me.

“Right, that’s what meant.  I just said it wrong.  I meant to say…you moved here to make this easier on us.  But, not us meaning me and Leo, us meaning all of the adults.  Does that make sense?”

“No.  You never make sense to me.”  Nudging me out as he closes the door, “I’ll drop her off on Sunday.”

“Hold on!”

Irritated, he cracks the door back open a smidge.

“What?”

“I just realized, you can’t drive her around in the Porsche, there’s no room for the car seat!”

“
Noooooo
, really?  Give me some credit, Chrissy, I sold the Porsche last month and bought a car fit for a kid.  How stupid do you think I am?”

“You sold the Porsche?”

“Did I stutter?”

“Well, no, but I thought you loved that car.”

“Not as much as I love Kendall.”

Wow, he’s taking this responsibility to levels I never thought he had in him.  Chrissy’s confused.

“Oh…okay.”

As I’m yelling goodbye to Kendall, she comes barreling around the upstairs corner.

“I wuv my room Ki-Ki!  I wuv it, I wuv it, I wuv it!”

“That’s great sweetheart.  I’ll see you on Su…”

And then she was gone, back to her brand new big room in the brand new big house.  Then Kurt said, “See ya” and slammed the door on me.  It takes me back to that daunting day in November, 1998 when I moved into my cottage.  After Kurt helped me pack up some of the furniture from our old house in Danville, I sat idling in the driveway, hoping he’d see how sad I was.  But, he just flashed his million dollar smile and went inside the house, giving me the independence I begged him so hard to have.

My cell phone snaps me away from the memory.  It’s the real estate agent in charge of selling Craig and Kelly’s house. She tells me the buyers need to shorten the closing process, which means I have to have everything cleared out-- like, right now! I hang up the phone and literally lose it in my car.

I’m in the process of selling a house that doesn’t even belong to me and I’m in charge of storing away the entire contents of it for future use, and now I’ve just been told that I only have ten days to do it!  Childless Chrissy can tackle anything in ten days!  But, now that I’m a mom, all I have available are the weekends when Kendall is with Kurt, and that’s not enough time to get the job done, at least on my own anyway.  I pick up the phone to call Leo, but then throw it back on the seat.  What’s the point?  It’s not like he can do anything all the way from New York.

“God fucking dammit!  Will life EVER be normal for me?”

I begin to pound on my steering wheel and throw the biggest baby temper tantrum in the world.  The much needed moment is rudely interrupted by a slow soft knock on my window.

“Go away, Kurt.”

“Roll down your window.”

“No.”

“Chrissy, roll it down and tell me what’s wrong.”

“No, you’ll just tell me I deserve everything I have coming, flash that stupid half-smile and walk back into your stupid new house.”

Trying hard not to laugh at my drama, he reassures me, “I won’t do that, I promise.  Tell me what’s going on.”

“Everything’s wrong!  I’m falling behind at work! I haven’t done my laundry in six days!  Don’t
even
get me started on how stinky this tank top is! And you were right about me being a terrible cook-- Kendall won’t even eat the hotdogs I make!  I’ve barely had the time to pack up Craig and Kelly’s house and now….I have to do it in ten days!  It’s too hard, and I need help, but I’m all alone and no one fucking cares how hard all of this is. Just go away so I can figure it out.”

He taps on my window again, “Roll down the window so I can hear you, please.”

Giving in, because deep down I don’t want to have to figure this out on my own, I roll down my window.

Rather calmly he asks again, “Now, tell me why you’re crying.”

After telling him everything I just said when the window was rolled up, he quickly comes up with a plan to clear out the house.

“Why don’t you head over there now and get started.  I’ll pick up where you left off on Monday and work through the week and then-”

“But what about your job?”

“I’m the boss, I can make it happen.”

Blowing my nose as I look at him, “What do you mean, you’re the boss?”

“You’re looking at the new president of Quest Adventure Gear.”

“
When the hell did that happen?”

“It doesn’t matter.  It just happened.”

“But you fart around too much for something like that to happen.”

“Chrissy, I work in the outdoors industry.  All anyone does is fart around.  Apparently, I do it the best.”

Well put me to bed and turn out the lights.  Never in a million years did I think Kurt had the work ethic to propel himself to such a level.  Then again, why am I surprised?  He knew where he wanted to work the minute he graduated from college.  He started at the bottom of that company and stuck with it all the way to the top.  He never quit.

“Chrissy, did you hear what I said?”

“Uh…yeah…you’ll do all the work.”

“Uh…no, that’s
not
what I said.  You go now and do what you can.  I’ll continue to work through the week and we’ll meet back there next weekend to finish together.”

“What about Kendall?  I don’t think we should have her at the house with us.”

“Guss and Kyle lost a football bet and they have to paint the inside of my house next weekend.  They can start with Kendall’s room and watch her at the same time.  Seeing as though they have kids, they shouldn’t screw up too bad.”

“You’d do all of this for me?”

“No!  Jesus, what is wrong with you?  I’m doing all of this for Kendall.”

And with that reality check, I set off for Freakmont to tackle the task of cleaning out Craig and Kelly’s house, feeling more relieved than I had in a long time.

End of an era

April, 2002

“It looks like that’s the last of it.”

“Yeah, and right on time.  I told Guss and Kyle I’d be back to the house by five o’clock and…” he looks at his watch, “...look at that, an hour and a half to go.”

Standing in front of Kelly and Craig’s house with a garbage bag in one hand and a broom in the other, Kurt and I stare in silence at the home we shared a lot of laughter in over the years.

“Man, remember when they bought this place?”

“Yeah, we were so jealous. We still lived in our little shack in Half Moon Bay.”

“Aw, c’mon…our house wasn’t that bad.”

“Kurt, we had a tarp on the roof ten out of twelve months of the year.  Calling it a shack is giving it too much credit!”

“Seems like just yesterday, doesn’t it?”

“Hard to believe it was five years ago next month.”