caroline
I may be thirty-four years old. And I may love my sisters more than life. But I still like having my mom all to myself every now and then. I am the firstborn child, after all. Sometimes I want a few minutes of going back to how it was for those short, fleeting years before Sloane was born, when it was just Mom and me hanging around all day until Dad got home. As I used to call them when I was little, the good old days.
Now, of course, I wouldn’t trade my sisters for anything. But it was difficult to transition from being an only child and having all of Mom and Dad’s love and attention.
“So,” Mom asked, sliding into the passenger seat of her SUV. “How you farin’?”
I smiled. It was one of those habits that even years as a New Yorker hadn’t cured her of. I kind of liked it.
“Well, I’ll be honest.” I turned to back out of the driveway. “During all those years of fertility treatments and IVF and praying for a baby, this wasn’t exactly how I pictured things. But I have a new baby. And he is perfect.”
“The universe has a funny sense of timing, that’s for sure.”
I rolled my eyes. The universe. My mother was in the front pew of the church, pearls on, the three of us in smocked dresses beside her, every Sunday morning for most of our childhood. It wasn’t like I had this strong faith or anything, but I liked that she did. It bugged me that she had lost so much of herself when she lost our dad. But I didn’t want to get into it today.
“Do you think that’s what made James cheat?” It was the first time I had said it out loud. Because it was a reason men cheated, wasn’t it? We had spent six years, ever since Vivi was three and it became apparent that I was not getting pregnant on my own, doing every fertility treatment under the sun. From Clomid to Chinese herbs, acupuncture to IVF, the big, the small, the Eastern, the Western, and everything in between. If someone had gotten pregnant doing something, I tried it. And nothing. No baby.
It was the most stressful time in our marriage. No doubt about it. I can’t count the number of months I cried over an EPT, the number of months James had tried to persuade me to give myself a break.
I took my eyes off the road long enough to see Mom shake her head. “Caroline, no.” She sighed. “I want to think only the worst of him right now because I’m mad at him, but the way he took care of you and supported you through all of that . . . I’m not sure many men could have taken it.”
It brought tears to my eyes. “Did you ever think about adopting, Mom?”
She shrugged. “Sure I did. But your father didn’t love the idea of that.” She paused. “I hope that doesn’t color him in a negative light. It was a different time. It wasn’t even about the baby, really. It was such an invasive process. He didn’t want anyone delving into our histories, all of our financial details . . .”
She trailed off. James had been so good about that, saying that we could adopt. And at first, I thought we should. I don’t know if it was the hormones or my basic personality or what, but once I started down the fertility road, I couldn’t stop. I became obsessed by being pregnant again, of experiencing giving birth. I almost idolized the idea. When one doctor would sense my desperation, would tell me that he or she wouldn’t let this lunacy continue, I would go to the next one and the next.
James tried to talk to me about it, but it was like he knew this had gotten bigger than me. He knew I couldn’t hear him, not really. He had to let me do this. He was always good about knowing that.
One night at dinner, the three of us were discussing how we would celebrate Vivi’s ninth birthday. And I said, in my usual way, “Wonder how we’ll celebrate your tenth birthday when the new baby gets here?”
Vivi was calm but strong. She reminded me a lot of Sloane in that way. She burst into tears at the dinner table and looked at me with the most beautiful yet terrorized face I’d ever seen and said, “Do you even love me anymore? Or only the new baby?”
She ran from the table, and I let her leave. I was stunned, as though she had slapped me across the face. No words could have cut more deeply or hurt me worse. She sliced right through me in the way only a daughter can do to her mother.
I didn’t cry or really even react much. I just turned to James and said, “What have I done?”
He squeezed my shoulder and said, “We understand, Caroline. It’s a hard time for you.”
I shook my head. “I have damaged my relationship with the child I do have in favor of the one I don’t.”
That was it. It was the last day I went to a doctor except for a regular checkup. The last time I took hormones, injected myself with drugs, anything. That’s how I am, though, I think. Sometimes something big has to happen to snap me out of it. But once it does, I’m done. It’s over.
“Thanks for everything, Mom,” I said now. “You were so great.”
She squeezed my arm. “I knew what you were going through. I wanted to protect you from it, but of course, I couldn’t.”
“It was better my way. At least there was something wrong with me. I could be in control. I can’t imagine if I’d had to wait around for James to decide what he wanted to do.”
Mom laughed. “That is what you would think about. Men can be very sensitive about these things, but your father was really fine. He was totally on board. He wanted our babies to at least be mine, and he was very grown-up and stoical about the whole thing.”
“Mom, did you worry that Dad would love Emerson the most?” There. I’d said it. Sort of. We always used to joke that Emerson was Dad’s favorite child. But even the joke stung just a little. She was the only one who was biologically his, after all.
She laughed again. Harder. “You need to turn right at the next stoplight.” She laughed again. “Honey, no. Of course not. I can promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that he did not love Emerson the most. It’s different for men. They don’t carry the babies. Either way, they sort of spontaneously come into the world. He was so grateful for you, because we weren’t sure we’d have any children. And then Sloane and Emerson were both just beautiful icing on a beautiful cake.”
I smiled and turned right into pickup and dropoff, which was a comical name for a section of the tiny airport that could have easily been someone’s house. There were no cars anywhere. Just us.
I put the car in park, and Mom said, “Whew! We survived!”
I held up my phone. “I didn’t even text and drive. Impressive, right?”
“You’d better not ever,” Mom said. She was very serious about three things: we were not allowed to text and drive, take shots, or skydive. Otherwise, she was OK.
So maybe my parents didn’t have favorites, or maybe they did. But I was pretty certain, as I walked into the tiny airport a few minutes later, that I was Grammy’s favorite grandchild. When I met her at baggage claim, she was on one of those contraptions that you rest your leg on and wheel around. It was shocking how agile she still was, in her blue tracksuit, pearls, and Ferragamo tennis shoes. Her hair was whiter than the last time I had seen her, curled and set like the good Southern woman she was.
“How do you do it?” was the first thing she said to me when I saw her.
“What, Grammy?”
“How do you manage to look like a million bucks right after a C-section? There is no rational explanation for it, yet here you are, stunning as ever.”
This was why I loved this woman.
“So,” I said, wheeling her two suitcases through the lobby, while she looked like she was having way too much fun on her scooter. “Give it to me straight.”
She nodded. We had always had that connection, that mind meld, where we used very few words. “Well, darling. You made your bed. You’re going to have to lie in it. For heaven’s sake, that son of yours can’t grow up without a father.”
I turned my head toward her. “But Grammy—”
“But nothing, love. We honor our commitments. We just do.”
Very awkwardly, as there was no one else around to help—I didn’t know how they kept this airport open—I finagled the two suitcases out the door and held it for my grandmother. “He didn’t honor his commitment. Not at all.”
She waved her free hand at me. “Well, darling, all men are morons. You know that. For heaven’s sake, you just gave birth to one. But you have to be the bigger person. Lord knows he isn’t capable.” She took a deep breath. “It’s going to be harder than hell. But doing the hard thing, even when it hurts, is what makes you strong.”
I thought about my sister Sloane, how she sat in her room every night after the kids went to bed and wrote her husband a letter. A real letter, detailing the events of the day. Her life was one huge sacrifice after another, and while, yeah, Adam’s calling was a noble one, it was still a choice. It was still choosing to protect your country over being with your wife and kids.
But she loved him. So she stuck by him. Although she was quieter and calmer and more reserved, I had no doubt that she was one of the strongest people I knew.
Mom turned, saw us, and said, “Mom!” running to Grammy.
“Oh, it’s my favorite girl,” Grammy said.
Mom and Grammy had had their differences in the past. But I felt like they were in a better place. I hoped so, anyway. Otherwise, this was going to be a long recovery.
Mom hugged Grammy and practically carried her into the backseat. It was a good thing the woman barely weighed one hundred pounds. Emerson had always had her string-bean build.
My phone beeped, and since I wasn’t yet driving, I checked the text. It was a silly selfie of my husband, daughter, and son. We love you, the text said. The biggest of us can’t wait to take you out to dinner tonight. You looked so gorgeous when you left. I’ve been thinking about you all day.
I didn’t need anyone telling me what to do. Not even Grammy. But it occurred to me that it was her voice, telling me it was OK, that crossed my mind when I texted back: What time?
I might not ever be able to forgive James. And that would be OK. But if I didn’t give our family another shot, I knew I’d never be able to forgive myself.
I REMEMBER TELLING SLOANE when I was a senior in college that I was sick of boys. She was very supportive. It took me a good fifteen minutes to realize that she thought I was telling her I was a lesbian. What I was really trying to say was that I was sick of kegs and kids who couldn’t hold their liquor. I was ready to find someone I could really settle down with, fall in love with.
He couldn’t be just anyone, of course. He had to be the kind of man I had always envisioned myself marrying. He had to be the kind of man who would support me, who would want me to stay home with our children like I’d always dreamed. In retrospect, I see how much I was asking for. But at the time, it didn’t feel like much. It had worked out for my mom. (Well, until the whole Dad-killed-by-terrorists thing.) Why couldn’t it work out for me?
I was way past the time when I thought picking up some random stranger in a bar was going to cut it. And online dating back then was still for people who lived in their parents’ basements.
So I did what many more women in my position would do if they were as crafty as I am. I combed every “eligible bachelor” list in the city for the previous few years. I figured out who these men were, where they liked to go, what they liked to do. I wasn’t trying to bag one, necessarily. But if I was ever in the position, I’d like to have a fighting chance.
So when I was at an art opening for yet another one of my friends who fancied herself an artist, sipping my chardonnay, standing around on my sample-sale Jimmy Choos in a dress too tight for my own good, it took me a moment to figure out who he was.
I thought I’d noticed him because he was so devastatingly handsome. I was actually intimidated, which is really saying something. He had effortlessly fluffy dark hair and eyes that, although I wasn’t close enough to see what color they were yet, I knew already wouldn’t let me go. His suit was perfectly tailored.
Jolie, artist du jour, came over and gasped. “Oh, my gosh! That’s James Beaumont!”
I replied, “Who?”
But I knew who. Number seven, four, and eleven on three of my latest “eligible bachelor” lists. Lawyer. Son of a lawyer. Grandson of a lawyer. Family was Southern, but great-grandfather had made his way north to find fortune—which he had.
Jolie was all breathless and flighty. “Do you think he’ll buy one of my paintings?”
I shrugged nonchalantly. I set my gaze on James, like I always did when I was interested in a man. And like they always did, he turned his gaze to meet mine, at which point I looked away demurely.
“Want me to ask him?” I said.
I looked back up, and he was still staring at me, which was a pretty good sign that he might be interested. I walked over casually, took a sip of chardonnay, and said, “This is my favorite piece in the entire collection.”
It spoke to me. The blues and tans and whites, the way they swirled in that perfect combination of water, sea, and sky.
“I think it’s mine, too,” James said, grinning at me. I could feel my heart pounding, and I felt thankful that I hadn’t inherited that awful blushing tendency from my mom.
I examined the painting, and James examined me.
“I grew up spending my summers in Peachtree Bluff, Georgia,” I said. “This painting feels like that to me.” I turned to meet James’s gaze.
“You’re a good agent,” he said.
I laughed. “Oh, no. I’m not an agent. I’m a senior at NYU. I just love Jolie’s art.”
He reached out his hand, which Grammy would have pointed out was rude. He should only have reached for my hand if I offered mine first.
“James Beaumont,” he said.
“Caroline Murphy,” I replied.
“So, Caroline Murphy, would you hold it against me if I bought this painting? I don’t want to steal your favorite.”
“Oh, not at all,” I said. “College living doesn’t provide much room for six-foot-tall paintings.”
Thirty minutes later, James and I were sharing oysters and champagne. When he asked about my parents, I heard myself say, “My dad was killed in the second tower.”
I couldn’t believe I had said that. I never said that. Which made me know that I must like this guy, eligible bachelor or not. He stopped mid-sip, mouth agape, and I think he actually dropped his oyster shell.
“You mean like the World Trade Center?”
I nodded and took a sip of champagne to swallow with my tears. It was still so raw and so fresh. I wondered if it would ever go away.
“God, Caroline,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
This was when I usually said something like So many people lost loved ones that day. But I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Me, too. He was one of the good ones.”
James didn’t ask me back to his place, and I didn’t ask him back to mine. He didn’t kiss me, either. But he did walk me home, slowly, holding my hand the entire way. We talked for hours that night. We talked about art and politics, religion, love, our favorite episode of Friends, the new BlackBerry and how we couldn’t live without it. We talked about his brother and my sisters. Man, did we ever talk about my sisters. In fact, we talked so much that I wasn’t sure we’d ever have anything to talk about again. And when he didn’t try to kiss me, I assumed he considered me a friend.
I thought I would be bummed because I’d let one of my “eligibles” slip away. Instead, I was bummed because for the first time in my life, I really, really liked a guy, and he didn’t like me back. So I thought.
The next morning, I awoke to a soft rap on the door. “Hang on,” I called quietly, trying not to wake my roommates, swiping a toothbrush through my mouth. Not even the UPS man needed to deal with that. I had no makeup on, my hair was disheveled from sleep, and I was wearing these ratty flannel PJs Mom had gotten me when I first went off to college.
I opened the door expecting to see a brown uniform and hear “Sign here.” Instead, I opened the door and could feel myself blushing, Ansley-style.
James, in a pair of blue jeans and a button-down shirt, peeked his head out from behind the massive painting.
“No!” I exclaimed. There was no way I would ever have been able to afford that painting in a million years.
“I saw the way you looked at it,” he said. “And I knew it had to be yours.”
He was still standing in the hallway. He stepped forward two steps and slid the painting against the wall of the apartment.
My heart was pounding so loudly I forgot to be embarrassed about the dishes in the sink or the months of magazines stacked on the coffee table.
“Do you know what else I knew?”
I shook my head.
James took a step closer, pulled me to him, and said, “That you had to be mine.”
Then he planted one on me that I knew I’d never forget. I mean, it was like planets colliding and the world stopping and the earth shaking all at once. Needless to say, I was glad I had brushed my teeth.
I fell for him so hard and so fast, realizing pretty quickly that all of my lists and qualifications never would have mattered. Because when you fall in love, real, consuming love, you’re done.
Six months later, I graduated and “rented a room” in the apartment of one of my friends so my mom wouldn’t know I had moved in with James. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to know for sure. I married him nine months after that. And I can truly say that I never looked back. Not once. From the very first time I laid eyes on that man, he was it for me.
Which is what made it so particularly difficult to swallow that I hadn’t been it for him.