It wasn’t that she was gone gone. Rochelle wasn’t dead, although sometimes when I was swimming around in my self-pity pool I wondered if that might actually be easier to recover from. No, she was just across town, living in Echo Park with her hot girlfriend, the one she’d left me for when I was five months pregnant with her biological child. Almost four months later, I was only starting to get used to the idea of living alone.
Funny, it used to be that when Rochelle had late nights out with clients, I’d be overjoyed to have a night to myself. I would have dropped my bag on the kitchen table and gone straight to the kitchen to preheat the oven to cook one of the pepperoni pizzas she didn’t like that I always kept in the freezer. On those nights, if I wasn’t paged back to work, I cooked the pizza with an extra-crispy crust (Rochelle liked a floppy crust, but I’d loved her anyway) and put on my softest, ugliest clothes. I’d tug on the huge T-shirt that I’d gotten at a novelty store way back in the day, even before I’d gotten sober—it was a big man’s size, and it was covered with cats shooting lasers out their eyes while fireworks went off all around them. It was the opposite of sexy bedroom wear, but the laser-cat T-shirt was my comfort T-shirt. The way it trapped me in its twisted folds as I slept should have given me nightmares, but instead, it comforted me. It reminded me of the long nightgowns I’d worn growing up. I hadn’t been the only girl in Utah who wore a neck-to-toe flannel home-sewn nightgown to bed, and I’d loved the weight of it as I’d gotten into bed. Waking up twisted tightly inside it hadn’t felt like being trapped; it had felt like being held. My laser-cat T-shirt comforted me the same way. Only now, my bulging belly actually filled it.
But a night alone wasn’t a rare freedom anymore. It wasn’t a cause for excitement. It was just my life. The quiet rooms echoed hollowly as I walked through them by myself. I’d always thought of our house as one of those welcoming, cheerful homes. It was empty and cold now.
Tonight it felt actually cold. I checked the thermostat—I didn’t remember setting the AC to sixty-five. It had been a warm day, and it must have come on automatically even though I tried to remember to turn it off when I went to work. Yet another thing I must have forgotten to do, like picking up cat litter for Fred or paying the car insurance. I reset the thermostat to let the house warm up a bit.
Then I wandered into the kitchen, patting the top of my belly. “No pizza tonight, huh, V?” I was trying hard to keep myself fed with actual food that had recognizable ingredients, not frozen pizzas or Hot Pockets. I threw three frozen chicken breasts into the Instant Pot with a cup of green tomatillo salsa. By the time I got home from the meeting, I’d have shreddable comfort food. This baby was made of tacos loaded with cabbage and crema and cheese and avocado. I figured there were worse things to be made of.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. I had just enough time to write a few lines in the baby journal before I got back in the car. In a clearly inadequate practice run of sharing custody, I was trying to write in it every day when it was my week to have it.
I’d been keeping the book in the nursery, writing in it while sitting in the rocker that I would nurse the baby in.
But the journal wasn’t on the shelf.
I stopped, tilting my head a bit. Yesterday, before my shift, I’d written in it, and I had a clear memory of putting it back. The pen I kept with it had rolled off and under the bookshelf, and it had been a feat of ungraceful pregnant yoga to get myself down low enough to grab it.
I started shifting books to look behind the bookcase.
The journaling had been Rochelle’s idea, but she’d completely rejected the cute pink birth journals sold at Target. Instead, she’d chosen a black Moleskine, unlined. She’d wanted something classy-looking (maybe to match her new blond girlfriend). We’d been writing to our daughter since the first moment we knew I was pregnant. If the house had caught on fire, I knew that both of us would have run to save the book before any other documents.
Now? It was a challenge not to be passive-aggressive when writing in it. The house is so gorgeous now that I’m alone. So much room for you to run and play in. I never knew I’d love living by myself so much. But I didn’t feel that way, and I didn’t write it. I gave myself one gajillion gold stars for not reading what Rochelle wrote when we exchanged the book every week, even though I almost sprained my eyeballs looking away from her dark, neat handwriting. If I saw that she’d written even one word about Domi I’d have wanted to burn the book. So I didn’t look, although I knew it was probably only a matter of time before I cracked. Hopefully, I’d be in a better headspace at the moment I finally gave in, but being abandoned for a hot Swedish model while knocked up didn’t leave me in the mood to be all that generous.
Okay, in reality, I knew that Domi was actually from Irvine, was only Swedish by blood, and had never been a model. But she could have been. On bad days, it was all I could do not to hope that Domi had a tragic accident. Not one that would hurt her—I wasn’t a monster—but one that would, say, give her total amnesia so that she didn’t love my soon-to-be ex-wife anymore. So that Rochelle would come back. I didn’t even think I would take her back, not now, but tell my hormones that.
I still hadn’t found the damn book. I turned in place, hands on my hips. Maybe I’d written in it in my bedroom?
Rochelle had always been the one who would carry the baby, who would deal with the hormone hell, not me. When I called my big orange cat, Fred, my baby, I meant it. I wasn’t one of those people who needed a child to prove she was a real woman. I wasn’t even one of those OBs who needed to have a child to prove she could help other people have one. Just like every male OB in existence, I’d been fine bringing everyone else’s babies into the world. My mom had been a terrible role model, an emotional whiteboard that always stayed blank. Who was to say I wouldn’t be the same? Having Fred and an office bulletin board full of photos of perfect children (because they were all perfect, no matter what) had always been enough for me.
But then six IVF cycles failed for Rochelle. Her body rejected every embryo. When we’d first talked about me being the one to get pregnant instead of her, she’d confessed to being worried that I would get selfish about the child. It’ll be yours. Why would you even keep me around?
I’d held her hands and kissed her face. We’ll use your egg. My body. This baby will be ours. This is what we want.
She’d wrinkled her nose in that way she did when she was trying not to cry. It’s what I want. Are you sure you want this, too?
I hadn’t been sure, not really.
But I’d said yes because not knowing how I felt was normal for me, and now here I was, with a belly that I couldn’t see my feet around and no Rochelle.
In my bedroom, I searched the bedside table and drawer for the baby book. I even checked the one on Rochelle’s old side of the bed. I was forgetting a shitload of things lately—the dreaded baby brain had been rolling in, as inescapable as the drift smoke from the wildfires that coated LA every summer. I’d always told my patients that yes, cognitive and executive functioning and memory were often poorer in pregnant women, but the changes would only be noticeable to them and those closest to them. Wasn’t that nice? That kept happening to me—things I’d told patients for years that I thought would make them feel better turned out to be stupid when actually applied. How was knowing my memory might get worse supposed to make me feel better when I couldn’t find my car keys or the password to our shared Netflix account or, apparently, the baby journal?
It wasn’t in the bedroom. Nor was it in the living room or the dining room or the kitchen or either of the bathrooms.
And it wasn’t like it was hidden in clutter, either. Rochelle was Marie Kondo’s sworn enemy and had liked to pile jackets and Amazon boxes and motorcycle gloves and paperbacks and bags of chips on top of any flat space. Since she’d left, I’d spent any rare bit of extra energy tidying. All the surfaces were clear. There was nowhere for it to hide.
I pulled my cell out of my pocket, wondering how much longer I’d be able to wedge it into the back pocket of my maternity jeans. They were stretchy, yes, but I was learning that nothing was really stretchy enough. I brought up Rochelle’s contact, trying to ignore that she’d changed her icon to a picture that I hadn’t taken of her.
Can’t find baby book. Did you come get it? She still had a key. I kind of hated that she could let herself in anytime after choosing to leave, but it made sense, given the shared custody we had yet to work out.
Dots formed as Rochelle texted back. I dropped it off three days ago. Remember?
I wondered if she was with Domi. Were they both home from the office? (Because of course they worked together.)
I know. But I can’t find it now. I felt stupid—of course it was here somewhere. Why had I even bothered texting her?
It’ll turn up. Give V a pat for me.
We’d agreed that she could choose the baby’s first initial, and I’d choose the name itself. Rochelle had chosen V. It was killing her that I hadn’t decided yet what her full name would be. Before Ro left, she’d spent whole evenings trying to pry the name out of me, but I still wasn’t sure yet. Verity, she’d say. Vanna. Valentina. Vava. I’d always tell her it was just V for now. I had some ideas, but I was in no rush.
And while I hated to admit it, there was something satisfying, especially now, about the fact that she wanted to know the baby’s name so much. Once I decided for sure, I’d have to tell her because I was a bad liar. But if I took a long time to decide, then I didn’t have to give her the satisfaction of knowing her daughter’s name. Who knew I could be so petty?
I glanced at my cell for the time. Damn it. I’d have to find the journal later. Now I had to go.
But for God’s sakes, what had I done with it? If Rochelle said she hadn’t taken it, then she hadn’t. Rochelle didn’t lie.
Or, at least, she never used to.