Jeremy was home for dinner. It was a real treat! Lu had made a Thai mango salad with peanut dressing. It was very simple, but the mangoes made it feel exotic. In fact, that’s what she’d be writing in her post.
You know how passionate I am about eating foods that are fresh and local. The butter lettuce I used in this recipe, for example, came from my local farmers’ market. So you might be surprised to see that this dish also features succulent, ripe mango, which is not exactly indigenous where I live. I admit it, these mangoes caught my eye in my local grocery store and I couldn’t help myself. Did you know that almost half the mangoes in the world are grown in India?
Both boys were devouring the salad—a win! Also, it was versatile. She’d made hers with chicken, but her vegetarian readers could easily substitute grilled or stir-fried tofu, and the pescatarians could use shrimp or even salmon. Provided the salmon was wild. Leo was very into sustainable seafoods, and he’d done a post about the dangers of farm-raised salmon that had generated a slew of reader mail. Though of course Leo’s preferred seafood was always the lake trout that he caught himself.
In between bites the boys were tripping over each other trying to tell Jeremy about their past few days. It was adorable, how happy they were to see him. And he seemed to be in a good mood, relaxed, smiling. Now they were telling him about the salmon pink bird-eating tarantula, native to Brazil, that had come to the library on exotic animal day.
“But you’re terrified of spiders, Lu.”
Lu only half heard him. She was wondering if it was worth creating a peanut-free version of the salad too, with a different kind of dressing. Maybe soy nuts to retain the crunch. She was also dreaming about a trip to India she’d create for Leo and Jacqui, something that would inspire a new twist on a chickpea curry. Maybe they’d gone before they were parents. Maybe they’d gone on their honeymoon! Yes. They also went to Thailand and visited an elephant sanctuary. Phuket Elephant Sanctuary. She’d do all of this tomorrow, plus the charcoal drawings to go with it. She also had to go to the bank and get cash for Maggie. For the first time since she’d been accumulating it, Lu had started to dip into the money in her private account, to pay Maggie. Once every few days she walked to the ATM at the Washington Trust Bank on Ocean Avenue. It wasn’t much—Maggie had quoted her a rate of eight dollars an hour, a steal—but still Lu cherished the feeling of withdrawing the cash that was her very own, and using it to pay her very own mother’s helper that she’d hired so she could run her very own business. Her own burgeoning empire.
“Spiders,” said Jeremy now. “You must have hated that.”
She had made the boys promise not to mention Maggie to either Jeremy or Nancy. Neither one would see it the right way. Nancy would wonder why Lu hadn’t just asked her to help if she needed some free time “to shop or exercise” (there were a hundred answers to that question), and Jeremy would see Maggie’s presence as Lu shirking her duties to the boys, Lu being dishonest, Lu spending money they didn’t, technically, have. For some reason Jeremy had no problem accepting a free summer home from his parents as well as a huge loan for a house down payment but would never dream of taking their money for small, day-to-day expenses. It didn’t make any sense to Lu, but then she hadn’t grown up with family money, so she supposed there were invisible rules she’d never understand.
Jeremy couldn’t know about Maggie: it simply wasn’t an option. “Maggie is our special little secret,” she’d told the boys. “She’s like a magical fairy; if we tell anyone about her she might fly away!”
They nodded solemnly. They promised. They adored Maggie. She was young enough that she was still mostly a kid herself, so she’d get down on the floor with them and pretend to be an elephant, or she’d arm-wrestle Sebastian, always letting him win, or she’d watch The Lego Movie with them and enjoy it every bit as much as they did. “Come with me if you want to not die!” she’d say, and the boys would roll around, laughing, saying with her things like, “We are from Planet Duplo, and we’re here to destroy you.” (Lu didn’t understand any of these references; the first time the boys had seen the movie she’d been answering reader mail on her laptop.) They’d do anything to keep Maggie from flying away.
“They didn’t bother me,” said Lu. “Maybe I’ve grown out of it.” She shot warning looks to both boys.
Jacqui went crazy over this salad, she’d write. Should she come up with a fictional case for Jacqui to be working on? Some of her stay-at-home mom readers relished the details of Jacqui’s professional life; big-time jobs were like porn to them. Office porn.
She didn’t notice that the whole table had gone silent until suddenly they were all staring at her.
“Who’s Maggie?” Jeremy asked.
Instantly, Lu flushed. She glanced at Chase and Sebastian and said innocently, “What?”
Chase hit Sebastian and said, “You weren’t supposed to say. Mommy told us not to tell, you’re an idiot.”
Sebastian began to cry. Jeremy paid no attention to the boys and fixed a cold, clinical gaze on Lu. Was this the gaze he fixed on his patients right before they were put under? How terrifying. “They said that Maggie has been showing them how to bodysurf.”
Lu cleared her throat. “No, no,” she said. “They’re not really bodysurfing, of course. They’re just in the very shallowest water. More like skimboarding, without the boards. It’s not even ankle-deep!” This was the wrong answer, of course. She knew that. It wasn’t about the dangers of the ocean.
“That’s not my question,” said Jeremy slowly. He put down his fork. There was still a piece of chicken on it. She’d cooked the chicken on the grill on the back deck, which was an old Weber, not as good as the Napoleon they had at home. Nevertheless, Lu was happy with how the chicken had come out. She’d done it on skewers, and she’d taken a decent photo. She’d use the photo in tomorrow’s post too.
“She’s our babysitter!” said Sebastian, through his tears. Chase hit him with an elbow. “She has lots of freckles,” Sebastian added.
“She’s a good dancer,” Chase said, reluctantly joining in.
Jeremy said, “I see.” He smiled at Chase and ruffled Sebastian’s hair. “Isn’t that nice.” He took a second helping of salad and chewed the chicken. He didn’t meet Lu’s eye.
The boys had scarcely finished their food when Jeremy said, “Boys. Go upstairs and build that Lego kit.”
“What Lego kit?” Sebastian asked.
“Any one. The Batman one.”
“We already built that one,” said Chase.
“We did,” Sebastian concurred. “We already built all the ones we brought.”
“Go rebuild one, then.”
“Well,” began Sebastian reasonably, “once you build one you really can’t rebuild it because of the way the—”
“Just go,” said Jeremy. “Just go.” They went. “I’ll make sure the grill is off,” said Jeremy.
“It’s off,” said Lu. “I always turn it off.”
“I’ll just make sure,” said Jeremy quietly. He stood and made what Lu thought was a great show of walking onto the deck and checking all of the burners. Upstairs, she could hear Sebastian doing his politically incorrect imitation of a cop about to arrest Chase.
When Jeremy returned he regained his seat and said, “You never said anything about needing a babysitter. Are things too much for you around here, Lu?” The words were almost kind but the sentiment behind them was not.
Lu said, “Sometimes.” It was true.
“In that case,” Jeremy said, “you can ask my mother for help.”
“I don’t want to ask your mother for help.” Lu was suddenly, violently enraged at the situation she’d put herself in. It looked to Jeremy like she couldn’t handle the children without help when really what she couldn’t handle was children plus a burgeoning career without help. (And who, realistically, could?) But she couldn’t balance the scales without telling him everything.
“My mother loves to help, Lu.”
“She doesn’t love to help! She just loves to see me need help.”
“That’s not fair.” Now Jeremy sounded peevish. “She wanted us here because she enjoys spending time with the boys, you know that.”
Grudgingly, Lu had to admit that might be true.
“Besides, once we have another baby we’ll be outnumbered. We’ll need her help then.”
Lu gritted her teeth. She couldn’t make this argument be about another baby. She had to keep dodging the baby question; if she dodged it long enough, maybe it would go away.
“I want you to fire her,” Jeremy said. “I don’t want a stranger here with the boys. Isn’t that why you left your job, so we wouldn’t have a stranger here with the boys?”
He’s tired, Lu reminded herself. He’s always tired when he comes back after a few long shifts in a row. The commute to and from the hospital was wearing on him. Jeremy didn’t get enough sleep, that was a big part of the problem. It was a scientifically proven fact that lack of sleep impeded your memory retention, your overall health, your sense of well-being and happiness. She’d heard a podcast about it. His circadian rhythms called to him, but he couldn’t answer.
Lu understood that she had to speak carefully. “She’s not a stranger,” she said. “The boys love her. She’s young, and she plays with them. She’s funny. She can cook! One time she—”
“She’s a stranger to me,” Jeremy interrupted. His mouth was set in a line that said he’d brook no arguments.
Even so, Lu tried again. “You should get to know her. Then she won’t be a stranger anymore. She’s delightful.”
“That’s enough, Lu.” Jeremy put his hands to his temples and rubbed hard. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t want to get to know her. We don’t need to be spending money we don’t have when my mother is right here, and when you’re home all day. I want you to fire her.”
The words were right there on the tip of her tongue. I have money. Sort of a lot of money, actually. More sponsor money had come in recently, and her affiliate sales for the Instant Pot had really picked up after that macaroni-and-cheese post from May. If things kept going at this rate, by next year she’d be earning almost as much as Jeremy did, especially if the cookbook worked out. If she really focused, if she really worked hard, if she could squeeze more working hours into every day, she could earn legitimate money.
Tell him, Lu. ’Fess up now, tell him. Maybe he won’t be mad. Maybe he’ll be proud, just the way you want him to be. Maybe he’ll be relieved.
But she knew he wouldn’t be any of those things. She knew if she brought up Dinner by Dad now, they’d have a fight not only about that but also about a third baby. She wouldn’t be able to hide how she felt about that.
Readers, wrote Dinner by Dad the next day, do you ever just feel like giving up on everything? Do you ever feel like it’s just not worth it, any of it?
Three hundred and seventy-six readers posted follow-up comments. Leo needed to keep his chin up. Leo was doing important work. Leo had only to look at Sammy and Charlie to see how much what he was doing mattered. Leo couldn’t give up on them, not now, not anytime!