Gwen let herself think ahead to this future, the two of them still friends when the girls were five, six, seven years old.
“That feels a hundred years away,” Gwen said. “But it sounds nice.”
“Yeah, time is a bitch right now. Bedtime feels a hundred years away.”
Nathan trudged his way up the hill with the plastic bag of sandwiches and sat on one of the swaddling blankets. He looked very stiff and uncomfortable in his work attire, and Gwen felt very stiff and uncomfortable in his presence.
He passed them their sandwiches and then unwrapped his own. After his first bite, there was a smear of avocado on the side of his mouth. It was large and obvious, but Leigh didn’t say anything.
“So Leigh says you’re a lawyer?” Nathan said, speaking with his mouth full after taking a second too-big bite.
“God, baby, chew and swallow, chew and swallow,” Leigh said.
Gwen felt herself blushing, mortified by Leigh’s public shaming of her husband. She was talking to him like he was a toddler. Nathan didn’t seem fazed, though. He wiped his mouth with a square of paper towel, though he missed the avocado smear, and awaited Gwen’s response.
“Yes. A lawyer,” she said.
“What kind of law?”
She hadn’t talked about this, her career, in ages. It felt like a past life, as believable as her saying she was a seamstress in eighteenth-century France.
“Corporate law. It’s really quite dull,” she said with a laugh.
She did not want to talk about work. June squealed, as if sensing her mother’s shift toward sadness, and Gwen lifted her from the grass, cradled her in the crook of her arm.
“When do you go back?” Nathan asked.
This was why she didn’t want to talk about work. She had spoken to human resources, and they had agreed to extend her leave because of the mastitis complication, the additional recovery. Still, she was set to return in two weeks, which felt like no time at all. How would she be recovered from anything in two weeks? She could not imagine zipping up one of her pencil skirts, putting on her heels, leaving June at the day care center they’d picked midpregnancy.
“I’m supposed to go back in a couple weeks,” she said.
She picked up her sandwich with her free hand, then set it back down without taking a bite. She felt suddenly nauseated.
“This country is so fucked up,” Leigh said.
“Maybe shewantsto go back to work,” Nathan said.
Their relationship seemed rooted in being each other’s devil’s advocates. Maybe they liked this kind of tension, the constant challenge of it, the push and pull. Maybe this was the excitement Leigh needed to stay.
“She’s told me she doesn’t,” Leigh said.
Gwen wanted to hide in the tube slide while they discussed her life choices.
“Oh my god, did you see Angeni Luna’s post after the Cincinnati shooting?” Leigh asked Gwen, turning her entire body away from Nathan to shut him out of the conversation.
“I did,” Gwen said.
It was a post that had made Gwen feel even worse about the idea of going back to work. How would she live with herself if the day care she and Jeff had so carefully chosen became the target of some madman with a gun? A truly dedicated mother would stay home during the young years. They were so fleeting, those years. Children needed so much consistency and attention in those years.
“I’m seriously considering homeschooling now,” Leigh said.
“Youare?” Nathan asked, reentering the conversation.
Leigh didn’t turn her body to face him but said, “Yes, I am.”
“I don’t know if I could do that,” Gwen said.
She’d never, ever considered homeschooling before. She wasn’t cut out for that—lesson planning, teaching her own child, organizing every moment of the day with the goal of ultimate enrichment. Was that the expectation of mothers now?
