Her eye contact was unnerving. It was as if she was trying to see into Gwen’s soul. Gwen had to look away.
“I’m fine. I think.”
“Look, this shit is hard. If you need to chat or whatever,” she said, fumbling around in her diaper bag with one hand, the other hand holding her daughter. She took out her phone. “What’s your number?”
Gwen gave it to her, watched her tap it into her phone.
“There. I texted you so you have mine.”
“Thanks,” Gwen said, unsure what to make of this sudden kindness, this abrupt proposal of friendship. Or maybe it wasn’t quite friendship, but simple camaraderie, a companionship based on circumstance. Whatever it was, Gwen felt herself wanting it. It had been so long since she’d wanted anything.
They continued walking through the hallway of the hospital, then out to the parking lot. Leigh had parked near the entrance, and Gwen watched as she went through the familiar mess of motions, trying to get her baby into the car seat without dropping any of her own belongings. Gwen would have helped, but her own hands were full. Leigh’s baby started to wail, as if sensing her mother’s discombobulation and feeling unsettled by it. You couldn’t even have your own emotional experience as a mother without your child being affected.
“I wish we could stay and chat more,” Leigh said. “But my kid is about to lose her shit.”
Gwen wanted to hug this woman. She’d never felt such an urge toward a stranger before.
“I get it. I’m sure mine is going to lose her shit soon too.”
“They’re always about to lose their shit or in the process of losing their shit, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes it’s literal shit,” Gwen said, proud of herself for the joke.
“That’s our days, right? Literal and figurative shit.”
Leigh closed the door so her baby’s crying was now quieter, muffled.
“It was really nice to meet you,” Gwen said.
“Likewise. I’ll text you, okay? We can hang sometime.”
The excitement Gwen felt was on par with what she’d felt in high school when a boy she liked dared to glance in her direction.
“I’d like that,” she said.
She started finger-combing her hair behind her ear nervously, which was also something high school Gwen did.Stop being a weirdo,she told herself.
Leigh walked around to the driver’s side car door and let herself in. Her baby was, as predicted, losing her figurative shit. As the car pulled away, Gwen waved, then lifted June’s little hand to wave too.
“Look, honey, we made friends,” she whispered.
That evening, Gwen decided to make a lasagna—with a pesto sauce, no tomatoes. She didn’t have all the ingredients, so she placed an order with Instacart, and the goods showed up on her doorstep—oven-ready noodle sheets, pesto in a plastic tub, ricotta, mozzarella, a bag of spinach.
She texted Jeff that she didn’t need him to pick up anything for dinner and included a playful chef emoji. He wrote back with heart eyes and said:
I can’t even tell you how excited this makes me
He always loved her pesto lasagna.
She placed June in the baby lounger that someone—she couldn’t remember who—had purchased off her registry. It was a glorified pillow with a bumper around it so the baby was penned in, secure, and it cost more than a hundred dollars. There were probably cheaper options, butshe’d chosen the higher-end items. All these baby-equipment companies preyed on first-time mothers, seized upon their belief inonly the best for my child. She had to assume the second-time mothers realized they’d been duped and would never buy a hundred-dollar glorified pillow.
Gwen hadn’t cooked an actual meal since she was pregnant, when she was whipping up breakfasts and lunches and dinners chock full of superfoods. The most she could manage since June had arrived was slathering bread with almond butter and honey or, if she was feeling particularly energetic, microwaving a bowl of oatmeal. She hadn’t had a conversation with Jeff about her sudden abstention from basic self-care, so bless his heart, he had kept the fridge stocked with various ready-made items—sandwiches and wraps and parfaits and those expensive juices that looked healthy but had fifty grams of sugar per sip. She hadn’t thanked him because doing so would be admitting what she’d been failing to do herself. She would thank him tonight, she decided. She’d been so awful lately.
June didn’t start fussing until after Gwen was done layering the lasagna—noodles, sauce, sautéed spinach, cheeses.
“Perfect timing, June Bug,” she said, as she slid the casserole dish into the oven and set the timer.
When she went to retrieve June from the lounger, she felt a surge of warmth and affection for her baby that was like a light bulb going on in her head—Ooh, this is what all the new moms are talking about. She held June close to her and twirled—twirled!—around the living room. She was giddy, and she knew it was all because of that woman. Leigh.
