call with a client in Hong Kong. At 3:00 a.m. I sneaked from the bedroom that Heidi and I share and crept into the office for the call, and when it was finished, I showered and left for work, long before Heidi or Zoe began to stir.
“I’m leaving in the morning for San Francisco,” I remind her.
She nods her head. “I know. How long?”
“One night.”
And then I ask about her day and Heidi tells me about a young man who emigrated from India to the United States six months ago. He was living in the slums of Mumbai—Dharavi, to be exact; one of the largest slums in the world, as Heidi tells me, where he was earning less than two American dollars a day in his home country. She tells me about their toilets, how they’re few and far between. The residents use the river instead. She’s helping this man, she calls him Aakar, with his grammar. Which isn’t easy. She reminds me: “English is a very difficult language to learn.”
I say that I know.
My wife is a bleeding heart. Which was absolutely adorable when I asked her to marry me, but somehow, after fourteen years of marriage, the words immigrant and refugee hit a nerve for me, generally because I’m sure she’s more concerned with their well-being than my own.
“And your day, Zoe?” Heidi asks.
“It sucked,” Zoe grumbles, slumped in the chair, staring at that chili as though it might just be dog shit, and I laugh to myself. At least one of us is being honest. I want a do-over. My day sucked, too.
“Sucked how?” Heidi asks. I love when Heidi uses the word sucked. Its unnaturalness is comical; the only time Heidi talks about things sucking it’s in reference to a lollipop or straw. And then, “What’s wrong with your chili? Too hot?”
“I told you. I hate beans.”
Five years ago, Heidi would have reminded her of the starving children in India or Sierra Leone or Burundi. But these days just getting Zoe to eat anything is an accomplishment. She either hates everything or it’s loaded with fat, like meat. And so instead we eat crumbles.
From the recesses of my briefcase—sitting on the floor beside the front door—my cell phone rings and Heidi and Zoe turn to me, wondering whether or not I’ll abscond with the phone in the middle of dinner to my office, the third bedroom we converted when it was clear there would be no more children for me and Heidi. I still catch her sometimes, when she’s in the office with me, her eyes roving along espresso office furniture—a desk and bookshelves, my favorite leather chair—imagining something else entirely, a crib and changing table, playful safari animals prancing on the walls.
Heidi always wanted a big family. Things just didn’t work out that way.
It’s rare that we get through a quick dinner without the obnoxious sound of my cell. Depending on the night, my mood—or, more important Heidi’s mood—or whatever emergency cropped up at work that day, I may or may not answer it. Tonight I stuff a bite of chili into my mouth as a rebuttal, and Heidi smiles sweetly, which I take to mean: thank you. Heidi has the sweetest smile, sugar-coated and delicious. Her smile comes from somewhere inside, not just planted on those cupid’s-bow lips. When she smiles I imagine the first time we met, at a charity ball in the city, her body cloaked in a strapless vintage tulle dress—red, like her lipstick. She was a work of art. A masterpiece. She was still in college, an intern at the nonprofit she now all but runs. Back in the days when pulling an all-nighter was a piece of cake, and four hours of sleep was a good night for me. Back in the days when thirty seemed old, so old in fact that I didn’t even consider what thirty-nine would be like.
Heidi thinks that I work too much. For me, seventy-hour workweeks are the norm. There are nights I don’t get home until two o’clock; there are nights I’m home, but locked in my office until the sun begins to rise. My phone rings at all hours of the day and night, as if I’m an on-call physician and not someone who deals with mergers and acquisitions. But Heidi works at a nonprofit agency; only one of us is making enough money to pay for a condo in Lincoln Park, to cover Zoe’s expensive private school tuition and save for college.
The phone stops ringing, and Heidi turns to Zoe. She wants to hear more about her day.
It turns out that Mrs. Peters, the seventh grade earth science teacher, wasn’t there and the sub was a total... Zoe stops herself, thinks of a better adjective than the one implanted in her brain by misfit preteens...a total nag.
“Why’s that?” Heidi asks.
Zoe avoids eye contact, stares at the chili. “I don’t know. She just was.”
Heidi takes a sip of her water, plants that big-eyed, inquisitive look on her face. The same one I got when I mentioned the 3:00 a.m. call. “She was mean?”
“Not really.”
“Too strict?”
“No.”
“Too...ugly?” I throw in to lighten the mood. Heidi’s need to know sometimes puts a strain on things. She’s convinced herself that being an involved parent (and by this I mean overinvolved) will assure Zoe that she’s loved as she enters into what Heidi calls: the tumultuous teenage years. What I remember from my own tumultuous teenage years was the need to escape my parents. When they followed, I ran faster. But Heidi has taken out books from the library: psychology books on child development, parenting with love, secrets of a happy family. She’s bound and determined to do this right.
Zoe giggles. When she does—and it doesn’t happen often—she becomes six again, consummately pure, twenty-four-karat gold. “No,” she answers.
“Just...a nag then? A nasty old nag,” I suggest. I push aside the black beans and look for something else. A tomato. Corn. A chili scavenger hunt. I avoid the vegetarian meat crumbles.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“What else?” Heidi asks.
“Huh?” Zoe’s got on a tie-dye shirt with the words peace and love written in hot pink. It’s covered in glitter. She’s got her hair in this side ponytail thing that makes her look too sophisticated for the tangerine braces that line her rambling teeth. She’s drawn all over her left arm: peace signs, her own name, a heart. The name Austin.
Austin?
“What else sucked?” Heidi asks.
Who the hell is Austin?
“Taylor spilled her milk at lunch. All over my math book.”
“Is the book okay?” Heidi wants to know. Taylor has been Zoe’s best friend, her bestie, her BFF, since the girls were about four. They share matching BFF necklaces, skulls of all things. Zoe’s is lime green, and draped around her neck at all times, day or night. Her mother, Jennifer, is Heidi’s best friend. If I remember correctly, they met at the city park, two little girls playing in the sandbox, their mothers taking a breather on the same park bench. Heidi calls it happenstance. Though I believe, in reality, Zoe threw sand in Taylor’s eye and those first few moments weren’t so fortunate after all. If it hadn’t been for Heidi with her spare water bottle to wash off the sand, and if Jennifer hadn’t been in the midst of a divorce and desperate for someone on whom to unload—the story might have had a very different ending.
