to become a stay-at-home mom after Mikey was born.
All right, maybe I thought twice. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a no-brainer. Maybe I believed I could have it all: marriage, children, glamorous career.
Maybe some women can.
But when my six-week maternity leave was over, I found myself crying daily on the commuter train that carried me away from my precious child. I lasted two weeks, until Mikey—poor sacrificial lamb—caught his first cold from a sick toddler whose working mother sent him to day care with a green runny nose.
That was when I knew the jig was up.
Hadn’t I been weaned on seventies TV? Didn’t I know that if you were going to make it after all, you had to be spunky and single and living in a bachelorette pad with a big gold initial on the wall?
I was never going to be Mary Richards. It was too late for that. No, I was destined to become Ma Ingalls meets Olivia Walton meets Marian Cunningham.
Tyler gurgles adorably and swallows more food.
I smile at him, spoon in another orange glob, and watch Mike try to catch his reflection in the window above the kitchen sink. He fusses with the dark hair that fringes his forehead, a forehead that seems to be getting taller with every passing day.
I never imagined that my handsome husband would have a receding hairline by his fortieth birthday. Most men do, I know. It’s just that Mike has always been as effortlessly good-looking as…
Well, as I was.
On that grim note, I watch him turn abruptly, cross back to the table and take his suit coat and briefcase from a chair. He asks, “Do you think you’ll be able to pick up my dry cleaning today, Beau?”
Oops.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry I forgot yesterday. I took the boys to the mall to get them out of Melina’s way, and I forgot to stop at the cleaner’s on the way home.”
“I need my gray suit for tomorrow.”
“Your gray suit?” I frown. “I don’t remember dropping that one off.”
“I wore it last Friday and then I put it into the dry-cleaning hamper.”
“Well, I dropped off the dry cleaning on Friday morning, so it must still be in the hamper.”
“Beau, I needed that suit by tomorrow.”
“I’m not your wardrobe mistress, Mike,” I snap.
“Fine. Whatever. Bye.” He plants a kiss on Tyler’s head and heads for the door.
“Bye,” I say as it slams behind him, remembering that there was a time when he wouldn’t leave—or come home—without kissing me, too.
Tyler coos. I flash an absent smile in his direction, my thoughts drifting back over the years, remembering the path that led to this place—and wondering what would have happened if, when I arrived at the inevitable fork, I had chosen instead to head in a different direction.
four
The past
So life was good. I was young, pretty, living in New York and madly in love—not to mention happily employed.
I adored my job as a production assistant on J-Squared, aka J2 or the Janelle Jacques Show.
Back when I was fresh out of college and interviewing for the position, I thought I’d be the luckiest entry-level drone in the city if I actually got it—which I doubted I would. Ironically, most of the other candidates competing for the job were huge fans, but I’d never even heard of Janelle Jacques before I moved to New York. She was a fairly well-known soap opera actress, but I rarely watched the soaps, aside from a few months leading up to Luke and Laura’s wedding on General Hospital my senior year in high school.
Turned out, I was wrong about my not getting the job. I was also right about being a lucky drone when I did. My job was one of those too-good-to-be-true things fate throws at you, so good that you just know the bottom is going to fall out somewhere along the way…and then it never does.
A year later, the freshly hired glow had yet to wear off. It was hard work, but I was still fascinated by the whole behind-the-scenes television studio process. Disillusioned, yes, but fascinated just the same. Perhaps even more so as the months went on and I realized that in the entertainment industry, nothing is ever what it appears to be.
As an actress, Janelle Jacques had won a decent fan following and was even nominated for a daytime Emmy. As a talk show hostess, she left something to be desired.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have stage presence, because she did. She was svelte and statuesque, with a flaming-red mane, porcelain skin and delicate bone structure. All she had to do was walk onto the set and the rest of us instinctively stopped whatever we were doing or saying to focus on her.
But when it came to interviewing her guests, she just wasn’t very…good.
Yeah, okay, she sucked at it. I mean, even I knew, courtesy of my high-school journalism class, that you don’t ask simple yes-no questions when you’re conducting an interview; nor do you ask questions that can be answered in one word.
Apparently, Janelle Jacques never took a high-school journalism class. Her Q&A sessions were almost painful to watch.
Janelle Jacques: Did you have fun making your new movie?
Up-and-coming starlet: Yes, I really did.
Janelle Jacques: That’s great. Great!
Up-and-coming starlet: Yes.
Janelle Jacques: Where was the movie filmed?
Up-and-coming starlet: In Paris.
Janelle Jacques: And do you speak French?
Up-and-coming starlet: No. (Beat.) No, I don’t.
Janelle Jacques: So was it hard to live in Paris and not speak French?
Up-and-coming starlet: Yes, it was.
I mean, come on, Janelle! I kept expecting one of her guests to respond to one of her vacuous queries with an eye roll and an exasperated “Duh,” but nobody ever did.
Sometimes, as I watched the show taping from behind the scenes, I could see Janelle’s eyes glazing over and realized that she wasn’t even listening. And sometimes, when I had a clear view of the guest’s eyes—or more specifically, the guest’s magnified pupils—I realized that they’d ingested—and/or smoked—something stronger than Jolt Cola and cigarettes as a pre-greenroom pick-me-up.
But like I said, I was still enchanted by my job. Despite the inept host and the competitive late-night time slot—opposite Arsenio Hall’s new hit show—J-Squared was doing fairly well, so far, in its ratings. It didn’t hurt that the week before the pilot aired, Janelle eloped with Caleb DeLawrence, her former costar.
Naturally, the tabloids were all over the marriage, proclaiming
