Chapter 3
I held Leo tighter and felt the living room shrink around us. The gray sofa hadn't moved. The glass coffee table with its gold frame was still between us and them. Vanessa stood with her arms crossed behind Marco, and Gloria's hands stayed locked around that black smartphone. Leo's breathing was uneven against my chest, his shirt damp where he'd pressed his face into my shoulder. I didn't get up.
The question came before I could stop it. Not out loud, not yet. Why was Vanessa still here at all. She'd come to help for two weeks after Leo was born and she'd never left.
Marco shifted his weight, and the light from the sheer curtains caught the edge of his gray tie. He didn't look at Vanessa. He didn't look at Gloria either. He looked at the floor where Leo and I sat, like he was trying to figure out how we'd ended up down here again.
I'd been down here before, just not on this floor.
The first time Gloria called Dr. Patel without telling me, Leo was four months old. I'd taken him in that morning for a regular check-up, the one where they weigh them and measure their head and tell you he's perfect. I was still in the parking lot, buckling him into his car seat, when my phone rang. It was the nurse calling back to say his grandmother had just called the office concerned about his feeding schedule and whether I was producing enough milk.
I sat in the driver's seat with the car running and the AC blowing and my hands shaking on the wheel. Gloria was at our apartment when I got home, folding laundry she had let herself in to do. She said she'd just been worried, that I looked tired, that she'd wanted a second opinion to help me. Vanessa was there too, making a bottle the way Gloria had told her to, even though Leo was nursing fine. Marco got home at nine that night. He'd worked late again. He said his mom meant well and I shouldn't take it so hard.
I didn't know how to explain that it wasn't about milk. It was about someone calling my son's doctor behind my back and rewriting my motherhood as a problem she needed to fix.
Vanessa was supposed to stay until I recovered. That was the word Marco used. Recovered. Like I'd been sick. I hadn't been sick, I'd been new. She brought one suitcase and put it in our second bedroom and then filled the closet. Then she filled the bathroom with her shampoo and the fridge with food Leo wasn't old enough to eat yet. By month three, she had a key. By month six, when I suggested maybe it was time for her to go back to her place, Marco said she was hardly there anyway and she helped Gloria not worry so much. But she was there every morning when I made coffee and every night when Marco didn't come home for dinner.
Marco didn't come home for dinner a lot. At first it was work, real work, the job that kept our rent paid on the apartment with now five people in it if you counted Gloria who came over every day. Then it became later and later. He'd text at six that he was stuck at the office, then at seven that he was grabbing a bite near work, then not until nine when he'd walk in with his tie loosened and say sorry, it had been crazy. I ate with Vanessa and Gloria at our small table while Leo banged a spoon in his high chair, and Vanessa would say, "He provides, you know," and Gloria would nod and add, "A man has to work," and I would be the one who felt guilty for wanting him there.
That's what I heard when Leo cried that afternoon and Vanessa said nothing and Gloria looked at her phone instead of us. It wasn't just that he wasn't there that day. It was that he was never there when it mattered, and they'd filled the space he left with their version of help until there wasn't any room for me to say no.
In the living room, Leo whimpered and I rocked him, my hand on the back of his dark hair. Gloria's phone screen lit up. She glanced down, her thumb moving. Vanessa's arms stayed crossed, her jaw tight. Marco stood between us, still in that black suit and black shirt, still looking down.
I realized I'd been waiting for him to choose for five years, just in smaller rooms.
"How long is she staying this time?" I said. My voice came out quiet, hoarse from crying, but it carried across the coffee table.
May you like
Vanessa's mouth tightened. Gloria didn't look up from the phone.
And Marco, who never answered that question, finally had to.
