Mike, Mike and Me. Wendy Markham

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      “What?”

      He doesn’t turn around. “I just said, I don’t understand how a mother can leave her kids behind like that.”

      I bite back another defense of Melina. I don’t understand it, either. The thought of leaving my babies behind—even when they’re adolescents—to go live and work in another country is as foreign to me as…well, as Guatemala is. Intellectually, I understand her reasons. Maternally, I’m at a loss.

      I’d never heard of such a thing until I moved to Westchester and had my first brush with domestic help. In the past seven years, I’ve met countless nannies and housekeepers with children and spouses back in South America or the Caribbean or wherever it is they’re from. I used to find it shocking; now it’s merely unsettling.

      I, after all, didn’t think twice about leaving behind a promising career in television production 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.

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