She’d made a wizard robe out of an old blanket. Ben looked adorable in his stripy scarf and round glasses. “That’s right. Oh, what about the year Dad was a Ghostbuster and you were the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?”
“I don’t remember that.” Ben sounded worried.
“Yeah, you were still pretty little, but we have about one thousand photos. So we won’t ever forget.”
Her son looked up at her. “Do you think I’ll ever forget Dad?”
“No!” A pit opened up in Liv’s stomach, its depth surprising her. She felt horrified. “No, sweetie, I don’t, I really don’t. You won’t, I promise.”
“But how? I don’t remember being the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”
Liv hadn’t contemplated the fact she’d be the primary bearer of Eliot’s memory. And that would mean swallowing her betrayal forever, only giving Ben the highlights. That was her maternal duty. But it also felt a bit like lying. “Because we’re going to talk about him. And look at pictures and tell stories and keep him alive in here.” She pressed her hand against her son’s chest. “In our hearts.”
“Mom,” he said, “that’s really cheesy.”
She laughed. “Maybe. Maybe it’s okay to be cheesy. Every now and then.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Can I order the pizza now?”
Liv unlocked her phone, checking there was no Amazing news!! text from Savannah. There wasn’t. “You got it, mister.”
Financial ruin, here we come.
“No, I want to call.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you know how?”
He nodded.
“Okay.” She handed him her phone.
Ben tapped and scrolled until he found the number and dialed. “Hello? I’d like to order a large cheese pizza. Yes, that’s the address. We’ll pay in cash. Thank you.”
“Look at you, ordering a pizza like a pro.” Liv knew she was biased, but it was quite possible her child was the smartest kid in Prospect Heights, and maybe even the entire world. She wanted to give him everything. “So clever, Benny.”
“Well, I’ve seen you do it a million times.” He sounded more upbeat than a few minutes ago. “You and Dad didn’t really cook a lot.”
“That’s true. What were we doing all the time?”
Ben pushed his glasses up his nose. “Working.”
He was right. They did work all the time. But in different ways.
When Ben was still a mysterious lump in Liv’s belly, she’d had many conversations with Eliot about equal parenting. She intended to raise a feminist, and that meant seeing his dad cleaning and his mom sitting at the head at the table. “He should know masculine and feminine is all on a spectrum,” Liv would say, rubbing her swollen belly while munching dill pickles. “My unborn child will respect women or I’ll have failed as a parent.”
“He will, sweetheart,” Eliot promised, helping himself to the last pickle. “And if we’re especially lucky, he’ll also be a genderfluid poet who wants to save the whales.”
“One can only hope.” Liv chuckled.
But somewhere along the way, Liv’s gender-neutral parenting dreams had been diluted. On top of running In Love in New York, she was the one doing the majority of the physical and emotional labor of raising her son: the one who packed the lunches and did his laundry and consoled him after a fall. Even progressive Brooklyn was behind the times: the parenting group she joined was called Prospect Heights Moms, the attendees of which complimented her as a career woman and, more upsettingly, a girl boss. “There’s no career men,” Liv would point out. “Or boy bosses.” The moms would all ooh, fascinated, and switch the topic to keto diets.
Things changed between her and Eliot after Ben was finally born, following their punishing four-year IVF journey. Benny was a fussy baby, mother-hungry, and cranky with Eliot. Their couple identity didn’t flow easily from “couple trying to conceive” to “couple being parents.” Eliot wasn’t a bad father, but he wasn’t an exceptionally good one. Liv suspected he liked being the baby of the relationship, vaguely resentful that Liv was no longer on tap to indulge his need for reassurance—that he was lovable, or a genius, or impressively virile. Liv had a new love. A tiny, unreliable god in the shape of a frog-faced baby she adored with swoony fierceness.
Liv’s desire to have a second child, a baby girl, pushed them further apart. Every time she brought it up, Eliot would look at her like she was absolutely mad. “You’re too old,” he’d say, or “I think we have our hands full with one.” Unequivocally no. And so her secret fantasies of teaching a girl how to be a woman, sharing all the important things her own mother did, or didn’t do, went unmet. Instead, she focused on Ben’s needs, and the needs of the business, a demanding and fulfilling entity that she also deeply loved.
Liv’s line of work involved negotiating tradition (what was expected) with change (what was truly desired). She met the life she was given with the ideals she thought she had and tried to make it work. So did Eliot. But it was only after they became parents did the ravine between their two approaches become clear. At the time, it seemed like the only way. But now, just like a bride who was deciding not to wear white down the aisle, Liv was beginning to understand there were so many more possibilities than what she thought she saw at the time.
As Liv put the risotto bowls in the dishwasher, the question presented itself to her with frightening clarity: Was being a wife something she still prioritized after Ben was born? Or had it somehow been lagging in third place, behind mother and business owner? She was probably a better friend than she had been a wife, given all the time she spent drinking with Gorman. For years, she’d been certain that seeing Eliot every day, in the home they shared and the business they owned, had been the highest form of intimacy. But now, Liv had to wonder: Had she still been married to her husband?
Or to everything else around her?
25
The next day, Savannah let the city distract her from the fiasco that was In Love in New York.
She took the subway to the Upper East Side to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ending up in a room full of modern masters: Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso. One of Modigliani’s famed reclining nudes gazed back at her, eyes heavy-lidded, flesh glowing and creamy. Transcendent. New York was like this—unexpected pockets of beauty and history, offered as casually as one tosses bread crumbs at pigeons. She’d turn a corner, and suddenly, there was Carnegie Hall or a naked cowboy with a guitar or a supermodel in sweats. Once, she saw Lady Gaga, in a full, glittery ball gown, getting into a black Suburban on Park Avenue. For one brief second, they locked eyes. Savannah swore that Lady Gaga smiled at her.
At first, it felt like a waste to have these experiences alone. She and Honey would occasionally text each other perfect little New York moments—a subway saxophonist playing “New York State of Mind,” a particularly excellent lox bagel—but still, physically, alone. Savannah was used to defining herself in relation to others—a daughter, an intern, a best friend. Alone, she was just herself, discovering who she was when no one else was around. Her own mother never had this opportunity: Terry and Sherry were high school sweethearts. They’d never spent more than two nights apart. But having been in New York alone for the past few months, Savannah could feel herself changing. Like the best work of art or a glass of good whiskey, her layers were beginning to reveal themselves.