A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  Alison’s cautiousness, making the limits of her relationship with Zoe clear to Mark, and to Zoe, was paying off. She suspected Zoe wanted more from her, but Alison wasn’t being tossed around by Zoe’s unspoken needs the way she used to be.

  Alison told herself it was good for Zoe to learn not to process every little emotion when she didn’t get everything she wanted. And it was definitely good for Alison to learn to resist Zoe’s pull.

  At eleven weeks old, Corey was pure delight: sleeping through the night, batting at the multicolored paper mobile that Zoe had made and hung over his crib, laughing as if he’d invented laughter.

  “Now I know how you felt when you had to go back to work,” Alison told Mark early one morning while she was nursing Corey. “I can’t leave him next week. I just can’t.”

  “Take another month off,” Mark said.

  “We can’t afford it.”

  “We’ll put stuff on credit cards. Spend less. Whatever it takes. It’s worth it.”

  Alison switched Corey to her left breast, leaned over, and kissed Mark on the lips. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” she said. She felt a surge of postpartum hormones. Or a resurgence of love for Mark. Or both. “How happy you make me.”

  “I’m staying home with Corey for another month,” Alison told Zoe over tea at Alison’s kitchen table that afternoon.

  “That’s so great,” Zoe said authoritatively, in her old-Zoe way.

  “You’re doing the right thing.”

  Alison poured tea into Zoe’s mug, then filled hers.

  “What’s wrong?” Zoe asked. “You should be ecstatic.”

  “I am. But we can’t really afford it. And it doesn’t seem fair. Mark wants more time with the baby too.”

  “You’re the mother. If only one of you can stay home, it should be you.” She giggled. “Thank goddess Mariandaughter can’t hear us now.”

  “Post-feminism is the new sexism.”

  “I’ll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy.”

  Alison smiled. Jousting with Zoe made her believe there might be life post-mommy brain.

  “It’s good to have you around,” Alison said.

  “It’s good to be around.” Zoe took a sip of tea. “Got any cookies?”

  “I purged the pantry. I’m trying to lose this baby weight.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Al. Like you don’t know how amazing you look.”

  Mortified to feel her face burning, Alison got up and rummaged through the cupboard. Zoe scowled at the Zwieback box in her hands. “What ever happened to Petit Écolier?”

  “Teething biscuits are the new Petit Écolier.” Alison handed Zoe a biscuit and took one for herself.

  Mark suggested they invite Zoe over for dinner. “Let’s cook for her, for once,” he said. “She’s doing so much for us.”

  Alison made her famous lemon roast chicken. Mark made salad and garlic mashed potatoes. Alison told Zoe not to bring anything, but she arrived bearing a chilled bottle of Möet & Chandon.

  “Wow,” Mark said. “Möet.” Was that a tinge of resentment Alison heard in his voice? “We’re supposed to be thanking you,” he said.

  Zoe handed the bottle to Mark, who handed Corey to her. “Hey, little boy,” she crooned, feathering kisses up and down his neck. “We’re celebrating,” she said. “I sold a painting.”

  “Zoe! That’s great,” Alison said. “Who bought it?”

  “I don’t even know. The gallery handled the whole thing.”

  Alison frowned. Zoe always wanted to meet the people who bought her paintings. She often asked to see her work in their homes after it was hung. Why not this time?

  Mark put the Champagne in the fridge, then held a chair out for Zoe. “Madame.”

  “I believe it’s mademoiselle,” Zoe said, but without rancor. “Or better yet—goddessmother.”

  Alison strapped Corey into his infant swing and cranked it up. Within seconds he was asleep. Mark scooped him up and carried him into his room.

  “Be right back,” Alison told Zoe, following Mark. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?” Mark whispered back.

  “For being such a good, good man. For being you.”

  They held each other for a moment, and in that moment Alison thought, I’m the luckiest person on the face of the earth.

  Zoe seemed subdued, not celebratory, over dinner. Alison felt guilty, imagining how hard it must be for her, seeing Alison with her man and her child in their home.

  But then Zoe reached into her Israeli paratrooper’s bag, pulled out a small white envelope, and handed it to Mark.

  Mark looked puzzled. “Open it,” Zoe said.

  Mark’s jaw dropped. He handed the envelope to Alison. In it was a check for a thousand dollars, made out to Mark.

  Alison felt stirrings of her old ambivalence. Is it just me, she asked herself, or is Zoe’s gift controlling as well as kind? Why had she made out the check to Mark? As a peace offering? Or to remind him that he couldn’t take care of Alison without her help?

  Mark seemed to have the same questions. “Why would you do this?” he asked her.

  “Because I can. And because you guys are short on money.” She looked at Alison. “Think of it as a gift for Corey. I want to support him having more time with his mom.”

  “This is really nice of you,” Alison said. “But we’re fine. We don’t need your money.”

  “Actually,” Mark said slowly, unhappily. “I wish we were in a position to refuse this. But we’re not. In fact, it’ll really help.” He looked at Zoe. “This is incredibly generous of you.”

  “It’s settled then,” Zoe said. “Let’s celebrate!”

  She pulled a newspaper-wrapped bundle out of her bag and unwrapped two glasses: the flutes that had been hers and Alison’s.

  “I noticed you didn’t have flutes. So I brought mine,” Zoe said, avoiding Alison’s eyes. “Someone’ll have to use a wine glass. I only brought two.”

  Mark took the Möet out of the fridge and popped the cork. He filled Alison’s flute, then Zoe’s, then a wine glass for himself.

  “Thank you so much,” he said, raising a toast to Zoe. “You’re such a good friend.”

  Zoe smiled and raised her glass. “To family,” she said.

  Corey got sick for the first time when he was three months old. Pacing the house with him, watching him pulling on his tiny pink earlobes screaming in pain, waiting for the antibiotics to kick in made Alison writhe inside her own skin.

  His ear infection turned to croup. Alison’s exhaustion turned to fevered flu. She moved Corey back to his bassinet so she could reach him from her bed. Every time she managed to doze off, he woke her, barking like a seal.

  Mark couldn’t take time off work. He was closing the winter issue of Mother Jones, cramming in breaking news of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. One afternoon he called to check on them. Alison could barely make herself heard over Corey’s hacking. “I’m coming home,” Mark said.

  “No,” Alison said. “Call Zoe.”

  Alison fell asleep. When she opened her eyes, Zoe was walking Corey around the bedroom, his limp limbs dangling from the Snugli on her chest.

  “I called the pediatrician,” Zoe said. “I’m taking him in. Go back to sleep.”

  The next time Alison woke up, the room was dark. Mark was leaning over her, stroking her hair. “Let’s get you into some fresh pajamas. Your fever broke. You’re soaking wet.”

  “Corey?” Alison croaked.

  “He’s better. Listen.” She heard no baby coughing, no baby crying. All she heard was the clinking of pots and pans from the kitchen. The smell of food wafted up the stairs. She knew that smoky fragrance: Zoe’s lentil soup. “The doctor said steam would help,” Mark said, “so Zoe spent the afternoon with him in the bathroom, running the shower. His croup is just about gone.”

  He lifted Alison’s nightgown over her head and helped her into her favorite flannel pajamas. He lowered her into the easy c
hair in the corner and stripped the bed. “She made soup while Corey was napping,” he said. “The house is spotless. The dishes are done. She’s amazing.”

  Zoe had rescued them. That didn’t surprise Alison; that’s what Zoe did. What shocked her was that Mark had let Zoe rescue them. Alison searched his face for signs of the suspicion she’d seen there when Zoe first came into their lives. All she saw was gratitude.

  Mark tossed the damp sheets into the hamper. “You told me Zoe was a cool person. You never told me she was Wonder Woman.”

  By the time Corey and Alison were well again, Zoe wasn’t just Alison’s ex and Corey’s goddessmother anymore. She wasn’t Mark’s nemesis anymore. Mark had experienced the Power of Zoe, and—how could he not be?—he was hooked.

  Mark taught Zoe to play poker. She taught him to appreciate abstract art. Overhearing their raucous card games, their loud arguments about whether graffiti should be sandblasted off walls or hung in museums, Alison was stunned by her good luck.

  Whatever it had taken to get them here; whatever compromises had been made, or were being made, or would be made in the future; even knowing that her mistakes and her demons might well be lying in wait, Alison was thrilled. She’d given her son a wonderful father and a wonderful goddessmother. She had Zoe in her life—her history, her mirror, her rock—and so did Corey. What Alison wanted, incredibly, was what she had. Corey’s cheerful, even temperament seemed to prove his family’s good intentions and their love.

  “How’s our Joy Boy?” Zoe would say when she called to ask Alison what to bring for dinner.

  “What’s Joy Boy up to?” Mark would ask when he called home from work.

  “Same thing he was doing when you called an hour ago,” Alison would say. “Making life better for us all.”

  The bulletin board that Alison hung on the kitchen wall became a multimedia collage illustrating the minutiae of their lives. Appointment cards for Corey’s checkups. Receipts for questionable purchases. Doonesbury’s latest, meanest snipe at Donald Trump. The latest, cutest snapshots of Corey. And a 1990 Great Women Authors calendar, on whose pages Alison had been counting down the waning days of her maternity leave.

  Each night when she faced that calendar, black Sharpie in hand, Alison felt like a prisoner marking time. How could she leave Corey now?

  A week before he’d held his head up and looked around. Yesterday he’d babbled all afternoon. This morning he’d discovered his feet. Curly blond hair was replacing the newborn fuzz on his head; his eyes were changing from blue to hazel; his weight had more than doubled. Soon he’d be eating rice cereal, and who would be feeding it to him? Soon his babbling would turn into words, and who would be there to hear what he had to say?

  “We can’t just hire some stranger to take care of him,” Alison said. She and Mark were driving bundles of old Chronicles from their house to the recycling center on Dwight Way. Corey was behind them, slumped in his car seat.

  The countdown was seventeen days. She’d been spending hours each day calling babysitters, nursery schools, and day care centers that accepted infants. All the calls had led to despair.

  “The decent places charge two dollars an hour,” she said. “That’s almost four hundred dollars a month.”

  Mark pulled into the recycling center. They sat in the car, windows shut against the cold, watching a crew of young, muscular guys in Ecology Center T-shirts emptying dumpsters labeled GLASS, CANS, WHITE PAPER ONLY, NEWSPRINT into a huge, psychedelically decorated dump truck.

  “What about Zoe?” Mark asked.

  “What about her?”

  “She could babysit Corey. I bet she’d love to do it.”

  “I bet she would.” Alison’s insides knotted at the thought. She saw Zoe rocking Corey. Zoe feeding Corey his first solid food. Zoe hearing Corey’s first words.

  “He’d be spending more time with her than he spends with us,” she said.

  “Get used to it,” Mark said. “Kids spend more time with their babysitters than their parents. Then their teachers. Then their friends and girlfriends. Then their own kids.”

  “Mark!” Alison hated it when Mark went rational on her, especially when he was right. “Corey’s three months old.”

  “No matter how much time he spends with other people, he’ll always know who his parents are.” He got out of the car, piled his arms with bundles of newspapers, and headed for the dumpsters.

  But his parents don’t know who his parents are.

  In her best moments as Corey’s mother, Alison knew instinctively what he needed. In this moment, she couldn’t distinguish between his needs and her own. Was she protecting Corey by keeping the secret of his conception from Mark? Or was she protecting herself at his expense?

  Alison glanced at Corey, asleep in the backseat, saliva bubbling over the nursing blister on his rosy top lip. What would be best for him: for Alison to surrender to her fears of losing him to Zoe and send him to a day care center—or surrender to her love for Corey and leave him in the care of someone who loved him too?

  Mark slid into the driver’s seat. “I don’t know why we have to spend our Saturdays doing this. The city should just pick up the recycling curbside along with the trash.” He sighed. “It’ll never happen.”

  “You’re right about Zoe,” Alison said. “There couldn’t be anyone better to stay with Corey.”

  “Well, good.” Mark started the car. “Hope she says yes.”

  “Zoe always says yes,” Alison said.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Zoe said. “Zoe Poppins. I like the sound of that.”

  Mark heaped mustard broccoli pasta onto her plate. “We’ll pay you, of course. Market rate.”

  Zoe shook her head. “No way. I’m his goddessmother. And that’s what goddessmothers do. We look out for our goddess-sons.”

  “It’s too much, Zoe,” Alison said.

  “Too much of what?” Zoe asked.

  Too much like you’re his mother, Alison thought. “If you won’t let us pay you,” she said, “we’ll find someone who will.”

  “Alison!” Mark said. “I want to pay her too. But could you be a little nicer about this?”

  “That’s one thing we love about Al,” Zoe said, forking spinach salad onto Alison’s plate. “She doesn’t do nice. She does real.”

  “How about fifty bucks a week?” Mark asked Zoe. “It’s not nearly enough, but it’ll make us feel a tiny bit less indebted to you.”

  “You owe me nothing. Make it twenty-five a week and you’ve got a deal.”

  Mark looked at Alison. She shrugged.

  “Deal,” Mark said to Zoe. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to thank you.”

  Zoe laughed. “Corey can support me in my old age.”

  Alison looked at Zoe, the first person she’d ever trusted. Can I trust her now, Alison wondered.

  20.

  oakland

  November 1990

  Alison began the painful process of weaning Corey—yet another maternal act she was sure she’d feel guilty about until she died. She pumped her breasts, feeling like a factory cow, and filled the freezer with little pink and blue plastic bottles. She bought some new clothes. Got a $50 haircut. Bought a high-value BART ticket. And went back to work.

  Within weeks her breasts stopped leaking, but she never stopped aching for Corey. The other moms at PMC kept telling her how lucky she was, having a babysitter who actually loved her child. But when Alison called home and heard Corey jabbering into Zoe’s ear, she didn’t feel lucky. She felt wrenched.

  It wasn’t that their arrangement wasn’t working. Unlike her coworkers, who plucked their babies from strangers’ arms each evening, Alison had dinner with her babysitter—and her baby’s father—once or twice a week. The four of them would sit at the round oak kitchen table, Corey snuggled into one of their laps or asleep on the table in his infant seat like a plastic-and-flannel centerpiece. They’d eat Mark’s lasagna or Zoe’s lentil soup or Alison’s lemon chicken while Zo
e told them about Corey’s day.

  Despite the pain of being separated from Corey, sometimes Alison looked across the table at Mark and Zoe and Corey and felt so full of love that her teeth ached. This bounty, this family, was so much more than she’d ever thought she deserved. There was her perfect son, her miracle, surrounded by the people who cherished him. There was Zoe—Zoe!—loving Alison by loving Corey. And there was Mark, doing something few men would do, just to do what was best for his child.

  Alison took Mark’s openness to Zoe as one indication among many of his commitment to their family and to her. Except for Alison’s lingering postpartum disinterest in sex, which he complained about sporadically, he was happy. For the most part, she was happy with him.

  For the most part. As their relationship aged, Mark was to Alison as Alison had been to Zoe: an emotional hydroplane, hovering above love’s turbulent chop and swill, two steps back from Alison’s emotional life. But he was sweet to her without being dangerously self-sacrificing, as Zoe had been; attentive without being overbearing, as Zoe had been.

  Mark told Alison often what a good mother she was, which eased her deepest doubts. It made her forgive the small indignities of heterosexual cohabitation: toothpaste cap missing, toilet seat up, whites washed with reds.

  Mark burst into the house after work one night in early December and announced to Alison and Zoe, who were putting the finishing touches on Zoe’s beef stew, that he was in the running for a promotion to senior editor.

  “It’s between me and Elaine, the other associate editor.” Mark lowered his voice. “But Dave told me off the record: the job’s mine.”

  “How long has Elaine worked there?” Zoe asked.

  “Two years longer than I have. But she took a year off to have a kid.”