Текст книги "Dirty Red"

Автор книги: Tarryn Fisher

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Copyright © 2012 by Tarryn Fisher

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

 

Cover design by Sarah Hansen of Okaycreations.net

Cover model Tricia Tulchin Boozer

Dirty Red

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Maryse Couturier Black

&

her book pimps

 

(Jenny Aspinall, Patricia Nesbitt, Gitte Doherty & the great Rebecca Espinoza)

Thanks for changing my life

Chapter One

Present

I stare down at the screaming, pink creature in my arms, and I panic.

Panic is a maelstrom. It churns to life in your brain like a whirlpool, gaining speed as it funnels down into the rest of the body. Round and round it goes, causing your heart to race. Round and round twisting, knotting and sickening the stomach. Round and round, it hits your knees, weakening them before creating a cesspool in your toes. You curl up your toes, take a few deep breaths, and grab onto the life-preserving ring of sanity before the panic can suck you in.

These are my first ten seconds of being a mother.

I hand her back to her father. “We have to hire a nanny.”

I fan myself with a copy of Vogue, until it becomes too heavy, then I let my wrist go limp, dropping it to the floor.

“Can I have my Pellegrino?” I wiggle my fingers toward my bottled water, which is out of my reach, and lean my head back against the flat, hospital-issued pillow. These are the facts: a human being just fell out of my body after I grew it there for nine months. The parasitical similarities are enough to cause me to grab a doctor by his lapels and demand he tie my tubes into a pretty bow. My stomach – which I have already examined – looks like a deflated, skin-toned balloon. I am tired and sore. I want to go home. When my water doesn’t come, I crack open an eye. Aren’t people supposed to be running circles around me after what I just did?

Baby and father are standing in front of the window, framed by the dim afternoon light like a cheesy hospital advertisement. All they need is a pithy hospital catch phrase to caption the moment: Start your family with our family.

I make the effort to study them. He is cradling her in his arms, his head bent so low their noses are almost touching. It should be a tender moment, but he is gazing at her with so much love, I feel jealousy do a little squeeze-squeeze on my heart. Jealousy has a hell of a strong hand. I squirm underneath its touch, uncomfortable for letting it in.

Why couldn’t it have been a boy? It … my child. Fresh disappointment makes me press my face against the pillow, blocking out the scene in front of me. Two hours earlier, the doctor had said the word girl and tossed her blue, slime-covered body onto my chest. I hadn’t known what to do. My husband was watching me, so I reached a hand up to touch her; all the while, the word girl was crushing down on my chest like a thousand ton elephant.

Girl

Girl

Girl

I am going to have to share my husband with another woman … again.

“What are we going to name her?” He doesn’t even look at me when he speaks. I feel I’ve earned a little eye contact. Mon Pied! Already I was an afterthought.

I hadn’t chosen a girl’s name. I had been so sure it was a boy. Charles Austin – after my father.

“I don’t know. Any suggestions?” I smooth out my bed sheets, study my fingernails. A name is a name, right? I don’t even go by the one my parents gave me.

He looks at her for a long time, his hand cupping her head. She has stopped thrashing her fists around and is still and content in his arms. I know the feeling.

“Estella.” The name rolls off his tongue like he’s been waiting to say it his whole life.

My head jerks up. I was expecting something less … ancient. I scrunch up my nose.

“That sounds like an old lady’s name.”

“It’s from a book.”

Caleb and his books.

“Which one?” I don’t read … unless you count magazines, but chances are if it was made into a movie, I probably saw it.

“Great Expectations.”

I narrow my eyes and get that sinking feeling in my stomach. It has something to do with her. I know it.

I do not verbalize these thoughts. I am too clever to call attention to my insecurities, so I casually shrug and smile in his direction.

“Any specific reason?” I ask sweetly.

For a minute I think I see something pass across his face, a shade coming down over his eyes like he’s seeing a movie play out on his eyeballs. I swallow hard. I know that face.

“Baby—?”

The movie ends, and he comes back to me. “I’ve always liked that name. She looks like an Estella.”

A catch in his voice.

She looks like a bald, old man to me, but I nod. I am incapable of saying no to my husband, so it looks like the kid just got screwed.

When he leaves for home to take a shower, I pull my phone from underneath my pillow and Google ‘Estella’ from Great Expectations.

One website calls her an enchanting beauty, says she has a cold-hearted personality and a superiority complex. Another says she was the physical representation of everything Pip wanted and could not have. I put the phone away and peer into the bassinet beside me. Caleb does everything with purpose. I wonder how long he’s wanted a girl. I wonder if the nine months I planned on having a son, Caleb was planning on having a daughter.

I do not feel anything – none of the gushing, maternal things my friends relayed to me about their own children. They had used words like: unconditional, all encompassing, love of my life. I had smiled and nodded, storing the words away for reference when I had my own child. And, now here I am, emotionless. Those words mean nothing to me. Would I have felt differently if she were a boy? The baby starts to wail, and I jab at the nurse’s call button.

“Need some help?” a mid-fifties nurse wearing Care Bear scrubs walks briskly into the room. I eye her gappy smile and nod.

“Can you take her to the nursery? I need to get some sleep.”

Estella is wheeled out of my room, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

I am not going to be good at this. What was I thinking? I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth like I do in Yoga.

I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. I want to kill the woman my husband loves. This is all her fault. I got pregnant to secure the man that I had already married. A woman shouldn’t have to do that. She should feel safe in her marriage. That’s why you got married – to feel safe from all the men who were trying to siphon your soul. I’d yielded my soul to Caleb willingly. Offered it up like a sacrificial lamb. Now, I was not only going to have to compete with the memory of another woman, but a shriveled up baby. He was already staring into her eyes like he could see the Grand Canyon tucked away in her irises.

I sigh and curl into a ball, tucking my knees under my chin and gripping my ankles.

I have done a number of things to keep this man. I have lied and cheated. I have been sexy and meek, fierce and vulnerable. I have been everything but myself.

He is mine right now, but I am never enough for him. I can feel it – see it in the way he looks at me. His eyes are always probing, searching for something. I don’t know what he’s looking for. I wish I did. I cannot compete against a baby – my baby.

I am who I am.

My name is Leah, and I will do anything to keep my husband.

Chapter Two

After forty-eight hours, I am discharged from the hospital. Caleb is with me while I wait to be discharged. He holds Estella, and I am almost jealous, except he touches me constantly – a hand on my arm, his thumb rubbing circles on the back of my hand, his lips on my temple. Caleb’s mother came earlier with his stepfather. They stayed for an hour, taking turns holding the baby before sweeping off to lunch with friends. I was relieved when they left. People hovering over me while my breasts slowly leaked made me squirm in discomfort. They brought a bottle of Bruichladdich for Caleb, a Tiffany’s piggy bank for the baby and a Gucci sweat set for me. Despite her uppitiness, the woman has excellent taste. I am wearing the set. I rub the material between my fingers as I wait to be wheeled downstairs.

“I can’t believe we did this,” Caleb says for the millionth time, looking down at her. “We made this.”

Technically, I made this. It's convenient how men get to sign their names to these little creations without doing much more than having an orgasm and assembling a crib. He reaches out a hand and tugs on my hair playfully. I smile weakly. I can’t stay mad at him. He’s perfect.

“She has red hair,” he says as if to establish her credibility as my child. She’s a Ginger all right. Poor kid will have her work cut out for her. It’s not easy to pull off red.

“What? That fluff? That’s not hair,” I tease.

He brought a plush lavender blanket with him. I have no idea where he got it since most of our baby things are green or white. I watch him swaddle her in it, like the nurses taught him.

“Did you call the nanny agency?” I ask timidly. This is a sore subject between us, along with breastfeeding, which Caleb strongly promotes and I couldn’t care less about. Our compromise consists of me pumping for a few months and then getting an augmentation.

He frowns. I don’t know if it’s because of what I’ve said or because the blanket is giving him problems.

“We’re not getting a nanny, Leah.”

I hate this. Caleb has all of these ideas about how things are supposed to be. You’d swear he was raised by Betty Fucking Crocker herself.

“You said yourself that you’re not going back to work."

“My friends – “ I begin, but he cuts me off.

“I don’t care what those spoiled voids do with their children. You are her mother, and you will raise her, not a stranger.”

I bite my lip to keep from crying. By the look on his face, I know I’m not going to win this battle. I should have known someone like Caleb Drake stands over what he owns, teeth bared, not allowing anyone to touch it.

“I don’t know anything about babies. I just thought I could have someone to help…” I throw my last straw … pout a little. Pouting usually works in my favor.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says coolly. “The rest of the birthing world does not get the option of a nanny – they figure it out. So will we.”

He is done swaddling Estella. He hands her to me, and a nurse comes in to wheel me to the car. I keep my eyes closed all the way, afraid to look at her.

When Caleb pulls my new ‘mommy’ car to the curb, we discover that you cannot get a swaddled baby into the car seat. I would have immediately turned sour. When things don’t go my way, I lose it. Instead, Caleb laughs, talks to the baby about how silly he is while he unwraps her. She is fast asleep, but he keeps up a dialogue. It’s silly, a grown man carrying on like that. When she is strapped, he helps me in. Before he closes the door, he kisses me softly on the lips. I close my eyes and savor it, tasting his attention. There are so few kisses that make me feel connected to him. He is always somewhere else … with someone else. If the baby can bring us together, then maybe I was right to do what I did.

It is my first time in my new car, which Caleb picked up from the dealership this morning. My friends all have less expensive SUVs. I got the best. It feels like a ninety thousand dollar prison sentence, despite my initial excitement to have it. He points things out as we drive. I listen intently to the sound of his voice, but not the actual words. I keep thinking about what's in the car seat.

At home, Caleb lifts Estella out of her seat and places her gently in her new crib. He is already calling her Stella. I laze on my favorite chaise lounge in our big living room, flicking through channels on the television. He brings me a breast pump, and I flinch.

“She has to eat, unless you want to do it the traditional way …”

I snatch the pump and get to work.

I feel like a cow being milked as the machine hums and purrs. How is this just? A woman carries a baby for forty-two grueling weeks, only to be hooked up to a machine and forced to feed it. Caleb seems to enjoy my discomfort. He has a strange sense of humor. He is always teasing and delivering some witty quip that I often fail to respond to, but now as he watches me with that little smile playing on his lips, I laugh.

“Leah Smith,” he says. “A mother.”

I roll my eyes. He likes those words, but they give me heart palpitations. When I am done, there is a large amount of watery looking milk in both bottles. I expect him to do the rest, but he returns with a wailing Estella in his arms and hands her to me. This is only the third time I have held her. I try to look natural to impress him, and it seems to work because when he hands me the bottle, he smiles and touches my face.

Maybe that is the key – pretending to love this motherhood deal. Maybe that's what he needs to see in me. I stare down at her as she sucks on the bottle. Her eyes are closed and she is making horrible noises like she’s half-starved. This isn’t terrible. I relax a little and study her face, looking for some trace of myself in her. Caleb was right; she has the makings of a redhead. The rest of her looks more like him – full, perfectly defined lips underneath a weird little nose. Surely, she will be beautiful.

“You remember I have a business trip on Monday?” he asks, sitting down opposite me.

My head snaps up, and I do nothing to disguise the panic on my face. Caleb is often away on business trips, but I thought he would take a few weeks off to let me settle in.

“You can’t leave me.”

He blinks at me slowly and takes a sip of something in a snifter glass.

“I don’t want to leave her yet, Leah. But, she came early. No one else can go, I've already tried to find someone.” He leans down in front of me, kissing my palm. “You’ll be fine. Your mother is coming in on Monday. She can help you. I’ll only be gone for three days.”

I want to wail at this bit of information. My mother is a drama addict on top of being an insufferable narcissist. A day with her feels like a week. Caleb sees the look on my face and frowns.

“She’s trying, Leah – she wanted to come. Just go easy on her.”

I bite my lip to keep from saying something really nasty. I have a malicious side to me that Caleb finds offensive, so I curb it when he is around. When he is not around, I swear like a sailor and throw things.

“How long is she staying?” I grumble.

“Burp her …”

“What?” I am so distracted by my mother’s imminent visit; I do not notice Estella is half choking, milk bubbling from between her rosebud lips.

“I don’t know how.”

He comes over, takes her from me and places her against his chest. He pats her back in short little taps that make a heartbeat sound.

“She’ll be here for a week.”

I roll over and hide my face in a pillow, with my butt sticking up in the air. He smacks me on the rear and laughs.

“It won’t be that bad.”

I grit my teeth. "Nope."

I feel the couch give as he sits next to me. I peek at him through my hair, which is wrapped around my face in a red mask. He holds the baby with one hand and uses the other to clear my face, swiping hair gently over my shoulder.

"Look at me," he says. I do, keeping my one exposed eye away from the little lump against his chest.

"You okay?"

I swallow. "Yup."

He purses his lips and nods. "Nope and Yup. Have I ever told you, you only say "nope" and "yup" when you're vulnerable?"

I groan. "Don't psychoanalyze me, Boy Scout."

He laughs and pushes me over so that I roll onto my back. I love it when he plays with me. It used to happen a lot more, but lately...

"It's gonna be okay, Red. If you need me, I'll jump on a plane and come home."

I smile and nod.

But, he is wrong. It will not be okay. The last time I saw my mother was when I was seven months pregnant. She flew down for my baby shower and complained the entire ride there about the horrible venue my girlfriends had chosen.

“It’s a tearoom, Mother – not a bar.”

At the shower, she refused to speak to anyone and sat in a corner sulking because no one had announced her as mother to the mother-to-be. A fistfight almost erupted with the tearoom’s owner because they did not serve organic Brazilian honey. I had refused to see her since.

Caleb – ever forgiving, ever understanding – encourages me to see past her flaws and help her understand how to be a better mother to me. I love this about him, but I learned long ago, that trying to be like him is beyond my reach. I pretend to understand what he is directing me toward and then do my own thing, which usually entails some sort of passive aggression. So, I agree with him wholeheartedly. I promise to make an effort with my mother and retire upstairs to get away from him and the noisy baby. I want a cigarette so badly it’s killing me. I go to the bathroom and strip, then I look at myself long and hard in the mirror. My stomach has thankfully deflated. A few more pounds and I’ll be back to normal. Now all I need to do is get my life back to normal.

Chapter Three

My mother arrives on Monday as scheduled. We all go to the airport to pick her up. Caleb is wary about taking the baby out in public so soon, but I convince him that she’ll be fine if we keep her in the stroller. I'm tired of sitting at home, tired of holding bottles and tired of pretending that eight pounds of screaming human flesh is cute. Besides, I want a Jamba Juice. I'm sipping on my juice and following Caleb and the stroller around baggage claim when we spot her obnoxious blonde head coming down the escalator. I roll my eyes. She is wearing an all-white pantsuit. Who travels in all white? She waves at us brightly and trots over, first hugging Caleb and then me.

She leans over the stroller and claps a hand over her mouth like she’s wrought with emotion.

God, I want to be sick.

“Ooooh,” she coos, “She looks like Caleb.”

This is absolute bullshit. I decided a day ago that she looks exactly like me. The kid has fluffy red hair and a heart shaped face. Regardless, Caleb smiles broadly, and they engage in a five-minute conversation about Estella’s eating and pooping habits. I’m confused as to how she knows anything about babies eating and pooping since a nanny raised my sister and me. I tap my foot impatiently on the tacky tropical carpeting and look longingly at the exit. Now that I’m here I just want to leave. Why did I think this was a good idea?

When Caleb’s attention is diverted with the baby, my mother pokes me accusingly in my stomach and shakes her head. I suck in my belly and look around guiltily. Who else noticed? True, I had a baby only three days ago, but I was being so careful to stand up tall – suck in the belly fat. My momentary lapse embarrasses me. It’s all I can think about on the ride home. I make a pact with myself to stop eating until I reassume my former figure.

At home, my mother insists on taking the room next to Estella’s, even though I had the larger guest room prepared for her.

“Mother, what is the purpose of having this room?” I ask as Caleb deposits her bag next to the bed.

“I want to help you, Leah. Get up with her in the middle of the night and all that good stuff.” She bats her eyelashes at Caleb, who smiles at her.

I hold my eye roll.

She is pretending to be enamored with the baby, but I know better than that. Public doting is what she does to spunk up her image, and when her audience is gone – so is the love. I remember being a child, having her stroke my hair, kiss my face, comment on how pretty I was – all in front of her friends. After they left, I would be sent back to my room to study or practice the violin – basically get out of my mother’s hair, until the next of her ‘good mommy’ performances.

“Really, Mother?” I say through my teeth. “How will you hear her after you’ve taken your sleeping pills?”

Her face becomes splotchy. Caleb elbows me in the ribs. We’re not supposed to talk about her addiction to sleep aids.

“I won’t take them tonight,” she says decidedly. “I’ll do the feedings so you can rest.”

Caleb gives her a quick side hug before we all go downstairs.

I watch suspiciously from my barstool in the kitchen as she carries Estella around and sings show tunes to her. We small talk, or they do. I pick at my split ends.

“We’re going to have a wonderful time while Daddy is gone,” she coos to the baby. “You, Mommy and I.”

Caleb shoots me a warning look before going upstairs to get the last of his things for the trip. I am itching to make a snarky comment, but I remember my promise to him and hold my tongue. Besides, if she wants to play ‘Grandmother’ and take care of all of Estella’s needs while Caleb is gone, so be it. It would save me the trouble.

“Her hair is red,” my mother says as soon as he’s out of earshot.

“Yes, I noticed.”

She clucks her tongue. “I always imagined that my grandchildren would be dark like Charles.”

“She’s not,” I snap, “because she’s mine.”

She shoots me a look out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t be so touchy, Johanna. It doesn’t become you.”

Always critical. I can’t wait until she’s gone.

But, then it hits me. When she’s gone, Caleb isn’t going to be staying home with the baby. I am. This business trip is the first of many during which I am going to have to pull all-nighters and change … human excrement … and – oh God – give baths. I almost fall off my barstool. A nanny, I have to break Caleb on this and make him see how much I need the help.

“Mother,” I say sweetly – almost too sweetly because she looks at me with her eyebrows raised. “Caleb doesn’t want me to get a nanny,” I complain. I am hoping to get her on my side enough to talk to him about it.

Her eyes dart to the stairs where Caleb disappeared only moments before. She licks her lips, and I lean in to better hear what nugget of wisdom she is going to impart. My mother is a very resourceful woman. It comes from being married to a controlling manipulator. She had to learn how to get her way, without getting her way.

When Court was eighteen, she wanted to go to Europe with her friends. My father had refused. Well, in actuality, he’d never verbally refused. He slashed his hand through the air as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The SLASH. It was a common occurrence in our Greek home. Didn’t like dinner? SLASH. Had a bad day at work and don’t want anyone to talk to you? SLASH. Leah crashes her fifty thousand dollar car for the fifth time? SLASH. At the end of all the slashing, Court had gone to Europe.

Remember when you were a poor boy? How much you wanted to travel? My mother.

She’s still a child. My father.

It’s good that she goes while we can still control her. We pay for the trip, the hotels, and the safest travel … much better than her going when she’s in her twenties, sleeping her way through France. My mother.

 My father hated the French.

He’d looked thoughtful. Mother’s logic was appealing. He booked everything a week later. Court was under careful, controlled watch, but by God she got to go to Europe. I went to community college. She gave me a small painting that she bought from a street vendor. It was a red umbrella suspended in the rain like an invisible hand was holding it. I’d pulled aside the paper and had immediately known what she was trying to say. I’d started to cry and Court had laughed and kissed me on the cheek.

“Don’t cry, Lee. That’s the point of this painting, yeah?”

Two months in Europe and she was saying yeah at the end of all of her sentences.

Court is … was … so cute. I want to bring her up, ask Mother about her last boyfriend, but the subject is still touchy.

 “What your husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” My mother’s voice snaps me back to the task at hand.

That’s it? I stare at her blankly. How am I supposed to translate that nonsense into full time baby help?

She sighs.

“Leah, darling … Caleb is away on business trips much of the time, is he not?”

I catch her drift and nod slowly, my eyes becoming wide at the possibility. Could I do it? Hire someone to come in and take care of the baby on the days that Caleb is gone?

My mother is an expert in the art of deceit. Once, before Caleb and I were married, we took a break at his request. He had just been in a terrible car accident and suffered major memory loss due to a blow to the head. To my absolute horror, he didn’t remember who I was. I remember thinking, How could this happen to me? I was about to get engaged to the man of my dreams, and here he was, looking at me like I was a perfect stranger. I had quickly gathered my wits and resolved to be supportive until his memory came back. It was only a matter of time before he would remember how much he wanted to be with me and placed the huge Tiffany’s rock I had found in his sock drawer on my finger. But, instead of getting closer to me as we waited for his memory to come back, he pulled away, opting to spend more and more time alone. Soon, he announced that he was … seeing another girl, if seeing is the right word for the shadiness that was going on, and girl is the right word for the cunning, worthless tramp that almost ruined my life. I called my mother right away to report what he had told me.

“Follow him,” she said. “Find out how serious it is, and make him end it.”

I had done just that, following him one evening to a tacky apartment complex in an even tackier neighborhood. The blocky buildings were painted a bright salmon color. I glanced at the pitiful attempt at landscaping that did nothing to cheer the place up and parked my car a block away from Caleb’s Audi. I was an emotional mess, knowing that he was probably going to see the girl. Through my rearview mirror, I watched as he walked right up to a door and knocked. He hadn’t consulted a piece of paper or his phone to find it. It was as if he knew exactly where to go. The door opened, and though I couldn’t see who was standing inside, I knew it must be her, because his face immediately broke out in a grin that was usually directed toward me; flirtatious and sexy. God, what was going on here?

I waited for several minutes before climbing out of my car and approaching the door. Just to make sure I was doing the right thing, I texted my mother, who responded with a firm: Go in there and get him before he does something stupid!

– Which was followed a few seconds later by a single word: Cry

I did both, and Caleb left with me that night. But, it was a short-lived victory. The girl he was seeing was an old girlfriend from college. Unbeknownst to both Caleb and me, she was pretending to have just met him, trying to squeeze her way back into his life for another round. I found this out after breaking into her apartment. I went straight to his condo with the evidence clutched in my fist, ready to out her scheme. She looked like trouble. I should have known the minute I laid eyes on her that it wasn’t a casual thing by some unsuspecting girl he’d met. It took me some time to figure out. He wasn’t home when I got there. I let myself in with a key that he didn’t know I had and studied the mess he left behind like I was fucking CSI. He had obviously cooked dinner for two. There was still the unmistakable smell of steak lingering in the halls. Had she been here with him? I felt sick. I found two wineglasses in the living room, and in a panic, I rushed to the bedroom for evidence that they had been together. His bed was unmade, but I saw no sign of sex anywhere in the room. What traces would he leave behind anyway? Caleb didn’t – wouldn’t use condoms. I’d gone on birth control shortly after we started dating because of this. He said the sight of them turned his stomach, so I wasn’t going to find any wrappers lying around.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I went to his dresser and opened a drawer, running my hands along the back of it until I found the square Tiffany box that held my engagement ring. I cracked it open and felt tears spring to my eyes. It had almost happened. He was getting ready to propose when that damn accident wiped me from his memory. I deserved to be with him, wearing my two-carat, princess cut diamond ring.

I got rid of her.

For a while.

After I drop Caleb off at the airport, I go shopping. Seems sort of shallow, like I should feel guilty … but I don’t. I want to feel the buttery silks beneath my fingers. I decide that since I no longer have a basketball attached to my waist, I need a whole new wardrobe.

I pull my new SUV into a spot at the Gables and head right for Nordstrom. In the dressing room, I avert my eyes away from my belly. It feels good to slide into dresses with cinched waists. By the time I head for the doors, I am carrying over three thousand dollars in merchandise. I toss everything on the backseat and decide to meet Katine for a drink.

“Aren’t you nursing?” she asks, sliding into the seat next to me. She eyes my burgeoning breasts as she plucks a cherry from the bartender’s garnish tray.

I shrug. “Pumping. So?”

She smiles all condescendingly and chews on her cherry. Katine looks like a blonde, botoxed Newt Gingrich when she’s being snotty. I lick the salt from the rim of my margarita glass and feel sorry for her.

“So. You’re not supposed to drink when you’re nursing.”

I roll my eyes.

“I have plenty of stock in the fridge at home. By the time I need to pump again, the alcohol will be out of my system.”

Katine widens her eyes, which makes her look even dumber than a blonde should.

“How’s Mommy Dearest?”

“She’s watching Baby Dearest,” I say. “Can we not talk about that?”

She shrugs like she couldn’t care less anyway. She orders a gin and tonic from the bartender and drinks it entirely too quickly.