LANCE
Cassie blows out the candles and my eyes fill with tears.
Everyone claps and wishes her “Happy Birthday.” Megan slips an arm around my waist, then presses her lips against my arm.
I nod to convince her that I’m okay and I smile as if to prove it but my wife can see the tears welling up.
“Family pics. C’mon.” Jensen, who has slipped into a photographer role, motions for us to join Cassie at the table where she and Sarah, my niece, are laughing. Sarah flew over from college for this weekend celebration and I worry when these two get together because Sarah is full of stories about how much fun she’s having in college, and Cassie is all ears. She goes to college next year and she can’t wait. I hope they’re not still discussing the spring break where the two of them plan to meet next.
Spring break?
No way.
But, Megan says I have to let her go. Hard to do that when you’re a protective dad.
Josh and Jamie rush to the table, and wrangle their way in front of the girls. Our sons are partners in crime and promptly stick their fingers into the cake which Rosemary, my mother-in-law, has baked.
Megan waddles towards the table and Cassie and Sarah move to let her stand between them. I stand behind her. Seven months’ pregnant with our third child due in a few months, Megan has filled out more than she did with the other two. I turned fifty a few months ago, and I’ve never been as tired as I have since the boys came along. Josh came first, followed a year later by Jamie. For baby number three we waited a while.
I pray we have a girl next.
Cassie wants a sister, too, and she wants us to call her Charlotte or Chloe.
The boys want another brother, and their name for him is Jack. We’ve never wanted to know what we’re having, and we are grateful for the surprise when he or she finally arrives.
“Joshie!” Megan cries, removing his hand from the cake. Jamie takes over and giggles before sticking his fingers in the cake, then scoops up a big blob of chocolate icing before shoving it into his mouth.
“Jamie, no.” I put my hand on my son’s shoulder. He stares up at me with his bright blue eyes. Our boys are a spitting image of me, everyone says. True, they have blue eyes and dirty blond hair, though mine is so grey now, but they have bits of Megan in them. Her nose, her lips.
“Smile!” Erica cries.
“Boys, look this way!” Arla yells, when the Terrible Two start to scamper away.
Cassie puts an arm around Megan’s shoulder. “Happy Birthday, Cassie.” Megan plants a kiss on her cheek.
“Thank you, Mom.”
Cassie started calling Megan ‘mom’ a little while before we got married, almost a year after we again that second time. Vivian didn’t like it, but Cassie didn’t care.
“Come on, Dad.” Cassie beckons for me to come to her side.
A murmur goes up around our group of friends and family who are gathered outside. We’re having a barbecue, and there’s a small bouncy castle. We invited the boys’ friends, because Cassie and Sarah didn’t want to spend the day trying to keep the boys entertained. Megan’s friend Arla came with her family, and Megan’s nephews and nieces are here, and Vivian is expected to join us at some point.
I wouldn’t want my life to be any other way. I have it all. I really do. Megan and our sons, Cassie doting on her stepmom. The photos of my wife and kids on my desk at work help keep the students away. That and my rapidly greying hair. I have more wrinkles now, but Megan says I still have the body of a guy in his thirties and I have to keep it that way, because my wife is still in her thirties. She laughs at me every time I come back from a gym session.
But the laughter soon turns to something else. Her libido is always higher than usual when she’s pregnant.
Not that I ever complain.
MEGAN
“The witch is here,” Erica bends down to whisper in my ear.
My mood deflates for a second, that way it always does when I hear that Vivian is close by. But just as quickly, I rebound back. I have Lance, and Cassie and I are so close, she’s like a daughter to me and a best friend. We’re also blessed with two little bouncing balls of energy.
Josh and Jamie, five- and four-year-olds, made my life complete and now we have another baby arriving soon.
I start to slowly raise myself from my chair.
“Don’t get up for her.” Arla is at my side in an instant. She’s been the best friend. She really has.
“I can’t be sitting down. I look even bigger.”
Arla makes a disapproving noise in her throat.
We childmind for one another and our children play together. Arla has a daughter the same age as Jamie, and another daughter who is two. She never married Scott. He broke her heart by taking up with another spin class student. The two of them went traveling around the world and set up a fitness center in Bali.
She went out with someone from work, and they got married. He’s good to her. He’s better for her, he loves her completely and he makes her happy. At the end of the day, isn’t that what life is about?
I did the right thing by taking on a job at a company founded and run by women because only women truly understand how a woman’s career is affected when she becomes pregnant, and then has to care for a baby and raise a family.
“I don’t want to be sitting down when she swans in,” I hiss under my breath. I’m aware that I look like a whale. I’m so much bigger this time around. At seven months I look as if I’m at full term.
I don’t think I would have been able to hold the position I have, as a department head, if I were somewhere else. If I were still at Roseby and Flock, I would never have gotten a promotion.
Preston is a Vice President there now. He never married and is quite the sugar daddy. On the few occasions Lance and I have run into him, he’s always had a young girl on his arm.
I was a young girl with an older man, once. I see that so clearly now that I am a mother; now that Cassie has turned eighteen, the same age I was when I met Lance.
“You look beautiful.” Arla’s compliment is timely because just then Vivian swans into the room wearing a figure-hugging dress that seems more appropriate for a bachelorette party.
I smile at Cassie’s horrified reaction. “Mom!” Her face is a picture of disgusted disapproval as she looks her mother up and down. “Your boobs look ridiculous.”
I blink I hadn’t even noticed Vivian’s chest. My eyes were on the hemline of the dress. I’m sure that if she sits down she’ll flash her panties at everyone.
“Megan. You have ballooned.” Vivian’s Hollywood smile dazzles me as she comes towards me. It’s then that I notice her pushed up, obviously plastic, new breast implants. It doesn’t help that she has her usual signature plunging neckline. But the skin around her neck and below is starting to turn crepey. “
“Having babies will do that to you.”
We air kiss and smile at one another, putting on the civil front both of us have perfected. I try not to let my gaze dip back down to her chest. It’s so difficult because they look so monstrously unreal.
“Gianni didn’t come?” I ask. She married the plastic surgeon she was dating, soon after Lance I and got married, but we’ve only seen him a handful of times.
We only get together with Vivian on Cassie’s birthday, and for major milestones, like her high school graduation, which was when we last saw her husband.
Vivian shrugs, rolls her eyes, and then something in her expression changes. Her face softens, for a split second, the hard façade she has put up, melts. I catch a flash of the real Vivian. She’s looking at Lance.
I know it’s him, because I’ve seen that expression on Vivian’s face before. His hand slides around my waist protectively and he hugs me to him, just like he always.
“You okay, babe?” He presses his lips to the top of my head. I look up at him, overcome with love and emotion. After six years of marriage, and two decades since we first met, and it feels like we’ve already had a lifetime together. With him I feel heard. I feel seen. I feel loved, and its’s all because of this man.
Our eyes connect and everything and everyone around us vanishes. I smile at him. “I’m fine.”
“Want to lie down?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
He hasn’t acknowledged Vivian yet. It’s like he has a filter that blocks her out. Even I feel embarrassed for her. Pulling my gaze away from him, I press my fingers into his waist. “Vivian’s here.”
He groans. It’s low, and quiet, but I hear it, and seeing Vivian’s face harden, I’m certain she heard it too.
“Vivian.” That one word is Lance’s acknowledgment.
Just like a switch, her persona is back. The fake smile, the wide eyes. “I was just saying to Megan that she’s so big this time around.”
Lance’s arm hugs me closer. “Having babies will do that to you.”
I giggle because he has echoed my exact words.
“I’m sure I didn’t look like a whale when I was pregnant with Cassie.”
“I don’t remember,” Lance says, dismissively. “I love making babies with this woman. She can balloon all she wants and I wouldn’t care.”
I press my lips together, indicating my disapproval of his words. It’s one thing standing up for me, but another being dismissive of Vivian when I can sense that on some level she’s hurting. She still feels for Lance, I know it in my gut. But she has lost him forever.
He belongs to me.
And now he’s looking down at me as if he could eat me up. And this is why I only have to suggest that I’d like to have another baby, and Lance is happy to oblige.
It’s getting harder to hide our desire from the boys. They walk in on us in the mornings, and sometimes during the night, if they can’t sleep, they’ll come into our bed. We’ve had to put a lock on our bedroom door, and our en-suite.
My mom comes over with a plate of cut up cake and some napkins just as Vivian makes a beeline for Troy, Erica’s boyfriend who happens to be a personal trainer.
I warned Erica about keeping a tight leash on him when Vivian arrived, and judging by the way my sister has placed herself between her boyfriend and Vivian, my sister is definitely taking heed.
“Cake?” My mom holds the plate up to us. I shake my head, not feeling hungry.
“You did a great job, Rosemary,” says Lance, taking a slice.
My mom nods. “Eighteen,” my mother sighs and I feel my insides tightening.
“Amazing how fast time flies,” says Lance. He offers me the slice but I shake my head. He takes a bite.
“Amazing to think that Megan was the same age as Cassie when you met.” My mother’s words have the effect of turning Lance’s mouth dry.
They have come to like each other over the years. She has softened, because she has seen how good he is to me. But my mother also doesn’t forget, and she likes to drop the occasional barbed comment if the opportunity presents itself.
Lance’s throat bobs, and I imagine he’s having difficulty swallowing. “I would do the same thing all over again, Rosemary,” he says, finally. “I wouldn’t change a thing, except, I would reach out sooner to let Megan know why I left.”
“Mom, drop it. Please.”
“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it—.”
“Yes, you do, Mom. Please don’t cause a scene.”
“I’m not!” My mother gets defensive. “I’m just pointing out that she’s so young and if she were to meet an older man—”
“Mom!” I wish my mother would choose her moments. Surrounded by our guests is the wrong time to be bringng this up.
“I love your daughter very much, Rosemary. I love her more than I could ever explain, or say, or show. It wasn’t ideal, as a parent, I understand, but it happened. What will be will be. Megan and I belong together and nothing you say or anyone else says matters.”
Vivian glides over to us probably sensing a commotion.
“Goodness, Vivian! Cover up, for the sake of the poor little children. Have some mercy on them. Showing so much cleavage!” My mom peers closer to Vivian’s chest and Lance I watch transfixed because it seems like she’s about to poke them to see if they’re real.
Thankfully she doesn’t. She lifts her head and stares at Vivian, perplexed. “They look very … very… buoyant. As if you’ve inflated them with a balloon pump.” She bursts out laughing. “I’m afraid I might bump into you and burst one!” With that, she swivels on her heel and wanders off to offer more cake to guests.
Vivian looks as if she’s been stung by a wasp. “Your mother is very direct.”
“Sorry,” I say, wincing. “My mom doesn’t hold back with her words.”
“That’s what we love about her,” says Lance. He looks at me again, and his gaze heating up my insides. I hear Vivian groan and from my periphery I can tell that she’s walked away.
“Your mom is right to remind me. If Cassie and her teacher did what we did, I would go insane,” says Lance, softly, dipping his head as if he’s about to kiss me. I give a subtle shake of my head. Not here in front of everyone.
“Me, too.” I inhale a breath.
It’s different, being a parent. We do all we can to protect our children, and to guide them and make life soft and comfortable for them.
We do our best.
I like to believe that my parents did their best. Now that I am older and wiser, I have forgiven my father for walking away. We never saw him again, but I tell myself he left us because the alternative would have been even worse. The arguments and fighting and swearing between my parents would have destroyed us even more.
That’s what I tell myself.
Maybe it’s true.
Who knows?
I’ve found a way of accepting what happened, and making peace with it and moving on.
“But we’re not going to break up, or have fights, or have an unhappy home, and Cassie and our kids won’t have a reason to go running to their teachers for help,” he says.
“No, but there might be other reasons…”
“We’ll deal with things as and when they happen.” He gives me an I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it look, and then he takes my hand and we wander around mingling with our guests.
My baby just kicked, and I place a hand on my belly, feeling the life moving inside me.
We’re not going to break up, or have fights, or have an unhappy home.
Never.
My life is good.
My life is beautiful.