Let's Pretend This Will Work

by Maddie Dawson

but somehow the grapevine considered the evidence and decided that I was a lawless temptress who had somehow snagged the only eligible man in the whole school and put him under some kind of spell.

Trying too hard never works with young people. They need to be treated like hostile, dangerous jungle cats who will slash you if you so much as make uninvited eye contact.

“This is very, very important. Don’t get married to someone who requires that you act quote, unquote, ‘normal’ in order to please him, okay? You don’t have to be anybody’s idea of normal. You’re wonderful and you’re an acquired taste, not just some generic woman who might be a match for just any old random guy. Remember that, and let him see the whole wonderful you.

Her own career soared, as she was practically a unicorn in her field: a fast, efficient, unencumbered woman genius who could put in eighty-hour

workweeks without having to arrange for childcare.

I can’t seem to help myself. Chaos follows me around.

The spirit guides know that you were expecting some kind of happily-ever-after, and you will get it, just not the way

you think. Right now, for a while, they say you’ve got some shit to go through.”

“That’s not the point. Who cares if he does? The important thing is that either way, you’re going to have a big, wonderful life.”

“Theater is all magic, really,” I say. “And here is a little piece of magic for you to carry with you while you’re doing the show. How do you think drama works anyway? It’s all smoke and mirrors and magic in the first place.”

“No,” he says. “I want you out of here. You are rug killer. You cannot stay here.”

apoplectic

“My mommy is in the ground now, so we can’t see her anymore. Did you know her?”

This takes forever, but I do it, mostly because I’m in awe of this terrifying little girl who knows the secrets of loss and life and death and also is apparently the authority in her household, ruling over

mealtime and treat time and all social interaction.

I like a man who can make jokes even when he’s obviously lost his mind.

“Who knows? Who cares?” “Who cares? What kind of psychic are you, anyway?” I say. “When I first saw your flyer on that subway platform, it had zero evidence that you

would ever answer a client’s question by saying who knows and who cares.” “I save those answers for my very favorite clients,” she says.

Love just showed up, right there on the curb on a Tuesday morning. The feeling slams into me. They ride off together, leaving the car she arrived in. I don’t know why this is yet another thing that brings me nearly to tears, but it does.

Then he says, “My poop needs a story to read. It won’t come out without a story.”

“So welcome to the Children’s Cooperative Madhouse Daycare,” she says.

And then, in a move that threatens to undo me once and for all, her little hand reaches up and she starts patting his back, too. Two little warriors/survivors.

What’s going to happen when he cracks open, I wonder. Who is there to comfort him?

I asked where Daddy was, and my mother cried, so I didn’t ask her again. It was because of the yellow crayon, I knew, and she probably hated me for that. It was as though he vanished into thin air, and we couldn’t speak of him again.

“She doesn’t have any babies at all,” says Alice with a kind of satisfaction I’ve noticed in women before. “I’ve been to her house.”

“Boy, if that isn’t the story of life. We all just want to be the only one, forever and ever.”

“WE GROW OUR OWN KIDS.”

It’s a very important point, they tell me, to realize that experts don’t

have all the knowledge about your ow...

I wonder what he would say if he somehow could have known she would marry four additional times,

Was this how she mourned him, always looking for someone to replace him and never quite finding the right person?

I notice that she never cries, even when she doesn’t get the coveted red bowl at lunchtime, even when she falls down. She just holds herself together,

a sturdy little person making her way through a hard day.

I almost can’t believe she’s the same child who fell apart so dramat...

She laughs. She actually laughs, so I push her faster over the grass, running alongside, and she squeals in happiness. It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard in my whole life.

I don’t know, there’s this way he has of moving like he belongs in the world. Lauren didn’t take him down into the ground with her.

I miss sharing a life with him that we can talk about.

I unwind him from the straitjacket of his daughters and his ex-wife and his responsibilities and paperwork, and I am light and airy and never demand

anything. Until now. Now I have asked him to think about the world in a playful way.

right now, there’s just not much left of me, I’m afraid. My whimsy is all depleted.”

“What I need,” he says, “is for the woman I’m in love with to understand that sometimes whimsy isn’t the thing that’s needed and to dial it back. Just a small request, please.”

This is a child who’s obviously missing her mother, and I’m sorry, but that deep, primal grief is a heavy feeling, and it takes all kinds of forms. Just let it go, for God’s sake. Why do we have to analyze every little thing and pathologize it? I don’t see why we even had to have a meeting about this.”

“Okay, then!” says Jerome. “Daycare comes through once again in our usual intuitive, nonpressure, inimitable, can’t-be-explained, miraculous style!

“Maya is a second wife, and maybe second wives have a wisdom to them. They saw how things went down the first time.”

“Maybe because they were the cause of it the first time.”

As I hear myself say this, it hits me that it really is true. They are a family again, and I’m just being strung along.

“And it would be in very bad taste of you to mind for one single second, I’m sure.” I’m afraid I’m going to choke up when I say, “Terribly bad taste. My job is to not mind anything, and to

stay on the sidelines, and to be available at night in case he comes over late, after he’s...

I stand there in the park, idiot that I am, and I realize again that I’m just the secret woman, hidden around

the corner, waiting for his morsels of attention. Lying beside him late at night when he comes over to make love. And aching for more. Always that ache.