“Let’s get over to the conference room but after that I’d like to talk about the GDL,” Aneela says, as she pushes the stroller for me while I carry Rocky to the conference room.
I whisper to him, “OK Rock, c’mon, do this for Jeej, OK? It’s just an hour, do it for Jeej.” But he’s ornery, impatient, overstimulated by all the new faces and the bright office lighting. I try to get my brain to scan itself for what I could say to Aneela later, but Rocky has scrambled everything and I can only concentrate on keeping him quiet when we get into the conference room.
We walk into the room and I feel the spotlight. “Gigi, my God, how are you, darling? Lovely to see you. Really missing you around here, really. Now look, who’s this? Can you believe it? Isn’t he gorgeous?” Isla and Francisco, the other paralegals, give me double kisses and squeezes on the arm, while Charlie takes Rocky from me and coos over him. Francisco lets him clench his little fist around his finger. I relax for a minute.
A flash of a parallel me from another life. The strong me who used to put on a suit, strap baby Johnny on in the carrier, take the subway and drop him at the day care on the way to work. Work all day, pick him up, strap him on, take the subway home, bathe him in the kitchen sink, sing him to sleep, then read cases until midnight.
Lara enters the room; her turquoise eyes give Charlie a meaningful glance and she quickly hands Rocky back to me and grabs her notebook to rush to her seat at the front. People start taking sandwiches from the middle of the table and I decide to try to strap Rocky in the stroller and rock him to sleep but he’s not having it. I pull him out and stay standing in the back of the room, swaying with him in my arms.
“Gigi, we’re going to begin, are you alright there?” Lara says, and ten pairs of eyes look at me, some smiling, some supportive, some impassive, some questioning, some noticing that I’m still in the same maternity skirt I wore to the office three days a week toward the end. No one offers to make me a plate.
“Sure, please just ignore us, I’m listening,” hoping they didn’t hear the tremble in my voice. They’re restructuring our division, new teams, but Rocky doesn’t want to be swayed, he doesn’t want to be rocked, he doesn’t want to be here. Charlie gives me a quick glance to reassure me but I know I’m giving working mothers a bad name.
Lara keeps talking: “Due to the length of time it’s currently taking for appeals to be heard, there seems to be an uneven distribution…”
I keep swaying, put him over my shoulder, start pacing the back of the room, but it’s not working. I try the pacifier. He spits it out and it tumbles to an unreachable place under the table. OK, try a bottle, look competent, like this isn’t stressing you, normal mom stuff. Get a bottle. I spy the corner seat next to Francisco and sit down. OK, just lean over, get the formula out of the bag, one step at a time. I hold Rocky over my shoulder with one hand and try to steady him there while he squalls. I unscrew the cap of the formula with the other hand, then unscrew the cap of the bottle, put the two bottles next to each other…
“Can I help you?” Francisco whispers, kindly, softly.
“Um, no, it’s OK, I’ll manage, thank you though,” I whisper back as I watch the open bottle of formula slide out of my grip because I have to catch Rocky, who’s slipping from my shoulder with his head about to hit the—5, 6, 7, 8—table. Which it does. Loudly.
In the moment of silence before the huge intake of breath Rocky needs to prepare his scream, there’s Francisco, wearing 200 mls of formula on his shirt and his size 32 pinstripe trousers, down to the tip of his pointy Paul Smiths. There’s the room full of people who just saw me drop my baby on the conference table during my Keeping in Touch day. There’s the turquoise eyes of Lara in black-frame glasses, her mouth taut, arms crossed, brow furrowed.
Rocky wails. A call to action. Aneela stands up, not knowing what to do first, saying, “What can I do, Gigi?” Charlie stands up, impotent arms outstretched, calling to me, “Gigi, are you alright? Should I get your bag?” Charlie, Aneela, Isla and all the others, passing napkins to Francisco, mopping up the table, I know they’re looking at me but I stare at the floor, pick up Rocky, grab my bag and just say, “Sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I run to the bathroom, holding my screaming son close to my chest, and get in a stall and sit on the floor with my back against the door. I hold him and rock, rub his fuzzy head and wonder what the fuck to do next.
“Rocky, baby, look what I have, look what I have.” I try to keep an even tone, try not to let him feel my stress, which is futile because he is my stress. And I’m his. His cries bounce off the stall walls and he’s a hundred times louder in here. I have no backup milk. I lost the pacifier under the conference table. I have a pouch of chicken, apple and parsnip puree and I try a bit of that on his lip. I still don’t know what the hell a parsnip is.
