“I told you we need our own bedrooms!” said Charlotte, glaring at me from the end of her mattress. She’d had her hair cut pixie short the month before. She’d always resembled Paul, but now she looked so much like him as a child that I sometimes had to stop myself from doing a double take.
“And I told you that’s not happening.” I was trying, with only moderate success, to keep my voice from rising. “You know Papi and I are saving up so you can go to college without racking up massive debt. Regardless, I wish you’d try to look on the bright side,” I added, ignoring the obvious eye rolls Charlotte and Isa were exchanging. “We gave you the big bedroom. We would be thrilled to have this much space.”
We had a nice-sized apartment, at least by New York standards. It occupied the ground and garden floors of a brownstone, and had big bay windows, a second half bathroom that kept us all from murdering each other, and a small stone patio out back where Shiloh and I liked to sit, weather permitting, as the sun went down. We’d been lucky to buy the place during a major dip in the market, though we’d probably pay it off the same week we hobbled into a nursing home. It was worth it. The very first time I visited our neighborhood, Carroll Gardens, I knew it was home. Which was saying a lot for someone who grew up outside of Grand Rapids and once thought Chicago would be her final resting place.
Still. Shiloh and I were jammed into a bedroom that barely fit a queen bed; the closet was so cramped that I kept my clothes on a rack next to the washer and dryer. Our room, unlike the girls’, faced the street, and though I knew what I’d signed up for living in New York, the mega grocery store that had recently been erected a few blocks away had more than doubled the traffic volume. Sometimes as I was drifting off at night, I could almost convince myself that the cars whizzing past harmonized with the ocean waves coming from our white-noise machine.
“Whatever. But you can’t yell at us when we fight. We need more alone time,” hissed Charlotte.
I stared at her for a second, willing myself to remember the sweet, pink-cheeked toddler who only wanted to be with me—on me, technically, in the koala-style latch she’d been so fond of. What on God’s green earth had possessed my daughter?
Oh, yeah—estrogen.
I supposed that wasn’t entirely fair. Charlotte had always been small and lean, but last year, she got unusually thin and was constantly guzzling water. It was summer, so Shiloh and I chalked it up to the heat, and that for Charlotte, to be awake is to be in motion. I’ll never forget Isa’s face peering down at me in the middle of the night. “Mom,” she said firmly. “Mom, get up right now. Charlotte’s sick.”
I denied it for the longest time, but the truth is, twins do share a psychic hotline. There’s literally no other way Isa could have known that Charlotte was this close to falling into a coma, considering they’d both been fast asleep. Charlotte was so asleep, in fact, that we could barely rouse her—and when we finally did, her words were slurred. A few hours later, a physician informed us that our daughter had type 1 diabetes and would need to take insulin every day for the rest of her life in order to stay alive. Carb counting, constant shots, monitoring for any sign that her blood sugar was too high or too low: it was a whole heck of a lot to put on an adolescent whose primary goal had been, up until that point, to ready herself to be the captain of the US women’s soccer team. And given how harrowing the situation had been and sometimes continued to be—there had already been a few close calls—I couldn’t fault her for being cranky.
“Come on, you guys,” I said, softening my tone. “Let’s not do this right now, okay? This isn’t why I let you stay home.” We’d decided to hold off on summer camp because we had yet to find one that truly knew how to handle Charlotte’s diabetes, and the girls had vetoed a sitter—they knew how to entertain themselves, they said. I had reluctantly agreed, unaware that by entertain, they meant engage in hand-to-hand combat every second I wasn’t hovering over them. “Why don’t we walk over to Prospect Park?” I suggested. It was a bit of a hike, but I knew spending time with them would lift my spirits.
“I’m going to finish my book,” said Isa, turning her back to me.
“I’m going to see if Cecelia can hang out,” said Charlotte.
I sighed. “I’ll be here if you don’t need me.”
I can’t say the girls did wonders for my mood, but as I made dinner, I was mostly able to forget about my blahs for a while. And just as well—Shiloh had been working long hours lately. The last thing he needed was to come home to Debbie Downer.
“Hey, you,” I said, kissing him hello after he let himself inside the apartment.
“Hey, yourself,” he said. He looked handsome in his crisp, white pilot shirt and navy pants, but there were dark circles under his eyes, and his skin, though naturally tan, looked like it could use more vitamin D.
I followed him into the kitchen. “Long flight?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, leaning against the counter. “It felt like it took three years.”
“I’m sorry.” I resisted the urge to mention that he could cut back. He’d worked his way up at the private air carrier where he’d been employed for more than a decade, and now he mostly shuttled executives around the US. It was a solid gig and paid well enough that between that and the modest
