I supposed that if Isabel were found dismembered on the side of the highway, it might be newsworthy. But for whatever reason, as it was, the search for her was still largely not being picked up by the press.
Punctuating the stress I was feeling about Isabel still being missing, and the Google Doc that must never be excavated, was the fact that I was also one week closer to ending my maternity leave—just three weeks to go, in fact. My principal had called me about a week ago to “check in,” and the conversation had left me nauseated. She’d brought up various tasks I would need to complete before returning, such as syncing up my syllabus with the substitute’s, submitting my first unit plan for my yearly portfolio, and drafting an assessment map for the year. These tasks, which I had once executed with relative ease and enthusiasm—actually enjoying poring over rubrics, geekily thinking about each and every word in every grid box—now sounded completely foreign to me, like I was being given a to-do list in another language. I didn’t even know where to begin. Tying my shoe tired me. Literally. I was pretty much exclusively wearing slip-ons. Opening up an Excel document and generating grading criteria for a thesis statement would surely kill me.
I had been uneasily dwelling on my conversation with her ever since—a conversation that had, ironically, ended with her asking if I was excited to have a break from the baby. As if work were some kind of a break! As if the thought of being separated from Clara didn’t make me salivate with both desire and nausea. My feelings were ineffable, but “excited” wasn’t the word. The strangest part was that my principal was in her early forties and had three young kids herself. So I couldn’t understand why she seemed to have no idea how I was feeling right now, how impossible my return felt to me. It just served to confirm that I might really be the only person, or at least one of the very few, who found all this so very hard.
On this Monday morning, Tim had stuck around putting final touches on the design he was pitching at a meeting closer to our apartment than his office in Brooklyn. I think he also felt guilty about leaving me alone with the baby all day on Sunday.
I kind of liked watching him work. His brow was furrowed and he was completely focused, sitting tall at his slanted desk by the window, visibly present in both his body and brain, pausing only to push his glasses back up on his nose. He used to work from home frequently, but since Clara was born, he preferred to go to his office, or a shared work space he sometimes used in our neighborhood. Anywhere but here, pretty much. But I was glad he was here this morning because it gave me an opportunity to talk to him about something I’d been thinking about vaguely for a few weeks now.
He saw me looking at him and smiled slightly. “What’s up, babe?” His pet name filled me with guilty bile rather than warmth. I didn’t deserve his love, though I had no intention of telling him this.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. Not a strong opening. “Remember I mentioned I talked to my principal a few days ago? It’s got me thinking that I might not be quite ready to go back yet.”
He blinked. Which was fair: that was a blink-worthy comment. “Really?” he said. “I thought you were psyched to go back to work? What about Diana?”
We had already found a fantastic nanny through a referral in Upper West Side Moms. （Occasionally, the Facebook group was good for more than helping me pass mindless minutes nosily reading about other people’s problems.） She came highly recommended from someone in the group whose children were now both in elementary school and no longer needed full-time care.
“Yeah, I know. I hate to lose her. But maybe we could offer her a few afternoons a week until I go back full time—sort of a peace offering? And it would be amazing for me to get a break.”
He’d turned fully toward me now, his eyes slightly obscured behind the windows’ glare playing over the lenses of his glasses. “Yeah. I hear you,” he said, his voice carefully modulated. “But I don’t know. We’d be stretched pretty thin if we were paying for a part-time nanny and you aren’t working.”
He was only being practical. I knew that. But it felt like my options were either round-the-clock childcare with no shower breaks, or to return to a job that I simply wasn’t ready to do. “I get that. So maybe we’d lose Diana. It’d be too bad, but . . . it’s just weird to go back to school in November, right in the middle of the semester. It makes a lot more sense for me to go back in January. Or even next year. Have a clean start.”