The Secrets of Apricot Lane

By Amy Tatko

After the birth of her only child, Elizabeth grows lonely during her husband’s long trips and finds unexpected companionship in her neighbor Nick, a single father with a baby boy. An unlikely friendship begins between the two parents of newborns, despite her career as a Russian professor and his job as a truck driver. Their connection grows deeper, and their love affair consumes Elizabeth and torments Nick. When he destroys her dream for their future, Elizabeth must confront her marriage and identity as a mother. Through the years, she longs for Nick and writes to him. Only the approach of death prompts him to answer her call. From idyllic California to a mysterious rendezvous on Red Square in Moscow, The Secrets of Apricot Lane shows how love can fulfill some dreams and shatter others. The romance between Elizabeth and Nick, their love for their children, and the power of marriage create an epic tale that spans twenty-five years and reveals the flaws of class and gender stereotypes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359188154

Book preview

Onegin

ONCE UPON A TIME

April 12, 1985

As the sun sprayed its tangerine rays across a mountain-valley village at dawn on a day in April, two babies traveled out of their mothers’ wombs and into a world that promised abundance to one and nothing to the other.

The girl was born first. She tumbled out on the fifth push and landed pink and screeching into her father’s hands. The midwife wrapped her in a towel and placed her at her mother’s breast, where she suckled with success, the first accomplishment of many that would define her in her parents’ eyes and challenge her to decide for herself what mattered and who she was.

Eight minutes later and a half-mile away, the boy slipped out blue and silent, drugged from his mother’s painkillers. He failed his first test, scoring four points out of ten on the hospital examination that measured a newborn’s well-being. His mother waved him off when the doctor handed him to her. His father stepped forward, as he would more and more with each passing day. Circumstances demanded it of him.

The girl was named Katherine, after the great Russian tsarina, a figure that her mother revered and a name that her father had agreed to months in advance. They would call her Katya and teach her Russian. The midwife placed the placenta in a kitchen pot, and the father cut the umbilical cord and shot black-and-white photographs of the peaceful homebirth.

The boy was named Eddie, after nobody and nothing in particular. It was the only name that his father could conjure from his mother when she sat up and looked at the child for the first time several hours after his birth. The nurse whispered post-partum depression into the father’s ear. The father knew the real diagnosis but remained silent.

Katya spent the first night of her life nestled between her parents in their nuptial bed in a Mediterranean-style cottage that they owned mortgage-free at 608 Apricot Lane.

Eddie spent his first night in the neo-natal unit before his unwed parents took him home the next day to their one-bedroom rental at 615 Apricot Lane.

In the darkness of the second night of their lives, the babies awoke and began to scream. It was a warm night, and the windows in both houses were open. She heard him in the distance and wrinkled her brow as she wondered what he was. He heard her down the street and relaxed in the comforting sound of one of his own.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

CHAPTER ONE

In a thrift-store bassinet, the baby boy awoke from his morning nap and opened his eyes. He did not search long before he found the comfort of his father’s face. When the boy slept, Nick sat beside him and watched the television with the volume low. When the boy was awake, Nick held him, rocked him, sang to him, talked to him, pushed him through the neighborhood in the stroller, and fed him warm formula on the schedule from the nurses in the maternity ward. For now he would be with his son day and night. The money would last a few months. He had planned ahead and arranged jobs during her pregnancy that brought in as much money in six months as he usually earned in a full year. Trucking was decent money, and Nick had put in his miles, countless thousands of them, for the baby. He knew even then, when everything with her was still good, that it would probably come to this, that she would not be up for it. No matter. For now he was at home with his baby, where he wanted to be and where he was needed most.

He lifted the child from beneath the blanket. Hey there, little man. That was a nice nap, wasn’t it? Maybe Mama will feed you now. Let’s go see how she’s doing. There was no reason to expect anything different on day nine than on the previous days since his son’s birth, yet Nick walked into the bedroom with the child cradled in his arms anyway. The baby’s awake. You want to try feeding him?

The lump in the bed moved, and the standard uh-uh came from under the covers.

Can I bring you anything? We have some of that chicken casserole from your ma.

Uh-uh.

You feeling any better today?

She never answered that one.

All right, then. We’ll be in the living room if you want to come join us. Eddie sure would love to see his mama, wouldn’t you, son?

Nick stood beside the bed and looked down at her dark hair spread across the white pillowcase. The dirty white pillowcase. The linens had not been changed since before the birth. Nick could barely keep up with the housework. One of these days she would get up. She would get up, walk into the living room, and take the boy into her arms. Everything would be fine. The nurses said to be patient. They warned him not to push her. He wasn’t the pushing type anyway, but he wondered whether there was something that someone ought to be doing. He didn’t see how a woman could do this to her own child. Yet, she had warned him. None of it should have surprised him.

Nick heated a bottle for Eddie and some casserole for himself. It was only ten in the morning, but the meaning of time had changed. Meals came when Nick needed them. Sleep came when the boy allowed it. Dinner could be at four o’clock one afternoon and nine o’clock the next night. Everything had turned upside-down since Eddie was born. That was how life went with babies.

The twosome settled into Nick’s stuffed armchair, and while Eddie sucked on the bottle, Nick managed to get a bite of food into his own mouth every so often. Dorothy kept bringing meals, thank goodness. She refused to help with the baby but found a way to make herself useful. Disgusted with her daughter’s behavior, she would not play the role of babysitter. That was just as well anyway. Nick did not dare let her into the house. He knew the scene that would follow, and the nurses had warned him not to allow anyone in who might disturb Randi.

Good job, buddy. Nick removed the empty bottle from the boy’s mouth and placed it on the metal tray table beside his plate. Sorry you can’t have the real stuff, but just you wait. We’ll be barbecuing steaks before you know it. And your mama will be right there with us.

The nurses praised him for the talk. They said his voice and smell would replace the womb as the baby’s new home. If Eddie could not bond with his mother or feed at her breast, then at least he had the consistency of his father’s care. Other babies had it much worse, the nurses said. They were passed from one caregiver to another, day after day, until their mothers were ready to take over. Sometimes that day never came. Sometimes there was no choice, and the state stepped in.

Don’t you worry, Mr. Jones, his favorite nurse had said. You’re a good father. Eddie will be fine. Either way.

There was no either way in Nick’s mind. This was not a case of either/or. Randi would come around. His son had a mother, and she would do her job as soon as she could. They were a family now, a real family of three.

How long will it be? Nick had asked the nurse.

Days. Or weeks. Or months. Each one is different. There is medication, if she wants it. And her doctor can refer her for counseling, when she’s ready.

Couldn’t we get that started now? To save time?

The patient has to ask for help. This is a decision she has to make on her own.

But she can’t, Nick said. She isn’t capable of making decisions. Shouldn’t we be doing more for her?

Give it some time, Mr. Jones. We’re just a phone call away if you have any questions.

The nurses and the casseroles had sustained him for a week and a half, but Nick sensed that something needed to change soon. Maybe she would get out of bed later that day.

He finished his early lunch, changed Eddie’s diaper, and nestled the baby into the stroller for a walk. Nick loved this time of year, with the chill gone from the air, the rainy season behind them, and the promise of summer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he needed sunshine and warmth. Yet, since he moved out of the city and into the quiet of Orange Valley, he had missed the milder summers of the coast. The inland heat of the valley was agony for too many months of the year. Yet, if he hadn’t moved, he never would have met Randi, and without Randi, there would be no baby boy.

He pushed the stroller down the street and peered across the front yard of the house a few doors down. A neighbor had told him that the couple there had a new baby, too. Nick had seen a pink balloon tied to their mailbox last week and grinned to himself. Those poor folks got stuck with a girl when he was the lucky winner of a son. The balloon was gone now. The freshness of the births had passed. Time had a way of moving everyone along and forcing new parents to cut the balloon string before they wanted to. It wouldn’t be much longer now. Maybe she would be up when they got home. Maybe she would be sitting on the couch, brushing out her rose-scented hair, still wet from the shower, ready to take her boy into her arms and give Nick a little loving, too. It had been a while, after all. It had been a while now.

* * *

The moon had shifted since the last feeding. Two hours earlier, the light of the full moon was cascading off the eaves of the roof and cast a pale yellow glow across the bed as Elizabeth held her baby at her breast. Now the rays were direct. If she leaned forward slightly and tilted her head upward, Elizabeth could see the massive orb hovering above the palm trees and amongst the polka-dot stars. A swath of bright, near-dawn moonlight illuminated the sheets and blankets across her lap as she waited.

I’m leaking! Please hurry. The please was not manners. It was not even merely the desperate plea of a new mother dripping milk from her engorged breasts. This please of Elizabeth’s was the sharp order of a wife to her bumbling husband. She could imagine his slow hands wiping and re-wiping, taking as much time as they wanted. She could picture his fingers fumbling about with the snaps on the pajamas, unaware that his dilly-dallying had outlasted her patience.

These darn snaps. Why don’t they make these things with zippers?

His voice drifted out of the baby’s room, across the hallway, and into the bedroom where Elizabeth sat propped against the headboard, naked except for saggy maternity underpants whose elastic waistband disappeared into the folds of her post-partum flesh. Her regular underpants were too tight. The maternity underwear was too big. Nothing fit. Everything irritated her belly and her breasts and her nerves. The fact that her husband had never intended to become a father did not permit him to bumble through the job. She had never planned to become a mother either, but that did not excuse her from performing well in her new role. Through more than fifteen years of adulthood, she had sat solidly in the no, thank you camp as one friend after another became pregnant and gave birth. As her thirty-fifth birthday approached, however, her internal alarm clock rang in a way that no snooze button could quiet. The thought of her eggs withering away and dying in her unused womb belied her old script about wanting nothing to do with motherhood. The two ordinary parts of life – marriage and family – that most people anchored themselves to had never appealed to Elizabeth until, well, suddenly, one fine day, they did appeal. Even now, though, as she watched the moonlight bounce off her dripping nipples and waited for her husband to bring her their newborn, she felt detached, like a poorly trained actress rehearsing for a part that was in fact her own life.

Andrew appeared at last at her bedside, holding seven-pound Katya in his arms. He changed her, and Elizabeth fed her. The teamwork had gotten them through the first ten days of parenthood. Gazing at their baby like fools in love had also occupied much of their time in the first days as new parents. One or the other of them could be heard proclaiming, She’s so beautiful, or It’s such a miracle, throughout much of the day. They had settled into their nest together, the three of them, but now the papa bird would fly away. Day eleven would mark the start of Elizabeth’s solo tenure. By the time Katya cried to eat again, Elizabeth would be alone. Andrew’s suitcase and briefcase stood by the front door, destined, like him, for Argentina. The travel writer had never agreed to any anchor, and after more than a month at home, he was anxious to step back out into the world that had captured his heart as no woman or baby ever could.

Elizabeth took the whimpering child from her husband and placed the little lips at her chest. Mother and daughter both felt instant relief as the vigorous suckling drew the warm sweet milk from one body and into the other. Andrew walked around to his side of the bed, cutting off the supply of moonlight that had enabled Elizabeth to gaze at the translucent peach skin of her baby’s cheek and the curly tips of the dark lashes that closed peacefully as Katya drank.

I don’t feel right leaving you, Andrew said. He mucked about beneath the covers and pulled the sheet too far to his side, disturbing the warmth and the calm of the mother-daughter nursing bond. But I really can’t stay much longer.

Elizabeth sighed. Every ounce of patience and strength, physical and mental, was being directed to this helpless new creature. The one beside her in the bed would have to fend for himself.

We’ve already discussed this, she said. The quiet in her voice came not from a place of gentleness but rather from exhaustion. The notion of repeating the same conversation, the thought of conjuring the energy to placate her husband’s anxiety, depleted her. She sighed again. I’ll be fine. You can’t not go.

To prolong his stay at home would delay his research and threaten the silent equilibrium that was the internal mechanism of his essence and therefore of their marriage: his life, her life, their life, in that order. They had a plan for maintaining the equilibrium, and his departure and his absence were the first phase of a rational and well-laid plan that would enable them to share the childcare throughout the first year while Andrew was writing in his home office. There could be no writing, though, if he did not first go to Argentina to gather the material.

Well, it’s just that – he began again.

Elizabeth sighed loudly enough for him to hear her this time in her effort to place a final punctuation mark at the end of a repetitive conversation that she could not bear to repeat once more. Yet, in the end, Andrew was like most people. Andrew was like her anyway. He needed one last reassurance, despite his claims of independence, freedom, and self-sufficiency.

This is a fact of our life, she said. That’s it. Period. How many times have we been over this? Guilt cannot be the reason that you stay. I want to be here. You want to be there. This is who we are. It’s always worked before, and I’m sure it will be fine now.

He slid a hand through the space that separated them and placed it on her knee. One squeeze qualified as his response. Soon his soft snoring played harmony to Katya’s sucking. And soon after that, Elizabeth stopped hearing either as she, too, drifted off.

When she awoke to her baby’s crying a few hours later, Elizabeth found the space beside her occupied by Katya and the space beside that empty. The clock read 7:03, the moon had vanished, and the suitcase, the briefcase, and the husband were gone.

* * *

Nick pushed the stroller past the neighbor’s rose garden and around the corner toward the house. Randi was smoking on the front steps. There was a glass in her hand, but she would sneak into the house and dump it in the sink before he and the baby got to her. He passed the house where the other baby lived. Sometimes he saw the woman sitting in the front window, and he could tell – the way that only someone who knew about such matters could tell – that she was nursing her baby. He smiled with relief every time he thought of her with a girl and himself with a boy. Everything would have been different if Eddie had not been a boy. Nick doubted that he would have had it in him to do it for a girl. He loved little girls, with their sweet laughter and their quiet curiosity about parts of life that boys did not even see. Little girls were lovable. It was what they grew into that scared Nick.

The woman was not at the window, but as Nick looked down the street, he thought he saw her coming toward him. He squinted. It was her alright, and she was alone. Maybe she had one of those husbands with a job that paid him to stay home after a baby was born. Maybe she had a live-in nanny, like celebrities and the super-rich. He squinted again. A bundle of some sort hung on her front from her shoulders. She was not alone after all. Nick had seen one of those somewhere. He saw a picture once, that was it, in the book that the nurses gave him. They had collected money around the maternity ward and delivered a basket of goodies. All of it was useful – the bottles and blankets for Eddie, the fruit and snacks for Nick – but the baby book was the best and had become his secret bible. He paged through it when Randi was asleep. There was a photograph of those baby holders and an article about mothers in Africa. Nick had never been a reader, but he knew that if a book could teach him how to be a father, then books could teach anyone anything. If you read enough of them, they could probably even teach you how to live.

The neighbor was getting closer. He had never seen her face before. She was pretty in the way of a rich woman, with sparse make-up, plain hair, the simple shine of gold jewelry here and there, nothing showy like Randi with her painted nails and crispy hair spray.

Howdy. Beautiful day, he said.

The woman smiled at him and patted her bundle with one hand. Such a beautiful day. Can you smell the orange blossoms?

Nick had not noticed anything other than the sunshine and the roses, but he lifted his snout and sniffed. Oh, yeah. Nothin’ like it.

She was standing close now, too close, and her smile was still hanging around, as if she had forgotten to put it away after saying hello. There was something odd about her, in a nice way, a way that kept Nick from taking a step back.

Oh, no.

What? She jumped and looked around. What is it?

You’re bleeding. Nick raised one hand and gestured toward the side of her head.

Oh, that. A boy on a bicycle hit me. Can you believe that? Knocked me right to the ground with the baby and all.

Nick rubbed his hand across his face and scratched the back of his neck. Eddie started to fuss, and Nick rocked the stroller back and forth until his son grew quiet. It, uh, it doesn’t look too good.

It’s just blood.

Randi was gone. There was an empty space on the front step where she had been sitting. Nick scratched his neck again. You ought to clean it out. You alone there? He pointed toward her house.

Yes. Well, with Katya. See? She pulled the cloth open so Nick could admire her baby.

Beautiful. Like her mother. The words slid out accidentally. Men were not supposed to make comments like that anymore, what with the women’s lib and all. Nick knew the rules, even if he did not agree with them, but this was different. This came out by itself.

Well, aren’t you charming, she said. I can’t decide which is more beautiful, the black circles under my eyes or the stretch marks across my belly.

She laughed, so Nick did, too, grateful for her humor and her lightness. Is there anyone around to take a look at your head? Maybe clean it out a bit?

She touched the side of her head again where the blood had hardened into a scab. I’ll be fine.

Nick nodded. I guess we’ll be getting home then. Nap time.

The neighbor peeked around inside the stroller. He beat you to it.

She started toward her house, and Nick pushed the stroller home. He was halfway up the driveway when he heard her voice.

What’s his name? She was standing at her front door, yelling down the street with the goofy smile still on her face.

Eddie.

She nodded. And yours?

Nick.

She nodded again. I’m Elizabeth.

He nodded and waved. She waved back. Then they disappeared into their houses with their babies.

* * *

Sleep deprivation was a disease, and the symptoms were rotting Elizabeth’s brain cells and robbing her of the energy required to care for her baby with some semblance of sanity. As the days rolled along, she learned how to survive without sleep. She could do it. She could move through the day with patience and at times with grace, as she pecked away at housework, met her child’s needs, and every now and then had a fascinating thought, as professors were apt to do. The flow of intellectual thoughts had slowed measurably, and Elizabeth had learned to appreciate each one individually, maximizing its pleasure by fixing her most intense concentration on it and considering it from every angle before it flew out of her head in about, oh, sixty seconds. Ah, but the bliss of those sixty seconds! The joy of remembering who she was and her place in life – a place that involved books and papers, lecterns and students, a doctorate and tenure – was an elixir for the ennui of her actual place in life at the moment, a place that involved baby poop and spit-up, sore nipples and an aching crotch, loneliness and a gradual decline into the doldrums as a result of examining her life choices.

As the weeks crawled by, Elizabeth discovered the reason that marriage traditionally came first, followed later by children: Nobody should have been expected to raise a baby alone. Even the hunters and gatherers had nailed down a system whereby, at the very least, someone other than the mother was responsible for acquiring the primitive equivalent of groceries. This business of doing one’s own hunting, gathering, laundry, errands, nursing, dish-washing, diaper-changing, and more nursing and more nursing – well, help would have been welcome. The notion of returning to campus in the fall to lecture to undergraduates and engage graduate students in discussions of Russian literature seemed impossible and heavenly. How she would do it all she could not imagine, yet handing off the baby to someone else for at least a few hours each day sounded excellent.

Or so she thought when she was trudging alone through the swamp of single parenthood with a baby that refused to sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or nap for more than forty minutes at a time during the day. Katya would not get off her mother’s breasts. When she had eaten her fill, she refused to let go, suckling for comfort and pleasure for hours on end. At night, Elizabeth would watch the clock for twenty minutes after each feeding, praying that Katya would be in a deep enough sleep to be gently removed from the nipple. If Elizabeth didn’t wait long enough, of if the prying of the baby from the boob did not go smoothly – it was an art, it was a science, it was a method and a thing of beauty – then the entire process began again, sometimes dragging on for hours in the middle of the night. This had become the definition of madness for Elizabeth. A helpless yet demanding creature was running her life. If she remembered to look at Katya’s face and hold her miniature hands, she could ward off the temptation to believe that the baby was ruining, rather than running, her life.

As the pair celebrated Katya’s one-month birthday, exhaustion was a rope that taunted Elizabeth in games of mental tug-of-war: I love my baby. I could never leave her, faced off against, Get me out of here. I want my old job back. The fall semester, though still months away, hung over her like a punishment and a reward at once. She also found, as the days trickled by, that she was more aware of Andrew’s absence than ever before. All the nights and weekends that she had spent alone throughout their years together seemed normal and acceptable at the time. The fact that she missed her husband now could only have been a reflection of her need for help. She heard an edge to her own voice when thoughts of him moved through her mind, a sharpness that hinted at anger, an accusation that suggested resentment and disappointment, and a lingering sadness beneath it all. And yet, this was how they lived their lives together. Together had always meant long stretches apart. This was what they wanted, after all, and so, even now, it could only have been normal and acceptable. Anyway, what kind of woman married a travel writer if she did not like the idea of him traveling?

Around the six-week mark, a routine began to form. The fact of the routine’s existence suggested to Elizabeth that she was regaining some control over her life. Breakfast was happening more or less at breakfast time. Lunch on most days came at lunch time. Dinner, though, remained the wild card, because nothing like a set bedtime had yet emerged. Some days Elizabeth stabbed awkwardly at her dinner while nursing Katya at the table. Some nights she waited until Katya was asleep and lunged at the refrigerator at eight or nine o’clock, tearing lids off plastic containers and eating the leftovers cold as she stood inside the open fridge door. There was a morning nap, an early afternoon nap, and a late afternoon nap, and though they lasted a mere forty minutes, Elizabeth learned to use the time well to accomplish a task or to rejuvenate with a cat nap of her own, a shower, or stretching and floor exercises. Her body was returning to its previous state, a welcome fact that had rejuvenating powers of its own.

Between afternoon naps, the mother and her baby set out for a walk. A friend had given her a baby sling, and as Elizabeth mastered the skills of putting it on and placing the infant inside the small fabric hammock, she came to love it. Katya’s body nestled against her mama, maintaining the contact she wanted for touch and for scent. Elizabeth’s hands were free. There was no stroller to manipulate or to separate her from the baby she wished to stay connected to, despite her conflicted thoughts about motherhood versus career.

A left turn at the end of the driveway led Elizabeth into town, sometimes on errands and sometimes when she was craving human contact in the form of conversation. The university was her true community, but she had become acquainted with the neighbors, several shopkeepers, and a particularly brainy young librarian at the public library. A walk into town guaranteed her a conversation, and some days she could not manage without it.

A right turn at the end of the driveway led her away from town and onto the paved path that was one of Orange Valley’s best amenities. Popular with bikers, runners, and walkers, the trail idled past horse farms, under canopies of oaks and eucalyptus trees, and along brooks, playing fields, and parks. The stretch closest to Elizabeth’s house was dense with trees along both sides. The traffic volume was unpredictable, but in the middle of the afternoon she could usually expect to find solace as she walked. Some days, Elizabeth dreaded conversation, and so she would turn right to walk alone with her baby and her thoughts for an hour of peace, a bit of physical activity – no runner could consider a walk actual exercise – and quiet narration of the world around them to Katya along the way.

Today she turned right. Her mental state warned her to avoid people. She was not exactly grumpy but rather contemplative. The edgy voice inside her head was bugging her again with thoughts of her absent husband. A walk would stop the noise. Elizabeth donned a straw hat and pulled a baby bonnet onto Katya’s fuzzy head. The heat was significant yet bearable, and most of the trail was shaded by trees anyway. Katya was still so small that her body disappeared down into the bottom of the sling, enveloped by the cotton material that closed around her and offered a protective canopy from the sun.

Look at all the flowers, Katyush. Mmm. The lavender is blooming everywhere. Can you smell it, sweet girl? Affectionate nicknames had rolled off Elizabeth’s tongue since the day Katya was born. This was a side of herself she had never seen. The Russian nicknames Katyusha and the shortened Katyush seemed normal enough. The long list of cute endearing terms, however, rendered Elizabeth unrecognizable to herself: sweetheart, honey buns, little one, sweet girl, kitty-cat-cat, little bug, and so on, with new ones emerging daily. The nicknames and their spontaneity were a small but trustworthy piece of evidence that her love for her baby was bigger than her exhaustion, her devotion as a mother was more