"You can't be that new," Kaye said. "Your daughter looks like she's about a year old."

"Eleven months," I said. "But my wife and I have only been separated for two"

I stopped talking when I realized she was glancinguncomfortablyaround the playground for somewhere to escape to.

"Oh, there's the friend I'm meeting," she said on cue. "Bye." And off she rushed for the far end of the park and sat alone on a bench.

Mothers really liked me until they found out I was a separated single dad with weekend custody. They immediately a.s.sumed I left my marriage, my family.

"Breast really is best," the busybody trilled again as she and the Posse pa.s.sed my bench.

"Would you like to spare one of yours?" I asked. "I'm all out at the moment."

She rolled her eyes. "There's a reason you're so defensive. It's because you're formula feeding. You should really read the research. Just check online." Thankfully she and her Posse headed toward the far side of the playground, where someone was making animal shapes out of balloons.

I took Ava out of her stroller and sat her on my lap so she could look at the toddlers climbing the two low steps to the baby slide.

"If you leave those Cheerios on the seat of the stroller, pigeons will swoop."

Good G.o.d, that was a man's voice. I glanced up to find a thirtyish guy in a Yankees cap parking his stroller next to mine. "So?" I said.

"So then the busybodies will swoop, complaining about vermin and germs."

I laughed. "That's the first thing someone's said to me today that has made sense."

He nodded back, and we sat there, in blessed silence for quite a while. "Ah, there's the wife," my comrade said, waving at a dark-haired woman heading over.

He went from comrade to family. My cue to leave. Fast.

On the way back to my apartment, I had only two comments and three choruses of "What a beautiful baby!" I made it inside without "running into" Ginger, which was a good thing because I had to pack up Ava for the ride back to Eye-in's. I'd promised Jodie I'd bring Ava back this afternoon so that she and Eye-in could take the baby to some special playgroup thing tonight. I'd had Ava for less than twenty-four hours of a four-day weekend. The next holiday was mine.

One Metro North ride later, I was in Chappaqua. The four-bedroom Colonial went on forever. Just when you thought it was ending, it continued on sideways.

I could see Jodie in the kitchen window; she was washing dishes, and the lawyer was behind her, his arms braced around her on the sink. Either he was helping her wash the dishes or they were having s.e.x.

I didn't want to know.

Jodie noticed me and started, and they both suddenly snapped to attention. They came out, hovered and fussed and fired off questions about whether I'd followed Ava's Checklist, then disappeared inside, hugging and kissing, one happy family.

The moment the door closed, leaving me literally out in the cold, I missed Ava.

Chapter four.

Roxy My mother was humming the wedding march at the top of her lungs. I could hear her even though I was upstairs in my old bedroom, a heavy down comforter pulled over my head.

"Dum, dum da-dum! Dum, dum da-dum! Dum, dum, da-dum dum da-dum dum da-dummmm!" she sang-hummed up the stairs. She and my aunt Maureen burst into the bedroom. "Rise and shine, Roxy! It's your wedding day!" My mother pulled the blankets off me. "Roxy, it's noon! Up, up, up! We let you sleep way too late. It's time for your minifacial! We've already done ours."

My mother's hair was in tiny pink curlers all over her head, and her face was covered in a dry green mask. My aunt Maureen's mask was pink.

"I don't think I can do it," I whispered.

My aunt raised the blinds in my room. I shut my eyes against the sudden glare. "Don't think you can do what?" she asked.

"Roxy, I told you not to drink too much last night!" my mother snapped. "I told you your bachelorette party shouldn't be the night before your wedding! Now she's hungover," she complained to her sister. "No wonder she slept till noon! She'd still be sleeping if we hadn't come to wake her up!"

I hadn't been sleeping. Not for hours. Nor was I hungover. I had exactly one gla.s.s of white wine last night at Hot Stuff, the silly male strip club my bridal party insisted we go to.

"I don't think I can marry Robbie," I whispered.

"What, sweetie?" my aunt asked.

"I don't think I can marry Robbie," I repeated. "I don't think I can do it."

My aunt and my mother looked at me, then burst out laughing. "You're good," my mother said, tapping her green cheeks to test for dryness. "You almost had me there. 'Can't marry Robbie,'" she repeated, shaking her head and smiling.

I sat up and closed my eyes. For a moment I saw white, then black, and I fell back on my bed. My stomach was flip-flopping. My head was pounding. "I'm serious," I said. "I don't think...I don't think it's what I want."

"Would you listen to the diva drama queen here?" my mother asked my aunt. She took my hands and sat me up. "Honey, it's called Wedding Day Cold Feet. b.u.t.terflies. Jitters. A case of nerves. Of course you want to marry Robbie."

I shook my head. "I don't. I really don't."

My aunt laughed. "You've got the jitters bad. I know just what you need," she said, flipping her index finger at my nose. "You need a cuc.u.mber mask and fresh cut cuc.u.mbers on your eyes while you're having your mani/pedi."

A wave of nausea came over me and I must have turned as green as I felt, because my aunt grabbed my hand and led me to the bathroom.

"Okay, sweetie pie," she said, gesturing at the toilet. "You sit there and let me grab my facial kit."

I sat on the cold white toilet lid and stared at the huge pink flowers on the shower curtain, the fluffy pink bath mat, the grout in between the tiles on the floor.

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

Last night at Hot Stuff, when a stripper with a mullet and no neck gyrated a foot in front of my face, I'd leaned over to my maid of honor and one of my oldest friends, Patty, and whispered, "I don't want to marry Robbie."

"Shut up!" she'd said on a laugh, flinging the cherry from her drink at me.

And before I could say, No, I'm dead serious, she was up on our table for six, shimmying her ample chest at No Neck. My bridal party was too tipsy for any kind of serious conversation, and so I'd gotten through it, forcing myself to think in between gyrations, in between calls for shots, in between discussions of whether we liked it better on top or on bottom, whose fiance/boyfriend/husband liked it kinky, and how many babies we wanted.

"None," I'd said. "I want none."

"That's not a number," my friend Jolie pointed out.

My cousin Jeanne flung another cherry at me. "You once said you wanted eight kids."

"I was eight when I said that," I'd pointed out.

I was now twenty-five. Too young. I didn't envision having a baby until my early thirties. Mid-thirties, maybe.

"You'd better start on your honeymoon," my mother-in-law had said a hundred times since Robbie and I got engaged last year. "Your first will be born when you're twenty-six. You'll s.p.a.ce them two and a half years apart, and Robbie wants four, soWait, how many years is that in total? Robbie Senior!" she'd screamed to her husband, "We need your calculator."

There was no talking to Rita Roberts. Her real name was Doreen. She'd changed it to Rita when she and her husband, Robbie Roberts, Senior, got married twenty-seven years ago. Robbie Roberts, Senior, was a personal injury lawyer, and Doreen had been his secretary. They'd both thought that a man named Robbie Roberts, an up-and-coming personal-injury attorney with his own commercial on local television, needed a wife who matched.

I once asked Robbie, Junior, if he'd ask me to change my name had it been Christine or Elizabeth instead of Roxy.

"Of course," he'd said, dead serious. Then he'd grinned. "I wouldn't change a hair on that gorgeous head of yours. If your name was Wilma, that would be fine with me. If your name was Vomit, I'd still want to marry you."

Doreen. Rita Roberts had once been a young woman named Doreen. A completely different person.

"No, silly," she'd said when I asked her if she missed her name or felt like she'd lost her old self. "It's just a name."

It bothered me, though. I tried to imagine Rita Roberts as Doreen, as this other woman with a different name. I imagined her in her secretary garb from twenty-five years ago, her high eighties hair.

My mother was rinsing off her mask. She blotted her face with a towel and I saw myself, twenty-five years older. The same dark brown doe eyes, the same pale complexion, the same slightly long nose, the same full mouth. We even had the same bleached-blond hair, except mine was past my shoulders and permed and hers was very short and layered. Even our bleached-blond eyebrows were the same. Too thin, I saw now.

My aunt came bounding in with her giant red bag. Red was skin care. Pink was cosmetics. Baby-blue was hair. My aunt managed a hair salon, Hair and Now, and was considered one of the best hair stylists in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

I tried to open my mouth to speak, to say again that I didn't think I could do this, marry Robbie, who would not call himself Rob even though he was twenty-five years old and not, say, seven. But my mouth was dry. My throat was parched. And my eyelid was twitching.

"Here, hon, take these," my aunt said, sliding two Tylenol tablets into my palm. She handed me a Dixie cup filled with water. "You'll feel better in ten minutes. Oh, and just you wait till you feel this cool cuc.u.mber mask on your face. Mmm! It smells so good and is so refreshing!"

My mother stood in front of the sink, applying moisturizer to her face. I loved when her face was devoid of any makeup, which was rare. Her face was so beautiful, but she liked her makeup heavyfoundation, pink blush, black eyeliner and thick frosty lipstick. "Da dum da-dum! Da-dum da dum!" she sang-hummed again. "Da dum da dum da"

"Will ya pipe down?" my father bellowed from my parents' bedroom down the hall. "I'm trying to read the paper!"

Please don't pipe down, Mom. Please don't. Please keep singing Dum dum dum da-dum in higher and higher pitch so that it takes over my every thought. Because marrying Robbie Roberts would be dumb, dumb, da-dumb.

No. Not dumb. Just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wra-wrong.

"Okay, Rox," my aunt said, sitting down on a step stool in front of me and slathering the cool green mask on my face. It did feel good. "Your job is to sit here and breathe. Your reign as Princess for a day has begun. If you want anything, you just ring this little bell." She indeed produced a little silver bell and placed it on the top of the toilet tank. "You are not to move a muscle."

But then how will I make my escape?

My parents' marriage in a nutsh.e.l.l: breakfast, lunch and dinnerMom serves, Dad sits and reads newspaper. Chews in silence. Mom asks what he thinks of new kitchen window curtains. No response. Mom asks again. No response. A minute later, Dad asks for more ketchup on his eggs, his hamburger, his French fries. Mom squeezes it all over his lap instead and bangs bottle down on table. Dad asks, What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you! Mom bursts into tears and runs into bedroom. Dad shakes his head, wipes at his lap with a napkin. Keeps eating and flipping pages.

My relationship with Robbie in a nutsh.e.l.l: longevity. Robbie and I have been a couple for nineteen years. And we're twenty-five years old.

It would take a few years, but it would happen. Robbie and I would become my mother and father, my aunt and her husband, Rita and Robbie Roberts, Senior. I knew it with absolute certainty. The main reason I was so sure was because it was what Robbie wanted. Tradition. Order. Expectations and expectations met. Comfort. And Robbie Roberts got what he wanted. He was good that way.

Last year, when we got engaged, we moved into a one-bedroom apartment three blocks from our parents' houses, which were around the corner from each other. Robbie liked a three-course meal every night, except Friday, when we ordered in either Chinese or a pizza, and Sunday, which was "family night." One Sunday we ate at my parents' house. One Sunday we ate at his parents'.

"Why should I cook a three-course meal five nights a week?" I asked him constantly. "It's ridiculous. I work full-time too!"

"You do the traditionally female stuff. I do the traditionally male stuff," he said. "If I could cook, I would. But I'm a terrible cook. And you're a great cook. If you could hang window blinds or build bookshelves from scratch, you would. See?"

I saw. And so I cooked (an appetizer, an entree, a dessert), and he made st.u.r.dy bookshelves. I cleaned and he fixed the vacuum cleaner. Add in the inevitable lack of conversation, the inevitable lack of s.e.x, the inevitable lack of stimulation of any kind, and we would be our parents.

"That's crazy," Robbie had once said when I voiced my fears. "We've been a couple since we were six years old. That's almost twenty years. And we still have scintillating conversation, hot s.e.x and stimulation of all kinds. After twenty years! You've got nothing to worry about."

I met Robbie in Mrs. Puffero's first-grade cla.s.s. At six years old Robbie was already Mr. Personality, Mr. Confidence, Mr. Popularity. During show-and-tell on the third day of school, he took my hand and led me up to the front of the circle and announced that he was going to marry me one day. Mrs. Puffero laughed. Our cla.s.smates made spitting sounds. But Robbie beamed at me and squeezed my hand tight.

We were best friends throughout our childhoods. At nine, ten, eleven years old, when Robbie was supposed to hate girls, he included me in everything. G.I. Joe fights, bug-watching. Bike races. And when we were twelve, at our elementary school's sixth-grade graduation dance, we kissed for the first time. A lip kiss during a slow song. Robbie was the most popular boy in school. By default, I was one of the most popular girls.

"Why are you so quiet?" girls would ask me all the time, looking at me closely.

It was just my way. But I was labeled stuck-up. Robbie was the opposite of quiet. Through junior high and high school, Robbie Roberts was my boyfriend. I never kissed another boy. Touched another boy. Felt another boy's arms around my waist.

"Trust me, they all kiss the same," my mother had once said when I asked her if she thought it was weird that I'd probably marry my only boyfriend. "And what do you mean probably? Of course you'll marry Robbie."

There were times over the years when I wanted to break up with Robbie. Times when I was sick of him. Times when I was attracted to other guys. Times when I just wanted to know what it felt like not to be Robbie Roberts's girlfriend. Not to feel so defined by that label. But something always kept me by his side. There were my father's drinking binges, which made me run crying and shaking to Robbie's house, which was almost directly behind ours and an easy walk through three backyards. There was the constant bickering. There was my case of mono, which brought Robbie to my house every day despite his parents insisting he not see me until I was cured. There was Robbie's inability to pa.s.s his driver's test, which was very depressing to a seventeen-year-old. (He finally pa.s.sed last year.) There were family problems on both sides, there were fights with friends. There were proms. There was Robbie's father's cancer scare. And then there was college (of course we went to the same school, Brooklyn College), where Robbie majored in business and I in English. There were guys everywhere. Different guys. Even if they were mostly from Brooklyn and not the great beyond, those glittering lights across the river.

More than once I'd asked Robbie if he regretted never being with another girl, another woman. Didn't he wonder? Didn't he have any wild oats to sow? Didn't he want to sleep with someone else?

"Why would I want to sleep with anyone else?" was Robbie's answer. "First of all, I love you. Second of all, you're the most beautiful girl in Brooklyn. Probably in the entire world."

There were times over the years when that answer was all I needed to hear, when I needed to hear just that so badly that it took care of things for a while. Things such as my fears. My worries. My dreams of what lay beyond Bay Ridge.

"There's nothing beyond Bay Ridge," Robbie would say. "Everything you need, everything I need, is right here in Brooklyn."

Robbie loved Brooklyn. On the weekends, he wore sweatshirts with Brooklyn across the front that he bought in souvenir shops as though he were from Kansas. Except for a few trips to a few Caribbean islands, Robbie had never left New York City. He didn't want to see the Grand Canyon ("we have enough potholes in the citywhy do I need to visit some giant hole in the ground?"). He didn't want to see the Eiffel Tower ("the French hate our guts!"). He didn't want to see the Taj Majal ("the what?").

"I'm going to propose to you the day I make my first million," he'd said the day we graduated from high school.

He'd proposed the next day, actually. I said yes because we were Roxy & Robbie 4 Evah. Because I was eighteen. Because I wanted freedom from my parents. Because I thought we could run away together, see the world, explore. Robbie had wanted to get married right away, but I kept saying "next year," then "when we graduate from college," then "when we get settled," then anything I could come up with to hold him at bay. When are we going to set a date? he wanted to know. Why don't you want to marry me this second? Don't you love me?

I did love him. Very much. But I confused not wanting to marry him at all with not wanting to marry him yet.

"I'm twenty-four years old!" he'd said last year. "I've made my first millionwell on paper. I'm ready, Roxy. Really, really ready. Don't you want to be rocking little Robbie, Junior, Junior?"

Robbie, Junior, Junior. No. I didn't want that at all. And I wanted a baby about as much as I wanted to...get married.

I'd tried to explain to Robbie. I didn't want us to end up like our parents, screaming, yelling, fighting, then suddenly making out in the middle of the kitchen, then more screaming. I didn't want to wear curlers in my hair in the middle of the day. I didn't want to wear curlers in my hair ever. I didn't want to know only members of my family and people who lived within a quarter-mile radius. I didn't want to never know if I could have made it out there.

"First of all, Rox, our parents have good marriages," Robbie would say. "And that's what marriage is. You fight, you make up, you live your life. It's real life. And as for 'out there'out where? Manhattan? What is the big whoop to you about Manhattan? It's just full of cutthroat, overly ambitious morons from everywhere else in the country who want to work their a.s.ses off till midnight and be snots to everyone. Trust me, I deal with lawyers from Manhattan all the time. They're the worst of the worst."

Robbie was a personal-injury attorney. When he graduated from law school, he joined his father's practice.

"And our little boy will be Robbie Roberts, Esquire, the Third," Robbie had said more than once, beaming. "Robbie Roberts Junior Squared! Robbie Roberts Cubed!"

"What if it's a girl?" I'd ask.

"Then it'll be Robbie Roberts I, II and daughter," Robbie said. "Or something like that."

"What if she doesn't grow up to become a lawyer?"