By the Numbers

by Jen Lancaster

  She says, “I don’t remember that, but I do remember him painting the trim in my room with his left hand after he’d sprained his right wrist.”

  “Stassi is not going to be dealing with a cooperative patient,” I say. In no way is he my problem anymore, yet there’s still a part of me that feels obligated to help, like somehow I’m better equipped. She can’t possibly know how to manage him when he’s down. He is difficult for the uninitiated. She doesn’t yet have the experience. Does she realize that when he requests Gatorade, he means G2 (specifically Glacier Freeze) and not the regular version, because now that he’s over fifty, he’s starting to watch his sugar intake? Is she cognizant that he will turn up his nose if she brings him any variety of chicken soup other than Campbell’s Chicken & Stars, including fancy homemade offerings from that wonderful Jewish deli in Skokie? And he needs oyster crackers, never saltines, damn it. And he likes applesauce, but not from a glass jar, only the single-serve plastic containers.

  “Does she want me to call her? Do you have her number?”

  Jessica selects an orange from the fruit bowl on the island but makes no attempt to peel it. Instead, she rolls it back and forth between her hands. “No, not now. She just wanted you to know because she wasn’t sure the best way to reach Kelsey.”

  “Let’s see,” I say, trying to remember the itinerary my travel agent arranged for her, which is pretty much identical to the trip Chris and I were going to take for our twenty-fifth anniversary, except I’d just been promoted to managing director and we’d landed a massive project and I couldn’t get away. I kept postponing until . . . smooth jazz. “They left Portofino today to return to Rome. The high-speed train will take them about five hours to get to Termini Station. They fly out of Rome tomorrow, which means they’ll be home on Friday. Do you see any reason to get ahold of her? There’s nothing she can do, you said he’s okay, and I don’t want to put a damper on the last day of her honeymoon.”

  “Agree. She’d go bitchcakes. She was already upset enough about the flights.” Jessica bats the orange back and forth across the counter, like a cat toying with a ball of yarn. I can’t tell whether or not Jessica is baiting me, so, naturally, I bite.

  “What about her flights?” I ask. “Was there a problem? I haven’t heard anything.” I literally haven’t heard a peep from her since she left here the night of her wedding to stay at the Peninsula downtown, also on my dime. (I forget why, but I was forced to right some grievous wrong by booking her a suite there—that much I know.)

  “She was furious about being in business class and couldn’t fathom why you didn’t just book her in first class since you had the miles to spare. She said that the lie-flat seats were really narrow and the plane was old so they didn’t have a built-in entertainment center. The flight attendants had to hand out tablets so people could watch movies, and she’d already seen most of what they had to offer.”

  Of course Jessica was baiting me.

  Of course she was.

  “That’s what you call a first-world problem,” I reply, keeping my tone light, while inside I’m raging. This goddamned wedding has been one opportunity for extortion after another, and now I’m hearing that even with everything I’ve done, I didn’t get it right? An all-expense-paid business-class trip to Italy wasn’t sufficient? Not satisfactory for Princess Kelsey? What is it the girls are always saying?

  I can’t even.

  I give the counters a quick spritz with antibacterial spray and wipe them down with a paper towel, more vigorously than needed. “Okay, I’m off to bed. I’m glad you’re here. I’m sure Stassi will appreciate your help once she gets home with your dad. Good night.”

  I don’t even try to hug or kiss her. I simply head up the back stairs. The door to the guest room is closed. As it’s too early for my folks to be in bed, they must be out. How nice that in their late seventies, their social life is more active than mine.

  It’s not until I’ve brushed my teeth and washed my face that I wonder how Jessica was able to make it to Chicago so quickly after hearing the news about Chris.

  Curious.

  • • • •

  “Now, for the capital optimization project: Vanessa, you take the lead on the proposal. I’m sorry, Adrienne, do you need something?” I’m in the middle of my Friday managers’ meeting in the glass-enclosed conference room with the lake view when Adrienne appears at the door. She never disturbs me when I’m with the team, so I’m immediately concerned that something terrible has happened.

  “May I see you for a moment?” she asks.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “Please continue.”

  Everyone goes back to work, save for Vanessa, who seems more concerned with what Adrienne is about to tell me. I close the conference room door behind me and step out into the hallway, removing myself from Vanessa’s line of sight.

  “What’s up?”

  Adrienne grasps the cuffs of her cardigan. “I’m so sorry. I hate to bother you, but this seemed important.”

  “No need to apologize. I’m sure you have a good reason.”

  “Your Realtor called.”

  I immediately relax. I thought she was going to tell me something about Chris, who’s had two restful nights and has been cracking jokes with the nurses in Spanish. “Kathy? Yes, she had a showing at the house today. Did she need something? Wasn’t she able to work the lockbox? The code is 0320.”

  “She didn’t have any trouble getting into the house, no. But there must have been some kind of miscommunication, because your parents and Jessica were all still home, so it was kind of awkward.”

  “Aw, you’re kidding. I told them about the showing last night and this morning, and I had it marked on the big calendar in the kitchen. I don’t know how they all forgot. I’ll have to reschedule with her. Thank you for letting me know.”

  Adrienne makes no sign of leaving. “Um . . . they probably won’t be back.”

  My stomach lurches. “What happened?”

  She pulls at a loose thread on the cuff of her cardigan before she begins. “Well, the wife of the family who came to see the house is foreign—I think Kathy said she’s from Argentina? Anyway, they loved your house, especially the room on the third floor. The wife wanted to run back up for one more look to see if there was space under the eaves for her son’s drum set. As she was coming back down, your father ran into her in the hallway.” She stops and clears her throat, visibly uncomfortable. “Your dad—um, Max—he pulled her into the bathroom off the guest room. He said he wanted her to see some spots on the grout that needed attention. He didn’t think she’d been scrubbing hard enough and next time she should use bleach.”

  “Oh, Jesus, God, no,” I say, feeling faint. “Please tell me Kathy explained that the old bigot does not convey.”

  Adrienne winces. “Kathy tried to lighten the situation by saying something like, ‘You must be teasing! How could you confuse Mrs. Westerfield for a housekeeper when she’s wearing such a gorgeous Armani suit?’ and that’s when Jessica walks by and says, ‘Gorgeous . . . for a knockoff.’”

  I double over with my arms clenched around my stomach. I feel like I’ve been kicked. I wonder if we’re not seeing some early-stage dementia manifesting in his behavior now, and if so, what might be done about it. I believe the time’s come to consult a gerontologist.

  Jessica, on the other hand, is just a bitch.

  “This violates all my rules, but I have to ask anyway. Can you ping Kathy and tell her I’ll call her when I’m done?”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks.”

  I return to the conference room. “Sorry about that.”

  “Everything okay at home?” Vanessa asks, her voice saccharine sweet. She bats her eyes, which are circled in far too much black kohl liner. “Anything I can do?”

  I give Vanessa my most competent, confident smile. “You can take the lead on
the capital optimization project proposal. Other than that, no.”

  Terrific. She senses an opening. Now I have to play defense around Vanessa again, too.

  I take my place at the head of the table and paste on a smile, trying to take comfort in the thought, Well, at least nothing else can go wrong.

  • • • •

  “No, really, I’ve got it. Don’t worry about me,” I call as I stagger through the back door under an armload of sacks from various grocery stores. With three extra people in the house, I’ve been running back and forth to the market all week. I had to shop twice on Saturday, and it’s only Monday and we’re already out of half a dozen staples again.

  Since no one around here cooks, I buy a lot of premade items. My father is partial to the ready-made assortment of chops and roasts at Heinen’s over in Glenview, while Marjorie prefers the salads from Sunset in Northbrook. Jessica only wants sushi from the Deerfield Whole Foods, but still complains about how much better the quality is in New York. As the only person who holds a day job, I have no idea why the hunting and gathering falls to me, yet here we are.

  I’m out of space on the countertop due to all the dirty dishes, so I set the bag with the meat loaf, pot roast, St. Louis–style ribs, and barbecue pork chops (with Styrofoam containers of spinach au gratin, honey-glazed carrots, and jalapeño-studded corn bread) on the floor before returning to the Camry to retrieve the case of bottled water. Marjorie won’t drink the filtered water from the cooler because apparently she wants to blow through the one point five million barrels of oil it takes to satisfy the United States’ yearly demand for bottled water.

  Argh.

  I run down to the mailbox while I’m outside, and I spend a few minutes chatting with my neighbor before I return with the bottled water. When I step inside the kitchen this time, carrying the twenty-four pack of Aquafina, I catch myself as my foot slips in something. I glance down at the hardwood recently refinished in a pale, weathered gray, not expecting a crime scene. A swath of sticky, reddish brown fluid is spread six feet in every direction across the wide planks. Stray bits of bone are scattered from one end of the kitchen to the other, interspersed with clumps of green and orange and yellow and mangled bits of white.

  What did—? How could—?

  While I’m bent over, trying to make sense of this mess, I see in my peripheral vision an enormous black blob thundering into the kitchen. The creature plows into me, taking me out at the knees and knocking me onto my butt before pinning me entirely to the ground.

  “Caroline! Come here, Caroline!” Kelsey comes charging into the room holding on to an empty leash. She surveys the damage to the kitchen and points toward the giant black Newfoundland now standing on my chest, cutting off most of my oxygen supply. “Uh-oh. Did she do all of that?”

  “That would be my guess, yes,” I gasp.

  “Caroline, no. Bad girl.”

  Kelsey gives the dog a tentative shove. The beast lumbers off of me and I’m able to breathe again. I sit up and shake corn bread out of my hair. Caroline assists this process by eating all the stray bits that fall off. Then she nuzzles and snuffles me for a solid minute, searching for more, leaving me covered in strands of drool that are half an inch in circumference. She slurps me right across the face for good measure.

  Somewhere in the ether, Barnaby is mortified.

  “Explanation, please.”

  Kelsey pats the giant quadruped on its anvil-shaped head. Caroline begins to pant, revealing an alarmingly long pink tongue that produces heroic amounts of saliva. “This is my new dog, Caroline. I missed Barnaby, so as soon as we got home, I went out and adopted her.”

  “How does Milo feel about your naming your new dog after his ex-girlfriend?” I rise from the floor and try to brush off as much side dish and dog spit as I can, but I suspect this pantsuit is a loss. I head to the pantry and grab a dustpan and broom, but I may be better off with a wet-dry vac. Or an exorcist.

  “I didn’t name her; she was already called Caroline by the shelter.”

  “You can always rename her,” I say, scooping up a wad of spinach and dumping it in the garbage disposal. Caroline begins to lick the barbecue sauce off one of the kitchen cabinets. “I’m sure Milo would prefer that. You guys can come up with a name together.”

  Kelsey’s face darkens. “I don’t give a crap what name he likes.”

  Oh, dear. Wait for it. . . . Wait for it. . . .

  “Why do you say that?” I ask, as though I don’t have a sinking feeling as to what’s coming next.

  “Because Milo is a jackass and we should never have gotten married. Like, who gets married that young? Did people really expect us to work? Well, that was their bad. Caroline and I are going to be staying here for a while until we figure out what to do next.”

  Caroline wags her massive plumed tail as she cleans the cabinet. Once she’s removed all the sauce, she starts to chew on the wood.

  So I was mistaken.

  Something else can always go wrong.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  June 2006

  “I can’t do this right now,” I say into the phone. “We’re boarding momentarily.”

  The other passengers are already beginning to crowd the gate. They stand in an irascible clump, a sea of logo polo shirts and no-iron khakis. Many of them are holding bags from Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, and the aroma of grease and dough mingled with cinnamon is almost intoxicating. The entire D gate at LaGuardia smells like Auntie Anne’s, which is the best subliminal marketing plan ever. I’m not a huge fan of visible salt grains (due to salt’s impact on blood pressure and its relationship to risk factors for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States) and I hate anything containing nitrates, yet I’m fighting the urge to mug one of them for their pretzel-coated hot dogs.

  “I need a date, Penny,” Chris insists, on the other end of the line, snapping me out of my would-be pretzel thuggery. “All of her friends have done their college visits. We’re coming down to the wire here. Kids start applying to schools over the summer these days, and she can’t apply if she hasn’t seen any of the places she wants to go. You promised you’d take her. She only has a small window of time before she starts her camps.”

  With an eye on the gate, I select save on my spreadsheet and start shutting down my laptop while I keep my cell phone pinched between my shoulder and my ear. “Wouldn’t she rather go with you?”

  Chris sounds aggravated. “She asked to go with you.”

  “Why?” I press.

  “Could be as simple as she doesn’t want to share a hotel room with her dear old dad for a week. Or maybe she never sees you anymore and would like to spend a minute together before she graduates and goes away to college. You remember Jessica, right? She’s the tall one, kind of a smart mouth?”

  Okay, that was unfair. He should not be leveling this kind of guilt at me. The only reason we can even afford to send Jessica to the college of her choice is because of my sacrifices. We were almost wiped out in 1998 when Chris’s house flip on Elm went awry—the one I privately refer to as the Nightmare on Elm Street. Between the cracked foundation, the zoning issues, the liens, the asbestos, and the black mold, we thought we’d have to sell our place and leave Glencoe entirely.

  Thank God I’d finally become fully accredited by then and had enough experience to be hired at a consulting firm downtown at a healthy salary. Yes, I knew I’d have to put in more hours than when I went back to work part-time a few years after Topher was born. And while I loved Allstate’s progressive job-sharing policies and the quick commute to their suburban campus, I wasn’t making enough to save us from the financial Chernobyl that was the Nightmare on Elm Street. We’d get to keep our house, but the trade-off was that I’d be around less. Chris stepped up the daddy duties and all was well, except now he’s trying to make me feel bad about choices I was forced to make because he d
idn’t do his due diligence on that cursed house.

  “For passengers on American Airlines flight 345 New York LaGuardia to Chicago O’Hare, we will be opening the doors for boarding momentarily.”

  In one fluid motion, I stow my laptop in a computer bag, scoop up my own roll-aboard, grab my Fiji water, and rise to get in line. This is the third project I’ve run with our huge New York client, so I’ve done this particular airport dance so many times on and off in the past two years that I could make it down the jet bridge and into my usual seat, 3B, with my eyes shut.

  “I have to go; we’re boarding. We can figure it out when I get home.” Then I hang up before he can argue more.

  “We’d now like to invite our first-class section to board.”

  I glance at the other Executive Platinum travelers in the priority lane, smiling and nodding at those I recognize, which is usually about half the plane. So many Chicago consultants take the same Monday-morning/Thursday-afternoon flights every week that we mostly know one another. We’ve bonded at one point or another, maybe in the Admirals Club over the last of the carrot sticks and ranch dip when LaGuardia’s socked in with snow, or perhaps when lightning’s struck the tail of our plane as we’ve flown over Pennsylvania during a wicked summer storm and we’ve all discovered religion at exactly the same time. I imagine we’re like those expats hanging out in a tiki bar in some far-flung banana republic, singing along to “Hotel California,” not because the Eagles are so great, but because they’re familiar and they smack of home.

  I hand my boarding pass to the gate agent and she says, “Welcome, Mrs. Sinclair. Have a nice flight home.”

  “Thanks, Leslie. See you next week.”

  I make my way down the gangway and up to the entrance of the plane. While I’m not superstitious, I always touch the right side of the door opening when I board. There’s nothing about this empty, meaningless ritual that keeps the plane aloft, but I do it anyway. (Patrick says I’m an Episcopalian for the same reason. Sometimes Patrick is too cynical for his own good.)