Laura & Emma

by Kate Greathead

  Upon retrieving it, Laura discovered it had left a mark. After scrubbing the residue off there was a faint discoloration. A subtle brown smudge. It was too low to hang a picture over it, but too high to hide behind her bureau. Like the liver spot on her left temple, she would have to get used to it. Then a solution came to her.

  “That’s it, dear?” Bibs asked. “Are you sure that’s all you want for your birthday? Wallpaper?”

  * * *

  EMMA ADMIRED THE ELEGANTLY DRESSED women of the Upper East Side—if only her mother would also wear lipstick, perfume, and high heels. She could at least carry a proper patent leather purse.

  That fall a suit appeared in a store window they passed by on the way to and from school. In keeping with the fashion of the times, it consisted of a short skirt and matching blazer. If the mothers of Emma’s classmates had a uniform, this was it.

  The first morning Emma pointed it out to her, Laura said, “We’re late,” and tugged Emma along, but when they passed by it on the way home that afternoon, Laura paused to have a closer look. After a suspenseful silence, she frowned and shook her head. On they walked.

  The suit remained in the window for several weeks, and each time they passed it, Emma’s hope would be rekindled as Laura slowed down and registered the suit with a glance. On more than one occasion, Emma would grab her mother’s hand and attempt to coerce her into buying.

  It was so pretty! Please, please, pretty-pretty-please, would she at least try it on?

  They were in the middle of one of these exchanges when Emma noticed someone inside the store, waving at them through the window. It was her mom’s friend, Janet. They stepped in to say hello.

  “Look at what Emma wants me to buy,” Laura laughed, pointing at the suit in the window.

  Janet did not laugh.

  “Emma’s right,” she said, “you could use some grown-up clothes.”

  Emma pushed Laura into the dressing stall and asked the shopkeeper to bring over the suit in her mother’s size. In a few minutes Laura emerged from the stall, zipped and buttoned up.

  Emma held her breath as Janet and the shopkeeper gushed their approval. Watching Laura take out her credit card, Emma had the feeling that this was all a dream and she was about to wake up.

  And that’s what it was like when they got home.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Laura said, reevaluating her purchase as she stood before the full-length mirror in their front hall closet. “I’m too small for short skirts and blazers—they made me look ridiculous. And the pattern reminds me of a carpet in a movie theater.”

  Emma was crushed.

  And so the suit went directly from a Madison Avenue mannequin to one of the women at the homeless shelter.

  * * *

  WHEN LAURA RETURNED HOME FROM the shelter that Sunday, the babysitter was not doing her homework at the kitchen table as she usually did after putting Emma to bed. She wasn’t in the living room either. Seeing the light was on in Emma’s bedroom, Laura assumed they were still reading, but stepping inside she saw the bed was still made—no sign of Emma or Daisy. Her own bedroom was dark, both bathrooms were empty. Daisy always left her backpack and boots by the front door. The backpack was there, but the boots were not. A dizzying panic set in. Laura picked up the phone to dial Frank, in case he had seen them go out. Frank answered the phone after four rings; yes, he had been in the lobby that evening; no, he had not seen Emma or a teenage girl leave the building.

  Laura retraced her steps through the apartment. What the hell had she been thinking, leaving Emma in the care of a teenager? Emma. She was the only thing in the world that mattered—to keep her safe, that was it. Without Emma there would be no point to anything.

  She went back to the kitchen and dialed Margaret. Trip answered. Margaret couldn’t speak right now—she was tucking Charlotte in.

  There was a tap on the window. Laura was so startled she dropped the phone.

  It was Emma—she and Daisy were out on the terrace. They were trying to tell her something.

  “Hold on, I can’t hear you,” Laura said, tugging on the door that led outside; it frequently got stuck. Daisy helped push it open.

  “There was an eclipse!” Emma’s voice chimed with excitement. “It was so cool, Mom, the moon completely disappeared.”

  * * *

  ALL ACROSS THE CITY, HOLIDAY lights were going up. The flamboyant fire escapes of Harlem abruptly halted at Ninety-sixth Street, where the demure twinkling of Carnegie Hill took over, eventually surrendering to the manic flash of midtown.

  THEN IT WAS JANUARY, WITH its sobering return to routine and tree corpses on the curb. Laura still hadn’t called Dr. Brown; the New Year was a good excuse.

  But it didn’t happen.

  Now it was February. Discovering Dr. Brown’s home number had been disconnected, Laura phoned Downtown Pediatrics.

  “Dr. Brown is no longer affiliated with this practice,” she was told. “Would you like to schedule an appointment with one of our other doctors?”

  “Where did he go?”

  There was a silence.

  “Would you like to schedule an appointment with one of our other doctors?”

  “No, we already have someone. I’m calling because I’m looking for Dr. Brown.”

  “Dr. Brown is no longer affiliated with this practice. I’m sorry, ma’am, that’s all I can tell you.”

  Swallowing her pride, Laura called her mother to see if the two had been in touch recently.

  “No, and to tell you the truth, I’m a little irritated. I sent him a Williams Sonoma gingerbread house for Christmas and he didn’t call to say thank you, which is very unlike him.”

  “You’ve known him for barely a year. You don’t know what he’s like.”

  “It’s very unlike him,” Bibs repeated.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A MAN WHO lived on the fourth floor of Margaret’s building who hosted a supposedly famous daytime television show. Laura had never heard of the show, which bore his name, but after an encounter in the elevator with him she was curious to watch it.

  It was like nothing she had ever seen. It featured emotionally unstable people confronting estranged family members or former lovers before a live audience. High-octane, profanity-riddled shouting matches ensued, with sordid revelations, accusations, and threats. Just as things felt on the verge of erupting into violence, a burly security person would lumber out onto the stage and there would be a commercial break.

  When the show resumed the guests would be subdued, and the host would summarize the conflict before inviting members of the audience to offer their take on the situation. The audience had no shortage of opinions of these people and their problems, and the crueler these were, the rowdier the applause they generated.

  This was the part Laura could hardly bear to watch. Fortunately, most of the guests seemed incapable of seeing themselves for who they really were and were thus indifferent to the audience’s impression of them.

  It appeared the host of the show was blessed with the same deficit of self-awareness, Laura concluded, as she recalled the man she’d shared the elevator with—who’d been delighted to confirm his identity to a third passenger, one of the building’s nannies, whose excitement bordered on hysteria.

  “I am he,” he’d said, the corners of his mustache rising in an unabashedly self-satisfied grin.

  * * *

  “LOOK, THAT’S OUR APARTMENT, RIGHT up there!” Emma pointed as they waited to cross the light at Ninety-sixth Street.

  Emma’s classmate Tiffany squinted as she looked up. “I don’t think my mom would like me to be in a neighborhood like this,” she said.

  “Why not?” Laura asked.

  The light turned; Laura took the girls’ hands as they crossed. As they passed by James’s corner, Emma waved and called his name but James did not wave back. This had been the case recently; Laura was a little worried about him.

  “Why do you know that guy?” Tiffany aske
d.

  “James is our homeless man,” Emma answered. “He calls me Goldilocks. Most of the time he’s the friendliest person, but sometimes he’s a little out to lunch.”

  As he often did, Frank had set up his easel in the lobby, and was painting a picture of an angel. On the table where he’d put his supplies was an ashtray. It was so full that the cigarette butts protruded like the needles of a porcupine. The door to his apartment was ajar so the cats could wander in and out.

  “Who was that man?” Tiffany asked when they were in the elevator.

  “That’s our doorman,” Emma said.

  “Why wasn’t he wearing a uniform?”

  “Frank is not a normal doorman.”

  “Actually, Frank isn’t a doorman,” Laura spoke up. “He’s the super.”

  “Then where was your doorman?” Tiffany addressed this question to Laura.

  “Not every building has a doorman,” Laura said.

  “Hungry!” Emma announced, kicking off her shoes as they entered the apartment. Laura went into the kitchen and put some Oreos on a plate.

  “Not allowed to have those,” Tiffany said when Laura called them in.

  “I am,” Emma said, reaching across the table and stacking all four of them in her hand.

  “How about some Wheat Thins?” Laura said, opening up the cupboard. Tiffany nodded glumly. Laura arranged some crackers on a plate and set it down in front of Tiffany. She went over to the fruit bowl and cut up an apple.

  “I don’t care for apples,” Tiffany said when Laura set the plate on the table.

  “Me neither,” Emma said, licking the inside of her Oreo. “Hate ’em, get ’em away from me before I barf.” Tiffany laughed as Emma pushed the plate toward Laura, who sat at the head of the table, which also functioned as her desk. It was not her job, but she’d agreed to stuff envelopes for the Library’s annual upcoming fundraiser.

  She mostly tuned out the girls’ conversation until she heard Emma inform Tiffany, in a certain nah-nah-nah tone, that her mother was thirty-nine years old.

  Tiffany looked at Laura, expectantly, as though waiting for her to dispute this fact.

  “I’m coming up on forty,” Laura told her.

  “That’s so much older than her mom.” Emma beamed with triumph. “Guess how old her mom is?”

  “I have no idea,” Laura said, trying to affect indifference, though she was a little curious.

  “Twenty-five,” Emma declared.

  “Really?” Laura had to fight a smile as she looked at Tiffany, who confirmed the number with a defeated nod.

  “So she was . . . quite young when she had you.”

  Tiffany shrugged.

  “You have an older sister,” Laura said to Tiffany. “How old is she?”

  “Eleven,” Tiffany answered.

  “Soon she’ll be in Upper School and she’ll have to wear a bra!” Emma snickered. Done with her Oreos, she got on her knees and reached across the table for a Wheat Thin.

  “You’re supposed to ask first,” Tiffany said, jealously pulling the plate toward her.

  “My house, my crackers!”

  “Emma.” Laura shook her head.

  “Fine!” Emma said. Clasping her hands together in a prayer pose and batting her eyelashes, she said, in a mock English accent, “Pardon, Madam, can I have a crack-ah.”

  “May I,” Tiffany corrected her, passing her the plate.

  Done with their snack, the girls disappeared into Emma’s bedroom. Laura continued licking and stuffing. An hour passed.

  “Pardon?” said a little voice from behind her.

  She turned to find Tiffany standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Emma is not being very nice, and I would like to go home please.”

  Laura tried to play diplomat, but neither party was interested in an apology or compromise. What each girl wanted was for Laura to vindicate her position and disavow the other. The conflict had arisen from the earlier exchange in the kitchen regarding the discrepancy in their mother’s ages. Was it better to have an older mom or a younger mom was the crux of it. Emma insisted that Laura’s seniority in years translated to superiority; Tiffany pointed out that having an older mom meant Laura would die sooner.

  That Laura found the whole thing quite amusing infuriated Emma. “Why are you laughing?” she demanded. “You think this is funny?”

  Unable to mend things, Laura proposed the girls play a game. Do an arts and crafts project. Get started on their homework. “Could we watch Hey Dude?” Emma asked.

  “I love that show!” Tiffany squealed with excitement.

  At five o’clock Tiffany’s mother arrived to take her home. Mrs. Vavra was one of the tall, tall, rakishly thin specimens. Her face, Laura had to admit, was smooth as a teenager’s, but she no doubt wore more makeup than an Olympic figure skater and her hands had the telltale pronounced blue veins.

  Laura opened the door but Mrs. Vavra did not step in; she lingered in the doorway, waiting for her daughter to get ready to leave.

  “Is that real fur?” Emma asked, pointing to Mrs. Vavra’s coat.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “But the animal died of old age,” Tiffany added.

  “Oh.” Emma nodded approvingly. “Well, then it’s okay.”

  As Tiffany struggled with the many brass buttons that secured her coat, Laura bent down to assist.

  “Emma’s allowed to have Oreos after school,” Tiffany announced as Laura crouched further to tie her shoes.

  “Is she,” Mrs. Vavra responded.

  “Guilty as charged.” Laura looked up and smiled at Mrs. Vavra, who did not smile back.

  “Also,” Tiffany continued, “Emma gets to watch TV on school nights.”

  “Different households have different rules,” Mrs. Vavra said. “Where’s your headband?”

  Tiffany reached up and patted her head.

  “I think it’s in my room,” Emma said.

  “Go help her find it,” Laura told her.

  “Usually I don’t allow TV during playdates,” Laura explained as the girls ran off. “But they had a little argument and it seemed like the best way to . . .” Laura now struggled to convey the logic of it. “To get them to drop it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mrs. Vavra said.

  “It was actually quite funny,” Laura told her. “It was about our ages.”

  Mrs. Vavra looked puzzled.

  “I’m thirty-nine, and Tiffany told Emma you were twenty-five . . .” Laura paused, waiting for Mrs. Vavra to acknowledge the lie. Her refusal to do so emboldened Laura.

  “Emma was confused by the math,” she continued, “and to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure how to explain it to her.”

  Mrs. Vavra raised her eyebrows. She looked like she wasn’t planning to say anything.

  The girls returned. Laura held out Tiffany’s backpack, but rather than take it, Tiffany turned around for Laura to mount it on her back. After slipping her arms through the straps she nodded at her mom. “Ready.”

  “What do you say?” Mrs. Vavra said, ringing for the elevator.

  “Thank you,” said Tiffany.

  “Thanks for coming over, Tiffany, see you tomorrow,” Laura said, shutting the door.

  When they were safely out of earshot, Emma asked, “It is better to be thirty-nine than twenty-five, right?”

  “Twenty-five minus eleven,” Laura responded.

  Emma looked confused.

  “It’s a math problem,” Laura said. “You can do it. Twenty-five minus eleven.”

  “Fourteen, no duh,” Emma answered after a lengthy pause. “Is it better to be thirty-nine or twenty-five?”

  “There’s a certain kind of woman who is terrified of getting older,” Laura said. “I am not one of them.”

  Emma looked unimpressed and frustrated by this answer. “You never take my side,” she said, and stomped off to her room.

  * * *

  “IT’S A LIKE A COCKTAIL party, at eight a.m.,
without the cocktails,” Trip commented dismally.

  Margaret shot him a look, but Laura agreed—class parent breakfasts were tedious. As Margaret strolled off to circulate among the other, more social parents, Laura and Trip were left on their own.

  Above the mantel hung a life-size oil portrait of the Vavra family standing in front of the very same mantel, above which hung a slightly smaller oil portrait of the Vavra family standing in front of the mantel, and so on, until they were tiny dots. Laura discreetly called it to Trip’s attention.

  “That’s crap,” he said.

  What most struck Laura about the Vavra’s lavish Park Avenue duplex was that there was just one shelf of books, a line of leather-bound and gold-leaf British and Russian classics. Upon closer inspection, they’d clearly never been opened, but were part of a set intended for décor. Laura brought this up when she spoke to Margaret on the phone that evening.

  “Are you surprised?” Margaret said with some irritation. “They’re not exactly intellectuals, Laura.”

  When Laura got off the phone, Emma looked up from her homework. “Who were you talking about? Who cares they got no books?”

  “No one,” Laura told her. “And remember what I told you about listening to my private grown-up conversations.”

  “But I don’t get it,” Emma persisted. “Why does it matter they got no books?”

  Ignoring the question, Laura turned on the stove to get dinner started.

  “Who cares about books,” Emma said, furiously erasing something in her workbook. Satisfied, she blew the paper clean and wiped the remaining eraser debris with the sleeve of her turtleneck.

  “Some people don’t care about books,” Laura reflected. “Which is too bad, because books are a wonderful thing—” Noticing she had Emma’s attention, Laura struggled to articulate the sentiment of what she was trying to say. “It’s important to read.”

  “I know,” Emma said. “Already read three books this week.”

  “You’re getting to be a much better reader,” Laura told her.

  After dinner, as Laura got started on the dishes, Emma reappeared in the kitchen to announce that she hadn’t yet watched her allotted hour of TV and wasn’t planning to.