The One That Got Away
Page 15
It was the longest speech he had ever said to me, longer even than when he proposed. I hugged him and snuggled into his shoulder, feeling that all was right with the world, in the way that only pregnant women really understand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I was flying, all the shops and people and cars a blur as I breezed by them. For the first time in my life, I was jogging—no, running—and I was really hauling ass. With the light morning traffic, I had made it all the way across the city to Front Street in twenty-five minutes. Sweat soaked my Lululemon sports bra and mesh-trimmed shirt, but I was barely winded, my ponytail bouncing back and forth, up and down.
In Grange Hill, I had tried many times to become a runner, not for the cardiovascular benefits or stress relief but to melt the muffin top that clung stubbornly to my waist. But my attempts usually ended with me giving up less than a quarter mile from home or bailing minutes into a charity 5K. I told Jimmy I just didn’t have the talent or the lung capacity, but inside I knew the real problem was dedication. And motivation. Why should I work out when Jimmy never did?
But today, after waking early and wandering around the apartment aimless and anxious, and feeling guilty about secretly finishing off Gloria’s box of Froot Loops last night, I’d decided to give it another try. I also figured from the sheer volume of running shoes in the closet, this body could handle it. Time to take it out for a test drive.
As I ran with ease, I wondered where Abbey van Holt found her inspiration. It had to be more than just a desire to stay model thin. Perhaps she had learned to love it from Alex, so committed to his late-night runs? Or maybe she was a member of an elite city-moms running club, the kind that tracked mileage on special watches and posted their Broad Street Run finishes on Facebook, shaming the rest of us for our slovenly ways? Whatever the case, I added “discipline” to the long list of traits Abbey van Holt possessed that I did not.
I slowed to a walk, paused to check my pulse (a mere 142 beats per minute), then descended a small flight of stone steps toward the Delaware River. I paused to watch the cargo ships gently slipping by and saw the cars rolling over the Betsy Ross Bridge. The city was waking up, ready for another long day.
It was Thursday, October 30—almost a week now in this new life. Already it was feeling familiar, and more routine, less like a fabulous vacation. And already my old life felt muted, like a seventies photograph. The faces were still familiar, but the edges less sharp, the colors fading.
It made me feel scared, as if I was having one of those dreams where I lost Gloria at school, me running the long, bright hallways of Grange Hill Elementary in terror, searching for her pink backpack, her tiny flowered sneakers. Had she gone home with a friend? Did Jimmy have her? Was she waiting for me somewhere else? Panic rose, and I started to run again, turning back toward Center City.
With commuters now rising from subway stations and cars at every intersection, I found myself having to slow. I tried to weave around them but gave up by Eleventh Street. I looked up and realized I was near the building where Jules worked. I began to circle her block.
On the third lap, I noticed a coffee shop across from the entrance to her building and went inside. A young woman with short black hair and a knit fisherman’s cap was filling metal baskets of gluten-free bagels, muffins, and scones. A large chalkboard announced prices and I winced. Even their specials were double what the same pastry would cost in Grange Hill, just six miles away. I pulled out a credit card from the tiny zippered pocket on my thigh and bought some scones, a bagel, two organic fig bars, and a coffee and then settled onto a stool by the window to wait. Like a cop on a stakeout.
A little after eight o’clock, I saw her. She was wearing dark gray skinny jeans, a silky aqua T-shirt, and a black leather blazer. Loops of thick silver chain hung low to her waist while knee-high black boots reached up toward them from the concrete. White plastic headphone strings emerged from her jacket and up into her long auburn hair, still her best feature, even when stick straight.
She was moving briskly, one arm on a black workbag, another holding a silver water bottle. I put down my coffee, grabbed the bag of baked goods, and sprinted across the street, catching her on the arm before she reached the revolving door.
“Aaaaahhh! What are you doing?” she cried in alarm, yanking back her arm and then removing her earbuds. “Trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said. “I just wanted to talk. Got a minute?”
“I’ve got to get to work.”
“Please, Jules,” I said. “I really need to talk to you.” And then, holding up the bag, I added, “And I have snacks.”
She eyed the bag and took in my sweaty clothes, messy hair, and eager expression. Then she glanced at her watch and sighed. “Five minutes.”
We crossed over to the coffee shop and plopped into opposite sides of a booth. I laid the pastries I had just bought on the crinkly brown bag, a little buffet of breakfast delights I hoped would sweeten her expression. But she didn’t touch them, just watched as I took a large bite of a cinnamon scone, raining crumbs on the table.
“Mon’t mu mant mum?” I asked, the scone turning to cement in my mouth. For a moment, I thought I saw a glint of craving in her eye, but she turned away.
“I don’t eat that stuff anymore,” she said flatly.
I cleared my throat, steeling myself for what I’d come here to say.
“Jules, I know that somehow I screwed things up. But I want to make things right between us. Please tell me what I can do so we can be friends again.”
She sighed and looked away, a bored look on her face. But I could tell she was listening. I could also tell she was not having it.
“I promise you I’m not this so-called socialite you think I am. I’m the same Abbey you met in college. I swear.”
Still nothing, but at least now she was making eye contact.
“Look. I appreciate the apology. But I’m not sure there’s a place for me in your life or for you in mine. You’re busy. I’m busy. I’ve got Lucas. My business. It may not seem very glamorous to you, but I’m happy. Happier than I’ve ever been.”
“I can tell,” I said, beaming at her. “And I’m so happy for you. But I could really use a friend. Alex is stressed out and—”
“That’s just it, Abbey. It’s always about what you need and what you want,” she said. “Or what Alex needs, what Alex wants.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. You know what I mean.”
No, I don’t, I wanted to tell her. Please, Jules, please explain it to me. It is beyond comprehension that I don’t see fourteen texts from you every day, that you haven’t updated me on every calorie you’ve consumed in the past forty-eight hours, that we let another himbo get chucked off The Bachelorette without a word exchanged between us.
Was I really the self-centered socialite she thought I was? And even worse, was I all about Alex van Holt, all the time?
“Don’t you like Alex?” I asked.
“I like Alex just fine. It’s you I have a problem with.”
I reeled back as if she had slapped me. Then she seemed to regret being so harsh, her expression returning to the gentle Jules I knew. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Bee, you were always the independent one. The one who knew what she wanted and went after it. It was me who was always morphing for the guy of the moment. Their music. Their food. Their side of the bed. Oh God, I even took line-dancing lessons for that guy from Lancaster. What was his name? Patrick?”
“Peter,” I told her.
“Yeah, Peter.” As she sat cringing at the desperation of a much younger self, I sat frozen, anxious—and scared—to hear more.
But it came. “But then, after Gloria, you started to change.”
“Kids do that to you. It just happens.” Jules just didn’t understand the grind of being a working mother. If she did, she’d understand why I quit working. I knew plenty of mothers—rich and poor—who quit their jobs after childbirth.
I felt defensive, wondering when she’d become so judgmental.
She lifted her hands in a gesture of self-defense. “I know, I know, how could I get the mom thing? But you and I both know it was more than that. You stopped calling so much. Stopped doing all the stuff you liked to do. Started going to fancy fund-raisers and hiring decorators and doing cleanses. It was like the Abbey I knew disappeared. Or got swallowed up.”
“That can’t be true,” I said, speaking to us both.
She looked at my fancy running gear and beige-blond highlights. She eyed my fake breasts and perfectly painted nails. “Really? Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
I started to refute her, getting angry. The demise of our friendship couldn’t be all my fault. But then again, it wasn’t like Jules to exaggerate. She always gave it to me straight; it was one of the things I valued most about our friendship.
She sighed and stood up, then grabbed her bag. “I have to go.”
I watched her move to the door and felt so helpless. But I also knew that nearly twenty years of friendship couldn’t end like this. I wasn’t about to give up.
“Jules, wait,” I said, jumping up to catch her before she reached the door. “Is there any way we can start again? Maybe just have lunch sometime. Or coffee. I could bring the kids.”
She paused, thinking it over.
“Maybe,” she said. “I’d really like to meet Van.”
Then she was gone, leaving me covered in crumbs and self-loathing. The situation was even worse than I’d thought; it was utterly unimaginable. Was I so wrapped up in myself and my husband and my new life that my dearest friend, the maid of honor at my wedding, the person who felt more like family to me than my own family, had never even met my son?
I gathered the half-eaten goodies and the coffee and stuffed them into the trash. I hurried outside and began to run again, wanting very badly to be home. And not at the apartment, but at the Grange Hill house, with its drafty windows and sloping porch. I ran and ran and ran, trying to ignore the cramp in my stomach and the even more painful thought in my mind: I may never see home again.
As I stepped off the elevator, I saw May coming out of the apartment door with Gloria and Sam. I hid on one side of the hallway, listening to her sing a funny song to them, one they knew well.
“Ladybug, ladybug, what do you say?” she sang.
And the kids sang back: “Ladybug, ladybug, have a good day!”
“Ladybug, ladybug, what do you hear—” She stopped, both the smile and the song, when she saw me.
“Oscar is taking Mr. Alex, so we are walking to school,” she said, all business. I was relieved that Alex was already gone, not here to see me looking so sweaty and gross, but also sad. I could use a quick hit of his smile right now.
“I’ll take her,” I told May.
She looked surprised—and suspicious.
“But you never…,” she said, her eyes opening in horror as I held out my hand for Gloria’s backpack.
I took it and then grabbed Gloria’s hand. But except for her arm, which hung between us like a clothesline, the little girl didn’t move.
“Gloria,” I said. “Let’s go.” I gave her my patented “Don’t test me” look.
“Let me take her,” offered May, pulling Gloria’s other arm up and out. “I’m sure you have things to do.”
“No. I don’t. I’ll take her.” By now I was getting angry, and so when I pulled Gloria again, it was with a little too much force. She smacked into me and yelped. May was aghast.
But she let Gloria go and instead reached down to pick up Sam. She wasn’t giving him up so easily.
“I’ll take the little guy too,” I insisted, curling my hand in a “give it here” motion as if he was a piece of a contraband I’d just seen May hide behind her back. She took two hesitant steps and gave him to me, but not before wiping the drool off his mouth and smoothing down his hair.
As we walked down the hall toward the elevator, both children looked back at May with longing. It filled me with curiosity. Was Abbey van Holt too busy and important to take her own kids to school? Did they prefer May to her? I tried not to target my frustration at them, but I couldn’t help it. It hurt and, at the same time, felt ridiculous. Two women fighting over who gets to take a little girl to school. In Grange Hill, it was the opposite: Jimmy and I always argued over who would be forced to take them, neither of us able to spare the twenty minutes it took to maneuver the kiss-and-go line.
“Go relax, May,” I said. “I can handle the kids. I am their mother.”
But then halfway down the hall, I had to yell back: “The stroller?”
“I called down for it,” she said, still not moving, watching.
“Right,” I said, herding the kids into the elevator.
Waiting for us downstairs in the lobby was a fancy chrome-and-red-canvas stroller with oversized all-terrain wheels. I lifted Sam and turned him around a few times before I figured out which direction he should face. There were no straps; the hammock-like seat used his own body weight, of which there was plenty, to secure him. Gloria was already to the front doors, so I gave the stroller a push. It shot forward like a hockey puck on ice, the motion lifting Sam’s soft blond hairs up like a halo.
We cruised along Walnut Street toward the intersection, Gloria skipping five feet ahead. My suburban parental instincts told me to grab Gloria’s hand, but since I had no idea where we were headed, I had no choice but to let her lead the way. After a few blocks I realized I need not have worried; she charged through the busy city streets with the focused gaze and pumping arms of a mall walker. Pedestrians moved out of her way; one couple even dropped hands and separated to let her pass. Watch out for this one, I thought, she’s got the eye of the tiger. Just like her grandmother.
We dodged people and dogs, and the occasional delivery cart, until the commercial buildings gave way to residences, and the sidewalks turned from smooth and concrete to bumpy and bricked. Stately old town houses loomed over foot-softened marble steps, and carriage houses, long ago emptied of horses and coachmen, beckoned young professionals with their wide-planked doors and clay roofs. I admired the curving iron handrails, the professionally decorated flower boxes, and the mullioned windows as Sam and I bounced along behind Gloria. I saw some equally confounding strollers heading in the same direction and figured we were close.
Gloria led the way to a pretty yellow church with a modern stone-and-glass addition. An etched gold sign announced the place: “St. Andrew’s School for Children, Established 1886.” A wrought-iron fence enclosed a slate courtyard and a mulched playground, while two rows of teachers, all looking like Jennifer Garner on her errand days, were clapping and singing a “good morning” song.
On the sidewalk, our trio waited in line, competing with kids jumping out of Land Rovers and nannies pushing double strollers. Gloria gave me a quick kiss good-bye and then ran through the gauntlet of teachers, while Sam looked around with glee. For a school built in the center of one of the nation’s grittiest cities, it felt more like a day with the von Trapps, but I guess this was the kind of educational environment that five-figure tuition buys you.
A few other mothers mouthed hellos under the din, but none stopped to chat. Most of them looked just like me in their expensive exercise tights and bright sneakers, their morning runs either complete or imminent. I saw one mother in a gray pinstriped suit kiss a little boy and then rush off down the sidewalk, thumb-typing on her iPhone. She was no doubt sending a clever but apologetic text to her boss, explaining why she was late for work—again.
The crowd thinned and the singing died down, so Sam and I made our escape. We were just turning out of the gate when a monstrous white Mercedes SUV ran up onto the sidewalk, dangerously close to the entrance. Twin boys burst out of the backseat door and raced inside, not bothering to say good-bye to their exasperated mother stepping out from the driver’s side. Against the white car, her hair gleamed black, while her overly bronzed skin skewed orange.
r /> Apparently she knew me, because the moment Sam and I passed by, she screeched, “Aaaaaaabbey,” and ran over to us. I stopped strolling and braced for impact as she came toward us at top speed, her giant breasts heaving.
“I’m so glad I saw you,” she said as she caught her breath and then extracted some long black hairs from her lip gloss. “Did May quit too?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, noticing her overly penciled eyebrows and platform heels.
“My nanny quit last week. Missed her boyfriend, so she moved back to Sweden. Didn’t even give notice,” she said as she leaned over and gave me a quick hug and a mmmm-ah! kiss. “I figured the same happened to you!”
“No, just decided to bring the kids myself.” Why was this so shocking to everyone?
“I’ve been e-mailing Betsy, but she never responds,” she continued. “Where the hell is the next benefit committee lunch? I’ve got updates on the caterer.”
“Um, I don’t know,” I said. “Is that today?”
She gave me a look: Duh. “Yes, it’s today, silly. We always meet on Thursdays.”
This woman had a little too much of everything—jewelry, teeth, cleavage—but I liked her smile and her blatant disregard for school policies: a sign directly above her car said “Absolutely No Parking.”
“Oh, right. Today is Thursday,” I said slowly, awkwardly. “And Thursday is when we meet. For the benefit… committee… lunch.” I was beginning to get used to sounding like a total moron.
I watched her face drop and realized she didn’t think I was stupid; she thought I was being coy, trying to evade the question. Luckily, an idea surfaced.
“Let me check my phone!” I whipped it out and held it up as if it was the first phone ever invented. I scrolled through messages while she cooed over Sam, and eventually I found one from Betsy marked “Today.”
“Looks like it’s at twelve thirty at a place called Le Jardin on Broad Street,” I told her.