Monica glances back over her shoulder at Caleb, to make sure he isn’t listening. “But how’s your H-E-A-R-T?” she says in a low voice, her eyes wide. “Stress is no joke, Charlie. It’s a silent K-I-L-L-E-R. That’s why I won’t date lawyers anymore, you know. Remember Tyler? He seemed great at first, but the guy was so stressed-out all the time. Clients used to call him at all hours of the night, and he popped Xanax like candy, and I think he had to take Lipitor, too, even though he was, like, thirty-two. It was just too much bad energy, you know?”
“What kind of candy is Xanax?” Caleb pipes up from the floor.
“Honestly, I’m totally fine,” I assure her. “It was just a false alarm. Sorry to have scared you.”
“You’re the best, Monica,” Zadie says, sounding tired. “Thank you so much for stepping in.” She shoots me a look that means, Pay her, please, so that she’ll leave.
“Oh, right.” I pull my wallet out of my back pocket. “How much do I owe you?”
Monica shakes her head, looking horrified. “Oh my God, nothing! I couldn’t possibly take your money right now. You and Caleb are like family. It was my pleasure, honestly.”
I look to Zadie, not entirely sure what to do. She gives a small, imperceptible shake of her head.
“No, no,” I say, “I can’t allow that.” I shove an overly large handful of cash in her direction. “Please take this.”
Monica steps back as though I’m offering her crack cocaine. “Charlie, no way. I mean”—she lowers her voice as if Caleb can’t hear her if she’s whispering—“I can’t possibly take money from someone who’s just been F-I-R-E-D.”
Before I can respond, Monica skips over to Caleb, crouches down beside him, and plants a kiss on the top of his head. She scoops up Princess with one hand, gracefully ignoring the cat’s hostile hissing.
“Bye-bye, buddy,” she says. “Thanks for hanging out with me today.”
“Bye, Monica.” He holds up a piece of paper covered in marker scrawl. “I made this. You can have it if you want.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet, buddy. You know what? Why don’t you give it to your daddy? I think he could really use a gift right now.” She straightens up. “Call me if you need anything,” she says to me, letting the implication of this offer sink in. “Anything at all, okay? Princess and I are here for you, Charlie.” She puts her hand over her heart. “You’re in our prayers.”
Once we hear the front door close, Zadie lets out a long sigh. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” she says. “The women of New York are rallying behind you.”
“Swell,” I say, before heading to the fridge to get myself a beer.
The Dud
Caleb has reflux. Mira and I learned this when, at three months old, he morphed from a peaceful newborn into Rosemary’s baby, seemingly overnight. He screamed literally every second he was awake and occasionally even when he was asleep. Nothing soothed him. He hated pacifiers. Detested the swing. He screamed even louder in the stroller, and so we gave up on taking him for walks altogether for fear some passerby would call Child Protective Services on us. Most of all, he hated eating. Breast milk or formula, bottle or boob—Caleb didn’t want any part of it. If anything, eating seemed to make things worse. Several times a day, Mira had to grit her teeth and attempt to feed our little hellion, an endeavor that typically ended with everyone covered in tears and breast milk.
Mira put on a brave face, but I could tell she took the whole thing personally. She changed her diet. She stopped eating soy and spices, then dairy and broccoli. She eliminated suspect foods one by one until there was nothing left but a monastic menu of chicken and rice. When that didn’t work, she started buying products I didn’t know existed: nipple shields and slow-flow bottles and special nursing pillows. She read books on breastfeeding and colic. She even hired a lactation consultant, an impossibly peppy woman named Bonnie who, for two hundred dollars, came to our apartment, felt Mira up, and proclaimed what I already knew: Mira had fabulous breasts, a healthy milk supply, and the problem couldn’t possibly lie with her.
The problem, clearly, was Caleb. Short of buying earplugs and making the occasional joke about being “past our rescission period,” I didn’t know what more I could do.
“At what point,” I said to Mira one night, after a several hour scream-a-thon, “do we just admit that we got a dud?”
I began to resign myself to the fact that I just might not be a baby person. Maybe Caleb and I would bond once he could toss around a football, I reasoned. It’s not like we had a lot of common interests. He couldn’t move. He didn’t smile. It was just cry, sleep, poop, repeat. No one tells you this when you have a baby, but for the first three months they’re about as dynamic as sea monkeys. Some nights I would stand over Caleb’s crib, watching him sleep and waiting. I didn’t know what I was waiting for exactly, but I had the distinct sense that I should be feeling something deeper for my own child than I currently was. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him; I did. But it was an academic sort of love, detached and distant. Sometimes when he cried, all I felt was irritation.
Mira was the opposite. She was a wellspring of love for Caleb. His pain was her pain, she said. When he was sad, she felt it in her gut. Even when he screamed like a banshee, her face radiated warmth and tenderness when she looked at him. She professed to miss him during the night, so she took to sleeping on the pull-out couch in his nursery. She carried him with her everywhere in a sling and gamely encouraged him to suckle her breast on the Lexington Avenue bus or while in line at Starbucks. He was a part of her, she said. The best part. She once told me she felt as though her heart had sprouted legs and was running around outside her body.
Their connection was obvious. The only time Caleb was ever at peace was in Mira’s arms. If I picked him up when he was crying, it only made things worse. If I tried to soothe him in the middle of the night, his face would twist in rage. Eventually, Mira would shuffle into the nursery and take him from me and the crying would stop. I would return to our bedroom alone and the two of them would fall asleep in the rocker where she nursed him, their bodies braided together.
They looked alike, too. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, Caleb was every bit Mira’s kid. In family photos I loomed behind them, a swarthy interloper casting a dark shadow over mother and son. In a video taken in the hospital, I hold him stiffly, as though he were an incendiary device that might ignite at any second. I thought fatherhood would come naturally to me. I was wrong. In the beginning, Caleb felt like an acquired taste. Not unlike cigars. Something I could see myself getting into down the road but that currently made me nauseous in large quantities.
As for his reflux, Mira refused to give up hope. In fact, the sicker Caleb seemed, the more she doted on him. “Something’s wrong,” she kept saying over and over. “It’s not him. He’s trying to tell us something. I just have to figure out what it is.”
Our pediatrician, a lovable, slightly doddering, older gentleman by the name of Dr. Bone, wasn’t hugely helpful. “It might be reflux,” he said, stroking his white beard. “But he never vomits after eating?”
We looked at one another. “No,” we said, mildly disappointed. “Never.”
“Then it’s probably colic.”
“So, how do we treat colic?” Mira asked hopefully.
“You don’t. You just have to ride it out.”
“I’m taking him to a specialist,” Mira said, once we were out of the doctor’s door. “There has to be something we can do.”
A specialist in what? Screaming babies? I thought, but kept my mouth shut. I had my doubts. I was sticking to the dud theory.
A week later Mira returned home from Weill Cornell Medical Center triumphantly waving a prescription for Zantac over her head. Her days of hitting re-dial had apparently paid off; somehow she had finagled an appointment with some famous pediatric gastroenterologist who made getting an eight o’clock reservation at Per Se look easy.
“He has reflux!” she crowed gleefully, as though Caleb
had just been declared the world’s most brilliant baby. “I’m so proud of him! You should have seen him, Charlie. He was so good during the exam. And the doctor said that with medication we can control his symptoms completely.” I had my doubts but was willing to try anything. So what if my three-month-old took the same medication as my grandpa?
Sure enough, within days of starting on Zantac, Caleb’s screaming and squirming abated. He began to eat a little. He even smiled. I had always loved the little monster, but I actually started to like him.
Once medicated, Caleb rebounded quickly. I, however, did not. I was thrilled that he was no longer crying all the time, but the experience left me feeling strangely hollow. Why hadn’t I seen what Mira had seen: that Caleb was simply uncomfortable and needed help? Why had I been so quick to write him off as a difficult kid? I’d lie awake thinking about this, worrying about how and when my lack of paternal instinct would next fail me.
“Are you okay?” Mira asked me during a particularly pleasant afternoon walk in Central Park.
“He seems so happy.” I stared down at Caleb, who was peacefully ensconced in his stroller. “He almost never cries anymore.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Of course. I just . . . I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“What’s stupid?”
“I feel guilty. I sort of hated him when he was crying all the time.”
Mira nodded. She understood, at least theoretically.
“It was tough,” she said, “but we’re through it now.”
“But only because of you. You knew there was something wrong. I just thought he was high-strung. Fuck. I’m a horrible father, aren’t I?”
“Charlie, you can’t beat yourself up. Dr. Bone didn’t even know what the problem was.”
“Dr. Bone is a hundred and seventy-five years old.”
Mira laughed. “Well, so maybe we need a different pediatrician. Look, we’re new at this parenting thing. We’re going to make mistakes.”
“If it weren’t for you, he’d still be screaming. If I was on my own with him, we’d never make it.”
Mira sighed. “That’s not true. But regardless, that’s never going to happen.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“You’ll never leave me? I can’t do this without you.”
“Never, Charlie. We’re in this thing together, you and me.”
Persona Non Grata
I wake up thinking about revenge.
I want Todd fired. No, I want more than that. I want him publicly humiliated and then fired, just like I was. He more than deserves it. What he did was so unethical, so below the belt, that my heart starts racing again just thinking about it. Welles wants to lecture me on clarity of thought, professionalism, and discretion? The guy who spent ten years toiling away in a windowless conference room while Todd was teeing off on the fourth hole at the Maidstone Club? What I did was stupid, yes. But what Todd did was foolish, immature, profoundly damaging, and potentially illegal. Where is the justice?
In the sobering light of morning, my mandate seems clear. I cannot waste time wallowing in my misery. I don’t need to sit in some psychiatrist’s chair bemoaning the inequities of my situation. What I need is to get my job back, and fast. And the best and most effective way to do that is to get Fred, Welles, and Steve to see who the real enemy is here: Todd Ellison.
• • •
“Well, hello,” Zadie says when I stride into the kitchen. She looks me up and down, assessing my newly shaven face, my suit and tie, my neatly gelled hair. “You look nice.”
“Thanks.”
“You going somewhere?”
“I’m going to the office.”
“Huh,” she says. She begins to crack eggs into a bowl. “You really think that’s a good idea?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”
She shrugs, her shoulders tense. “Okay,” she says simply, and begins to beat the eggs with a whisk.
“What do you suggest I do?” I say, annoyed. “Just slink away without a fight? Start collecting unemployment checks and watch Wheel of Fortune all day?”
Though her back is to me, I can feel her rolling her eyes.
“No need to get dramatic.”
“This is dramatic, Zadie! I lost my job, for Chrissake!”
She turns and glares at me. “First of all,” she says, pointing at me with the whisk, “Caleb is asleep, so please keep your voice down. He was up and down all night last night and he needs his rest. Second, yelling at me is not going to fix anything. None of this is my fault, and you know it.”
“Fine,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I’m sorry.”
“I understand why you’re upset, Charlie. Of course I do. But I really don’t think storming your office is a good idea. For starters, it’s a Saturday. Why don’t you take the weekend off and just try to relax? Spend time with Caleb. Enjoy the fact that your BlackBerry won’t be going off every forty-five seconds. And then, when you’re in a better head space, you can come up with an actual plan.”
I open my mouth to argue but I can’t. As of right now, I have no plan other than to show up at Fred’s office and demand he hears me out.
“Anyway, the doctor said very specifically that you need to rest. He said it was essential. Why don’t you come to the zoo with Caleb and me? It’ll be fun. He’d love to spend some time with you.”
I sigh. “What time are you going to the zoo?”
“It opens at ten.”
I look at my watch. It is nearly eight a.m., right around the time that Fred typically shows up at the office, even on Saturdays. “Okay,” I say, “I’m in.”
“Really?” Zadie’s face lights up. “That’s awesome, Charlie.”
“But I’m going to go to the office quickly first. I just want to talk to Fred. Otherwise I’ll just be thinking about it all day.”
Zadie turns back to the kitchen counter. “Okay,” she says, her voice flat.
“I’ll be back by ten, I promise. Eleven for sure. Okay? Don’t leave without me.”
“Whatever you say, Charlie,” Zadie replies, in a tone that implies that she’s already written me off as a no-show.
• • •
Because it’s Saturday, the lobby of 392 Park Avenue is relatively empty. I lower my head and walk towards the turnstiles, hoping not to run into anyone I know. I swipe my ID card swiftly through the reader but nothing happens. A second time—still nothing. I’m beginning to draw stares. A small line accumulates behind me. It’s not until my third try that I realize what’s happened: they’ve already invalidated my ID.
Humiliated, I slink off towards the visitors’ reception desk. Terrence, the friendliest of the building’s security guards, sits behind it reading the paper. I let out a small sigh of relief when I see him. Unlike some of the other guards, Terrence never hassles anyone for forgetting or misplacing their ID. If anyone is going to let me upstairs without one, it’s him.
“Hey, man,” he says when he sees me. He stands up and offers me a fist bump. “How you feeling?”
I shrug, embarrassed by his candor. You’d think he’d at least pretend not to know what happened yesterday.
“I’m okay. Thanks for asking, Terrence.”
“Juan said you got hauled outta here on a stretcher, man. That don’t sound okay to me.”
“It wasn’t my finest hour.”
“Well, I hope you got some rest.” Terrence glances nervously at his computer. “You got a meeting or something?”
“Nah. I just wanted to pick up some things from my office.” I feel my cheeks turn pink as I say this; I’ve never been much of a liar. But something tells me he’s not going to let me upstairs to see Fred without Fred’s explicit permission. “Could you swipe me in?”
Terrence lets out a sigh. “I wish I could, man. But you know they’ve gotten real strict about that, so . . .”
“I hear you,” I say, and offer him a tight smile. “It’s okay.”
For a moment I consider just walking away. Who would I call? Suzanne at the Hardwick front desk? She acts put out if you ask to borrow her pencil; there’s no way she’d do me this kind of favor. I could call Moose, but he usually works from home on Saturdays. The thought of being turned away by Fred is too mortifying to contemplate.
I am persona non grata at my own firm. This is beginning to sink in. Not only have I been fired, but I’ve been stripped of small dignities: packing up my own office, for example, or sending a parting e-mail from my firm account. Yesterday, after I was carried out by paramedics, someone went to the trouble of disabling my ID card. Like I was some kind of disgruntled worker who might just show up with an AK-47 and start shooting.
“I can call Lorraine,” Terrence suggests. “She came in about an hour ago.”
“Lorraine!” I exclaim, feeling a surge of hope. “Yes, call Lorraine. She’ll sign me in.”
“You got it, man,” Terrence says, looking relieved. He turns away from me as he dials her extension. After some animated whispering, he hangs up the phone. “She’s coming down,” he says.
“She’s coming down?” My eyebrows shoot up. “I’m not allowed upstairs?”
Terrence shrugs. “I don’t know, man. All I know is, she’s coming down.”
The elevator doors part and Lorraine darts across the lobby. She glances right and then left as though she’s deep into enemy territory.
“Charlie!” she exclaims, and throws her arms around me. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Fred. I have to talk to him, Lorraine. It can’t wait.”
Lorraine smiles sadly at me. “You can’t go up there, Charlie. I wish I could help, but I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble, either. But if I could just talk to him face to face, I know I can straighten this whole thing out.”
Lorraine shakes her head. “Trust me, now’s not the time. He’s with Steve and Welles. They’re meeting with some crisis management person about how to handle all the negative press. I was just in there. Everyone seemed really tense. Fred’s doing that thing where he tugs at his eyebrow.”
This Was Not the Plan Page 8