I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

Don’t want to be grown-up anymore. When did we start having to be the grown-ups? K xxx

  * * *

  2:57 P.M. Our prospective client’s offices are decorated in a style I immediately identify as Corporate Cozy. Plaid wing chairs, a lot of teak and ethnic hangings bought by the mile. The look says: We mean business but, hey, you can do a yogic headstand in here if the mood takes you.

  Momo and I are shown into the meeting room by the largest female I have ever seen. Carol Dunstan is clearly a major beneficiary of Workplace Diversity, Fattist Section. The walk from the lobby has made her breathless; just looking at her is to wonder what manner of distress it is that requires so much comfort eating. She makes the introductions, taking us through the eighteen faces round the table. I hear Momo decline a drink. That’s my girl. “And last, but certainly not least, our distinguished colleague from the Salinger Foundation. Mr. Abelhammer sits on the state board of trustees, Ms. Reddy.”

  And truly there he is. In the farthest corner, marked out from the other suits by a posture of almost insolent relaxation and a broad grin. Simultaneously, the person I least want to see and the only person I want to see. Jack.

  THE PRESENTATION GOES WELL. Too well, maybe. Halfway through and I can practically taste the healing sting of gin and tonic on the plane home. I have tried to ignore the fact that my e-mail lover is actually physically here in the room, although I have felt his presence as you feel the sun on your skin.

  I talk our prospective clients through the booklet containing mug shots of the guys who manage portfolios back in London. It’s a gallery of City types pretty much unchanged for three hundred years: well-lunched Hogarth squires, thrusting runts. Men whose last wisps of hair have been blown dry to form a spun-sugar web over a pink saucer of scalp. Heart-attack candidates, their eager prep-school faces buried in the landslide of middle age. Young men with the waxy, stunned look that comes from long obedient hours in front of a screen. With particular pride, I point out hotshot manager Chris Bunce, whose coke habit has given him the eyes of a laboratory rat and the manners to match. At the front, there is a photograph of Robin Cooper-Clark—tall as a birch, quizzical, half smiling. He looks like God would look, if God had his shirts made at Turnbull & Asser.

  Carol Dunstan clears her throat. “Ms. Reddy, New Jersey has recently signed up to the McMahon Principles. Would that be a problem to your asset allocation?”

  OK, Kate, let’s not panic. Let’s think. Think! “No. I’m sure that if we were given a list of stocks that were governed by the Mc—um—Mahon Principles—”

  “We don’t have a list, Ms. Reddy,” says the big woman curtly. “Naturally, we would expect Edwin Morgan Forster to provide a list that abides by the McMahon Principles. Principles with which you are, of course, familiar.”

  Eighteen faces in the room fixed on me. Nineteen, including Momo, who looks up with trusting spaniel eyes. I have never heard of McMahon or his sodding principles. Seconds which normally pass silently, modestly, happy to go unnoticed, are suddenly long, loud and merciless. I can feel the blood surge to my throat and chest—a raspberry flush that can only be triggered by sex or shame. The exhalation of the air-conditioning unit sounds like a woman parted from her lover. No. Don’t think about lovers. Think about McMahon, whoever he is. Probably some self-righteous little Celt wanting to take his revenge on the Anglo-Saxon capitalist oppressors. I avoid looking down the far end of the table where Jack is sitting.

  Carol Dunstan’s prim drawstring mouth is just opening again when a male voice speaks. “I think we can feel confident, Carol, that with Ms. Reddy’s wide experience of ethical funds she would be up to speed with the employment practices of companies in Ireland.”

  Sudden rush of gratitude as heady as oxygen. Jack has flipped the emergency hatch and given me a way out. I nod in eager agreement. “As Mr. Abelhammer says, we have a team which screens for employment policies. On a personal note, I’d like to add that I am fully behind the McMahon Principles, being Irish myself.”

  There is a crash behind me. Momo has dropped a file, but this calamity is lost in the general murmur of appreciation for my ethnic credentials. On a tide of goodwill, I move straight into the close. The close is the bit where you say Give us the money. But politely. And without mentioning money.

  5:11 P.M. Momo and I are falling into the cab when there is a squeal of leather behind us.

  “I’d like to say what a pleasure it was to witness such a performance, Ms. Reddy.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Abelhammer. I was most grateful for your interjection.”

  Caught in the static between Jack and me, Momo looks slightly perplexed.

  He rests his hand lightly on the rim of the car door. “I was wondering whether I could interest you both in a drink. Perhaps take in the sights of Shanksville. I see the Sinatra Inn does a cocktail called Come Fly with Me.”

  “Actually, Ms. Gumeratne and I are very tired.”

  He nods his understanding. “Another time. Take care now.”

  On the way back to the hotel, Momo says, “I’m sorry, Kate, but do you know that guy?”

  “No, I don’t.” A truthful answer. I don’t know Jack Abelhammer, but I may be in love with him. How can you be in love with someone you don’t know? It’s probably easier, isn’t it, all things considered. A blank screen you can type all your longings on.

  “He looks like George Clooney.” Momo sighs. “I think we should have that drink.”

  “No. It would be unprofessional before they’ve made their decision. Anyway, we should have our own drink to celebrate. You were a complete star.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate, but you were the brilliant one. I couldn’t do what you just did.” Momo permits herself a smile, and I suddenly see how tense her face has been. “I didn’t know you were Irish.”

  “Just a little. On my father’s side.”

  “Like McMahon?”

  “Yes, only without the principles.”

  She giggles. “What does your father do?”

  “Same line of work as me.”

  “He’s a fund manager?”

  “No, but like us he gambles a lot on fancied horses, pretends it’s scientific and hopes to God they’ll come home, and when they don’t he leaves town.”

  “Good gracious,” says Momo, so shocked she forgets to say sorry for the first time since I met her. “He sounds like a colorful character.”

  * * *

  WHENEVER I TALK ABOUT MY DAD to other people I hear myself adopting a different voice: detached, breezy, ironic. A voice you tell funny stories in. Colorful characters are wonderful in Dickens or as bit parts in movies, when they’re played by bloated ex-matinee idols who can be carried all the way to Best Supporting Actor on a wave of public sympathy; you just don’t want one in your life if you can possibly help it.

  “Pretend we’ve got plenty of cash, Kathy duck,” Dad once instructed me. We were sitting in a pub garden at the tag end of a long gray line of northern towns. Julie and I sat on a bench with half-pint glasses of Dandelion & Burdock—a drink that tastes like Pepsi mixed with creosote but was believed by us to be the chosen nectar of sophisticated ladies. I was twelve years old, too dizzy from moving town every six months to know what stable behavior was, and far too in thrall to my father to protest. Of course there wasn’t any money, and when there was it would be spirited out of my mum’s purse by Joe for one of his schemes.

  But I pretended we had money. Even then I think I could smell the disappointment settling like damp on my father and I wanted to protect him from it. Disappointment unmans a man so. The women around him have to go on pretending they can’t smell it, with him sitting there, hand shaking, using the other one to steady the glass and insisting that there’s everything still to play for.

  Now here’s a funny thing. All the women I know in the City are Daddy’s Girls one way or another. (Candy’s dad walked out when she was five and I think she’s been trying to find him ever since; Debra’s ran a motor company in the West Midlands a
nd was occasionally sighted by Deb and her sisters between rounds of golf at the weekend.) Daughters striving to be the son their father never had, daughters excelling at school to win the attention of a man who was always looking the other way, daughters like poor mad Antigone pursuing the elusive ghost of paternal love. So why do all us Daddy’s Girls go and work in places so hostile to women? Because the only real comfort we get is from male approval. How fucking sad is that?

  I close my eyes and try to banish thoughts of my own wayward sire. Since he turned up at the office with that nappy design, he has called most days. The other night, he left a message on the answerphone, saying that the money wasn’t enough.

  “How much did you give him?” asked Rich, his face draining.

  I mentioned a figure that was about a third of the check I wrote that day in the pub, and Rich hit the roof.

  “Christ, when will you learn, woman?”

  A good question. There’s no statute of limitations on pity, is there?

  8:18 P.M. Must have lain down on the bed and fallen asleep. Woken by the phone. It’s Richard. He sounds incredibly pissed off. Says he can’t find the detergent ball for the washing machine. Paula called in sick and Ben was running round without a nappy and there was an accident on the duvet. So he’s got the cover off and into the machine, but he can’t find the ball.

  I tell him the ball will probably have got tangled up in the sheets; he should try the ironing basket.

  “Where’s the ironing basket?”

  The ironing basket is the basket full of clothes next to the ironing board.

  “Rich, aren’t you even going to ask me how it went?”

  “What?”

  “The final.”

  “I need you.”

  “Oh, come on, Rich, you can manage the washing just this once.”

  “Kate, it’s nothing to do with the washing, I just need you. Why can’t you fly home tonight?”

  “I just can’t. Look, I’ll be on the first plane tomorrow.”

  The phone again. I let it ring and ring. Richard asking about hamster food, presumably, or the location of the microwave or his children’s ears. Eventually, thinking there might be a genuine problem with the kids, I pick up.

  “I was glad to learn that you’re Irish. For a moment there I was in danger of confusing you with the Katharine Reddy who runs my fund and told me she was French.”

  “I did not say I was French, Jack. I said I had French blood in me.”

  He laughs. “What next? Cherokee? You are a piece of work, Kate.”

  Now I hear a voice—a responsible sober woman’s voice—telling her client quite firmly that under no circumstances does she want to try the Come Fly with Me cocktail in some cheesy roadside diner.

  His reply comes straight back over the net. “No problem. They do a great ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.’”

  A line from that song pops into my head and I sing it: “Horizontally speaking, he’s at his very best.”

  Abelhammer lets out a low whistle. “So it’s true, you do know everything.”

  “I don’t know the way to the Sinatra Inn.”

  17

  Night and Day

  THE SINATRA INN has the determined gaiety of a fading showgirl. Red-velvet booths line the walls; fifty years of elegant dining have rubbed shiny saddle sores in the scarlet plush. The back wall is given over to photographs of the local boy who made good (Frank came from Hoboken, just down the road). There is a picture of Sinatra with Lauren Bacall; Sinatra at a rakish angle with the Rat Pack; Sinatra standing at a piano, caught in a cone of light, his skinny tie at half mast, his neck straining for some long-lost note; and Sinatra with Ava Gardner in the fifties, him looking famished, her insatiable. I can never see those two together without imagining them in bed.

  Each booth has its own mini jukebox where you put in your quarter and take your pick of Frank’s Greatest Hits. So many titles, so many featuring the word you. Jack Abelhammer and I choose the corner seat under the poster of Frank as Maggio in From Here to Eternity. To the waiter, an eager, harassed man with a lot of veal to get rid of, we must appear to be a regular couple having fun over the cocktail list. (“Witchcraft” looks evil, so I opt for “Night and Day.”) In fact, Jack and I are in trouble. Like returning astronauts, we are struggling to make the switch from the weightless world of e-mail, where you can say what you like and mean it or not mean it, to the real world where words, being earthed by gestures, by arms and lips and eyes, have their own specific gravity.

  I have never seen Jack out of a suit before. The effect is only slightly less alarming than if he were entirely naked. I laugh and drink and laugh and feel a needle of doubt threading through me. I know Jack Abelhammer the way I know a fictional character. I need him to exist to make reality more bearable, not to complicate it.

  “So, what’s it to be, signora?” Jack is examining the menu. “Veal with marsala, veal with mascarpone or veal with our delicious chopped veal. You don’t likea da veal? OK, so we have a very gooda scaloppine à la limone.”

  He slots a quarter into the jukebox, and his finger reaches out to press “Where or When.”

  “No, not that one.”

  “But it’s beautiful.”

  “I’ll cry. When I heard Sinatra died I cried.”

  “Hey, I love Frank too, but he was real old when he died. Why’d you cry?”

  I’m not sure how much I want to tell this most familiar stranger, the version with the colorful character or the true story. My dad had a cache of Sinatra 78s he kept in the sideboard filed in their brown-paper sleeves in a big toast-rack thing. Julie and I were fascinated by them when we were kids. The brown paper smelled like old people, but the records themselves made everyone seem so young. They had that kind of ebony luster a cockroach has and a fabulous label in mauve with silver writing like an invitation to a ball. My father always did a great Sinatra impersonation at family get-togethers, standing on a table and spitting out “Schick-kargo, Schick-cargo, that toddlin’ town!” But the songs he liked best were the sad ones: “All the Way” and “Where or When.” “Frank’s the patron saint of unrequited love,” Dad said. “Will you listen to that voice, Katharine?”

  “Kate?”

  “Frank could make my parents happy,” I say, studying the menu. “Sinatra was always the truce music in our house. It was safe to come out if my dad put on ‘Come Fly with Me.’ I think I’ll try another cocktail instead of the veal. What d’you think would happen if you mixed ‘Love and Marriage’ with ‘Strangers in the Night’?”

  Jack grabs the tip of the knife I am playing with, so we each have one end. “Nothing too terrible. Maybe a strange taste in the mouth. I’d say the worst was a bad case of remorse in the morning. What’s a bouncy castle?”

  “What bouncy castle?”

  “A bouncy castle. You have it written on your hand. I haven’t seen a girl write on her hand since fifth grade; Kate, you really should look into these great new things called diaries.”

  I look down at the spider of Biro across my knuckle, a reminder about Emily’s birthday. So, here’s the rub: to tell him or not to tell him that I am a mother (surely, the only context in which this could be a shameful revelation).

  “A bouncy castle is... it’s a blow-up castle you bounce on. For my daughter’s birthday party, I need to remind myself to hire one. I mean, it’s not for ages, but by the time I get round to remembering it’s usually too late.”

  “You have a child?” He seems interested, not appalled.

  “Two. Or so they tell me. I don’t see as much of them as I’d like. Emily will be six in June; she thinks she’s Sleeping Beauty. Ben was one in January and you can’t get him to stay still, he’s . . . well, he’s a boy.”

  Jack nods solemnly. “Amazing they’re still making us. Strictly, we men should have been phased out with the stegosaurus. But a few of us wanted to stick around and see what the place would be like when you were running it.”

  “I’m not
terribly good at being laughed at, Mr. Abelhammer.”

  “That’ll be the German in you, Ms. Reddy.”

  Later, after the veal—a flannel wrapped in a loofah of cheese—there is tiramisu, like shaving foam flecked with almonds. The food is so transcendentally terrible that we are already relishing the shared joke it will become. And then there is dancing, a lot of dancing. I seem to remember singing too, but that can’t be right. What kind of a state would I have to be in to sing in public?

  “Still a voice within me keeps repeating, You You You.

  Night and day you are the one,

  Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.

  Whether near to me or far,

  It’s no matter darling where you are,

  I think of you. Night and day.”

  2:34 A.M. “Hello, Mummy! Mummy, come on, sleepyhead, it’s time to wake up now.”

  Sit up in blind panic. Cover breasts with hands, then realize it’s dark. Emily? Here in New Jersey? Takes a few seconds to find the light switch, a few more to figure out the voice is coming from the alarm clock, the travel one with the recorded message that Emily gave me for Christmas. It must be getting-up time back in London. “Come on, Mummy, lazybones; you’ll be late.” Emily’s voice is tinged with pride in her assignment. When she’s bossy she sounds exactly like her mother.

  Peer around the room for signs of adultery. My dress is on a hanger; shoes under the chair, underwear in a neat pile on top. Jack has carried me back, undressed me and put me to bed. Like a child. Suddenly, I think how unbearable it would have been if he’d been here when Emily’s voice sang out in the darkness, stopping us in our—

  Oh, God, my head. Must get water. In bathroom, switch on light. Light like a drill. Switch off light. Drink one glass of water, then another. Not enough. Climb into shower with mouth open and let water gush in. On the way back to bed, I see that the top page of the hotel stationery has something on it. Switch on desk lamp:

  “Some things that happen for the first time,