Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

by Ayelet Waldman

  This new mother is young, closer to my age than the others. She stands a bit apart like I do, although as I watch she shifts almost imperceptibly closer to the mothers. She catches my eye and smiles.

  “Hi,” she says.

  I am so taken aback by being spoken to that I stammer before returning her greeting. There is one other stepmother in the Red Room, but she has never dared show her scarlet-lettered self. I am the only one who comes to school to pick up her husband's child, and the women, all of whom have known Carolyn since Orange Room days, have joined forces and frosted me out. They will not speak to me; they shrink from me; they pull their children away from me as if touching me will give them some kind of disease, as if infidelity is contagious.

  “We're new,” the woman says. “I'm Adik Brennan. Frida's mom? We've just moved here from LA.”

  “Oh,” I say, struck dumb. I glance at the mothers to see if one will come forward to escort Adik into their circle, to correct her in her misapprehension that I am someone with whom she is permitted to speak.

  “I'm Emilia.” Loath to ruin this opportunity, I don't identify my relationship with William.

  “With an A?”

  “No, an E.”

  “That's unusual. Although I should talk, right?”

  “Right, er, no. I mean . . .”

  “I can't believe this weather,” she says. “I actually called a car service just to come and pick Frida up. There was no way I was even going to try to get a cab in this.”

  “Your daughter's name is Frida?” I say.

  “With just an i,” she says. “Like Kahlo. I know, you're probably thinking that Kahlo's been totally commodified and trivialized. I mean, at this point she almost symbolizes lightweight feminism. And it's certainly true that the art world has moved way beyond identity politics.”

  “Um,” I say.

  “But I really loved Frida Kahlo when I was starting out. Like every other female art student. And I still reference her in my work, although my painting is nonobjective.” When she says the word “painting” she mimes quotation marks with her fingers. “Nowadays I source a pretty wide range of artists. Do you know John Currin's work, or the photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia?”

  “I saw Frida,” I say. “It was pretty awful.” Then I blush.

  “The movie? I didn't see it,” Adik says. “I'm not that interested in film. Linear narrative is just really hard for me to follow.”

  Someone touches me on the elbow and I jump. It is William's nanny, Sonia. She is wearing a black, knee-length coat and high, patent-leather boots. Her face is carefully made-up with dramatic blue eye shadow and dark lipstick. I have never seen her look like this. Usually she is scrubbed clean and her hair, rather than sprayed into today's stiff curls, is held back in a simple headband or elastic.

  “It's your day off,” I say, confused. “I'm supposed to pick William up today, aren't I?” Could I possibly have mistaken the day?

  “Dr. Soule tells me to give this to you.” She hands me a pharmacy bag. Inside is a bottle of pink medicine. “For the ears.”

  “Why didn't she just put it in his backpack this morning?”

  “She gives me directions. They are very specific.” Sonia's English is good. She has a large vocabulary and her sentence construction is usually almost perfect, unlike some of the Eastern European cabdrivers I've had, or the men who work in the bagel store near Stuyvesant Town where I used to buy breakfast every morning before I moved in with Jack. She only knows the present tense, however. I have never heard her use any other. Neither has Jack and while I've only met her a few times, he has spent hundreds, even thousands of hours in her company. Sonia has been William's nanny since the day, when he was six weeks old, that Carolyn went back to work.

  “But it's your day off,” I repeat. “She made you work on your day off.”

  Sonia's face is very broad, flat, with Slavic features that hint at pillaging ancestors thundering on shaggy ponies across steppes and forests. She blinks her almond-shaped eyes and a sneer of contempt flits across her wide mouth so quickly that I am not sure it was really there. Perhaps I imagined it. Perhaps she does not actually scorn my blatant attempt to suck up to her, to convince her that we two, Sonia and I, are on the same side, that we are alike in our victimization at the hands of the powerful Dr. Soule.

  I remind myself, for the millionth time, that I am the one who hurt Carolyn, and any anger she expresses, any venom she spews, any mortar shell she lobs across the park from her apartment on Fifth Avenue to ours on West Eighty-first Street, is entirely justified. Still, it pisses me off that she feels she must send an emissary with specific instructions on how to administer a spoonful of antibiotic.

  “Three times a day he takes this. With food. And keep cold. But not in the fridge.”

  “How am I supposed to keep it cold if it's not in the fridge?”

  Sonia shrugs her shoulders.

  “Dr. Soule says also when Mr. Woolf drops off William this time, William's clothes are clean and fold, not shove in the backpack.”

  “Okay, now that is not fair. First of all, it's ridiculous to make us return his outfit every Thursday morning, instead of letting us send it back over the weekend, and second of all, his clothes weren't shoved, I had just pulled them out of the dryer and maybe I folded them too quickly or something . . .”

  Sonia holds up her hand. “Ms. Greenleaf, I am only messenger here. I am not Dr. Soule; is not my message. Please do not yell at me.”

  “I'm not yelling.”

  “It is very embarrassing for you yelling at me in public.”

  Sonia is younger than I am, perhaps in her late twenties, but she makes me feel like a badly behaved child.

  “I'm sorry,” I say softly. “I just . . . I'm sorry.”

  She nods. “I look at William. Then I go to my day off. Don't forget, three times a day. Cold, but no fridge.”

  “Got it,” I say. “Cold, but no fridge. And folded, not shoved.”

  She nods.

  We both look over to the door to the Red Room. It is still closed. The mothers have gathered closer to the door, Adik among them. I smile at her, but she turns away. Someone must have told her about me. Or perhaps she overheard my conversation with Sonia and figured it out on her own. At any rate, Adik and I will not be discussing nonobjective art or linear narrative again.

  Chapter 10

  There is no catching a cab in front of the preschool. Not with the rain, and William and me already sopping, and the goddamn booster seat in its clear vinyl cover advertising our status as nightmare fares. I do my best for a while, hopping in and out of the street, trying to avoid the sheets of muddy water sprayed up by the passing cars. I wave madly at the cabs, even those that have their lights turned off or their off-duty lights on. Finally I say to William, “Let's try Park Avenue. Maybe we'll be luckier there. At least they'll be going in both directions.”

  We head west, our heads bowed against the rain. William wears the most subdued rain gear I have ever seen on a child. The other children wear bright yellow raincoats, fuchsia oilskins, purple slickers. His raincoat is military green and buckles up the front. However, at least it is lined with goose down and is very warm. I shiver in my thin raincoat. Even with my thick woolen sweater and silk long underwear I am freezing. William's boots, also dull green, are plain old rain boots and I am afraid his feet are as cold as mine. When we get to Park Avenue there are cabs going in both directions, but none are for hire. I curse myself for having failed to bring an umbrella. I imagine the telephone conversation in which Carolyn screams at Jack because I have caused William to catch cold by forcing him to stand in the freezing rain with no umbrella. Worse, I imagine Jack and Carolyn huddled over William's comatose body, the suck of the respirator forcing his pneumonia-damaged lungs to expand and contract. Barely controlled panic over their desperately ill child draws them together and they fall into each other's arms. They cling to each other. How could they have allowed this to happen? How could they ha
ve failed to protect their child and their marriage? They promise a lifetime of renewed troth and fidelity, if only William will get well.

  We are facing the northbound traffic and I lead us downtown, trying to move ahead of the other waterlogged taxi hunters. We are standing at the corner of Ninetieth and Park when I have had enough.

  “We're taking the bus,” I say.

  “The bus?” William says.

  “Please don't tell me you've never taken the bus.”

  “I've taken the bus.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Just not in the winter. Not during flu season. My mother prefers that I not use public transportation during the winter months.”

  I shift the booster seat to my other hip and glare at him. “Your mother wouldn't want you to stand here in the pouring rain.”

  “You should have called daddy's car service.”

  Of course I should have called a car service. Even a five-year-old child knows that. The idea, however, had never occurred to me. I am not the kind of New Yorker who uses a car service. I am the kind of New Yorker who either rides the subway or takes cabs. I don't even ride the bus, except in and out of New Jersey.

  “It's only four blocks. It's a five-minute walk to the bus stop.”

  “The crosstown bus is at Eighty-sixth Street,” William says.

  “Right. Come on.”

  “Emilia?”

  “What, William?”

  “Le Pain Quotidien is at Madison and Eighty-fifth.”

  “Le what?”

  “Le Pain Quotidien. My favorite café. Sonia takes me quite often. It's at Madison and Eighty-fifth.”

  “And?”

  “As far as we know, it is the only café in the city that has dairy-free cupcakes.”

  “William, it is pouring rain; we are both drenched to the skin, and I am not taking you out for dairy-free cupcakes.”

  William does not cry, but his nose turns a shade of red more intense than rain and cold could produce. He pokes out his lower lip and suddenly he looks like the little boy that he is. I feel terrible. I am horrid, an unspeakably wretched bitch. Of course he wants a cupcake. When did I turn into the kind of person who would take a cupcake away from a child?

  “If you promise,” I say, “that you won't give me a hard time about getting on the bus.”

  The right side of William's mouth lifts, and then he is grinning. We run as fast as we can to Eighty-fifth Street and over to Madison, William's booster seat and lunch box bumping along between us.

  The café is meant to evoke the French countryside. The floors are made of wide oak planks, waxed warm and buttery smooth. The walls are plastered sienna brown and in the middle of the room there is a huge rustic table where pairs of mothers and children and nannies and their charges huddle, blowing the steam off hot chocolate and coffee drinks served in bowls of heavy white porcelain. I recognize a couple of the women; their children are at the 92nd Street Y Nursery School, although not in the Red Room. At one end of the community table sit two women with strollers covered in plastic sheeting. I try not to look into the strollers, try not to gauge the ages of their babies relative to the age that Isabel would have been. Instead I lead William over to the other end of the table. When the waitress comes, I order an espresso, and for William a hot chocolate made with soy milk. Then William asks for a dairy-free cupcake, explaining to the waitress that he is lactose intolerant, which means he has a milk allergy, which means that he will get both a stomachache and a rash from drinking milk or eating butter.

  When I was first dating Jack, before I was well-enough versed in the various permutations of the supposed milk allergy, I gave William a piece of lemon ricotta cake. He happily consumed it to absolutely no ill effects. I have never been able to say anything about this telltale piece of cake, however, have never been able to trot it out to prove that William's lactose intolerance exists only in his and Carolyn's minds, because back then, once I realized my mistake, I told William it was tofu lemon cake and I don't want him to know, even two years later, that I lied. The waitress is still waiting so I order myself a cupcake, too.

  “Dairy-free?”

  “No, regular. Strawberry.”

  William does not lick the frosting off his cupcake like a normal child would. Like I do. He takes careful, even bites in a circle, peeling off the pleated paper cup as he goes. When a crumb lands on the table he licks his finger and dabs it up.

  The cupcake I have ordered for myself is yellow cake with pink frosting, and it is the best cupcake I have ever eaten in my life. I lick the strawberry frosting very slowly, trying to be Zen about it, so mindful of the flavor, of the buttery texture of the frosting on my tongue, that there will be no room in my consciousness for the woman who is now breast-feeding her baby at the other end of the table.

  William, hopelessly mired in his rational, left-brain, Western approach to cupcake eating, finishes long before I do, and turns his deadpan gaze to consider my cupcake. Something about it seems to be troubling him.

  “They do not make dairy-free cupcakes with pink icing,” he says.

  “That's too bad,” I say.

  “Only vanilla and chocolate.”

  “Maybe it's never occurred to them to make pink, dairy-free cupcakes. Perhaps you could leave a note for the baker. I have a pen. Would you like to borrow it?”

  “Perhaps,” William says. He licks his lips and looks longingly at my cupcake. The intensity of his analysis sours my pleasure, breaks the meditative focus of my attention.

  “Would you like a bite of my cupcake?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Only I'm lactose intolerant.”

  “I know you're lactose intolerant, William. The waitress knows you're lactose intolerant. The girl behind the bakery counter knows you're lactose intolerant. Everyone in the café knows you're lactose intolerant. But it won't kill you to have a bite of cupcake. It probably won't even hurt you.”

  “Perhaps just a small bite,” William says.

  I hand him my cupcake. I have licked off much of the frosting on one side, and William carefully turns it around so that he can take his bite from an unlicked part. He bites carefully, holding the cupcake with two hands and taking a single nibble—a cartoon mouse cherishing a nugget of cheese. Then he hands the cupcake back to me.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “You're welcome.”

  “It's very good.”

  “It is.”

  “I think it is even better than my dairy-free cupcake.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh the dairy-free cupcakes are good. They are very good. It's just, yours might be better. Perhaps a little bit better. Because of the strawberry.” His face grows very grave. “Or the butter.”

  “Gotta love that butter.”

  William sighs.

  The nursing baby at the end of the table burps loudly, and his mother laughs. I swallow, wondering how it is that one moment I can be having a surprisingly pleasant conversation about cupcakes, and the next I can be on the verge of dissolving into tears.

  William is looking at the baby. “How old is that baby, I wonder,” he says loudly.

  “He's four months old,” the baby's mother says.

  “He looks older,” William says. “Is he big for his age?”

  The mother laughs and gives me one of those your-kid-is-so-delightfully-precocious looks. I try to smile, but I can't.

  “He's pretty big,” she says.

  William sips his hot chocolate thoughtfully. Then he says, “Emilia, did you know that Isabel wasn't really a person?”

  “What?” I whisper, because if I do not whisper, I will scream.

  “She was never really a person. That's what it says in the Jewish law. In the Jewish law, a baby doesn't become a real person until it is eight days old. Isabel was only two days old when she died. So that means she wasn't a person. Not in the Jewish law.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  He licks the rim of his cup. “My mother. I told h
er I was a little sad about Isabel, but not as sad as if I had known her for a long time. Not like if she had time to be my real little sister. And my mom told me about how in the Jewish law she wasn't even a real person. So I don't have to feel bad about not being so sad.”

  This is coming from Carolyn, I tell myself. Not from him. But I cannot stop myself.

  “Isabel was a person,” I say. “She was every bit as much of a person as you are.”

  William seems unperturbed by my vehemence, by my shaking voice, by the saliva that sprays from my lips and flecks across the scarred top of the oak table.

  “I didn't say it. It's the Jewish law. My mother said she was surprised they let us have a funeral.”

  Isabel is buried in the Linden Hill Cemetery, out in Queens, in a corner set aside for others like her, others whose plots take up so little room that two or even three can fit in a space meant for one adult. We buried Isabel four days after she died, a longer delay than that dictated by the Jewish law on which William and Carolyn are apparently such authorities, but there was a backlog at the New York City morgue, and when a healthy infant dies for no apparent reason, an autopsy must be performed, whatever the Jewish law says about defiling the human body and the imperative of immediate burial.