Newly fortified by sugar, I was good to go.
“Your turn,” I said. “Have at it.”
“This part isn’t a problem, exactly. It’s an announcement.”
I sat up straight and paid attention. In my experience, announcements don’t always augur well.
“I’m done with being a stay at home mom,” said Alice. “I’m going back to work.”
This was momentous. And very exciting, as news went. In this one particular aspect of our lives, Alice and I had always been opposites.
I’d been a working mother, and a single mother, for most of Davey’s life. Alice, meanwhile, had a husband who went to work and supported the family, which gave her the luxury of staying home to take care of the kids.
Now it looked as though our roles were reversing. At the end of the previous semester, when my pregnancy had reached the six month mark, I’d taken a leave of absence from my job at a private school in Greenwich. While I’d be staying home for the near future, Alice was gearing up to rejoin the workforce.
“Congratulations,” I said, tipping my cookie in salute.
“Not so fast.” Alice laughed. “It’s been years since anyone offered to pay me for what I can do. Let’s see if I can make this thing work first.”
“What kind of job are you looking for?”
“That’s the good part.” Her laughter faded. “At least I hope it is. I already have a job.”
“Wow, that was fast. Am I totally out of the loop or did that happen overnight?”
“Kind of the latter,” Alice admitted. “I’m going to work for Joe’s law firm.”
“Plummer, Wilkes, and Hornby?” I said, even though we both knew the name. I was buying time and thinking fast, wondering what she’d be doing there. Finally I gave up and just asked.
“You know, the usual paralegal stuff.”
That brought me up short. I even put down my cookie.
“What usual paralegal stuff? When did you become a paralegal?”
“Right out of college. That’s what I did before I met Joe.”
Utterly amazing, I thought. “How can I have known you for ten years and not known that?”
Alice shrugged. “With the kids around all the time, I guess it never came up. But now Joey and Carly are both in school full time for most of the year. And even their summers are filled with activities. Joey will be at soccer camp for eight weeks.”
I nodded. Davey was doing the same thing.
“While Carly’s doing a ballet program over at the Silvermine Guild. So I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Neither one of them needs me to be home all the time anymore. Which makes me feel kind of superfluous—like all I do is sit at home and wait for the people who are out doing interesting things to come back. So enough of that. It’s time for me to see what else I can be besides just a mother.”
Just a mother. The phrase made us both wince, but neither of us bothered to comment on it. I knew what she meant.
“Congratulations,” I said again, applauding the decision as much as its execution.
“Yeah, well. It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. The good thing was that I got a job without having to apply to a million places, go through some huge interview process, and then justify what I’d been doing for the ten years that are missing on my resume. The bad news is, I’ll be working for Joe.”
I liked Joe. He was a good father and a nice guy. But even so, I could see how all that togetherness might strain things around the house.
“What does Joe think of the idea?” I asked.
“He’s the one who came up with it. At first he wasn’t crazy about the notion of me going back to work, but eventually I managed to convince him that the kids wouldn’t miss me when they weren’t even around to know that I was gone. Oh yeah, and that I’d still make sure that the dry cleaner put the right amount of starch in his shirts.”
She paused, rolled her eyes, and grabbed another Oreo. “Then he thought of this. I think somehow it made the whole thing seem more palatable to him, like maybe he thought he could keep an eye on me or something. Plus, as he said, think of all the gas money we’ll save!”
Alice and I laughed together. I could just hear Joe saying that. He was the kind of guy who liked to keep his eye on the bottom line.
“So give it a try,” I said. “If it works, great. If it doesn’t, quit and go somewhere else.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Alice agreed. “Flexibility’s a good thing. There’s just one problem with the plan. In fact, that’s why I’m here.”
Sad to say, that’s the story of my life. People always seem to bring their problems to me.
“I need to find something to do with Berkley. If I’m going to be gone all day, I can’t just leave him sitting home by himself.”
Berkley was the Brickmans’ eighteen-month-old Golden Retriever. Though he’d been purchased as a pet for Joey and Carly, predictably the bulk of his care had fallen to Alice. He was a beautiful, smart, rambunctious, teenage dog; and as long as he had company, he mostly managed to stay out of trouble. Bored and left to his own devices, however, I could see how he might be tempted to entertain himself by tearing the place apart.
“That’s where you come in,” said Alice.
I opened my mouth but she hurried on before I could speak.
“Don’t worry, with a new baby and all, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to look after him. So I found a place in town that offers doggie day care.”
Now she paused. Like it was my turn to say something. For a moment, I couldn’t think what that should be.
“Doggie day care?” I managed finally.
Despite the subject matter, none of my Poodles even looked up. Though they understand most things I say, the Poodles possessed far too much dignity to ever think of themselves as doggies.
“Don’t make fun,” said Alice. “Apparently it’s a very successful facility. And hard to get into. There’s a waiting list.”
“A waiting list,” I echoed faintly. It was all I could do to keep a straight face.
“The place is called Pine Ridge Canine Care Center. And you know I’m hopeless when it comes to things like this. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to look for. But you know all that important dog-type stuff. So I was wondering if you could go and check it out for me. You know, see if it’s the kind of place where Berkley would be happy.”
She’d played the flattery card and no surprise, it was working. Besides, while I was delighted to have the chance to stay at home and take care of Kevin, Alice wasn’t the only one who’d spent some time recently looking around the house and wondering what to do next. A job like this sounded like it would be right up my alley.
“Sure,” I said. “I can do that. No problem.”
You’d think I’d know better than to make predictions like that.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2007 by Laurien Berenson
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