For a quick minute I weighed my risks. I knew where the bathrooms were and how long it would take to walk all the way there with a child and all the way back. They would pass all kinds of things that would be of interest to the boy.
“Let’s give out another prize,” I said quickly. “I pick him.”
As fast as I could, I walked over to Deirdre-Agnes’s husband and said, “Hi, Coca-Cola is giving away cash today and you’ve been chosen to win ten thousand dollars.”
“Oh my God,” he said. “My wife just went to—”
“That’s okay, she doesn’t have to be here. Congratulations! Just quickly tell that woman your name.” That should pay for your damn crib, I thought.
“Uh, okay,” he said. “My name is Brandon O’Leary. This is incredible. Is this real?” he asked in his Irish brogue.
The Coke woman and the guards came over to us and the guard handed Brandon his ten thousand dollars. Before he could even say thank you, I said, “I’m ready to give out the next prize. Let’s go this way.”
I just started walking in the opposite direction from the bathrooms, praying that they would follow me. I heard Brandon say, “We’ve fallen on some hard times, my wife and me. This is our baby boy, Colin, and my elder boy, Brandon Junior, is with my wife . . .”
Wait, I thought. Deirdre-Agnes’s son wasn’t named Brandon Junior. He was named Patrick Junior. Deirdre-Agnes’s husband was named Patrick. Then little Brandon Junior started running toward us with his mother behind him, but it wasn’t Deirdre-Agnes.
I handed out the rest of the money in a sort of daze and, in the car home, did what any mother of a three-year-old and a newborn baby would do under the circumstances, fell quickly and deeply asleep.
40
I stood in front of Joy’s tiny perfume shop on Mulberry Street and looked at the sign on the door that said it was closing. She was bailing out of the perfume business, closing her three stores and her factory, and shipping everything she owned to Africa.
I walked in and said hi to the salesgirl and picked up the tester of Joy’s newest fragrance, Shamba. I sprayed some on my wrist and before I had even lifted my wrist to my nose my eyes filled with tears. I sprayed it on my other wrist and oh the scent! I breathed it in, holding as much of it as I could inside me, before exhaling. I breathed it in again and again, spraying it on my wrists and then burying my face in them.
“Don’t you love it?” the salesgirl asked. “It’s musky and fresh at the same time. It’s got a hint of wheatgrass. It’s got such a homey smell, almost like crescent rolls or something.”
With my eyes closed I was as good as standing at the changing table. It was uncanny. There it was, that fresh-baked buttery bread smell. Hot and sweet. With just a slight hint of vanilla.
“Joy called this morning and said you should take as much as you want from the store. And she wanted you to have this.”
She handed me an old bathroom scale that I stood awkwardly holding.
“She had a scale in the store?” I asked.
“Yeah. She always liked to weigh herself right after lunch,” the salesgirl said. “I miss her.”
“I miss her too,” I said, but I knew I would visit her wherever she was.
“What’s happening with this space?” I asked. Joy had put so much into making it beautiful, I couldn’t believe she was just going to close it like that.
“I don’t know,” the salesgirl said. “Probably nothing. It’s so small, there’re not a lot of businesses that could go in here. The landlady was just in here complaining that it’ll probably just sit empty.”
I walked out of the store and looked at the store-closing sign while the salesgirl packed as much Shamba as she could for me into five shopping bags. Then I took out my cell phone and called the landlady.
The next day, with my business plan in hand, I went to talk to Marilyn and Doris in front of the senior center. I explained what their investment would have to be in order for us to be partners, what our expenses would be, and what profits we could expect. A children’s clothing consignment shop—new hand-knitted wares and gently used garments. What Duncan had outgrown alone could fill the shop.
We walked to the Waverly Diner to discuss it.
“We could call it Is Old’s,” Marilyn said. “Get it? Isolde’s.”
“Or As Is,” Doris said.
I thought of how Duncan always told people I was a hedgehog manager. “We could call it Hedgehog,” I said.
That night Russell and I made love. I took my nightgown all the way off. When he said, “Do you want to turn over?” I said, “Yes,” and he fucked me from behind. When he said, “Do you want me to come?” I said, “No, not yet. I don’t want to stop.” We ignored Humbert’s crying and scratching from where he was locked in the bathroom. I kissed Russell. We kissed for a long time. It was different from kissing the wide, furry, flappy, wet lips of my dog, which was what I was used to. I would have to get used to it, but I liked it. I didn’t think of Gabe Weinrib or Dr. Lichter or Dr. Heiffowitz or Dr. Sitbon or the father I liked in Duncan’s class or anybody else but Russell.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” I said.
“And I love our children.”
“I love them too.”
“I love them so much.”
“Me too.”
“But I don’t want to have any more,” he added.
In the morning Shasthi said she didn’t want to work for us anymore. “I want to stay home with my baby,” she said.
We were sitting next to each other on Duncan’s captain’s bed with Rhys between us holding a fistful of my hair in one hand and a fistful of Shasthi’s in the other.
“Okay,” I said, glad it was ending like this at least, with stacks of Duncan’s clothes at our feet, size 2T and 3T now history, along with Rhys’s size 0–6. In a small way, it was almost a relief. I knew how tired she must be. How hard it would be to leave her baby in the morning and arrive home after she was asleep. I realized I had been waiting for this.
“Well, you won’t be far away,” I said. “You can visit us, and we can visit you in the Bronx.”
“Yes,” she said, but I knew we wouldn’t.
I went into the living room to talk to Duncan. “Shasthi’s not going to be your nanny anymore,” I told him. “She loves you, but she has to stay home to take care of her baby.”
“Okay,” he said. “Dude,” he added.
“What?” I said.
“Okay, dude.” I looked at my three-year-old in disbelief. “It’s okay, Mommy, it doesn’t mean ‘doodie.’”
“So you’re not upset about Shasthi leaving?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I love Shashti, but she’s not in our family. As long as no one in our family leaves I’m not upset.”
Shasthi stood by the door. She hugged the boys and put her keys on the table. And then she left.
It felt strange being home alone without Shasthi, so Russell suggested we go for a walk. Pushing two strollers in tandem, we walked through SoHo to look at the store and then continued to Washington Square Park. Without thinking, I started to walk around the perimeter, when Russell pointed out that the park was open. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Duncan scrambled out of his stroller and ran to the fountain, which was going full force. The cobblestones were smooth and seamless, the plants and flowers—rosebushes even—were incredible. Everywhere on the grass, people sat smiling. I had never seen anything as beautiful.
We laid out the baby blanket I had purchased from Marilyn and sat. Duncan made friends with another little boy and they played on the benches.
Suddenly Duncan ran past me screaming, “There’s a monster coming! Run from your life! Run from your life!”
He collapsed into my arms, completely terrified by his own game.
“You mean run for your life,” I said.
“No, run from it.”
“You run for your life.”
“No, Mommy. If you’re sc
ared you run from your life. To get away from it.”
And that’s when I realized I wasn’t scared and I didn’t want to run away from it anymore.
I could see all that we had and all that I wanted to protect. I could see five years into the future. In fact I could see fifty years into it. I could see Duncan and Rhys attending elementary school and then college and medical school. I could see us at their graduations, meeting their fiancées, dancing at their weddings. I could see my grandchildren, all boys of course, Russell and I taking turns changing their diapers.
As we sat laughing with Duncan and flipping through that week’s Irish Echo that we’d picked up at a newsstand, I could see my life instead of my death. Like that park, my marriage had closed and now it was reopened. And I loved it. I loved everything about it.
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Acknowledgments
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who willed this book here, Anna DeRoy, Lauren Whitney, and everyone at WME. Megan Lynch, Geoffrey Kloske, Susan Petersen Kennedy, Matthew Venzon, Kate Stark, Rick Pascocello, the entire hardcover marketing, paperback marketing, publicity, hardcover sales, and paperback sales departments, and everyone at Riverhead—I hope you all know how grateful I am. Craig Burke for four books and fifteen years of publicity and friendship. Tina Bennett, Julie Grau, John Ashbery, David Kermani, Erica Jong, Jennifer Weiner, Ulrich Baer, Debra Rodman, Penny Arcade, Robert Steward, Kit McCracken, Beck Lee, David Khinda, Michael Ruocco, Sonia Jacobson, Evelyn Horowitz, Eric Schnall, and Kim Kowalski, for continuous inspiration and enormous generosity. Melinda Chu and Tony Cheng for giving me their magnificent, empty loft on Wooster Street to write this book in. All the writers I have ever worked with, especially Jon Reiss, Erin Hussein, Stacey Lender, Michael Sears, Juliann Garey, Bronwen Hruska, Desiree Rhine, Renee Geel, Elin Lake Ewald, Amy Perrette, Meryl Branch-McTiernan, Aaron Zimmerman, Marilyn Rothstein, Merrye Schindler, Emily Axelrod, Robin Swid, Heidi Brod, Dinah Prince Daly, and Gray Lippman. Everyone at the Olive Tree Café and the Rosendale Café, where I love to write, and Donna Brodie, who brought me back to the Writers’ Room. My family, Jack Herz, and my mother, Jill Hoffman, for endless editing, praise, and pots of cabbage soup. The booksellers who have sold me, the readers who write to me, and Andy, who still takes me as I am, in this, our seventh year of marriage.
© Jeff Chenault
About the Author
Jennifer Belle is the bestselling author of Going Down (for which she was named best debut novelist of the year by Entertainment Weekly), High Maintenance, and Little Stalker. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Independent (London), Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Ms., Black Book, Mudfish, and many anthologies. She lives in New York City and Olivebridge, New York, with her husband and their two sons.
Also by Jennifer Belle
Going Down
High Maintenance
Little Stalker
FOR CHILDREN
Animal Stackers
(illustrated by David McPhail)
The Seven Year Bitch Page 27