Carpool Confidential

by Jessica Benson

  “Oh, no, they were great.” Randy pushed back her hair and bit into the slice of cold pizza she was holding. “I gave them snacks and forced them to do their homework. They complained that Josh makes cookies with them. I explained that the only kind of cookies I do come in a bag, gave them two Chips Ahoys each, and then barely saw them again until I ordered pizza. Do you want some?”

  “Sure.” I went to the top of the stairs and called down to the boys that it was time to go home. Judging by the reaction I got, choruses of groans and Just five more minutes please and then we swear we’ll be readys from both my own and Sarah and Owen, they hadn’t exactly been pining for me. “So.” I looked around at the debris. “How are things?”

  She followed my gaze. “Pretty good. I’m just not into the picking-up-every-day thing like Josh was, and delegation doesn’t seem to work as well here as it did at the office, so I’m doing it strictly on an as-needed basis.”

  “So what constitutes need?” I asked. “Actual decomposition?”

  She laughed. “Josh is decomposing, that’s for sure. He can’t stand the mess. Come on through to the kitchen, where I promise basic standards of hygiene are being practiced. I’ll even heat your pizza up. See how domestic I am now?”

  “Wow,” I said, as I sat down at the table. “Nice stained-glass candle holders. New hobby?” I was getting seriously worried here.

  “Josh’s mother keeps sending them. The kids think they’re stunning. My plan is to wrap them up and give them to Jen as a housewarming gift.” Randy handed me a glass of red wine while she made herself a cup of some kind of skunky-smelling herbal tea. I asked her about the doctor’s appointment. She said they were going to try harvesting in two weeks.

  The first sip of wine tasted like heaven. I turned my attention back to the candle holders. “Those will fit in perfectly with Jen and Nora’s gallery-quality modern art collection.”

  She laughed and handed me a plate of pizza. “Tell me about the house.”

  “It’s—” I almost didn’t want to talk about it. I felt like I’d had a deeply personal experience with it. Realizing I needed to get a grip, I said, “It’s beyond gorgeous, but nothing can change the fact that Jen doesn’t want to move.”

  She sat down with her cup. “Do you think they will?”

  I took a bite. “Probably.”

  “It’s the first in a long time.” We looked at each other, both remembering those early years, when it felt like we lost friends in droves when the kids started reaching kindergarten age.

  Randy and I had met in a playgroup that we’d both been in when Noah and Sarah were babies. There had been twelve of us, and we’d been so tight it had been impossible to believe we wouldn’t always be in and out of each other’s kitchens, on the phone, taking care of each other’s children. It had seemed like those endless lazy days sipping lattes and chasing the kids around the playground would last forever.

  But one by one, people had moved on and things had changed. I hadn’t understood until later that when you’re home with babies, you form friendships with people you probably would not have passed the time of day with under any other circumstances. By the time the kids had started first grade, we’d had seven wine-soaked farewell parties, and only five of us were left in the city. Of the five, one had gone massively crazy, in the true sense of the word, one had decided for undisclosed reasons that she loathed both Randy and me violently and had stopped speaking to us, and the other had become a born-again Christian and left with her husband to go join a back-to-the-land movement in Iowa.

  “When was the last time you heard from any of them?” she asked me.

  “Hillary left me a what’s up message a couple months ago, but I haven’t returned it. I got Christmas cards from Maria and Susan. And Laura and I email every once in a while, but, honestly, I can’t remember the last time. What about you?”

  “Ruth and I have lunch once in a while. Mel and I talk probably once a year, and I get Christmas cards from Maria and Susan too, but that’s about it.”

  We were quiet for a second. “That’s the thing about life,” she said, “you know? You get in that groove and you just assume you’ll always be there and then one by one things change so gradually you don’t even notice it until it’s all different.”

  “Or sometimes,” I pointed out, “they change so fast it’s like a sonic boom.”

  We both laughed. “Yeah,” she said and then asked, “do you think that’s what I’m doing here? Trying to hold onto days that have already passed?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “If you are, it’s not going to work, because new baby or no new baby, those days are still passing.”

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “Tell me about it. You’re talking to someone who’s waking up to the reality that I spent a dozen years, give or take, confusing marriage with a full-time career.”

  She smiled. “And you’re talking to someone who spent the same confusing a full-time career with a life.” I laughed. “So do you think it’s OK to want to do it again when I’m not exactly the earth mother of the year?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “I do.”

  “Can I make a confession?”

  “Of course.” But as I said it, I was steeling myself. I didn’t think Randy had any major skeletons, but no one knew better than me that you never knew.

  “I hated nursing, couldn’t wait to wean, frequently didn’t bother with organic baby food, and sometimes used the television as a babysitter. And not always PBS.” She lowered her voice. “Nickelodeon!”

  “Never mind another baby, you should just be shot,” I said.

  “But I feel like such a hypocrite putting everything on hold to have another when half the people we know would say I didn’t do a very good job with the first two. And it’s not—” She stopped. “I know I’ve always seemed dismissive of the whole supermom thing, but now I wonder if it’s just that I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t be bothered.”

  I clearly wasn’t the only one doing some major self-assessing. “But if the proof is in the final product, then you’ve succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Sarah and Owen are fantastic. Smart and funny and empathetic and sweet. So what if they’ve seen a few episodes of Rugrats?”

  She sighed. “But the good stuff, was that me? Or Josh?”

  “Can you separate your contributions? Would you want to?”

  “Not really. I guess.” She didn’t sound totally convinced.

  “Hey,” I said, remembering, “I have a gift for you.” I ran out to the hall and grabbed the pregnancy test that I (or rather, Sue Moriarty) had bought her. “It’s not exactly a Bugaboo,” I warned as I came back in. “More symbolic and less expensive.” I put the EPT on the table.

  “An EPT!” she was crying. “Thanks, Cass, I can’t wait to use it.”

  Before I could answer, her phone rang. It was clear from her end of the conversation, which mostly seemed to consist of phrases like transitioning and bringing him up to speed, that it was work-related. I pointed at the door to ask if she wanted me to go out. She shook her head, so I started flicking through the newspapers on the table. Not that the conversation wasn’t fascinating from this end, but…

  I pushed aside the New York Times as being too intense for me at the moment, as they had actual articles about actual topics of significance, and, pretending to myself that I might once again have a life and want to leave the house recreationally, I picked up the new Time Out and started flipping through.

  HE WROTE THE SONGS

  Performance Space 6, long engagement beginning this spring

  The name Barry Manilow doesn’t exactly conjure visions of a hipster fan base. But now the enterprising team behind “And You, Andrew” (a tragicomic musical look at the life and times of Andrew Ridgley—the non-George-Michael half of Wham!) is out to change that. They’ve spent the past year working on bringing their trademark mix of music, pop culture, and quirky postmodern iconoclasty to bear on the work and c
areer of the former Barry Pincus aka Barry Manilow. While it hasn’t previewed yet, if this show is anything like the last, we’re all in for a treat, and this reviewer, for one, won’t be surprised to see it go bigger. In summation, Manilow as you’ve never seen him before: all of the fun, none of the schtick.

  My face went numb. Again. I got up, walked over to Randy, who was leaning on the counter, and started flapping the magazine under her nose. She gave a what the fuck? look. I gave her a read this! one and slapped the magazine, open, on the counter in front of her. She nodded, whether to me or the person on the phone, I wasn’t sure, and said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” but I could tell she was reading.

  I splashed a refill into my wineglass and pretty much chugged it. I could almost feel my face again.

  “Listen, Steve, let me give you a call back, OK?” I heard her say. “Something’s just come up here…yup…great…talk to you then. Thanks.” Then she hung up and turned to me. “Holy shit! It never even occurred to me he was telling the truth.”

  “No kidding. This thing sounds legit. I can’t believe it.”

  “That makes two of us.” She was reading it again, like she was expecting it to have a pop out that was going to fly off the page saying, FOOLED YA! Actually, she wasn’t the only one.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked her.

  She sat back down, looking at me like she was troubled. “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does this being—surprising as it is—for real means you forgive him?”

  I knew topping up the wine again was a bad idea, but I was seriously tempted. As if reading my dilemma, Randy got up and did it for me. “It’s weird”—I took a sip—“but I don’t feel like I care all that much whether he was telling the truth or not. It doesn’t change the other stuff he did along the way. Where he actually is and what he’s doing doesn’t make as much difference as it probably should.”

  Randy nodded, and then after a minute said, “So. Do you think you can finesse us VIP opening night tickets? Hey, maybe Charlotte will let you cover the premiere for the magazine!”

  31

  Even Now

  Harmonye was sound asleep even though it was only eight. There was a pile of schoolbooks on the kitchen table. I got the boys bathed, made them cocoa, read them stories, rubbed their backs, reassured them fifty or sixty times that Rick still loved them, his behavior notwithstanding, and that I still loved them and would never leave. Our new nightly ritual.

  Then I went and stood in the door to Harmonye’s room. She was sprawled on her stomach, her ponytail falling away from the line of her neck. Had anyone ever rubbed her back and assured her that they’d love her forever? I knew this was simplistic, but maybe if they had she wouldn’t be self-destructing now. I’d always loved her in a distant, fond way, but looking at her now, asleep, not looking all that much older than my own boys, I felt the same kind of rush of love and protectiveness for her that I did for them, like I’d walk though fire to protect her.

  Why did I not know anyone who could give me reliable advice on dealing with a teenager in crisis? As I’ve mentioned, none of my friends had teenagers, and I think we’ve already established my parents’ credentials. I discussed her in therapy, but Dorothy was more about how I reacted to her. Which was fabulous at further establishing me as a walking disaster, but in terms of practical help? Not so much.

  So I figured I had to take it as an omen that on the answering machine, along with a message from Janice Streitmeier saying that she’d been unable to get into the Nantucket house because neither the locks nor the security code worked, there was a message from probably the only person I did know who knew anything about teenagers.

  “Hi,” he said, “this is James Spence. If I invite you to lunch, will I end up reading about myself on NYMetro again?” He definitely sounded more dryly amused than put out. “And, yes, the shirts are, as you speculated, custom made. My ex-wife liked them, so Borelli has my measurements, and it’s easier to keep ordering from there than go anywhere else.” He left his phone number at the end even though he’d already given it to me in our previous conversation.

  “Hi,” he said, when I identified myself.

  I launched right in. “So, I’m kind of embarrassed about this, but do you know anything about teen pregnancy?”

  “Not to be rude, but I don’t really consider you a teen.”

  “My niece.”

  “I knew that, I remember and also, obviously, I’ve read the blog. I was joking. Sorry if that fell flat.”

  I laughed.

  “Nope,” he said. “Too late. It wasn’t funny.”

  “Sorry.” Was it possible he sounded nervous, too? “It’s me. I’m suffering acute sense of humor failure.”

  “A not uncommon symptom in adults dealing with teen pregnancy in the immediate vicinity,” he assured me. “It doesn’t tend to be terribly amusing.”

  Which should have sounded stiff, but somehow the Britishness sounded just right, and I really did laugh. “Not terribly, no. Would you mind if I asked you for a little advice?” I realized I was digging my nails into my own hands, my fists were curled so tight.

  “Not at all. Do you mind holding on for one second? I just need to get off the other line.”

  And before I could tell him he didn’t need to do that, he was gone. And then back. “OK, hang on one more second while I grab my drink.”

  “What are you drinking?” I was trying to sound friendly, but for some reason that sounded too intimate to me. I could feel my face burn. “I hope that didn’t sound too What are you wearing?”

  He laughed. “Not nearly enough, actually.” And my face burned all over again. Until he added. “I meant it didn’t sound enough that way. Not that I wasn’t wearing enough. And scotch. It’s been a long day.”

  “Would you rather I called back tomorrow? Because I don’t mind—”

  “Not at all. So I get the sense from your blogs that she’s just not dealing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The adolescent mind is a very interesting place to visit, but longer stays—let’s say, their brains just don’t work quite the same way ours do. And she wouldn’t be the first person in her position at any age to want to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.”

  “Pretending problems don’t exist is my specialty,” I said. “But I can’t let her sit back and possibly ruin her life because cowardice is hereditary.”

  “You’re right, she does need to see someone not emotionally involved for a rational discussion of her options and some basic medical care, and sooner rather than later. I’d offer to see her myself, but as it might be a conflict of interest because I’d really like to take her guardian to lunch, I have someone else really great in mind.”

  I felt the blood flush into my face, yet again. I hadn’t really expected that to turn out to be more than a polite way of turning down the sex club invite. “I’d like that. Thank you.”

  We got out calendars (like I had anything going on) and ended up picking a date after the New Year. He gave me the doctor’s number and said he’d give her a call tomorrow morning and I should call a little later. Then, “Oh, about lunch. Don’t bring the rabid pooch.”

  “Ordinarily I like to bring him everywhere, but I guess I can make an exception.”

  He laughed. “See? You don’t have total sense of humor failure.”

  “Not yet,” I said darkly. “Give me about two more days.”

  “Forget it,” M.A. said the next morning over her organic fake pop tart. “I’m so not about going to your doctors. And this thing tastes like ass.”

  “Fine go to yours then.”

  “OK.”

  “When?”

  “Like sometime.”

  “Like now.”

  “Soon.”

  “Within the week.” I looked her straight in the eye. “It’s either that or back to boarding school. And I’ll deliver you personally.”

  “Sue Moriarty’s h
ummus sandwiches taste like ass, too,” Jared said.

  “Jared!” I started loading the dishwasher. “I don’t ever want to hear that from you again.”

  “Why are you being so mean to M.A.?” Noah asked me.

  “And how come she needs to see a doctor?” Jared looked at her. “Are you sick?”

  “Checkup.” No need to elaborate. “And I’m not being mean, I’m being firm about her doing something for her own good.”

  “That’s like just fucking fine. You can escort me like the Gestapo, too.” She stormed out to go get dressed.

  “Hey, Mom,” Jared said. “What’s the Gestapo?”

  “People in Germany a long time ago who weren’t nice.” Call me overprotective, but I didn’t think they were ready for the Holocaust over breakfast.

  “You know how we’re getting new school lunches now with baked yam slices instead of fries now, Mommy?” Noah said.

  I closed the dishwasher, just missing Cad’s hovering nose. “Vaguely.”

  “Well, baked yam slices fucking taste like ass!”

  Once I got everyone dropped off at school, I came home and blogged. Walked Cad, ran out, and ran a million Christmas-related errands, trying hard not to think about pennies. Then came home and started the tough calls. First the doctor to make an appointment for M.A. She was booking six weeks ahead, the receptionist told me, but since Dr. Spence had called, she was going to squeeze us in this afternoon. I thanked her profusely and called M.A. on her cell to let her know I’d be picking her up at noon. Then, with shaking hands, dialled the box office number of Performance Space 6. I got a grainy (if ever a recording could sound grainy, this was it) message saying the box office was closed and to please call back.

  Then I called Bowers & Flaum to speak to Patrick from the CFO’s office about those receipts. “Oh, hi,” he said when I’d identified myself. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. So I was wondering if you’d made any headway on processing those expenses.” I was trying to sound cool as a cucumber, like I’d just happened to remember, as opposed to hyperventilating for the check.