by Sally Koslow
“What are you doing here?” I asked, shifting back ever so slightly. “Weren’t you supposed to be in the office?” If our mutual desk was empty, it was Talia’s problem.
“No. You were,” she said, accusation in her voice, and hissed something about our having arranged a switch. I had to admit, though only to myself, that it sounded … familiar. I had agreed to the change before I realized it conflicted with the school appointment. But I’d e-mailed Talia again and made it clear that I wanted to stick with our original plan. I was 90 percent sure I’d sent that e-mail, which I’d redrafted several times so it didn’t sound overly apologetic, my customary position.
I took a moment and tried to capture an aura of pink calm as I fondled my long strand of pearls. There must be something to Autumn’s approach. To my surprise, I felt in complete control!
“But it’s my regular day off,” I said evenly. Talia wrinkled her forehead and turned away. I’m sure she was furious, as the new Chloe would be. The old Chloe would have assumed the snafu was her fault. I adored the new Chloe!
The teacher clapped her hands. Dash obediently followed her direction and took a chair at one of two tiny tables. Henry stood in the corner, piling block atop block. The teacher stepped away from the tables and stood over Henry, trying to cajole him into joining the group. He ignored her. I glanced at Talia, who looked smugly amused. “That big kid over there is ruining it for everyone,” the mother next to me said, none too quietly.
“Henry,” the teacher said. “This isn’t how Jackson Collegiate boys and girls behave.”
Mother Hen gave Henry a stern look, and then—point, Henry Fisher-Wells—the arrogant little rooster said “Fuck” repeatedly as he came at his own building like an enemy bombardier. The minute the curse flew out and his building crashed the whole barnyard went rogue, kids leaping out of chairs, scattering in every direction.
“Does that child have Tourette’s?” the man on the other side of me asked. “This isn’t a special-needs school.” Half of the kids were staring openmouthed, and the others, Dash among them, had joined the party. I wanted to pounce on him and pull him back, but he’d already hurried toward his hero, singing something that I prayed everyone thought was “cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck a duck.”
CHAPTER 26
Talia
“We need to hurry, boychik.” Whenever I used my father’s nickname for Henry, he gave me a dimpled grin.
“I’m not boychik today,” he said as he tried without success to tie his blue cape around his chicken-wing shoulders. “I’m Superman.”
Another generation, another fleet of flying heroes. Maybe this one would live up to the honorific, but now wasn’t the moment to test the theory. We needed to be at Jackson Collegiate in forty-five minutes. Mean Maxine had insisted that for Henry’s cattle call, I give serious consideration to attire. After I hit the mother lode at a consignment store, Maxine and I settled on a red Fair Isle sweater and cords.
“Superman has superpowers. He doesn’t need a sweater,” Henry said, folding his arms in a stance that resembled Tom’s as much as you-know-who’s.
“It’s November. Superman might catch a sniffle if he isn’t warm enough.” And I still needed to dress myself. Hoping my son and I would appear as if we’d sprouted from the same bog of DNA, I’d laid out a gray pleated skirt, a cardigan whose moth hole could be deftly covered by the starched cuff of a white shirt, old but newly polished flat brown boots, and a Hermès scarf given to me by Chloe for my last birthday. I’d blown my hair as straight as my abilities allowed.
“That sweater’s for girls,” Henry sneered as he walked to his drawer and pulled out an orange sweatshirt, nearly fluorescent, the top half of his Halloween costume. “Superman changed his mind.”
“Henry, no,” I said. “Today’s like a really important play date.”
He wrinkled his brow. “Okay, Mommy. Then close your eyes till I say when.” I heard the hoofing of small feet, a door closing, and “when.”
I opened my eyes to a grinning Henry, the orange sweatshirt covered by a scuffed black leather jacket that hung past his hands by inches. He looked like a pubescent Keith Richards. “Please take it off.” I looked at the clock.
He switched to the whining channel. “You said today was special.”
Perhaps the Jackson Collegiate evaluators were softhearted child advocates, not fashion fascists, and would admire my son’s moxie. “At least put on the pants,” I sighed, holding out the tan cords. I helped him into them and zipped them up. He did the snap. I handed him sneakers and then unsuccessfully searched the room for his brush, not that it made much difference. Henry had been blessed with my hair—it sprang from his scalp like rotini. In monkey mother mode, I worked my fingers through his curls, stood back, and admired my WASP impostor, not unlike Mr. Lifschitz himself.
“Handsome,” I said, kissing his forehead. “Now sit down, please, and play while I get dressed.” It took three tries to tie my scarf so I didn’t look like Annie Oakley—and then we were out the door. To my eyes, I looked air-dropped from Greenwich.
Several of our neighbors hadn’t yet taken down their Halloween decorations, and as we raced along the long brownstone blocks to the subway, Henry pointed to make sure I didn’t miss each ghoul, ghost, and wisp of polyester spiderweb.
“I love our street,” he said. I did, too. I felt lucky to live here, crowded as we might be. On the surface Park Slope might look like the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but this is a true community. Kids trick-or-treat not up and down elevator banks but at doors where people know their names, and nearly every Saturday, except in the dead of winter, you can count on a stoop sale from which you might buy, say, a five-dollar broken-in black leather jacket sized for a third grader.
Two weeks ago Tom had informed me of today’s visit. It fell on one of my workdays, and he wanted me to rearrange my schedule—which I did—to escort Henry. “The director already knows me,” he pointed out. “Betsy has to see that you’re on board, too, and that Henry lives up to my brags.” Sexism played no small role. Tom didn’t want Henry’s mother to come off as Executive Mom. The subliminal crawl I’d read during the general meeting I’d attended was that the complete Fisher-Wells family would be under scrutiny. I intended to scrutinize back to see if this school deserved my son, if it was educational heaven or a hill of bricks tottering on a threadbare reputation.
There were seats on the subway, an auspicious sign. At our destination a few stops away, an older man—any male under the age of forty would be more likely to trip you as he bolted up the steps two at a time—helped me lift boy and stroller to the street. I pushed Henry at a quick trot along the block and a half to the school, arrived breathless and damp, parked the stroller, and asked to be directed to the classroom for nursery school interviews.
“And you are?” the young redheaded gatekeeper asked.
“Fisher-Wells—Henry and Talia.”
At the pace of a gentleman, he located our names, then hand-lettered stickers for both of us to wear. “It starts in five minutes,” he announced. “Down the hall—second door on the left,” he added.
As I walked in that direction, tightly holding Henry’s warm, chubby hand, I inhaled the aroma of lemon oil emanating from the rich mahogany paneling, and noticed that on the bulletin boards there was poetry. I stopped to read some haiku. Leaves that have lost life / are crinkly tissues of gold. / Man dies and is dust. And by the same Olivia Samson, A sea of eyes and / Ear and minds. / But why do / I play solitaire? Had anyone, I wondered, rushed this budding Emily Dickinson to a psychiatrist?
From the classroom where I was headed, I heard high-pitched voices. I opened the door, and while I searched for an authority in charge, a small boy ran over to Henry and tugged his jacket.
“Henry!” he said. “Blocks!” It was Dashiel Keaton. Each time I saw that child he had become more impossibly appealing, even if that day he’d been dressed as an accountant. I searched the room for Xander or Jamyang. But the parent I sa
w was Chloe, a vision in pink, fingering her pearls and sitting against the far wall, riveted to Clifford the Big Red Dog as if she were reading the surprise ending of her own biography. Only when I was standing over her did she look up.
“Weren’t you supposed to be in the office?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “You were.” Last week we’d confirmed the switch by e-mail. On that I’d have bet Henry’s life.
“But it’s my regular day off,” she said with reproach. “I’d never miss this.”
There had been—I tried to be charitable—a miscommunication. It was now a good thirty minutes past the time when Eliot, our boss, would have expected one of us to sail through the office door. It was I who’d take the heat for the unexplained absence; he didn’t care if Chloe and I traded days, as long as her tush or mine was warming the desk chair. Any minute now he’d be bellowing like a lost moose—and who could blame him?—that he had no copywriter to brainstorm with in that morning’s meeting. It would probably be at least eleven by the time I rushed Henry to his sitter, and then I still needed to take the train to the office. Half the day, shot.
There was only one immediate response to this problem—turning off my phone. I’d do some fast talking later. I shrugged and sat down.
“Like the scarf,” Chloe said as a jumper-clad teacher clapped her hands.
“Children, children,” she shouted, “I want each of you to take a chair at one of the tables. Now.” Every potential student except one scurried into place. Henry remained engrossed in constructing a tower of blocks. The teacher walked to him, bent to his level, and spoke gently. “Now, Henry,” she said, “wouldn’t you like to join the others?” He added two stories to his high-rise. “And wouldn’t you like to take off your jacket?”
“No,” he explained. I’m busy was his implication. He took another large block and created what I clearly saw as a bell tower. I imagined him in it, gun in hand, surveying the terrain.
“We all have our jobs, and yours is to join the other children.” The teacher sounded aggressively patient, aware that every parent in the room was curious about how she’d persuade this recalcitrant participant to play by her rules.
My son narrowed his eyes and sized up the woman with a look of deep disdain I hoped he’d never show me. “No, thanks,” he said, and returned to his blocks. Could he, I hoped, at least get points for manners?
“Henry.” The woman sucked in her breath and peered down through heavy glasses as if her reputation was at stake, which it was. “This isn’t how Jackson Collegiate boys and girls behave.”
“Okay, fuck it,” Henry said as he crashed the blocks in one furious swoop. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
All the children and adults turned, impressed by what I have tried to stress to Henry is vocabulary reserved exclusively for automobiles. Tom and I did use that word, but only on the rare occasion when we rented a car and tried to negotiate the civil unrest that is city traffic. Circles of perspiration soaked my scratchy white shirt as sweat collected at my hairline. The room went silent—except for Dash, always in awe of Henry, singing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck a duck.” Chloe gasped before she glowered in my direction. I shrugged back to her and mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
But I wasn’t. I was positive she’d agreed to work today.
As Henry threw up his hands, he looked toward the worshipful faces of the other kids. Giggles, some of them coming from the parents, rippled toward my superhero. If a three-year-old can have dignity, Henry did as he followed the teacher. She seated him across from Dash as I noticed another teacher scribble on a clipboard—Henry Fisher-Wells revealed his first sociopathic tendencies at age three, perhaps.
“Now, children,” the head teacher said, “we thought you’d like some snacks.” The scribe walked to a shelf holding trays and transformed herself into a waitress offering graham crackers, grapes, and cubes of cheddar cheese. Most children daintily grabbed one or two of each. Dash wrinkled his nose, looked at Chloe, and took nothing. Henry, whose breakfast had been half a peanut butter sandwich and a juice pack that he drank on the subway, filled two handfuls, dumped them on his plate, and returned for seconds.
The teachers brought glass pitchers of apple juice to each table. “Who’d like to start?” one of them asked. Tom and I had never let Henry try to fill his own glass at home. The teacher, that sadist, turned toward him and asked, “How about you, Henry?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, using a four-letter word he definitely hadn’t learned from me.
“In that case,” she said, “go ahead.” Be my guest, sucker. “Class, Henry is going to show you how pouring from a pitcher is done. Let’s … all … watch.”
He lifted the pitcher, which might as well have been a barbell, tilted its spout, and poured perfectly. He looked in my direction. I blew him a kiss, sorry I couldn’t swoop him up in my arms and shout, Mazel tov. One mother nearby patted me on the shoulder and another gave me a thumbs-up. Neither was Chloe.
“When you finish your treats, everyone may play.” The moment the teacher uttered the sentence, Henry bolted, knocking several cubes of cheese onto the floor, and returned to the block corner, the bigger boys trailing him. For the next ten minutes he was architect, foreman, and head engineer, barking orders as he supervised the construction of yet another colossus. I hoped it was as clear to the teachers as it was to me that my son was a natural leader, perhaps the next Frank Lloyd Wright.
I was percolating with motherly pride and ambition as I turned toward Chloe to make an effort to talk, but she was chatting up the assistant teacher. Clearly, we each had our own agendas today, and she didn’t know the half of it. Just as I’d temporarily shut down thinking about the story I’d cook up later for Eliot, I’d managed for a whole hour not to brood about whether I’d be offered the Bespoke spot—the one Mean Maxine and I both referred to as Chloe’s job. That’s when I heard a small voice call my name. “Mrs. Fisher-Wells!” it said. “Look!” Dash was wearing a plastic pince-nez on his tiny, upturned nose and carrying a doctor’s bag. “Are you ready for your checkup?”
When Chloe heard his voice, she turned and beamed. I squatted down to Dash’s level. He thumped my chest with a stethoscope, peeped up at me with his dimpled smile, and thumped again. “Just fine,” he announced, and grinned.
“Why, thank you, Dr. Keaton,” I said. He’d missed the lump in my throat and, as I looked at Chloe, the pain in my gut.
CHAPTER 27
Chloe
Jamyang was waiting outside Jackson Collegiate when our nightmare ended. The car dropped her and Dash at home and continued into Manhattan for my own two o’clock interview. I threw on a black wool jacket that I’d had Jamyang bring and decided I looked creative enough for an ad agency.
With ninety minutes to kill, I had the driver park a few blocks away from the agency, bought him coffee and a ham sandwich, and went into a bistro to grab a cup of green tea and review my notes. I was ready to order when I noticed four women at the next table toasting one another. Their drinks were pink, which matched their cheeks. It seemed like one of Autumn’s signs. “What are they drinking?” I asked the waitress.
“House specialty, something retro, kind of like lemonade. Pink Ladies,” she said. “Very popular.”
“I’ll try one,” I said. A real drink would relax me. I was studying the printout I’d made of the agency’s account history when the server brought me a darling beverage topped with a maraschino cherry. It tasted like no other lemonade I’d ever had—though far sweeter than the mojitos in California.
As I sipped, I tried to prime myself for the interview. The headhunter who was Arthur Weiner’s friend had seemed strangely surprised to hear from me when I tracked her down. We’d had a short, halting conversation, but after I faxed a résumé with a polite note, a few days later she set up an appointment at an agency. “The owner was ready to make an offer,” she’d said. “I had to convince him to see you, and he only agreed because your background is exceptionally strong
.”
Exceptionally strong. I felt as if I were listening to chamber music!
I reviewed my notes, again, and checked my watch. Still too early to leave. I ordered a salad and, feeling more mellow than I had in months—thank you, Pink Lady!—decided to go for a second drink. I sipped and nibbled, sipped and nibbled. There was definitely something in that cocktail, something wonderful. I decided to make it my signature drink. I’d never had a signature drink, and the thought made me warm and happy.
I looked over my notes one last time and got up to leave. The room swayed.
I was drunk—let’s call it tipsy—and this was not good, not at all. Ever since an unfortunate pre-Xander frat party, when I woke up in the bed of a guy I’d never seen before in my life, I have judiciously monitored my alcohol intake. Marijuana? Forget it. When anyone passed a joint, I only faked taking a puff. But I heard Autumn’s melodious voice in my head reminding me that everything was going to be fine. By the time the interview started, the effects of the drink surely would have worn off. I shouldn’t get my knickers in a twist! Today Autumn was speaking with a British accent. I bought a box of mints at the drugstore next door and then told the driver to take off.
At Bespoke Communications, I was welcomed by a platinum-haired receptionist. She was arranging a bouquet of carnations. Pink!
“Hi,” I giggled and introduced myself. “Those flowers are gorgeous.” They were ordinary enough, but a compliment never hurts.