“Mommy, are you listening?”
“Uh-huh,” she lied. She was too distracted by the assortment of threatening mail meant for the Durants. She shuffled them to the back of the pile. She’d give them to Grace at drop-off or pickup tomorrow.
“Mo-MMEEE.” Noah stamped his foot as Amy opened the front door.
“Don’t raise your voice at me.”
“But you’re not listening.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Tell me what did I say?”
“You said . . .” Amy was at a loss. He was right: She hadn’t been listening. “Sorry, I forget.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “I said, can I have a yogurt tube for a snack?”
“Oh, sure. Let me just put all this stuff down. Go wash your hands.”
Noah rushed toward the bathroom, and Amy made for the kitchen, where she laid the mail on the counter. On top was a big envelope addressed to her and Rob. She flipped it over. The return address was printed on the upper flap: It was from Food Fight.
Amy tore open the envelope to find a simple, tastefully designed invitation: Food Fight’s Fall Fund-raiser (“sponsored by MediaCom”).
“Say that four times fast,” Amy muttered to herself.
“Say what?” Noah snuck up behind her.
“Food Fight’s Fall Fund-raiser.”
“Food’s Fall Fightraiser.” He laughed. “Say it again?”
She tousled his hair. “Food Fight’s Fall Fund-raiser. It’s an event for Ethan’s daddy’s company.”
“What does it do?”
“The event? Or his company?”
“Both.”
“Well, his company helps poor people get healthier food, and the event raises money so that he can help more people.”
“How?”
“How do they raise money?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, for Daddy and I to go, we have to pay for tickets, so some of that money will help. And a lot of times at events like these, they have auctions, where people offer to pay money for certain prizes.”
“PRIZES?” Noah’s eyes lit up. “What kind of prizes?”
“It depends on the event. But a lot of times it’s something like dinner at a nice restaurant or a gift certificate to a spa or something like that.”
“Oh.” Noah looked thoroughly unimpressed.
“Yeah, it’s mostly adult stuff. Sorry. But I promise if I see anything you’d like, Daddy and I will bid on it.”
“Is it tonight?”
Amy laughed. Only in a four-year-old’s mind could an invitation received today be for an event tonight. “No, it’s not until November.”
“Can I come?”
“No, it’s for adults only.”
“Awwww!” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I want to come, too.”
“Trust me, it wouldn’t be your thing.”
“Then what am I going to do?”
“We have two months to figure that out. But I’m guessing either Bubbe and Zayde will babysit, or maybe Kara.”
“From Ethan’s?”
“Yep.”
His mood brightened. “Can I sleep at Ethan’s again?”
Amy was tempted to clarify that last time he hadn’t actually spent the night at Ethan’s; they’d brought him home after he’d fallen asleep. But she didn’t want to argue over details that didn’t really matter.
“We’ll see. I have to discuss all of this with his mommy.” Assuming she’s still talking to me.
“Okay.” His eyes drifted toward the refrigerator. “Can I have my yogurt tube now?”
“Of course.”
She settled him in with his snack and sorted through the rest of the mail—bills, junk, a few catalogs. She put the Food Fight invitation to the side and snapped a quick photo of it, which she proceeded to send to Jess.
* * *
The event is a go! You guys in?
Last she heard, Jess’s parents were able and willing to fly out at some point in the fall to see the kids and watch them for a weekend. Amy only hoped the offer stood.
She put the invitation on top of her pile next to the refrigerator. Rob always called it her GDS (for “Get Shit Done”) pile, but lately shit didn’t seem to be getting done. The pile was now several pieces of paper thick—fund-raising requests from the Georgetown and Yale alumni societies, appeals from local charities, coupons from stores that (hopefully) hadn’t expired. She always paid medical bills and other important invoices right away. But somehow all the requests for donations had piled up this month. Maybe it was because she knew she’d be donating $300 to Julian’s charity—and probably more the night of the event. Or maybe it was because she felt like she’d be throwing money at the house and her family (and even the Durants) lately, and she needed to put a few things aside for now to keep her financial anxiety in check.
“Sometimes mommies and daddies fight, and that’s okay,” Noah said.
Amy turned around and looked at him. Where had that come from? “Did you talk about that in school today . . . ?”
He shook his head as he slurped the last of his yogurt tube. “No.”
Amy racked her brain. Had she and Rob said something in front of him recently? She couldn’t think of anything. They rarely fought, and they certainly never did in front of him. The last time they’d had a disagreement was about a month ago, about Julian’s delayed call to Rob, and frankly that wasn’t even really a fight. More like a difference of opinion.
“Then where did you . . . why are you worried about mommies and daddies fighting?”
“I’m not. I’m just saying. It’s okay if they do sometimes.”
“That’s true. Mommy and Daddy don’t really fight, though. We occasionally disagree, but we still love each other very much.”
“I know.”
“Because you can be upset with someone and still love them. Just like when I sometimes get upset with you. I still love you—I always love you.”
He rolled his eyes like a cranky teenager. “I know.”
“Hey, you’re the one who brought it up.”
“I didn’t. Ethan did.”
“Ethan isn’t here.”
“No, at school.”
Amy’s antennae went up. “He did? What did he say?”
His expression brimmed with exasperation. “That sometimes mommies and daddies fight, and that’s okay!” By his tone, he might as well have said, Haven’t you been paying attention, you idiot?
“Did he say anything else?”
“No, just that.”
“You’re sure?”
He pressed his hands to his temples. He looked entirely fed up with her. “Mommy, seriously. Yes.”
“Okay, sorry. I was just checking.” Because it now seemed that Grace’s sour mood at pickup may have had nothing to do with Amy at all.
Chapter 14
She didn’t see Grace at drop-off the next day. Ethan wasn’t in the class when Noah arrived, and after lingering for a few minutes after she signed him in, Amy decided she was better off running into Grace another time. What would she say, anyway? Are you and Julian having problems? In front of Miss Karen and all the kids? Please. If she weren’t already on Grace’s shit list, she would be after that.
As she returned to her car, she saw she had three alerts on her phone. The first was a text from Jess.
WE ARE SO IN! OMG THIS IS HAPPENING! I’ll look at flights today. Will let you know. Xo
Amy looked at the time stamp: 9:01 a.m. That meant Jess must have texted at 6:01 her time—a reasonable time for a lawyer with two kids to be up, but earlier than Amy had arisen in months. She had to admit, as much as she missed aspects of working in an office—the camaraderie, the regular paycheck, the title—she did not miss having to wake up extra early so that she could get to work on time. Noah was also a great sleeper and regularly slept until 7:30 or 8:00. Part of her couldn’t imagine going back to waking several times in the night with an infant, or taking a gamble on a kid who regular
ly chose 5:45 as a wake-up time. She knew this was partly a self-preservation mechanism on her part (she had no idea what time Penny woke and whether she had anything to do with Jess’s early morning text), but it worked, and she wasn’t going to fight it.
The second alert was a reminder that she had a call at 10:30 with the organization for whom she was drafting fall conference materials. They wanted to go over format and content, and Amy had a few questions of her own that she wanted to bring up. Even though the pay was abysmal, she’d taken the gig mostly because she believed in the organization’s mission. Well, that and the fact that she didn’t want a huge hole in her résumé. Part of her felt that as long as she was working on something, she was more likely to find another project or job she liked better. It hadn’t worked out that way so far, but she was eternally optimistic.
The final alert was another reminder, only this one made her stomach sour:
Call Timmy
She’d plugged a reminder into her phone last night when she was feeling a twinge of guilt for not having spoken to him in so long. But seeing the note in front of her now, she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk to him. It was more that she was . . . well, scared. It had been so long. Almost three years, when she thought about it. She missed Tim and wanted him to get better, but she really wasn’t sure she could travel down that treacherous emotional path again.
The last time they talked was shortly after Tim met Noah for the first time. She and Rob had taken a summer road trip to Woonsocket with Noah, so that he could spend time with his Mimi and meet Uncle Timmy. Amy’s mom had already met Noah on several occasions, but that was because the Kravitzes had paid for her to fly to Washington. Tim never made his way down, though, and both he and Ellen gave various excuses as to why not. They were all legitimate—the most salient being his probation-related travel restrictions due to a drug charge earlier that year—but it meant that her brother still hadn’t met his nephew after more than a year.
She knew something was off when they finally met. He seemed distracted and aloof, like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep or was stressed about work. But for Amy, the telltale sign was his eyes. It was always the eyes. When Tim was a kid, and even through high school, his eyes could tell stories. They danced and sparkled, the magnetism of their green-flecked irises drawing people in and refusing to let go. There was a bit of mischief in those eyes, too, a twinkle that used to make Ellen say, “That boy’s got a bit of the devil in him.” She’d say it with a smile because she didn’t mean it, not really. His eyes told you he was up for a good time, but also that he’d never hurt a soul. As it turned out, the only person he’d hurt was himself.
But when Amy saw Tim on that visit, his eyes were dead. There was no life behind them—no joy, but no mischief either. Just . . . nothing. It was hard to explain to someone who didn’t know him. By then, he’d gotten very good at hiding his addiction. He wasn’t lying strung-out on the couch, a trickle of drool running from the corner of his mouth. Until things got bad, he could fake it pretty well. But he couldn’t fake the eyes. The second she saw him, she knew he’d started using again.
She spent the trip building up courage to say something. She’d been through this enough times to know that attacking him or coming out aggressively would only work against both of them. She also knew that unless he truly wanted to get better, nothing she said would make a bit of difference.
Then one morning Rob had taken Noah for a walk in the stroller while Amy showered and dried her hair. Her mom was at work (she wasn’t able to take the whole week off and needed to put in two days while they were there), and Tim was sleeping in the basement. According to Ellen, he’d been staying with her for two months, while he looked for another apartment. His former landlord sold the building and the new owner jacked up the rent, so he couldn’t afford it anymore. At least that was the story.
When Amy went to dry her hair, the circuit breaker tripped, and all the lights in her bedroom went out. The outlets didn’t work either. This had happened to her before—the wiring in her mom’s house was in desperate need of an upgrade—and it usually required a quick visit to the electrical panel in the basement, where she could flick the breaker back into place.
She scurried downstairs, not thinking to knock before she entered the basement, and when she got to the bottom of the steps, she found Tim sitting on the basement couch, sticking a needle in his arm.
“Are you KIDDING me?” she shouted before she could stop herself. She’d wanted to approach him with love and kindness, without judgment or aggression, but the shock of the situation took a match to whatever plans she’d had. She wasn’t surprised, in the sense that she already suspected he was using again. But catching him in the act—that had never happened before. And for it to happen under the roof where her one-year-old was living and sleeping . . . she was furious. What if Noah found some bits of paraphernalia when he was toddling around? They never took him into the basement, but still. If Tim was willing to be so brazen to shoot up in his mother’s house—the mother who’d paid for his rehab stints and sacrificed so much to help him get better—then anything was possible.
“Ame, I’m sorry—I just . . . I need help again.”
At that moment, she was so furious with him that she wanted to tell him to fuck off, that he was on his own. Instead, she flipped the breaker and took a few deep breaths before turning around to face him. “You want help? You’re going to get it.”
As soon as Rob and Noah got back to the house, she sent them back to DC. She stayed on for the next two weeks while Tim detoxed and got back into a program. She visited him every day, saw him through every grueling step, and watched the life return back into his eyes. Sherrie had come to DC to watch Noah, so Amy knew her son was in good hands, but she missed him terribly. She’d never been away from him for more than a few hours. But as she watched her brother get sober, she knew the sacrifice had been worth it. He told her every day how thankful he was for her, how important it was to him that she was there for him. In some ways, she felt closer to him at the end of those two weeks than she ever had. On her last day, he hugged her and said, “I’ll make you proud this time. I promise.”
Three months later, she got a call from her mom. Tim hadn’t come home the night before, and she was worried. He showed up the next day, strung out and filthy. He was using again.
He called Amy shortly after that to apologize, to tell her it was just a brief relapse, but that he was going to get back on track. At the time, Amy couldn’t pinpoint what she was feeling. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t pity. It was a deep, crushing sadness she hadn’t quite experienced before.
She didn’t say much, just wished him well and hung up the phone. Later, she realized what she was feeling. It was heartbreak.
Now, she looked down at the reminder on her phone. “Call Timmy.” Her thumb hovered over the reminder.
“Not today,” she said to herself, then slid the phone into her purse and unlocked the car door.
* * *
At pickup that afternoon, Amy ran for the door as another mother opened it. The building had self-locking doors and required a key fob for entry, and Amy realized she’d left the fob at home. She’d been meaning to attach it to her keychain, but in an uncharacteristic bout of laziness still hadn’t done it yet.
“Could you hold that?” she called out. She was far enough away that she wasn’t sure she’d make it.
The mother turned around, and Amy realized it was Emily. She was wearing a denim shift dress, and her honey-blond hair spilled over her shoulders in long waves.
“Hey,” Emily said, smiling. “How’s it going?”
“Good. Sorry—I didn’t even realize it was you. I’ve never seen you with your hair down. It looks great.”
“Yeah, occasionally I manage to pull myself together. Don’t get used to it—I’ll probably be back in gym clothes and ponytails tomorrow.”
Amy laughed. “Please. If I manag
e to brush my hair, it’s a good day.”
She followed Emily inside and made for Noah’s classroom. The hallways were decorated with cheerful “back-to-school” pictures and crafty projects: trees with apples featuring the children’s names, colorful books with children’s names on the cover, a wall full of bedazzled kites. The school was such a welcoming place.
“So I was thinking—we should get the boys together again,” Emily said before they stepped foot in the classroom.
“Definitely. Noah would love that. Ethan, too, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I meant . . . well, I guess Ethan could come, too, depending. I was thinking more just Noah. But whatever works.”
“We’re fine with anything. I just noticed that Jake and Ethan seem to get along really well.”
“They do—of course. I mean, my God, they were inseparable in the two-year-old class and most of last year. But then, well—”
“Mommy!”
Jake came running out of the classroom. Amy figured he must have heard them talking. She found it amazing how in tune kids could be to their own parents’ voices.
“Hi, sweetie. I was just talking to Noah’s mommy about scheduling another playdate. Would you like that?”
“Could Ethan come, too?”
“We’d have to ask Ethan’s mommy about that. But Noah would love to get together!”
“See if Ethan can come, too.”
Amy tried not to take it personally that Jake seemed to prefer a diluted version of her kid. It made sense, given how long he’d known Ethan. There was probably some territorial stuff going on, too. She’d seen it countless times over the years—as a kid herself and as an adult. Three was almost always a crowd, and there was usually a favorite, in this case Ethan. The two other people both wanted to be the “best” friend of the favorite, and the favorite was either completely unaware of his or her role, or aware but uninterested in doing anything to change the dynamic. She foresaw some tears on the horizon.
The Last House on Sycamore Street Page 17