I lay down and stared at the cracks in the ceiling and then stood and paced the room. I was angry and sad and frustrated. I directed my rage first at Karl and then at myself.
Sometime before dawn I abandoned the idea of sleep altogether and cracked open my laptop, determined to do my duty and find the e-mail of the man who arranged the bartenders to make sure he had two available for the Brozny party.
At the top of my in-box was an e-mail from Lois Delancey. “Where Are You?” was the subject.
I didn’t see you at drop-off or pickup today. Have you left Karl? LOL
I wondered, not for the first time, whether I was the only adult left in New York City who didn’t use abbreviations or emojis in e-mails. The tone was playful, but the snappy subtext was clear if you spoke “Upper East Side mom.” There was no doubt that Lois, the enfant terrible of the mommies at the Atherton School, had already floated any number of speculative theories about why I hadn’t dropped my children off at school. Lois, a graduate of Harvard Business School who never missed an opportunity to remind you that she went to Harvard Business School even when you didn’t ask, had the perpetually bothered expression and pinched tone of voice of a woman given a surprise enema. I could hear her high-pitched accusation in my head. Drop-off was a necessary evil in our world. No matter how much help any of us had, and my part-time au pair was considered a skeleton staff compared to most of the moms from Atherton, parents (mostly moms) almost always made it to drop-off or pickup. It was part of the facade we all cultivated that we were absolutely fucking doing it all. We were good mothers, we were in the best shape of our lives, we looked better than we did in our twenties, and we did meaningful work, mostly charity, outside of our home. We were superwomen, and our daily presence at the school added the exclamation mark on that falsehood. It didn’t matter if you had two nannies and a night nurse the rest of the time. If you were at drop-off, you were a good mom.
Lois, a former exec at Google turned mom-trepreneur who was making a fortune selling panties that you could essentially pee in, was probably trying to dig up dirt on me to diffuse the gossip about her own latest drama. She’d recently stolen a personal chef from Ainsley Harrison. What made it especially bizarre was that it was a personal baby-food chef, a top-notch graduate of Le Cordon Bleu hired specifically (with a six-figure salary) to puree organic vegetables for a six-month-old. It was Ainsley who originally discovered the culinary prodigy. She’d bragged about him every morning for months, before Lois secretly e-mailed him and offered him double what Ainsley was paying him. It got juicier. Some mommies speculated that Lois had snagged the chef to cook for her and not for her baby. The latest was that she put herself on a baby-food-only diet in order to shed her baby pooch. These women were more ruthless than Breitbart in their genesis of fake news. The Facebook groups, the e-mail chains, the mommy listservs, the whisper down the lane at pickup and drop-off. I wished I could say I’d become numb to it, but I hated the toxic culture of Upper East Side mothering as much now as I did when I first entered it. That said, it felt like there was no escape—for better or worse, this had become my social circle.
I considered not replying to Lois, but leaving a vacuum would only give her space to fill.
Had to fly to the West Coast. Helping out some old friends with a situation here. Resolving now. Home Friday. Coffee next week?
The word situation was both vague and important-sounding, as if I’d come out here to help someone with their sick mother. It would keep the chatter to a minimum. I imagined Marley had done both drop-off and pickup, or maybe just one of the two. Karl liked to get the girls to school when he could. That was the thing about Karl. He was a great father. If he weren’t I couldn’t have imagined leaving my children for even a day.
I closed Lois’s e-mail, picturing the look of horror on her face if she could see me now—the room was still a bit of a mess from our after-party, an empty cigarette pack in the corner, the lingering smell of weed, my clothes in various puddles around the room, as if it belonged to a recalcitrant teenager. I tried to imagine Lois ever doing molly and decided it would do her some good.
I gazed over at my empty suitcase. There at the bottom was a rust-orange vial filled with a prescription for Zoloft from our family general practitioner, Dr. Sullivan. I had another one for Xanax. Both were prescribed at my annual physical last year when Dr. Sullivan asked how I was feeling. I had a rare moment of honesty that I later regretted. I confessed to him that sometimes when I woke in the middle of the night I felt as though I were drowning. That I would then lie awake for hours, dark thoughts spinning, like imagining I was in a coma like a daytime-soap star, beautiful and serene, while the world went on without me. Dr. Sullivan prescribed the anti-anxiety medication and recommended a therapist and gluten-free diet. Since then I kept the drugs with me all the time. Karl had no idea about the prescriptions. But it didn’t matter. I’d never taken a single pill.
For me, taking the drugs meant admitting I was depressed, admitting I was unhappy with my life, and that brought on a roaring wave of anger at myself. Like Nina had said on the beach, didn’t I have the perfect fucking life? I didn’t deserve to be depressed. I had a good, if occasionally absent, husband. I had healthy, beautiful daughters, and we had enough money to never think about money for the rest of our lives. If I took the pills it would be like admitting those things weren’t enough for me, and that seemed like courting disaster, even if most every woman and child over the age of eight in our zip code had a script for some kind of SSRI if they hadn’t already moved on to medical marijuana. After all, we were the fucking one percent. What right did we have to complain.
I had actually tried to talk to Lois about it once, during one of our rare conversations about anything more than school gossip or our children.
She laughed at me in a way that wasn’t mean but also wasn’t nice. “Oh, Kate. Why don’t you just eat your feelings and then throw them up like everyone else we know.” Her laugh turned into a cackle. “Kidding! I’m just kidding. I’m not talking about me, of course. But I did hear Ainsley the other day talking about a baker in Koreatown who makes sheet cakes laced with laxatives and ipecac.”
I laughed then. I wish I hadn’t, but Lois’s approval used to mean so much to me.
She swiftly changed the subject back to her waterproof underwear. “Kate, you must check out our new sports line, Jinx Joggers—Lululemon just took a huge order.”
We never spoke about feelings again.
My passport was also lying in the bottom of the bag. I’d brought it along instead of my driver’s license when I realized, two days before this trip, that the license was expired and I wouldn’t have time to go to the DMV.
“You really should be able to pay an extra fee and cut in front of the gen pop at the DMV,” one of the mommies at school drop-off remarked when I told her about the nuisance. Gen pop was something some of the moms were trying out to refer to the “general population.” This sounded perfectly natural coming out of the mouth of a woman who paid $10,000 for her kid to cut to the front of the line of Space Mountain during their recent trip to Disney World, a place, she remarked upon her return, that had way too much gen pop.
I tossed a shirt on top of the pill bottle and my passport and returned to my computer screen. The bartender. I had to e-mail the bartender.
It took forever for the e-mail to load again and I bit my fingernails in the meantime, a nasty habit I’d abandoned when I began getting de rigueur weekly manicures. I thought of Nina’s ragged, dirty fingernails then, and as I thought of her, she came to life on my computer screen. At least her e-mail did. Her name appeared in my in-box like a spirit conjured at a séance where no one believes in ghosts. The subject line of the e-mail was in all caps and punctuated with cheerful, if insistent, exclamation marks. “THAILAND!!!!!!”
I opened the e-mail.
I’ll meet you at the zen center!!!! I can’t fucking wait. This is going to be perfect. I love you.
There was a l
ink to her itinerary—she would arrive at the center almost a half day before me. That is, if I went through with this.
I fiddled with the slim gold chain at my neck, the one with delicate charms bearing my daughters’ initials. I brought the chain in and out of my mouth, tasting the bitter metal. I thought of Henry Miller, “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” I thought of something else he said: “Fuck everything.”
I still had two plane tickets booked on the same day—one back to New York and one to Bangkok.
Chapter Three
* * *
If Karl answered the phone I would get on the plane to New York and Nina would just have to understand.
If he didn’t answer, if my husband ignored me, or didn’t try to talk me out of this, I’d get on the plane to Thailand. There was a part of me that felt ridiculous having created such a melodramatic scenario. Who did I think I was? A character in a Lifetime movie?
But I couldn’t deny another feeling: exhilaration. It was like faking a stomachache as a kid—the feeling of being able to play hooky. But these weren’t the kinds of games a grown woman with two children was allowed to play with her life.
After I settled into one of the soft booths in a charmless airport wine bar, I pulled out my phone and stared at it for a moment, smiling at the screen saver photograph of Isabel and Tilly staring up at fireworks from this past Fourth of July. I took a deep breath and made the call.
As the phone rang, I played out the ideal conversation in my head. Karl would answer and he’d tell me he couldn’t wait to see me when I got home. He would tell me he missed me and he’d wait up for me.
It would be the validation I needed. Thailand would become a foolish memory.
I’d leave the international terminal and get on the plane that was scheduled to fly back to New York and write off this little detour as a mild midlife crisis. When I got home Karl and I would snuggle into bed. I’d slip into that black lace chemise we’d picked up together in Paris and we’d laugh about Nina and Alex. I’d admit I bought a ticket to Thailand and he’d be so relieved that I didn’t jet off to the other side of the world that we would screw like bunnies for half the night.
I’d put on a new dress for the Brozny party, the violet Dries Van Noten that had been on back order for a month. The caterers would take over my kitchen, preparing a variety of delicacies on very tiny toast, and the bartenders would arrive and craft a signature cocktail for the evening. I’d name it something witty and hilarious and everyone would compliment me on it and say things like, “Kate, you really should have been a writer,” and for the first time in a long time I would say, “Actually I’m working on something.”
Sara, Karl’s assistant, answered his cell phone.
“Hi, Kate. Is something wrong with your flight?” She sounded flustered. Sara almost always sounded like she hadn’t had her first cup of coffee.
“Can I talk to Karl?”
“He told me to pick up. He’s on the line with John—he can’t talk to you right now.”
John Montgomery, head of Pride Capital, was Paradigm’s chief investor, and the only thing between Paradigm’s survival as an independent publisher and selling out to one of the “Big Five,” a move that would have Karl Carmichael Sr. rolling over in his grave. Nothing stressed my husband out more than talking to John, who had built one of the most successful hedge funds in the world, but who could not wrap his mind around the vagaries or nuances of the publishing business, despite fancying himself a bibliophile. Last Halloween he and his husband, Gary, had both dressed as Offred from The Handmaid’s Tale.
“Can you just tell my husband I need two minutes?”
“He specifically said he didn’t have time to talk to you, Kate. I can give him a message.”
The last thing I wanted to do was leave a message for my goddamn husband. And even though this was a scenario that had happened dozens and dozens of times before, this time something in me broke. I felt like I was having that dream where you try to scream but you have no voice.
“OK, tell him I won’t make it home today.”
I clicked the phone off before Sara could ask me anything else and I walked toward the gate.
To hell with it all, I was really going to do this. I’d flown across the country and now I was going to fly halfway around the world to meet a woman I had hardly seen in twelve years in the middle of the goddamn jungle. I expected to feel a crush of anxiety, but I felt fine. In fact, I felt better than fine. I felt a surge of joy and anticipation. I missed my girls. I always missed them, even when they were only a few blocks away, or when they were asleep in their own beds just down the hall. But I didn’t worry about them. They were in good hands. They could survive without me for another week or two.
After I made my way to the gate, I quickly settled into a flurry of activity that would make this mad adventure possible. I texted Marley that I wouldn’t be home today as expected and gave her some directions and reminders about the girls—that Isabel’s piano time had moved this week and that Tilly needed new ballet shoes before Saturday’s class.
I’d hired Marley because I trusted her completely. She was more than capable. Everything was going to be OK. I had to keep repeating it like a mantra, or I wouldn’t be able to make it through this plane ride.
Next, I e-mailed Nina, telling her I was about to board the plane. Her previous message had the address of her mythical zen center in the foothills of the Dawna mountains. A quick check of Google Earth showed me very little except that it was surrounded by national parks and wildlife reserves and was located just over two hundred miles from Bangkok. I figured I’d rent a car at the airport, drive for a couple of hours, and be there for dinnertime with Nina.
I confirmed with the caterers and the bartenders for the party. Fortunately, these events were a well-oiled machine at this point. Karl would have to host alone. He could do it, but he wouldn’t like it. Making sure his events went off without a hitch had become my specialty.
He’ll figure it out, I told myself. It’s not rocket science.
Finally, just as the flight began to board, I dashed to the newsstand and bought a New Yorker. When was the last time I had time to sit and read a New Yorker cover to cover?
I settled into my middle seat in the middle of economy—which was the only ticket available with a few days’ notice. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d flown economy. As soon as I had the thought, I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach that I was the type of person who thought things like, I can’t remember the last time I was in economy. It was disgusting. A lot of things about my life were disgusting—like the fact that I had become so comfortable always being comfortable. I used to revel in the things that went wrong when I traveled. I loved getting myself out of a difficult situation, didn’t even mind when a bag was lost or a reservation canceled because it meant that I could practice a new language or stretch my skills. Now I despised having to share my armrest with a pimply teenager. To be fair, I could see that he was thumbing through Japanese comic porn on his iPad.
I was too polite. I’d surrendered both armrests and now I would have to live with it. I opened the New Yorker and skimmed the Talk of the Town before turning to the fiction pages. I almost laughed out loud. Even as I attempted to escape my life, I would never get away from it. The story this week was an excerpt adapted from a new book by Jackson Welch that was being published by Karl. Just a few days before I left for Big Sur, Karl and I had hosted a dinner in our home for twenty people in Jackson’s honor.
I realized now, as the plane barreled down the runway, that I could trace so much of my irritation and angst during the past forty-eight hours to that party.
I closed the New Yorker and thought back to that night. The guest of honor, Jackson Welch, was an asshole—and worse, he was the type of asshole who cultivated and relished that persona. His bad-boy swagger was like performance art. Twenty years ago he won the Pulitzer Prize and then not two weeks later o
verdosed on heroin in the bathroom of Odeon. After emerging from a posh desert rehab in Arizona, the kind that charged $20,000 a week for a man-child to make bamboo bird feeders and weave reed baskets while talking about their feelings and why they hated their mothers, Jackson had gone into seclusion in the Smoky Mountains and hadn’t written a word for almost two decades. His new novel was expected to be the “big book” of the fall and a boon for Paradigm’s third-quarter profits. I hadn’t much enjoyed his first book when I read it in college. I remember talking about it with my writing group at the time. “When a male author writes about marriage and feelings he gets the Pulitzer fucking Prize,” I had said. “When a woman does the same thing her book is dismissed as chick lit.”
When Karl brought home pages of Welch’s new book, I vowed to keep an open mind, but from the very first sentence I could tell it was a sophomore flunk. It was a weak narrative about a middle-aged divorcé who falls in love with a prostitute on a train trip from Hartford to New Orleans to attend his mother’s funeral. In the midst of it all they solve a murder aboard the train. I bit my tongue to avoid saying that he wrote a poor man’s mash-up of Pretty Woman and Murder on the Orient Express with none of the panache and wit of Agatha Christie or Garry Marshall. The pacing was slow, the characters were caricatures, his prose was pretentious—as if he were trying to sound like a good writer, rather than be a good writer—and his disdain for women was palpable. I could tell Karl didn’t particularly like the book either, but Paradigm had paid a small fortune for it at auction, so he would never admit out loud that it was anything less than a masterpiece.
Marriage Vacation Page 5