Been There, Done That (24 page)

“I know how worn out the baby towels get,” Meredith said as Marcy opened her fluffy package. Alex’s mother (I forget which one) said the same thing about receiving blankets. By the end of the shower, Marcy’s household inventory now included ten infant towels and nineteen receiving blankets. Add to that a ducky frame, an unusually ugly Noah’s Ark wall hanging, a couple of Toys “R” Us gift certificates and four mint green outfits (Marcy and Dan had chosen not to find out the sex of their baby), and I wondered if Marcy and Dan would have to build an addition on their house just to contain all their crap.

I gave Marcy a gift certificate for a facial because she always looks so happy when she is away from her kids. She thanked me profusely, but the rest of the mommies glared, as if to say, “What else would you expect from a career gal?”

“Great gift,” Pamela said, sincerely. “I wish someone had thought of that for me when I was pregnant with Sophia.” I suddenly, passionately, wished I had bought some booties and a bib.

twenty-seven

I had never been to Jennifer’s apartment, but I had a hunch she owned a lava lamp. She lived near Boston University, her alma mater, and I checked the little piece of paper on which I’d written her address before heading from Newton into the city. It wasn’t hard to find her building, a bland white brick structure half a block off noisy Commonwealth Avenue. I spent fifteen minutes circling in search of a large parking space (I’ve never mastered parallel parking) before I finally pulled into a parking garage that was much farther away from the apartment than I’d realized.

When I finally made it back to the building, a guy in painter’s overalls (just a hunch, but I don’t think he was actually a painter) held the front door open for me. In principle, I objected to his trusting nature (I could have been a thief ), but I was relieved that I’d be able to slip the envelope under Jennifer’s door in case she wasn’t home. Still, I was hoping she was in. I really did want to see if my hunch about the lava lamp was correct.

Her roommate answered the door. She was a tall, gangly girl with pale skin and short black hair. I’d met her before but couldn’t remember her name, just that it was something weird. “I’m Kathy,” I said. “I’m Jennifer’s—I work with Jennifer. I’ve got comments for her on some articles she wrote.” I said this casually, but, in truth, I was feeling slightly buoyant. Jennifer’s articles, while cleanly written, were almost as dull as mine had been.

“Oh, right,” she said, airily. “Come on in.” I walked into the living room and was hugely disappointed. It was so uninspired: worn rust-colored wall-to-wall carpeting, grayish white walls, mismatched Salvation Army furniture. A small television set sat atop a plastic milk crate. There was not a lava lamp in sight. Also, the place was dirty: unopened mail and crumb-covered plates covered the scratched coffee table, while newspapers, shoes and vast amounts of lint littered the carpeting. I glanced at one of the envelopes on the coffee table. Oh, right, I remembered—the roommate’s name was Chrisanna.

“They’re in her bedroom,” Chrisanna said, tilting her head toward a closed door.

Was I supposed to barge in on Jennifer in her bedroom? College coed or not, I still had my inhibitions. “Can you tell her I’m here?”

“Oh! Okay!” Chrisanna looked honestly surprised, like, “Right! Manners!” She rapped on the closed door and said, “You got company.”

Jennifer pulled the door open. She was barefoot but wearing full makeup, black satin hip huggers and a pink tube top. She had outdone herself. She looked like a hooker on the verge of catching pneumonia.

She looked horrified to see me. I attempted a smile. “Sorry to drop by unannounced.” Did she really dislike me that much? I’d always thought she merely disdained me. “But I’ve got a bunch of handwritten comments on the articles you sent me, and I don’t have access to a fax machine.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Her voice was tight. She took the envelope from me and reached back for her doorknob. That’s when I snuck a peek in her room and saw the boy sitting propped up on her bed. Not a boy, though, but a man. He was wearing blue jeans and holding a paperback. I was about to be amused when I took a look at his face.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, honestly confused. And then, even more stupidly, “Why didn’t you guys just meet in the office? Richard would have let you in.”

Tim stared at me for a minute, then looked away. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Shit.”

I felt my lungs contract. “Oh, my God.” I said. “Oh, my God!” I looked at Jennifer. Her arms were crossed across her chest. She squinted down at the floor and ground her purple-painted big toe into the carpet.

This is the point where I should have started shouting, “How could you!” It was the time when I should have hefted the closest thrift store lamp above my shoulder and chucked it across the room. Next time I assume a new identity, I’m going to be a violent schizophrenic.

Instead, I turned and ran out of the apartment, down the stairs and out the door. I paused a moment on the cracked concrete sidewalk, partly because my tears were making it hard to see and partly because I expected Tim to appear at any time, at which point I was now fully prepared to scream, “I hate you!”

I started down the street because I didn’t want him to think I was waiting for him. I walked slowly so he’d be able to see me from a distance, call out for me, catch up to me.

I made it to the parking garage without being pursued. The attendant took my ten dollars with only a quick glance at my tear-streaked face. I drove back down Commonwealth Avenue, just to see if Tim had come after me yet. But he never did.

 
 
Marcy knew something was wrong the instant she opened her door. “What happened?” she asked without saying hello.

“It’s Tim.” As soon as I said his name, I began to sob. She threw her arms around me and held me against her massive belly.

“The bastard,” she said with venom. Then, just to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood my hysteria, she gasped, “He’s not dead, is he?” I shook my head against her shoulder. “Total bastard,” she hissed.

I sobbed some more and finally pulled away because we were still in her open doorway, and I didn’t want the neighbors to see. Also, my nose was starting to run, and it would have been rude to get snot on her dress even though, given her extensive experience as a mother, she probably wouldn’t have minded all that much.

She led me into her living room and settled me on a velvety moss green couch, then spread a blanket over my lap even though it wasn’t cold. She darted off to the bathroom and returned with a box of tissues (the kind with lotion), which she set on her cherry coffee table. “Comfortable?” she asked. I nodded, still unable to talk. She headed for the kitchen with a promise to return with a cup of tea.

Marcy came back with a huge glass of wine. “I thought you could use something stronger than tea.” She handed me the glass. “I turned on a video for the boys and gave them a plate of cookies. With any luck, that’ll keep them happy until bedtime.” She sat next to me on the couch and waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, she quietly asked, “Is he getting married?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s even serious.” I took a mouthful of wine and swallowed. “He’s sleeping with Jennifer.”

Marcy shook her head in confusion. “Jennifer who?”

“Jennifer from work.”

Marcy squinted at me, still confused. “Not your secretary? The tacky one?”

“She doesn’t like it when you call her a secretary. But, yeah—that’s her.”

Marcy snared the wineglass from my hand and took a swig, murmuring something about how the fetus was fully formed and in Europe women drank all through their pregnancies. Clearly, she was trying to remember if I’d ever mentioned they knew each other. She was stumped. “But how did Tim ever meet her?”

I was all set to be vague, cover my tracks, keep my promise to Tim not to divulge our big secret. And then I thought: why? I was nervous, though. “Where’s Dan?” I asked.

“It’s Saturday night,” she said. “Where do you think he is?”

“At the office?”

She nodded. “To make up for staying at home with the boys while I was at the shower. Don’t ever marry a lawyer. You’ll spend all your nights and weekends alone.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

She stared at me, waiting. I looked at the deep yellow of my wine and ran a finger along the rim, making a little squeaking noise.

“I don’t mean to be insensitive,” Marcy said. “But we’ve got maybe twenty minutes before the boys come tearing in here. And that’s if we’re lucky.”

“Okay,” I said, finally. “Tim called me a couple of months ago and asked me to work on a story with him. I’ll get into the details later. Basically, I’ve spent the last month undercover, living as a freshman at Mercer College.”

For once, Marcy was speechless. Finally, she managed a
“What?”
and I launched into my tale. When I got to the part about pretending to be Jewish, Jacob came in and said, “Josh is stinky.”

Marcy blinked at him. “It’s probably just gas.”

He held his nose. “Uh-uh. He’s poopy. Joshy’s a pooper.”

“Okay, okay,” Marcy said hurriedly. “I’ll come get him in a minute. Just go back in the playroom and let Kathy and me talk.”

He shook his head. “No! I don’t want to sit next to him! He’s stinky! P.U.! P.U.!”

Marcy sat up straight and spoke slowly. “Jacob. If you’ll go back in the playroom now, you can have another cookie.”

“I don’t want a cookie. I don’t like that kind.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice rising. “You can have one of the chocolates in the pantry.” He stood very still for a moment, and then scurried off to the kitchen.

“So she actually believed you were Jewish? Who would believe you were Jewish?”

“I told her I was half Jewish, half Irish.”

“Oh, yeah,” Marcy laughed. “That was a popular match in our parents’ day.”

“Does your mother still refer to me as your shiksa roommate?”

“It was once she said that. Once! I never should have told you.” When we were in college, Marcy’s older brother, Larry, came down for a weekend. Tim and I were temporarily on the outs—every year or two, we split up for about a week—and Marcy’s brother expressed an interest in filling the vacuum. I didn’t find him the least bit attractive (I never actually told Marcy that), but when Marcy’s mother heard he’d started calling me, she got in a tizzy envisioning little Catholic grandchildren and all the attendant baptisms and First Communions. I truly hated her for her bigotry—moot though it was. In time, however, she acquired Pamela as a daughter-in-law instead, so I guess she’s been punished enough: Pamela is not just a bitch; she is a Methodist bitch.

Over the years, I’ve occasionally wondered if I was too quick to write Larry off. I mean, he was a nice man who later showed himself to be a good husband and father. Also, having hit it big in the Internet boom, he owned not only a mansion in Brookline, but a waterfront house on the Cape.

“It gets worse,” I said, continuing my Mercer saga. “Next I was supposed to be a lesbian.”

Marcy was leaning toward me, utterly absorbed, when Jacob reappeared in the doorway. “The chocolates are all gone.”

“They were there yesterday,” Marcy said desperately.

“Daddy ate them.”

“When? He’s never home.”

“Today, when you were at your party.”

Marcy lowered her voice. “Please, Jacob. Please. Go. Back. To. The. Playroom.”

“It’s
stinky
,” he wailed.

There was a heavy moment of silence. She looked at me beseechingly. It had been a long time since Marcy had found me this fascinating. She looked back at Jacob and took a big breath for strength. “If you’ll go back to the playroom, tomorrow I will take you to Chuck E. Cheese.”

Jacob’s eyes lit up. He jumped in the air. He ran out of the living room, and we heard him say, “Joshy! We’re going to Chuck E. Cheese!”

“You have no idea how much I just gave away,” she said to me.

“I think I do,” I said. Jacob’s third birthday party had been held at Chuck E. Cheese.

“So now you’re a lesbian,” she said, returning to my story.

“I’m not anymore,” I said. “And, really, I never was. It was just this rumor. And there’s this guy, Jeremy, who’s just so amazing but way too young.”

Jacob appeared once again in the doorway. “This better be good,” Marcy said.

“Josh stuck a cookie in the VCR,” he said.

“There’s a video in the VCR.”

“Not anymore.”

“Okay. I’ll get it later.”

Jacob turned and began to walk out. “Oh, yeah. And Joshy took off his diaper.”