A Window Opens: A Novel

For Ethan, Louisa, Simon, and Frances, my lights at the end of the Lincoln Tunnel

We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

—T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

And the moral is: If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.

—Mo Willems,
Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

I drag my suitcase out from under the bed and start packing.

The Ramona books go in the elastic pocket intended for socks and underwear; the yellow-spined Nancy Drews go in neat towers on the luggage floor. Around these, I wedge Anastasia Krupnik, Pippi Longstocking, Emily of New Moon, Harriet the Spy, Betsy, Tacy and Tib, the All-of-a-Kind Family.

When the luggage is full, I sit on its lid and yank twin zippers around the periphery until Strawberry Shortcake’s canvas face is distorted from overstuffing. Then I grab the yellow plastic briefcase handles and lug the suitcase down the hall to my brother’s room, where he’s working on the final side of a Rubik’s Cube.

Will immediately kicks the door shut with the toe of his Reebok and, in his unfamiliar new deep voice, says, “Get out, Alice.”

I heft my suitcase of books downstairs and make my way to the kitchen, where my mom is on the phone, receiver tucked between ear and shoulder, olive green cord wrapped around her waist.

I carry my wares to the backyard.

My dad is sitting on a lounge chair in the sun, his head in a cloud of pipe smoke, reading. When he sees me, he puts down his pipe and Ed McBain, lifts his legs off the bottom half of his chair and gestures for me to set up shop. “Welcome, Book Lady. What’s on the reading list today?”

One by one, I lift the books from the suitcase, showcasing them in my hands the way Vanna White does on
Wheel of Fortune
. I explain the concept of Choose Your Own Adventure and read a short poem from
Where the Sidewalk Ends.

My dad listens intently, puffing on his pipe, pretending he hasn’t heard every one of my sales pitches at least ten times before. When I’m finished, he makes a show of examining the books, lingering for a moment over battered spines and flipping a few over so he can read the descriptions on the back. I scratch my mosquito bites and attempt to French-braid my hair and wonder which of my friends will be at the pool in the afternoon. I’m a little dizzy from the hysterical thrum of the cicadas.

Finally, my dad says, “I’ll take this Encyclopedia Brown. And can you recommend a good book for my wife?” We both glance back at the kitchen window, where my mom is still gabbing on the phone, most likely railing about the scourge of Atari.

“So. How much do I owe you?”

“A dollar.”

He fishes into his pocket and hands me a stack of quarters, saying, “Save this for a rainy day.”

Instead, I buy twenty watermelon Jolly Ranchers at the pool. Later, while the grill is cooling after dinner, I’ll come back out to the yard to collect the books my dad bought so I can sell them back to him again next week.

Being the Book Lady sets me up for two things: a mouthful of cavities and a deep appreciation for the heft and promise of a book. Eventually, I will learn that the first is a small price to pay for the second.

I
n my book, January and February are just frozen appetizers for the fillet of the year, which arrives in March, when you can finally wear a down vest to walk the dog. That’s when I commit to my annual resolutions: become more flexible in all senses of the word, stop snapping at my family, start feeding the parking meter, take wet laundry out of the machine before it mildews, call my mom more, gossip less. Throughout my thirties, the list has remained the same.

On this particular sunny and tentatively warm day, I was driving home from spin class, daydreaming about a pair of patent leather boots I’d seen in the window of a store near my office. They were midheight and semi-stylish, presentable enough for work, with a sole suited for sprinting through the aisles of Whole Foods. Maybe I recognized a little bit of myself in those boots; after all, I fit the same description.

When I stopped for a red light in front of the high school, my phone lit up with a photo of Nicholas. The snapshot was three years old, taken on wooden bleachers at the Y while we were waiting for our son, Oliver, to finish basketball practice. Splayed across Nicholas’s chest was the paperback edition of
The Cut
by George
Pelecanos; while he grinned at my then new iPhone, our daughters, Margot and Georgie, each leaned in and kissed one of his cheeks.

“Hey, what’s up? I’m just driving back from Ellie’s class. Since when does ‘Stairway to Heaven’ qualify as a spin song?”

Silence on the other end. I noticed a spray of white crocuses on the side of the road, rearing their brave little heads. “Nicholas? Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Another pause.

“Nicholas? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just—”

More silence.

I watched as a group of high school kids trampled the crocuses with their high-tops and Doc Martens. The light turned green.

“You just . . . what?”

“Listen, Al, I’d rather not have this conversation on speaker while you’re driving. Can you call me when you get home?”

I felt a slow blossom of anxiety in my throat. When someone starts talking about the conversation in the third person, you know it’s not going to be pretty.

“Nicholas. What’s going on?”

“I can’t . . . You know what?” I heard a noise in the background that sounded like a big stack of papers hitting the floor. “Actually? I’m coming home. I’ll be on the 11:27 train. See you soon.” There was a strain in his voice, as if someone had him by the neck.

“Wait—don’t hang up.”

But he was gone.

Suddenly, I felt chilly in my sweaty clothes. I distractedly piloted my minivan down Park Street, past a church, a temple, a funeral home, and a gracious turreted Victorian we’d lost in a bidding war when we first started looking for houses in Filament.

My mind raced with possibilities: Nicholas’s parents, my parents, his
health, an affair, a relocation. Was there any chance this urgent conversation could contain
good
news? A windfall?

What was so important that Nicholas had to come home to say it to me in person? In the seven years we’d lived in New Jersey, he’d rarely arrived home before dark, even in the summer, and most of our daytime conversations took place through an intermediary—his secretary, Gladys, doyenne of the Stuyvesant Town bingo scene.

I called Nicholas back as soon as I pulled into the driveway of our blue colonial. When the ringing gave way to voice mail, I suddenly felt dizzy, picturing the old photo pressed to my ear. The girls had grown and changed since then—Margot’s round face chiseling down into a preteen perma-scowl, Georgie’s toddler legs losing their drumstick succulence. But what struck me was Nicholas’s jet-black hair. It had been significantly thicker in those days, and a lot less gray. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him kick back with a book, let alone look so relaxed.

I was about to find out why.

•  •  •

I spent the next hour repairing damage wrought by the daily cyclone of our kids eating breakfast, getting dressed, and supposedly cleaning their rooms but really just shoving socks, towels, and Legos under their beds. Eggshells in the garbage disposal, Leapin’ Lemurs cereal in the dustpan, Margot’s tried-on-and-discarded outfits directly into her hamper even though I knew they were clean. I filled out class picture forms—hadn’t I already paid for one round of mediocre shots against the backdrop of a fake library?—and called in a renewal of the dog’s Prozac prescription: “His birthday? Honestly, I have no idea . . . He’s not my son! He’s my dog!” Cornelius lifted his long reddish snout and glanced lazily in my direction from his favorite forbidden napping spot on the window seat in the dining room.

I kept checking my phone, hoping to hear from Nicholas, but the only person I heard from was my dad. Ever since losing his vocal cords to cancer, he’d become a ferocious virtual communicator. His texts and e-mails
rolled in at all hours of the day, constant gentle taps on my shoulder. The highest concentration arrived in the morning, while my mom played tennis and he worked his way through three newspapers, perusing print and online editions simultaneously. Many messages contained links to articles on his pet subjects: social media, the Hoyas, women doing it all.

That day, in my state of anticipation and dread, I was happy for the distraction.

Dad:
Dear Alice, do you read me?

Alice:
I do!

Dad:
Just wondering, are you familiar with Snapchat?

Me:
Sorry, not sure what this is.

Dad:
Reading about it in WSJ. Like Instagram, but temporary. Pictures only. No track record.

Me:
I’m not on Instagram either. Have nothing to hide anyway.

Dad:
I can educate you. These are great ways to stay connected.

Me:
I’m on FB. That’s all I can handle.

Dad:
Yes, but why no cover photo on your timeline?

Dad:
Hi, are you still there?

Dad:
OK, TTYL. Love, Dad

We live four houses from the station, so I headed over as soon as I heard the long, low horn of the train. By the time I’d walked by Margot and Oliver’s school and arrived at the steep embankment next to the tracks, Nicholas was already on the platform. He looked surprisingly jaunty, with his suit jacket hanging from his shoulder like a pinstriped cape.

He kissed me on the cheek—a dry nothing of a peck that you might give to someone who baked you a loaf of zucchini bread. He smelled like the train: newsprint, coffee, vinyl. I shivered inside my vest and pulled him in for a tight hug, wrapping my arms around his neck.

“What is going
on
?”

Nicholas sighed. Now I smelled mint gum with an undernote of—
beer
? Was that possible?

The train pulled out of the station and we were the only two people left on the platform. I was vaguely aware of a gym class playing a game of spud on the school playground behind us. “I called it and he moved!” “I didn’t move, she pushed me!” Nicholas leaned down to put his leather satchel on the ground. It was a gift from me for his thirtieth birthday: the perfect hybrid of a grown-up briefcase and a schoolboy’s buckled bag. As he straightened his back, his green eyes met mine. He put his hands through his hair and I thought of the photo, my chest tightening.

“Alice, I didn’t make partner.”

At first, the news came as a relief. A problem at work was small potatoes compared to a secret second family or an out-of-control gambling problem or the middle-age malaise of a friend’s husband who said, simply, “I don’t feel like doing this anymore,” before packing a backpack and moving to Hoboken.

Just a
backpack
!

Then: the lead blanket of disappointment descended gently but firmly, bringing with it a sudden X-ray vision into our past and our future. The summer associate days when we dined on Cornish game hen and attended a private Sutherland, Courtfield–sponsored tour of the modern wing of the Met; the night Nicholas’s official offer letter from the firm arrived, when we climbed a fire escape to the roof of our apartment building and started talking—hypothetically, of course—about what we would name our kids; the many mornings I’d woken up to find him, still dressed in clothes from the day before, with casebooks, Redwelds, and six-inch stacks of paper scattered willy-nilly across the kitchen table. You don’t know how big a binder clip can be until you’ve been married to a lawyer.