Julia's Child (9781101559741) (34 page)

“Okay,” I said finally. I extracted my pink phone, pressed Luke's speed-dial code, and handed it to Wylie.

“Hi, Daddy! Sing the sheep song again?”

This week Wylie was on a “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” bender. Luke must have complied with his request, because Wylie's face became serene as he listened. Eventually he said, “Mama? Yes her here. Bye.” Wylie handed me the phone.

“That was nice of you,” I said, taking it.

“Oh, him so nice,” Luke imitated our toddler. “And it's not like anybody can hear me in here.”

I knew just what he meant. Luke had taken over my old office at the Chelsea Sunshine Suites last month, right after he finally got a pink slip from the bank.

“Hey, I forgot to tell you. Yona's hair is purple now.”

I could easily picture that. “Tell her I say hello.”

“She said exactly the same thing.”

“Sweetie, I called just to remind you that I'm in Pittsburgh overnight.”

“How glamorous.”

“Make fun if you want to, but if anyone's diaper leaks in the night, it's all yours.”

“We'll miss you, babe. Take care of yourself.”

“I promise.”

“Take a moment to look for the closest exit, bearing in mind that the nearest one may be behind you.”

“Love you too, sweetie. Bye.”

My mother always told me that 99 percent of the things I worried about wouldn't happen. She should have told me that sometimes even when they do happen it isn't the end of the world. Luke's pink slip had been a huge worry, but the reality wasn't so bad.

“I've got skills,” Luke had said the evening after it had happened. We were lying, naked, in our bed. We had needed to prove that life was not just about the office.

“I
know
you have skills,” I'd whispered teasingly.

He rolled his eyes at me. “Baby, I've also got dweeb skills. I can organize peer-to-peer database access like nobody's business.”

Apparently the investment bank—Luke's former employer—thought so too. They quickly assigned him a pile of consulting work. There was no security in it, but the pay was pretty good. We didn't know when or if he'd decide to look for a regular job.

The happy beneficiaries of the change were Wylie and Jasper. They were a little confused to occasionally find Daddy lounging around the apartment, but they didn't seem worried, probably because their mommy wasn't freakishly uptight anymore.

I'd learned so much over the past year and a half that I blushed to think back on my entrepreneurial naïveté. But instead of beating myself up over it, I'd learned to appreciate just how well things had actually gone.

For example, Luke had calculated in his spare time that I—Julia Bailey—had actually outperformed Warren Buffett last year. While the rest of the nation was losing buckets of money in a tanking stock market, I withdrew ours to start Julia's Child. Sure, I'd stayed awake nights worrying about my big “investment.” But then GPG repaid the money I borrowed from our retirement with the tiniest bit of interest. So even though our money earned nothing last year, most other 401(k)'s plunged in value. Go figure.

Then there were my real estate dealings. There's a saying that goes, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.” After the fertilizer debacle, my farmland could not be certified as organic for three years. So I talked to a realtor about selling it. Because the hilltop views were so terrific, she was able to find a buyer who would put only one house on the twenty acres. I sold it—deeded as non-subdividable—to a solar panel factory owner from Connecticut.

Our new neighbor showed us the blueprints. He'd specced out the greenest house I could ever imagine—bamboo floors, photovoltaic electricity, off the grid, with solar hot water. It would be a showplace of politically correct building, down to the zero-VOC interior wall paint.

We broke even on the transaction—without completely ruining the neighborhood.

Kate still isn't speaking to me, but I'm sure she'll get over it eventually. And I still have high hopes for her farming future. She switched her ambitions from vegetable farming to goats' milk cheese. The goats graze on her remaining farmland and on our land too. Her mother told me that she's entering a cheese-making contest in the fall. Maybe some day I can use it in muffets. Chèvre goes well with many flavors.

The only fly in the ointment was the truck that showed up to work on the new house across the road. I couldn't believe what I read on the freshly painted van: “Biden Green Builders.” That slick developer had rebranded himself as an eco-home specialist. And business was booming. The man was like a cockroach—he wouldn't die. Our hilltop would line his pockets, and there was nothing I could do about it. Still, I did manage to stop the Lincoln Lodge Condos. That was something.

I realized too late that, as I sat daydreaming about the past year's challenges, Wylie had climbed back into the sandbox. Bonnie was now twenty minutes late, and I would have to go through the entire sand removal routine again and then drag Wylie home against his will.

I stood up to look hopefully, past the iron playground gates, toward the street. And there was Bonnie, walking toward us, unhurried.

I sat down on the bench again to enjoy my last two minutes of sunshine. Feeling very Zen, at least for me, I tried to imagine a scenario that explained Bonnie's tardiness. Perhaps the little old lady who lived just off the lobby had staggered out, choking on a chicken bone, just at the moment Bonnie had left the elevator to meet us. Bonnie would have had to administer the hug of life and then maybe wait for the ambulance to arrive.

I was still grinning at this improbable idea when she strolled up to my bench and took a seat next to me. “Sorry,” she sighed. “The lift was out of service. I waited for
hours
.”

My first impulse was to ask why a fit young thing like her couldn't run down a few flights of stairs. But I bit it back. “Is it broken again?” I asked charitably.

“No, it was movers,” she explained. “They used the key to hold the cab on the first floor while unloading.”

“Someone's moving out? Do you know who it is?” Bonnie was more plugged into the building gossip than I ever hoped to be.

“You didn't know?” She eyed me sideways. “People have been talking about it for weeks.”

“Who, Bonnie?”

“Why, apartment 510, that's who!”

It took me a second to think through the building's layout. Then it hit me. That was Emily's apartment! “Really?” I gasped. “I didn't know it was for sale.” I had a moment of typical New Yorker angst. Had I missed an opportunity? Did that apartment get better light than ours?”

“Oh, it wasn't for sale,” Bonnie said knowingly.

“What do you mean?”

“Emily isn't moving out. Her husband is.”

“Oh!” I tried to take that in.

“Apparently, we're not the only ones who thought she was a shrew.”

For a second I almost smiled. But then I thought of her two children—two
little
children.

A cloud passed over my carefree day. “My God, what a shame.” I looked at Wylie, digging busily in the sandbox, and tried to imagine what on earth my toddler would think if Daddy moved away.

“I don't know, Julia,” Bonnie paused. “The thing is—she's happier now.”

“Emily? Really?”

“Yep.” A few Americanisms had crept into Bonnie's speech lately. “She even offered me a piece of coffee cake.”

“Well, that's nice.”

“In the playroom
.
”

I sat up straight on the park bench. “You're kidding! Did you slap her? Because I might have.”

Bonnie shook her head. “She's nicer now. Seriously. She smiles at me.”

“Wow.” I was suddenly reminded of a bit of advice I'd just read in one of the parenting magazines that littered my office. When encountering another parent who is behaving badly, you are supposed to stop and remind yourself that that person might be experiencing real hardship—like a medical trauma or job loss. Or a bad marriage.

I tapped my toe on the sunny pavement. I'd gotten better at living in the moment, but perhaps I still had a ways to go toward appreciating my good fortune. Surely it was easier to be a good neighbor when your husband still loved you and your business had been yanked from the jaws of death.

I glanced toward the grumpy mom on the other side of the sandbox, still frowning into her phone. I squinted at her hairdo. Maybe that thinness on top was due to a recent round of chemotherapy and not too many trips to an overzealous colorist at the salon.

“So I guess you probably haven't heard Emily's other news, then.”

I whirled around toward Bonnie. “There's more?”

“There is.” Bonnie clearly enjoyed having the upper hand in building gossip. “She got a job at the Tudor school.”

“A job? What kind of job?”

“Teaching high school chemistry and physics. Also, Bryan can go to kindergarten there next year—at half fees.”

My mouth dropped open in surprise. “Tudor is the best school in the city.” Little Bryan could fill out his Harvard application within its ivy-coated brick walls.

A recently divorced Manhattan mom would sleep pretty soundly at night given that arrangement.

My brain, enfeebled by the sunshine and pancake syrup, scrambled to adjust to the new information. My neighbor's news swam in a sea of fruit punch, chemistry, and flash cards—and also courage.

I leaned back against the wooden bench and stared at the blue sky. How had I missed, in Emily's voice, the evidence of all the drama playing out right down the hall? The picture looked so much different now. Here sat Bonnie and I, two able-bodied adults looking after one two-year-old. But somewhere nearby Emily bravely soldiered through her day with the knowledge that her husband wasn't coming home. Tonight or ever again.

At that moment, something became crystal clear. When Emily watched me blithely pass the childcare baton over to Bonnie, she probably heard exactly the same little “pop” sound that I heard whenever I saw another mother break the seal on a fruit punch drink box. The truth is that every one of us takes shortcuts. It is the only way to survive. I might have a little more fun in my life if I could just learn to accept it. My eyes fell on Wylie's progress in the sandbox. Somewhere between the ages of two and thirty-five, I'd forgotten how to just live in the moment.

Slowly, I got up off the bench. “Bonnie, I've got to run. You know I'm—”

“Away tonight. I remember.”

“Thank you.” I turned to look her in the eye. But she was scrolling through text messages on her phone, without a care in the world. “I'll see you tomorrow, Bonnie.” I turned toward the sandbox but then turned back. “Wylie is coated with sand,” I warned her.

“Okay, Julia.”

I put the odds at about fifty-fifty that Bonnie would actually remember this vital bit of information before those little sneakers made it onto my rug. I knelt on the edge of the sandbox. “Bye, sweetie. Mommy has to . . .” I stopped. “I have to go to work now. Can I have a kiss?”

Wylie looked up and frowned, measuring the distance between his digging and the edge of the sandbox. Then, deciding that the risk of theft was just too great, he gathered up the two sticks and a plastic cup he'd found somewhere, pressed them safely to his belly, and wiggled over to the edge where I waited. “Bye, Mama.”

In spite of my rewarding job, where I cheerfully waged war against chicken fingers and refined sugar, this part never got easier. I leaned toward Wylie's fuzzy head and buried my nose in his hair. He smelled of sunshine and the spring wind. I kissed his velvet cheek. “Bye, sweetie. Be a good boy for Bonnie.” Without a word, he turned back to the sandbox and recommenced mounding the sand into a pile.

I gave Bonnie a salute. Then I forced myself to walk away.