A Window Opens: A Novel (21 page)

Margot:
“Have six kids?”

Me:
“And what else?”

Margot:
“I’m thinking the six kids will keep me pretty busy.”

Me:
“Well, yes. Six kids are a lot of work.”

Margot:
“Not for me, they won’t be. I’ll marry someone who does all the work, like Daddy.”

Me:
“Okay, then. Good luck with that.”

I
missed the kindergarten ice cream social, the first day of school, the first PTA meeting, Cornelius’s bordetella vaccination, and Nicholas’s dinner with a promising new client, New Jersey’s leading manufacturer of pet beds.

But I was hunting down some great books for Scroll and was embracing my new mantra, “You can’t be all things to all people (or animals).” The key to taking a stab at doing it all was getting comfortable with rarely hitting the bull’s-eye—in fact, being hopelessly left of center most of the time.

Genevieve and Rashida were constantly behind closed doors, giving the rest of us a chance to breathe and a much-needed break from the constant pummel of inscrutable e-mails.

Matthew ripped open a packet of pumpkin seeds. “Have you noticed that Genevieve has canceled the all-hands meeting two weeks in a row?”

“I guess. Why?”

“Don’t you find it strange that they don’t want to know what we’re up to? Something’s afoot, I’m telling you.”

“Aren’t they
just working on budgets for next year?”

“Sure, but will that budget have room for us? That’s the question.”

“You’re a conspiracy theorist. Just do your work.”

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

This week marks our first Wacky Wednesday! Wear polka dots and come pose for a group photo in the bullpen at 2 p.m. Let’s show Cleveland our Scroll spirit!

Going forward, Wacky Wednesday will be a weekly tradition. Attached please find a spreadsheet containing themes through Wednesday, 12.19. The schedule includes stripes, florals, ruffles, argyle, plaid, boho, hobo, hippy, pajamas, nautical, among others. Ideas welcome. NOTE: For home team, Yankees/Knicks preferred, but does anyone have Indians/Cavs wear for team-building purposes?

Participation in Wacky Wednesdays is strongly encouraged. There will be scones.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Al, Mom & I have an appointment with Dr. Davis on September 18 at 2 p.m. This is the big reveal about whether or not the radiation has been working. I realize it’s right in the middle of your workday, but if there is any possibility of you joining us, I know it would mean a lot to Mom. No pressure whatsoever. I’m proud of you out there, being a woman of letters.

Back at the old homestead, the pumpkins are coming up nicely, I’m keeping Cozy Shack in business with my steady diet of rice pudding, and we’re looking forward to using our new Blu-Ray as soon as I can make sense of these damned remote controls. We now have more remote controls than we have living creatures in this house, including cats. Next time Nicholas is in the neighborhood, I may ask him to give me a brief
tutorial. Will tried to set me straight via Skype but I’m afraid his strengths lie with sculling.

Do let me know about the date with Dr. Davis. He has expanded his collection of golf memorabilia since your paths last crossed, so that’s something to look forward to.

Kind regards,

Dad

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Kind regards? Dad, I’m your daughter, not your accountant. Of course I’ll be at the appointment. If you can get rice pudding down, you might want to experiment with the Vitamix. You can even put chocolate in there! Along with your veggies. I don’t want you to get scurvy. Xxoo

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Scurvy is a disease resulting from deficiency of vitamin C, which is present in rice pudding in trace amounts. So I should be all set but thanks.

The minute I got home, I knew something was wrong. Not tragically so, but just
off
. You develop this sixth sense as a mother, especially with a recently minted middle schooler on the premises. Her charges against you may not be one hundred percent legitimate, but you know when you’re about to hear them.

“Mom, I texted you like
fifty
times and you didn’t answer.” Margot
stood at the top of the stairs with her arms crossed, leg jutted. In tween yoga, this pose is known as “how stupid can you be.”

“Thanks, Margot, my day was fine. How was yours?”

Jessie grabbed her keys, quietly waggled her fingers, and headed out to her car. I knew she’d text me later if she thought of anything I needed to know—which reminded me: why hadn’t Jessie responded to the last few group texts between the two of us and Nicholas? For the past week, she’d started a new string, replying only to me. That was odd. I made a mental note to find out what was up, and also to thank her for her meticulous organization of the craft cabinet, which usually looked like a larger, more colorful outpost of the junk drawer.

My mom was in the kitchen, packing up the supplies she brought every Tuesday night to make her famous spaghetti and meatball dinner: a cast-iron pot (even though we have the exact same one in our cabinet), Boston Bibb lettuce and homemade vinaigrette, and a lacy red and black polka dot apron that is very Shirley Temple meets Mayflower Madam. Once my mom left this garment hanging on one of the hooks where we keep our car keys and Nicholas said, “Is there some way we can incorporate this into our repertoire?”

Now my mom pointed at the kitchen ceiling, which is the floor of Margot’s bedroom, and whispered, “I’m not touching this one with a ten-foot pole.”

“What happened?”

She shook her head and made a beeline for the front door.

“ ’Bye, Mom. Thanks for coming.”

“Pour yourself a big glass of wine. Oh, and Alice, I forgot to tell you: there’s a Halloween party at the museum. Come as your favorite inventor. I thought the kids—”

“Halloween? Are you
kidding
? Mom, I’m not up to that yet. I still have beach chairs in the trunk of my minivan.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll remind you closer to the time. And hey, did Daddy e-mail you about—”

“Dr. Davis? Yes, I’ll be there.”

“Great, great. Night, sweet girl.”

Nicholas and my mom crossed paths on the front stairs. I could tell by Nicholas’s terse hello that I was in the doghouse with him, too, but I had no idea why.

As soon as it was just our family in the house, Margot exploded, “Lucky for me,
Daddy
checks his texts during the day. I’m not sure what I would have done if he hadn’t answered.”

“Wait, can someone please tell me what’s going on here? And Margot, don’t take that tone with me.” One of those lines I thought would never come out of my mouth, and there it was.

“What Margot is trying to say is, she wanted to reach you to let you know she needed a piece of poster board for her social studies project, which is due tomorrow.” Nicholas raised his arm to show me a white plastic bag with red poster board rolled up inside. “Don’t worry, I picked it up.”

He spoke calmly, but I could tell he was annoyed in solidarity with Margot, and this made me livid.

“I would assume this project wasn’t assigned today, Margot?”

“No, she told us about it last week.” (“She” meaning the teacher.)

“So you could have given me some advance notice about this drop-dead deadline?”

“Yes, but—”

“Like on Saturday? We could have gone to the stationery store together? Or I could have given you money so you could have walked over by yourself after school.”

“But the other moms—”

“Margot. I don’t care about the other moms. I’m
your
mom. And this is your dad, and he handled it. So stop pouting and finish your project. I don’t want to walk into an ambush when I come home from work. I’ve had a long day.”

Margot stomped up the stairs, but I chased behind her and yanked on the back pocket of her jeans. Suddenly I realized they were on the snug side and also way too short. The old Alice had been vigilant about
providing clean, well-fitting clothes for her children. The new one? Not so much. Our entire household’s worth of socks were permanently unmatched in a laundry basket at the foot of my bed.

“
Don’t
walk away from me, Margot. Schoolwork is
your
job. Your school supplies are not my responsibility. You need to plan like a business manager.”

I let her proceed to her room; the door didn’t slam, exactly, but closed firmly.

“Jesus, Alice. Plan like a business manager? Margot is eleven.”

“Wait, why is this
my
problem? I didn’t have a chance to look at my phone all day. This happens to you all the time, and I don’t get mad at you for not being in touch. She needed poster board; she has poster board. Thanks for getting it, by the way, but: problem solved.”

“I think you know what the bigger problem is,” Nicholas was in full lawyer mode. “You’re so distracted, the rest of us barely register. You’re constantly checking your work messages when you’re home, but it doesn’t seem like we’re on your radar at all when you’re at work.”

I glanced down at my phone, which lit up the front pocket of my flowered tunic.

He had a point.

•  •  •

I had no trouble falling asleep that night, but suddenly I was wide-awake at 3:18 a.m., and then I visited Facebook.

Everybody else was baking pies, jumping in piles of leaves, wishing their parents a happy fortieth anniversary, and hopping a plane to LA (JFK → LAX) to deliver an important presentation to Pixar.

I considered updating my own status. This is what it would have said: “I’m lying here awake in the middle of the night, wondering how much weight I’ve gained and how long it’s been since my kids have seen the dentist. She stopped sending reminder postcards. Our carpet has dog puke on it, our minivan has a gnat infestation, our board games are all missing pieces, and we eat nachos for dinner.”

Or I could go with a crowd-sourcing approach, which tended to attract the most commentary: “My dad’s tumor used to be the size of a golf ball; now it’s the size of a tennis ball. Do you think he’ll make it to his seventieth birthday?”

Somebody out there would have an answer, but I decided to keep my status (or lack thereof) to myself for the time being.

The sacred and the profane, not necessarily in that order.

Eventually, I whispered in Nicholas’s ear. “Are you awake?”

“Now I am.” I turned my back to him so he could wrap his arms around me.

“I’m really stressed out.”

“Why?”

“I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. I can’t keep track.”

“Of what?”

“Everything.”

“Alice, come on. You have so much going on. Too much. Everybody who has kids and a job feels like you do, not to mention having a sick parent.”

“But not like
this
. I miss the kids. And I don’t even want to
see
my dad—it’s just too heartbreaking. And this job—it’s not like I thought it would be.”

“The kids are fine. They’ll be self-sufficient and scrappy. Your dad . . . well,
he
seems to be in good spirits, so we need to follow his lead, don’t you think? I think you’re doing great with all of this—and as for your job? I know it’s important, but honestly, you have bigger things going on.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Now I lay on my back, my forearm against Nicholas’s. I remembered lying in Margot’s bed when she was a toddler and petrified to be alone in the dark in her bedroom. Every night we tucked her in and she’d sob inconsolably. “The chirps! The chirps! I’m ascared of the chirps!” We had no idea what she was talking about and we really wanted her to
go to bed so we could watch
The Bachelor
. One night, I went back into Margot’s room and crawled under the covers beside her. When she cuddled up against me and stopped whimpering, I heard the chirps: the high staccato sounds of an opera singer warming up with the voice teacher who lived upstairs.

“Margot, that’s just
music
,” I explained.

She let out a shaky sigh and closed her eyes. Problem solved.

Those were the days.

“Nicholas?”

“Yes?”

“There’s one more thing.”

“What is it?” He propped himself up on one elbow and peered down at me in the dark.

“I’m worried about
you
.”

“Why are you worried about me?” He sounded genuinely amused. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by starting a fight, but he deserved to know what was on my mind.

“I think the stress of your job is . . . taking a toll.”

“What are you talking about? I’m so relieved to work for myself, and sure, I’ve had some bumps in the road, but—”

“I’m just worried about you.”

“Yes, you said that already. And I’m telling you, I’m
fine
.”

I don’t know why it was so hard to talk about the elephant in the room; maybe because it was squatting directly on top of my lungs. I took a deep breath but still felt like I couldn’t take in enough air. “Nicholas, you’re drinking too much.”

“
Excuse
me?” Every iota of tenderness had vanished from his voice.

The elephant was out of the bag. Or was that a cat? Louder now: “I said,
you’re drinking too much
.”

Nicholas turned away and pulled the sheets all the way up to his shoulders so he resembled a neatly wrapped burrito. “We are not having this conversation.”

Oh, but we
are
, I thought. The only question is: When?

•  •  •

“Genevieve, can I interrupt for a minute?”

She cocked her head almost imperceptibly in my direction, keeping both eyes on the Design Within Reach Website. “Yeeeeah—hang on. I’m just drilling down on some of Rashida’s concepts.”

“Actually, that reminds me. I didn’t notice any bookshelves in the new schematics, did you?”

“No, there weren’t any.”