A Window Opens: A Novel (31 page)

My days are always brightened by Georgie’s big laugh. I’m certain yours are, too, especially during this difficult time.

Sincerely,

Gina Pasquariello

My first order of business when I arrived for a visit with my dad: before I even ducked my head into the sunroom to say hi, I went directly to the living room, where I examined all the framed photographs on top of the piano. My parents at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Will’s kayak school; my parents on their wedding day; me and Nicholas on the London Eye, with Big Ben in the background; my dad standing next to a homegrown sunflower that came up to his shoulder. Looking at these pictures was like picking a scab: I couldn’t stop, but I knew I should try to “stay in the moment,” as people kept urging me to do. The past was a gaping black hole with no end in sight.

O
ur office holiday party happened in two shifts. The first part took place during the day, when we met in the conference room to exchange gifts. They were to be wrapped and then added to a grab bag. If you didn’t like what you got, you could swap with the person on your right. You couldn’t swap with the person on your left or across the table. You could not spend more than $10.

These instructions were conveyed to us in a series of e-mails from our office manager, Jane. On the day of the party, she donned a headband of reindeer antlers and spent the morning alone in our blank conference room, hanging red and green lanterns from the ceiling. When the decorating was done, she sent a sternly worded e-mail, instructing us not to peek, even though nobody seemed the least bit interested in peeking.

During phase one of the party, I landed a mug bedecked with the Scrabble tile
S
—for Scroll, of course. Other colleagues opened packs of dry-erase markers, a copy of
Fifty Shades of Grey
, a $10 gift card from Target. I talked to the faux British guy from marketing, who worked the word
zed
into every conversation and dropped the second syllable from the word
literally
.
His response to everything I said: “Alice, you are such a pip.”

When the rest of us returned to our desks, Jane meticulously Saran-wrapped the mountains of leftover sandwiches, stored them in the office kitchen, and followed up with a series of e-mails reminding us to eat them. The mom in me wondered why we’d ordered so much food, and the employee in me wondered why, if we were all team players, nobody had offered to help with the cleanup.

The evening portion of the holiday party was at a bar on the Lower East Side. The location wasn’t easy to find because I came of age in an era when the Lower East Side was off-limits, with the exception of Russ & Daughters on East Houston Street. My time at the party was limited because I had to catch the 6:09 train back to Filament for Georgie’s holiday sing-along. (This is not my favorite school event, but one can’t really tell one’s five-year-old that one would rather be drinking creative cocktails than attending the show a kid has been practicing for since Halloween.)

I positioned myself by the deviled eggs and downed one glass of wine very quickly. Genevieve encouraged me to order another, so I did. She was in a celebratory mood, wearing a feather boa and sipping a Red Stripe.

The room was packed with people who were normally too busy to chat. Suddenly, I was having a great time.

At 5:40, I said my good-byes and slid tipsily into the back of a taxi, which became ensnared in a tangle of traffic.

At 5:58, I looked up and we were still eleven blocks from Penn Station, at a standstill. The taxi driver looked like he wanted to bang his head on the steering wheel.

“Do you think we’ll make it to Penn Station by 6:09?”

“No.”

“Really? I have to catch a train to New Jersey so I can go to my daughter’s holiday show. I have to get there.”

“Then you must run.” The taxi driver stopped the meter and I handed him a wad of cash. “Run, woman! Run.”

I started to sweat. I ran past FIT, past Panera, past American Apparel. I muscled my way through intersections crowded with tourists, weaving around pedicabs and food carts and halal men who in turn dodged dramatically out of my way.

When I finally arrived at Penn Station, I leaned down and unzipped my boots and made the rest of the mad dash only in my navy blue tights. This was no time for a low heel. By the time I plummeted down three flights of stairs to Track 2, the conductor was clanging the bell signaling all aboard and I made it onto the train without a second to spare.

I could feel the sweat trickling down my back, cold inside my winter coat. Every tendon in my neck hurt from tensing forward through the rush. My ribs hurt from the unaccustomed strain of running #thisis38.

I tried to catch my breath but couldn’t escape the haunting realization that I’d almost missed Georgie’s concert so I could have a second glass of wine. My friends and I are always telling each other not to feel guilty—
ever
, about anything. “Don’t go down that road,” we say. Because of course if you do, you’ll never come back.

If I’d missed that train, there would have been no choice.

•  •  •

I located Nicholas and settled into the hard wooden flip-bottom chair beside his. From behind, I felt a few unidentified hands patting me on the shoulders; someone whispered, “You made it.” The lights went down, catching sparkles on the glittery snowflakes circling from the ceiling.

Georgie was in the first row, front and center, wearing a blue and purple shiny dress that had been handed down from Margot, purchased years ago for my mom’s sixtieth birthday party. Jessie had styled her hair in the half-up, half-down style, with the up part consisting of tiny, perfect braids.

When Margot and Oliver participated in this kindergarten holiday show, they’d located themselves as far from the limelight as possible, and to the extent that I caught a glimpse of an eyebrow or forehead, I saw just enough to know that they were mortified and miserable up
there in front of the whole school. I’d expected the same level of dread from Georgie.

But she was radiant during the show, with a huge smile showing off her Chiclet teeth. She might have been the most delighted kid in the grade. She was resplendent.

I settled back and grabbed Nicholas’s hand. There are certain times when you think you might burst from happiness and this was one of them.

•  •  •

We were hosting our fifth annual holiday party, and the dining room table was laden with petit fours, brownies, crab dip, pulled-pork sliders. Normally this is my favorite night of the year, but now I felt like my house was crowded with friends who had committed the unforgivable offense of having healthy parents. I could just imagine the pairs of boomers, strolling the boardwalk together or shaking up a Boggle set with veiny but vital hands.

I scanned the crowd, looking for Nicholas. There was Jessie, every inch the cool rocker chick in a leather minidress, tattoos glowing in the candlelight as if in Technicolor. She was deep in conversation with Susanna, who took a long sip of Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc, her favorite. From the concerned looks on their faces, I suspected they might be talking about me.

I found Nicholas on the back porch, using a long pair of tongs to break up bags of ice. I grabbed Oliver’s soccer hoodie from a hook by the back door, stepped outside, and closed the door behind me. The porch should have been romantic—strung with fairy lights, a dusting of snow on the floor—but I had a funny feeling in my stomach. Not worry, exactly; more like homesickness, even though I was in my own home, surrounded by beloved people.

“Hi.”

“Hi. You look pretty.” I wore a red dress—too tight, too short, the best I could do. I’d found it at the back of my closet while browsing for clothes to wear to my dad’s funeral.

“Thanks. I just
overheard Tim and Bill talking about your tournament—by the way, they ate all the Swedish meatballs. Anyway, it sounds like you guys have a lot of fun stuff planned.”

Behind us, the bathroom light went on. Through the window, we saw Margot in front of the mirror applying . . . was that
lipstick?
Top lip, bottom lip, fake pout. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

“What tournament? The Atlantic City one?”

Nicholas’s response confirmed that something was off. Why was he stalling for time?

“Um . . . is there another tournament I don’t know about?”

“Alice, we play every Sunday night. Sometimes games; sometimes tournaments. I don’t always tell you which is which.”

Nicholas was certainly putting a lot of muscle into the ice. When he looked up, he stared blankly through the porch screen to the swing set, now covered in snow. An empty swing set is one of the most tragic sights in the world; even before we surprised our kids with this one, we agreed to rip it out the minute they lost interest.

I sighed. “Nicholas. We’re getting off the subject. Tim and Bill were talking about the Atlantic City tournament and it sounded like they were saying something about meeting up with a bunch of girls.”

“I have no idea if that’s part of the plan. I’m just going for the basketball.”

“Nicholas—”

“Why do you keep saying my name? I know you’re talking to me.”

“Fine. My point is, do you really want to be involved in this thing if those guys are going to pick up . . . women?”

“Who cares if they’re picking up women? It’s none of my business.”

“It doesn’t make you uncomfortable that these guys aren’t . . .
loyal
? I mean, the conversation they were having was pretty gross. And when they realized I was listening, they stopped talking, which led me to believe they expect you to be part of their plan.”

In my peripheral vision, I noticed Margot heading for the back door. It figured; our kids have strong radar for arguments and scandals. The
less I want them to have certain information, the more determined they are to seek it out. And they’ll innocently follow up later, in front of my mother or one of their teachers: “Mommy, what did Daddy mean when he called that guy a juicebag?”

“Alice. I am not having this conversation with you. I’ve never given you a reason not to trust me. Ever. I’m going to this tournament. I deserve this after all I’ve done around here in the past few months.”

There were many problems with this response. Nicholas was right: he’s never given me reason to doubt him, but what did he mean about
everything he’d done
in the past few months? Had I not been doing all those same things for him?

“Nicholas. It’s not like I’ve been sitting around eating bonbons.”

(Why do people always go with the bonbon example? Has
anyone
actually sat on the couch eating bonbons,
ever
?)

I wished I could find a way to articulate my freezing-cold trudge to the train station and then the twenty-five-block windy walk from Penn Station to my office. (Of course I’d crunched the numbers—the long trek through midtown was faster than the subway followed by a shorter trek along the windy base of Central Park.) While Nicholas was snug in his Accord listening to the
BBC Newshour
, I was wrapped in two scarves, wearing supposedly attractive snow boots, puzzling together the day’s news from the block-long ticker in Times Square. Ninety minutes, door-to-door. You could lose your mind on this commute.

“Yes, I get that and I’ve been supportive every step of the way. But when I tell you I need a break—”

“And I’m
giving
you a break!”

“What do you mean, you’re
giving
me a break? Like you’re my boss? I’m—”

The back door opened, bringing with it light, a rush of warm air and faraway laughter. “You
guys.
All you do is fight.”

“Margot—”

We both said her name at the same time, but I won. “Lovey, please stay out of this. Daddy and I are having a conversation—”

“Yes, I heard you giving him a hard time.” She gestured at the house behind her. “Mommy, tonight is supposed to be
fun
.”

I glanced to Nicholas for reinforcement, but instead of coming to my defense in parental solidarity, he looked tickled to have someone on his team.

“I was
not
giving him a hard time. You know what, Nicholas? Let’s talk about this later.”

“Great. Let’s do that.”

T
he floor of the quiet car was slippery with dirty, melted snow, so you couldn’t put your bag on the floor. I sat with my Orla Kiely tote on my lap, and on top of that a massive, crinkly paper shopping bag from Old Navy, filled with the winter’s second round of hats and gloves for each kid.

Someone’s phone was ringing and I was about to join the disgruntled crowd—“This is the
quiet
car!”—when I realized the ringing was coming from my bag. The caller was my mom. I sent her directly to voice mail and then listened to the message: “Alice? I think you need to come home.”

•  •  •

I dropped my backpack in the hallway and kissed each of my kids. Georgie was sitting on the bottom step, freshly bathed and smelling like Suave. “Tell Pop I’ll save him a seat,” she whispered.

“He knows,” I whispered back, perplexed but touched by her promise.

I reversed out of the driveway so quickly, I ran over a hockey stick and a snow shovel.

I called Nicholas from the car and reminded him that we needed
to bake cupcakes in ice cream cones for Oliver’s class party to celebrate the conclusion of the second-grade read-a-thon. “The cones I bought don’t have the recipe on the back, but I’m sure you can find it at BettyCrocker.com,” I barked into my phone, pausing at a stoplight to rifle through the glove compartment to make sure I had a spare contact lens case.

“I’ll take care of the cupcakes; please don’t worry.” Nicholas’s voice was husky. “Alice, do you think this is it? I just saw him this morning. He flashed me a peace sign when I left.”

I checked the rearview mirror before switching lanes but still managed to cut off a driver who then leaned on his horn and honked at me for the next half mile.