A Window Opens: A Novel (37 page)

“Well, to the extent it—” A
setback
? A drubbing was more like it.

The Mask was on. “Is. Your. Head. In. The. Game?”

“Yes. My head is in the game.”

“Fabulous. And seriously, when things settle down we still need to make a plan for Bunna.”

“Excuse me?” I thought Genevieve was referring to another acronym I’d forgotten.

“Remember? The Ethiopian brunch we were talking about?”

Now I had whiplash. That conversation felt as if it had happened in another century, on a different planet. “Of course. Yes, let’s do it.”

“Let’s.”

Berate, then befriend. Different pattern, same mixed message.

Dear Alice Pearse:

Please call 1-800-WESTELM to schedule delivery of 6 GORDON BACKREST BAR STOOLS (@$260 x 6 = $1560). Thanks from your friends at,

WEST ELM

Nicholas:
I need to leave early tomorrow morning. Can you take the kids to school?

Me:
Sure. What’s up?

Nicholas:
Meeting your mom at probate court. Also she says she has something wrong with her “World Wide Web,” so I’ll swing by the house after.

Me:
Okay, thanks.

Nicholas:
You sound annoyed.

Me:
Not annoyed. You’re a great son-in-law.

Nicholas:
But?

Me:
Nothing. Just remember, you’re
my
husband, too!

Nicholas:
I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.

The house was blissfully peaceful when I walked in the door. It would devolve into chaos the minute Jessie left, but for now the big kids were finishing their homework in their rooms and Georgie was coloring in the dining room. Jessie stirred sausage into the farfalle; all we had to do was pull out our chairs and sit down. The napkins were neatly folded into triangles next to each plate.

She looked at me apologetically, and even before she spoke, I knew what she was about to say. “So. I got the job.”

“You got the job! Congratulations!”

Forcing this enthusiasm was like disgorging a chicken bone stuck in my throat, but I owed it to Jessie for her years of loyalty and especially for the time she turned around on the parkway years ago when she was on her way to a gig and I texted her from the emergency room to say that Georgie had a broken leg.

Jessie had been there for me and now I had to be there for her. The timing couldn’t have been worse; I couldn’t think about how Nicholas and I would break the news to our kids, who were already in the midst of puzzling through another massive loss.

“I’m still not sure if this is the right thing.” Jessie started folding the dishtowels into a little pile, which I knew she would then top with an upside-down juice glass. I knew all her little habits, as she knew mine. “And I know you guys are going through a lot right now, with your dad and—well, with Nicholas.”

I waved away those concerns as if they were mere roadblocks—when in fact, they loomed in front of me like twin Mount Everests. I remembered another gem of wisdom from Susanna (this time via Robert Frost): “The best way out is always through.”

“Jessie, if this
is
the right thing, you need to do it. It will be hard for us, too. Too hard to think about. Are you excited about the job?”

“I guess so. Maybe. I don’t know. But I think it’s time for a change of scenery—”

“Wait, before you finish, let me just say: things around here will change. We’ve been . . . overwhelmed. But we’re turning over a new leaf, getting our act together . . .” My voice trailed off as Jessie waved her hands for me to stop. I was humiliated by my own desperation, but she was worth fighting for. I knew that much.

“Stop, Alice—it’s not you guys. Please don’t think that. You’re like family. It’s just that the kids are getting older, and it feels like I should be thinking about the next step. I need to figure out what it is.”

I wanted to tell her that the next step was for us to blunder forth into the teenage years together, consulting each other about curfews and driving lessons the same way we’d been confabbing for years about healthy snacks and the right time to pull the plug on the pacifier.

“Jess, you’re still very much needed here, if that’s what you’re wondering. Please,
please
don’t leave because you think we don’t need you. Only if you feel like this new job will open doors for you. We understand that we can’t offer much of a career future beyond a ticket to three high school graduations. But what a hot ticket that is!” I forced a small smile. I knew I needed to think about Jessie’s future, not just mine or my kids’. If you love someone, set her free.

Jessie’s eyes darted miserably to our refrigerator, wallpapered with pictures of the kids from a long-ago Halloween (ice skater, basketball player, ladybug); at the top of the Empire State Building; huddled together in a chubby-faced trio one afternoon at Deer Lake. According to my quick inventory, Jessie had been our babysitter when each one these photos had been taken.

She swallowed audibly—a small gulp. Suddenly, even with her edgy nose pierce and heavily lined eyes, she looked like a teenager. “Alice, I really think I need to do this.”

I closed my eyes in an extended blink, willing them to hold their tears for later, if I had any tears left. I remembered Jessie from our first meeting at Starbucks: the way she bounced up to the counter to collect her Frappuccino, the huge smile on her face when I described Margot and Oliver. For an instant, I pictured Jessie the first time she met Georgie as a newborn—a light going on, pure adoration. I had to pull a blackout shade over that memory.

“Jessie, I think you need to do this, too. Can you stay until—”

“The Atlantic City tournament? Yes, definitely. Alice, I—”

“We’re happy for you. Truly.”

I wanted to tell her how I’d noticed and was so grateful for all the little details she’d attended to over the years: the half-eaten lollipops preserved
lovingly on a saucer in the fridge; the finger paintings drying over the edge of the tub; the bowling and roller-skating and sand art birthday parties she’d cheerfully attended on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, always with the most sought-after and beautifully wrapped gift. I’d looked forward to seeing her at the end of every day almost as much as I looked forward to seeing my own kids. Fine, I’d never pinched Jessie’s cheeks or inhaled the smell of the top of her head—that would have been weird—but I loved seeing her in the front yard, running bases with Georgie as I made my way home from the train.

I couldn’t say any of this without crying, so I said nothing.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for my kids to see someone other than Jessie waiting for them on the front lawn of the school. The thought of them scanning the crowd for her face killed me.

We hugged.

She yelled “Catch you on the flip side” to the kids, as she always did. Cornelius tried to follow her out the door, as he always did.

As Jessie walked to her car, I remembered that she was the one who had shoveled this path the last time it snowed.

•  •  •

Nicholas wanted to wait to break the news. He poured himself a tall glass of water (this was something good, at least) and said, “Let Jessie sleep on it; does she even have an official offer?”

“I think so. Nicholas, now that we know, we can’t keep this from the kids. What if they hear us talking and find out Jessie is leaving?”

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. I just think we should give it a night, talk to them in the morning maybe.”

I said I’d wait—but for some reason I didn’t. I plowed ahead in the middle of dinner and dumped the news on the shoulders of our worn-out gang. “You guys? I have something hard to tell you.”

They immediately perked up. They love bad news, especially when it has nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, in this case, it had everything
to do with them. I ignored Nicholas’s look of caution. “Well, you know how Jessie graduated from college a few years ago and has been trying to figure out what she wants to do after she’s finished being our babysitter?”

“Of course,” said Oliver. “But she’s not finished being our babysitter.”

I soldiered on. “Well, that’s the thing—”

“Jessie
is leaving
?” Georgie burst into tears. “
But we love her!
Doesn’t she
know
that?”

“Wait, hang on a minute. Jessie got a new job, and she’s really excited about it. She’s so sad to be leaving us. It’s going to be a big change for everyone, but Daddy and I are proud of her.”

“WTF,” Margot muttered under her breath. Before I had a chance to address her semi-profanity (did acronyms count?), Nicholas nodded in Oliver’s direction.

At first I thought he had fallen asleep at the table, but then I realized Oliver’s chin had dropped to his chest because he was crying. Silent, shoulder-heaving sobs, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Nicholas and I exchanged a miserable glance and blundered through the rest of the conversation. Even though it was still freezing cold outside, we took them out for frozen yogurt for dessert. While they piled on their toppings, Nicholas said quietly, “I asked you not to tell them tonight, but I guess my opinion doesn’t count.”

I didn’t respond; we sat in silence, both stewing.

Mom:
“I put aside a few of Daddy’s ties, if you want them.”

Me:
“I’d love them. But I thought we were going to do his closet together?”

Mom:
“And when exactly would that happen? Don’t worry. I rolled up my sleeves and did it. Also just dropped off shirts to have them made into a quilt.”

Those shirts: blue, white, striped, their collars battened down with little buttons. I forced my memory to zoom out, like the long lens of a camera. You had to keep the picture at a wide angle—that was the trick. The devastation was in the details.

T
wo nights before I left for Cleveland, I was scrolling through uninspiring babysitter listings on Care.com when Nicholas reminded me about our appointment to refinance our mortgage. I quickly recalibrated my Tuesday morning: I would head into work around eleven, when the morning press of trains would already have tapered off, so it would be quicker to drive into the city. I had a metrics meeting at eleven. No matter how I traveled, I’d be cutting it close.

The morning did not go according to plan. The representative of the mortgage company was an hour late, after calling periodically to report a huge backup on the parkway north. She named exit numbers—“I’m driving by Exit 135 at a snail’s pace”—which I knew were bunk because I’d turned into the kind of obsessive person who fact-checked late arrivers with the traffic report on 1010 WINS. According to the radio, traffic on the parkway was moving along smoothly.

As the mortgage lady shuffled through her papers on our dining room table, arranging pages marked with little plastic tabs for our signatures, she said, “I’m so sorry
I kept you waiting. They said there was a rubbernecking delay.”

I said, “That’s interesting, because I heard on the radio that the parkway was clear this morning.”

Nicholas gave me a look that said,
Seriously
?

The mortgage lady looked up from her paperwork, surprised, then wounded. She aggressively twisted her little shell earring, then shifted in her seat to avoid Cornelius’s wandering nose. “All I know is, down by where I live, there was traffic. It was bad.”

“Yeah, well, not according to the radio. I’m just saying.”

“Alice, do you want to initial the pages first and then I’ll do mine?”

Nicholas was openly hostile, sliding the papers across the table with force. My behavior was unacceptable and I knew it. But these two with their normal jobs had no idea what it would be like to be late to the metrics meeting—the burning shame of walking into that room and facing the big screen of grim Clevelanders, their every pore and flared nostril magnified in the camera’s glare, then the wrist-slapping e-mail Genevieve would dispatch to the entire team, reminding us that punctuality was paramount. Or the alternative: missing the meeting altogether and having to schedule a confab with the miffed marketing team so they could give me a private tutorial on the data they’d shared with the group. I knew from experience, it was harder to feign understanding in an intimate setting.

•  •  •

“Alice? This is Mom. Just sitting here at the kitchen table feeling a little blue. Call me if you have a chance. Love you.”

•  •  •

I arrived in the city at 11:15, having screeched through the Lincoln Tunnel at such a fast clip, the transit cop on the Manhattan side flashed his headlights as I tore by. The minute I settled into my white leather chair,
Genevieve called on me to interpret the data listed in column GG on the Smart Board. I stuttered over the explanation—something to do with pricing—but tried to avoid specifics, mainly because I had no idea what the numbers meant.

When I was finished, Rashida piped up cheerily but not cheerily, “Okay, so everyone? It would be fabulous if you could take a read of this material and digest it
before
you come to the meeting? It’s available on the SharePoint. If you have trouble accessing the files, you can file a trouble ticket and we can remedy that for you. But it’s top priority for us all to be on the same page when we get together. Otherwise we lose ground, right? Right. Awesomesauce.”

Matthew was at an appointment with his acupuncturist, so I closed our door and called my mom. “I’m having a really bad day.”

“Hang on a minute.” Three steps across the kitchen, and she was turning down the volume on
Rigoletto
, which blared from a Bose radio courtesy of WQXR. The kettle was on. I’d been in the center of this scene so many times, I knew it by heart. “Al? I’m back. What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m really stressed out.”

“I know that. You’ve
been
really stressed out.” Her tone was breezy, stating the obvious. For some reason, the observation didn’t bother me, but when Nicholas had the same response, my nostrils flared and I breathed fire.
Really? You’re no picnic either.