A Window Opens: A Novel (38 page)

“No, I mean, I’m so stressed, I feel like my head is going to explode.”

“Alice, your head isn’t going to explode.” I pictured my mom in her kitchen, spooning a peppermint tea bag out of an old mug printed with fading green letters: Very Charming Very Lucky Very Irish.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think I like this job.”

Silence. I heard her blow on the tea, take a quick sip. “Yes, I gathered that.”

“Would you think I was a loser if I left?”

“A
loser
? ” I had to hold the phone away from my head, her voice was so loud. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Alice. You’re a
winner
, always. You’re my girl.” She said this as if daughterhood was a career path unto itself, with a paycheck and vacation days, maybe even a modest pension. Come to think of it, this didn’t sound like a bad gig.

“Thanks. Well. You’re my . . . mom. Obviously.” Why couldn’t I say something nice in return? You’re a winner, too? Hail Joan, full of grace? But the words wouldn’t budge.

“Alice, are you still there?”

I waited for a bleating police car to make its way down 55th Street. “I’m here. Do you think Daddy would think I’m giving up on Scroll too soon?”

“Absolutely not.” There was a pause, then a little catch in her voice. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“Thanks.” Suddenly, I remembered her voice mail from earlier in the day: “Feeling a little blue.” The woman had just lost her husband and here I was, prattling on about my occupational ennui. It didn’t seem right, but I was mother enough to know she wanted to be supportive, and daughter enough to appreciate her strength. It occurred to me that the Irish stiff upper lip deserved the same global acclaim as the gift of the blarney.

“Alice, Daddy thought you were doing too much.”

“Really?” My mom already had a habit of attributing her own opinions to my dad when it was convenient.
As your father always said, when you find an antique Limoges candy bowl, you should snap it right up.

“You better believe it. Also, remember what Edison said.”

“What was that?”

“He said, ‘My mother was the making of me.’ ”

My eyes burned. “Okay . . .”

“Remember,
you
are the making of your kids. That’s important stuff.”

I felt better when I hung up the phone. At least if my head did explode, I’d be in good hands while it healed. My mom would brew bottomless cups of tea and lend me the pick of her hat collection: wide brim
with cherries, black sequined beret, the gray felt cloche that was her current fave. I remembered her gently placing a Mets cap on my dad’s head when we were leaving Sloan Kettering for the last time, how she tugged the bill into place with one hand while the other cupped the back of his neck.

I was down one parent, but I still had a lot to learn from the one I had left.

•  •  •

At five o’clock, I crept out of my office and made a beeline to the parking garage under the Gershwin Theatre on 50th Street. My head was spinning with all the data decoding and dishwasher unloading and laundry folding I would have to do after I put my kids to bed.

I hastily shoved my ticket through the bulletproof plastic at the sleepy attendant and hopped on a halting elevator down to the subterranean level where my minivan awaited. It was one of those elevator rides where you keep jamming the number with your finger even though it’s already lit.

I arrived on my level and marched distractedly to my blue Honda Odyssey. As I rounded the driver’s side, I almost bumped into a tall chestnut horse tied to the wall in the adjacent parking space, between my minivan and a cherry-red Fiat.

For the first time all day—all year, maybe—I stopped. I stood completely still.

The horse was well fed and carefully groomed. He was staring straight ahead at the pocked cement wall, his ears barely clearing a caged bulb hanging from the ceiling. They twitched in time with the slow drip of water in some far-off corner of the garage.

Did he belong to the NYPD or was he just taking a break from his responsibilities to a carriage driver in Central Park? He wasn’t wearing a saddle, reins, blinders or any other equine accessories. Why was he tied to a wall six floors below ground? I opened the car door gingerly, afraid of spooking the horse. But his limpid, mournful brown eyes barely registered my sound or movement. He looked resigned.

As I put my key in the ignition and glided up the steep, dark ramp, I started to cry. I mean,
really
cry. Hiccups and snot—the whole deal.

Why had I tethered myself to this job where I was so unhappy?

Why had I checked my e-mail when my dad was downstairs, dying?

How many times had I pretended to listen to Nicholas or our kids when I was really agonizing about work? I was no more a Scroller than that horse was a car. The more I tried to assimilate, the more impatient, scattered, and unreliable I became. I couldn’t believe I’d treated the poor mortgage broker with the condescension and disdain that permeated Scroll like a flu.

The whole way home, I puzzled through the logistics of how that horse would get out of the parking garage. He wouldn’t just step onto the elevator; he would have to plod up five slippery exit ramps to the mouth of the garage. It would take time, but he would put one foot in front of the other and he’d end up in the right place.

This was how I’d get out of Scroll. I promised myself.

•  •  •

The kids were full of complaints about the grilled chicken legs Jessie made for dinner. After she left, they amped up their whining: “I don’t like drumsticks. Why can’t I have macaroni? When is Daddy coming home? This dinner is slimy.” Even though I generally tried to hold it together in their presence, I started to cry again.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Margot snapped out of her adolescent funk, immediately back to the sweet girl who used to wake me up every morning with a kiss on the forehead. “Do you miss Pop?”

Georgie piped up, “You must be sad because your dad is dead.”

Oliver put his hand over her mouth. “Georgie! That’s desensitive!”

All six eyeballs were on me: four blue, two green. I swallowed hard. “You guys, I’m not happy at my job.”

They looked at me blankly. This was an adult problem, and not the one they had been expecting. I told them about the horse in the parking lot. Now I was speaking their language; they love animals.

“The hard thing with the horse is, he’s
trying
to be a car,” said Oliver. “But he’s a horse. That’s probably very hard for him.” From the mouths of babes.

“When did you know you didn’t like your job?” Margot asked.

“I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just been gradual, but now I know I need to start thinking about what I’ll do next.” Boiling my life down to their level was a useful exercise; I felt grateful to have such an attentive and sweet board of directors.

“Will you be home to pick us up after school like Morgan’s mom?” Okay, so maybe the honeymoon didn’t last long. I resisted the urge to tell Georgie that Morgan’s mom was having an affair with her paddle tennis coach.

“I don’t think I’ll be home all the time, but I’d love to find a job where I’m around more and where I’m less stressed out.”

“And maybe where you don’t have a phone?” Georgie pointed to mine, which was next to the cookie tray of chicken legs. The sound was turned off, but it lit up every few seconds as new messages rolled in.

I pictured the ramps stretching in front of me and above me, stacked on top of each other. One step at a time, ramp by ramp.

L
eaving for Cleveland was surprisingly easy—a big change from the last time I’d headed out there, for orientation, when the kids had asked a million questions about who would pick them up and who would read
Freckleface Strawberry
before bed. This time, Filament Taxi arrived at 8:06, which happened to be the exact time I normally headed out for the 8:16 train, so I yelled up the stairs to the kids as I did every morning. “Love you guys! Be good for Jessie!”

“We will!” The chorus was cheerful. They were excited to have Jessie sleep over; she’d promised them a dance party to end all dance parties, complete with a disco ball and limbo contest. This seemed like a fitting way to end our happy seven-year run with Jessie at the helm.

Nicholas walked me to the front door and gave me a brief, impersonal hug. We’d been cordial but distant—spouse colleagues—since our encounter in the basement, and my rudeness to the mortgage broker hadn’t helped matters. We hadn’t talked—I mean,
really
talked, aside from the logistics of child minding and pet care and who would pick up the dry cleaning. When Nicholas conspicuously unloaded a six-pack of O’Doul’s
nonalcoholic beer into the door of the fridge, I made an “I’ll believe it when I see it” face. Every time I felt a moment’s relief about his new temperance movement, I flashed back to Georgie, gamely waiting for me in the principal’s office while he dozed drunkenly across the street, only five hundred feet away. This wouldn’t be an easy image to forget.

“Good luck out there.” Nicholas held me at an arm’s length and then kissed my cheek.

“Thanks. Have fun at your tournament.”

“Thanks.”

He opened the door and gestured for me to walk through. Halfway down the walkway, which was now covered with a chalk hopscotch board, I turned around and said, “Nicholas, when I get home, we really need to have a state of the union conversation.”

He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. For a guy who’d come off a year-long bender, he looked pretty great: thin and strong, with a hint of a beard. Just as I was appreciating the badass scruff, he nodded curtly. “Trust me, Alice, I know that.”

•  •  •

On the way to the airport, I noticed that the school drop-off line was fifteen cars deep at the end of Flower Street. Despite my proximity to the school, I rarely saw it; by the time the cars started lining up, my train was sliding down the gritty corridor between Bloomfield and Watsessing Avenue.

But Nicholas constantly complained about the gridlock, and I read friends’ irritated status updates on Facebook. “Sat in car line for 30 min this morning. Anyone else wonder what would happen if an emergency vehicle needed to get through? Between the Denalis and the snowdrifts, good luck with that,” wrote Kara, sparking a polite passive-aggressive war among the moms. I could picture them at granite kitchen islands all over town, sliding aside their Chobani yogurts and crafting careful but pointed—oh, so pointed—responses. “Perhaps you should consider dropping your kids one block away? Let Owen get his feet wet for a change?”

I
knew one thing about being a working mom: you forfeited the right to weigh in on a subject like this one.

•  •  •

The flight to Cleveland was transcendent in every way. I’d long been suspicious of the claims of regular business travelers that it’s a hardship to be away from home for a couple of days, to slog through an anonymous hotel lobby with no hope of seeing a friendly face at the end of the day. Fine, I get that, even though I, personally, have never felt anything but joy at the prospect of someone else making my bed or leaving a stack of fresh folded towels by the tub while I’m out.

But flying alone? I can’t imagine it would ever get old. Once you’ve been a parent, trudging through airports lugging kid paraphernalia—car seat, Pack ’n Play, baby gym, booster seat—you never again take for granted the freedom of strolling toward your gate unencumbered.

I sidestepped the comically fast-paced people mover, collecting Toblerone chocolates, edamame, a mini-tray of takeout sushi, and two cans of Diet Coke on my way. I even took pleasure in the smooth glide of the purple rolling luggage I’d borrowed from Margot. It had been a Christmas gift from Judy and Elliott; in a rare burst of sweetness, she’d insisted I take it, even though my trip would be so short, I could have crammed all my clothes in a backpack.

Judy and Elliott didn’t know about my trip to Cleveland. I was going to be in town for less than forty-eight hours, most of them gobbled up by Scroll. I knew Nicholas was annoyed about this, especially since he’d just spent an afternoon rewiring my mom’s sound system to accommodate a turntable; thankfully, he was tactful enough not to comment.

I was landing at eleven, meeting with Greg at four, and catching an early morning flight back to New Jersey on Saturday, slated to arrive at Newark Airport at seven o’clock. My plan was to take a taxi from the airport to the train station, hop on a train to Filament, and be home in time to take Oliver to his basketball game. I didn’t dare take a taxi all the way
home from the airport since I’d been reprimanded for flouting the frugality tenet in my expense reports.

When my flight landed at Cleveland Hopkins, I stopped at an airport outpost of a famous local candy store, Malley’s, to buy an assortment of chocolates as a going-away present for Jessie. First I grabbed a modest tray; then I splurged on an outrageous triple-layered affair of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and truffles, all encased in a satin box tied with a garish purple ribbon.

As I was paying, my wallet slipped out of my hands and change spilled all over the counter, bouncing off the back of the cash register and plummeting to the floor in a loud, chaotic mess. It took me five minutes to collect my coins while the put-together twenty-something clerk rearranged the cardigan around her neck and surreptitiously checked her teeth in the mirrored chrome of the cash register. The last thing I picked up was a hair clip of Georgie’s: turquoise plastic, with a bear playing the banjo at its center. This I tucked into my pocket for good luck.

I kept my head low as my taxi wound its way down the gray strip of highway leading to Scroll Headquarters. Even though Cleveland is a big-enough city, I was paranoid about getting spotted by Judy or Elliott or one of their sharp-eyed friends. It was a little sad and also a little exhilarating to pass the Cleveland landmarks that I’d visited as a new girlfriend, a fiancée, a wife, and later as a mother—but never before seen through the eyes of a midlevel, stressed-out, anonymous businesswoman wearing a blue Marimekko shift and navy wedge heels. Unfortunately, the dress was cut in such a way that it rode up too far when I bent over, which I absolutely could not do since my tights had a hole in them in exactly the wrong place. But when did I have time to go shopping for a new pair?