Balancing Acts (2 page)

S
abine pressed
SEND
and rubbed her temples. Violet was not going to be pleased about her five pages of edits. Not at all. But what could she do? Violet's book was about vegan romance and, sorry, there were only so many ways to make an impromptu quickie in the co-op bathroom sexy.

Sabine's editor in chief was on a mission to expand their readership and somehow she had determined that organic vegetables and soy cheese were a recipe for sexy. Hence, their new line of vegan and eco-friendly romances.

At a publisher best known for Fabio-covered bodice-rippers, this was a departure, to say the least. And as a senior editor, Sabine had to make these new titles work. . .or else.
Or else, what?
she often wondered.
Would getting fired be such a bad thing?!
Sabine sighed. She supposed that some days she did like her job, and even found herself strangely turned on by editing page after page of passion-fueled romps, but today was not one of those days.

She looked up to find Jasmine, her assistant, lurking in her doorway. “Um, is there anything else you need, Sabine?” she asked hesitantly, her hope that the answer was no and that she could go home decidedly apparent.

“No, no, go home!” answered Sabine. “Start your weekend, already!”

Jasmine smiled with relief. “Thanks, Sabine,” she answered, practically running out of her doorway. She heard the distinct zip of Jasmine's jacket and then her sneakered feet bounding toward the elevator. She wondered what Jasmine's weekend entailed. Jasmine was twenty-three, fresh out of college, and living in the East Village with four other struggling friends. Jasmine had confided in Sabine that “really, she wanted to write” one night as Sabine treated her to wine and appetizers at a nearby bar.
No shit,
thought Sabine.
Good luck with all that.

Sabine, too, had started in book publishing with the sole intention of writing, and here she was, ten years later, spell-checking
quinoa
. She stretched her arms high above her head and rotated her neck counterclockwise as she shut her computer off. The kinks in her body were so textbook “office kinks” that she wanted to weep. Work had been a bear lately. When was the last time she had gone to the gym? August? It was January. Ugh.

Sabine's cell phone rang. She picked it up to inspect the culprit.
MOM
it read, the shrill ringing eerily reminiscent of what she was sure to hear the moment she pushed
TALK
.

“Hi, Mom,” she answered.

“Hi, Saby,” she replied. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

Sabine laughed as she involuntarily grazed her lips with her fingers. They were so chapped by winter's unrelenting cruelness that they felt like beef jerky. And there was not a speck of color gracing their flesh. “Oh sure,” she replied. “I've got a full face of fake on. Not to mention a push-up bra, a miniskirt, and stilettos. You know, just another day at the office.”

“Your attitude is for the birds, Sabine,” her mother replied. “Being such a smartass is going to land you on your couch with that dumb cat for the rest of your natural life.”

“Don't call him dumb!” Her cat, Lassie, was a huge bone of contention with her mother, who, as soon as Sabine had adopted him, had told her he was “the feline equivalent of a locked chastity belt.”

“Well, I hope you're over penis,” her mother had gone on to say in one of her more vulgar, martini-induced moments. “Because you'll never see it again in that apartment.” Sabine had laughed at her audacity.

“Mom, keep your pants on, I'm on my way to that ridiculous ten-year reunion night,” Sabine said.

“Oh good!” her mother shrieked. “I have a good feeling about this.” As much as Sabine hated her mother's involvement in her personal life (or lack thereof), she was a glutton for punishment. She couldn't help herself from sharing and her mother was a particularly entertaining sounding board.

“What's the good feeling about?” asked Sabine. “Washed-up divorcés desperate to spread their seed?” Sabine reached into her bag and pulled out her makeup case. She had been staring at a computer screen under the brutal glare of fluorescent lighting all day. She didn't even have to see a mirror to know that she looked like a corpse.

“Listen, I have to dash,” her mother said, cutting Sabine off. “I'm meeting the girls for movie night. Don't act like a jackass, and put on some lipstick and mascara. You're a beautiful girl and I love you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” replied Sabine, her eyes tearing up against her will. “Love you, bye.”

“Love you, too, honey. Call me tomorrow. For chrissake, don't sleep with anyone! Not yet, at least.”

“Roger that, Mom,” Sabine replied, laughing. She hung up and wiped her eyes. She couldn't believe she had teared up. Had it really been that long since someone had called her beautiful? She whipped her magnifying mirror (the mirror responsible for Sabine's ever-changing eyebrow arch) out of her desk to survey the damage.

See, you're pretty,
she said to herself. And she was. With her big hazel eyes and wild chestnut locks, she was a classic, Mediterranean beauty. When Sabine wanted to, she could turn on the charm and snag more than a few second looks from appreciative men—it's just that she seldom wanted to. Men seemed to require a lot of energy, and she just couldn't muster it up these days.

She sighed as she pulled out her concealer and rubbed it into the circles underneath her eyes, remembering her last suitor—the constant checking of her cell phone (did he call? is it working? should I call him?), the uncertainty of their future, the good but not great sex, and then his eventual disappearance. It was a lot of anxiety and heartache for very little reward. She closed her eyelashes into her curler, counted to two, and then released.
Amazing what a difference this torture device makes.

She resolved to push her negative thoughts about men out of her mind and refocus on the possibility of meeting someone who exceeded her ten years of dating in New York expectations. They couldn't all be cads. There had to be at least one who broke the mold.

She surveyed her face one last time and swept the mirror back into her desk drawer. She stood up and stretched, her back and neck cracking like Rice Krispies. “I need a massage,” she said aloud to her empty office. She piled her manuscripts for the weekend into her bag and zipped herself into her coat.

“Go Terriers!” she sarcastically whispered, paying tribute to her college mascot. She flipped off her light and made her way out into the madness of midtown.

M
ama, where are you going?” Noah asked suspiciously. “How come you have that stuff on your lips?”

Naomi laughed. She couldn't get anything past her son, or the Inspector, as she liked to call him. Noah needed to know everything, all the time. “Who is that? How does this work? What is milk made of? Why is your tummy sticking out?” This last question had come quite recently, when Naomi had attempted to squeeze herself back into a pair of jeans that had last seen the light of day in 1998. She had gotten them on, by the grace of God, but zipping them had been a different story entirely. She had lain across her bed and pulled with all her might, half expecting the metal teeth of the zipper to rip off entirely, but then—victory! The zipper had miraculously completed its journey upward and she had even managed to button them.

She had laughed, or, rather, wheezed appreciatively, wondering how she was going to get up. Awkwardly, she had made her way to a standing position—kind of like a baby calf's first steps—and wobbled to the mirror.

Just then, Noah had wandered in, surveying every detail of the scene before him, but naturally zeroing in on the fact that his mother seemed to be encased in some sort of denim torture device on the lower half of her body.

After he asked her the stomach question, Naomi had promptly removed (very carefully) the denim relic of her past and placed the jeans in the Goodwill pile. Now Noah was her personal Tim Gunn as well as her inspector. Two for one.

“I'm going out, lovey,” she replied, zeroing in for a hug. Noah tensed when she put her arms around him.

“Where out?” he asked again. “And who is staying with me?”

“I'm going to see some old college friends in the city.” She cringed a little at the thought of what lay ahead of her. Since Noah had been born almost eight years ago (eight years ago? What?!), she had been a virtual recluse—and happily so.

This year she had vowed that she would make more of an effort to have conversations that didn't revolve around dinosaurs or the virtues of orange juice with pulp. And just like that, the Evite for this ten-year college reunion night had landed in her in-box. This was especially strange because Naomi had spent only one year at said college, and certainly couldn't legitimately be considered an alumna. It had seemed almost predestined somehow, even though Naomi didn't believe in that kind of thing. But still, it had been eerie.

“What college friends?” probed Noah. Naomi paused. That was a good question from the Inspector, and one that she wasn't entirely sure how to answer. She had spent most of her one college year skipping class and trying unsuccessfully to turn Boston into a smaller version of New York. She had barely made any friends at school, truth be told. She wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know a single soul tonight.

“Just some people I used to know,” she answered.

“Oh,” answered Noah. “Are they nice?”

“Sure,” she replied, as she slid her gold hoops through her lobes.
I hope so,
she thought.

“Am I going to college?” he asked.

“Yes, you most certainly are,” she replied, scooping his warm body into her arms. He was getting so big! Despite herself, her uterus lurched in response to this little man who just yesterday was a cooing baby. “But that's not for a long time. Oh, and Cecilia is going to come hang out with you tonight while I'm gone.”

Cecilia lived in their building and was Naomi's lifesaver. Whenever Naomi had to dash out for the occasional work meeting or sanity-keeping emergency (the denim disaster of last weekend came to mind—it had been a wake-up wardrobe call that she had to heed), Cecilia was more than happy to watch Noah. She was getting her psychology Ph.D. at NYU and was always up for taking a break from her dissertation for a couple of hours. Naomi also suspected that Cecilia was analyzing the hell out of her for kicks, but she supposed that was okay. Trusting someone enough to let her take care of her son was a rarity.

“Okay, cool,” replied Noah, as he de-pretzeled himself from their embrace and returned to his dinner at the kitchen/living room/everything table.

Naomi surveyed herself in the mirror.
Not too bad,
she thought. She had done a little shopping in preparation for her reentry into the adult universe and liked what she saw. Her neighborhood in Fort Greene had really reinvented itself over the past couple of years, and she had boutiques boasting a ridiculous array of enticing clothes at her disposal. She had flinched when purchasing her new pieces—visions of Noah washing dishes to pay for his college tuition ran through her head—but she knew it had to be done. Wearing jeans from the nineties was not going to win her any new friends, even if they were left over from her modeling days.

Naomi ran her fingers through her short Afro, tousling it just so. She wondered if anyone at this alumni night would recognize her. In college and for many years afterward, her long dreads had been her trademark. She had chopped them off in a hormonal fit of epic proportions when she had been pregnant with Noah, and luckily the short do suited her just as well, if not better.

“Knock, knock!” Cecilia yelled from outside their apartment door.

“Who is it?” she heard Noah ask.

“It's a land shark!” Cecilia replied, causing Noah to erupt into a fit of giggles.

“Sharks don't live on land!” he shrieked, excited to have his playmate just outside the door.

“Oh, okay, then it's a brontosaurus.” Noah, still laughing, opened the door and Cecilia enveloped him in a hug.

“Hey Naomi!” she said, smiling broadly—her dazzling white teeth contrasting beautifully with her silky curtain of ebony hair. Just then, Naomi wanted nothing more than to grab her camera and capture that moment of pure light. She pushed the thought out of her mind.

“Hey Cee,” she answered.

“You look hot!” exclaimed Cecilia, giving Naomi the once-over. “I wish I could wear skinny jeans. And with flats, no less!”

“It's okay?” Naomi asked nervously. “It's not too much? It doesn't look like I'm trying too hard?”

“No way,” answered Cecilia. “You look annoyingly effortless.”

“Perfect answer,” replied Naomi, smiling. “Okay, Noah is finishing up his dinner and then maybe you can watch a movie, or—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the drill, Naomi,” interrupted Cecilia. “Get moving!”

Naomi glanced at her watch. If she didn't leave now, she would go from fashionably late to last call. The commute into the city from Brooklyn was less than speedy. “Okay, okay,” she answered. “Noah! Give me a squeeze, please!”

Noah ran to her, his blue eyes dancing. “Bye, Mama,” he whispered, as he pressed his compact frame into her willowy legs.

“Bye, baby boy,” she whispered back.

She grabbed her bag and let herself out. She hit the street and took a deep breath in. The cold air was refreshing. She had been in the house practically all day, except for her walks with Noah to and from school.

She had finished up a huge Web design project a week ahead of time, and although that had meant long, grueling hours hunched over the computer, it had been worth it. Now she could enjoy her weekend with no guilt. That was the funny thing about freelancing—even though her schedule was her own, the lines between her personal and work life were criminally blurred.

She made her way down the subway stairs and swiped her card through the turnstile. It felt so strange to be out by herself, without a bag full of snacks and juice boxes. Strange, but good. She was ready to enter the non-Mommy world again, even if it meant revisiting her past to do so.