Seven Year Switch (2010) (2 page)

“
GREAT GIRLFRIEND GETAWAYS
,”
I SAID INTO MY HEADPHONE
as Anastasia reached for another pot sticker with her chopsticks. “Feisty and fabulous man-free escapes both close to home and all over the world. When was the last time you got together with
your
girlfriends?”

“Hello?” a female voice said into my ear. “Is this a real person?”

That was probably a question to be pondered, but I gave her the short answer. “Yes,” I said. “This is Jill, one of GGG's cultural consultants, available twenty-four/seven to help you plan the girlfriend getaway of your dreams. How can I help you?”

“Okay, well, my friends and I are thinking about your trip to the Dominican, but somebody I work with said she went to an all-inclusive there and saw an actual rat in her room, and I don't do rats. Can you guarantee me a rat-free room? In writing?”

I wasn't sure I could guarantee her a rat-free room in New York, but why get into it. Anastasia picked up her plate and started sliding her chair back. I narrowed my eyes and gave her a mom glare.

“Well,” I said, “if you want to keep the pests at bay, we've also got a trip to Italy coming up. It includes one full day on Beach 134, aka the Pink Beach, the official no-men-allowed beach on the Adriatic coast.”

I waited for a laugh. Nothing. Anastasia was tiptoeing across the kitchen. I stamped my foot. She kept walking.

“The signs alone will make your photo album,” I said. “They've got this one huge sign with an Italian version of the Marlboro man in an old-fashioned bathing suit getting ready to hit on somebody, and he's got a great big diagonal line drawn through him.”

Of course, I'd never actually seen this sign, but I'd added the photo to our brochure and also uploaded it to the Web site.

“I don't know,” the woman said. “I bet the guys still pinch you as soon as you get off the beach. And doesn't Italy have rats, too?”

I pinched off a little piece of pork dumpling and popped it into my mouth.

I covered the phone and swallowed quickly. “Orlando's nice this time of year,” I finally said.

“I don't know. We really wanted to absorb another culture.”

I rolled my eyes and reached for another pinch of pork. “You can always go to Epcot.”

“Good point. Okay, so do you recommend the Epcot-only International Pajama Party or the Careening-thru-Kissimmee Multi–Theme Park Girlfriend Adventure?”

In so many ways, this job had saved my life, and I knew how lucky I was to have it. Joni Robertson, Great Girlfriend Getaways' owner, paid me enough of a salary to almost make ends meet, as well as about half of Anastasia's and my health insurance. She'd also given me a computer to replace my dinosaur when she upgraded her office equipment, and even paid half my cell phone bill so I had somewhere to forward the GGG calls. But the best thing was that she let me do most of my work from home and gave me enough flexibility to pick up jobs on the side.

I couldn't have made it without Joni. If I were in charge of the world, I'd get rid of all the Oscars and the Grammys and just give awards to women who helped other women.

Sure, I'd imagined that by this point in my life, I'd be a little further along in my career as a cultural consultant. A dual major in international government and sociocultural anthropology, I'd envisioned myself as a pioneer in the emerging field of cross-cultural coaching. After getting my feet wet in the corporate world, where I'd be brilliantly successful at training executives to become more effective global communicators, I'd build my own international consulting business. I pictured myself jetting around, preparing foreign service families before they headed off to their posts, helping to greenwash small countries trying to step up their ecotourism trade, counseling rising politicians who thought they could see Russia from their backyards.

And then life got in the way.

Here's the thing that really pisses me off when I listen to those women on TV with their big salaries, or their trust funds, or their great family support. They're up on their high horses in their rarefied worlds telling the rest of us women we shouldn't jump off the career track or we'll never get back on. We should just follow our dreams, go after what we want, come hell or high water.

But what if scrambling to pay the bills takes every minute of your day, every ounce of your creativity? What if you can't afford an au pair? What if you can't even afford an ordinary babysitter? And even if you could, which you can't, what if your three-year-old is so afraid that you're going to leave her, too, that she spends most of an entire year holding on to your leg, and somedays, just to do the vacuuming, you have to drag her around the room with you?

Eventually I got Rat Girl off the phone. I popped the rest of the dumpling into my mouth, took half a second to appreciate
the warm burst of ginger and green onion, and pushed back my own chair.

I poked my head into the living room. “You've got until three to turn that TV off and get back to the dinner table.”

Anastasia ignored me.

“One,” I said.

She ignored me some more.

“Two,” I said.

“Mom,” she said. “It's almost over.”

“Anabanana…,” I said.

She jumped up. “
Don't
call me that. It's a baby name.”

My daughter, all elbows and knees in purple leggings and a long striped T-shirt dress, flounced past me with her empty plate. She adjusted her shiny pink headband with one hand as she came in for a landing at the kitchen table. I tried hard to give her the firm, consistent limits all kids need, but the truth was I loved her little acts of rebellion. I read them as signs of progress, evidence that she had not only survived, but was finally starting to thrive. She had friends at school. Her grades were good. She loved to read.

The last thing either of us needed was for Seth to come back into our lives and screw them all up again.

 

MY PHONE SHIFT TONIGHT
was four to midnight. After Anastasia was in bed, I made myself a cup of Earl Grey tea so I could stay awake. Some nights the phone rang like crazy, and I'd talk nonstop about group rates and trip insurance and the relative merits of Provence versus Paris while I washed dishes or folded the laundry. I'd gotten so used to going about my business while I talked into my headphone that once I even flushed the
toilet while I was talking to some woman about our Galapagos Islands cruise.

“What was
that
?” she'd asked.

“Just a waterfall,” I'd replied. “The Iguazu? On the Brazil-Argentina border?”

“Ooh,” she said. “Can you send me some info on that trip, too?”

To night was quiet. Eerily quiet. Twice I got up and walked over to the living room window that looked out over the street. I pulled back the curtain just enough to peek out without being seen. As hard as I tried, I couldn't detect a trace of Seth. But whether he was actually out there after all, or simply hovering on the outskirts of our lives, I could feel him.

Just as the big old predigital clock on the living room wall was reaching its long pointy arm up to midnight, I pulled off my headphone and pushed myself away from the couch.

I took my time heading to my bedroom. There was no rush: my life had turned back into a pumpkin a long, long time ago.

ANASTASIA HAD NIXED THE KISS AT THE BUS STOP AROUND
this time last year. We said our good-byes inside the house now, and then I sat on the front steps, looking up and down the street for potential kidnappers and pedophiles while she waited with the other kids and pretended I wasn't there.

“Hi there,” Cynthia from next door said as she came over to join me. For a minute, it looked like she might even sit down beside me on the cement steps. Whether it was the potential damage to her tennis skirt or her manicure that stopped her, I might never know. She rested one hand on the metal railing instead.

“Hey,” I said. I kept my eyes on Anastasia. I'd never admit it to anyone, but even though she was in fourth grade now, I still got a tiny bit choked up every time the bus pulled away.

Cynthia lifted her hand off the railing and examined it.

“It's called rust,” I said.

“Don't
we
have a big chip on our shoulder this morning,” she said. “God, you never seem to amaze me.”

While I puzzled over her morning malaprop, Cynthia grabbed a chunk of impeccably foiled hair with her rust-free hand, stretched it diagonally across her forehead, and held it there, as if she were teaching it how to stay. “So, how about lunch at that new sushi place on Maple?” she finally asked.

I tried to like Cynthia, I really did. She reminded me of that old
don't hate me because I'm beautiful
commercial, and she drove me almost as crazy. It was hard not to hate someone,
at least a little, when they oozed entitlement from every well-peeled and dermabraded pore, but I also kind of wanted to
be
Cynthia. Somehow I thought I'd do a better job of it.

Cynthia and her family buying the house next door last year had been a sign that the neighborhood was on its way up. Anastasia and I moved in three years earlier with the help of a no-money-down, low-interest program for first-time buyers. Joni, my boss, had not only helped me find it, but also gave me some hand-me-down furniture and a paid day off to move. It was considered a “transitional” neighborhood then, though “sketchy” might have been more accurate.

But the neighborhood had gone from transitional to trendy, and now people like Cynthia couldn't wait to get their hands on the funky little summer cottages, so they could double or triple the square footage and deck them out into full-blown year-round housing extravaganzas. With every year that passed, my mostly untouched house looked smaller in comparison but also grew a lot more valuable. Maybe eventually my neighbors would pool their pocket change and plop an addition on mine, too, just to keep me up with the Joneses.

The bus pulled up in front of my house. I stood up. Anastasia held on to the front straps of her pink backpack as she climbed aboard with the other kids. She took a seat where I could see her and leaned back against her backpack like a pillow. I waved. She lifted one hand casually, maybe a wave, maybe not, then started fine-tuning her headband.

After the bus had pulled away, I turned to Cynthia. “Sorry,” I said, “but I can't. I've got a client today.”

Cynthia reached up with both hands to check on her chunky gold earrings. “All work and no play-ay,” she sang, “make Jill a dull gull.”

“Thanks,” I said. I thought about adding a little seagull screech, but I wasn't sure I could pull it off.

Supposedly, Cynthia worked, too. She said she had her own interior decorating business, but I'd yet to see evidence of a client, interior or exterior, to back up the claim.

I took a step toward my door. “Yeah, well, have a tuna roll for me, okay?”

“Eat your own mercury. Hey, if I'm not back in time, can you grab my three off the bus and give them a quick snack?”

I looked at her. Cynthia was simply one of those women who always came out on top. If you carpooled with her, you somehow managed to drive twice as often as she did. If you watched each other's kids, she got one and you got three. There was nothing to be done about it. It was just the way of the world. And I needed her for backup.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Not a problem.”

 

I WAS MEETING
my new client at Starbucks. Of all the cultures in all the world, wouldn't you know he'd want to talk about Japan. But I couldn't afford to ruminate about brutal poetic irony when bills needed to be paid, so I had no choice but to take him on.

He'd gotten my name from an ad I'd placed on Craigslist, so he could easily turn out to be a nutcase. Starbucks was safe, private enough, and since he'd agreed right away to the insane hourly consulting rate I'd thrown out to leave room for negotiation, I could even afford the coffee.

A guy was chaining his bike to the bike rack next to Starbucks when I got there. I hurried past him and reached for the heavy front door.

“Yo,” he said. “You're not Jill, are you?”

I turned around and watched him slide a big rubber band off one nylon pant leg while I considered which was the
bigger red flag that this guy couldn't afford me, the
yo
or the bicycle.

“I am indeed,” I said. I held out my hand. “Jill Murray. And you must be Bill Sanders.”

“Billy,” he said.

“Great,” I said.

I'd half expected a high five or a knuckle tap, but at least he shook hands like a grown-up. He had good eye contact, too. His crinkly brown eyes had a bit of a raccoon quality, as if he spent a lot of time outside wearing sunglasses. He was probably about my age, though he seemed younger. Or maybe I just felt older.

Starbucks was teeming with people. I wondered if the whole world was doing away with their offices and coming here instead.

“How about you snare us a table, and I'll grab the coffee. Cappuccino okay?”

Technically, I should pick up the tab. I'd order a small regular coffee and hope he did, too.

I imagined gazing into the foam of a frothy, overpriced cappuccino. “Thanks,” I said.

He handed me his bicycle helmet. I hovered near the tables, and as soon as two men stood up, I slid into a chair fast. I plopped the shiny green helmet in the middle of the table like a centerpiece.

When Billy Sanders eventually made his way over with my cappuccino, it turned out to be a venti. I said thanks and took a demure sip, since it seemed more dignified than yelling “score,” but the truth was I couldn't wait for the day when I could just relax and buy what ever damn size overpriced coffee I wanted whenever I wanted to. “Okay,” I said. I reached into my bag and pulled out an invoice. “Let's get the bookkeeping out of the way first, so we can get right to Japan.”

He handed me a check that was already made out.

“Cool,” slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. I cleared my throat. “So, tell me what you need to know about Japanese culture, and why.”

He took a moment to beat the bicycle helmet between us like a drum, ending with a single air cymbal crash. “The short version is that my family owns a business that makes bicycles.”

I took another sip of foam-capped espresso heaven. “Must be nice,” I said.

He shrugged. “It has its moments. Anyway, we have a core business with stable profits, and we're trying to balance some cuts we've made by investing in future growth.”

He pushed a button on his cell phone and handed it to me.

I didn't know anything about bicycles, but the one on the screen was pretty amazing—sleek and shiny and futuristic. Most of the bike was an ultrametallic red, but its handlebars were painted so that they loomed above the front wheel like menacing eyes.

“Wow,” I said. “It looks almost alive.”

“Thanks,” he said. “It's called the Akira. It's named after the Japanese anime from the '80s.”

I squinted at the picture. “Of course it is.”

“The design is a nod to the motorcycle the hero drives.”

I nodded, as if I knew what he was talking about.

He looked over his shoulder for potential bicycle spies, then leaned toward me. “I had this idea that we'd test-market them in Tokyo. The bike rental market is already established there, but this would add a fresh, high-tech spin. Basically, we'd implant a microchip in each bike, and then people could locate the nearest bike with their smartphones….”

I handed him back his iPhone. “And the bicycle would ride itself over to meet them?”

He smiled. “We're not quite there yet. But we'd sell inexpensive packages, and members would have access to hun
dreds of conveniently located, high-end Akira kiosks all over Tokyo. It'll be great advertising for bicycle sales, too, since the rental bikes will function like little billboards. And then, if the whole thing flies in Japan, we'll give it a shot in Boston. Car share companies like Zipcar are paving the way for us.”

“Sounds like a great idea to me,” I said. I took another sip of my cappuccino. “So what's the problem?”

He held both palms up toward the ceiling. “I can't get anybody to talk to me over there. I e-mailed some likely candidates, tried to set up some meetings. Nothing. So then I made some phone calls. I was like, hey, just say no if it doesn't sound good to you, but here's an idea that could make us both some money.”

“There's your first problem,” I said. “The Japanese don't like to say no. ‘I'll consider it' means no. Sometimes even yes means no. You'll have to hire a go-between to set up the meetings, someone who speaks Japanese, has a good reputation, but also doesn't have a personal stake in the project. Make sure you wear a suit when you go. And bring gifts, but don't give them out until you see what they give you first, because it's important to match the level of your gifts to theirs. It can't be too extravagant a gift, because it might be considered a bribe, and make sure you don't open your gifts in front of them, and…”

Billy Sanders opened his raccoon eyes wide. “Seriously?” he said. “A suit-suit?”