Wishful Thinking (13 page)

Earthbound again, Jennifer put her ear to the door.
Outside, she could hear the sound of women’s voices, the rise and fall of prepickup chatter. It was just after 2:45 p.m. (
Amazing, incredible!
she thought, allowing herself a moment of awe)—time for her to join the fray. After opening the door just enough to see that the coast was clear, Jennifer smoothed down her skirt, reassembled her ponytail, and walked outside.

Facing the crowd of mothers and nannies, smiling and trying to appear as if she’d just come out of the bathroom, Jennifer almost felt more anxious than she had while awaiting her transport by wormhole. As a working mom, she always experienced the chatting trios and pairs of mothers at drop-off as a bit of a gauntlet—never quite feeling like she belonged, the mom who dropped off but never picked up, the mom who never chaperoned a class field trip or volunteered to run a booth at the annual book fair. Jennifer always felt as though the mothers who did everything viewed her as a freeloader … if they remembered her name at all.

But here they were, throngs of them in jeans and Uggs, talking of Suzuki and tae kwon do. (The nannies had their own cliques, usually organizing themselves by their countries of origin. The few dads who picked up tended to skip Pecan Café, apparently, and go straight to the school.) After making awkward eye contact with a few moms who seemed to recognize her but couldn’t quite place her, Jennifer locked eyes with a mother she was sure she knew, and smiled. But what was her name? She racked her brain but found nothing there. The woman stood and embraced her with a warm “It’s
so
good to see you” hug that would have made Jennifer feel terrible if she hadn’t been so grateful for it. And then she had it, just in time. Caroline.

“Caroline!” Jennifer said warmly. “How are you? How’s Charlie?” Charlie was an adorable redhead whom Jack often played with at the park after school. She knew this because
Melissa had often texted her pictures of them together.

“Where’s Melissa?” Caroline asked. “We
love
Melissa!”

“She’s just doing Mondays and Fridays now,” Jennifer replied. “I’m going to start picking up on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“That’s great!” Caroline said, clapping her hands together. “Melissa is great, but Mommy’s always better.”

Mommy’s always better?
Jennifer’s working-mom self chafed at this. But as she stood there, basking in Caroline’s approval, part of her was eating it up. “Is Charlie free to play today?” Jennifer asked. “I could take him to the park with Jack and my older son, Julien.”

“Oh, I know Julien. He and my daughter, Sasha, are in the same third-grade class, didn’t you know?” Jennifer, embarrassed, apologized, making some comment about never knowing any of the girls. “Oh, please,” Caroline said. “I can’t remember what I had for breakfast. Charlie has fencing on Tuesdays,” she went on. “But we would love a date on Thursday!”

And that was that. Jennifer, feeling punchy, experienced a surge of
love
for Caroline. (She’d tried to suppress her astonishment at the idea of a four-year-old taking fencing classes.) Armed with a freshly booked playdate and feeling like a very good mother indeed, she soon followed the pack of women across the street for pickup a little bit before 3:00 p.m. As she approached the school, anticipating Jack’s blue eyes lighting up at the sight of her, her hunger for him became a craving, her palms practically itching at the thought of the soft, still-babyish skin of his upper arms warm against her hands.

Once inside, Jennifer wended her way through the hallways to Jack’s classroom in back. Naively, she pressed straight on to the doorway, hoping to collect him early so she could get to Julien’s school. Then she noticed the other mothers
and caregivers, who had already lined up in an orderly row along the wall outside. Apparently each child had to be called from the rug, and each picker-upper had to wait her, or his, turn. As she waited, Jennifer craned her neck, trying to catch an illicit glimpse of Jack, whose movements were apparently as highly restricted as a maximum-security prisoner’s, until finally she was at the head of the line. She heard his teacher whisper, “Jack, Mommy’s here.” Jack’s head snapped up, his eyes widened as he met her eyes at the door, and then his whole face lit up like it was Christmas morning. Running right at her despite his teachers’ protestations, he jumped into her arms, so thrilled and surprised to see her he was practically trembling. Touching each of her cheeks and looking into her eyes, he pronounced two sweet syllables with quiet satisfaction: “
Ma-ma
.” She was smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.

They stayed like that for a moment, snuggling.

Then she put him down. “We have to hurry to get Julien!” she said. Jack nodded solemnly, though they both knew
hurry
was not in his vocabulary. The two of them wound their way through the crowd and headed for the door. Jack held her hand firmly. At last they were standing on the sidewalk together in the fresh air.

He looked up at her. “Did you bring me a snack?” he asked.

“Snack?” she asked blankly. “Don’t you get a snack at school?” Jennifer seemed to remember two school snacks, in fact. She still could not believe how much snacking was always going on. On the weekends she often felt like a combination of a Sherpa and a vending machine, carrying backpacks, sporting equipment, and coats on one arm while dispensing an endless supply of Annie’s Snack Mix and Honest Ade into the open mouths of her insatiable children with the other.

“Mewissa ahways brings snack!” Jack whined. The charm of her appearance, it seemed, was already a distant memory.

“Me
liss
a,” Jennifer corrected. Jack ignored her. “Maybe we can get something at the park,” she said. “Now, come on—it’s after three o’clock!”

Jack began to walk again but, head downcast, refused to hurry.

Arriving at Julien’s school at 3:10, Jennifer discovered they were criminally late. Apparently, Julien had to be picked up by 3:00 p.m. sharp every day or the family would be placed on probation. When she arrived, he barely acknowledged her, he was so distressed. (Melissa later explained the way to be at two pickups at once: skip Pecan Café and head straight to New Day School at 2:45 p.m. The teachers were happy to release Jack at ten or even fifteen minutes before three.) “Did you bring snack?” Julien asked as soon as they were out of the yard.

“Are you kidding me?” she fired back. “You’re talking about Mommy here, who always remembers everything and is always on time!” Julien rolled his eyes at her, but she saw a hint of a smile. She held his gaze, and finally he laughed. She reached for him and gave him a big hug and kiss. He returned it and, relaxing in her arms, let himself be happy to see her.

“Why aren’t you at work?” Julien asked. “I thought Melissa was picking us up.”

Jennifer sat down on a bench and motioned for them to join her. “I actually have some big news for you guys,” she said, putting her arms around both of them. “I made some changes at work, and from now on, I’m going to be picking you guys up
every
Tuesday and Thursday, and spending the whole afternoon with you!”

The boys clapped and cheered as if they’d won the lottery. Jennifer felt so happy to be telling them this, she was able to ignore the niggling guilt she felt for lying to them. But wasn’t the fact that she was with them more important than why, or how?

“So,” she said, hopping up off the bench, “let’s go get a freaking snack, and
play
!”

Fifteen minutes later, armed with water bottles and “bars” (not the usual breakfast bars, but a chocolate-masquerading-as-health-food thing they both professed to love), the three of them walked onto the grass at the park. It felt wonderful to be outside. The day was so breezy and bright, Jennifer felt as though her heavy, office-bound body might lift and spin skyward like the autumn leaves. Her boys were invigorated by the early-autumn air, too, as frisky and playful as puppies and ready to run. Julien set about determining bounds and goals for their game, and Jack, a natural but more indifferent athlete, began dribbling the ball. Jennifer sat on a bench and put on the sneakers she’d transported through the wormhole in her bag, along with a soccer ball. As she laced up her shoes, she drew in a long, deep breath. She was at the park on a weekday afternoon, and for the next couple of hours there would be nothing between her and her boys, nothing between her and the sky, and nothing between her and the ball she couldn’t wait to kick around. Best of all, this afternoon would be 100 percent free of stress, worry, or guilt, because during these same hours, she was at her office, getting all her work done too.

They played hard, and for the most part they had a blast. Jack had a meltdown when he thought Julien wasn’t being fair, and Julien struggled to rein in his competitiveness, but as they finished their game of “World Cup” with a nail-biting penalty shoot-out, she against the boys, Jennifer couldn’t remember having been happier in a very long time. (Jennifer had been a decent soccer player in high school, though not nearly as good as Norman, who’d played at Amherst.) Clouds began to gather overhead around four thirty, however, threatening rain, so the three of them headed home, red-cheeked and panting. The
boys were happy, too, she knew. Both of them held her hands when they crossed the street without her having to ask them to, and when she asked about their days, they answered her with enthusiasm, and in multiple complete sentences.

They were home by five. Soon after they crowded into the small apartment, however, stuffy and cramped after all that glorious space and air, the wrangling began. The boys resisted her on every possible front, from baths to homework to dinner. They bargained and bickered, and Jennifer went from patiently requesting things to straight-up yelling at them. By six o’clock she was feeling less like bliss and more like making a run for it. Shouldn’t she do
other
things, she thought, with this borrowed bonus time? Looking around her apartment, its surfaces covered in newspapers and school papers and work papers and unopened mail, its floor swept but in desperate need of mopping, the couch heaped with piles of clean but unfolded laundry, Jennifer was seized with an overpowering desire. In another life she had prided herself on her neat and orderly environment. Hadn’t a new life kicked off today? So much for family dinner. While the boys ate, Jennifer cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned.

She did not look up, in fact, until Jack tapped her on the shoulder, signaling for her to turn off the vacuum cleaner. “Can I have dessert?” he asked.

“Sure, darling,” she said, standing up and stretching. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied. Jennifer looked at the clock on the microwave and did a double take.
Seven fifteen? Wasn’t it six o’clock five minutes ago?

It was then that Jennifer remembered the difficulty she had decided, when booking her appointment, that she was going to figure out later: how to deal with the five-hundred-yard-radius problem she was presented with now. Her appointment
ended at eight o’clock. If her stay-at-home-mommy self stayed in her apartment until eight, however, her work-till-eight self wouldn’t be able to come near her building until at least ten minutes after she’d left in order not to violate the five-hundred-yard radius, meaning she’d need to leave her apartment in a little over half an hour to make it work. Not only that, but she’d have to find somewhere outside her apartment to travel from. How was she going to manage that?

Where was her phone? She’d buried it in her bag in order to focus on the boys and also to resist the temptation to use it. Now she dug it out and flipped on the sound.
Ping!
It was a text from Dr. Sexton, sent over an hour ago.
How r u?
it read. Jennifer was so panicked, she didn’t even laugh at the incongruity of Dr. Sexton’s using text-speak.

Help!
Jennifer wrote back, the hair standing up on the back of her neck as she stared at the time.
How do I stay here with my kids until I get back from work to be with my kids? I will violate the five-hundred-yard radius, right?

Good point
, came the reply.

“‘Good point’?” Jennifer cried.

Then came a second text:
I’ll be right there
.

Of course
, Jennifer thought. Dr. Sexton lived down the hall. Which meant that Dr. Sexton was about to show up at her front door.

“Boys!” Jennifer called. Julien was in his room, doing his homework. Jack, now holding a Popsicle he’d taken from the freezer in one hand, was shooting Playmobil knights off the counter with a Nerf gun with the other. “I have a friend stopping by!” At least she had cleaned her apartment.

Julien appeared, shirtless, in his flannel pajama bottoms. He was so lean he had a six-pack, though he would have had no idea what that was.
Oh, to be young again,
she thought,
with
the metabolism of brushfire.
Jennifer’s metabolism now burned at the rate of a damp kitchen match.

“Who?” he asked.

“A neighbor,” she told him. “I forgot something at the office. I just have to run out for a few minutes.”

There was a crisp knock at the door. “Mommy,
really
?” Julien wailed as he ran back to his room to get a shirt.

Jack put his Popsicle in a bowl on the counter and, gun in hand, marched to the door. “Who goes there?” he yelled.

“Dr. Diane Sexton!” came an equally booming response.

Jennifer, attempting to respect Jack’s solemnity but suppressing a laugh, lowered Jack’s gun and opened the door. There stood Dr. Sexton, in a belted black dress and knee-high boots (one red, one black), wearing nutty-professor glasses that dwarfed her face and bright red lipstick (dashingly applied), and holding a gigantic metal ball mounted on a wooden stand, with a smaller metal ball on a stick mounted next to it.

“I come bearing a Van de Graaff!” she pronounced, holding the machine out like an offering. Jack, for one, was impressed. He followed her at a trot.

Julien, however, took one look and grabbed Jennifer’s shoulder, pulling her ear to his mouth hard. “Her?” he whispered. “The
Shoe
Lady?”