All the Time in the World (19 page)

“No, that's fine,” I say. “See you then.”

Hanging up that phone call is like catapulting myself out of Siberia. I straighten the couch cushions and get myself into the shower. I get dressed and use a blow dryer. I do the dishes, vacuum the floors, send my laundry out, and make my bed. After those things are accomplished, I text Eliza, asking her to meet me for a drink after work. She suggests a bar on Amsterdam, and I get the impression from the immediacy of her reply that she'd really like to see me too.

That, I get. Family and friends are great. Everyone wants to be there for you, to help you get through the difficult time. But there is no substitute for someone who sat in a room with you, waiting for the end of the world.

A few hours and drinks later, Eliza and I are old friends. “I resisted him for a long time,” she says, swallowing the first bit of her third Manhattan. “Even now that I'm engaged, I go out of my way to avoid him. I'm kind of afraid of what I might do around him! He has something, some kind of, like, power, some kind of animal thing going on. Otherwise, there's no way so many women would sleep with him. He's such an asshole.”

I nurse my second Jack and Diet and don't say anything.

“I couldn't even believe myself when I agreed to go home with him. I knew he had a girlfriend; she was like a model or something, with a model-y name. Sierra?”

Sienna. But it's not worth correcting Eliza.

“Something,” she continues. “It felt so dangerous, like if my boss found out it could wreck everything—his brother, for goodness' sake—and he was kind of a dirty talker. I felt like—I don't know—like a different person. With a different life. Like the darker side of myself. Totally stupid, right? Anyway, I learned my lesson. Is that only your second drink? Catch up!”

“But Scotty's not like that, right? I mean, he and Patrick seem like polar opposites,” I say, and I feel bad for prying, but not that bad. “Scotty doesn't really dick around. Right? It always seemed like he went out of his way to … I don't know. To be present, I guess.”

“No way would he ever have cheated.” Eliza fishes the cherry out of the bottom of her cocktail by the stem and eats it. “He was totally obsessed with Gretchen, texted her all day long, on his way to meetings, illegally from airplanes, everything. I rarely went on trips with him; he always took some junior associate from our department, for propriety's sake. But not in a gross way, like he thought he couldn't control himself. In a classy way. You know? He was, like, a class act.” I wish she would stop talking about Scotty in the past tense. I know that she means the Scotty of before, the Scotty who existed before this altering event occurred. I want to hold on to my certainty that he'll eventually come back.

I order my third Jack and Diet and another Manhattan for Eliza. She starts to protest, but I wave her off. “Maybe your fiancé will meet us here and take you home. He'll understand. It's a rough week.” She laughs like this is a bad, bad thing that she knows she shouldn't do, and maybe she's right. Maybe we shouldn't be here, exchanging stories this way. I don't know why I feel the need, except that there are all these nerves creeping up on me, the anxiety of knowing that Gretchen's whole world, her entire life, will be showing up in the next few days. I feel like I need to arm myself to be in the middle of that, have everything I can at my disposal in order to prove my value, should the need arise. I don't want to feel that way. I don't want to be part of that competition, but Mae's making comments about how much the boys “like playing with me” has gotten under my skin. I can't afford to think of myself as the insignificant thing she seems to want to reduce me to. That wasn't our relationship.

“Not that he hasn't had the opportunity,” Eliza continues, without any prompting from me. Hooray for alcohol. “There are girls at work, girls who are younger than me, who are constantly throwing themselves at him. And they're not even—what's the word—detracted? No. Deterred? Yes, they're not even
deterred
by the pictures of Gretchen and Matt and baby George all over the office. If anything, they seem, like, spurred on by them. Like the fact that he's a family man would make him a better guy to have an affair with.” She rolls her eyes and almost falls off her stool. I hope she remembered to text her fiancé.

“Younger than you?” I say. “What are you? Twenty-six?”

“Twenty-eight, like you,” she says.

“I'm twenty-nine,” I say, like it makes a huge difference.

“There's this one woman, this mom from Matt's class, who calls all the time. Like, who do you think you're fooling, lady? There's no reason she should call to ‘keep him posted' on what's happening at school. I think she said she was a class mom or something. He never wants to talk to her. She had the nerve to call yesterday, like she thought he'd be at work? I didn't even bother to take the message.”

“What's her name?” I ask. “I've probably met her.”

“It's so disgusting,” Eliza says, slurring a little. “Ooh! I'm pretty drunk. She has an odd name. I've never heard it before on a real person. Melody?”

“Ellerie,” I say, and I feel a spike in my chest, a sharp surge of anger.

“Yes! Have you met her?”

“She's not my favorite person to have a playdate with,” I say, and we both laugh, maybe a little too loudly. Not that you could hear it over the bar's stereo system, blasting the Velvet Underground.

“Water,” Eliza says to the bartender, and I know we're getting close to the end of this. I don't want her to go.

“Eliza, I'm seriously so glad to see you. No one else really knows … you know?”

“I know!” she says. “I'm glad you called. It's so unreal. He's been calling in for his messages every day, and he sounds normal even though things must be totally crazy. It's so sad. I'm sad.” He's been calling for his messages every day?

“I hear you,” I say, and the bartender slides another Jack and Diet my way. “I didn't order that.”

The bartender points to a guy at the other end of the bar who can't possibly be older than twenty-two.

“Did that guy order that for you? Ugh, Charlotte, I miss being single!” When I hear people in relationships say things like that, it's kind of a blow to their authenticity, but I try not to hold it against her. Her fiancé walks in the door then and spots her. “Baby, this is Charlotte.”

“Nice to meet you, Baby,” I say, and he tells me his name is Mike.

“I was just telling Charlotte how much I miss being single,” Eliza says. “Babe, no one ever buys me drinks anymore.”

“I'll buy you a drink,” he says, “as long as you promise to go home with me.”

“I don't think I need any more drinks,” she says as she slides off her stool, unsteady. “I'll go home with you anyway.” I say good-bye to them, and Eliza hugs me because—I don't know—she feels like we're the same, and I hug her because she's the only one that I can hug right now who
knows
.

Almost as soon as she vacates her stool, the guy from the other end of the bar comes in for a landing. “Hi,” he says, “I'm Mike.”

“That's such a coincidence,” I say. “I just met another guy named Mike,” and he laughs, bless him, because if he didn't, I probably wouldn't have ended up going home with him. But he does, so I do. Because I'm sad, and I don't have anyone to hug.

April, seven weeks after

“I'm gonna stomp on your head, and then I'll throw you out the window,” says Matt.

“I poop on your mouth, and I kick you on the face,” says George.

“Boys, that's really gross talk. Please stop,” I say, but I'm in the kitchen trying to unearth the takeout menus, and they're halfway down the hall to their bedrooms. Proximity is a make-or-break with these kids.

“I'm gonna punch your tummy, and knock you on the floor, and sit on you until all the air comes out,” says Matt.

“Matty,” I call. “Please stop. When you get going, George gets—”

“I punch you on the face; then I hit you!” George says. He's getting riled up, and Matt is enjoying getting him that way. It makes me want to lock them both in their rooms.

After we ate brownies, no amount of coaxing, threatening, or bribing could get Matt to the candle store, so here we are at home, going stir-crazy. We'll all be lucky to survive the evening.

I find the menu for a home-style southern chicken restaurant and wonder how it got in there among the vegan bistros, organic pizzerias, and sushi restaurants. I consider it a sign from the universe and call in an order for fried chicken strips, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and macaroni salad. If I'm really, really lucky, we'll get through the meal with no complaints.

“I'll throw you on the ground and pee all over you!” I hear Matt say, and just as I'm about to decide to give up and let them exhaust their ugly talk on each other, all becomes quiet for a few minutes. I should know better than to think it's because they're done because the very next moment I hear Matt whine “owww!” loudly, and a few seconds later, George starts to scream. I step over the pile of coats and lunch boxes in the doorway to the kitchen and hurry down the hall to find George smacking the crap out of a cowering Matt.

“Ow! Stop! George is hitting me. He won't stop hitting me! OWWWW!”

I pick Georgie up. What am I going to do when he gets too big for me to physically remove him from the situation? He screams in my face as I take him to his room and shut him in there. I don't lock it, but he knows better than to try and come out. I can hear him sobbing as I go back into Matt's room. Matt seems to have recovered in an instant, as if nothing happened, and is dragging out a bucket of Legos into the center of the room. I'm speechless as I watch him dump them out, because the only word to describe his demeanor is satisfied. Like he's done what he came to do.

“Matt,” I say, trying hard to control my temper. “What did you do? George is screaming like a banshee. What did you do before he started hitting you?”

“Nothing,” he says. “I didn't do anything to him.”

“Okay, then, what did you say?” He doesn't answer me. “Matt,” I say. “Please tell me what you said to make him so upset.” I expect him to start making some kind of excuse for whatever it is he did, and it's usually easy enough for me to extract the vital information as to what occurred from the content of the excuse. It's also how I can tell he feels guilty and knows that he has something to feel guilty about.

But he is just sitting there, building an L-shaped base for what looks like it might become an epic tower. He doesn't look at me but not because he's ashamed. It's more like he doesn't care. He might even be bored as he informs me, “George said he was going to kick me off a bridge and shoot lasers at me in the water. And I told him that I would push him in front of a car and he would die like Mommy.”

I can't say anything to him right now. Whatever I say will be completely out of rage, and unproductive and potentially scarring. I'm totally out of my league, for the second time today.

So I walk away. And a greater person than I would walk into Georgie's room and say something to soothe him.

But I walk out of the room, down the hallway, into the living room, open my laptop, and reply to Jess's e-mail with my availability for next week.

A few hours later, Georgie is listless in his high chair, refusing to feed himself. I am cutting the fried chicken into tiny bites and trying to get him to eat it. Both of us are distracted by the nasty, full-throated yelling that is coming from Matt's room. He has refused to curb his horrible talk. It has gone on all day long, toward me, toward George, toward inanimate objects. He's in a black hole of crankiness. No five-year-old on the planet can think abstractly enough to know that he shouldn't be around people until he gets it together; as smart as he is, he's no exception. So I have set him up with his dinner at the little art table in his room and told him he can come out when he has nice things to say to the other people in this house. And he has screamed, called me every awful name he can think of, pounded on the door with open palms for a solid fifteen minutes, and thrown his dinner plate across the room. The door is not locked, but I'm contemplating it for everyone's safety if this goes on much longer.

“This chicken is delicious,” I say to George. He takes a bite in resignation but doesn't chew it once it's in his mouth. I have a feeling that someone will be going to bed hungry, and another someone will be eating her feelings after the first someone is in bed.

“CHAAAARRRRLOTTE!” Matt screams. “I WANT TO COME OUT! LET ME OUT CHARLOTTE! LET ME OOOOUUUUUUT!”

“How about some mashed potatoes?” I say to George. He opens his mouth and uses the potatoes to wash down the bite of chicken. Maybe I should put in a feeding tube and save us all a lot of trouble.

“CHARLOTTE! CHARLOTTE! I WANT TO COME OUT RIGHT NOW!”

“Hey, George,” I say. “What if we skip this whole farce of a dinner and have a milkshake instead?” He wags his head from side to side, looking exhausted, and while it's not exactly a nod, I take it for assent and click on the TV for him to watch while I scrounge up a drinkable dinner in the kitchen.

I mix up vanilla ice cream, whole milk, a scoop of protein powder, chocolate syrup, and peanut butter in the blender and am impressed with my own genius as I stick a straw in it and take it back to George.

“CHARLOTTE?” Pause. “CHARLOTTE?” Longer pause. “CHARLOTTE? CHARLOTTE? ARE YOU STILL HERE? I WANT TO COME OUT PLEASE! IS ANYONE HERE?”

I hand the cup to George and walk across the living room and down the hallway to Matt's room. I open the door, then close it again and count to ten. Then I open it back up.

Matt's dinner hit the wall when he threw it, and the mashed potatoes, gravy, and macaroni salad have slid down the wall into a hamper of stuffed animals. God knows where the little cut-up bites of chicken have landed—I see a few sticking out from under his dresser. His biscuit is still on the table, half-eaten. He has pulled many of his board games (mostly the ones with tiny pieces) out of his closet and dumped them out, and every object formerly in the toy chest has been thrown against the wall. They lie in a telltale pile. And when I get closer, I see where the paint has chipped, under assault from some of the things composed of harder materials, like wood or plastic. It's like a postapocalyptic toy-factory wasteland in here, as if someone came and kidnapped Santa, causing the elves to flee in a blind panic. I feel tears rush up behind my eyes, so I press on either side of my nose and will them back. Matt is staring at me, possibly looking at the room through my eyes, and his face, red from screaming, starts to regain its normal color. His breathing calms down, and he tries to wipe at the tears he can't seem to control.