On Grace (16 page)

“Grace. Nicole Winters,” she says in a clipped voice that I immediately read into. If she were offering me the job she would sound happier. But maybe she is just trying to sound professional, considering she’s going to be my boss. After all, when I met her at the post-yoga coffee, it was under friendlier, on-the-same-level circumstances, so maybe this is just her way of exerting authority. It’s like predicting the meaning of a college acceptance based upon the thickness of the envelope. A thin envelope could have a one-page letter containing a rejection. Or a thin envelope could contain a one-page letter offering congratulations and announcing that the thick admissions packet will arrive by the end of the week. But the rejections are usually thinner. So in this split second of trying to interpret Nicole’s intention from three words, I have not only assumed I have and don’t have the job, but I’ve returned to those stressful days of college admissions.
Snap out of it, Grace. For God’s sake, find out what the woman has to say.

“Oh, hi Nicole,” I say casually, trying not to sound as if I am dying to find out what the woman has to say.

“So,” she says and then pauses.
Oh no, not good.
“I really am so glad Callie introduced us. It was great to meet you and hear your ideas for our new email product.”

But.

“But, I’m so sorry I’m not going to be able to offer you the job,” Nicole says apologetically.

“Oh.”
Oh? Is that all you can say, Grace?

“I’ll just be straight with you. I think you’re incredibly qualified, but the woman I hired has a deep and up-to-date network of health and wellness contacts in Westchester, and I just think she’ll be a better fit for us. I’m really sorry.”

Key words: up-to-date. Cameron was right. Those of us who leave the workforce to have babies are suckers. When we try to go back, no one wants us. We’re damaged goods.

“
I am, too,” I say.
Act with grace.
“But thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I think you have a wonderful company, and I hope the new email product is a huge success. I’ll definitely subscribe to it
.”

“Thank you, Grace. Again, I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but I’ll keep you in mind if anything else ever comes up here or if I hear of anyone looking for someone with your skill set.”
Packing snacks, writing the descriptions for the school benefit silent auction items, dodging sketchy neighbors.

“Thanks, Nicole. I really appreciate it.”

I’m crestfallen. I’ve never had the opportunity to use that word in my life. But it’s so fitting now. When I imagined getting this job, I pictured myself on a surfboard riding the crest of a wave that would lead me from the vast sea— the one that had swallowed up part of my identity—onto the shore of my “self.” But instead, the wave has crashed into the shore prematurely, preventing me from proudly standing on my longboard, cruising onto the beach. Crestfallen.

I pour a cup of coffee and sit on the couch. I stare out the window at the leaves that are continuing to turn. A red bird alights next to its twin on a branch. They flutter off, busy to get to the next branch, then the next.
To everything there is a season.
I can’t help myself from going to that place in my mind where I interpret Nicole’s decision (the thinner envelope) as a sign that I am not meant to have a
real
job right now. On the other hand, it could be the universe trying to challenge me to not give up so easily. Two job rejections do not a failed career reentry make. But I am really disappointed. I had really gotten my hopes up on this one.

To be honest, I do feel some relief. Relief because I won’t have to arrange sitters three afternoons a week. Relief because I can stop waking up in the middle of the night to maniacally scribble half-legible ideas for the emails on the pad beside my bed. And relief because now I don’t have to worry about doing a good job and proving myself. Despite always having high expectations for myself and putting my all into every project I’ve ever done in my life, I am inherently lazy. The dichotomy doesn’t make sense. I just force myself to be productive, to be really good at whatever it is I’m currently doing, because I would be so disappointed in myself if I didn’t. But most of the time, I’d rather just sit on the couch, drink coffee, and watch cooking competition shows. (
Will they be able to move the ten-foot bridge made entirely out of candy from the prep kitchen to the judges’ staging area without dropping it
?) This leads me to wonder what it is I really want in my life. And although I’ve had this conversation with myself a gazillion times, I don’t know if I’ve been honest lately.

And since my plan had always been to go back to work once James started school, that plan just kind of took on a life of its own, first with the
Weekly
and then with
Well in Westchester
. I never really examined it carefully. It was just what I was going to do. But now that time is here and, maybe, instead of just being on autopilot I should think about why it’s important to me to go back to work.
If
it’s important to me.

Come to think of it, I’ve always run on autopilot, conformed to the norm: high school leads to college, college graduation leads to a job, serious boyfriend leads to marriage, marriage leads to babies. Never once did I picture myself taking a gap year after high school and traveling through Europe, moving to Colorado after college to teach skiing for a year, staying single, and choosing not to have children. Conforming is just what most mainstream girls do. I sometimes envy the frizzy-haired, hemp-wearing, child-free rebels sitting in their airy, light-filled outer-borough brownstones with their life partners leafing through photo albums of all the wonderful adventures they’ve embarked upon, stopping only to take a call from their agents letting them know that their debut novel has just topped the best-seller list.

Yes, there is a sense of fulfillment and identity I can only get by engaging in productive and stimulating work that is outside the realm of my children and their school. And there is something affirming about dressing in dry-clean-only clothes and sitting at a desk in an office that’s not in my home. Something that I felt distinctly when I first graduated college and went off to work that first day in an Ann Taylor suit with the good leather work bag my sister bought me for graduation. Sure, after I exhausted the new wardrobe and all its iterations (white blouse with the navy skirt, white blouse with the khaki trousers, navy skirt with the grey blazer, ivory dress with the grey blazer) and I got comfortable with my job, that initial feeling faded and then I just became another drone trying to figure out if I’d already worn the navy skirt suit that week, packing myself into an already-packed subway car, trying to be happy with a paycheck that was in no way fair remuneration for all the hard work I did. But I felt important. And feeling important is magnificent.

I want to feel important again. Unfortunately, I don’t know how many kids have the ability to make their mothers feel that way. Sure, my kids can make me feel proud, and loved, and needed in a way that prickles with pain and pure love at the exact same time. But they don’t make me feel important.

Which leads me to wonder (overthinker at work) why it’s so important for me to feel important. Is it the praise I covet? Is it the pat on the back from a person of authority when I do a good job? Well, maybe partly. Mostly? Yes. If I could I would mainline praise. So maybe it’s
not
the bachelor I want. Maybe I just want the bachelor to think I’m the prettiest, nicest, smartest, most desirable of all his suitors, and then have him go off with second-best and let
her
deal with all the crap that comes with getting chosen. And if I could muster enough of my self-esteem to realize I
already
am important, whether or not an eight-year-old or a highly respected boss tells me so out loud, then maybe I can finally let myself off the hook and relax for the first time in thirty-nine years. Maybe I can finally stop trying so hard to get everyone else to tell me I’m so damn special and just realize that I am.

“Do you want to hear the rap I wrote last night, Mom?” Henry asks me as he comes into the kitchen on Friday morning while I’m trying to bust out a few eggs-in-a-hole—the boys’ favorite breakfast. I’m leaving for the airport the moment they get onto the bus, so I’m feeling a little rushed.

“Sure, buddy,” I say. Henry has been into writing raps lately. There was the one about basketball (get it in the hoop/throw it for a loop/when you swoop) and the one about homework (math is tough/the carpet is rough/enough is enough). But I am not prepared for the masterpiece he is about to unleash. He opens with a beat-box intro.

“Oh fuck/you shuck a buck/and you got some good luck/some roses you pluck/oh fuck. . . .”

“Whoa! Whoa! Henry!” I say, and I can’t help myself from cracking up. Here in the exact moment I should be stern and formidable, I am laughing so hard the pee is starting to leak out. “You can’t say that,” I say, trying to regain my composure as I frantically wave my spatula about.

Henry smiles. He knows exactly what he’s doing. “What? I’m not gonna sing it at school.”

“Seriously, Hen?” Again, I’m pleased I’m not losing my shit here. I’m handling this calmly, and he’s actually listening. Or at least pretending to. “Why don’t you write another rap about basketball or something? Or about Legos? You know if you sang that at school or told any of your friends about it, you would have gone straight to the principal’s office, and I can’t have you go to the principal’s office today, because I’m going to be on an airplane, and I can’t pick you up from school. So please, please, don’t tell anyone at school about this.” Then I bring on stern. “Plus, this is completely inappropriate. You may not use bad words in your raps or even out of your raps. It’s not okay,” I say, wondering if he’s been sneaking a listen to the “explicit” songs on my iPod. I know I sound like one of those holier-than-thou parents who says, “My little Billy doesn’t even know any bad words,” but I honestly didn’t know he knew the word fuck. Not a word Darren and I toss around. At least not in front of the boys. I guess that’s what recess is for.

Disaster averted and little brother’s ears thankfully not corrupted (James was still in the mudroom putting on his shoes during Eminem Jr.’s concert), I proceed with the breakfast prep and imagine Darren’s face when I tell him. He’ll laugh harder than I did. For some reason, fathers take it as a point of pride when their boys swear, perform arm farts, or burp the alphabet. Man training has begun.

“When are you coming home from California, Mommy?” James asks as he punctures the yolk with his fork and dips the crust in the ooze. He’s not asking because he’s sad. He likes to know what’s coming next and when exactly that’s going to be.

“I’ll be home late Sunday night, but you’ll be asleep, so I’ll see you Monday morning. What should we have for breakfast on Monday?” I ask, trying to distract him from my impending absence.

“Chocolate-chip pancakes!” Henry shouts.

“Well, I’m in for the pancakes, but we’ll see about the chocolate chips. Depends on how well you guys behave for Daddy this weekend.” Who am I kidding? They’re going to be angels. Kids save their best behavior for their dads. It’s the moms who seem to always bear the brunt of their kids’ disorderly conduct. Part of me hopes Darren has to deal with at least one meal refusal or a sock tantrum. I’ll settle for a door slam. It’s only fair.

As the boys collect their sweatshirts and backpacks, I don’t tell them that I’ll miss them or that I’ll be so sad while I’m away. Because I don’t think either will be true. I love my boys to the depths of my soul and beyond, but I can be away from them for a few days without self-combusting. I’m actually excited to be going away. It always makes the coming back so sweet and joyful. Like what working fathers get every single night they get home from work when their children rush the door and hang on them like they’ve been gone for a year fighting a war instead of in midtown Manhattan for twelve hours. I can’t wait to feel that. That feeling of an unexpected gift, the first buds on my magnolia tree in April, the gold-sequined, top-hat finale of
A Chorus Line
.

“One more hug,” I tell them both, squeezing them tight before they rush away to get on the bus. I inhale their little boy smells of laundry detergent, toothpaste, and sleep, and tell them that I love them. I wave till the bus is out of sight, then I rush inside, grab my bags, and get into the taxi that’s waiting in my driveway to take me to the airport.

This is admittedly and embarrassingly lame, but when I get on the plane, in an effort to use my time wisely, I make a list of all the topics I want to ponder during the flight: Darren (with a subtopic of Jake Doyle), job, life goals, and how to help Cameron. True to form and order, once the plane is at cruising altitude, I get busy thinking about Darren. I’m big on attaching soundtracks to my life experiences, so I put on my “reflective” playlist which contains everything from “Fix You” by Coldplay (I cry when I think about how Chris Martin wrote that for Gwyneth when her dad died) to “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers (a guy I worked with eons ago turned me onto that soul-stirring classic), from “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield (totally corny, but the words are inspiring) to “Superman” by Five for Fighting and “Superwoman” by Alicia Keys (both self-explanatory).

It’s now been almost two weeks since the big revelation, and I realize that the emotion now making its debut in my limbic system is anger. Anger that takes over my body like I’ve freebased it. Over the last few days, I was strangely ambivalent about the whole thing, a position almost bordering on acquiescence. I just felt too tired to fight it. The basic facts are that he loves me, that we have a solid marriage and a great family, that he did something stupid, and that I should just move on. Simple. Done. Get on with my life.

I had moments of even forgetting the whole thing had ever happened. Like I’d be in a conversation with Darren and everything would be normal until I got some strange pang somewhere near where I imagine my gallbladder to be, and then I remembered that he did the dirty with another woman. But those blissfully blank moments around the pang made me realize that maybe the pangs are temporary, and when they go away, I’ll only be left with the parts that don’t ache. And then someday, memories of The Bandit will appear only once in a while, like when we’re checking into a hotel on a family vacation and I glance over to the lobby bar or when we’re away, just the two of us, and we come back to our hotel room after a few drinks, laughing in the hall, trying not to wake the conventioneers. Then as Darren slides the key card into the door, I’ll imagine his expression when he brought her into his room instead of me.