The Smart One (47 page)

One afternoon, Weezy decided she needed to come clean. They were both in the kitchen and Will was eating toast when she said, “Do you remember how Claire accused me of lying to the florist?” Will nodded. “Well, it was a little bit true. I just got so enamored with the wedding planning that after Claire called it off, I just kept doing research. It was silly, I know.”

It sounded much better when she called it research. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She looked at Will to see how he’d react, and her stomach fell. He was looking for something to say, but his face told her that he’d already known.

“Well,” he finally said, “I can see how that could happen.”

She’d nodded and begun loading the dishwasher. In the other room, Nina began to cry and Weezy had never been so happy for that little baby’s ability to distract them from everything else.

MAUREEN WAS OFFICIALLY RETIRED,
which meant that she stopped by more often than ever. She loved seeing Nina, and spent many afternoons just holding her, walking around the house with her. Also, she used this time to pitch business ideas to Weezy. Maureen suggested starting a nanny company, buying a gym franchise, and once—in one of her strangest moments—starting a purse design company.

Weezy just listened to her talk, nodded when she’d say, “Okay, I know you’re going to think this one is crazy.” She was like a wind-up toy, and Weezy figured she just needed to wear herself out.

Then one day Maureen brought over a catalog with continuing education classes. “I’m signing up for something,” she said. “And you’re doing it with me.”

A cooking class sounded a lot more pleasant than watching Maureen try to design purses, and so Weezy sat down and looked at the catalog with her. Paging through, she found a class on flower arrangement. “What about this one?” she said. “I bet it would be fun. I loved the florist we worked with for the wedding. He was amazing. If I could do what he could do …”

“We should open a flower shop,” Maureen said.

“I don’t think we’re really qualified,” Weezy said. “But I will take the class with you.”

“Okay, great. Let’s do it. And you never know. Maybe we’ll be great at it. Maybe we’ll start working for a florist, and then we’ll decide that we should open our own shop.” Maureen was off again, and Weezy let her go.

“I doubt that working for a florist would pay very much,” Weezy pointed out. “And they would probably never even hire someone our age. Plus, who knows what this course will be like? We don’t even know if it will be worth it.”

“No one ever does,” Maureen said.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG TIME,
Weezy began to wish for her house to be just hers and Will’s again. No babies crying, no worrying about making dinner for more than just the two of them. And while it probably wouldn’t happen for a while (they weren’t going to throw Max and Cleo out on their ears!), it seemed like it was actually a possibility, that in a year or two they might be able to watch TV alone, just the two of them.

As much as she knew she’d miss the kids when they were gone, she also knew that she’d be happy to reclaim her house, to maybe just have a quiet dinner with Will one night on the back patio, with wine, no interruptions, no one handing the baby around to give everyone a chance to scarf down their food. Yes, she was looking forward to that.

WEEZY WAS CHANGING NINA’S DIAPER ONE DAY,
and the little buster was crying so hard her face was bright red. Nothing Weezy said or did seemed to do anything to begin to quiet her. “Okay, sweetie pie,” she said. “Let’s just get through this. We’re in it together. A dry diaper will make you feel better, I promise.”

Nina continued to scream and then Max came back to the house. “Hey,” he called out. “Who’s that crying?”

Nina stopped and her eyes opened, looking around to find the voice that she recognized from all that time she was in the womb. Weezy stopped and stared at her, feeling tears start to form in her eyes. She blinked them back before Max came into the room, so he wouldn’t accuse her of being just a sentimental old lady. She finished fastening the diaper and picked up Nina in time to hand her to Max, and he took her easily, put his face against hers.

“There you go,” he said. “There you go.”

Anytime Weezy felt she was losing her patience with Cleo and Max, anytime she wanted to scream at them for being so irresponsible, for letting themselves get to this place, she would take a breath and observe them with Nina—the way they watched her, the way they rushed to her bassinet to make sure she was still alive. More than once, she watched Cleo place a hand on the baby’s back while she slept, waiting to feel the little body rising and falling so she could make sure she was still breathing.

She wanted to tell them that it would never go away, that feeling, that worry that your child was going to be okay, but she was pretty sure that they were figuring that out already. They’d have to watch Nina start walking, watch her walk up the stairs, sure that she was going to tumble down. They’d have to take her to school, pray that she made friends, hope that no other little kids were mean to her. They’d watch her get in fights, get left out, get cut from a sports team, not get into the college that she wanted. They had so much heartbreak ahead of them.

And so, after she had watched them for a minute or two, she found that she wasn’t angry anymore. Not much, anyway. At least, she didn’t feel like yelling at them. What else could she have said anyway? What could she have said to make them feel worse, to make this bigger? They had Nina to take care of and worry about for the rest of their lives.

They were in it now.

CHAPTER
24

Claire slept on Katherine’s couch for a few weeks, while she started her new job and looked for an apartment. It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but Katherine offered and Claire didn’t want to be rushed into finding a place she didn’t love. Plus, Katherine had a new boyfriend and as long as she had someone at the apartment to stay with Mitzy the dog, she could stay over at his place as often as she liked.

Most mornings, Claire woke up with Mitzy breathing on her, asking to be taken outside. She wasn’t the best-trained dog by a long shot, and she often just squatted in the apartment, relieved herself right where she was, looking right at Katherine or Claire, like she was daring them to punish her. The whole place smelled a little bit like urine, no matter how quickly Katherine cleaned up after her.

Also, Katherine had become very eco-conscious, and while Claire admired this, it could be a little hard to live with. She’d stopped one day to buy paper towels and cleaning supplies, and had spent the afternoon dusting and cleaning, but when Katherine came home to find her Windexing the front windows, she’d screamed like she was watching the execution of a near-extinct animal. “What are you doing?” she’d said. “I have rags for that. And this”—she held up the blue solution with two fingers—“is basically poison.”

Katherine also kept a compost bowl in the kitchen, which smelled and attracted flies. “She’s just a little
too
green,” Claire told Lainie over the phone. Claire was grateful for the place to stay, but she knew she couldn’t stay too long.

Claire interviewed for almost a month before she contacted her old boss, Amy. She had just started to panic and think that she was
never going to find another job, that she shouldn’t have quit any job in this economy, and she felt desperate. Amy was happy to hear from her, probably because she was just happy to hear that Claire was still alive and functioning and hadn’t had a complete breakdown. “I’ll put the word out,” Amy said. And true to her promise, Claire had three calls in a week, one from a nonprofit called Gallery 87 that was looking for a project manager to replace someone immediately. “We’re in a bit of a bind,” they kept telling Claire during the interview. She figured this worked in her favor.

The office that they gave Claire was a mess. All the drawers were still full, and there was a long sweater hanging on the back of the door, like the woman that had been there before had just not bothered to come back one day. The office assistant, Abigail, apologized when she showed Claire the office. “She moved to California with her new boyfriend,” Abigail said. “They hadn’t even been dating that long, like two months, and one day she just came in and said she was leaving.” Abigail shook her head. “We think she was dying to get out of New York and just looking for an excuse.”

Claire had no idea what she was doing at the job, but no one seemed to care. They were all just happy to have a body there again. The purpose of Gallery 87 was to pay high school kids to beautify the city—they painted murals on the sides of graffiti-covered buildings and in the subways, and spruced up parks, and playgrounds. Claire was thrown into the middle of projects that had been in the works for months, accompanied teenagers to parks and watched them paint benches with designs they’d created. They would descend on the park in the morning, and at the end of the day the benches were bright spots of color, some painted with checkerboards and swirls, one with tiny animals marching all over it. Claire was surprised at how much better the park looked when they left, how much it had changed. She wondered if she could get the kids to come paint her new apartment when she moved.

Every night when Claire left work she was so tired she was almost dizzy. Her head swam with information, and she felt like she’d never catch up. She slept better than she had in a year.

Whenever she had a few free moments, Claire would go through
the drawers and files in her office. She threw out old receipts and packs of gum, and kept paper clips and pencils. In a cardboard box, she put all of the woman’s personal stuff—her sweater, an old pair of heels, a stuffed duck, and pictures that were on the bulletin board. She was going to throw it all out, but it seemed nicer to put it all in a box together first.

In one of the drawers, Claire found a shopping list that read:
Tulips, Carrots, Q-tips
, and
Celery
. She taped the list up on the wall behind her computer. It made her smile. She liked reading it out loud, reciting it under her breath like a prayer or a poem, a crazy little list of the things someone needed.

A BROKER SHOWED HER TWO APARTMENTS
in Manhattan before Claire decided she was going to live in Brooklyn. Most of her friends were there now anyway, and she didn’t want to go back to the Upper West Side. She’d walked by her old building one day, expecting to feel drawn to it, but instead she found herself speeding up to get past it quickly. She waved at the doorman when she passed, but didn’t think he remembered her. He waved back like she could be anyone.

Katherine tried to convince Claire to live in Windsor Terrace near her, but Claire was set on Brooklyn Heights. She’d fallen in love with everything about the neighborhood. Even the street names were adorable—Poplar, Orange, Cranberry, Pineapple, and Vine. She didn’t care how small her place was, she just wanted to be there. It was too perfect for words.

“I think you should try to widen your search,” Katherine told her. Sometimes she looked at Claire like she’d lost her mind, like she’d forgotten how hard it could be to find a decent apartment in New York and would end up living on Katherine’s couch forever. But Claire remained hopeful.

THE DAY THAT CLAIRE MOVED OUT OF THE HOUSE,
Max followed her around with Nina, making Nina’s arm wave. “Say good-bye to your aunt,” he said. “Tell her how much you’re going to miss her.” She remembered how, when she left for college, Max had cried in her
dorm room. He was ten at the time, and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He seemed sort of the same now, holding Nina up and talking behind her, saying, “Aunt Claire, how can you leave me? You’re going to miss me so much.”

And she did miss them, of course. As soon as she left, she missed them all, more than she had before she moved back. It was like she felt their absence more now. That was the worst part about leaving home—no matter what, it always felt a little sad. But not for one second did this mean that she doubted her decision. She was leaving and that was that.

When Claire told Lainie she was moving, she nodded like she’d been waiting for the news. “I hoped maybe you’d stay. That you’d like it here so much you wouldn’t want to go back.”

“Lainie,” Claire said, “I can’t stay here.”

“I know, I know. I knew you’d go. I just thought maybe you’d change your mind.”

“I’ll come visit, I promise. Probably more than I ever did before.”

“Good,” Lainie said. “Because once I have this baby, I’ll probably never be able to leave the house again. I’ll be under house arrest, so you’ll have to come to me.”

“I will,” Claire said. “I promise.”

And she had been home three times already since she moved out. She loved seeing Nina, holding that sweet little baby. And then Lainie had her fourth baby, a boy that they named Tommy. Lainie and Cleo got the babies together pretty often, would put them next to each other on blankets and let them play side by side. They referred to Nina as Tommy’s girlfriend and talked often about their future wedding. Claire knew they were kidding, but she swore those little babies smiled at each other.

Every time Claire came home, Weezy made a big deal of it. They all had dinner, and Martha came home to be there too, like it was a special occasion, like they all hadn’t eaten together every single night just a few months ago.

WHEN THE BROKER TOLD CLAIRE
that there was a studio on Pineapple Street that was for rent, she almost screamed. She tried to stay calm,
but she knew that barring a major disaster (a serious mice infestation, for example), she was going to take it. Pineapple Street had been her favorite one from the start, the place where she hoped to find an apartment. She started to think that she was getting very lucky.

The apartment was one of the smallest that Claire had ever seen. But it was clean and solid and the girl that was moving out told her that she loved it there. (And she seemed honest, even if she did have Care Bear sheets on her bed.) There was a little half wall that hid the bed from the rest of the apartment, and enough room to put a tiny couch and TV comfortably. Claire didn’t have any furniture anyway, since she’d sold it all, and she promised herself that she was going to get only the basics—a bed, a couch, and maybe a little table.