Time of My Life (15 page)

“Oh my God, I’m so proud of you,” he says, pulling me close, then holding me by the shoulders from afar, the way that a grandparent might his teenage grandchild who has gone through an unprecedented growth spurt. “I mean, seriously! Jill! It’s amazing!”

I demur and pick up a menu, even though I order the same thing every time I’m here: the chicken gyro platter—and I do exactly that when the goateed waiter who looked like he might be perhaps getting his MFA in poetry while busing tables at night, ambles over and says, “So what’s your pleasure?”

Halfway through dinner, Jack reaches around into his messenger bag and pulls out two envelopes.

“For you,” he says, sliding one across the table.

With a furrowed brow, I engineer it around my plate, then flip it open.

“Oh, I didn’t realize that you really intended to do this!” I say. I eye my plane ticket to Miami, which is tucked on top of Jack’s handwritten list of suggested activities: Jet Skiing, South Beach, new restaurant openings.

“Of course,” he answers and reaches over to weave his fingers into mine. “I’ve planned out every detail of the trip—all you have to do is pack and show up at the airport on time.”

“You did this all this weekend?” I cock my head. “I thought you were taking care of your mom.” I pause, unsure of whether I should be amazed at what Jack can actually pull off when he aspires to it or upset that he wasn’t aspiring to something greater. “And writing.”

Indeed, I’d envisioned him either hovered above her sickbed or crouched over his laptop through all waking hours. Not sweet-talking airline representatives into upgrades to business class or booking nearly impossible reservations at celeb-packed Asian-fusion joints.

“The writing’s going a little slower than I expected.” He shrugs.

“What’s the problem? Maybe I can help.” I nudge some tab-bouleh around a green pepper and swoop my fork in to grab it.

“There isn’t a problem,” he says. “It’s just, you know, my mom is a distraction, and I wanted to be sure that I gave her my full attention.”

With a mouthful, I nod my head in what I hope is support—even though I suspect that, mother or not, Jack might always find an excuse for the writing to go a little slower than expected.

“Anyway,” he continues. “This isn’t about my writing. This is about Miami!”

“Are you sure,” I ask, “that you wouldn’t rather spend that time at that writers’ workshop we talked about? So that you hit the Thanksgiving goal you were aiming for?”

“Jillian! Seriously. You’re killing me here.”

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” I say. But I don’t add, because when we split seven years ago, you ruefully and regretfully told me that you’d orphaned your manuscript to spend more time with me, and that had you not devoted so much effort to what was now a torpedoed relationship, you might now have finally fulfilled your dream. And that I spat back that you never had any intention of fulfilling said dream because it was nothing more than a mirage, a mythical goal that you and your mother conjured up like an illusory end zone, that you had no intention of ever running toward. And that you crumbled in—I’m not sure what—rage, defeat, true pain—when I said such hateful things. Such that part of me always wondered if maybe you were right: that I hadn’t been encouraging enough, nurturing enough, though I’d been plenty of both, and that when you slipped into the living room late at night to bang out a few pages, and I’d call you back, needy and hating to sleep alone, maybe I unconsciously didn’t want you to get away from me, to take off on a new trajectory and potentially leave me behind. I’d been through that enough already.

“I know,” Jack says kindly. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll write when I write.” He raises his glass. “To Miami.”

“To Miami,” I echo, clinking my chardonnay against his.

I look down, and it’s only then that I notice the date on the ticket. October 3. Three weeks away. The mere glance at it sends a jolt through my core, as if my chi were getting tangled all over again. This, after all, was the date that I was supposed to tearfully trudge into an East Village bar, order a cosmo to nurse my bruises after Jack and I were nearly ready to dissolve ourselves from each other, and then sidle up on a bar stool next to the man who would heal me. The man who would turn out to be my future. Henry.

I double-back at the date, then grab the ticket and stuff it into my purse. October 3. Now that dates and times have lost all meaning, so, too, I tell myself, can this one.

Chapter Sixteen

A
llie, it turns out, was a supermodel in training.

“I practice every night in front of the mirror,” she confides to me when we take a break for the photographer to reload his film, and she munches on Fritos. The grease on her fingertips shines under the glare of the studio lights.

Leigh’s eyes widen in horror. “Allie! You do not.”

“Yeah, I do, Mom, so? No biggie. I want to be in Victoria’s Secret.” She shimmies her shoulders like, I imagine, she’s seen glistening, half-naked, nearly inhuman women do during prime time.

“That’s it,” Leigh sighs. “We’re losing the TVs in the house.”

Allie is called back to the set, and as she strikes her pose, a makeup artist darts in the frame to touch up her lip gloss and smooth off the crumbs from her chips.

“Easy with the makeup!” Leigh calls from the side. “Good Lord,” she says to me. “If I wanted her to look like a pageant girl, I would have entered her in Little Miss New York.”

I shrug. In fact, back in my old life, I’d considered sending in Katie’s picture to the
Parents
child-model contest, so I wasn’t entirely sure why Leigh is so disgruntled. Don’t all parents want the world to coo over their offspring, as verification that their genes are the literal picture of DNA perfection, enough to make other couples froth with envy that their tots don’t measure up?

Leigh’s cell phone rings, and just as she excuses herself to the corner of the white-walled studio, Josie steps through the door. She glances around, then waves.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” I say, as she strides over in hip-hugging blue-rinsed jeans and a crisp pink oxford. “I’ve got everything under control.”

“I know,” she says, her eyes darting. “I just wanted to check in.”

“He’s not here, Jo,” I say.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Bart,” I say firmly. “He’s not here.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she says unconvincingly, as color spreads across her neck. “I’m here to make sure that the shoot goes okay.”

Before I can answer, Leigh rushes back over.

“So there’s a problem,” she exhales. “My neighbor just called and, evidently, the basement pipes exploded and our house has flooded.
Shit.
” She stares down at the phone, as if she’s intuiting it will ring. “I called Liam, but I can’t reach him. How much longer do you need Allie for?”

“Oh God, at least another hour. Maybe two? They want to shoot her in different wardrobes so they can use her for the winter campaign, too.”

“Shit,” she repeats, then looks at me intently. “Well,” she pauses. “What about if she stays with you?”

“Yeah, no, that’s fine,” I say. “Just sign the waiver that I’m her guardian, and you can pick her up after the shoot.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” She shakes her head. “It’s already 4:30, and by the time I get home and deal with the plumbers and the cleanup, it will be hours . . . and well, Allie adores you, and I trust you, so could she just sleep at your place tonight?”

“Sleep there?”

“Well, yeah, turn it into a sleepover of sorts. I’ll pick her up first thing in the morning and take her to school.”

“Um, okay, I-I guess,” I say with a stutter. “Jack’s in Philadelphia for work, and I had dinner plans with a friend, but . . .” I mull it over: maximum bonding time with Jack’s niece. This can’t be a bad thing. “No, definitely. Let’s do it.”

“Thank God. Okay, look, you have my cell, call me if anything comes up, and I’ll buzz you as soon as this mess is taken care of.” She inhales and bats her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“No, no, don’t be silly.” I wave her off.

Leigh calls out to Allie and explains her good-byes, and then she’s off like a clap of thunder—one second here, the next she’s gone.

“Good luck with that,” Josie says, after we hear the heavy metal doors to the studio slam shut.

“How hard can it be?” I think of Katie and how I’d nearly mastered the art of domesticity.

“Harder than you think,” she replies dryly. “You’re not a mom.”

I start to disagree but then grasp that she’s not incorrect: for all intents and purposes, I’m nobody’s mother. I’m saddened by the realization more than I expect to be.

“Well, I’m out of this blowhole,” Josie sighs, and looks at her watch. It’s impossible not to detect her bitterness.

“Jo,” I start but am then unsure what else to say. Because I know that in the future, in the
real
future, she’s happily content with Art, and that whatever life choices she made, whatever
hard
choices she made, she seems satisfied with them. And I also now know that if I hadn’t come back, we never would have landed this print campaign, and she never would have been thrust so thoroughly back into her fantasy life with Bart. He never would have swirled around her head, like an escape hatch from her mundane doldrums, from the San Jose Opera, from a husband who now seemed to be a second-best choice.

Before I can speak, however, Bart walks in the studio, with the same nervous glance that Josie had cast about when she arrived earlier. The two lock eyes, and Josie erupts into a near-lunatic grin and then shuffles over to greet him with a peck on the cheek.

I watch her for a moment, then turn back to Allie, who has mesmerized both the crew and the photographer with her flawless charisma. She catches me staring and winks, then blows me an air kiss. I reach up to grab it, and she squeals in delight. Long after she’s returned to posing, I can still feel the kiss on my palm, like a seared scar that, try as I might, just won’t seem to fade.

M
EGAN MEETS US
at Serendipity for dinner.

“Of course I don’t mind,” she says, when I explained our change of plans. “It gives me good practice.”

“News to report?” I asked on the phone. I tried to remember when Meg announced that she was pregnant for the second time, but nothing jiggers in my brain.

“I can’t test for a few more days,” she responded, with either hope or nervousness: In both of our lives, the two are knotted so closely, they’re nearly indistinguishable.

The restaurant is a throwback to a tea shop from my grandmother’s era. Vivid blue and red and yellow and purple Tiffany lamps hang from the ceiling like stained-glass windows, elegant wire-backed chairs cushioned with blooming pastel fabrics are tucked under marble-topped tables. The unmistakable scent of chocolate envelops the space, and around us, families clutter booths, toddlers sitting on top of their older siblings, moms leaning into fathers and laughing in their ears. This sort of laughter crops up when you’re ensconced in something so quaint, so innocent, that it’s easy to forget that outside the glass doors, another world exists entirely.

“Can I order a hot chocolate for dinner?” Allie asks. Serendipity is famous, after all, for their hulking sundaes and their frozen hot chocolate.

“Absolutely not,” I tut. “Healthy dinner, then dessert after.” I grab a napkin and dip it into my ice water, then rub down her hands.

“Come on,” she whines. “Please?”

“Not even with a cherry on top.” I glance at the kids’ menu and twinges of the old me emerge; I’m more than a little horrified at the offerings: fried chicken fingers, (undoubtedly processed) hot dogs, pasta and butter.
I’d never allow this crap past Katie’s lips. Never!

Megan nudges me in the booth. “What’s the big deal? Let her have the frozen hot chocolate for dinner.”

“Yesssssssssssssssss!” Allie shrieks. “Lemme, lemme, lemme, lemme!”

“No,” I say firmly. “Dinner first. Sorry, Al.”

“Aw, come on, Jill. She’s celebrating her first big shoot. She’s a near star!” Megan grins at Allie who is now standing opposite us, perched on the sparkly red leather cushion, as if she’s about to conquer the world. Or pounce on us like waiting prey. Whichever comes first.

“Uh-uh,” I say. “Nutritionally, it’s important that she get a mix of protein and fiber at dinner. It helps her sleep at night and ensures a deeper REM.”

Megan rotates her head to cast a suspicious sidelong stare. “And you know this how?”

“
Parenting
magazine.” I shrug.

“And you’re reading this why?” Megan says slowly.

It’s only then that I realize I have absolutely no excuse for amassing the knowledge that I’ve amassed, so, as a distraction, I cave.

“Fine, Allie, you can have the hot chocolate for dinner,” I say, but Megan is still looking at me with peculiarity. “What?” I ask her finally.

“You’re not pregnant are you?”

“Oh God, no!” I laugh.

“Then what’s with the kid-knowledge and the parent magazines?” For reasons unclear to me, she appears bruised.

“It’s nothing . . .” I race for an explanation. “I was in an office the other day, waiting for a meeting, and saw it on the table. So I flipped through it, you know, to kill time.”

Meg doesn’t respond but returns to reading her menu. After a minute, she says, “Why are you lying to me? I’ve known you since we were kids. You think I can’t tell that you’re lying to me?”

“Meg, Jesus Christ, it’s nothing!” I wave my arm and try to hail down a waiter.

“Seriously, are you pregnant?” She stares at me, her eyes unavoidably welling.

“Oh my God, Meg. NO.” I place my hand on top of hers. “Really. You’re overreacting. It was just a silly article that I noticed in passing.” I turn to Allie. “I tell you what, Al, not only can you have frozen hot chocolate but I’ll let you order a banana split, too.”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” Allie screams, still standing on the seat of the booth, and throws her fifty-pound body through the air.

“At least bananas are healthy,” I say with a guilty look to Megan.

“Hey, I’m not judging,” she answers, holding her hands in the air, just as the waiter weaves his way over. “I say give the girl what she wants. That’s my motto. God knows I’m going to be over-the-top with my kid.”

She says this, and it strikes me violently, ruthlessly that this might never come true. That, unless something else has shifted in this new altered-reality, that sundaes and frozen hot chocolate and having the choice to say yes, or even no, won’t be on Megan’s future landscape. I watch her cajole Allie down from the booth and into a game of patty-cake and try to reassure myself.
So much is different this time around. So much and everything. So, too, might this be.

Later, after we’d taken a horse and buggy ride through Central Park and after Allie had crashed from her sugar high, in which she demolished my apartment in under ten minutes, Meg and I gently strip off her pink plaid dress, tugging it gingerly over her head, and slip her white leather sandals off her tiny feet. I carry her to my bed, tuck her under the covers, and watch as her eyelids droop lower and heavier, as if weighted down with sand. I click off the nightstand light, but neither Meg nor I turn to leave. Instead, we are transfixed.

“I’m sorry about before,” she says. “It’s just this whole thing.”

I don’t answer; I just listen to Allie’s lilting breath slide in and out.

“I’m just so focused on it, you know?” Meg continues. “Getting pregnant, staying pregnant . . .”

I reach over and clutch her hand.

“Sometimes it seems like too much.” Her voice cracks. “Like it’s the only thing in the world that I want.”

I squeeze her hand harder, firmer, a tacit, wordless admission that I get it, and that she wasn’t alone.

Eventually, we slip out of the room, not because we want to but because after a while, you feel strange to watch over a sleeping little girl who isn’t your own. Even if she looks like an angel. And even if she reminds you so much,
too much,
of the angel you once had or the angel whom you so desperately hoped for.

After Megan leaves and I settle on the (scratchy goddamned) couch, I will myself to sleep, hoping to dream of nothing, but instead, dreaming over and over again of Katie. An angel no longer at my door.