With Friends Like These: A Novel (27 page)

“Job hunting,” I said, as matter-of-factly as if I’d said I was checking the weather. I’d scheduled my Autumn appointments during hours when Xander would be away. Who needs a buzzkill? I had just started using that word, too: buzzkill, buzzkill.

“Good for you—it’s about time,” Xander said. “Remember Joe Thrombosis? His wife wants to start some sort of diet website for women. I told her to call you.”

“Why?” I was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and lifted my arms to check for flab.

“Back down, fighter,” he said. “It sounded interesting, that’s all, and how hard could it be?”

After he left the room, I’d make a note to bring up his tone with Autumn. But Xander seemed in no hurry to depart. He sat in my reading chair and put his feet up on the ottoman. “When’s Dash’s appointment at Jackson Collegiate?”

“Wednesday.” I’d reminded him of this every night at dinner.

“Do you think he’s up to it? Have you been working with him?”

Couldn’t Xander see I was busy? “Yes and yes.” I returned to my screen. “If he doesn’t go on strike.” That afternoon, when I took Dash’s vegetable puzzle off the shelf, he’d whined, “No peas, Mommy, please!” as if I were going to force him to eat a bowlful the size of his head.

I continued on with my career test well after the time Xander finally took the hint and left the room.

•   •   •

When my session with Autumn started the next day, she kicked it off by revealing, at a quick clip, that “pink is your missing link.” She advised me to “embrace your traditional femininity and use it to advance goals, equally balanced between home and the workplace.” A blink of pink would be a private sign to remind myself “to be bold without sacrificing your essential self.” The pinker I could make my life, the more uplifted and motivated she said I’d become. I loved this approach, like a fashion
magazine reminding lawyers to wear push-up bras in case they forgot they were women.

The next morning, I put aside the green tweed pants suit that I’d selected for Dash’s school meeting in favor of a pale pink skirt and matching sweater I hadn’t taken out of my closet in two years. For good luck, I ate half a pink grapefruit for breakfast, which I finished as Jamyang walked Dash down the stairs.

“Aren’t you the little gentleman?” I said.

“Like Daddy,” Dash said, adjusting his bow tie and grinning. In the gesture, I saw Xander’s face and pulled Dash into my arms.

“Excited?” I asked. His freshly shampooed hair smelled like tangerines. “It’s going to be an adventure,” I said as we clasped hands.

Dash and I walked to the car, long as a hearse, waiting for us. Having a driver was easier than driving myself. We arrived with time to spare. A young man dutifully lettered our name tags and we strolled down the hall, stopping to admire bulletin boards covered with finger paintings and haiku.
Night passes my eyes / Jogged by a staccato beat. / Can light make me see?
This young poet had read my mind.

The regular students were getting settled into their homerooms, the girls in navy pleated skirts, anklets, and white blouses, the Peter Pan collars edged with lace, and the boys in a uniform much like what I’d selected for Dash—white shirt, khaki pants, and neat oxfords, though their ties were long with rep stripes. The school felt orderly yet warm. I liked it even more than at our first visit.

In the classroom, Dash immediately started zooming a fire truck across the floor. I chose a prime seat on the other side of the room. Around me were an agreeable cluster of well-scrubbed strangers and their offspring, the adults trying to hide under fake camaraderie, pretending they didn’t feel their child’s entire academic success hinged on the next hour. Every person looked recently barbered or blow-dried, dry cleaner’s fumes all but wafting off their freshly pressed clothing.

Dash was starting to dig through the costume bin when I heard a fuss. A loud child had backed into the room. The boy was a good bit taller than
Dash and wore an old, oversized jacket. Dash took one look and ran to his side, shrieking, “Henry, Henry. Henry,” and proceeded to tug at his sleeve, dragging him toward the blocks. The Messiah had arrived. Dash worshipped Henry Fisher-Wells.

I looked for Tom Wells, who always could keep his son in line, and started to scoot over to make room for him. I like Tom—he’s as solid as a guy comes—and the regrettable by-product of the cold war between Talia and me was that it meant I’d stopped having conversations with him if he answered the phone when I called their apartment. But it was Talia who walked through the door, wearing one of her more regrettable ensembles. I recognized the tiger scarf because I’d given it to her, though I’d never pictured it accessorizing a droopy gray skirt and a shirt that any self-respecting Goodwill shopper would pass by. She came toward me immediately.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, shifting back ever so slightly. “Weren’t you supposed to be in the office?” If our mutual desk was empty, it was Talia’s problem.

“No. You were,” she said, accusation in her voice, and hissed something about our having arranged a switch. I had to admit, though only to myself, that it sounded … familiar. I had agreed to the change before I realized it conflicted with the school appointment. But I’d e-mailed Talia again and made it clear that I wanted to stick with our original plan. I was 90 percent sure I’d sent that e-mail, which I’d redrafted several times so it didn’t sound overly apologetic, my customary position.

I took a moment and tried to capture an aura of pink calm as I fondled my long strand of pearls. There must be something to Autumn’s approach. To my surprise, I felt in complete control!

“But it’s my regular day off,” I said evenly. Talia wrinkled her forehead and turned away. I’m sure she was furious, as the new Chloe would be. The old Chloe would have assumed the snafu was her fault. I adored the new Chloe!

The teacher clapped her hands. Dash obediently followed her direction and took a chair at one of two tiny tables. Henry stood in the corner, piling
block atop block. The teacher stepped away from the tables and stood over Henry, trying to cajole him into joining the group. He ignored her. I glanced at Talia, who looked smugly amused. “That big kid over there is ruining it for everyone,” the mother next to me said, none too quietly.

“Henry,” the teacher said. “This isn’t how Jackson Collegiate boys and girls behave.”

Mother Hen gave Henry a stern look, and then—point, Henry Fisher-Wells—the arrogant little rooster said “Fuck” repeatedly as he came at his own building like an enemy bombardier. The minute the curse flew out and his building crashed the whole barnyard went rogue, kids leaping out of chairs, scattering in every direction.

“Does that child have Tourette’s?” the man on the other side of me asked. “This isn’t a special-needs school.” Half of the kids were staring openmouthed, and the others, Dash among them, had joined the party. I wanted to pounce on him and pull him back, but he’d already hurried toward his hero, singing something that I prayed everyone thought was “cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck a duck.”

  
Talia

“We need to hurry,
boychik
.” Whenever I used my father’s nickname for Henry, he gave me a dimpled grin.

“I’m not
boychik
today,” he said as he tried without success to tie his blue cape around his chicken-wing shoulders. “I’m Superman.”

Another generation, another fleet of flying heroes. Maybe this one would live up to the honorific, but now wasn’t the moment to test the theory. We needed to be at Jackson Collegiate in forty-five minutes. Mean Maxine had insisted that for Henry’s cattle call, I give serious consideration to attire. After I hit the mother lode at a consignment store, Maxine and I settled on a red Fair Isle sweater and cords.

“Superman has superpowers. He doesn’t need a sweater,” Henry said, folding his arms in a stance that resembled Tom’s as much as you-know-who’s.

“It’s November. Superman might catch a sniffle if he isn’t warm enough.” And I still needed to dress myself. Hoping my son and I would appear as if we’d sprouted from the same bog of DNA, I’d laid out a gray pleated skirt, a cardigan whose moth hole could be deftly covered by the
starched cuff of a white shirt, old but newly polished flat brown boots, and a Hermès scarf given to me by Chloe for my last birthday. I’d blown my hair as straight as my abilities allowed.

“That sweater’s for girls,” Henry sneered as he walked to his drawer and pulled out an orange sweatshirt, nearly fluorescent, the top half of his Halloween costume. “Superman changed his mind.”

“Henry, no,” I said. “Today’s like a really important play date.”

He wrinkled his brow. “Okay, Mommy. Then close your eyes till I say when.” I heard the hoofing of small feet, a door closing, and “when.”

I opened my eyes to a grinning Henry, the orange sweatshirt covered by a scuffed black leather jacket that hung past his hands by inches. He looked like a pubescent Keith Richards. “Please take it off.” I looked at the clock.

He switched to the whining channel. “You said today was special.”

Perhaps the Jackson Collegiate evaluators were softhearted child advocates, not fashion fascists, and would admire my son’s moxie. “At least put on the pants,” I sighed, holding out the tan cords. I helped him into them and zipped them up. He did the snap. I handed him sneakers and then unsuccessfully searched the room for his brush, not that it made much difference. Henry had been blessed with my hair—it sprang from his scalp like rotini. In monkey mother mode, I worked my fingers through his curls, stood back, and admired my WASP impostor, not unlike Mr. Lifschitz himself.

“Handsome,” I said, kissing his forehead. “Now sit down, please, and play while I get dressed.” It took three tries to tie my scarf so I didn’t look like Annie Oakley—and then we were out the door. To my eyes, I looked air-dropped from Greenwich.

Several of our neighbors hadn’t yet taken down their Halloween decorations, and as we raced along the long brownstone blocks to the subway, Henry pointed to make sure I didn’t miss each ghoul, ghost, and wisp of polyester spiderweb.

“I love our street,” he said. I did, too. I felt lucky to live here, crowded
as we might be. On the surface Park Slope might look like the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but this is a true community. Kids trick-or-treat not up and down elevator banks but at doors where people know their names, and nearly every Saturday, except in the dead of winter, you can count on a stoop sale from which you might buy, say, a five-dollar broken-in black leather jacket sized for a third grader.

Two weeks ago Tom had informed me of today’s visit. It fell on one of my workdays, and he wanted me to rearrange my schedule—which I did—to escort Henry. “The director already knows me,” he pointed out. “Betsy has to see that you’re on board, too, and that Henry lives up to my brags.” Sexism played no small role. Tom didn’t want Henry’s mother to come off as Executive Mom. The subliminal crawl I’d read during the general meeting I’d attended was that the complete Fisher-Wells family would be under scrutiny. I intended to scrutinize back to see if this school deserved my son, if it was educational heaven or a hill of bricks tottering on a threadbare reputation.

There were seats on the subway, an auspicious sign. At our destination a few stops away, an older man—any male under the age of forty would be more likely to trip you as he bolted up the steps two at a time—helped me lift boy and stroller to the street. I pushed Henry at a quick trot along the block and a half to the school, arrived breathless and damp, parked the stroller, and asked to be directed to the classroom for nursery school interviews.

“And you are?” the young redheaded gatekeeper asked.

“Fisher-Wells—Henry and Talia.”

At the pace of a gentleman, he located our names, then hand-lettered stickers for both of us to wear. “It starts in five minutes,” he announced. “Down the hall—second door on the left,” he added.

As I walked in that direction, tightly holding Henry’s warm, chubby hand, I inhaled the aroma of lemon oil emanating from the rich mahogany paneling, and noticed that on the bulletin boards there was poetry. I stopped to read some haiku.
Leaves that have lost life / are crinkly
tissues of gold. / Man dies and is dust
. And by the same Olivia Samson,
A sea of eyes and / Ear and minds. / But why do / I play solitaire?
Had anyone, I wondered, rushed this budding Emily Dickinson to a psychiatrist?