Carpool Confidential (10 page)

In the school lobby, Jared threw himself at me. “Is Daddy home?”

The naked hope in his eyes made me want to cry. I shook my head. I desperately wanted to tell him that he would be for Thanksgiving, but I bit my tongue.

“Hi, Cassie.” Sue appeared next to us. “You're looking nice today.” She clearly hadn't missed a thing, from the daily sweatshirt repetition to my unwashed hair. “So—is everything OK?”

Did she know something? I looked into her eyes, trying to read her, but got nothing except bland concern. I hated the fact that I was going to lie. Again. In front of my child. Again. But what else could I do? My insides felt twisted in about ten different directions.

“Of course!” I smiled. Hard. Jared looked alarmed by such uncustomary heartiness, so I lowered the wattage a tad. “Why do you ask?”

“It's—well, you've looked like maybe you weren't feeling well. And you've seemed so”—she frowned—“rushed lately.”

I hated my faux tinkly laugh. “Everything's fine. Rick's been traveling a ton, and life's been kind of crazy.”

“Mom, can I go up to the cafeteria and get a snack?” Jared asked as he saw his friend Oliver going up the stairs to do just that.

“Sure.” I handed him the cafeteria punch card and he took off. “No junk,” I called after him, more for appearances' sake than out of any real belief it would stick.

“I hear you. I hate it when Tim travels. I have plenty of help, and it's not like he actually
does
anything domestic”—Sue laughed—“but I find I miss having another adult around at the end of the day. Do you know what I mean?”

Did I ever. “Yeah,” I said. I was so busy thinking of all the ways in which I knew exactly what she meant that I was totally unprepared when she said, “So listen, I've assigned you to chair the Food Committee, cochair it with Ken, actually. Now that Grace is back, I know you've been at loose ends PTA-wise, and I wanted to make sure you aren't underutilized.”

Underutilized wasn't exactly the way I'd thought of myself. I realized I was still smiling. Maybe my face was stuck that way. “Um, thanks, Sue, but I'm not—”

“I know we can't ask on-the-ball people like you to be on the executive committee and then not use you, Cassie! So when this opportunity came up to really dig in and review the cafeteria food—what it is, what it should be, and how it compares to what's on offer in other schools—I knew it would be the right challenge for you. It's a time commitment, but a chance to really effect some change. You're such a doer and an integral part of our school community, and Ken's a dream to work with. I think you'll really enjoy spending time visiting other schools for lunch with him. Anyway, I'm really excited to have you both on board!”

I might have described myself more as half on the train while one leg dragged on the ground than on board. The part of me that knew I couldn't do this warred with the part that was almost desperate to dive back into the life where I'd had nothing more to worry about organic versus non-organic.

“Initially I thought about Nancy Bosworth for your cochair, but between us”—she dropped her voice to confidential levels— “she's been a little off the ropes since she and Dave split. I almost feel sorry for him.”

“You feel sorry for him?” I stared at her. “He has a five-year-old with her
and
a five-year-old she knew nothing about until last year. He's a liar and a cheat. How can you feel sorry for him?”

“Something tells me she was hell to live with long before that. Talk about your high-maintenance wives. Anyway, I think she's too busy trolling for a new man to want to undertake anything big right now I hope she goes outside the school community for Dave's replacement.”

Every internal organ I had felt like it wanted to sink through the floor. Was this how they were going to talk about me? Would it be my fault Rick had left me? Would I be recast in whispers over their Starbucks as a bitch suddenly on the prowl for everyone else's husbands? Or would I be protected by what I'd been: a tireless worker for the PTA and stalwart bake sale organizer who'd helped with many a school pickup. Someone who'd smilingly kept other people's children for dinner or overnight when a sibling was sick, meeting postponed or a husband out of town; given lifts to and from soccer matches and birthday parties; sewed costumes for school plays; helped preschool classes bake snot-laced cookies and gone on every single field trip?

“She's a beautiful woman,” I said stiffly. “I wouldn't think she'd have too hard a time.”

Sue laughed again. “A beautiful woman helped along by all that Botox and those new boobs. Is it just me, or do they look fake a mile off?”

“I think they look fantastic.” Who was I kidding? I'd be just like Nancy, an instant outsider, and they'd be all over the reasons they couldn't possibly end up like me—that I had somehow deserved my fate—faster than kids on a piñata at a birthday party (plus I didn't even know if I'd be able to afford new boobs). And—I saw myself, suddenly, in clear-focus looking back— hadn't I done that with Nancy? Wasn't I just as guilty as the rest of them?

Guilty of smiling to her face but secretly believing there must be something wrong with her for ending up as unloved, and therefore, as unlovable as my mother. God, it was so easy, so self-deceptive to look down on someone from a position of smug security, safe in the arms of a marriage that seems like it will protect you forever. Well, whatever bad Karma I had coming over that was certainly coming home.

Sue said, “I'll give you a call later to see if we can set up a dinner for when Rick gets back. Tim was just saying the other day that he hasn't seen him in forever.”

“Me neither,” Jared said sadly, returning from the cafeteria holding a triple chocolate muffin and a container of chocolate milk, probably with extra BGH added.

Sue gave an aren't-you-too-cute laugh as she looked at Jared's food selections. “I think you can see how badly you're needed on that Food Committee, Cassie!”

“I didn't say I'd do it, I said I'd have coffee with Ken and talk about it,” I told Randy on the phone.

“Cassie”—I could practically hear her shaking her head— “you have way too much to deal with in your own life. You have to get yourself out of it.”

She was right, I knew it, but somehow I couldn't seem to actually take steps to disentangle myself. So when Ken called to set up our first meeting, I agreed to meet with him after Thanksgiving. Agreeing to one meeting didn't mean I couldn't still disengage, I told myself. And by then maybe I'd have my life back. Because Thanksgiving, I told myself, would be the compass that would point my way forward.

Which, depending on how you look at it, is a lot of pressure to put on a day that revolves around a dead, tasteless bird.

Thanksgiving with my family is, well…Let's just say the fake one photographed for the spread in
Gourmet
after which my father threw the (property of the magazine) carving knife into the wall and left for good doesn't automatically receive top billing as the worst. Over the years I've come to think of it like a raw hot dog—something best left unexamined and untasted unless there are no earthly alternatives.

“It'll be fun,” my mother said when she called. She did not sound sincere. “Katya's still away, but Luke's coming and bringing his new girlfriend. I'm even taking the day off.”

So taking that into account, it's hard to say whether choosing to ignore my niggling doubts about Rick was
the
stupidest recorded thing anyone has ever done. I mean, people go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. On purpose. Which hardly seems comparable to spending a day or two (or four) brining, marinating, and pureeing for an admittedly somewhat unreliable husband, does it?

OK, don't answer that.

“Are you sure you guys don't want to spend the day with us tomorrow?” Randy asked about fifty times on Wednesday. “I'd feel so much better if you would.”

“It'll be fine.” I tucked the phone against my shoulder as I slid the half pumpkin into the oven to soften for pureeing. “He may not think he wants the marriage, but he'll never voluntarily miss my pumpkin pie.” I neglected to tell her that I was calling the 216 number I'd gotten off the caller ID about ten times a day (OK, more like thirty) and no one ever answered.

“Josh is deep frying the turkey again,” she wheedled, as though it would be an incentive, like I didn't know about last year's two-alarm incident. “He says he has the kinks worked out. Why don't you all come? Bring Rick
and
the pumpkin pie.”

“Thanks, Ran, but I have to do this, you know?” It almost felt like a test, to see if the faith I still had in him and us, despite everything, would pull us through and out the other side of this disaster. Ignoring the squicky feeling in my stomach about the unanswered phone in pursuit of this larger, more noble goal was the right thing to do.

“Remember that you can call me up any time at all and we'll put more plates out, all right?” She really did not sound optimistic.

“Thanks, Ran.”

“Anytime. Listen, Cass, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“You know I love Rick, but, honestly, are you sure you want him back? I mean, if it was me, I'd be fantasizing about ways to lure him to his death, not baking pies for him. Not literal pies because, of course, I don't bake, but figurative pies. And even the figurative ones would have arsenic in them.”

“But you just said you wouldn't be baking them at all,” I pointed out.

“I might if I had arsenic. Aren't you angry, Cass?”

She wasn't asking me anything I didn't ask myself nightly as I lay staring at the ceiling for hours on end. “Of course I'm angry. I have moments when I worry my internal fury will singe the ends of my hair off, but more than that I'm miserable and lost without him. I miss our life together, and I miss
him
. I honestly believe our life together, our relationship, is so much more than this one…thing that, yes, if he pulls it together, I would still like to put my family back together.”

“Do you still love him?”

“Yes.” I was trying not to cry now. “Shamefully. I don't understand it any better than you do.”

So for the time being, or until proved otherwise, I was treating this as a mental health issue. His, that is, not mine. Under ordinary circumstances (and I realize you didn't meet me under those, so I have no way of proving this—you'll just have to take my word for it), except for the worrying about everything, I am a very rational person. I don't believe in ghosts or ESP or fairies or angels. I think that things that go bump in the night are things that have been left too close to the edge of the counter. And I don't believe that formerly sane people just suddenly go
in
sane with no warning and no road back.

“OK, Cass.” Randy sounded resigned but worried. “I hope you get what you want.”

I was certainly making every effort. On Wednesday I got a facial, had my hair highlighted, and threw in a not-that-he-was-going-to-see-my-feet-
but-just-in-case pedicure. And for once in my life, I was effortlessly thin, thin, thin, due to the very under-hyped but effective Dumped And Deserted Diet (if Dr. Atkins had tried it, he might have avoided those humiliating posthumous tabloid articles).

I caved and told the boys Daddy was coming home for the day. I didn't want to, was afraid it would jinx it somehow, but if I hadn't, the frenzy of preparation would probably have scared them to death. They were so excited that they even submitted to haircuts. On Thanksgiving morning, they were practically exploding with anticipation. I'd sent Cad to the groomer, and fortunately her poor, elderly heart had withstood the shock of cleanliness. And for Rick, who hated her drinking out of the toilet, I locked her out of the guest bathroom.

And it wasn't just us. The apartment had never looked better. Maria had acquiesced to polish the silver, and I'd pulled out the crystal. The fire glowing in the living room sent out a whiff of wood smoke. Everything everywhere gleamed. It was like the infamous picture in
Gourmet
.

The difference was that this one was for real. The food, the setting, my love for Rick—it had been sorely tested, for sure, but it remained—our children, our family. None of it was a photographer's trick. No fake lighting, no retouching (unless you counted my hair, but you have to draw the line somewhere), no prop knives flying. He had to see that. There was no way he could come home and deny that reality, that this was not only where he belonged but where he wanted to be.

“Not yet,” I told Randy when she called to check at noon. I yawned—I'd gotten up to par-cook the turkey at 3 a.m. because I hadn't seen any way of preserving the effortless glamour I was going for other than to have it ready to push into a hot convection oven to finish to burnished perfection in the last hour before we sat down. Everything was so ready that I had nothing to do except play every board game we owned (about three times each) with the boys. After the third round of Yahtzee, when the sound of the dice in the cup started to edge me toward insanity, I finally caved on the Play Station front, and they were happily rapt— playing and waiting for their Daddy with the same intensity of excitement as waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. “But I'm not worried. He said he'd be here, and even with all this he's never broken a direct promise.”

“Except a few marriage vows.”

“Shut up, Ran.” I had reason to worry, but also, I told myself, reason to hold onto hope. I tried that phone number yet again. Still, I managed to cling to belief through the various cheery calls from friends and relatives. At two, when there was no word from Rick and his mother's customary Thanksgiving call (always made from the backseat of her car as her driver whisked her to dinner at the club in Connecticut) came, I let the machine pick up.

“Don't forget, and I mean it, Cass, call me any time if you want to come over,” Randy said in her next phone call.

“Thanks, Ran. Love you.”

Same again on the 216 number. By three, the turkey was starting to look more desiccated than burnished and the boys were starting to look more frayed and hanging-on-by-a-thread than excited. The expressions on their faces made me hate both Rick and myself in equal measure. I'd allowed him and my stupidity to do this to them. I pitched the food in the trash, feeling guilty about not donating it somewhere, and bit into the raw hot dog: I picked up the phone, repressed the urge to try the Cleveland number just one last time, and called my mother.

Come hell or high water, Noah and Jared were going to have some kind of family holiday. So what if my family sucked at them? I was making it happen. My mother was surprising. Without even a hint of I told you so, she said Luke would be thrilled to see the boys and me and volunteered to see if my father would join us.

Noah was adamant about staying. Jared was more pliable, more interested in doing what Mommy wanted him to, but wavered. I knew, though, that if I let them wait it out, the heartbreak would be worse. I threw clothes into a suitcase, and we piled into the car, dropped Cad off at Randy's house, with me trying not to think about the results of the mix of gas-prone dog and fried turkey that would be greeting us on our return, and headed to Boston. I'd thought the flurry of activity might distract the boys from their devastation, but between them it seemed one or the other was in tears the entire trip. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic.

For the first time in all this I was lit with fury. Every time I looked down, my knuckles were dead white on the steering wheel.

 

“I'm sorry,” my mother said, as she dished up servings of super-market rotisserie chicken for everyone else and a soy burger for herself, “if I'd known you were coming I would have cooked.”

The kids looked half asleep over their plates. It was late and it had been one hell of a long day. I was a seething ball of nerves. I wasn't sure how much was due to the Rick debacle and how much was due to my parents being about to sit down at the same table. It had seemed like a thoughtful idea, to give my boys as much family as possible, back when I was two hundred miles away. In close proximity it was just plain alarming.

Luke, who was currently occupied with ignoring his girlfriend Caleigh and playing some parentally-advised-against game on his PSP, said to my mother, “You knew I was coming. And bringing Caleigh.”

“I bought Froot Loops,” she retorted. “And considering that I find mandated festivity artificial and frivolous, I'd think you would know I'm doing the best I can.”

“Caleigh doesn't eat Froot Loops,” Luke said.

Frankly, Caleigh didn't look like she ate period. I looked down at my congealed chicken. To give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe that was just her policy here. I was considering adopting it. I smiled at her. She didn't smile back.

God, this was fun.

“How come Luke gets to play PSP at the table?” Noah wanted to know.

“Cause I'm, like, a grown-up, dude,” Luke said.

“Because Luke always plays PSP,” Caleigh said. “When he's not at work. When he's at work he plays FreeCell.” She did not seem to correctly understand the role of the outsider—to buffer dangerously close to conflagrating family relationships.

“Cool!” Jared said.

“What's FreeCell?” Noah looked optimistic of having found his future calling.

My father came in with the can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce and plunked it on the plastic tablecloth. Due to his last-minute recruitment to this happy family occasion, he was missing whatever holiday delights his latest dental assistant had on offer. I was guessing they weren't culinary.

“Awesome!” Jared said, looking at the can. “Do we get to eat that? It looks like school cafeteria Jell-O.”

“Yeah. Mom's has nasty chunks in it,” Noah said accusingly. I hoped he wasn't pinpointing my homemade Port and cranberry confit as the reason Rick had failed to materialize.

“Yes, boys.” My father's tone was all forced jollity. “You do get to eat it. Provided your grandmother actually owns a serving plate. It's possible such a thing is too bourgeois for her. Maybe we'll all dig straight into the can with our spoons!”

Jared looked just a little too excited about that. I put my hand on his, forcing him to lower his spoon back to the table.

“I thought you'd had enough holiday elegance the time you set up that magazine shoot, Bill.” My mother was clearly chafing at having him here. “That ended well for everyone. As I recall.”

“Oh, yes, I remember well enough, Judy. They brought in that team of stylists who worked on you all day. Last time I saw you looking presentable.”

A tug of memory. It hadn't been a real Thanksgiving, of course. Magazines tend to work six months to a year ahead, so it had been shot the previous April, but it had
looked
incredibly real. And that (despite what my father had just said) was when the house and my mother both had still been beautiful—before she'd made lacking a sense of humor into her life's work. That day I'd almost been able to fool myself into believing we were the family we looked like.