Carpool Confidential (24 page)

“Noah,” I said, “where is your backpack?”

“Guess I forgot it this morning.” He veered off to the steps of Cadman Plaza. “I probably left it in the foyer at home.” He forestalled the inevitable spate of tedious questions by turning to Jared. “Want to race to the top, even though you never win?”

“Sure.” Jared, always game for some younger brother torture, handed me his half-eaten slice, so the grease dripped down my hand and into the sleeve of my jacket. “Hold this for me, OK, Mom?”

Cad seized the opportunity of our stopping to once again throw herself on the freezing ground. I looked at her, lying there, panting with exhaustion, and allowed myself the thought I always managed not to have—she was considerably into borrowed time. I blinked away the tears as I watched the boys careen down the dangerously steep stone steps, looking like the most important thing in their worlds was scaring me half to death, and felt like my heart would break for all of us.

There was a message on the answering machine from Harmonye (at 4:23 p.m.) that she'd see me later, so I knew at least that she'd still been alive at the time.

I tried to call Paulette. Her extension went through to voice mail again. I left a casual-sounding message asking her to give me a call. It was time to forge a little sisterly solidarity here. Then I went through my cell phone call list until I found Humphrey's number, called him, and asked if he could come sooner.

“Sorry,” he said, “on a case in Cali. Won't be back until next Thursday night.”

I was distracted for a while by a call from Charlotte. “It's posted. Have a look.”

I wanted to but didn't. I pulled it up, wishing I could read with my eyes closed. It was the weirdest sensation, seeing my words there. I'd had plenty of stuff published before, so I was used to that, but magazines took so long that by the time the articles came out they were almost removed from having been my words. This was so…immediate. It was hard for me to tell whether I would have found it entertaining if it had been written by someone else. I knew I could get used to this, but wasn't sure whether I could like it.

By ten o'clock, with nothing more from Harmonye, I was pacing the floors, inhabiting that world that hangs directly between terror and anger, in which you alternate between visions of someone's crumpled and mutilated body and visions of yourself being the one to crumple and mutilate it when they walk in the door hale, healthy, and unconcerned about your mental state.

Calm down
, I'd remind myself during my visits to terror. She's sixteen, and totally messed up. She's a child. Who probably doesn't even know better. Then, five seconds later: How can she be doing this to me? Even someone raised by wolves has more sense than to do this to someone. Doesn't she realize I have more going on than I can handle right now? How dare she just show up, taking it for granted that I'll take her and her problems, while she does nothing to help herself and then do this.

At 12:01, I picked up the phone to call…whom?

At 12:01:30, I put the phone down.

At 12:02 I picked the phone back up. The police would hear my tale of a missing sixteen-year-old and laugh. This was New York. They had real problems.

12:02:28, put it down.

At 1:10 the doorman buzzed. “Your niece is on her way up.”

“Thanks.” I yanked open the door, ready to let her have it.

She walked in, looking so small and young that pity once again took the upper hand. I was nothing if not consistent in my ability to swing between extremes.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” I said. “I've been really worried about you.”

“Really?” she seemed surprised. “I'm starving. Can we like move this to the kitchen?”

I forced myself to sound much calmer than I felt. “Why are you here?”

“Because you would have lost it totally if I'd stayed out later.”

“I mean here as in my house.”

She shrugged as she headed for the kitchen. I followed and stood there as she pulled open cupboards before pulling out the peanut butter (that had been on the shopping list that I'd made for her and that I'd had to stop to buy on the way home from school with the boys), the jelly (same), bread (same), and milk (ditto). “New York is home. I have friends here, more than at school. But if I went home to our apartment, the housekeeper would make me go back to school. I knew you'd help me. So.” She started making a sandwich. “Are you just going to like stand there staring at me?” She turned around. “You need to chill, Cassie.”

I looked at her. She looked small and young, and lost. And really stoned. I wasn't so old I didn't recognize the signs. I was so furious at her lack of consideration both to me and to her baby that I could have slammed something. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” She took a bite. “I mean, I know Rick like totally fucked you, but you're just like sitting around moping, you know?”

“Where were you?” I still sounded calm.

“Out. You should try it. It beats sitting home being a total victim or whatever.”

I clenched my hands. “But I'm not talking about me right now, I'm talking about you and what you should and shouldn't be doing.”

“Katya's cool with it. Me going out and stuff. She doesn't stress about who I'm with or what I'm doing.” She finished her sandwich. Apparently her tongue was healing. “Or when I'm going to be back.”

I looked at all the crumbs on the floor at her feet. It seemed unnecessarily hurtful to point out that Katya seemed not to care, period. “Would you prefer staying with her?”

“I might”—she tossed the peanut-butter-smeared knife onto the counter—“but I like don't know where she is.”

That's why you have to stay calm
, I told myself, because that's the crux of it: she's in trouble, and she doesn't know where her mother is. “Harmonye—”

“Whatever, Cassie. I'll listen tomorrow, OK? For now, just save it.”

Then she flounced down the hall and slammed the guest-room door.

The depressing thing was that I could relate. I was thirty-eight, in trouble, and didn't know where my husband was. I wondered if flouncing down the hall and slamming the door would make me feel better, too.

 

Even though I'd been up ridiculously late obsessing about Harmonye, I was awake at five. I crept down to the study and, leaving the lights off, flipped on the computer. While I waited for it to come on, I walked over to the window and looked out. I could see, against the lights lining the FDR Drive, that it was snowing. Not real snow, just flurries. Hopefully it would still be going when the boys got up, which made me think about Christmas and the fact I had done nothing yet and it was almost time to get a tree. The stark reality was that I couldn't afford it and, frankly, couldn't bear to think about it.

It was almost a relief to sit down and blog about exactly those thoughts. By the time I went to wake the boys, I felt calmer. Harmonye was still asleep when we left. I stuck a note on the front of the refrigerator asking her to please walk the dog because I had to go to the emergency meeting that had been called during the emergency pre-meeting that Sue et al had held while I'd been in restraints on the waxing table yesterday.

The boys frolicked around, catching snowflakes on their tongues. I sat on the impulse to make them stop on account of the likely chemical composition of the snow. I wasn't in the same kind of pain as yesterday, but I was still walking gingerly. On Joralemon Street we ran into Sue and Isabella.

Sue smiled. “So. Are you ready? They canceled assembly so we could commandeer the auditorium. Turnout's going to be huge.”

I suggested to Jared in an undertone that he thank Sue for the snack yesterday.

“Thank you, Mrs. Moriarty,” he said, with his best smile as Noah muttered, so only I could hear, “for the cow brain sand wich.”

Jared continued in what I can only describe as a hitherto unheard please-sir-can-I-have-some-more voice, “I hope I get a good snack like that again today, because I had Frosted Flakes for breakfast.”

What was he talking about? “You did?” I said.

“I had a handful when you went to get dressed,” he admitted.

“And before that?”

“Orange juice.” He looked down at the empty soda can he was kicking.

“Don't do that,” I said automatically. “And?”

“Toast with cheese. And strawberries.” He started kicking the can again, not looking at either Sue or me. Why was he making it seem like he was neglected?

“And, Noah,” I said, as we crossed Court Street, “would you like to tell Mrs. Moriarty where we found your lunch yesterday?”

“Bottom of my backpack.” Cheerfully said, not a drop of remorse.

“Actually, Sue, I'm glad I ran into you.” I pulled my wallet out. “I've been meaning to pay you back. Thank you so much for your help.”

There. I'd made restitution, been vindicated in the neglectful-mother-of-the-year sweepstakes, and paid her back without betraying even a flicker of how painful it was to part with those crisp twenty-dollar bills.

“No problem. So what happened with your
friends
?” She was bright with security and niceness and good health and grooming and curiosity. She made me feel ancient, gray, drab, careworn, cast off. You name it. “Are
they
pregnant?”

“Actually, I don't know. She—they—haven't told me.”

Sue put the money in her coat pocket. I almost cried at how casually she could treat it. “Considering what I've heard about the year-end forecast for bonuses at Bowers & Flaum, I should probably be charging you major interest.”

I smiled. What else could I do?

“I know Rick's running around working his butt off to deserve that bonus, but Tim said just the other day to tell him not to be such a stranger—they miss him at squash.” I felt the cold wind of
she knows
down my neck. “Of course then I told Tim not to be such a stranger and it might be nice if we saw him at home occasionally.”

I didn't want to be having this conversation or going to the meeting. I wanted to be…where? It took me a minute. Home, in front of the computer, working on the next installment. It was the strangest realization. The kids were up ahead. Jared was probably telling Isabella that he hadn't had a bath in a month or that I made him sweep chimneys after school.

“Do you ever think about going back to work, Sue?”

“Why?” she looked at me. As her clear, blue eyes fixed on my blotchy complexion, I could actually feel the circles under my eyes. “Do you?”

“Sometimes.”

She looked at Isabella and the boys walking ahead. Isabella and Jared were laughing at something Noah had said, probably bathroom-related.

“Being there for my kids has been much more rewarding,” she said firmly.

“But you had such a great career,” I said. “Meteoric, I called it in my article.”

“Yes”—she was still staring at the kids—“
had
being the operative word.”

I caught a waft of the fifty-cent coffee from the cart at the corner.

“It's all who you know in PR,” Sue said. “I don't have the contacts anymore.”

We caught up with the kids and crossed Court Street, then they took off ahead again.

“And it's not like I don't have enough going on,” she said as we headed up the front steps behind the kids. “Being PTA president is so time consuming, I can't even think about anything else. Speaking of which, this should be one hell of a meeting. See you inside.”

 

“Fish sticks!”
Sue was handing out copies of the
London Times
article. It had a sidebar detailing the horrifying array of chemicals found in everyday foods.

Ken and I, as the Food Committee cochairs, were supposed to be heading things up. His wafting Polo was making my eyes burn and my stomach roil. Did they still sell that stuff, or was he hoarding a bottle from 1985?

Sue's voice was shaking. “Sure, they look like child-friendly servings of healthy omega-three-bearing fish, but do you know what they really are?”

This was obviously either rhetorical or a Very Important Question. And since no one wanted to answer either one incorrectly, it was met with silence.

“A three inch by one inch cocktail of organochlorines, polychlorinated biphenyls, brominated flame retardants, artificial musks, and organotins!”

“And they're rolled in
white bread
crumbs and fried!” someone said.

“And not in organic olive oil,” Ken added.

“And they're serving them”—Betsy was doing drama— “with
ketchup
!”

The conference room erupted into a babble of startled side conversations at this hitherto unknown but horrifying fact. I closed my eyes.

“Cassie!” When I opened them, Sue was brandishing a ketchup label. “For your Food Committee folder. I think nutrition labels would be helpful.”

Was it really necessary for me to mention that I did not have a Food Committee folder as such? Once again I blinked at Sue, who increasingly seemed to belong to a whole different world than the one I now inhabited. Actually, she did. One of a husband who came home every night and a secure financial future.

I took the label as Ken said, “We need to make it clear that we're reasonable—we, as parents, do recognize the value of fish as part of a balanced—”

“Except insofar as practicing vegetarian and/or vegan children are concerned,” Arlene Rundgren said over him.

“What about overfishing!” someone unidentified yelled from the back.

“St. Stanley's is going 100 percent organic within two years,” Ailsa Grandman said.