How to Be a Grown-up (16 page)

“I just feel like I’m supposed to be
doing
something,” I said to Jessica over the phone as I arrived later that morning at the photo shoot for Gavin’s chandeliers—which Taylor was insisting our copy refer to as “a child’s first earrings.”

“You’re doing it. Breathing.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“That’s because you’re a woman. We idle at ‘not enough.’ How’s Wynn taking it?”

“He didn’t look at me all morning, but he’s entitled to be angry. I’m just giving him space,” I said, taking another swig of my triple espresso. “You know, because that strategy’s working so well for me.” The crates of Gavin’s chandeliers were on-set, but no sign of Gavin.

“How are you holding up?” she asked me.

“Blake was out of town that time both kids got Coxsackie and I have still never been this tired.”

“Get a prescription for Ambien,” she instructed.

“But how does it work if something happens in the middle of the night? Like Maya has a nightmare or something and I’m called into action?”

“Then start with Klonopin. You can wake up and wash barf out of sheets while on it; you’ll just be super mellow.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “That sounds good. I cannot be plunged into single motherhood and sleep deprivation simultaneously. I’m amazed more moms don’t show up in court saying, ‘Here, take ’em.’ ”

“You do not need to be present for this experience. Use sedatives. Drink caffeine. Eat circus peanuts for dinner. Whatever you need right now.”

“I’m buying a flask,” I decided.

“Do it.”

A door to another studio down the hall opened.
“Have a holly jolly Christmas,”
came bouncing from their radio.

I rubbed my face. “Oh my God, Blake couldn’t have waited until January?! When
everyone
is depressed? I’ll call you when we break for lunch.”

“Rory.” She caught me as I was about to hang up.

“Yes?”

“
I
love you. ’Til death do us part. I will not lose interest in you sexually. Or have a midlife crisis. You are my one true one. And I think you’re perfect.”

“Thank you. I have to go cry in the bathroom now.” My other line beeped. “Crying postponed—that’s Kathryn.”

“Cry to her—I’m sure she’d love it. Hang in there. Bye.”

“Hello?” I answered, widening my eyes, as if my lids could yank the “on” chord to my brain.

“Rory, it’s Kathryn. How was your Thanksgiving?”

Cataclysmic. “Good. Weird. Yours?”

“I love collective experiences. I don’t know why. I just think it’s fabulous that for no good reason, we’ve all agreed to eat the same meal once a year. I took my son and some of his friends to see
Hunger Games
after dinner, and I pointed, I said, look at that line for the next showing. You know what every person on it just ate—isn’t that amazing?” It was so hard to imagine Kathryn doing anything as mundane as taking a bunch of teenagers to the movies. I knew that Lachlan was close to Wynn’s age when she divorced and I should ask for advice. But I wasn’t ready to package this to Kathryn Stossel, let alone myself.

“You should do a story on it,” I suggested.

“Rory, I won’t keep you. I need another favor. Asher won’t give me any of JeuneBug’s numbers. I think he’s hiding something. Can you get me whatever revenue information you can before the break? I want to take it all with me to Santorini.” Where did we even keep that information? “I really need it or I wouldn’t ask.”

“Sure.”
Really, Rory, how?

“JeuneBug’s not going to collapse, is it?” I asked.

“Not if I can help it,” she said. “But if Taylor wasn’t his daughter, there would be serious oversight measures in place. It’s worrisome, Rory. I’m not going to lie to you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You always do. I know that about you.”

I hung up and looked at the set. I was daunted. How was I going to get this all up by myself when it hurt to even move? How was I going to get through Christmas? How was I going to find JeuneBug’s revenue information?

Rory!
The mom voice that had appeared in my head overnight snapped at me. It sounded like it was clapping erasers. Right!

I’d been instructed by Gavin’s team not to touch the chandeliers myself because I wasn’t covered by their insurance. But there was still plenty of work to do. I put in my earbuds to drown out the holly and jolly, turned up the Stooges, shook my can of paint, slid down my mask, and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. I layered red and green, gold and silver, writing
joy
,
cheer
,
noel,
then
Blake is a fucking asshole
and spraying over it, singing,
“Somebody gotta save my soul—”

“Rory?”

I spun, finger on the trigger. “Oh, shit.” I jumped back, hand over my mouth in mortified horror. I had nailed Gavin
right across the chest.
“I’m so sorry.”

Arms raised like I was mugging him, he looked down at the wet black stripe across his bespoke shirt, stunned. Oh God, I was going to have to replace that shirt. It was worse than a parking ticket.

A slow smile spread from the corners of his thin lips. “I’ve been tagged.”

“You’re it,” I tried gamely.

He raised his gaze to me, giving me full stare. Full hot stare. “Can I take off my shirt and we’ll try this again?” he asked huskily. God, he was cute. “You look beautiful today.”

“I’ve been up crying all night.”

He put his palm on my cheek. “It suits you.” I’m fine, thank you for asking.

“Gavin, people are going to walk through that door any second.” Even as I said it, his assistant arrived, looking like she’d just taken first prize in a Robert Smith lookalike contest. Or perhaps she’d just hit a pothole.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” he whispered.

“Gavin, your girlfriend is my boss. My boss. My
boss
,” I hissed a third time because he was smiling at me how I used to smile at Wynn when he was first learning to talk, the meaning irrelevant, the attempt empirically endearing. “So you need to stop this because if she finds out, I will get fired. And I and my two destructive children will move in with you and your chandeliers.”

Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop. Taylor appeared in poured-on shiny black pants and a fur jacket with an oversized ruff she could have hid in. “Oh my God, what the fuck is this?” Taylor’s whole upper lip retracted in double-sided stink face. Then she spat a few times because her coat was shedding in her mouth.

He stepped back, red creeping up his cheeks. “Rory, here. It’s Rory, right? She was just explaining the concept.”

I had been wracking my brain for what could possibly top our Halloween shoot. I was starting to realize, after the toddler meditation room I created for Thanksgiving sold out in a matter of hours, that we were tapping into a bizarre but underserved clientele. “I wanted to set the chandeliers off, not compete with them.” They took in the graffiti, the child-sized urinal, the band stickers I’d recreated while I waited for their verdict. “It’s a kid’s bathroom inspired by CBGB.”

“Amazing,” he whispered as she came to stand on the other side of me.

“Oh, good,” I said. “I was worried you were too young to know what that was.” And he swatted me on the ass. I whipped my eyes to Taylor, but thankfully she was still staring at my Keith Herring, mouth agape.

“Well?” I asked her, stepping away from Gavin. “Are we ready to shoot?”

“It doesn’t feel on brand,” Taylor grimaced.

“It will,” I stated confidently. I was a forty-one-year-old woman in emotional free fall who had somewhere, somehow made a series of grievous missteps to land me here, but that this shoot would be on brand? Of that I was confident. “Once the chandeliers are up.” Oh fuck, he was still staring at me. Mooning, technically. “That’s your cue, Gavin.”

“Oh, right, right.” He finally hustled away.

“He’s so brilliant,” Taylor said to me wistfully, watching him wedge a crowbar into a crate.

“He has a vision,” I agreed, slapping a Ramones sticker next to the little steel sink I had sprayed with brown water.

“The first time I saw his work, I thought, ‘This guy is a fucking genius.’ I really want to give him a platform, help him reach a wider clientele.”

“Hmm,” I said encouragingly. “So, uh, can I ask, um, where do we compile our stats? Like, revenue, and that kind of thing?”

Her romantic whist flew away like a silk parachute taken by the wind to reveal a tank. “We are not fucking giving out bonuses. Stop asking.”

“Um, I didn’t.”

“Only our top vertical editor gets a bonus.”

Which, I thought, as far as I knew, technically was me. “That’s not why I was asking.”

“Well, we guard our growth story very carefully, Rory.”

“Right. Of course. But for potential investors, you know, do they get . . . a deck?” I was using it in a sentence!

She just narrowed her eyes. “Our pitch materials are baller. Gavin!” she called. “Need any help?”

And she teetered away to him, like a fur Popsicle on latex sticks.

That night I opened a bottle of wine after the kids went to sleep—Wynn in his bed, Maya in mine. And I called Blake. It went straight to voicemail.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said, walking around the dark living room in the sweatpants I had thrown on the second I got home. “So, uh, how does this work?” I took a deep swallow. “Do we meet up to buy the kids their presents?” I set the glass down on the coffee table. “Do we make a joint list over e-mail? Are we all going to the Dorans’ caroling party?” I sighed to the ceiling. “How do we do Christmas?” I waited. But it was voicemail. It was not going to talk back. “Okay, call me, bye.”

And I drank until I filled a tiny plunge pool of anesthesia inside myself and jumped in.

“So.” I sidled up to Tim’s desk the next morning, full of Advil. “I’m pulling some revenue stats. Where should I get the most recent ones?” I decided Tim, our programmer, was the safest person to ask because no one else there talked to him unless they absolutely had to and then they never stayed to listen to the answer. He’d be left at his desk, his voice growing smaller as he blew some salient detail at a departing exposed lower back like Milo in
The Phantom Tollbooth
.

“Yeah, Taylor and Kimmy guard their growth story pretty carefully.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“So you don’t, uh, have those?” I tried again.

“No.” He pushed his glasses back up.

“Okay.” We kept nodding like we’d come to a deep agreement. “Would you know who might?”

“Just T and K, man.”

“Cool. The dude abides.” I backed up as my phone buzzed—a text. From Blake.
“Let’s just take this day by day, okay?”

What?!

Sorry, kids, Santa didn’t bring you anything this year because Daddy is starring in a one-man production of
Godspell
.

I threw my head back, a hard sigh erupting from my gut. There
had
to be a way to play this. I thought of sitting on the lawn at school, watching Blake a few blankets away with Condra on his lap. I studied her because she knew how to get him, how to keep him.

I wanted my family, my fully intact family, to celebrate Maya’s birthday, get a tree, watch the ball drop.

What was the next step, goddammit?