How to Be a Grown-up (25 page)

“I bet boob jobs are socialized in Europe,” she shot back.

“Yet another thing I’ll be missing out on.”

“Go to Milan!”

“I can’t.” I sat down on the bench in the reception area. “Who knows what Blake’s cooking up? It could be considered abandonment.”

“You’re showing such restraint.”

“He’s still their father. And I look awful in orange.”

“Spin class starting. I love you.”

“Have fun.” I dropped my phone in my coat pocket.

Maya was at a play date, and I had forty-five whole minutes to read the paper. But I kept looking up expecting to see Josh. I hoped he could be a sounding board for this nursery line situation. Class started, and the other parents peeled out to grab coffee, but there was no sign of him. Shit, was he avoiding me? Had I overshared at Monkey Bar? Or maybe Matt was just sick.

But I couldn’t let go of the feeling that I’d soured things. I started to replay our conversation, but then gave myself a mental
hiy-ah!
I had an actual soon-to-be ex-husband, and our relationship had in fact soured. I had a pseudo-suitor who seemed to really want to see me naked. And there was Kathryn.

I slouched under a poster of Bruce Lee, realizing I had always done this. I had first seen Blake on campus during those initial weeks when I was discovering I didn’t want to be a performing arts major and was scrambling to get transferred to the design program. I had real things to do, real paperwork that needed to be filed, real coursework to make up, but all I could wonder was,
If Blake and I married, would I wear a dress with obvious bra cups like Cindy Crawford?

I guess my crush on Blake had always been a kind of distraction. So what had my marriage to him been?

“Hi, Rory,” Matt said, rushing past me into class, his jacket still flapping open. Gillian strolled in a few beats behind in a Canada Goose coat over yoga clothes. She looked up at the clock.

“Five minutes late,” she observed with a shrug.

“Not so bad,” I said.

She sat down next to me. “I guess they’ll make him do push-ups on his knuckles again.” She pulled the spring fashion issue of
Vogue
out of her Mulberry tote. I wondered which weighed more—the magazine or the bag.

“One of those mornings?” I asked. She didn’t answer. “I personally hate weekend classes,” I continued, “because it drags that whole weekday
can we make it out of the house
pressure into Saturday and I can’t take the suspense.”

She took me in for a moment. “My husband thinks you’re
hilarious
.”

“Pardon?”

“He’s always quoting you. Rory said this. Rory said that.” She glanced down at my left hand. I hadn’t removed my rings yet—neither the gold band that had been Blake’s grandmother’s nor the diamond he splurged on because he’d just booked a razor commercial in Asia. I just wasn’t ready to walk the world without my shield.
My hair is dirty? My skirt has a stain? Yeah, well, somebody has chosen to spend the rest of his life with this stain
.

“I’m flattered he even finds me intelligible before coffee,” I deflected.

“Your husband doesn’t do the weekends?” she asked. “I don’t think Josh has ever met him.”

“No, he’s an actor.” I tried to infuse the word with as much success and hotness as I could. “So he spends a lot of time with the kids when he’s not on set, but, like, right now he’s in LA on this new J. J. Abrams show, so . . .”

“God, that must be so hard. Not knowing when the break’s going to come. I mean, I’m basically a single mom Monday to Friday, but I know come Saturday morning, it’s me, my green drink, my hot yoga. Peace and quiet until Monday.”

“That sounds like heaven,” I said, but thought,
You still have a family, enjoy it.

“Josh keeps wanting to get rid of our live-in, but I said, well, you’re not the one coordinating babysitters, so you don’t get a vote.”

“Is he sick?” I ventured. “So many people have this flu that’s going around.

“Oh no,” she said. “He was all ready to head out the door in his Malo sweater, the one that brings out his eyes. And I said, honey, why don’t I take karate from now on?” Oh.
Oh.

Whatever she was imagining, he would never, I would never, we would
never
.

“That’s great,” I said, setting down my paper.“Everyone I work with is twenty. I am starved for some good mom conversation.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Me too.” And opened her
Vogue.

Monday, after a protein shake lunch that left me hungry for lunch, I sat at my desk, cooling down from taking the stairs. Jessica had assured me that leading experts in mom fitness, an oxymoron if ever there was one, extolled the virtue of small changes leading to big results. What small change was going to reattach my stomach skin to my abdominal wall I was not sure, but taking the stairs was in my grasp.

Just as my heart rate was starting to come down, a parade of buyers got off the elevators and marched toward Capri. How did I know they were buyers? Because it was either that or we were being audited. I’d only gone to a handful of design shows in my life, but I knew that unwavering look of stony disapproval. I had frequently tried to imagine buyers in their own homes. Did he look like that when his child fingerpainted a butterfly? Was that her expression when her spouse proposed intercourse?

“What’s going on?” I asked Merrill. She just shrugged and replaced her headphones. Through the glass wall I saw Kimmy and Taylor standing at the head of the table. My cell rang. “Hello?”

“Rory, it’s Melvin.”

“Hi.” He’d never called me before. I wasn’t even sure he was allowed to. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but Blake’s attorney just reached out to me.”

“His
what
?” I asked as my mouth dried. Okay, fine,
hit me,
I thought,
hit me and get it over with.

“Apparently he’s retained a lawyer who threw out a new parameter and wanted to see if we could fold it into our agreement.” I could feel a thudding under my ribs.

“Which is?” Taylor was making a presentation in front of two easels. Stony faces. Stony faces.

“Their argument is that Blake’s income is linked to his employment. You can work anywhere. He wants a full fifty/fifty custody split so he’s insisting you move there.”

“He’s insisting
I
move to LA?” I sputtered.“I thought he’d want—Wait, can he do that? Can he insist that I move?”

“Rory, the point is that we’re outside the bounds of mediation—”

“No. I can’t be a single mother without any support, any infrastructure. I have a job in New York. My friends, my family, his mother, our lives: they’re here.”

“In that case you’ll need a litigating attorney.”

“To stay in my own life?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I dug my nails into my palm and asked, “How much will that cost?”

“Assuming this is the only dispute. Seventy, eighty thousand.”

A sound escaped me like I was being strangled. I looked up from my phone to see Taylor, with as much grace as she could muster, pull the cloths off the easels to reveal my work. I wasn’t even invited to the meeting I insisted she take? “I have to call you back.” I walked to the doorway of the conference room in a fugue state, like Bette Midler in
Stella Dallas
just trying to get a glimpse of her daughter’s wedding.

Taylor shot me a warning look of pure venom. I spun on my heels.
I should be presenting that line. I should be leaving Blake, telling
him
where to live, making
him
throw up in his mouth. I’m forty-one, dammit! I should be setting the sky on fire and making my mark!!

“Where’re you going?” Ginger asked as I headed to the stairwell, bag and coat over my arm.

“To get a spray tan.”

“Well, this
is
an unexpected treat,” James said a few hours later as I sat across the table from him at Circo. I was freshly waxed, newly bronzed, and the girl from Agent Provocateur had been very helpful in selecting alluring undergarments that obscured my tummy and lifted my boobs. I was ready.

“I’m sorry to be meeting so ungodly early, but—” if we’re going to get back to your place to have sex, “my sitter has to leave by ten.”

“You look terrific,” he said, opening the napkin swaddling the bread. A puff of steam escaped. “Have you been on vacation? Is that why you haven’t been by?”

“Oh, no.” I looked down demurely. “Just in the park with the kids, you know.”

“Suki won’t go outside if it drops below forty.”

“Oh, Maya is pure Irish. Even as a baby, she boiled over. I’d have her out, completely underdressed, getting the dirtiest looks. But she never gets sick so, I figure, what’s the harm?”

“Her room is fantastic, by the way.” He looked past me for the server. “Only she’s now insisting I call her Queen Suki. You haven’t seen it yet?”

“I’ve been firing on all cylinders since the kids are back.” Was this weird? Unsexy? Talking about our children? I should have read a book on how to do this. Or looked it up on YouTube.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said as the waiter arrived, “but I know what to order here. You like truffles?”

I nodded, just as happy not to have to think about food on top of everything else. Like, was Wynn finishing his homework? And did I have a small glob of wax stuck to my inner thigh?

He ordered champagne and the $200 pasta with fresh truffles.

“Is this how you whisk Stateside?” I asked. I was teasing him, but I was also deliciously aware that I was being wined and dined by a guy and didn’t think I ever had been. In my twenties I was lucky when someone bought me a drink—or a taco. In my thirties, a joint bank account really took the romance out of Blake “buying me” anything.

“Oh, you have no idea,” James said.

After two decades fighting for a seat on the subway, fighting the rent-control board, fighting the school board, fighting gravity, I wanted to. I really wanted to.

He had a town car waiting as we stepped onto the sidewalk. I was trying to steady my ankles against a champagne and chocolate-ganache-induced wobble. The driver opened the door, and James raised an eyebrow. Was my getting in even in question?

Inside I crossed my perfectly tanned legs, the champagne making me feel twenty-five. Was I really going to do this?

Part of me was damned if I was going to get hit by a bus and have Blake be the last person who was inside me.

Part of me still felt like I was cheating.

Okay, okay,
I said to that part as James put his hand on my thigh. Could I decide that I was cheating and just let that be . . . hot?

He took my chin gently in his left hand and tipped my face to his. His lips found mine, gently at first, then hungrily, his tongue sliding between my teeth. He tasted like dessert.

Yes,
I answered.
Yes I could.