How to Be a Grown-up (27 page)

I begged off from meeting with Sage, claiming a family emergency, which was legit. That night, I waited until the kids were asleep, and I was on my third glass of wine, to dial Blake’s number, against the advice of Jessica, Kathryn’s lawyer, and the online tarot site I visited while Maya was in the tub.

He picked up: “Hey.”

“Oh my God, you answered.” The monologue I’d planned went pouf out of my head.

“I’m on break. With all these action sequences the set-ups take forev-er. And there’re no stunt doubles, so yesterday I actually rappeled down the side of a building. The insurance alone must be insane.” His voice sounded different, buoyant, like how I remembered it from long ago. I realized it had so gradually leaked its sense of purpose that I hadn’t even noticed it happening. “How are you doing, Rory?”

Clawing my way back to functional.
“Good, except for this whole aborting mediation thing. What happened? I thought we were figuring this out.”

“Now that I’m on the show J.J. just didn’t want me to agree to anything without having a lawyer look at it.”
J.J.?

“Kathryn didn’t want me to either,” I tossed back.
Who were we?

“Okay, good. I’ll have my lawyer draft something, and yours can take a look at it.”

“But, Blake,” I tried to pull him back from his new craft-services lifestyle, remind him of life back here on Val’s worn afghan. “The reason we’re doing mediation is it’s way cheaper. I’m thrilled for you, but I don’t have $80,000.”

He sighed angrily. “I’m going to be based here for the next seven years at least. It takes nine months to shoot a season. I can’t be away from the kids for that long.” I had already become an annoyance, the ex-wife who wouldn’t fall in line.

I drained my glass. “So I’m just supposed to pick everything up and move to LA?”

“LA?” he balked. “We’re not in LA. Well, I mean, we are, but the state.”

“What?” I asked, not following.

“For the tax breaks. Belcher, Louisiana. With the rice paddies and swamps here, we can—”

“Swamps?” My arm hit the lampshade.

“Looks just like Southeast Asia for the subplot. They can conjure a ton of locations inside of, like, five miles.”

“You’re demanding I move to Belcher, Louisiana?” I could not even see out.

“Rory, I’m working, I have a job—”

“And I’m thrilled for you, I am, but I have things going on here.” I tried to straighten the lamp. “JeuneBug’s building a whole campaign around me.”

“What? You’re breaking up.”

“I’m not your appendage.”

“I gotta jump, Ror.” When we first started dating he bought me a pair of leopard-print knickers. When I looked horrified he said, “Roar, get it?” “I know you’ll do what’s best for Wynn and Maya.”

He hung up, and I scrambled for my laptop. Google maps pixilated Belcher into view. It was a strip of trailers on a dusty stretch of road miles and miles and miles from anywhere. Two hundred and seventy-two people currently lived there, over half of whom, Wikipedia thought it important to note, were in families. Only 10 percent of those remaining were between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four. My chances of employment, of friends, of meeting an eligible man were nil.

I went to the front hall and upended my purse on the floor, digging through everything until, almost panting, I found Benjamin Stern’s card.

“You sold your engagement ring on Forty-Seventh Street?” Jessica asked, half-horrified, half-impressed as she sat across the kitchen floor from me the following night. “God, I wish we could have a fundraiser. Can we Kickstart your divorce?”

“Lemonade stand?” I asked.

“Car wash?” she volleyed, waving her ice cream spoon. “You know I got a press release today saying you’re co-chairing the Moms for Change event at the end of the month.”

“I’m
what
?” It was an annual fund-raiser that anchored the New York City spring calendar. Kelly Ripa and Tina Fey eating cotton candy alongside Park Avenue mothers and their seersucker-clad offspring. I had never been, of course, not having a spare thousand dollars to attend the Big Apple Circus, but apparently now I was the co-chair.

“Look.” She pulled the e-mail up on her phone.

“This is crazy.” I took it from her to read.
‘Come meet Rory Turner, new face of
JeuneBug.com
.’
When were they going to tell me? Oh, I see. Asher’s wife is on the committee.” Stellar was one of the sponsors, so adding me was within Sage’s powers. As was, I would guess, holding a hamster and being able to drain it of its youth with her eyes. “I can’t be in the same room with his wife again,” I said. “What if she places me from Kathryn’s bathroom?”

“Women like that can’t pick out their own gyno from a lineup. You’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure me while digging out all the chocolate-coated pretzels.

“Right, how bad could this be? I have to sit on some bleachers for a couple of hours and eat cotton candy. And if I get overwhelmed, I’ll just say Maya’s tired and beat a hasty retreat.”

“You’re a lady with a plan,” she said, nodding.

“And then I’m going to break into the raffle box and steal $80,000.”

“Just don’t let Jessica Seinfeld catch you. She will cut a bitch.”

The one thing I did know was that this was the perfect opportunity to return some of James’s generosity. It was like having front row seats to Aerosmith in high school, only in this case it was sitting on a stretch of bleacher near Madonna. And it would give James and me the chance to meet each other’s kids in a low-key way they wouldn’t really notice. Something parenting based, but with a thick varnish of glamour on top.

Which was sorely needed, I thought as I tried to get ready and finish Wynn’s volcano at the same time. Why, you might ask, was I trying to finish a volcano and get everyone ready for the most exciting thing that had happened to me in ages? Because Friday night, after French horn practice, Wynn had karate, Saturday morning they both had birthday parties, Saturday night he had a sleepover, Sunday morning I collected him late because Maya wanted to know what would happen if she poured orange juice down her play sink and then we had to buy the supplies. Now here we were, doing something I thought sitcoms had invented. But no, he had a volcano due Monday morning, and it was 20 percent of his grade.

We were still waiting to hear if he’d get into the performing arts middle school at Lincoln Center (do-able) or the one on Coney Island (IhavenospaceIhavenospaceIhavenospace).

After coaxing Maya into finishing her lunch while calling out directions to Wynn from my iPad while a hairstylist and makeup artist tried to make me look like—like someone who didn’t have a bathtub full of homemade lava (for the record I asked if we could just eBay one of those chocolate fountains they have at weddings and cover it in papier-mâché and got a resounding No!)—I discarded the bathrobe protecting my outfit. Sage’s stylist had selected J Brand riding pants, striped tee, and fur vest.

“Maya, dressed, check! Wynn, dressed, check! Me, looking better than I did at my wedding, check! Team, move out!” I called, only ten minutes behind schedule.

“Mom, Mom, Mom!” Wynn cried from the living room, where he couldn’t pry himself away from the mountain. “Wait, wait, I think I’ve got it!”

“No, Wynn, not n—”

Boom.

It was like when James Dean strikes oil in
Giant
. And for a second all I thought was,
Wow, you really look like your father. You’re going to break some hearts.

And then I thought,
#$%^&*
, but all I could say was, “Frogballs!
Frogballs!
FROGBALLS!!!”

Miraculously we were only thirty minutes late. And if you didn’t get close enough to Wynn to smell him, you would never have guessed that the pomade slicking his hair back was a science experiment. But who would notice in the throngs of insanely well-dressed people making their way into the Big Top? Already the sound level was approaching nightclub decibel.

“Here!”
I texted Sage.

“Thnk Gd,”
she texted back. After years in New York media, I was used to the hysteria, the urgency. Until I finished plumping the pillows and rotating the urns, everyone on set treated me like a neonatal oncologist.
“Sndg vus 2 u.”

It was all a license plate to me.
“?”
I texted back.

“K?”
she replied. I gave up.

I craned my neck in the madding crowd, looking for James, who was also running late because Suki couldn’t find her magic wand. I felt her pain.

“Rory!” If he turned heads on an average morning walking down the street, James holding Suki on his hip was causing all the moms in his vicinity to shift in their tight pants. Actual ovulation was happening.

“Hi!” We elbowed our way to each other. Suki was burrowing her face into his shoulder.

“This is Suki,” he said.

“Hello, Suki. This is Wynn.” He gave a curt wave. I think his scalp was starting to itch. And he was still put out that we were taking James and Suki instead of Emily and his friend Peter. I couldn’t explain that Mommy had a few short months to dramatically make over her life so she wouldn’t be a tragic ex-wife slowly going up sizes in pajama jeans. (Yes, that’s a thing.) “And Maya.” Maya was holding my hand and pressing herself against my leg as if it was going to open and make a space for her like the fairy nook in Val’s oak tree. “Let’s find our seats.”

They were not hard to spot. Front row. Center ring.

“Well, you’re clearly very important,” James said as we sat down. And I got that little shiver right below my belly button. The tiny upside to being upended? The shiver. The point scored. The laugh earned. The look. He’s intrigued. He’s in. It had been years since I’d tried to get any of those things.

“Only in the Big Top.” I smiled and leaned in, over Maya’s head, lowering my voice. “I can tame lions.”

“Do you have a whip?” he asked.

“On order. And I ride the horses. Bareback.”

“I’d like to see that.” And it was his turn to shift in his seat.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” a man in a leather jacket boomed, in that way that meant,
Excuse you for living and occupying space I should be occupying.
And then a few things arrived in my consciousness simultaneously, as if getting off a very packed elevator.

• It was Asher.

• With his wife and their son, Fly.

• They were sitting next to us.

• Fly shoved Wynn over very hard.

• Wynn sent Maya’s popcorn airborne.

• Maya leaped up, making Suki drop her ice pop.

• Both girls burst into projectile sobs.

• I caught myself with my right hand, squarely in James’s crotch.

“Oh,” Asher’s wife said flatly. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” I said, because that’s what we say to other parents, even when their child has just beaned our child with our own child’s truck and then made off with it, laughing maniacally. We still smile, like their child isn’t a sociopath, and say,
That’s all right
.