Seven Minutes to Noon (2 page)

Alice found her cell phone at the bottom of her purse and speed-dialed Lauren’s cell. When her voice mail came on, Alice left a message. Then she called Lauren at home and left another message on the machine.

She dropped the phone back into her purse and pulled out the folded, now crumpled letter she was eager to share with Lauren. Flattening it across her lap, she read it again, with its bold, blunt title:
THIRTY DAY NOTICE OF EVICTION.
She had been served the summons at the store just an hour ago, feeling betrayed that her landlord, Joey —
former
landlord, as of the sale of his brownstone two days ago — had supplied the new owner with her work address. The letter was signed
Julius Pollack, owner.
Why hadn’t Mr. Pollack,
owner,
contacted them first? Discussed it? Found out how diligently Alice and Mike had been house hunting lately? Lauren and her husband, Tim, had received a similar notice earlier in the summer — hers signed by a managing agent for Metro Properties — giving them the same thirty days to vacate their apartment before eviction proceedings would begin. Both lawyers, they were fighting it; but they lived in a
multiunit dwelling,
the litmus test of responsibilities and rights that apartments in private homes, like Alice and Mike’s — no, Julius Pollack’s — lacked. Their lease with Joey had expired and Pollack was under no obligation to renew it. Alice and Mike had hard decisions to make now: should they undergo the exorbitant and exhausting
project of moving twice, first to a rental, then to a house they owned? Put the kids, and themselves, through all that? Or dig in their heels and demand the time they needed to move just once to some place they could rightly call their home? Alice needed
facts.
Where was Lauren? Surely she could offer sage legal advice and also commiserate over the shock and humiliation of being summarily tossed out of your home.

As the minutes ticked by, Alice’s disappointment grew at the missed opportunity to quietly dissect the new development with Lauren. It would be hard to discuss the notice in front of the kids. She had already spoken with Mike on the phone and they had agreed not to worry the children until it was figured out. Alice and Lauren would have to break their conversation into bits, fitting it into random pockets of privacy during the children’s after-school playground time. It was better than nothing.

She carried Lauren’s soggy cup of iced decaf with her, just in case she
did
come soon, and walked across the street to the entrance of P.S. 58, where parents and babysitters had gathered in force. The kindergarteners came out first, led single file by their teacher. Peter and Austin were at the end of the line, holding hands; they had been best friends almost from birth and were said to be inseparable in class. Alice knelt down to their eye level and kissed both boys hello.

“How was school?” she asked Peter, shifting forward to plant an extra kiss on her son’s irresistibly soft cheek.

“Good.”

“How was school for you?” she asked Austin. He had Lauren’s light brown hair, cut short, and tufted after a day at school.

“Good.”

“What did you guys do today?”

“Good,” Peter said, drawing giggles from Austin.

Alice stood up and scanned the crowd for Lauren. It was chaotic; she could easily be missed. Alice didn’t see her but there was no point sending up alarms quite yet. She would just stand here until Nell came out, and if
Lauren still wasn’t here, then she would decide what to do about Austin.

Nell was at the front of the second-grade line, swinging her purple lunch box loosely from her hand. Alice waved. Nell said good-bye to her teacher and darted away from her classmates.

“Hey, sweetie, how was school?” Alice asked.

“Good,” Nell said. “No homework again today!”

Alice figured that by Monday, homework would make its unwelcome appearance. But she didn’t want to burst Nell’s bubble, so she just said, “Great!” and took her hand.

All of the kindergarteners had been picked up. Peter and Austin stood by the fence, thumb wrestling. Their teacher, Gina, was herself now scanning for Lauren.

“I think I should just take Austin,” Alice told Gina. “I have a funny feeling Lauren might have gone into labor.”

“Really?” Gina smiled. She was a young woman with long brown hair and tiny but piercing eyes. “How exciting!”

It had already been prearranged for Alice to pick Austin up from school when the baby came, so Gina didn’t question the suggestion. She told the boys to enjoy their weekends, and to Austin added, “Congratulations, big brother!”

Alice cringed; she wished Gina hadn’t said that. What if Lauren was just plain late?

She took the three children back across the street to the park to wait a while longer for Lauren, just in case. Once on the curb, they bolted straight to the big kids’ side of the playground, where the jungle gyms were taller, the slides steeper, and innocence noticeably dampened by age.

Alice sat on the bench and tried calling Lauren again at both her numbers, but again, there was no answer. Maybe Maggie was still at Blue Shoes; maybe
she
had heard something. Alice dialed the store phone but it rang and rang. Strange, she thought; Maggie was either
in the bathroom or she wasn’t there at all. Five minutes later, Alice tried again. And again, no luck.

A Mr. Frosty truck pulled up at the park entrance nearest to them, and the children hurdled out of play. Nell, Peter and Austin accosted Alice with demands for ice cream money, issuing varied tones of
pleases
calibrated for results. She dug into her wallet, producing dollar bills. The children took them and raced off, returning a few minutes later with beady-eyed, fluorescent popsicles fashioned after action heroes and their nemeses, which may or may not have derived from actual ice cream. Nighttime baths would remove most of the colored streaks from their faces and arms, but Alice knew that a slight fluorescent shadow would still be visible come morning.

The children wove themselves back into the cacophony of play. Phone cradled in her hand, Alice watched them reel from ladder to slide to monkey bars. Then she thought to try Maggie’s cell, this time with success.

“Mags! Where are you?”

Somewhere behind Maggie, Alice heard the fading wail of a departing siren.

“Getting Ethan from school. As soon as you left the store, Sylvie called in sick,” Maggie said in her crisp British accent. Sylvie, Ethan’s babysitter, normally picked him up from his private school in the Heights. “Can you imagine? What about a little advance notice?”

“Do you think she was lying?”

“She said she’d just come down with a stomachy thing, maybe something she ate,” Maggie said. “Ethan!
Please
wait for the walk light!”

Alice could picture them: tall, glamorous, blond Maggie at the mercy of her little boy. Ethan was the spitting image of his father, Simon, whom Maggie had summarily divorced last year despite all evidence that she still loved him. They equally shared Ethan, this little boy with his father’s haunting good looks, tugging on his mother’s hand.

“Mags, did you try Jason? Maybe he can come into
work this afternoon.” They had recently hired a young college student to help out at the store, to keep it open later at night and also to pitch in on days like today when child-care disarrangements made the schedule difficult for two mothers sharing what amounted to three jobs.

“He’s got classes. I told him after being so late yesterday, he ought to get his priorities straight, drop out of school and work for us full-time!” Maggie’s laugh was a high cackle.

“Mags? Why don’t I watch Ethan this afternoon so you can work?”

“Righto. And tell Lauren I found that phone number she wanted, the baker on Columbia Street.” Alice heard a Mr. Frosty jingle sail by on Maggie’s end of the line.

“That’s why I’m calling,” Alice said. “Lauren never showed up. So I picked Austin up from school. Did you hear from her, by any chance?”

“Not a peep. What are you thinking, Alice?”

“She got held up somewhere,” Alice said. “Or maybe she had the baby.”

“Have you phoned Tim?”

“I don’t have his numbers, do you?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re in my Palm Pilot backup at the store,” Maggie said.
“All right, but just a small one.
Sorry, Ethan’s asking for an Italian ice.”

“I’ll tell you what, Maggie,” Alice said. “I’ll meet you at the store and we’ll call Tim. Then I’ll take Ethan with us to the butcher so you can work. Did you remember the barbecue at our house tonight?”

“Translation,” Maggie said, “I don’t have to cook. Of
course
I remembered.”

Alice gathered the three children and herded them out of the playground and onto Smith Street, tossing Lauren’s ruined cup of no-longer-iced decaf into a wire mesh garbage can on the corner. As they waited for the light at President Street, a puddle of paper scraps swirled in a cowlick wind, delighting the children with proof of everyday magic. Alice figured a garbage truck had recently
passed, dribbling refuse. New York just couldn’t keep clean, though it was partly the grit of the place that was so appealing. Grit and possibility.

She sidestepped the eddy of leftover trash and ushered the children across the street. Two blocks along, Nell made them all stop in a wide swath of shade in front of Smith Home to peer at the window display of silly pull knobs. Nell loved to lure the other kids into the game of choosing which eccentric knob they would buy today if they could. About an inch around, each buffed-pewter knob was a lopsided face, pulled and stretched by some humor or discontent. They reminded Alice of miniature commedia dell’arte masks — pathos, hilarity — and were beautiful in a disturbing kind of way, like two sides of a coin pressed into one exceptional, misaligned image. Scanning the dozens of knobs, Nell announced today’s favorite: fat cheeks, eyes skewed directly upward, mischievous grin. Watching her beloved daughter enact this ritual, Alice made herself a silent promise to both please her children and assuage the sizzle of anxiety she was starting to feel like an itch under her skin every time she thought about that Thirty Day Notice. They would never be able to move in time, but if they found something — signed a contract or a lease — any sane housing court judge would give them the time they needed to move, wouldn’t they? Alice and Mike would have to immediately step up the house hunt. Raise their price, lower their standards. When they found the right house, she would keep the promise she was just now conjuring and make Nell and Peter a gift of silly knobs for their new rooms, a gesture to a new beginning in a new home.

“Let’s get moving.” Alice turned into a pool of bright sun and started walking. The children noisily followed. It was just two more blocks to Blue Shoes.

With every step, Alice thought of Lauren and tried to call up her own physical memory of childbirth, its shattering pain, the outrageous joy. Tried to feel herself in Lauren’s experience today. Could it be true?
Had
she gone into labor? Alice wondered if Tim knew anything.
Or if instead Lauren had gathered up an amazing story no one had yet been told: birth in the back of a cab, or in the subway, or at home. All frightening scenarios. Alice hoped she had made it to a hospital. That she hadn’t been alone. And Alice thought,
Ivy. At last. You are here.

Ivy was the women’s secret, a gift they shared before Lauren would pass it on to Tim at their daughter’s birth. As with their first pregnancy, Tim had not wanted to know the baby’s gender. He wanted to be surprised. But motherhood had toughened Lauren and the only surprise she wanted was that the baby was born alive and healthy. It was a feeling Alice and Mike shared: they knew their twins were boys.

The other gift Lauren had prepared for Tim, along with the surprise of a daughter, was choosing the name, Ivy, after Tim’s favorite grandmother.

Alice and Maggie had kept Lauren’s secrets for months. Tonight, Tim would finally know.

The sun was strong and for a moment the plate-glass storefront of Blue Shoes seemed to float, mirrorlike, against the brick building. Alice was pleased to see that Maggie had remembered to suction the
BE RIGHT BACK
sign to the front door. She rummaged through her purse for her keys.

The children raced into the dark shop. Alice switched on the lights, instantly brightening the painted-silver tin ceiling, the high gloss of the oak floors, the rich depth of the blue walls. Pinging awake the displays of gorgeous shoes. Blue Shoes had kept its promise and become “Brooklyn’s footwear fashion destination,” a prediction made by a tiny newspaper article that appeared when they first opened last winter. Alice loved her partnership with Maggie, the bustle of their store. It was a sane, even fun compromise between her former work life as a film editor and her current life as a mother. They had jointly dubbed the store a
midlife reinvention,
an experiment that, blissfully, had worked.

Alice checked the answering machine under the stone counter, its creamy green glaze dazzling in the halogen light. Nothing. Maggie and Ethan arrived minutes later and the four children, lifelong friends, gathered on the center bench to inspect Nell’s latest pack of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

Maggie, in flowing butter-yellow pants and a cornflower-blue tank top, with her mop of blond hair pinned high
on her head, strode through the store like a queen defiant of the heat.

“Anything?” Maggie asked.

Alice shook her head.

They went straight for the computer in the back room and found Tim’s numbers. His cell phone went right to voice mail, so they tried his office. His secretary told them he was away on business. When pressed, she explained that he was taking depositions in Chicago.

“When he calls in,” Alice asked the secretary, “please ask him to call me as soon as possible. Tell him—” She hesitated to leave an alarming message, but decided spontaneously to follow her instinct. “Tell him Lauren didn’t meet me today when she said she would, and I can’t reach her anywhere, and being as she’s nearly full-term, naturally I thought that possibly—”