Seven Minutes to Noon (3 page)

“The baby.” The secretary summed up Alice’s worries so efficiently.

“Yes,” Alice said. “The baby.”

“I’ll get the message through to him.”

“Thank you.” Alice recited her cell and home numbers, hung up the phone and turned to Maggie. “I’m getting really worried. Do you still have her key?” Maggie had been in charge of plant watering at Lauren and Tim’s while they were away recently.

“I do,” Maggie said. “I’ll tell you what, while you’ve got the kids, I’ll make some calls. I’ll start with Methodist, where she’s supposed to have the baby, and if she’s not there, I’ll try other hospitals. And I’ll call the exercise place, see if she made it to class. If I don’t come up with anything, I’ll go over to her apartment.”

“Good idea, Mags.”

“I wish I could tell you to have a glass of wine,” Maggie said, her eyes squinting in a kind of feline smile. “You’ve had a hard day, darling. Please, leave the worry to me.”

“You’re not good enough at it,” Alice said.

“Well, you’re too good at it.” Maggie leaned in to kiss Alice on the cheek. Her perfume was light and flowery.
“Don’t think about that horrid notice — you’ll move when you move. And we’re going to hear from Lauren any minute. She probably lost herself at the Barneys warehouse sale. I was there yesterday and I was nearly late back myself.”

Alice appreciated Maggie’s efforts to distract her from the day’s disappointments, but it was no use. “Lauren doesn’t shop at Barneys,” Alice said. “And she’s never been late for anything in her life.”

“An impossibility,” Maggie countered, “even for the prompt and brilliant Lauren Barnet.”

The kids were getting restless; Peter and Austin had already drifted through the front door onto the sidewalk.

“Call me if you find out anything,” Alice told Maggie in parting. “I’m stopping at Cattaneo’s for barbecue stuff, then going straight home.”

Alice ushered the band of children up to Court Street and a few more blocks to the neighborhood butcher. They loved coming to Cattaneo’s for a chance to skate in the sawdust that covered the floor and also for the lollipops, which Sal Cattaneo himself doled out to children after every sale.

Cattaneo’s was a nice, clean, well-lit store with neat shelves of bottled gourmet sauces that hadn’t been there when Alice first arrived in the neighborhood fifteen years ago, pregentrification. She stood at the glass counter and ordered a pound each of ground turkey and beef from Sal, who looked to be in his fifties, with his halo of tousled white hair spilling out from beneath a creased white paper hat.

Sal handed over her order and in his sonorous voice nearly sang to her, “Anything else, young lady?” She adored him for that
young lady.
Thirty-six years old, hugely pregnant, with four children bedeviling his store.

“Not today, Sal, thanks.”

He distributed lollipops to the children, who had lined up on cue at the ding of the closing cash register.

Back on Court Street, Alice checked her voice mail to see if she had possibly missed a call; her cell phone’s
ring was often subsumed by the children’s noise. There was, in fact, one message, caller ID
unknown.
She listened eagerly for the sound of Lauren’s voice, feeling the first note of buoyant relief as she dialed her code. Then the message played and her moment of hopefulness evaporated.

“Hi, Alice, it’s Pam Short returning your call, returning my call, returning your call. Don’t ya just love playing phone tag? Now it’s your turn. You know my number.”

Pam Short was a broker at Garden Hill Realty — where Ethan’s sitter, Sylvie, worked part-time as an office assistant — and was supposed to be some kind of miracle worker. Alice dialed Pam back and left her another message. It was a frustrating volley, and all Alice really cared about now was hearing from Lauren, but the house hunt couldn’t wait. She marched the children past gourmet shops, antique stores, designer boutiques, spiffy new restaurants and all the real estate brokers who had practically laughed at her request for a house under a million dollars.

They crossed Smith Street and continued along President onto the leafy block of landmark brownstones where Alice had lived virtually her entire adulthood. Up the stoop and back home; well, it was home for now, though clearly
Julius Pollack, owner,
didn’t agree. In the foyer, Alice saw that Joey — who had moved out this morning after a lifetime in the house — had left behind some of the miscellany no one knew what to do with after a move: a bag of wire hangers, an old cork bulletin board, a box containing different shades of shoe polish and an ugly picture frame. He had probably left this stuff for Alice and Mike, in case they wanted it. But it was all junk. She would ask Mike to carry it to the curb later.

She turned on the air conditioner and opened the kitchen door to the backyard, into which Nell, Peter, Austin and Ethan eagerly ran. She watched them from the broad window over the sink of her large, well-used
kitchen. Nell opened the toy bin and the boys made an eager collection of plastic shovels and buckets and hoes, which they tossed into the oversized sandbox Mike had built.

As she watched the children happily play, unaware that anything was wrong, Alice thought back to yesterday, wondering what she had missed. She conjured Lauren and Maggie to the bench beside her and tried to recall if there was something she had not heard or understood about Lauren’s plans.

The day before, Thursday, had been even hotter than today. Alice, Lauren and Maggie had gathered at the playground after school.

Lauren shifted her bulky middle on the bench but couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Her blue eyes paled in a flush of sun and she inched closer to Alice, who instinctively slid over to accommodate her. It was an odd sensation that Lauren, who was the smallest among them, suddenly needed so much space. Her long brown hair was coiled atop her head and skewered with a takeout chopstick, but still she couldn’t seem to cool down her neck. She fanned it with her flattened hand. A wine-colored maternal family birthmark, roughly the shape and size of a quarter, was visible at the nape of her hairline, just at the nexus of her spine.

Alice remembered the little portable fan she kept in her purse. She took it out, flipped up the yellow plastic blades and held it whizzing at varying angles around Lauren’s face and neck. Lauren leaned forward to catch the breeze.

“Joey sold the house yesterday,” Alice announced.

Lauren turned to her. “I thought the buyer wanted it delivered vacant.”

“He did, but Joey had another buyer lined up, so the first guy gave in. He really wanted it.”

When he decided to move to Florida, Joey had asked them if they wanted the house. They had always thought the day would come when Joey moved on and they
would take over the title. They knew it wouldn’t be cheap, but the price tag awakened them to a shift that had transformed the real estate markets when they weren’t paying attention: 1.7 million dollars for a two-family brownstone. Alice was struck dumb when she first heard it. Mike’s reaction was to laugh. Joey shrugged his shoulders. He found a buyer in two weeks.

“I still think it’s outrageous.” Drops of sweat had gathered on Lauren’s forehead and she wiped them off with the palm of her swollen hand. Her body had assumed a laden quality, and Alice had a feeling Lauren’s baby wouldn’t wait for her due date in mid-September. “So much money for a house. People around here are getting pathologically greedy.”

It was true. Lately, the streets of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and even Boerum Hill seemed to be turning to gold.

“Any news on
your
housing problems?” Alice asked Lauren.

“Nothing yet.” Lauren pressed her hands beneath her belly and lifted its weight off her thighs. “Tim’s got someone at his firm handling it. He says if he can prove this eviction’s illegal, he’ll probably find they’re doing it to other tenants too. Metro Properties owns a lot of buildings in the area. Corporate landlords are the worst; we don’t even know
who
our landlord is. I think Tim wants to bust Metro and I’m starting to feel the same way. I’m so angry at those bloodsuckers for putting us through this.”

“If I were you, I’d get on with it and move,” Maggie said. “It isn’t worth fighting over scraps.”

The remark clearly annoyed Lauren. Her lips scrunched and she looked away. Alice’s gaze wandered after Lauren’s to a bright red ball that was just then spinning toward their feet. A little boy of about three was chasing it, stumbling over his own chunky sneakers and finally crashing face-first onto the black rubberized mat that covered the play areas for just this reason. He wailed tragically. Alice flinched toward him, about to
offer comfort, when a woman raced over and scooped him up in her arms. Young, probably not yet thirty, she wore a scoop-neck purple T-shirt tucked into jeans, and black leather sneakers. Her dark hair was bobbed at her jaw, heightening the contrast of her paper-white skin. The round pink lenses of her sunglasses partially obscured her eyes.

“Shh, buddy. It’s okay.” Her voice was clear and deep, warmly resonant yet without a ripple of worry for the child. She was not his mother.

To test her hunch, Alice asked, “Is your son all right?”

The woman lifted her face from the boy’s thick brown hair. “He’ll be fine.” She smiled, but only halfway.

Alice found a clean tissue in her purse and got up to offer it.

“My kids fall all the time,” she said, “and, oh, the drama!”

The woman accepted the tissue and began to dry the boy’s teary cheeks.

“He’s adorable,” Alice said.

“Yes,” the woman said, “my nephew’s a doll.”

“I’m not a doll!” the boy blurted out. “I’m a person!”

Now the young woman smiled fully. “You’re my big boy.” She ruffled his hair. As soon as she set him down, he crouched to pick up his red ball, threw it and resumed the chase. His aunt calmly watched him. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, Alice noticed. No jewelry at all, as a matter of fact, not even earrings. She was lean and muscular as a gymnast.

“I’ve seen you here before,” Alice said.

“I watch him now and then. It keeps me sane, you know?”

“Funny, being with my kids keeps me crazy.” Alice glanced back at Lauren and Maggie to see if they’d caught her joke. They had, and were both furiously nodding.

“I’m Alice.”

“Frannie.”

“Nice to meet you.”

A shriek issued from the other side of the playground, beyond the women’s sight. Alice quickly scanned the immediate area for her children but saw neither.

“Excuse me,” Alice muttered as she hurried to the other side of the jungle gym.

Someone else’s child was fighting for a turn on the tire swing. Alice relaxed as she caught sight of Nell huddled with a girl from her class on a low wooden platform. They were bent over their prized card collections, hands veiled by Nell’s long peachy hair. Peter, darkly handsome like his father, was standing at the top of the tall slide, waiting his turn to go down. Flushed with relief, Alice walked back to the bench. Frannie was gone.

“That little jog winded me,” Alice said.

“You’re telling me. I can barely move an inch without hyperventilating.” Lauren stretched an arm along the bench behind Alice. “I’m so happy we’re doing this together.”

“It’ll be nice,” Alice said, “to be back at the playground in the mornings with the babies. It’s so much more peaceful here when the big kids are in school.”

“No offense, ladies,” Maggie said, “but I’m thrilled not to be joining you.” She haughtily swung one of her tanned, waxed legs over the other. Her beaded flip-flop dangled off her foot. Alice and Lauren ignored the remark; it had long been understood that Maggie’s strongest statements tended to be the least true.

“How about a barbecue at my house tomorrow night?” Alice suggested. “We’ll say good-bye to summer. Six o’clock?”

“Does the summer really have to end?” Lauren asked sadly.

“Sooner or later,
everything
must end,” Maggie said. “Life’s like an orgasm, don’t you think? The good part’s fleeting and the rest is prep or cleanup. Only the perfect shoe can truly elevate the spirit. Right, Alice?”

Alice’s burst of laughter drew more laughter from Maggie and Lauren.

Across the playground, Frannie was watching them. Holding her nephew in her lap, she lifted his little hand to make him wave. Alice and Lauren waved back.

“I like her,” Lauren said. “I don’t know why.”

“Me too,” Alice said.

After a few minutes, Maggie went back to Blue Shoes. Alice gathered up Nell and Peter and kissed Lauren good-bye.

“Want to meet here tomorrow before pickup?” Alice asked in parting. “Say, two thirty? I’ll get us a couple of those yummy iced decafs from the Autumn Café.”

Lauren smiled. “It’s a date.”

Alice opened her eyes to now, today, late Friday afternoon. The children were throwing sand at each other. Why wouldn’t the phone ring? She walked over to it and checked again for messages; but there had been nothing before and there was nothing now. She phoned Maggie, who reported no news, saying she was just on her way over to Lauren’s apartment. Alice then called Tim’s secretary, who informed her that Tim had been given the messages, had been quite concerned, and was on his way back from Chicago. Why, Alice wondered, hadn’t he returned her call before heading back? Lauren always said Tim was a poor communicator, and the stab of frustration Alice now felt confirmed it.

She went to the refrigerator and began to assemble barbecue supplies on the counter. Ground turkey, hot dogs, buns, mustard, ketchup, potato salad, lettuce. Practical details to push against the growing current of worry. She could hear the children’s voices drifting in through the window, open just an inch to let in sound and a ribbon of hot air.

The phone behind her bleated suddenly into the strange tranquility. She calmed herself with a deep breath, crossed the kitchen, and answered it.

Alice heard blaring horns on the other end of the phone, clicking footsteps, the layered chatter of too many voices.

“I’m at the airport,” Tim said. “Have you heard from her?”

“Nothing,” Alice answered. “Which airport? New York or Chicago?”