The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  “So, what’s the first step?”

  “Realtor.com!”

  My plan was simple: We’d find a home in the Five Towns area on Long Island’s South Shore, because the community there had the exact religious-modern balance I was seeking and was an easy drive to the bakery in Brooklyn. We’d join one of the many local synagogues, and as soon as word spread of a new family in the ’hood, our social calendar would be filled with playdates, Shabbos dinners, and weekends lounging on neighbors’ lawns. Then one day, maybe six months after our move, we’d be strolling along Central Avenue and notice an empty storefront for rent. Adam and I would instantly have the same thought—next franchise location!—and I’d call the broker on the spot. Our son and his friends (or perhaps our own future children, should we be so lucky) would grow up stealing cookies from the display case and then, as teenagers, work their first job as a cashier behind the counter. I had it all mapped out.

  By mid-September, the dream was crystallizing. Our bid was accepted on a completely renovated splanch (split-level ranch) with a teak deck and a huge wooden swing, set on half an acre of flat land. We moved at the beginning of December, and on the first night of Hanukkah, just after we lit the candles in front of the dining room’s bay window, I asked Adam to check on something in the basement. I followed behind as he descended the stairs, Ezra snoozing happily in my arms.

  “You didn’t!” Adam gasped, frozen at the base of the steps.

  “I did!” I squealed, as softly as I could.

  “No freakin’ way!” He sat down on the cushioned stool, grabbed the sticks, and ran his finger over the cymbals.

  “It’s the same set Jordana has in her basement. I knew you loved it, so I asked for all the details, and she told me exactly what to order, including the champagne sparkle finish. A guy from the music store came over and set it up this morning when you were at work.”

  “But I thought we weren’t doing gifts this year. Didn’t we agree the house and all this new furniture was enough?”

  I smiled and shrugged. “Oops.”

  He shook his head in mock disapproval and then ogled his shiny new toy.

  “Well, I figured now that we have a basement of our own, it was time you got your drums. Maybe one day you’ll teach Ezra. Maybe you’ll even have your own band. The Fabulous Bakery Boys or something.” I laughed, pleased by my own wit.

  Adam rose from the stool and sauntered toward me, expertly twirling the sticks between his fingers like batons before gliding them into the back pockets of his pants, just as he did in high school. He looked just as cool as he did back then.

  “How’d I get so lucky?” he whispered, just inches from my face, and then kissed me softly on my mouth. I could feel my knees weaken as he lingered longer than expected.

  We pulled apart and both looked down at our son.

  “The Fabulous Bakery Boys,” he said with a nod. “I like that.”

  Later that night, while checking email in bed, I noticed a message from Lex:

  Hey, Hol! Hope your new place is fab and Adam loves your gift (Jordy told me about the surprise—awesome!). Did you give it to him yet? I’m sure it will rock his world (bad pun intended—couldn’t resist). Wanted to let you know that I’ll be in New York at the end of December and staying through New Year’s. Jack’s taking the kids to his parents’ in Florida then, so I figured I’d come home for a visit. Any chance you’re free? We’d love to see the baby (and, okay, maybe you guys too)! Let us know. XO

  We. Us. The use of plural pronouns to represent Seth and Lex’s coupledom was still shocking to me. I prayed this relationship wouldn’t be another failure for him, although in truth, Lex was the one with much more to lose.

  Ever since she had returned from the reunion in the Berkshires and informed Jack that she was no longer in love with him, Lex’s life had become headlining gossip of Chicago’s North Shore. As a mother of three and the local source for personalized children’s gifts, she was separated by far fewer than six degrees from the other youngish moms in the area who shopped at the Northbrook Court Mall, displayed an inordinate amount of oversize holiday paraphernalia on their front lawns, and stored their kids’ ice hockey gear in the trunks of their luxury SUVs. Some women believed she dumped Jack for an East Coast lover she’d met online. Others swore she was having an affair with a beefcake physical therapist working across from the famed Beinlich’s hamburger joint. The tales did possess a kernel of truth. Seth was from the East Coast, but, of course, he and Lex did not meet online. And he did explore a job prospect during one of his weekend visits, but his relationship with Lex was hardly an affair. According to both, it was love—genuine, unexpected, and unlike anything either had ever known.

  Without question, it was her name and reputation that had been tarnished, not Jack’s. She was deemed the ungrateful bitch, while he was the casualty of his wife’s massive midlife crisis. Lex had seen the hot divorcees in their semi-sheer yoga outfits approach him at soccer games with those sympathetic, Botoxed eyes; one even pulled a lasagna out of the backseat of her convertible and told him she’d stop by later in the week for her “Le Cruise-it.” Listening to a woman try to impress her husband with high-end French Le Creuset cookware incited laughter, not jealousy or regret. “Oh my God, Hol,” she wrote in one of the lengthy emails I’d started receiving after her separation, “it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Jack doesn’t know Tupperware from freakin’ Teflon. I guarantee he thought this hussy wanted to take him on a cruise!”

  To her credit, Lex never uttered a negative word in public about the father of her children. After all, she didn’t hate him; she just didn’t love him anymore. Other than her kids’ well-being, the only thing she wanted was closure.

  “I can’t tell my kids that their father never felt like an equal partner,” she told me when I called to thank her for the inordinate amount of personalized baby paraphernalia she sent for Ezra. “When I met Jack, he looked like what I thought I was supposed to marry. And for a long time, I assumed we were happy, and that this was how life was supposed to be. But then I spent time with Seth. He listened. We laughed. I realized that I’d forgotten what that felt like.”

  Looking at the we and us in Lex’s email reminded me of that conversation. As weird and incestuous as their relationship felt to me, who was I to question?

  Hi, Lex! Would love to see you guys! How about New Year’s Day brunch at our house? I’ll see if Bec and Jordana can come too. Love, H

  Hosting this group as the first guests in my new home made me feel like I was starting the new year off on the right foot. Plus, if I needed to excuse myself for a short nap, they would certainly understand. They knew that Ezra’s sleep schedule had been thrown by the move and how that translated to weeks of sleep deprivation for Adam and me. Jordana, who’d taken on a fairy godmother role and become my authority on all things Boy (she sent all of AJ and Matthew’s hand-me-downs, which, in truth, was mutually beneficial because it provided her with the incomparable joy of de-cluttering her apartment), overnighted a costly essential-oil starter kit and insisted we diffuse lavender into the air to help Ezra sleep. She swore it worked on her boys, so I gave it a shot, but Adam abhorred the smell and immediately threw the whole contraption in the garbage.

  By New Year’s Eve, we were running on three weeks of erratic sleep and had become complete zombies. Like clockwork, Ezra cried out at 1:00 a.m., awakening Adam and me with his whimper on the baby monitor.

  “Stay there,” Adam said, reaching over from the other side of our bed, his fingertips gently grazing my arm.

  “But you were on last night,” I yawned. “That’ll be two nights in a row, and you have a ton of deliveries in the morning.”

  “It’s fine.” He swung his legs over the side of the mattress and rubbed his eyes.

  “Why don’t you ask one of the guys at the store to cover for you? You know they’ll do it for the boss. They won’t say no to us.”

  “Absolutely not. It’s a holiday
. I can’t ask them to work today.” He yawned.

  Seriously? Could I not have a better guy? I thought.

  “Go back to sleep, babe. I’ve got to be at the store in a few hours anyway to load the truck. I’ll be home before everyone gets here for brunch.”

  “You sure?” I reached over and put my hand on his back.

  He nodded and adjusted his boxer shorts as he walked out of the room. I turned the monitor’s volume down, and when I did, I could hear my aspiring-rock-star husband transform a famous Kansas tune into a lullaby and implore our son to rest his weary head and cry no more.

  Ezra must have taken his father’s musical plea to heart, because at seven thirty, the latest I had slept in weeks, I woke to the sound of the telephone, not the baby monitor.

  “Hello?” I muttered into the landline’s receiver on the fourth ring. My eyes were closed, still heavy from sleep.

  I could hear some commotion in the background. “Hello?” a deep male voice said. “I’m looking for a Holly Marcus.” I detected a hint of an Irish accent.

  “This is Holly,” I said, and when I did, sirens blared through the other end of the phone. My heart leaped. I shot out of bed and was down the hallway in Ezra’s room a moment later to make sure he was in his crib. It wasn’t that I expected my five-and-a-half-month-old to have pole-vaulted out, but still, I needed to make sure he was safe. He was, thank God, and sleeping soundly. I closed his door softly.

  “Ma’am, this is Sargeant Carthy, of the Nineteenth Precinct in Manhattan. Your name is listed as an emergency contact on the cell phone of . . .”

  Manhattan . . . Emergency contact . . . The only person who lives in Manhattan and with whom I’m close enough to be considered an emergency contact is Becca. Becca!

  “Oh my God! Tell me Becca is okay, sir. Please, is she all right? What happened?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s no Becca here. I’m with—”

  “Rebecca! It’s Rebecca! Her name is Rebecca Scardino! What happened?”

  “Ma’am, please,” the man said, sounding more stern. “I’m here with your husband. Adam.” He paused. “There’s been an accident. . . .”

  And with that, I fell to my knees and lost control of my bladder on the newly carpeted hallway of our second floor.

  Chapter 20: Jordana

  The call came in at a quarter to eight.

  “Jordana, I’m sorry to wake you. I woke you, didn’t I? Shoot . . .” Holly sounded flustered and winded. Ezra was wailing in the background.

  “Hey,” I said groggily, squinting to check the clock on my nightstand. While Holly and I had grown close, we still hadn’t quite reached the intimacy of an early-morning phone conversation. “Everything all right?”

  “I tried Becca, but she didn’t pick up. Oy, please stop crying, Ezzie,” she begged.

  “Sounds like you’ve got your hands full over there.”

  “We’re going to take a ride in the car, yes we are!” she said in a voice at least an octave higher than her normal one. “We’re gonna go see Daddy! That’s right. Can you get your arm in that sleeve, Ezzie? That’s it. Good job! You’re such a big boy!”

  I heard the jingle of keys, a few footsteps, and then a mumbled “Dammit!”

  “Hol, you okay?” I couldn’t decipher whether this was an actual emergency or just an overwhelmed new mom trying to run an errand. Either way, it sounded like a shit show.

  “You sure you don’t want to call me back?” I glanced across the bed to see if Sal was still asleep. He was.

  “Listen,” she panted. “Adam was in an accident while making deliveries on the Upper East Side this morning.”

  “What?” I gasped, my torso rocketing up. “What happened?”

  “I just got a call from the police. I don’t have details. The cop didn’t say anything other than that Adam was asking to see me and that he was at 72nd Street and Third Avenue and . . . Seriously? How am I supposed to get this infant seat belt over a puffy snow-suit? How do you loosen the strap on this thing? Ugh!”

  I pulled my pajamas off, tossed them into the laundry basket, and headed over to my closet to get dressed. “Holly, what can I do to support you?” I’d recently picked up this phrase in my Meditation & Mindfulness class and had been trying to incorporate it into my daily lingo; I was pleased to see it roll off my tongue without conscious effort.

  “Can you get over there and stay with Adam until I arrive?”

  Now, there’s a request I’ve never gotten before. “Of course I will.”

  I heard her start the car’s ignition. “I don’t know how long it will take me to get there; I can’t imagine there’s much traffic this early on New Year’s Day, but still, it’ll be at least a half-hour from my house . . . Shit!”

  “Take a deep breath,” I said calmly. “Try to relax and stay focused. You have precious cargo in that car. This will all be fine. I’m running out the door right now.”

  I scribbled a Post-It note for Sal and attached it to the cover of the toilet seat—his first stop every morning—and headed outside. It was a gray, gloomy morning with a slight drizzle of rain that would have turned to snow had it been a few degrees cooler. It was a perfect morning to read the paper in bed with a mug of warm tea nearby. Instead, I stretched my legs and began to jog the four long avenue blocks toward 72nd and Third. As I passed Madison and then Park, I willed myself to ignore the sirens in the distance. It’s just background noise, the daily soundtrack of the city. But when the whirrs grew louder and closer, I quickened my pace. By the time I passed Lexington, I saw fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and two cops rerouting traffic. Panic and adrenaline shot through me.

  “Adam!” I screamed, my legs transitioning from a jog to an all-out sprint. As I neared the scene, the first thing I noticed was buttercream smeared across 72nd Street. Dented white cake boxes with squished New Year’s–themed pastries littered the crosswalk, and shards of glass decorated the asphalt like large sprinkles. A crowd of coffee-toting, sweatpant-clad locals had already formed to gawk. Their gaping mouths turned my stomach.

  “Adam!” I shouted again, elbowing my way through the mob. When I reached the yellow caution tape and took in the sight, I grew light-headed.

  “Oh my God,” I cried, instinctively shielding my eyes from what they had already seen. The bakery truck had plowed onto the sidewalk, flipped upside down, and missed the windows of the Citibank on the corner by about a foot. The van’s roof was crushed, its windshield and windows shattered, and, as far as I could tell, there were no airbags to speak of. And yet, despite the horror, the sweet aroma of freshly baked cupcakes permeated the air, making the site smell like a celebration.

  “Ma’am, you can’t come back here,” an officer said, one hand on his hip holster, the other in front of my face as I ducked beneath the yellow caution tape.

  “Sir, that’s my friend’s truck. You must let me see him.”

  “Jaaaay?” I heard Adam moan. I turned and saw him lying on the ground, covered in blood, two paramedics by his side.

  “Please,” I begged the officer.

  “Jaaaay?” Adam groaned again.

  “All right, go ahead,” the officer said, his tone softening.

  I ran over and crouched down on the concrete near Adam’s head—close enough to talk, but distant enough to give the EMTs space to work. Immediately, I could see that his nose was broken and one of his teeth was lying on the sidewalk beside my sneaker. I felt queasy.

  “Oh my God, Adam. Are you okay?” I inched closer to hold his hand but then pulled away before he realized. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to touching a woman other than Holly or a paramedic. “What happened?”

  “I think I fell asleep,” he said, his voice shaky. “One minute I was driving, and then, next thing I knew, I was upside down. Guess I shouldn’t have thrown out that oil diffuser you sent us.” He managed a weak smile, which revealed he had lost more than just that one tooth.

  “I’m gonna need you to move out of the way,
ma’am,” a paramedic said, wheeling over a stretcher.

  I stood back and tightened my wool coat around me like a security blanket. Adam cringed as they lifted him off the ground. His face was scratched and bloodied, his white button-down shirt and black pants literally ripped to shreds. It was an absolute miracle he hadn’t hit another car or a pedestrian.

  “Are you in a lot of pain?” Surely an idiotic question, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  He closed his eyes and grimaced. “Not my best day. And I’m really cold.”

  I immediately unzipped my coat and threw it over him.

  “Please remove your jacket, ma’am,” one of the medics said.

  I obeyed and walked beside the stretcher as they rolled him toward the back of the ambulance. Adam began to shiver, and I recalled Holly’s request that I stay with him until she arrived. “Can I ride inside with him?” I asked one of the medics.

  “That’s up to the patient.”

  Adam nodded his permission.

  The EMT motioned for me to climb aboard, and I slid in close to Adam’s head. As we headed toward Mount Sinai Hospital, Adam looked paler. “I want to talk to Holly,” he said, shaking.

  “She’s on her way to the city now. You’ll see her soon.”

  “No,” he chattered. “I want to talk to her now.”

  I glanced at the medics. “May I call his wife?”

  They looked at Adam, then intently at each other, and then one of them said, “Sure, go ahead.” I wasn’t familiar with EMT protocol or the rules in the back of an ambulance, but I was grateful these two were so accommodating.