When she tried to remember why they had bought such a huge house and a property that required so much care, she realized Howard had been trying to compensate for the loss she had felt leaving Manhattan. She had not wanted to go. It was so hard to know, sometimes, what decision to make. At this point Amanda only knew she wanted them all to be together in the New York she so loved.
“I’m not worried about any old terrorist,” Amanda overheard Teddy telling one of his friends. “My dad’ll take care of them. And Ashette will bite ’em, won’t you, girl?”
They had already started running fire drills with the children in New York on the weekends. “It’s like soccer practice,” Howard told them. “You practice enough so that if anything were ever to happen, you don’t even have to think about it—you’re gonna win no matter what.”
“Luck is for people who are ready,” Emily said, parroting her father.
The Stewarts were shocked and then elated when an offer was made on the house a week after it went on the market. But before long another sign was added below the first: Sold. That night Teddy came tearing down into the basement where Amanda was looking for Emily’s blue pants. “Mom, Mickey-Luck’s here!”
Miklov had kept a respectful distance since that awful day. Several times she had seen his red truck ride past the house during school hours but he never stopped. At soccer games he waved but never spoke to her, and phoned the house only to speak to one of the children about soccer.
Teddy went racing back up the stairs and Amanda heard him thunder across the kitchen overhead. Then she heard a slower, much heavier tread.
Teddy ran across the kitchen again to the stairs. “Mom! Mickey-Luck wants to talk to you!”
“Just a minute, I’ll be right there!” she called. Surely he would not say or do anything in front of Madame Moliere and the children. She heard his footsteps overhead, and just as she was thinking, He wouldn’t dare, a pair of work boots appeared on the stairs, clomping down, one by one. “Mrs. Stewart?” Miklov called.
“Hi,” she said, taking the pile of clothes she had just folded and dumping them back into the dryer so she had something to do. “What’s up, Miklov?” she asked without looking.
“The house,” he said. “It is sold.”
“Yes,” she said. Here were Emily’s blue pants. They had been in the pile the whole time.
“You are leaffing?”
“As soon as school is out,” she said as she folded a shirt.
Silence.
“Why?” he asked.
She hazarded a look at him. He was very tan already from the outdoor spring practices.
“Because my husband and I want to be together every day.” She took another piece of clothing out of the dryer and when she looked over at him she saw he was looking down at the floor.
“I am leaffing, too.” He looked up. “I have been offert a job. A goot job. In Grenitch.” They locked eyes. “So I am here to say gootbye. They give me a place to live. A nice place.”
“I’m very pleased for you, Miklov.”
He swallowed. “Now you do not haf to go. I leaf.”
She dropped her eyes to the piece of clothing in her hands, then put it on the ironing board. “You are very kind, Miklov. And I thank you for your thoughtfulness. But we are moving back to New York because it is our home.”
“Miklov!” Teddy called from the top of the stairs. “You wanna have ice cream with us?”
“I will be right there, Teddee.” Miklov took a step in her direction and Amanda looked up in alarm. Miklov held up his hand to reassure her. “I only want to say,” he said quietly, “you are so beautiful and Mr. Stewart is lucky man.”
She smiled. “Thank you. But I’m the one who’s lucky, Miklov.” And then she turned her back to him, pretending to sort clothes, and waited until she heard his heavy tread leave the house.
48
The Wyatts
“BUT WHAT DO you really think?” Sam asked Harriet. They had valiantly tried the run-walking regimen one of Harriet’s fitness authors was promoting, but they’d already pooped out, which had left them walking on the path between the West Side Highway and the Hudson River.
“I don’t think the magnitude of all she’s undertaken has dawned on Althea yet,” Harriet said, finding her husband’s hand.
He grunted in agreement.
“But she’ll be a fine mother, Sam. I have no doubts on that score.”
“I don’t, either. It’s amazing how much she reminds me of you, now. I never saw the resemblance before.”
“I bet within three years Althea’s married.”
Sam stopped walking to look at her. “Who’s she going to marry? Not that textile guy.”
“She’ll marry someone who will make a good father.”
“She’s got me to be a father figure for Samuel,” he said when they resumed walking.
“It’s the way things happen sometimes, Sam. A woman gets her priorities straight and suddenly she can see clearly. About who’s right for her.”
Sam ballooned his cheeks with air before letting it out. “That would be nice, if at least one of our girls was happy.”
“Sam, look!” Harriet’s hand shot out to point. “Some crazy person’s already out sailing and it’s not you!”
“What about Samantha?” he asked, sliding his arm around Harriet. “How long do you suppose she’s going to hate us?” They had succeeded in getting Samantha to go into therapy in Utica and she had hinted she was blaming them for all of her bad decisions.
“I’ve been trying to imagine how she must feel right now,” Harriet said. “How angry she is. I think she feels ostracized and that we chose Samuel over her.”
“I wish I could stop wondering whether or not she’s seeing Culmathson,” Sam said. He pulled Harriet aside while a small woman with a pit bull passed by them. “Maybe we should take a ride up to Utica Saturday,” he said. “Not tell her, just show up. Stay over Saturday night, make her do something with us.”
“We can always take her shopping,” Harriet said glumly. She was still hurting, Sam knew, big-time, feeling as though she had failed Samantha in some way.
“And if she won’t hang out with us then we’ll just hang out with each other,” Sam said, pulling his wife closer. “We’ll tell her that whether she likes it or not, we still love her, we’re still her parents, and we’re still her number one fans. Then she can either come with us or not. And if she doesn’t we can go to an open meeting and then dinner or something.”
He wasn’t sure if it was a smile or a sense of resolve tightening Harriet’s mouth. “We can try, I suppose.” She stopped walking to look up at the top of the apartment buildings that could be seen over the trees of Riverside Park. He knew Harriet was looking at their building. “You’d think after all these years I’d know for sure what the right thing is for the girls.”
“They’re their own people now, honey,” Sam said, looking up at their building, too.
Harriet leaned into him. “I love you, big guy.”
“You know,” Sam began, eyes still on their building, “after all these years, you’d think you could have promoted at least one fitness writer who isn’t full of crap.”
Harriet gave her husband a playful punch in the shoulder and then took him by the hand to continue walking on the path.
APRIL
VI
49
The Ladies of the Neighborhood
“IT JUST DOESN’T look the same without Jason’s knapsack on the floor,” Rosanne joked to Cassy as they walked into the living room of the Cochran’s old apartment. “I’m not sure how I’m going to get him used to living in a small apartment.” She stood in front of the windows. “Remember the old windows, Mrs. C? Before you got these?”
“You mean do I miss how they rattled in the wind and let the cold air in?”
“To be honest,” Rosanne said, “I was kinda thinkin’ about when Mr. C threw the TV out of the window.”
“Have a seat, Rosanne,
the others should be here shortly. I need to do a few things in the kitchen.”
“Oh, right,” Rosanne said, following her out. “Like I’m gonna sit there like the Queen of Sheba. I only cleaned this place for eighteen years.”
Cassy laughed. “I’ll tell you this, Jason left this place better than he found it. He fixed the cabinet door in the bathroom while he was here.” She started making a pot of coffee while Rosanne pulled a breakfast stool out to sit. “He fixed the silverware drawer in here. And the doorknob actually works now in the master bedroom.”
“He’s pretty good with his hands.”
“When does he actually go to Penn?” Cassy asked, switching on the coffeemaker.
“Middle of August. He’s going up in June, though, for some kind of freshman orientation.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Cassy said. She looked over to see that Rosanne was looking at some of the family pictures on the wall. “Rosanne, there’s something I wanted to—”
The doorbell rang.
Cassy headed for the front door. Moments later there was a great deal of chattering and laughter in the front hall and then Althea came waltzing in with Samuel, followed by Harriet and Amanda, the latter lugging a snoozing Grace in a carrier. Cassy herded them into the living room, disappeared for a few minutes and then reappeared with the coffeepot, mugs and coffee cake.
“There’s no sugar and very little canola oil in it,” Cassy explained about the cake, prompting the ladies to all reach for it.
They chatted for a while: the Stewarts had sold their house in Connecticut and would be back in the city as soon as the children were out of school; Harriet said Samantha had signed up for the summer session at Cornell; Althea reported on Samuel’s latest accomplishments in eating, sleeping and smiling, and Cassy shared some pictures of her granddaughter, Catherine.
“Rosanne,” Harriet said, “I understand you’ve dropped your advanced nursing course.”
Rosanne glanced at Althea, scowling slightly. “I never snitched on you.”
“Yes, you did,” Althea told her.
Rosanne rolled her eyes and turned back to Harriet. “Yes, Mrs. W, I dropped my class.”
“Why?”
Rosanne looked at her. “Well, if it’s any of your business…”
Harriet waited, clearly expecting an answer.
“I hated it, I don’t know what else to tell you,” Rosanne said flatly. “I hated it just about as much as I hate nursing. The illness part is fine, it’s just the people that are hard to take. The crabby people, the rude people, the mean people and the doctors and RNs who pooh-pooh their noses at me because I’m only an LPN. So other than that, everything’s great.” She noticed some smiles being exchanged around the room. “What? What are you guys smiling about?”
“They’re hopeful smiles,” Cassy began. “Because we’re hopeful you might consider a career detour for a year or so.”
“And maybe longer,” Althea added, “if you like it.”
“And we really, really, really need you to seriously consider it,” Amanda added, gently rocking Grace’s carrier on the floor.
Althea’s baby began to fret. “Oh, not now, Samuel,” she whispered. But it was to be now and after he started crying she took him out of the room, baby bag slung over her shoulder. “You have to say my part, Mom!” she called from the hall.
“Right,” Harriet said. “Rosanne.”
“It is so great to see her like this,” Rosanne whispered across the room, nodding in the direction of Althea’s voice. “It’s like night and day. She’s so happy.”
Harriet beamed. “I know.”
“So, Rosanne,” Cassy prompted.
“What, for Pete’s sake?”
“Would you be Samuel and Grace’s nanny?” Harriet said.
Rosanne’s mouth fell open. “A nanny? You gotta be kidding.”
“And live here, you and Jason,” Cassy said, “with Althea and Samuel?”
“Althea’s buying the apartment from Cassy,” Harriet explained.
“And you’d have Henry’s old room,” Althea said, holding a bottle for Samuel, “Jason can have the guest room and we’ll make the study into a nursery.”
“It goes without saying how much better Sam and I would feel, Rosanne,” Harriet said, “knowing that you were here with the baby.” She smiled at Althea. “With both of my babies.”
“This year,” Althea said, standing as she fed Samuel, “Mom and Dad will be around almost all the time. You know, when I have to travel.”
“And we’d take Samuel some nights,” Harriet said.
“I’m going to be able to bunch my travel time,” Althea continued. “So it will take place during the first and third week of each month.”
“Althea and Sam have already found major medical insurance we can offer,” Harriet said.
“And we’ll do your taxes and stuff,” Althea said. “Because, you know, you’ll be paid a salary.”
“And we will be paying you, as well,” Amanda added. “If we can drop Grace off for a few hours each day.”
“And it’s important that you know, Rosanne,” Cassy said, “that no one will expect you to continue after a year if you don’t want to.”
“We’d have a yearlong contract,” Althea said, “so we would both know what to expect.”
“And that would give you a year to figure out your housing situation,” Cassy said.
“And give me a family to come home to,” Althea said. She walked over to Rosanne and offered her the baby and the bottle, which Rosanne accepted. “And you can get Jason organized this summer for school.”
“I need to take him to Philadelphia.”
“And Sam and I will be here to take care of the baby while you’re gone,” Harriet said.
“It’s not like I’m never going to be around,” Althea told her mother.
Rosanne glanced up from the baby to Amanda. “So you’re really givin’ Madame DeFarge the heave-ho?”
Amanda nodded. “She leaves at the end of June.”
Rosanne took the bottle out of Samuel’s mouth and wordlessly accepted the towel from Althea to put over her shoulder before bringing Samuel up to burp him. “Okay,” Rosanne said, gently patting Samuel’s little back.
“What?” Harriet said.
“You mean you’ll do it?” Althea said with wide eyes. Samuel burped and her face filled with love. “That was very good,” she told her son.
“Are you finished, or do you need to do one more?” Rosanne asked the baby. She put him back on her shoulder and resumed patting. She looked up at Althea. “What?”
“Are you kidding? Rose, are you really going to do it?”
“Why not?” Rosanne asked her.
“I—I can’t believe it,” Althea said, a look of elation spreading over her face.
50
Howard Has Some News
THE CHANGES IN their relationship were not magical but were, as Amanda expressed it, indelibly wonderful. Their progress as a couple seemed to go two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, but with a closeness and energy that felt new.
As for Howard, he felt as though he was falling in love all over again. “The better you feel about yourself,” one of the pop psychologists he represented had written, “the more capable you are to love others.”
Yeah, well, whatever.
Even worse than having to list the debts for Amanda had been fully recognizing the sacrifices he was asking Amanda and the children to make in order to clean up his mess. Putting the Woodbury house on the market had felt like death to him. But Amanda being so excited about moving back into Manhattan made the process that much easier. They had also found a summer soccer program the kids could get into, and since Mickey-Luck had moved to Greenwich, anyway, Teddy and Emily didn’t feel they were missing as much now by moving. (There would also be a week of science camp, music camp and art camp.)
“Howard,” Gretchen announced from the doorway of his office, “Amanda
’s on two and I’ve got ten thousand people waiting for you to call them.”
He snapped up the phone. “Hi, darling.”
“I’ve got a surprise,” Amanda said, sounding happy.
If Howard wasn’t mistaken he could hear the theme song of I Love Lucy in the background. “Where are you?”
“We’re on our way in.” There were shrieks of laughter from the children. “Lucy and Ethel are in the chocolate factory.”
He laughed. “So what’s the surprise?”
“Celia Cavanaugh left us a Christie’s catalog at the desk.”
“Oh, right, the vulture and the camel.”
“Howard, you’ll never believe what she said the estimate is.”
“I thought she said seven to ten thousand.” Although they weren’t counting on the money it sure would come in handy right now.
“Celia said they listed it for fifteen to seventeen!”
“You’re kidding.”
She was laughing. “Can you believe it? I just talked to her. They had a number of people look at it and that’s the estimate now. I must go to that auction. Celia and her mother are going so I want to go with them. Anyway, Celia’s coming out with us next week to see what we have in Woodbury we want to get rid of.”
“They’re your things, Amanda. I hope you’re not selling them because—”
“We need to get rid of it, Howard. Remember, someday the children are going to get all of my parents’ stuff, too. How much stuff can one family possibly need?”
Gretchen was back in the doorway. “Kate Weston. She says it’s very important she speak to you.”
He held up one finger. “Don’t you think we need someone other than a bartender handling your antiques?”
“I can’t think of anyone else I would rather handle it. She’s eager, grateful and she’s working her derriere off.”
“Whatever you say.” Howard hung up with her and changed to the other line. “Kate,” he said brightly, shifting his headset slightly in an attempt to veer his thoughts away from vultures, debts and pretty bartenders.
Riverside Park Page 31
