To Wish or Not to Wish

by Mindy Klasky

  Eager to look busy, I lifted one of the silver warmers and stared at the plate beneath. Grilled asparagus. Innocent enough. Tiny roasted potatoes carved into roses. They were actually pretty. And stew.

  Pungent, gloppy, lumpy stew.

  A twist of nausea swirled through my belly and I slammed the warmer lid back onto the plate. As a Skellar cousin started toward the door with a full tray, I asked, “What is that stuff?”

  Her pale face looked ghastly against her chartreuse-and-orange shirt. “Kippenlevertjes met abrikozen.”

  I didn’t speak Dutch, but I thought I recognized that last word. “Apricots?”

  She frowned and nodded. “With chicken livers.”

  Our Customers’ Happiness Was Our Concern? Really? Concerned Caterers might want to consider a new slogan, if it was going to continue in the Dutch line of business.

  Before I could say anything, the pastry chef ordered me over to his station. Following instructions, I arranged twelve parfait glasses on a serving tray. With Jack paying eagle-eyed attention from his perch by the double doors, I composed my dozen desserts, following directions from the harried chef. Sorry bites of fruit were spooned out of a hotel tray, rescued from the sweet wine where they’d been allowed to macerate for far too long. Three scoops of ice cream followed—two vanilla, one strawberry. Alas, the frozen confection, um, wasn’t. The ice cream was half-melted, so that it settled into a streaky mess at the bottom of each parfait glass. The pastry chef himself topped each deflated little mound with strawberry sauce, the unfortunate crimson streaks looking like a roadmap straight to the emergency room.

  “Um, what is this called?” I finally dared to ask.

  “Knickerbocker Glory,” he growled. “No seconds.”

  I didn’t think that was going to be a problem.

  “Great,” I said, faking a smile so perfectly that I should have received an instant Tony Award on the spot. Unfortunately, when I had laid out the parfait glasses on my tray, I’d assumed that I would have the full range of motion in my lifting arm. I hadn’t counted on my tiny T-shirt cutting off the blood flow at my shoulder. I longed to invent a new catering tray, some type of molded plastic that would fit my shoulder, that would make it impossible for me to spill catered food treasures.

  Gritting my teeth and compensating with the ordinary tools of my trade, I barely made it past Jack without disaster. My job wasn’t made any easier by the defeated stream of returning caterers, bringing back dozens of untouched plates of kippenlevertjes. A few of the abrikozen had been pushed around by adventurous diners’ forks, but the entrée looked to be a near-complete failure.

  At least I carried my desserts across the crowded dining room without incident. I placed the first Glory on the plate of the oldest woman at my table. And the second. And the third. It was my dumb luck that the fourth Glory went to the drunkest woman in the bunch. Orange Tiara.

  She may have gotten a late start at the party, but she’d clearly made up for lost time, downing more than her share of the chartreuse jenever. Now, she was declaiming eloquently about her family lineage, some ancient relative, her great-(emphasis with one hand), great-(emphasis with a forearm), great-(emphasis with a lurching torso), great-(emphasis with a nod of her head and a flying diamond tiara)—

  And a cascading tray of melted Knickerbocker Glories.

  Eight of them. Crashing down on two sedate black formal gowns, one décolletage covered with pearls and a tiaraless orange ensemble.

  The dress was definitely not made better by a cascade of melted pink-and-white ice cream.

  “To the kitchen, Hollister!” Jack shouted, and I realized that he’d followed me into the dining room. He fluttered around the table, doing his best to extinguish the cries of surprise and outrage. He flung business cards left and right, promised dry cleaning, door-to-door transportation for salvaged clothes, everything short of his nonexistent firstborn child.

  Including punishment. Of me.

  With one officious glare, he ordered me back to the kitchen to await my fate. I staggered through the doors and huddled miserably in the corner, trying to stay out of the way of the rest of the Skellar family.

  Jack didn’t keep me in suspense for long. “You’re fired!” he snapped, immediately commanding the attention of every person in the bustling room. I would never have believed that a working kitchen could become so quiet, so quickly.

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts’! You showed up late, you ruined a fur coat, you dumped an entire tray of desserts! Are you drunk?”

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t make any excuses to me!”

  “But she—”

  “Out! Now! Before you destroy anything else!”

  “What—”

  He whipped a cell phone out of his pocket, sending a flock of business cards flying around the room. “Do I have to call the police to get you out of here?”

  He was totally serious.

  I looked around the kitchen. Two dozen eyes were locked on me, eyes that shimmered with shock (a couple of the women who had started about the same time I had), with horror (a couple of the guys, who realized that they might just be next in line for Jack’s unfair attention), with just a hint of glee at the scandal they were witnessing (the entire horde of Skellar cousins, who were probably already planning a family reunion to welcome whoever was going to take my place).

  My cheeks flamed red, certainly brighter than the glittering lion stretched across my chest. I turned on my heel and fled the kitchen, scarcely taking time to snatch up my bedraggled, fortunately furless coat and my beaten-up leather tote.

  As my heels slammed down on the frozen sidewalk outside the Van Bleeker, I tried to accept that I had just lost my job. My Survival Job. The job that preserved my dignity, that let me contribute to the rent, to the groceries, to the life I shared with Sam.

  I was going to be sick.

  Three. (You didn’t forget, did you? I’ve only told two-thirds of my disaster trifecta.)

  I fished out my phone and pressed the first number on my speed dial. Amy. My sister. We’d talked at least once a day, every day, ever since she’d phoned me during my freshman year in college with the staggering news that our parents had been killed in a car crash. In the intervening seven years, Amy and I had become more than sisters. We were best friends.

  “Hey,” she answered halfway through the first ring. “Are you watching this?”

  “Watching what?”

  “Food Channel. The history of distilled spirits.”

  “I don’t even want to hear that phrase.”

  Amy grunted, and I could picture her shifting position on her too-deep sectional couch. “What’s going on?”

  I told her the whole tragic tale, starting with my audition and ending with my rushing up Fifth Avenue, clutching my coat closed over a chartreuse-and-orange T-shirt, trying to decide if I could blow money on taking a cab home to the Upper East Side refuge that I shared with Sam.

  Amy made all of the appropriate noises, clicking her tongue in dismay at the casting director, sighing in exasperation at Jack’s family-oriented insanity. When I’d finally run down, she said, “Don’t worry. Catering is really outside of your silo.”

  I gritted my teeth. I hated when Amy lapsed into business-school-speak, an all-too-frequent occurrence, since she’d left her job as a bookkeeper for a law firm and started taking management classes at Rutgers. Unaware of my annoyance, she said, “What about your job at the Mercer? Can you take on more hours in the box office there?”

  I sighed. The Mercer Project was a theater down in the Village. Despite their small house, they’d gained a reputation for doing some really innovative shows. For the past three months, I had worked two shifts a week in the box office, selling tickets, enforcing the no-refunds-no-exchange policy and dreaming of the day when I’d be cast in one of their productions. “I can try. I work tomorrow afternoon. I’ll talk to them then.”

  “You know that if you need anything, if you n
eed to borrow any money—”

  “Thanks,” I said, before she could complete the sentence. Like I was going to borrow money from my sister. She was struggling to make her own ends meet, with her husband over in Germany, serving in the army while Amy stayed stateside to finish her business degree. Every spare penny she had went toward child care for my nephew. Speaking of which… “Where’s Justin?”

  “I sent him to bed early.”

  “Another bad night?”

  Amy sighed. “Only if you count getting into a fistfight during recess at school. And refusing to eat his dinner. And using the F-word twice when I told him that he couldn’t watch TV.” Justin was not handling his father’s deployment well.

  “Oh, Ame, I’m sorry,” I said. Not that there was anything I could do. Not that there was anything anyone could do, short of getting Derek home.

  “The worst part—” Amy groaned “—is that I’ve got cramps from hell tonight!”

  Ah, the joys of sisterly communication. I listened to Amy complain about her body’s overly sensitive hormonal wiring. She’d always had a worse time than me, every single month. She was the one who got out of gym class on a regular basis, who stayed home with heating pads and Motrin.

  Motrin. I wondered if I had any with me. My back still ached, a low, throbbing pain, and my headache had returned with a vengeance.

  Amy had complained of backaches and headaches when she’d been pregnant with Justin. She’d said that Tylenol didn’t even start to take the edge off of them. She wouldn’t take anything stronger, though. Couldn’t, out of concern for her baby, and because of her persistent nausea.

  My belly twisted, as it had when I’d seen that hideous liver-and-apricot concoction, spread out on the catering plate.

  Back pain. Headache. Nausea. And I’d had a craving for those imaginary Gouda appetizers, too. I’d read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, memorized every page so that I could help Amy.

  Oh. My. God.

  Today was May 21. I counted back. Four weeks. Five. Six.

  Oh. My. God.

  Sure, I was on the pill. But I’d had strep throat a while back, picked up from Justin when I babysat him one night for Amy. Strep throat, treated with antibiotics. Antibiotics that weakened the pill.

  Oh. My. God.

  “Hello?” Amy was saying, a slight ring of annoyance behind her voice. “Erin? Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, I am totally exhausted. I’m going to grab a cab and head home.” I’m sure I said something else, something appropriate to end the conversation, but I wasn’t really paying attention. And I wasn’t looking for a cab, either. Instead, I continued walking uptown. I needed the time to think.

  What was Sam going to say? We were both always complaining that we didn’t have time to live our lives. We had too many dinners delivered, grabbed too many quick meals out, blew through his lawyer salary because neither one of us had time to cook. We constantly complained about not having clean clothes, because we couldn’t manage to do laundry in the few spare minutes we scraped together each week. We waded through piles of magazines and snowdrifts of the Times because neither of us had time to straighten up the apartment.

  I could change all that. I could manage our home life. I could be the perfect corporate wife—cook for us, clean for us—all while raising our child. Maybe everything did happen for a reason. Maybe I’d lost out on the afternoon audition—the Mamet play, and every other show I’d auditioned for in the past year—because I was meant to start down this new path. Maybe I’d pushed my catering boss beyond forbearance for a reason. Maybe it was time to stop being a child, stop being a starry-eyed little girl who thought that she could ever succeed in the impossible world of the theater. Maybe it was time to be a grown-up. Someone practical. A wife.

  A mother.

  I was a little astonished at how well I was taking this. I mean, it was a shock and all. I never would have asked for such a sudden change, for such a complete transition in my life. But it was real. It was happening. And it made so much sense.

  Until I tried to figure out how to tell Sam. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I wasn’t actually pregnant. After all, it had only been six weeks. And I was on the pill. I should buy a test at the drugstore before I said anything.

  Sam greeted me at the door of our first-floor apartment. (Hmm, the first floor would make it easier to get the baby’s stroller out to the street.) He nuzzled my neck as he closed the door behind me. I could smell beer on his breath. “You’re home early.”

  I made some noncommittal noise as I let him lead me over to the living room couch. He’d been watching TV, a Yankees game. Two empty beer bottles sat on the coffee table, glinting next to a nearly full one. Sam nodded toward the collection. “Want a beer?”

  I shook my head and shrugged out of my coat. When I collapsed into a corner of the couch, Sam lunged toward the television, howling at the blind ump who wouldn’t know a high strike if it knocked him on his ass. I waited for the batter to hit into a double play before I asked, “Did the Lindstrom case settle?”

  He swore. “No. Bastard backed out at the last second. Said he couldn’t recommend settlement to his client without another ten mil to sweeten the pot.” He glanced at me, finally noticing the horror of my chartreuse-and-orange too-small T-shirt. He started to say something, but leered instead. “Well, at least Concerned has one thing going for it.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. I should tell him that I’d been fired. Tell him that this was the last “costume” I’d ever have to suffer through.

  “What?” he asked, either because he realized I was upset, or because the baseball game had finally flickered to a commercial.

  “I think I’m pregnant,” I said.

  Wow. I really thought that I’d decided to wait. To have medical proof, something more than my wigged-out suspicion. Guess not.

  He pulled away as if I’d spilled a tray of melted Knickerbocker Glories in his lap. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m two weeks late.”

  “What the—” He jumped off the couch, eyeing me as if I had bubonic plague.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s not contagious.”

  “What?” His eyes widened. “You think this is funny? Don’t you realize I’m up for partner this year? I don’t have time for this!”

  Time for this? Like I’d just invited him to a party he didn’t want to attend? I forced my voice to stay calm. “Of course I realize you’re up for partner. But it’s okay. I mean, this might all be happening a little sooner than we’d planned, but—”

  “A little sooner?” His voice was hoarse, as if I’d punched him in the gut. “How could you have been so irresponsible?”

  That lit a fire under me. I snapped, “Last time I checked, it took two people to make a baby.”

  “Are you sure it’s mine?”

  “Sam!” I was so shocked I could barely gasp his name. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  His gaze settled on my belly, on the tight stretch of chartreuse and orange. He could still make everything all right. He could still apologize. We could still talk this out. But then he said, “I can’t believe it, either. I can’t believe any of this.”

  He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. I heard him scramble in the foyer, grabbing for a jacket. I heard him turn the locks, fumbling them open as if his life depended on it. I heard him slam the door, as if he were fleeing a horde of raging demons.

  And then I heard nothing but perfect silence inside our perfect brownstone apartment on our perfect block of the perfect Upper East Side.

  I collapsed onto the couch and started to cry.

  CHAPTER 2

  I KNEW I SHOULD’VE BEEN GRATEFUL. I SHOULD’VE BEEN lighting candles in some church, or writing checks to support orphans in a country I’d never heard of, or knitting bandages for lepers, or something. I was lucky. I really was.

  I’d seen the real Sam. Now I knew how he t
ruly felt, without any screen, any filter, any contrived social constraints. Sure, I’d startled him with my announcement, and he’d spoken brashly. But that wasn’t really what bothered me.

  What bothered me was, he didn’t come back. He didn’t take a walk around the block to cool off, and then come home to discuss the situation, like a man. Instead, he avoided me, ignored me, treated me as if I were some make-believe monster that would just go away if he squinched his eyes shut and counted to one hundred.

  He didn’t come home.

  The following morning, I called in sick to the Mercer, even though I needed the shift. I needed every penny I could scrounge, now that Concerned Caterers was history.

  I left a message with Amy, something mindless and falsely cheery, sneaked into her voice mail when I knew she was at class. No reason to drag her into the spectacular mess I’d made out of my life. She had enough on her mind, with Justin’s misbehavior, with Derek overseas, with spring semester classes drawing to a close.

  I stared at the phone all day on Thursday, all Thursday night, willing Sam to call.

  I’d handled things badly. Poor Sam had had a lousy day—he thought he’d settled the Lindstrom case only to find out that the damn thing was still going to trial. He’d had a couple of beers; he was angry about the baseball game. I hadn’t thought out my announcement. I should have cushioned the news for him.

  Full of remorse, I finally tried to reach him at his office on Friday. His secretary picked up, and clouds of butterflies swarmed in my belly, worse than any audition jitters I’d ever experienced. “One moment please,” she said with a formality that terrified me. “Let me see if he’s in his office.” I caught my breath, ready to apologize to Sam for dropping such momentous news in his lap without warning, ready to ask him to come home, to talk things through. “I’m sorry,” the secretary said a minute later, so smoothly that I knew she was lying. “He’s stepped away from his desk.”

  Stepped away. Yeah, right. Just like he’d stepped away on Wednesday night.