Carpool Confidential

by Jessica Benson

  Jen called as I was tearing across Cadman Plaza, pretty much dragging Cad. Wherever she was calling from, it was noisy. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “At NYLMA Mommies and Me Swimming—Oh, no! Maximillian! You have to take your hand out of there. If you don’t, Mommy will be very, very disappointed!”

  “Jen,” I said, “you’re telling a one-year-old boy not to grab his dick? I hate to break it to you, but that’s a waste of time. What’s the NYLMA?”

  “New York Lesbian Moms’ Association.”

  “Kind of like a gay Junior League?”

  “Think halfway between that and the Israeli Army.”

  “Maybe Nora’s right about the burbs,” I suggested.

  “There are Scarsdale and Darien chapters in the works. Anyway—Max, no! Mommy can’t let you do that here, sweetie. It’s a private thing.”

  While I ran down the steps to Adams Street I told her about my morning.

  “I’m sure Mary Alice will turn up. And at least you have confirmation you’re not pregnant.”

  I stood on the traffic island in the middle of the street. Wind from the too-fast cars flying by whistled past my back, but it was clear in front. I debated trading safety for punctuality by crossing against the light. Always now I was aware of the fact I was the only parent my boys had. I waited. “True.” The light changed, and I ran across.

  I could hear a lot of very butch-sounding yelling in the background.

  “Just got busted for being on my cell phone,” Jen whispered. “The instructor’s an ex-bounty hunter slash traffic cop who doesn’t hold with moms on cells. Gotta go before it gets confiscated. She could snap one of these in half with one hand.”

  “Which? The cell or one of…the other things.”

  She giggled. “I’d hate to give her the choice. Maybe we should give her a picture of Rick and set her loose.” Then she hung up in a hurry.

  As I rounded the corner to the school, my phone rang again. I clicked the button praying that it was Harmonye, which made a change from praying for Rick. So of course it was Rick. First time since his departure he’d called me on the cell.

  “Cass, listen.” He sounded rushed. I was having violently conflicting emotions. I hated him and everything he’d done, wanted to kill him, but at the same time it was like some part of me had instantaneous regression at just the sound of his voice. I wanted desperately to sink back into the days when he was someone I could turn to, count on. The history of an abiding love and a marriage had to be worth something. “If—”

  “Rick”—I started to cry, right outside the school—“please. My life is falling apart.”

  He sighed. “You tell me this stuff like I’m supposed to fix it, Cassie. But I’m not codependent any more. I understand that I can only control my life, you have to take responsibility for yours. Happiness has to come from inside you.”

  I moved the phone away from my ear and looked at it. It looked fine, was clearly in no way to blame for what was coming out of it. I had loved this man, had children with him. Sue was right—there was something more wrong with me than him. I moved from the emotional to the practical. “My credit cards were declined—”

  “Sorry, I forgot to mention that I canceled them. They’re in my name, and I didn’t want to be tied to anything like that.”

  A haze of red verging on purple was passing in front of my eyes. Good thing I’d crossed Adams Street before this conversation, since I couldn’t see anything other than my own fury.

  “Anyway, the reason I was calling was because Paulette said you’d left her a message about expenses and I wanted to save you some time. I turned those in a long time ago, so don’t bother.”

  “OK, thanks,” I said, on autopilot, as I mentally watched the tidy stack of cash I’d been envisioning disappear. I was hovering outside the school doors. Cad practically threw herself to the ground. I might have to send her home in a taxi. I was about to tell him I was going to rent out the Nantucket house when he shouted, “Sorry, Cass,” over a suspicious crackling noise, “I think I’m losing you.” My phone went dead.

  Who did he think he was, using the lost-my-reception hang up on me? I was so fuming it took a few seconds for it to penetrate: Paulette, fat-assed, big-mouthed Paulette, knew how to reach him.

  I burst into the lobby. Late, panting, and, as usual, psychologically reeling.

  “Mommy!” Jared was sitting on the bench with Trina, his teacher, wearing the expression of someone stranded on a desert island. He threw his arms around me and burst into tears, as though I’d been four hours, instead of ten minutes, late.

  I hugged him. “Sorry,” I said to Trina.

  She took one look at me and said, “No problem, Cassie.”

  “Where were you?” Jared sobbed into my side.

  I’d known I was late, obviously, but his extreme reaction puzzled me. “It’s OK, baby.”

  He hiccupped and sobbed on. My gaze met Trina’s. She smiled apologetically. “Maybe it would be a good idea if we could set up a time to talk?”

  Shit. “Of course.” I stood up. “We have to go up and get Noah. How’s Thursday morning?”

  “Sounds great.” Trina smiled. “I’ll see you then. Bye, Jared.”

  Jared let go of me, leaving a smear of accumulated face dirt, snot, tempura paint, and tears across the leg of my jeans. “By the way, Mommy,” he said in that carrying voice all small children know how to adopt whenever you’d rather keep things between yourselves—the kind that makes you think they’d be ideal for the Royal Shakespeare—right as the elevator doors opened. Sue Moriarty and Betsy Strauss stood in the open doors with Isabella and Poppy. “You forgot my lunch today. Everyone had to share with me. I’m starving. Did you bring me a snack?”

  “No, but—,” I whispered, about to add that I had packed him lunch (it was later found inexplicably moldering in the cubby of a child in his class who was not related to me in any way), but his face crumpled again. “NO SNACK??” he wailed.

  “As soon as we pick up Noah we’ll get pizza from Tony’s, OK?”

  Sue stepped out of the elevator so she was blocking the doors. Jared wailed, “But I’m starving NOW, Mommy!”

  I was struggling not to have my own meltdown. “As soon as we get Noah.”

  “Would you like an apple? Or an organic pita with hummus?” Sue asked.

  “Thanks, Sue,” I started to say, “I’ll get him—”

  “Don’t be silly, Cassie, it’s my pleasure.” She beamed as though she’d just done a single-handed food drop in the Sudan, while simultaneously giving me a look that made me feel like I’d been caught squandering my food stamps on Slim Jims and Diet Rite cola.

  Another elevator came and went. “Thanks,” I said. “Come on, Jared, we need to—” Sue was waiting for the return of her plastic baggie for recycling. Jared, who would rather have eaten his own sock, immediately lobbed the sandwich into my hands. Trust me, an organic hummus sandwich sans Ziploc is not something you want to catch.

  The second elevator arrived, and when the doors opened Noah came bursting out. “Mom! Where were you? I was waiting forever. I was like the only one left on the seventh floor. You’re totally late, and you forgot to give me lunch! I’m starving to death. And why are you holding a barf sandwich?”

  “It looks more like cow brains than barf,” Jared said knowledgeably as I pitched it.

  Noah yanked open the door to Tony’s Pizza. We ordered, and I blotted the grease off the slices with a napkin. “Mo-om, that ruins it,” Noah said. I folded Jared’s and handed it to him to eat on the way. He was so close to my side that he might as well have been attached. We were walking extremely slowly on Cad’s account. “Did you forget to feed me today, Mom?” He looked worried.

  “No, sweetie,” I said. “You had French toast for breakfast, remember? To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never yet forgotten to feed either of you.”

  He chewed his pizza thoughtfully. “Breakfast seems like it was a long time ago. I thought ma
ybe that was yesterday.”

  And just for a second I had one of those flashes, long suppressed or forgotten, of how long a day of childhood could seem. The summer ones where the last minutes of daylight stretched, thrilling with their endlessness, or a bad school day that dragged by with exquisite slowness. When, exactly, did the days change from that to this, crammed so full of stuff that they seemed to fly by almost before they’d begun.

  Noah said, “It wasn’t that long ago, Butthead Barbie.”

  Jared aimed his foot at his brother’s ankle. “Don’t call me that.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Noah!” I warned, and then added, “Jared!” since it seemed like he, too, needed one. “I don’t know what happened to your lunches. I remember packing them, because it was soy burger day. I could have sworn I put them in your backpacks.”

  “My backpack?” said Noah, as though he’d never heard of such a thing before.

  “Yes,” I said. “You know—that blue thing with all the key chains attached that your lunch is always in on soy burger or lentil loaf day? Was it in there?”

  “Dunno.” He dropped his pizza crust into a garbage can.

  “Noah,” I said, “where is your backpack?”

  “Guess I forgot it this morning.” He veered off to the steps of Cadman Plaza. “I probably left it in the foyer at home.” He forestalled the inevitable spate of tedious questions by turning to Jared. “Want to race to the top, even though you never win?”

  “Sure.” Jared, always game for some younger brother torture, handed me his half-eaten slice, so the grease dripped down my hand and into the sleeve of my jacket. “Hold this for me, OK, Mom?”

  Cad seized the opportunity of our stopping to once again throw herself on the freezing ground. I looked at her, lying there, panting with exhaustion, and allowed myself the thought I always managed not to have—she was considerably into borrowed time. I blinked away the tears as I watched the boys careen down the dangerously steep stone steps, looking like the most important thing in their worlds was scaring me half to death, and felt like my heart would break for all of us.

  23

  A Very Strange Medley

  There was a message on the answering machine from Harmonye (at 4:23 p.m.) that she’d see me later, so I knew at least that she’d still been alive at the time.

  I tried to call Paulette. Her extension went through to voice mail again. I left a casual-sounding message asking her to give me a call. It was time to forge a little sisterly solidarity here. Then I went through my cell phone call list until I found Humphrey’s number, called him, and asked if he could come sooner.

  “Sorry,” he said, “on a case in Cali. Won’t be back until next Thursday night.”

  I was distracted for a while by a call from Charlotte. “It’s posted. Have a look.”

  I wanted to but didn’t. I pulled it up, wishing I could read with my eyes closed. It was the weirdest sensation, seeing my words there. I’d had plenty of stuff published before, so I was used to that, but magazines took so long that by the time the articles came out they were almost removed from having been my words. This was so…immediate. It was hard for me to tell whether I would have found it entertaining if it had been written by someone else. I knew I could get used to this, but wasn’t sure whether I could like it.

  By ten o’clock, with nothing more from Harmonye, I was pacing the floors, inhabiting that world that hangs directly between terror and anger, in which you alternate between visions of someone’s crumpled and mutilated body and visions of yourself being the one to crumple and mutilate it when they walk in the door hale, healthy, and unconcerned about your mental state.

  Calm down, I’d remind myself during my visits to terror. She’s sixteen, and totally messed up. She’s a child. Who probably doesn’t even know better. Then, five seconds later: How can she be doing this to me? Even someone raised by wolves has more sense than to do this to someone. Doesn’t she realize I have more going on than I can handle right now? How dare she just show up, taking it for granted that I’ll take her and her problems, while she does nothing to help herself and then do this.

  At 12:01, I picked up the phone to call…whom?

  At 12:01:30, I put the phone down.

  At 12:02 I picked the phone back up. The police would hear my tale of a missing sixteen-year-old and laugh. This was New York. They had real problems.

  12:02:28, put it down.

  At 1:10 the doorman buzzed. “Your niece is on her way up.”

  “Thanks.” I yanked open the door, ready to let her have it.

  She walked in, looking so small and young that pity once again took the upper hand. I was nothing if not consistent in my ability to swing between extremes.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’ve been really worried about you.”

  “Really?” she seemed surprised. “I’m starving. Can we like move this to the kitchen?”

  I forced myself to sound much calmer than I felt. “Why are you here?”

  “Because you would have lost it totally if I’d stayed out later.”

  “I mean here as in my house.”

  She shrugged as she headed for the kitchen. I followed and stood there as she pulled open cupboards before pulling out the peanut butter (that had been on the shopping list that I’d made for her and that I’d had to stop to buy on the way home from school with the boys), the jelly (same), bread (same), and milk (ditto). “New York is home. I have friends here, more than at school. But if I went home to our apartment, the housekeeper would make me go back to school. I knew you’d help me. So.” She started making a sandwich. “Are you just going to like stand there staring at me?” She turned around. “You need to chill, Cassie.”

  I looked at her. She looked small and young, and lost. And really stoned. I wasn’t so old I didn’t recognize the signs. I was so furious at her lack of consideration both to me and to her baby that I could have slammed something. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” She took a bite. “I mean, I know Rick like totally fucked you, but you’re just like sitting around moping, you know?”

  “Where were you?” I still sounded calm.

  “Out. You should try it. It beats sitting home being a total victim or whatever.”

  I clenched my hands. “But I’m not talking about me right now, I’m talking about you and what you should and shouldn’t be doing.”

  “Katya’s cool with it. Me going out and stuff. She doesn’t stress about who I’m with or what I’m doing.” She finished her sandwich. Apparently her tongue was healing. “Or when I’m going to be back.”

  I looked at all the crumbs on the floor at her feet. It seemed unnecessarily hurtful to point out that Katya seemed not to care, period. “Would you prefer staying with her?”

  “I might”—she tossed the peanut-butter-smeared knife onto the counter—“but I like don’t know where she is.”

  That’s why you have to stay calm, I told myself, because that’s the crux of it: she’s in trouble, and she doesn’t know where her mother is. “Harmonye—”

  “Whatever, Cassie. I’ll listen tomorrow, OK? For now, just save it.”

  Then she flounced down the hall and slammed the guest-room door.

  The depressing thing was that I could relate. I was thirty-eight, in trouble, and didn’t know where my husband was. I wondered if flouncing down the hall and slamming the door would make me feel better, too.

  Even though I’d been up ridiculously late obsessing about Harmonye, I was awake at five. I crept down to the study and, leaving the lights off, flipped on the computer. While I waited for it to come on, I walked over to the window and looked out. I could see, against the lights lining the FDR Drive, that it was snowing. Not real snow, just flurries. Hopefully it would still be going when the boys got up, which made me think about Christmas and the fact I had done nothing yet and it was almost time to get a tree. The stark reality was that I couldn’t afford it and, frankly, couldn’t bear to think about it.
r />   It was almost a relief to sit down and blog about exactly those thoughts. By the time I went to wake the boys, I felt calmer. Harmonye was still asleep when we left. I stuck a note on the front of the refrigerator asking her to please walk the dog because I had to go to the emergency meeting that had been called during the emergency pre-meeting that Sue et al had held while I’d been in restraints on the waxing table yesterday.

  The boys frolicked around, catching snowflakes on their tongues. I sat on the impulse to make them stop on account of the likely chemical composition of the snow. I wasn’t in the same kind of pain as yesterday, but I was still walking gingerly. On Joralemon Street we ran into Sue and Isabella.

  Sue smiled. “So. Are you ready? They canceled assembly so we could commandeer the auditorium. Turnout’s going to be huge.”

  I suggested to Jared in an undertone that he thank Sue for the snack yesterday.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Moriarty,” he said, with his best smile as Noah muttered, so only I could hear, “for the cow brain sand wich.”

  Jared continued in what I can only describe as a hitherto unheard please-sir-can-I-have-some-more voice, “I hope I get a good snack like that again today, because I had Frosted Flakes for breakfast.”

  What was he talking about? “You did?” I said.

  “I had a handful when you went to get dressed,” he admitted.

  “And before that?”

  “Orange juice.” He looked down at the empty soda can he was kicking.

  “Don’t do that,” I said automatically. “And?”

  “Toast with cheese. And strawberries.” He started kicking the can again, not looking at either Sue or me. Why was he making it seem like he was neglected?

  “And, Noah,” I said, as we crossed Court Street, “would you like to tell Mrs. Moriarty where we found your lunch yesterday?”

  “Bottom of my backpack.” Cheerfully said, not a drop of remorse.