Immediately, I heard: “This is Bonnie’s mobile phone,” the Mary Poppins voice drawing out the i in “mobile” the long way. The British way.
Mary Poppins had her phone switched off.
“Oh, dear God,” I whispered under my breath.
I ran back to the front hall and dug my own cell phone from the depths of my purse, praying to see the message indicator lit. But the display was dark.
“Happened, Mama?” Wylie looked up at me with big eyes.
“It’s . . .” I leaned over and scooped him up. “Nothing happened, Wylie. I’m just not sure where Bonnie is. And I’m supposed to go to work right now.”
“Wylie go with you,” he said simply.
He was still wearing his rocket-ship pj’s and a saggy diaper. I kicked off my scary heels and ran with him toward his room. Then I pulled his pj’s over his head and replaced them with a T-shirt with a bulldozer on the front.
Wylie, sensing adventure, allowed me to dress him with unprecedented cooperation. He didn’t run away or roll around on the rug while I tried to put on his diaper. There was only a minor skirmish over his socks.
“I do it b’elf,” he said.
“I’m sure you could do it by yourself,” I said tactfully. “But I’m just going to help you a little.” I jammed those little sausage feet into the socks and shoes. Then, running to the door, I slipped into the heels once more and opened the apartment door, willing my toddler to follow me.
“I go to work with you,” Wylie said smugly, as the elevator arrived.
“Kid, it’s your lucky day.” It was almost nine already. A stretch limousine sat at the curb. The driver, in a suit with gold buttons and a perky hat, stood waiting.
I hesitated. That rig couldn’t be for me.
“Miss Bailey?” the driver asked.
“That’s us,” I said.
He opened the door of the gleaming black car. “Come on in,” he said cheerily. “The studio wants you right away.”
“Bus!” Wylie said happily. I guess there weren’t many limos in his picture books.
I gave him a little push through the door, and the driver closed it after us. The interior was a cool, leather oasis. The driver wasted no time starting the engine. As it hummed to life, he floored the gas pedal.
I grabbed Wylie and belted him in. “Dis is Taxi?” he asked, rubbing his little hands on the expanse of buttery seat on either side of him.
“Sort of,” I answered. “A really nice one.”
Wylie adored taxis, primarily because they didn’t have car seats.
I fumbled for my cell phone. I needed to warn Marta that she would have to amuse Wylie during the interview. Then I’d call Luke at his office and brief him on the Bonnie situation. Calling the police felt a bit premature.
But I didn’t get to dial a single call, because the small video screen on the partition between us and the driver blinked to life, with live programming from the network that carried The Scene.
“Want it Elmo,” Wylie demanded nonchalantly.
“Oh, honey,” I said. “Elmo is only in our car.”
He didn’t believe me. “Touch buttons,” he said. He strained against the seat belt, one stubby finger outstretched. He couldn’t reach the screen. “Elmo!”
The limo careered down Central Park West, and I reflexively held my hand in front of Wylie’s chest, pinning him into his seat, which only made him angrier.
“Want it!” he yelled.
We’d made it down to Lincoln Center. But now the traffic gods frowned. Ahead of us, taillights from the traffic ahead began to flash more brightly than the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
“Brake lights!” I yelled. The driver slammed on his brakes. I put my hand on Wylie’s forehead, to keep him from sliding. He pushed it off.
Then we were stopped completely. I looked anxiously out the front window. A block ahead I saw a mass of people. I realized they were holding up hand-lettered signs.
“It’s . . . a protest march?” I said aloud.
“Oh, Lord,” the driver said.
“Want touch it!” Wylie strained for the screen. Since we were currently going zero miles an hour, I let go of him.
I dialed Marta. She picked up on the first ring. “Where are you?”
“I’m stuck in traffic, behind a protest rally.”
“Ay!” she said.
“Marta, I have Wylie with me. I’m really sorry. It’s a long story, but Bonnie wasn’t home.”
“Not home! Where is that chica?”
“If I only knew. I’m trying not to fear for the worst. I have to call Luke now and fill him in. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Okay. Don’t panic. The prop stylist and I have got your table almost all set up for the segment. All you’ll have to do is hair and makeup.”
“Marta, you’re the best. I mean it.”
I hung up and called Luke.
“What do you mean, missing?” he asked.
“Missing. Her bed has not been slept in. Would you try her cell phone again now? And keep yours out on your desk?”
“Of course I will. But do you think . . . Should we call the police?”
I chewed on my lip. There were cars honking all around us now. Frustrated motorists, taxi drivers, delivery vans. Half of them seemed to be lying on their horns. Wylie didn’t seem to notice. He was glued to a clip from a Broadway musical.
“We could,” I said. “But maybe she just decided to stay out for the night and then overslept. Wherever she is, Wylie wasn’t there to wake her.” I found myself chuckling. “Well, maybe we should just be grateful that Wylie didn’t wake up two people in her room this morning.”
But Luke wasn’t laughing. “She’s not seeing anyone,” he said, soberly. “I think we should call the police. I’m on it.”
I sighed into the phone. “Thanks, honey.”
“Talk to Dada!” Wylie demanded. I handed him the phone. “Hi, Dada,” he said.
I looked out the window. We had not moved an inch. We were at Sixty-sixth and Columbus, which was twelve blocks from the TV studio. That was just over half a mile. Normally, no big deal. I walked that every day. But with Wylie and my torturous footwear, it was practically an odyssey.
“Okay, bye, Dada,” Wylie said. Then he snapped the phone shut and pocketed it.
“Wylie, that’s my phone.”
“Mine,” he said, eyes already glued back on the screen.
I waited, trying to stay calm. But the screen showed a teaser ad for The Scene. “Coming up next!” the announcer’s voice promised. Time was running out, on so many levels.
The brake lights on the vehicle directly in front of us went out, and that car inched forward about six feet. My heart leapt with hope. But that was all. We’d moved six feet in about fifteen minutes. I was now almost a half hour late.
I stuck my face between the break in the glass partition. “Okay. That’s it. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to hoof it.”
“Miss! It’s my job to get you there,” he argued.
“Sorry, but it’s not working,” I said. “I’ll tell them you did your best.”
“C’mon Wylie.” I scooped him off the seat and onto my lap. I opened the door gingerly, so as not to bump the neighboring car. I squeezed the two of us out and threaded through the stopped traffic to the sidewalk. Then I put Wylie down. “Hold Mommy’s hand,” I told him.
But in my terrible heels, I was three inches taller than usual. His short arm strained to reach high enough to hold on.
“No pull on me!” he complained immediately.
I dropped my shoulder as low as possible, stooping a bit. We struggled along the sidewalk. It was thick with traffic too, the picket line slowing pedestrians as well as cars.
“No working,” Wylie complained. He stopped. He raised both arms over his head. “Pick up.”
Wylie weighed about thirty pounds. I’d carried him far and wide but never in heels. “Oh, buddy, I don’t know if I can.”
“Pease,” he said pathetically, arms still outstretched.
I hefted him. As I’d suspected, the pain was immediate. My pinkie toes felt as if there were nails driven straight into them. My heels cried out in agony.
I made it one block, closing most of the distance to the protest march. I set Wylie down again. “I’m sorry, honey, but you’ll have to walk. Mama’s feet hurt.”
“I kiss it?” he asked.
“Um, not now, Wylie. But that’s very nice. Let’s go.” I was getting panicky.
“No walking, Mama,” he said. “Go home now?”
“I’d love to, but we can’t,” I said, near to tears. There was only one thing to do. I reached down and took off the shoes, placing my stocking-clad feet on the sidewalk. I jammed my shoes under one arm and picked up Wylie in the other.
“No shoes!” Wylie laughed.
I felt oddly naked. The stockings would be shredded, but I could toss them. Just more of the day’s collateral damage. At a trot, I reached the street where the march was in full swing. The police were running around, setting up sawhorses to try to contain the crowd and restart traffic.
One flustered uniformed officer waved me away from the barrier. But then he turned his back. I ducked quickly through the space between two sawhorses. I was surrounded by marchers. “Human rights now! Human rights now! Human rights now!” they chanted.
“Them yelling,” Wylie commented.
“Yes, they are,” I agreed. Straight in front of us, one protestor waved a gruesome sign depicting what I assumed was a tortured prisoner covered with blood. I turned Wylie’s face away and struggled forward. It hadn’t been so very long since I was a student joining protests just like this one. Now, instead, I was racing through the crowd like a fullback, toward a daytime television appearance. Time flies.
Once on the other side of the fracas, I looked around for a cab. From across the street, a face brightened. It was a young male pedicab driver.
Sensing opportunity, the young man did a U-turn in the near-empty bit of Columbus Avenue and pedaled his touristy contraption toward us. “You need to go where?” he asked in an eastern European accent I couldn’t quite place.
I plunked Wylie on the seat and climbed in next to him. “How much to Fifty-fifth and Ninth?” I asked.
“Thirty dollar,” he answered.
“Twenty,” I snapped. I was done losing time and money today.
“Okay,” he said, already pedaling toward midtown.
Chapter 9
It was showtime. I had been styled to perfection by a team of hair and makeup specialists.
And so had my vegetables.
Standing on the stage, I surveyed the ingredients spread out before me. The perfectly julienned zucchini was heaped on the cutting board. A whisk glinted like silver under the bright lights. The whole wheat flour was artfully mounded in a sparkling glass bowl. A single perfect egg perched in a glossy cup, just waiting for me to crack it into the bowl once the cameras rolled.
Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to teeter onto the stage in my heels. After the commercial break, I would magically appear on the set.
As I looked up from admiring the beautiful table, Lizzie Hefflespeck stepped onto the stage in the flesh. She wore another version of the pencil-size wrap dress I’d seen in the video. She walked toward me with an electric smile, reaching out to shake my hand. “So glad you could join us! Ava just loves your muffets!”
“Thank you!” I beamed at her. “What’s her favorite flavor?” It was great to have a few minutes to get to know Lizzie before the segment began.
“Fifteen seconds,” the producer said from the edge of the stage.
My mouth fell open with surprise. Fifteen seconds?
“Oh! Don’t be scared,” Lizzie smiled. “Just pretend the studio audience isn’t even there.”
My heart began to race, and the lights came up with such intensity that it was suddenly possible to take Lizzie’s advice. I could no longer see the crowd.
“Ten seconds! Cameras one . . . three . . . four . . . and six . . .”
A young woman in an apron scurried onto the stage like a frightened chipmunk. She slid to a stop in front of Lizzie, just long enough to pat the star’s nose with a powder puff, and then dashed away again.
I managed to close my mouth, just as the producer began to say, “In five . . . four . . . three . . . ,” and then there was the sound of a jazzy intro tune. A red neon sign at stage left lit up with the word “Applause!” but the invisible audience needed no encouragement. They screamed like a crush of teenage girls at a pop concert.
When they quieted down, Lizzie spoke. “So there I was in Brooklyn,” she said breathlessly, as if it were some exotic locale worthy of mention (“So there I was in Taipei . . .”). “Ava and I were in the middle of a photo shoot, when I realized that the poor thing was starved!”
“Ohhhhhh,” the audience said.
“I went into a little store to try to find something yummy for her, and there we stumbled upon a wonderful food called a muffet, made by an outfit called Julia’s Child, and Ava loved it! We called the company right away, and we’re lucky to have Mrs. Julia Bailey here this morning to tell us all about her wonderful organic line of toddler foods. Welcome, Julia!”
The applause was so sudden and loud that I nearly jumped.
Marta, in her preparations for today, had tried to ease my fears about the live studio audience. “They write in for tickets,” she’d said. “There’s a lottery, and people wait for months to get seats. They’re almost entirely women, and they clap for everything, laugh at every joke. Then they take home an enormous goody bag full of DVDs, books, and other booty. So don’t worry. They’re primed to love you.”
“So tell us about your company, Julia,” said Lizzie. “How did you come up with muffets? And the name—I love that too! So cute!”
And I was on. I said the first thing that came into my head.
“Well, my children have always loved the nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet!” I enthused. “But my boys think she’s kind of a wimp—to be scared away by a spider!”
The audience roared, as if I’d just told the funniest joke ever. Now I understood. They loved me because Lizzie Hefflespeck’s love shone—however briefly—down on me. And I wasn’t immune to the glow. Suddenly, I had 250 new friends, and I was going to tell them what they wanted to hear.
But Lizzie interrupted me. “And here’s a picture of my little miss eating her muffet.”
Apparently, the big screen behind us showed something adorable, because the audience made a collective “Aw!” like they’d just spied so many bunny rabbits.
“That’s right,” I said. “No child can resist a baked good. Muffets are as easy to hold as a muffin, but so much healthier. Shall we stir some up right now?” I gestured toward the beautiful mixing bowl the show had provided, in a shade of robin’s egg blue, and the stylishly coordinated rubber spatula.
“Oooh! Which flavor are we making?” Lizzie chirped.
“This is Autumn Harvest, our newest recipe for fall. It has all the wonderful seasonal ingredients we find at the farmers’ market this time of year. We’ve got zucchini . . .” I tipped the prepared zucchini slices toward camera four, the way the producer had taught me. “And we mince it down to the size of a grain of rice, to get the texture just right. Here we have whole wheat flour—ours is grown and milled in Vermont—and some lentils for protein, and pureed organic pumpkin for flavor and color.”
“Such wonderful veggies!” Lizzie gushed.
“They sure are!” I said, carried away, sounding for all the world like an infomercial. “I like to cook food for children that is right out in front, visible. But you know . . .” I put down my spatula and turned to face Lizzie. “I’m swimming against the tide. The current fashion is deception. And I’ve got to tell you, I really don’t agree with those moms who hide spinach in their brownies.”
Lizzie’s heavily mascaraed eyes opened wide in surprise. Last year
a famous singer had made the talk show rounds with her book, Behind the Spinach Curtain, full of deceptive recipes for hiding vegetables in cake and cookies. “Oooh!” Lizzie gasped, as if I’d just insulted her taste in shoes. “But those brownies are so good!”
“I’ll bet they are,” I said, returning to my mixing. I dashed the egg quickly against the bowl and dropped its contents expertly onto the minced vegetables. I knew that attacking spinach brownies would put me out on a limb, and I hoped it would work out. “But what’s the end game?” I asked, picking up a whisk. “Will you still be making those spinach brownies for your thirty-year-old?”
The audience laughed then, and I was off the hook.
“Ladies,” I tipped the flour into the mixing bowl. “We should be teaching children that healthy food tastes good! Do we really not have the courage to say that? We need to help children to make their own smart choices. And it isn’t that hard!” I gave the muffet batter a final stir. Under the sparkly stage lighting, the green zucchini and the orange pumpkin shone like jewels in the bowl.
There was thunderous applause and cheering, as if I’d just solved the Middle East conflict.
“I noticed you didn’t put any sugar into that,” Lizzie said.
“True!” I said, in my excited commercial voice. “There’s no refined sugar in this recipe.”
“So your own children, they eat very little sugar?”
“Very little,” I said. As the words came out of my mouth, I recalled watching just an hour earlier as Marta lured Wylie away from me with a chocolate chip muffin from the greenroom. It had been the size of his head. “Uh, instead of sugar, I use fresh vegetables or fruits that are naturally sweet. And every one of my recipes has a very short ingredient list.”
“That’s just so great,” Lizzie sighed. “Because preservatives are usually everywhere. I have a terrible citrus allergy, and you’d never believe how many products have citric acid as a preservative! It’s just awful!”
“That must be so scary!” I sympathized. “But I never use preservatives, which is why my products come frozen—for freshness.”
“So let’s taste your other recipes, Julia.” She led me toward the other table on the stage, where a spread of my products had been artfully arranged on platters. “What do we have here?”
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