With a grin, I snapped the phone shut. The sound drew the attention of a mother leaning over her stroller to execute a familiar maneuver. With her finger, she wiped away remnants of peanut butter and jam from her little girl’s face. Then she pinched the girl’s nostrils together quickly, removing a drop of unsightly nasal mucus from the little button nose. The child yelped in protest. She caught me watching her, just as she wiped her gooey fingers on her own pair of very fashionable skinny jeans. She frowned assertively at me, perhaps embarrassed to be caught in the act of on-the-go toddler hygiene.
Without my own preschoolers in tow, she probably assumed I was a tidy, childless woman who wouldn’t dream of wiping snot on her own clothing. Hey! I’m on your side. I too have made the motherly decision that it is better to wear goop on your jeans than to let the world see it on your toddler’s face. She marched away, pushing the stroller.
In spite of the bright fall afternoon, I yawned. The week had featured more late nights than I cared to count. Answering the message I’d just heard—though important—could wait five minutes until I got home.
Our lobby was blissfully empty, except for the drowsy doorman. As the elevator carried me upward, I charted the rest of my busy day. I could return the call from my kitchen, while I threw dinner together for the family. I would eat a little something and then rush to Brooklyn for a shift in the kitchen. And somewhere in there I’d hug the kids and call Luke. And maybe even my mother.
When I opened the door to my apartment, I heard muffled giggling. It was Wylie’s voice, but somehow far away. I closed the door softly and made a quick turn from our tiny entry hall into the kitchen. I poured myself a glass of water and bolted it down.
Wylie’s muffled laughter and the low sound of Bonnie’s voice filtered into the kitchen. Whatever game they were playing, they were deep in it. I picked up my cell phone to call my new driver, Lugo. Last week I’d asked Mr. Pastucci if he knew anyone with a refrigerated delivery van. He’d put me in touch with Lugo, whose voice mail had just confirmed that the very first Whole Foods delivery had been made. Lugo and his beat-up truck were both antiques. But the truck chilled to thirty degrees. I’d checked it myself.
“Lugo!” I enthused when he answered my call. “You did it!”
“Of course, missy,” he said. Lugo called me “missy” either out of endearment or because he’d forgotten my name. I wasn’t sure which. “The deliveries went down without a hitch,” he said.
“Excellent! To all three Whole Foods? Thank you so much.”
“Yep. Nicest loading docks I ever seen. Snazzy outfit you must be running, missy.”
“Thanks, Lugo. You’ll be around next week too? We might need to deliver more. I hope.”
“No problem, missy. See you soon.”
I hung up, smiling through my exhaustion. So it was official. Julia’s Child was in the door at Whole Foods. On the premises! It was all I could do to keep from running down there right away to see for myself. I’d waited so long for this moment, to see those packages staring back at me from the other side of the freezer-case window.
It would have been nice to make the delivery myself. But there was no way I could maintain the illusion of professionalism if I showed up in my Subaru, weighted down with coolers chilled by those freezer packs moms carry around with bottles of breast milk.
If my business were ever to get off the ground, I would have to learn to let go, to rely on people. I would have to trust them with my proverbial baby. The alternative, I reasoned, was a schedule so manic that I’d never see my real babies.
With that in mind, I attacked a red pepper, chopping it to a quarter-inch dice in about sixty seconds flat. It would soon be sprinkled all over the homemade pizza I planned to make for my family for dinner. Cooking for them was something I felt I had to do, even if I didn’t get to see them eat it.
Buoyed by the satisfaction of finally appearing at Whole Foods, I dialed my mother. Waiting for her to pick up, I scraped up the pepper remnants with one hand.
“Darling! What’s happening in the Big Apple?”
“It’s official. Julia’s Child is for sale at Whole Foods.”
“Congratulations, honey! I’ll have to make a road trip to Charleston to see it.”
I winced. “Better wait a few months, Mom. I’m only in three Manhattan stores for now. But it’s been a long time coming.”
“Fantastic! With the prices at that place—you’ll be rich!”
“Maybe some day,” I said lightly. My mother wasn’t the best audience for my host of financial concerns. I didn’t tell her that our order from Kai had kicked off a massive cash outlay. First, we rushed a giant gift basket of muffets to Kai. The messenger alone cost forty dollars. Ka-ching! And that was just the beginning. Our website cost four thousand. An ad in the kids’ edition of Time Out New York (“Now at Whole Foods!”) cost three grand. We put in another freezer at Mr. Pastucci’s club. So he raised our rent. Ka-ching! Ka-ching! My shoulders tensed with anxiety just thinking about it.
“So what are you doing to celebrate?”
I chuckled. “I’m going to the kitchen tonight to bake about three hundred more muffets. Right now I’m making a pizza for the kids.”
“Pizza?”
“Well . . . sure. Whole wheat crust, veggies—”
“But honey. You live in New York City. Pizza gets delivered, you crazy girl. Who on God’s green earth makes her own pizza?”
“Mother! What do you care? Mine is healthier!” Not to mention cheaper.
“I care because life is supposed to be fun. Take a shortcut every once in a while. God, girl. Live a little.”
I gritted my teeth. Even if I’d felt like succumbing to another petty argument with my mother, there simply wasn’t time. “I’ll take it under advisement, Mother. I’d better get going.”
“Julia—wait. The reason I called is that I’m just about to book those Thanksgiving tickets. Do you think Saks will be open on Thanksgiving?”
“No way.” It was both an answer to her question and my own personal statement of disbelief. I guess that’s what my mother meant by living a little.
“Okay. We’ll probably come in Tuesday, then. My love to the boys!”
“Bye, Mom.”
“Bye!”
I sighed. At least everyone else around me rose to the occasion of my now frequent absences. Luke made sure to come home every night in time for dinner. He put the kids to bed. And Bonnie put in extra hours. She didn’t seem entirely thrilled with her new responsibilities, but the embarrassment of her recent run-in with the law seemed to quell complaints.
I tossed the phone back into my bag. Even my unreliable cell phone seemed to be holding up. For the most part it rang when it was supposed to, connecting me to the host of new vendors and distributors with whom I needed to negotiate. And I appreciated it, because money was tight.
The view from our tiny kitchen sink was a crumbling brick wall. Luke used to talk about selling our apartment and moving into something a little roomier. But lately he hadn’t mentioned it. It was the only evidence I had of his growing unease about our financial situation. His only recent comment on the matter, as I filled him in on how much Julia’s Child had “borrowed” from our savings, was that business capital was like love—you had to give some to get some back.
I wondered if this was exactly how intelligent married couples got into grave financial trouble. Maybe both of us were secretly terrified about the cash hemorrhage for Julia’s Child, but each was too chicken to say it out loud.
I took a deep breath and went to find the children. When I stepped into our sunny living room, I understood why their laughter had sounded so far away. A couple of dining chairs had been pulled into the room, to an awkward spot in front of the sofa. The blanket from Bonnie’s bed was stretched over the couch to the top of the dining chairs, where it had been secured with rubber bands. From underneath this makeshift tent came Wylie’s giggles.
“Where fash-wite go?” I heard W
ylie ask.
Bonnie murmured something in response.
“Want it. Peeeeease Bonnie.”
A spot of light appeared on the inside of the blanket, moving back and forth across the tent’s wall. Then it disappeared. “Night time now, Bonnie. You go seep.”
From inside the tent I heard an exaggerated yawn and then the low rumble of a snore.
The boys had taken to Bonnie immediately. At first I’d thought it was because she was so young, and a little bit exotic with her Mary Poppins voice and her Briticisms. She said “shed-ule” and “trousers” and “telly.” Lately it had sunk in, though, that they responded to something more fundamental about her personality. Bonnie lived in the moment. Just like children do.
She snored again—and not just any snore. A big, exaggerated chainsaw snore.
Wylie giggled.
I cleared my throat. “Grrrr. There’s a bear in the woods!”
From inside the tent came happy shrieks. Wylie’s head appeared at one end of the tent. His sandy hair was standing on end, the static from the blanket having electrified him. “Bear! Mama, come in!”
“I am the bear, Wylie. Grrrr!”
“You not a bear. Come.” He beckoned forcefully.
There couldn’t be much room under there, so I dropped to my knees and scooted just up to the opening of the tent. Maybe that would be close enough.
“In, Mama. Bear not eat you.” Wylie backed farther into the tent to make room for me, ending up on top of Bonnie’s legs, in the unconscious way that all toddlers treat people like furniture.
I obeyed, inching into the tight enclosure.
“Why ’ello Julia,” Bonnie said politely. Like Wylie, she also had tent hair.
“Hi, Bonnie! Come here often?” I smiled as warmly as possible. These days we tiptoed around each other. “Say,” I asked her, “did Jasper ever find his missing sweatshirt?” I had ducked out in the middle of a drama this morning, hoping that it hadn’t inadvertently been me who had stashed the thing where nobody could find it.
“Of course. He found it under his bed.”
“Ah. So where is he, anyway?” I asked.
“Birthday party,” Bonnie answered in the Queen’s English. “He went directly from school.”
“Oh! But I didn’t buy a—”
“He and Luke were planning to choose a gift on the way to school. At the bookshop,” she said. “The party is just a few blocks away, actually. On Ninetieth Street.”
“Oh! The Hanson family.” I vaguely remembered taking Jasper to that child’s birthday last fall. In spite of my hectic new schedule, I thought I’d managed to keep all the balls in the air, but apparently some things were slipping by. “Thanks,” I said uselessly. I tried to imagine Luke picking out a birthday present. I hoped they’d managed to wrap it somehow.
The tent was warm and airless. I wondered how long Wylie and Bonnie had been camping in there. Bonnie appeared completely unrushed, even serene. But after just a couple of minutes inside, I’d already had enough. I turned to peer out of the confined space, hoping to ease my growing claustrophobia. Lately, when the stress of my business got to me, I could swear I felt the rotation of the earth. I felt it right now, the living room rug shifting beneath me. Logically, I knew I was just overtired. But lately the clock in my head never shut up. Its constant ticking prevented me from enjoying myself, knowing I still needed to settle my obligations in the kitchen and then race back to work in order to save my company from certain ruin.
But Wylie had other ideas. “Bear out there?”
I inhaled slowly through my nose, hoping my discomfort would lift.
“Mama,” he tried a stage whisper. “Make bear sound.”
Wylie, being two, wanted the game to go on forever, but I was out of time. It was a routine state of affairs here in apartment 514.
Jasper had summed it up perfectly last weekend. He and Wylie had been playing house. As usual, he was bossing his little brother around, which Wylie accepted without complaint. Jasper gave himself the role of daddy, assigning the mommy role to Wylie. “You’re getting the dinner,” he’d instructed. “But do it fast. Because Mommy is always in a rush.”
On hearing that, I’d felt as bad as if he had said, “Mommy beats me with a leather strap.”
Because of course he was right. I was always in a rush. It had been true long before Julia’s Child got off the ground and probably for years before Jasper was born. I was a high-energy girl, which was not always a bad thing for a woman with two rowdy boys.
Even so, the comment made me feel terrible. But the upshot was that it helped me appreciate Bonnie a little more, in spite of her penchant for leaving crumbs everywhere in the kitchen and the laundry loads that never quite got folded and her blossoming rap sheet. She led a more carefree existence than I did, and why shouldn’t the children enjoy her?
I stuck my head outside the airless chamber and filled my lungs with fresh air. Then, ducking back in, I said, “Come to the kitchen with me, Wylie. I’ll let you help me with the pizza dough.”
He bounced off Bonnie and onto my knees. I wrapped my arms around him and maneuvered us into the daylight.
In the kitchen I felt a little better. I stood Wylie on a chair. I slipped an apron over my head, since kitchen work and Wylie were a volatile combination.
“Where my apron go?”
Wylie’s apron had an inchworm appliquéd on the front. It was hard to believe that I’d done the needlework myself, before life had become so intolerably frantic. I plucked it off a hook and dropped it over his head. “Show me the back of Wylie, please.”
“Here go.” He turned around, and I tied the apron strings loosely around him, just above the diaper bulge.
“This is for our pizza.” The ball of whole wheat dough had been defrosting on the countertop all day. Of course the moment I removed it from its plastic bag the phone rang. The outside of the dough ball was sticky with condensation, and so I stared at the phone, not sure what to do.
“Phone ringed,” Wylie prompted. “I hold it.” He reached for the dough.
“Don’t drop it, okay?” I sighed, handing Wylie the sticky ball and scraping my hands on my apron. In an alternate universe, perhaps Bonnie would answer it. But in this one, it was clearly my job. “Hello?”
“Hi, Julia. It’s Derrick. Do you have a minute? Can I run a couple of things by you?”
“Um . . .” I looked up at the clock. I didn’t actually have a minute. I needed to make a pizza and then leave for Brooklyn within half an hour. On the other hand, my trusty Web developer had managed to make good on his promise to have my site up and running in record time. “Sure, Derrick. What’s on your mind?”
“Mama, who talkin’?” Wylie asked.
“It’s Mama’s friend from work,” I whispered.
“Hey! Is that your little man? How’s he doing?” Derrick asked.
I squinted at Wylie as he manhandled the ball of dough. “He’s thirty pounds of burning ambition. Now, what did you need to ask me about?”
“Tracking cookies, Julia. I need to know how deeply you want to embed them.”
Wylie was happily poking his finger into the dough, over and over. I trapped the phone with my shoulder and began to slice an uncured nitrate-free pepperoni into discs. “Say it in English, Derrick. What are we deciding?”
“Do you remember what a tracking cookie is? We talked about it last week.”
“Sure, tracking cookies,” I said breezily. “They, um, track things.”
Wylie put the ball of dough down on the counter. “Where tookie go?”
“Oh, Wylie,” I sighed. “It’s not a cookie you can eat.”
“Want to eat it.”
Derrick laughed in my ear. “At least you’ve got part of the idea. You can’t eat a tracking cookie, but they’re very useful. When customers visit your site, you can put a little bit of code onto their computer. Then, when they log back into your website, you’ll be able to tell which other companies’ sites the
y’ve visited. It’s kind of like following them around the mall.”
“That’s what a cookie does? That’s so rude! Who would do that?”
“Who wouldn’t? If we look at your PC right now, I’ll bet I can find fifty of them. It’s business intelligence.”
“Want tookie!” Convinced that I was holding out on him, Wylie began to cry.
So I set down my knife and began riffling through kitchen cabinets, looking for something to pacify him. “I don’t know, Derrick. Let’s not do that.”
I found a box of wheat crackers in the back of the cupboard. They were probably horribly stale. I opened the box and handed it to Wylie. Sniffling a little, he plunged one of his hands into the box and then popped a cracker into his mouth.
“It’s your show, Julia. You can always change your mind later. I’m almost finished with your webforms, and I’ll show them to you tomorrow. Are you in the office in the morning?”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” I sighed.
“Great. See you then.”
“Thanks, Derrick.” We hung up.
“Okay, kid. Let’s knock out this pizza crust.” I dusted the countertop, and then my hands, with flour.
I began to press the dough into a disc.
“Mine!” Wylie shoved my hands out of the way, diving onto the dough with both hands. The disc began to resemble an undersize wheel of Swiss cheese. I was willing to share the work but poking holes in the dough was not getting us anywhere. I had twenty-four minutes to leave the house, and the kitchen was spiraling into a very messy circle of hell. I was a brittle twig, just about to snap.
The sound of my voice was shrill. “Rolling pin time!” When I handed Wylie the pin, he dropped the dough. I scooped it up at lightning speed, reformed it into a ball, and set it back on the counter. “Now, here we go!” I fitted our two sets of hands onto the rolling pin handles and guided the pin across the dough in smooth strokes.
But Wylie fought me off. “Do it b’elf,” he kept repeating, and I thought I might cry. I’d always seen myself as someone who welcomed her children into the kitchen—someone whose career was supposed to bring her closer to family and hearth, not further away. And here we were wrestling for the rolling pin. I didn’t let go, and Wylie began to scream.
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