by Sonya Cobb
Still, her mind kept turning back to the mirror. Nobody knew it was missing; nobody even knew it existed. It was right there, within those brick walls. She felt an intense need to hold it in her hands again, to slip it back into the museum, as if it could reverse time and events. She couldn’t retreat to the carpeted hush of Carly’s apartment without trying something. Anything.
She stood up. She’d just ring the doorbell, ask to use the bathroom; she could improvise from there. She strode toward Irving Place and stood at the corner waiting for the light to change, her sights set on the imposing double doors flanked by curved brass handrails. Then, from the corner of her eye, she noticed some movement on the Twentieth Street side of the house. A mass of frizzy curls was slowly coming up a small stairway that led from a basement entrance, dragging something heavy. The curls belonged to a young woman; she was pulling a wide double stroller. She left it on the sidewalk, then descended the stairs again, reappearing with two small, black-haired children, whom she strapped into the stroller with practiced efficiency.
Sophie waited until the woman had pushed the stroller past her up Twentieth Street, then turned and followed. They walked to Park Avenue, turned right, then left onto Twenty-First Street. It took some effort to stay behind the woman, who was slowed by the weight she was pushing, but Sophie matched her pace, trying to look like she was taking a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood. Finally the woman stopped in front of a limestone apartment building with a shop window on the first floor, and bent down to unstrap the kids. Sophie ambled past, reading the bright red awning with an inward groan.
Music for Me.
***
1.I’m sure you got word about the conviction. We’ll see what happens with sentencing; I heard they want Michael to testify at the hearing. I hope you’ll be able to go back to work soon.
2.Goldmeier wants to get together next week to go over our legal options. Can you come see him on your lunch hour? Say, Tuesday?
3.Carly thinks she found me an investor to help get my database idea off the ground. I’m meeting with him next week to show him some wireframes, and go over my business plan. I’m pretty nervous/excited about that.
4.If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take the kids to New York on Thursday. I’ve been missing them, and I thought it would be fun to go to the Museum of Natural History. Elliot’s into dinosaurs these days.
5.I miss you. I want to make things right. I’m trying.
This time, when she handed the notebook to Brian on the doorstep, once the kids had run inside, he sighed and let his arm drop heavily. “Thanks.”
“What?”
He looked sideways and up, into the ginkgo tree, then let his gaze fall back to the sidewalk. “Nothing. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Seriously, Brian.”
Brian held out the notebook as if it were incriminating evidence. “This is nice and all, but don’t you ever think it would be good to, you know—”
“What?”
“Talk?”
“Talk!” Sophie laughed. “You never want to talk.”
“No, you never want to talk.”
Sophie jerked her head back with a furrowed squint. “I want to talk. I love talking.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I love it. This right here, what we’re doing right now, I love it.”
“Okay then.”
“What?”
“Let’s…” Brian waved the notebook around in circles.
“What, out here?”
Brian shrugged and pushed the front door open. Sophie brushed past him into the living room, where she sat, like a guest, on the edge of the sofa. Brian sank into one of the armchairs across from her.
“So what do you want to talk about?” she asked him, a smile escaping, momentarily, from her tense lips.
“Very funny.”
“Let’s hear it then. You hate me.”
“Christ.” Brian rubbed his mouth. “Okay, a little. But no, not hate, really, just…what the hell, Sophie? How could you do this to the people you—supposedly—love?”
“I don’t know.” Sophie bent forward, tucking her hands between her belly and her thighs. She realized this was the first time Brian had asked her, point-blank, to explain herself. She also realized she hadn’t prepared an answer. “I guess…I thought, I don’t know. This house was the key to everything. I thought it would keep me from becoming someone I didn’t want to be.” She paused. “Someone like my mother.” Brian was looking at her with his usual nonexpressive expression. “I thought it would give our kids a better life. And when it looked like it was going to be taken away, I couldn’t think about anything else. I was fixated on the house.” She straightened up, avoiding Brian’s gaze. “The wrong thing.” She was still holding back…still tightly wrapped around her darkest secret—the thing that “filled the hole,” as Harry put it.
“I just feel like we could’ve avoided all this if you had included me,” Brian said. “If you’d told me what was going on. If you’d asked for help. Now I feel like an idiot.”
“I’m so, so sorry.” Sophie wanted to reach out to him, but she didn’t. “I was trying to protect you. I was trying to just take care of things, to fix things so you wouldn’t have to worry.” Brian pulled the corner of his mouth ever so slightly to one side. “And okay, yes, I was ashamed,” Sophie continued. “I didn’t want you to know how royally I’d screwed up. It’s not easy, you know. Being married to Mr. Perfect. While my career falls apart. While my life turns into something I wasn’t ready for. Always feeding someone, cleaning up after someone, carrying someone, wishing someone would carry me for a change, wishing I could just do some work—my work, the work I’m actually good at. Blah blah blah, the oldest story in the book. Everybody goes through it, but I’m the only one who used it as an excuse to sabotage my entire life.” She hiccupped, and tears came in a gush—dammit! Again with the tears! But her frustration only made them come harder, and soon she was sobbing into her hands.
“Mommy?” Lucy and Elliot were standing in front of her, identical worried expressions on their faces. Lucy patted her knee. “Are you okay, Mommy?”
“Oh, Lucy,” Sophie cried. “Elliot. I’m okay. I’m sorry, don’t worry. I’m just having a bad day.” She pulled them onto the couch, kissing their heads and breathing in their salty-sweet scent. The weight of them against her, the clambering jabs of elbows and knees, the heat of their high-pitched breath against her neck—it was what she needed; it was what she’d always needed. She’d been so focused on the giving, she’d completely forgotten about the taking. She looked over the children’s heads at Brian, who seemed almost on the verge of a smile. “I hope you know how much I love you,” she said. “I hope you all know.”
***
Taking the kids to New York on the train by herself was doable; taking the stroller along with them was another story. In Philadelphia, at least, a redcap let her take an elevator to the train platform, but then she had to put the kids on the train ahead of her, ordering them to stand motionless by the door while she fought her way through boarding passengers to retrieve the folded stroller from the platform and hoist it into the narrow luggage compartment at the front of the car. In New York the elevator wasn’t working, so she had to hold Elliot in one arm and the stroller in the other, leaving Lucy to fend for herself as they rode the narrow, crowded escalator up into the station. Taking the subway uptown, she realized, was not an option, given the obstacle course of turnstiles and stairs. So they stood in the Eighth Avenue cab line for twenty minutes, Elliot strapped into his seat against his will, unmoved by promises of dinosaurs, Lucy dancing all over the sidewalk, touching everything.
The three of them relaxed once they arrived at the American Museum of Natural History, a stroller-friendly haven busy with children in various stages of joy, exhaustion, and outrage. They wandered through
the dinosaur halls, where Sophie did her best to read some of the labels, causing Lucy and Elliot, bristling with impatience, to abandon the stroller and run ahead, rushing through the Eocene, Cretaceous, and Jurassic periods with the impetuousness of creatures who have only been on Earth for five and three years.
After lunch, Sophie announced that she had a surprise for them: they were going to Music for Me! In New York! But the kids received this astonishing news with mere shrugs, probably imagining, quite reasonably, that New York and Philadelphia were part of the same vast metropolis, and that it was perfectly normal to find Barnes and Noble, the Lego store, and Music for Me just around the next corner.
She’d signed them up for the same early-afternoon session she’d seen Hansei’s nanny go to: Rhythm Makes Me Happy! Sophie had often taken the kids to Rhythm Makes Me Happy! in Philadelphia, but she’d never personally experienced actual happiness during the class—just irritation, existential angst, and a rhythmically pounding headache.
She had the cab drop them a few blocks north of Twenty-First Street, then walked the kids the rest of the way in the stroller. When they arrived she could see the curly-haired nanny with her two small charges already inside, sitting on the rug. Sophie hurriedly parked the stroller, then ushered Lucy and Elliot toward the spot just next to them. As the teacher began strumming the familiar tune to “Good Morning, Farmer George,” Sophie grabbed a maraca and began shaking it with brio, singing the words she could—and probably, on occasion, did—sing in her sleep. Lucy and Elliot, inspired by her sudden enthusiasm, sang and clapped loudly; Lucy even twirled around a few times in the center of the circle.
Afterward, Sophie followed the nanny outside and popped open her stroller next to hers. “That was so fun,” she exclaimed. “Your kids have great rhythm.”
The nanny looked up with surprise, her face pillowy with youth. “Oh, they’re not my kids,” she laughed. “I’m just the nanny. But thanks, I guess.”
“Have you guys been coming to this class for a while?”
“Oh, sure. Well, they’ve been coming since last year. But I literally grew up coming to Music for Me. My mom used to bring me and my sister. My sister didn’t like it, though, so my mom would leave her in front of the TV and bring me because if I didn’t get to go she said I would literally drive her nuts.”
Sophie smiled at her, a little dazed by this flood of information, then bent down to greet the two children in their stroller. “Did you like that class? Was it fun?” The girl nodded solemnly, but the boy squirmed and turned his face away. “This is Lucy and Elliot,” Sophie said, turning her stroller to bring the kids face-to-face. “They’re about your age, I think.”
“This is Mina and Takashi. Say hi, guys.” The four kids looked blankly at each other. “They don’t spend a lot of time with other kids,” said the nanny. “That’s why I’ve been bringing them here. They don’t go to preschool or anything. Their dad’s kind of a control freak. I mean, I don’t mean that in a negative way or anything, he’s great, but sometimes, you know, I think kids need to socialize a little. I try to keep them entertained and all, but I’m probably pretty boring. To a four-year-old.”
“I’m Sophie, by the way.”
“I’m Becca.” She wiped a hand on her jeans and offered it to Sophie. “Nice to meet you. I guess we should go—we’re creating a traffic jam.” Annoyed-looking pedestrians were piling up behind the strollers. Becca turned toward Park Avenue.
“We’ll walk with you,” Sophie blurted, wrestling her stroller around to follow Becca. “We’re going this way.” She walked behind Becca’s bobbing curls until they got to Park Avenue, whose sidewalks were wide enough to accommodate the strollers side-by-side. “So how long have you been their nanny?”
“About a year I guess. I started last fall. I was a camp counselor all summer, then I took a break for a few weeks ’cause I was burned out, and then I literally went broke so I started answering nanny ads. This is really just a way to make money while I work on my writing. I’m going to be a writer someday. I mean, I already am one, just nobody knows it.” Sophie nodded and smiled, doing her best to seem politely interested in a noncreepy way as Becca continued rambling from subject to subject. Eventually they pulled up in front of the Gramercy Park mansion, where Becca stood, still talking about her writing, her boyfriend, and her night classes at CUNY, for another fifteen minutes. “Well, anyways,” she finally said, gesturing toward the house, “this is us.”
“You live here?”
“Yeah, he gave me a room on the fifth floor, and there is no elevator, so you’d think I wouldn’t have these thighs, ha-ha.”
Sophie craned her neck to see the fifth floor, then looked back at Becca. “What would you think about having a playdate? It seems like they all get along really well.” She pulled back the sunshade so she could see Elliot and Lucy. They were fast asleep.
“Mmm….” Becca’s lips momentarily disappeared inside her mouth. “I’m not supposed to have anybody over. Their dad is such a control freak about stuff like that. Like, this is literally the only park we’re allowed to go to.” She nodded toward Gramercy Park’s iron fence. “I honestly think he bought the house just for the park key. Doesn’t want them mixing with the riffraff. Not that you’re riffraff, of course, but you know. He’s strict.”
Sophie felt the day’s investments—the train, the singing, the nap-deprived kids—on the verge of evaporation. Her mind rifled through Becca’s previous monologue, searching for something to use. “Do you think I could check out your writing sometime? Do you have a blog?”
“Oh, gosh, no. I would have no idea how to—”
“No blog?” Sophie widened her eyes. “Every self-respecting writer has one. It’s how people get discovered these days. Seriously, you can’t not have a blog.”
“Really?” Becca pulled a strand of her hair straight, then let it spring back. “I guess you’re right. I should get one. Or make one or whatever.”
Sophie leaned on the stroller handle, gazed into the distance. “You know…”
“What?”
“I’m not doing anything this afternoon. I could set it up for you. But I understand if you’re not allowed to have anyone over.”
“You know how to do that?”
“I’m a web developer.”
“Oh my gosh!”
“Is their dad home? Maybe the kids can play a little while I set it up, then we’ll be on our way.”
“No, he’s not home…”
“I mean—if this is really what you want to do,” Sophie said. “Be a writer. Because if that’s really your dream, then you have to just do it. You won’t always have this kind of time. This…passion.” Sophie took a deep breath. “Don’t let it go to waste.”
“Wow.” Becca wound another strand of hair around her finger. “Maybe we can do it on my day off? Are you around this Sunday? We could go to Starbucks or something.”
“Sunday.” Sophie drummed her fingers against her lips. “Oh, you know what, I’m out of town.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sure you can set it up yourself,” Sophie said brightly. “Just decide which open-source CMS you like best, like Movable Type, or Blosxom if you’d rather work in Perl. I’m really liking WordPress, now that widgets are included by default in the core code.”
Becca blinked at her.
“I’m sure you can figure it out.” Sophie picked her diaper bag off the sidewalk, slinging it over a shoulder.
“I guess I can try.” Becca fiddled with her stroller brake, then cocked her head and gave Sophie a wavering smile. “Oh, who am I kidding?”
Inside the townhouse, Becca showed Sophie a closet under the main staircase where she could put the stroller and pulled out a basket of white cotton slippers. “Can I keep these?” asked Lucy, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, when Becca handed her a tiny pair.
“No,” said So
phie.
“Yes!” laughed Becca. “Come on, let’s have a snack first. The kitchen’s down here.”
Sophie scuffed slowly down the corridor, peering into a series of formal rooms while the kids, energized by the thought of snacks, ran ahead. The house was like an oyster shell: the walls and floors, darkly textured with complicated woodwork, were lined with gleaming white upholstery, rugs, and furniture. The tall windows were shuttered at the bottom with dark wood, while light fell through the upper panes in blinding quantities.
Becca led them through a heavily carved door to the back staircase. They filed down the steps and into the kitchen, which was long and low-ceilinged, with two blocky marble islands in the center of the room, the air sweetly perfumed with sesame oil.
“Danny!” cried Mina and Takashi, running toward a wiry man who stood chopping vegetables at one of the islands.
“Hey, guys,” he said, handing each of them a slice of red bell pepper, which they devoured. Sophie felt a twinge of jealousy. Her kids would never touch a red pepper.
“Hello,” he said with a nod to Sophie.
“We’re here for snacks,” Becca said. Danny thoughtfully pressed his bottom lip upward for a second, narrowing his eyes almost imperceptibly at Becca, then gave Sophie a swift smile and resumed chopping.
“What?” Becca said. “It’s just for a little while. Everybody come sit.” She slid into a banquette that curved around a large round table at the far end of the room.
They sat, and Danny brought them a tray of colorful, doughy-looking balls. Lucy frowned at the balls, then turned to Mina. “Is he your daddy?”
Mina laughed, popping one of the balls into her mouth. “No, silly. He’s my Danny.”
“Danny cooks for us,” said Becca, pushing the tray toward Lucy. “Wagashi?”
Lucy shook her head vigorously. Danny reappeared, this time with a bowl of Goldfish crackers, which Lucy and Elliot began scooping out of the bowl like ravenous bears.
