by Amanda Brown
Guava, he realized. A glance around the kitchen and a peek in the refrigerator told him they weren’t going to go hungry after all. Becca had seen to that.
“Sit, drink your juice.” He realized Emily had dressed herself before waking him. She must have awoken in the middle of the night. Her overalls were a little crooked and the shirt underneath was a white dress-up shirt, but otherwise, she was fine.
Emily held up her glass, now empty. “You drink yours.”
He had no idea what guava juice tasted like, but he was game—so he drank a few sips. It was disgusting, heavy with bits of fruit. On the table was a note: “Boxes of cereal in pantry. Also microwavable oatmeal. Sweet rolls. Milk, etcetera. See you at lunch!” Then there was a P.S.: “I am Arlene Reinhart’s daughter. I take it you’ve already met her. Food is like air—you are never without it.” It was signed “B” and then that was crossed out and she’d written “Becca.”
His glance at the clock gave him a flashback of the mornings he had spent training for crew. Until now he had never thought of that as a very long time ago. Today it seemed like another life. He was not living only for himself anymore.
After more coffee than he usually drank in the morning, Edward and Emily went downtown. By the time they met Becca for brunch, Edward was carrying a large bag from FAO Schwartz with tutus and sequins poking out of it. Also, Arthur had ordered a four-foot pink teddy bear, which the store was sending over. They reached the restaurant ten minutes late, which, for Edward, was a prompt arrival.
KATZ’S DELI
“Where the Kosher Consumer Is King”
Edward looked inside the deli with anticipation. The only “kosher” he knew was a pickle, but he could smell wonderful food cooking halfway down the block. Though he had eaten already, Edward had a natural tendency to accept pleasant things in life that were offered to him. His appetite was stirred.
Becca, fueled by her coffee, had not eaten a bite. She had covered the hard topic of discipline this morning with the information from her analysts, and was satisfied that four-year-olds were essentially angelic creatures whose main function was to strive for acceptance. The experts recommended using something called a “time out,” which was more or less the penalty used for high-sticking in hockey, and she wanted to talk to Edward about where in the apartment they might set up a penalty box.
Barry Katz, the deli’s owner, was as friendly as he was round. Becca Reinhart was a regular customer for whom he had much affection. She had arrived early to tell him about Emily, and Barry was eager to meet the new “daughter.” The white-smocked teddy bear emerged from the kitchen after Becca called for him, his arms waving happily, his wide, red face warm and inviting. He invited Emily to dye bagels in the kitchen with kosher food coloring, and nearly collapsed with shock at her answer.
“What’s a bagel?” she asked him innocently.
“It’s like a doughnut, Em,” Edward explained, “but harder, like it’s stale.”
Becca was sure that Barry would have a heart attack.
“Like a doughnut?” Barry threw his hands out wildly. “Who is this dummkopf?” He pounded his balding head. “He has the brains of a bagel!”
Becca laughed, first at Barry, then at Edward. She reminded Emily about bagels, the heavy bread things that made Becca’s purse smell like onions. She stood and whispered something to Barry, who softened, and smiled.
“Be nice,” she had whispered. “He just doesn’t know better.” She glanced at Edward’s tweed blazer, starched collar, belted khakis, and cordovan loafers, summing him up in a quick wave of her hand.
“All right, Becca,” Barry returned, offering his pudgy hand to Emily, who took it after Becca nodded permission. His tone was unconvinced, and he flung Edward a frown before trudging back to the kitchen.
Edward looked around him with curiosity. He felt like a man from the moon.
Becca gave him a sympathetic look. She didn’t want to be too tough on Edward. He meant well. She sat down quickly, before he had a chance to politely rise. Soon she’d have to abolish that practice.
“Forget about it, Eddie. Let’s get to work.” She pulled a red pen out of her roomy black Fendi bag. “The first thing we need to do is to define our mission statement for Emily.”
He laughed out loud, but she ignored him.
“We’re talking at this stage about her growth as the first priority,” she continued, shuffling through a file of handwritten notes, “though moral development is important too. The main contributor to growth is eating. I have a few ideas about that.”
She handed him a piece of paper. Grinning, he folded his menu closed and glanced at her bullet points. She had highlighted certain topics: Protein Builds Muscle, Passing Fruit Off As Dessert, The Benefits of Milk. He laughed when he saw the circle with exclamation points around Vegetable Strategies.
“Very thorough,” he complimented her. His bright blue eyes shone as he smiled at Becca; his gaze was steady and calm. What sadness he felt for the past few days, Edward seemed to have internalized into his natural good balance.
“We have Emily’s language development to consider too: essential in controlling impressions. We need to build brand identity now.”
“Brand identity?”
“Image, personality, whatever you want to call it,” Becca fired back, waving her pen in the air as she talked. “It’s a highly front-loaded process. Once a positive brand is in place, a kid can go miles. With good image projection and placement, she’ll pick up share every year.”
“Share? Market share? Of what, the playground?” Edward couldn’t finish for laughing.
Becca nodded, making a note with her pen.
“I have a caution flag here. The trusted brands are simple: simple personality, simple message. One look, and you know what you’ve got. Kleenex. Kellogg’s. Xerox.” She dropped her eyes to consult her bullet point. “Here’s the danger with Emily.” Becca looked Edward in the eye to deliver the bad news.
“Confused message.”
He shrugged. “What do you mean? I think Emily’s a great kid.”
“She’s great, of course,” Becca said, frowning, annoyed that Edward brought up this non sequitur. “Emily’s the best. And from what I’ve read, she’s ahead of the game. Early talker: That’s a plus. But we have to be careful. The kid is developing a screwed-up language identity. I think we ought to pull her out of the French classes.”
Edward gave her a funny look. He had always heard that kids absorbed language best when they were youngest, but he didn’t want to argue. Edward was a patient soul. He had long experience of sitting quietly while a monologue whistled past his ears. Without speaking, he looked down at his menu.
The waiter and Becca noticed at the same time that Edward had looked at his menu. The waiter approached at once, and Becca turned vehemently to scare him off. She waved him off like a pigeon.
“I’ll tell you when we’re ready!” she shouted.
“Eyngeshparter!” he shot back.
“Don’t eyngeshparter me,” Becca returned. “You’re as stubborn as a ram.”
“Am not,” she heard him fling over his shoulder.
Turning calmly to Edward, she continued delivering the lecture that had resulted from the past ten hours of her research. The current literature said that kids could suffer in their self-confidence if they lacked a clear language identity.
“When did you pick up your Yiddish?” Edward asked her.
“What?” Becca laughed. “What does that have to do with anything?” She tried to frown at him, but her eyes revealed that she knew she had talked herself into a corner.
“When?” he pressed his point with a frank smile. “When you were little, I’ll guess.”
She turned her eyes down. “I’ve always known it.”
“I rest my case,” he said, lifting her hand from his menu. “Don’t worry about the French lessons.”
“But French is different,” she protested.
“Je ne suis pas d’
accord.” Edward grinned at her blank face. “I disagree,” he said with a laugh. “Do you think I’ve lost my brand?”
She shook her head. “No way. You’re still Joe Ivy.”
He smiled, offering himself to win his point.
“So she sticks with French?”
“All right,” she conceded. “But French is your action item.” She handed Edward a blank pad and a pen.
“Thanks.” He laughed, returning his pen to the table.
It annoyed Becca that Edward didn’t write anything down. What if he forgot? She leaned across the table and wrote his action item on his notepad.
“Before you get too far down your list,” Edward interrupted, touching her hand gently, “Let’s order.”
Jumping at the chance to put Becca in her place, the waiter hurried to the table when he saw Edward motion for him.
“Whaddaya want?” he demanded.
Edward rarely ordered off the menu. He was surprised that the waiter hadn’t yet mentioned the day’s specials.
“Special service today,” snapped the waiter. “We’ll bring it right to the table. So whaddaya want?”
Edward gulped, and ordered something ordinary.
“I’ll have pancakes, with a side of bacon,” Edward tried. “And a latte.”
“Ha!” The waiter took his pencil off the pad. “Chazer! Is he kidding?”
“He’ll have the blintzes,” Becca took over, “and potatoes on the side. Eggs too?” she asked, turning to Edward.
He held up two fingers. “Two eggs. No potatoes.”
The waiter turned to Becca, scribbling on his pad with his eyes locked on hers.
“What about you? The honey cake?”
“No,” said Becca, “A strudel for Emily, and leber mit tsibeles for me. Make it hot,” she added, lowering her eyebrows. “Last time I had to send it back.”
“All right!” the waiter fired at them, slamming his spiral closed. “So I’ll be a minute! Who’s in such a hurry?”
He stomped off to the kitchen.
“What am I having?” he asked politely. He couldn’t remember anybody ever ordering for him. Even when he was little his parents would have told him what to order, then put him on the spot when the waiter arrived, like a little bird taught to sing on demand.
“Oh, the usual. Cheese-filled, crispy pancakes, eggs. The pancakes are called latkes—but actually, forget about it—you don’t need to know latkes, the blintzes are better. And don’t even say the word bacon. No pig. Got it?”
Edward nodded, letting Becca’s words roll over his ears. She talked an awful lot. As he watched her turn her eyes back down to the paperwork she had prepared, becoming absorbed, for the moment, in the details of her own thoughts, he stole the chance to watch her thinking. It was only in stolen moments like this one that Edward had gathered his impressions of this blunt beauty. Her hair, shining and dark as a blackbird, fell in loose layers that brushed her shoulders. Her charm had an accidental quality that stunned him: it was different in nature, not in degree, from the powdered and pampered tribe that he knew. She had a practical efficiency about her, a casual grace.
His glance traveled over her tapping fingernails—no polish, he noticed—and he caught sight of the notepad she had brought for him. The only writing on it was hers. The pen she had flung next to the notepad was ordinary and worn. Her pen was the same, a Bic. He had a feeling that they were stuffed chaotically in a crammed desk drawer, dime-store ballpoints next to sleek fountain pens—Becca’s corporate gifts. Why was he so sure that Becca Reinhart got no particular pleasure out of acquiring things? Why did she seem detached from the usual pursuits: self-contained in her intensity?
His gaze had rested on Becca long enough for him to conclude she was paying him no mind. Suddenly, her eyes flashed a welcome. She threw her head back with a merry laugh.
“Emily!” she called.
Emily Stearns skipped from Katz’s kitchen toward Becca and Edward, squealing with excitement. Her hand-smocked dress was soaked with green food dye. Becca’s eyes met Edward’s. She smiled. This was going to be fun.
CHAPTER 12
So Make Time
Together they ate, and when they had gathered enough bread crumbs from Barry’s kitchen for Emily to feed a whole species of ducks, they took a cab to the south entrance of Central Park. While Emily scattered crumbs, taking not a few bites herself, Edward broke the news to Becca.
“Emily already has a schedule,” he said, sitting on a bench and inviting her with a pat on the seat to join him. “I don’t know what we’ll do with these action items of yours. Really, she has almost no free time.”
Edward reached into his Orvis bag for the copy of the schedule he had gotten from the nanny while Becca and Emily were in Hong Kong. They would not have time to breathe. And since Becca had summarily discharged the nanny, not wanting such a disloyal employee to stay on one minute longer, there were only the two of them.
“We’ll have to divide this up between us,” Edward reminded her, handing her the schedule to look over. “What days are good for you?”
Becca’s face fell. She didn’t answer. No day was good for her.
She remembered what her mother had told her, and her cheeks colored with a mixture of shame and resolve. She handed him back the papers.
“Let me rearrange my schedule. I’ll make time,” she promised quietly.
Edward smiled. He appreciated her willingness.
“I think Emily needs to spend time with us right now,” he said. “She needs to trust us.”
Becca nodded silently in agreement. Her eyes turned to Emily, who was squealing with excitement as a green-headed mallard waddled close to her. She felt a sudden and surprising sense of relief, as if she had already cleared something, some obstacle to embracing this child, just by declaring that she would make the time. She turned to Edward, and noticed that he, too, was watching Emily with pride and pleasure.
Her eyes rested on his boyish face, and she wondered, suddenly, where he had come from. She had never really known Arthur, having lost so much of her day-to-day contact with Amy since the college days when they traveled together. After Emily was born, she renewed her contact with Amy, but they always met in the park with the baby, or had lunch. Becca had gotten the idea that Amy needed to get out. She had lost the chance to get to know Arthur, and wondered, suddenly, if he were anything like his friend Edward.
She felt at home in Edward’s company: a peculiar feeling, as she hardly knew him, and nobody like him. Not personally—if she met someone upper crust through business—boundaries were set, nobody’s real self was revealed. He turned, meeting her eye, and she looked away quickly.
“We’ll be fine, Eddie. All it takes is scheduling. If we can schedule it, we can get it done.”
She probably talked to her staff that way, Edward thought, reclining, to the extent he could, on the wooden park bench. He stretched his arms behind his neck, the chipped bench yielding with a slight bend behind his strong back. With a sigh, he massaged his neck and shoulder muscles, sure that Becca underestimated Emily’s schedule. He wondered how bullish she would be when she saw the sheer number of Emily’s classes, groups, lessons, and activities. He had a sinking feeling that Becca would have to make more time than she bargained for.
“So, what’s on the program?” she asked him, having resumed her coach’s voice as she reached for the papers he had withdrawn from his flat envelope-sized, rich, burgundy leather briefcase.
He kept the papers in his hand.
“Her day planner is all in French,” he explained. “I didn’t have time to copy the whole thing. I’ll translate.”
“I know some French,” said Becca, defensively. But she didn’t object when Edward read it to her.
Edward put on his reading glasses, then removed them as a sudden thought occurred to him.
“I forgot to mention this weekend. Sorry, but I’m flat-out booked. You’ll have to cover for me.”
Becca raised her eyeb
rows. “What’s your conflict, Eddie?”
“It’s been scheduled for ages,” he said, grinning with anticipation of the event. “I’m playing in the member-guest tournament at the Racquet Club. I already have my times—well, my first round times. The finals are Monday night at seven. Labor Day. So I am out of pocket until Tuesday morning. Probably late morning would be best. There’s a great party after the tournament on Monday night. It’s a holiday, you know.”
Becca’s jaw dropped. Was he kidding?
“A holiday,” she said, looking down at the table. “You’re joking. What’s that?”
“No, seriously,” Edward said, trying to help. “It’s a federal holiday. The markets will be closed.”
“Markets closed? The bell-ringers might take the day off,” Becca laughed, “but it’s a workday for me.”
“Why?” Edward asked. She saw innocence in his eyes.
“Every day is a workday for me, Eddie,” she answered simply.
They were miles from each other. He saw the determination in her eyes, and he knew that she didn’t understand who he was. She was not so open-minded, he thought suddenly: She doesn’t know that there is more to life than what she has already concluded. He saw himself, in her eyes, as she must see him: He felt shallow, like his reflection.
She stared into his eyes, searching, for a minute, and as he pondered her expression, he thought he saw her sharp, glittering stare yield to something different. He saw warmth in her eyes, but as soon as he noticed the spark of tenderness, it was gone. The suggestion of her soul had flickered before him like a candle, and gone out. The flint was back when she spoke quickly to him.
“I’ll take Emily to work this weekend. Don’t worry. She’ll have lots of fun. Play your tournament—hats off, or whatever you people say. Talley ho. We’ll have a great time.” She waited for him to thank her.
Edward gave a simple nod. “Okay. So I’m off for the weekend, and back on board Tuesday.”
She stared at him, nodding silently.
