If We Lived Here

by Lindsey Palmer

  “This is why people in academia are all nuts,” Annie had said. “They spend all their time buried in books, studying stuff no one else could give a shit about, and they forget that there’s actual life happening here in the real world. Earth to Ems, more than a hundred years have passed since Edith Wharton wrote that stuff! I can’t even imagine where you’d go these days to find the kinds of outfits they wore—probably some hipster Williamsburg hat shop.”

  “Haberdashery,” Emma said.

  “What?”

  Emma mumbled the word again, realizing she sounded crazy. Annie ignored her and went on. “Also: Hello, none of the stories are real! Nobody’s going to jilt you at the opera, or accuse you of being a floozy for visiting some guy’s apartment late at night. Times changed, oh, about a century ago, and now you can do whatever the hell you want! Get with the program, Ems!”

  This outburst had actually cheered Emma up, because Annie was the last person she’d imagined would argue against society’s codes of convention. Still, it hadn’t been enough. With only fifty pages left to write of her dissertation, Emma had dropped out of the Ph.D. program and moved to Manhattan, where Annie had hooked her up with a job in P.R. The gig, all surface and spin, had seemed at the time like the perfect antidote to the brain-bending work of her doctoral studies. She’d met Genevieve around then, who’d been working as the office’s part-time messenger in between auditions, and they’d developed mutual girl crushes—Gen taken with Emma’s dramatic abandonment of academia in favor of publicity’s glitz and glamour, and Emma taken with Gen’s devotion to what seemed like an impossible dream career. Emma’s sense of relief at her new job path had lasted about six months, until she again grew restless and panicked, intent on finding the next solution to her Lily Bart–esque dread.

  Now here Emma was, going on her second hour of waiting for Nick at Penn Station, feeling worse off than the doomed Miss Bart. Lily was tragically at risk of spinsterhood and societal ostracism at age twenty-nine, and yet Emma had already hurtled past the treacherous threshold of thirty. She had a boyfriend, sure, but where was he when she needed him, i.e. now? Emma had sworn she’d arrive two hours early to Annie’s rehearsal dinner to help set up. She knew it was ridiculous to stress about not being on hand for flower arrangements and centerpiece construction, but she’d made a promise to her best friend. She was the maid of honor, after all.

  Not that Nick was usually unreliable. And yet Emma sometimes felt like one of those lab rats who got used to a routine, but then every once in a while—zap!—was tricked (I thought pushing this lever led to a piece of cheese, not an electroshock!) and then started to go insane. That was Emma’s experience of dating Nick—90 percent of the time he was a committed and conscientious boyfriend; but there was that other 10 percent, the oversleeping, hungover, overgrown-teenager part of Nick. Then again, Emma knew she had a habit of holding the people in her life to unreasonably high standards. Just because she’d never been late to anything, and just because she believed it was inappropriate to cancel plans except in cases of high fever or stomach flu (and maybe this was why she struggled with making plans in the first place), she realized other people didn’t operate by such strict principles. And that didn’t make them all hopeless flakes. Just as Emma was starting to soften toward Nick, she felt him wrap his arms around her from behind and say in her ear, “Hey, bad news.”

  “Good morning to you, too. What’s the matter now?” Emma’s stomach started gurgling, like it was preparing to take in something sour. Admittedly she’d just ingested thirty-two ounces of sugar from a “size small” shake.

  “Our tickets were nonrefundable, and it was going to cost another three hundred dollars to buy new ones, day of.”

  “So you found a teleporting machine to zip us down to D.C.?”

  “Close. I booked us on Greyhound.”

  “You’re kidding.” Again, Emma felt herself slipping into the role of Lily Bart, indignant over being wronged. And she wasn’t just acting like a diva. Buses made Emma ill—literally. Once, on a ride to Boston with a driver whose two modes of movement were gunning the gas and slamming the breaks, Emma had been subjected to a seatmate sloshing a pint of beef bouillon onto her lap. Not only had she spent twenty minutes vomiting in the bathroom, but because there was only hand sanitizer and not a sink with running water, she’d had to sit for three more hours stewing in a fusion of broth and alcoholic rub, willing her stomach not to erupt again. Emma detested the bus.

  “I wish I were kidding,” Nick said. “I screwed up. And believe me, I’m paying for it.” He rubbed his temples, and for the first time that day Emma got a good look at her boyfriend. His skin was sallow, his eyes bloodshot and covered with a cloudy film. The part of Emma that wasn’t furious wanted to pull him into a comforting embrace.

  “What happened to you exactly?” she asked.

  “You know, alarm-clock trouble. Hey, look, a Krispy Kreme!”

  “All right, I’ll fall for your very subtle sleight of hand.” As much as Emma had been fuming, and even as she suspected that Nick had done something that likely deserved her scorn, it seemed easier to let it go. “I’ll take a chocolate glazed, please.”

  “One chocolate-glazed donut to go, and one bus ticket for the lady.”

  “And one Dramamine.”

  “Coming right up!”

  The traffic was bumper-to-bumper, and Emma was trying to gaze beyond the window’s grimy streaks and concentrate on the horizon. It had taken nearly an hour to make it through the Holland Tunnel, and they’d spent the past forty-five minutes inching so gradually down the New Jersey Turnpike that it seemed like life was playing in slo-mo.

  Emma glanced at her watch: two p.m., meaning their original train was just pulling in to Union Station in D.C. She pictured passengers gathering bags after a pleasant trip; she felt particularly resentful toward the two people who, due to the vacancies left by Emma’s and Nick’s absences, had probably sprawled out across double-seaters for naps.

  The screen on Emma’s phone flashed Landlady!, which she’d inputted yesterday for Mrs. Caroline. She picked up: “Hey, Mrs. Caroline, how’s it going?” The man in front of Emma swiveled around to glare, which seemed unfair considering he’d spent the past half hour loudly recounting a synopsis of last week’s Girls to his seatmate.

  “Listen, we need to talk.” Her tone was ominous. Emma was struck with the sinking feeling specific to knowing you’re about to get dumped; she realized she’d been half expecting this all along. “I’m going to have to rescind my offer on the apartment.”

  Emma let her head fall against the dirty window beside her. She closed her eyes.

  “Hello, are you there? Emma?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was a whisper. Nick placed a hand on her shoulder, scrunching his face into a look of concern. Emma shrugged him off.

  “I know we agreed, but I’ve had a funny feeling about it ever since. It’s been affecting my sleep, and I’m someone who needs to get my eight hours. Another couple came by to see the apartment. They’re newlyweds. She’s a law professor and he makes a great income as some kind of engineer for Google, and—”

  “Enough, please stop.” There were many things Emma wanted to say to Mrs. Caroline—how she was a bad person; and how the last thing Emma wanted to hear about was the wealthier, more successful, more committed couple who were her lucky new tenants; and how it was ridiculous to ask people to refer to you as “Mrs.” along with your first name. But she also didn’t want to waste another moment in conversation with her.

  Click. Emma hung up. She yearned to thrust her hand through the glass beside her, then stick her head out and drink in the fresh air. Also, she wanted to talk to her mother. But because of the intercontinental time difference, they always made Skype dates, catching up once a week at predetermined times with that weird computer screen delay. Her mom’s phone didn’t even take international calls.

  “What does Annie want now?” Nick said. “I hope you told her it’s too late
to get the tablecloths monogrammed according to each guest’s seating placement.”

  Emma didn’t even attempt a smile. “The apartment’s out.” She didn’t bother filling him in on the reason. Meanwhile, the man in front of her jerked his seat back to recline fully.

  “Oh, Emma.” Nick pulled her into his arms as best as he could in the cramped two-seater. “I admit I’m sort of relieved. That woman was a nutcase.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I know you’re disappointed. But we still have plenty of time.”

  “I guess.” Emma did the math—they had three weeks until their respective leases were up. But in three days’ time Nick would be back in school and return home an exhausted lump each afternoon; evenings would be needed for planning and parent calls. Finding their future apartment, Emma sensed, would be a burden entirely hers to bear.

  “Slam.” Nick nudged her arm. She was unresponsive. “Come on, Em, slam.”

  “Fine. Slap,” she said, not thrilled to be playing Scrabble Slam. The game involved taking turns changing one letter in a word in order to create a new one. Emma usually enjoyed it.

  “Slip.”

  “Slim.”

  “Slit.”

  “Shit.” Emma said it loudly, and the man in front of her shot her a look of disdain. This from someone who had recently eliminated all of her legroom.

  “Shit is right,” Nick said. “This trip is the worst. Shin.” Nick made a motion to kick the offending passenger.

  “It is. Thin.” Emma sucked in her stomach.

  “At this rate, we won’t arrive until halfway through the rehearsal dinner. Thus, I wish you hadn’t been so irresponsible and slept through our original train.” Nick grinned.

  “Oh, shush.”

  “Shush doesn’t work, Em. You can’t add two letters.”

  Emma elbowed her boyfriend, then reached for her vibrating phone. It was her brother, Max, no doubt calling to offer his weekly Shabbat Shalom tidings. Emma wasn’t up for it, so she let the call ring through to voicemail, then dialed to hear the message. The sharp sopranos of her niece and nephew, Aimee and Caleb, accosted Emma’s eardrums. They were singing some Hebrew school song. Aimee’s lisp was cute, but otherwise the song made Emma roll her eyes: “On Shabbat we are happy, we are bursting full of joy! For Shabbat is a festive day for every girl and boy!”

  Emma worried that her sister-in-law, Alysse, was the type of mother who wouldn’t allow her children to act anything but happy. Here the kids were, ages three and four, singing about their joy on Shabbat, but Emma wondered whether they even knew what the holiday was. She also thought it was no coincidence that Max called her every week after synagogue. His voice interrupted the children’s on the message: “Hey, Emmy, I hope you’re having a great weekend at the wedding. We just heard a very moving sermon from Rabbi Shimon and it made me think of you. Shabbat Shalom!”

  Emma noted her brother’s put-on Hebrew lilt. “The Shabbat police, calling to check in,” she said to Nick.

  “I think it’s nice,” he replied. Nick had been raised in one of those laid-back Unitarian homes, and so had no idea about all the subtle, guilt-inducing tactics Jewish families employed. But while most of Emma’s Jewish friends shouldered heaps of guilt from their mothers, she found it disturbing that for her it was her brother, just three years older than she, who had taken it upon himself to be the family’s religion monitor. Emma suspected a lot of it was for show, some kind of “keeping up with the Jacobsons” thing. Even their mom, whose business was selling kosher-style pastries to the Jewish Madrileños, poked fun at Max’s and Alysse’s insistence on calling on a Christian neighbor to flip their light switches on and off during Shabbat. If all that weren’t bad enough, it made Emma seethe that, back when their parents had broached the idea of selling their house and shipping out to Europe, Max had pounced; within six months, he’d bought them out and moved himself into the house Emma had grown up calling home. All of the doorframes now bore colorful mezuzahs that Alysse had picked up at JCC craft fairs, and Emma’s niece now slept in her old bedroom, redecorated in Alysse’s matchy-matchy aesthetic. A giant poster of Noah’s ark replaced the photo collage Emma had updated through high school and college and then pleaded with her parents to preserve like a museum display after she’d moved away.

  Emma and Nick did occasionally trek up to Westchester to spend Jewish holidays with her brother’s family. And when she didn’t let herself get worked up over Alysse’s pointed comments—“Isn’t it refreshing to get out of the city and breathe clean air for a change?” “By the time I was your age, the only thing on my mind was babies, babies, babies. It’s funny how people are different.”—Emma did find herself comforted by the old rituals. They gathered around the family room, which Max must’ve lobbied to keep as it was before, and lit the candles. They sang the same songs she and Max had sung as kids, the ancient tunes bursting up like buds from their childhood, lovelier for their deep roots. They tore off chunks of the same fluffy challah from Weintrob’s, sipped at the same syrupy Manischewitz wine, and then took turns sharing a highlight from the past week and a hope for the coming week. This last tradition was a new one, created by Max for his family, and it was sweet, something Emma could imagine Aimee and Caleb might repeat decades down the line with their own future families. Emma didn’t go in for any of the God stuff, and she’d yet to meet anyone who was anything but horribly scarred from their childhood Hebrew school experience, but she could see the appeal of this weekly touchstone, the ritual coming together of family for an official day of rest.

  Considering Max’s Shabbat ritual made Emma wonder what kinds of rituals she and Nick would create now that they’d be living together. When Annie had moved to an old apartment, she’d brought in a feng shui expert to perform a move-in ceremony with incense and yoga and, much to Emma’s amusement, Annie had followed the instructions and repeated the procedure each full moon thereafter. Now Annie and Eli practiced mindful meditation each morning. (Annie was flexible in her spirituality.) Emma knew her parents had a bimonthly tradition of compiling care packages of sweets and Spanish tchotchkes to send to their kids, their intercontinental expression of parental love. And Genevieve had once confessed to a post-one-night-stand ritual of flooding her room with musky incense and Drake tunes in order to seal in what she called her “sexual mojo.”

  Emma began dreaming up new traditions for her and Nick—a weekly Scrabble tournament at the breakfast nook overlooking Grand Army Plaza, or a shelf in each of the his-and-hers closets where they’d leave little trinkets for each other. But wait. She bolted up in her seat, remembering that that particular home had vanished. She and Nick were back to square one. Acid anxiety swirled through Emma’s stomach. She breathed deeply, willing herself to feel a hint of excitement, the thrilling potential born of the unknown.

  The bus jolted forward and a fishy stench invaded the air. Emma stared stubbornly ahead, gaze fixed on the horizon, and thought, We’re almost there, we’ve got to be almost there.

  Chapter 6

  “Em, it’s time.”

  Emma blinked awake, disconcerted by the darkness. She had that half-relieved, half-unsettled feeling of jolting out of a nightmare: In her sleep, she and Nick had been setting up a new apartment, laying down masking tape to indicate which half of the space belonged to each of them, and then Emma had discovered her closet was jammed full of her teenage clients, all freaking out about the SATs.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Eight. I called Eli and they know we’re running behind. We’ll rush to the hotel—”

  “Let’s just head right to the dinner. We’re already so late. We can pop into a bathroom and change.”

  But when their cab pulled up to the restaurant and Nick and Emma raced in with their bags, a distracted concierge directed them left instead of right, not to the bathrooms but straight into the reception hall. They pushed through a set of double doors and, both still in their hoodies and jeans, found themselves gapi
ng at hundreds of Eli and Annie’s guests, everyone suited up and cocktail-attired, chic and tailored and so very appropriate.

  “Ah, Nick and Emma finally make an appearance!” The words echoed through the ballroom in surround sound. “I was just discussing you two.” It was Connor, Eli’s best man, perched on a platform at the front of the room and speaking into a microphone. Hundreds of heads swiveled to face the entrance, where Emma and Nick stood frozen. Emma waved awkwardly, searching in vain for Annie’s face to gauge her friend’s level of fury.

  Connor went on: “I was saying how if it weren’t for you guys, there’d be no Eli and Annie, and none of us would’ve had to schlep all the way down to humid, hazy D.C. and have the last weekend of our summers ruined.” Polite laughter all around. Emma wished Connor would stop pointing in their direction; half the crowd was still eyeing her, probably noticing her unwashed hair, maybe even detecting a faint stink of Greyhound.

  “So what’s with the late entrance?” Connor continued, a glint in his eye. Connor was known as a jokester among Nick’s and Eli’s college friends, but what others regarded as “edgy” humor Emma found to be plain not nice. “I hear you guys are moving in together after only—what?—three or four years? Nice work stalling, Nick. You should’ve offered Eli here some tips. Looks like you could’ve used even more stalling tonight to pull together some decent outfits. Eli, man, next time you get married, make sure to write ‘No sweatshirts’ on the invitations. Apparently that wasn’t clear. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let’s raise our glasses to our maid of honor and her boyfriend, fashionably late in not-so-fashionable attire, and to all of you gathered here tonight, and of course to the couple of the hour, who knew within months that they were meant to be together forever. Hear, hear, to Annie and Eli! L’chaim!”