If We Lived Here

by Lindsey Palmer

  “That’s exactly what Wade said.”

  “Who’s Wade?”

  “Some Upper East Side trust-fund kid. From a party.”

  “Ah yes, Wade. Anyway, my point is, I don’t think this is about the money. Emma needs this court case to pursue some sense of justice, and I’m guessing that’s because her job of abetting rich people who throw mountains of money at the college process is not very fulfilling. You, my friend, are toiling on the ground day in and day out in pursuit of social justice, so you don’t need to stick it to one shitty landlord to feel like your life has meaning. If you ask me, you should talk to Emma and convince her to drop the case. Otherwise you’ve got a whole load of crap ahead of you.”

  Nick wasn’t used to Carl saying anything of any value, never mind sharing actual wisdom. “I’ll think about it,” he said. And he would.

  “Want some more advice?”

  “I know you’re going to give it to me either way, but be quick because the kids are back from gym in four minutes.”

  “It’s a fucking cesspool out there, and soon it’s gonna be flu season. Load up on Vitamin C while you can.” Carl tossed Nick two juice boxes. “One for you, and one for the furry guy. Now get the hell out of my office. Scram.”

  When Emma burst into Nick’s apartment that night, bearing an armful of flattened boxes she’d gathered from the curb, and speed-talking about the document she’d gotten José’s father to sign about bearing witness to the bedbug infestation, Nick knew there was no point in suggesting they drop the case. Plus, it was easy to get caught up in her excitement—she’d already organized and filed all the relevant documents into an accordion folder, like his own personal Julianna Margulies from The Good Wife. She seemed confident they’d make Luis look like a fool before the judge.

  Emma went on about all of this as she reconstructed the boxes, wielding the packing tape like a pro, and Nick was grateful for his girlfriend’s energy. All week he’d been putting off packing. Not only would Emma’s brother be arriving in two days to haul their stuff over to Annie and Eli’s, but on the same day Nick would have to forfeit the keys to his apartment. It was hard to imagine, after seven years in the same spot. He’d tried to convey to Emma how big of a deal this was, how his stalling on packing was out of sentimentality and not just sloth, but she’d gone directly to his gaming console and touched the top; her frown indicating it was still warm. The disappointed-mom look was not becoming on her. Nick knew she wouldn’t understand that the video games and the sentiment were connected—yes, Nick had given in to giving up his single life, but he felt a right to cling to it until the last possible moment.

  Nick watched helplessly as Emma refolded each of his shirts and sweaters—somewhere she’d learned to do this in the fancy department store way—and then stacked them into boxes. “I cannot believe you still have some of these,” she said. “Surely it’s time to ditch the 1992 Science Fair T-shirt with a hole in the armpit.”

  “Don’t you dare get rid of that,” Nick said. “My wind-powered rollercoaster won second place in ’92.”

  Emma raised her eyebrows and made a show of folding the shirt extra carefully. Nick knew she was joking, playing the part of the exasperated girlfriend—but he feared part of her was more serious than she let on. He changed the subject: “So listen, Em, my school’s launching this new tutoring program to help kids apply to the city’s top middle schools. Carl of all people issued a survey, and it turns out eighty-four percent of our students don’t get any help on their apps. That means almost all of them get funneled into the crappy local schools, even when they could get into better ones.”

  “Uh-huh.” Emma had moved onto Nick’s pants, tugging out each pair’s crotch before bending the overlapping legs into thirds. She wasn’t really listening.

  “So they’re looking for a coordinator,” Nick went on. “It’s a part-time position—”

  Emma wheeled around. “Nick, you are not seriously thinking of taking on another activity at that school, are you? What is it, a five-hundred-dollar stipend for five hundred hours of work? Is Carl pressuring you into this? I am so sick of them pushing you around.”

  “Oh, well, I was thinking of it for you.”

  “Me?” She stopped folding. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re always talking about how your clients are spoiled and overprivileged, and how ridiculous it is that their parents hire them a tutor for every single subject—”

  “I’m not always saying that.” Nick knew she would act defensive. He waited, and eventually she put down the pants. “Some of them, fine, but most of them are just kids. With those kinds of parents, anyone would grow up spoiled.”

  “That makes sense. But what if you did both, if you cut back at 1, 2, 3 … Ivies, and took on this position, where the kids could really use your help?”

  “My kids can use my help.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Just because they’re wealthy doesn’t mean they don’t need help. Most of the Hellis believe throwing money at a problem makes it disappear, and that approach makes their kids totally unfit for the real world, or just plain terrified. They think because their parents are sinking tens of thousands of dollars into college prep tutoring that if they don’t get into Harvard then they’ll be total failures, doomed to mediocrity, unable to ever afford the army of staff they’ve grown up to believe is essential to managing their lives. I help them with their SATs and essays, but more than that I’m their source of support, their counselor and big sister and cheerleader. I assure them it’ll be okay, Ivy League acceptance or not, despite the company name. And these kids need that. Plus, I figure if they’re going to be running the world someday, with all their inherited money and influence, they might as well have some empathy and humility, too—and I’d like to think I have something to do with teaching them those things.”

  It felt like the end of a speech, and Nick began slow-clapping. He was impressed.

  “What?” Emma blushed.

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard you talk about your job without apologizing for it or making fun of it or denigrating it as total B.S. Turns out my Emma Feit is providing a real service, and you’re proud of yourself. I like it!”

  “Plus,” said Emma, smirking, “if I worked with your students instead of mine, what kind of holiday presents would I get?”

  “One kid once got me a five-dollar gift card to Popeye’s.”

  “Hmm, tempting.”

  “But seriously, think about it. You could do both jobs, really.”

  Now Emma changed the subject. “Next up is to pack your comic books. Where’d you put them?” Nick’s stacks of comics had been a contentious topic for the move—Emma hadn’t been shy in grumbling about how much space they’d occupy in their new place, wherever the two of them ended up. Nick had planned to surprise her with the bookshelf he’d set up in his classroom: a comic book lending library for the kids.

  “Come here.” He pulled up a photo of it on his phone.

  “Aw, sweet,” said Emma. “Too bad I sold my soul to the devil to get you a new comics subscription.” Nick had no idea what she was talking about. “O. Henry, get it? It’s a gift of the magi.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, I got you a welcome mat, but you no longer have an apartment.”

  “Not funny. Anyway, that’s so thoughtful. The kids are going to love your comics collection.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Ugh, I’m sick of packing all your stuff. I can’t believe you roped me into this.”

  “Hey, you roped yourself. I didn’t ask you to do a thing.”

  “Either way, I’m done for the night. How about Scrabble, a tournament for the final weekend in our single-person apartments?”

  “Bring it.”

  And so, among the boxes and half-packed contents of Nick’s apartment, they each took seven tiles and began arranging and rearranging them into viable words on their racks. Distracted as he was by this being their last round of Scrabble in his soon-to-be-abandoned
bachelor pad, Nick knew he didn’t stand a chance.

  Chapter 19

  The noise that came through Emma’s speaker when she pressed Listen was like a pack of laughing hyenas. She wondered if her buzzer system was broken, and pressed Speak. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry, Emmy.” Max’s voice. “Aimee and Caleb were screaming their hellos.”

  “The kids are here?” That had not been part of the plan. In addition to the problem of how all of her and Nick’s stuff was going to fit in Max’s van with two extra bodies, Emma was nervous about those bodies entering her apartment, which was currently all sharp edges and dangerous implements. She pressed Listen, hoping for an explanation, but heard only chaos. “I’ll buzz you up,” she said, then ran around picking up loose nails and tacks and an X-Acto knife while Max and his kids climbed the flights of stairs.

  They burst through her door like a sweaty storm, the kids squirming free of their father’s grasp, then scurrying away to investigate the apartment’s corners and hiding spots. With so many people present the space felt even more cramped than usual. This might make it easier to say good-bye, Emma reasoned.

  “So sorry about the kiddos.” Max sounded exhausted, like it was midnight instead of nine a.m. “Alysse wanted to keep them out of Hebrew school because of the bomb threats at that temple.”

  “You mean the one in Crown Heights?” Max nodded, and Emma felt a prick of pride at knowing this Judaism-related news item, which she’d heard an hour ago on NPR.

  “Apparently they’re planning to install metal detectors at the entrance to the sanctuary. Can you believe that?”

  “But, Max, that’s, like, fifty miles from where you live.”

  “More like thirty.”

  “Well, it might as well be a world away, considering how different the two places are. Crown Heights is a pretty poor area, with Hassids and a black community basically living on top of each other. The clashes have been going on forever. Isn’t Irvington still, like, ninety-five percent Jewish and a hundred percent upper-middle class?”

  “Look, I’m not defending Alysse’s decision. It’s what she wanted, and she’d already planned a JCC fund-raiser today, so here we are, the kids and me. Sometimes there are things you just go along with. One day when you’re married you’ll understand.”

  “All right-y.” Emma felt belittled by the implication that she didn’t know how relationships worked. She reminded herself that Max was here doing her a favor. “Nick’s on his way over. Why don’t you two load up the car, and I’ll take the kids to the park.”

  “Thanks, Emmy, I could use a break. You know that Christmas carol Nick taught them at Rosh Hashanah? They’ve been screaming it on auto-repeat all morning.”

  Serves you right, she thought. “I’ll stick to Hanukkah songs at the park.”

  Passing through the gate to the park’s play area, Emma felt a thrill, as if she were accessing a club’s VIP room. Adults had to be accompanied by a child to enter, and while in theory Emma understood the rationale of keeping out creeps and perverts, she’d always felt weirdly excluded; if she wanted to swing on the public monkey bars, she thought it should’ve been within her rights to do so. Before she had a chance to warn Aimee and Caleb to stay within her view, they were off, swallowed into the swarm of city kids.

  Alone now, Emma examined her surroundings. Aside from the children, there were two main clusters of women, plus a stray man or two—one group was mostly late-thirtysomethings, mostly white, mostly holding coffee cups from Ost or Ninth Street Espresso, all well dressed in that fashionable-but-not-trying-too-hard way; the other group was a livelier, more diverse crowd, mostly non-white and of varying ages, some speaking Spanish. Each group gave off an intimate vibe, like these were their people and this was their hangout: the moms and the nannies, Emma assumed. She herself wasn’t sure where to stand. That is, until she spotted a lone woman in a corner, who looked a bit like Annie, only heavier and with curlier hair. Emma missed her friend, which may have been why she approached the woman.

  Emma waved hello, and the woman introduced herself as Rosie, then launched into a mile-a-minute monologue, as if this were her first opportunity in weeks to speak. “That’s my Chaz over on the slide. He’ll be five next month. He looks older, but he’s just big for his age. I can’t decide if that’s going to help him or hurt him in the kindergarten application process. What a nightmare, right?—all those tours and interviews and IQ tests, as if they’re applying to college. Have you started all that with yours?” Rosie didn’t wait for an answer, so Emma couldn’t clarify that she was just an aunt. “Of course my ma wants us to ship out to the suburbs, move into her leaky basement in Jersey, and send Chaz to the schools out there. Someone shoot me if I have to move back in with my ma.” Rosie popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “Want one? It’s Nicorette.” Emma shook her head. “Remember when they used to let you smoke in here? Some of the snooty types would give you the stink-eye, but screw ’em; I always exhaled the other way.”

  Rosie snapped at her gum. “Anyway, I may just end up out in Jersey. Chaz’s dad doesn’t give us a dime unless I shake him down like the Mafia, so we’re stuck in a crappy studio over on Avenue C. But it makes me feel better, living in the city, like I’m not being totally robbed of my twenties. What a ball and chain kids are, am I right? You gotta get a sitter to go out, and the kid doesn’t care if you’ve got the worst hangover of the twenty-first century, you still hafta get up and take him out to play the next day. On the plus side, I’ll only be thirty-six when Chaz is off to college, God willing, and then I get my freedom back.”

  After this torrent of information, Emma felt tongue-tied. “He’s very fast on the slide,” she said moronically, then did the math: Rosie must’ve had her son when she was eighteen, which put her at twenty-three now; she looked older, her eyes heavy with bags.

  “Who’s yours?”

  Emma pointed to her niece and nephew, who were swinging side by side on the monkey bars. It seemed too late to mention that they weren’t really hers. Rosie nodded. “Confession: I kind of can’t stand other people’s kids. No offense, it’s nothing personal.”

  “None taken.”

  A moment later a teary Aimee rushed up to Emma, exhibiting a freshly scraped knee. Caleb followed closely behind: “That girl pushed her,” he announced, a little too gleefully, if you asked Emma. Emma followed his finger and landed upon a kid who was small but seemed older than Aimee—age four? five?; she was headed for the swings. Emma knew she was supposed to do something, but what—yell at the girl? Tell Aimee to go work it out on her own? Find the mom or nanny associated with the girl and talk it through? She felt woefully uninformed and feared that whatever action she chose, she might violate some complicated bylaw of playground politics.

  Rosie, who’d been swiping at her phone, humming what sounded like a Justin Bieber song (Emma was embarrassed to even recognize it), stepped in. “Hey you,” she yelled at the offender. The girl turned away, casting down her eyes. “Yeah, you, I know you can hear me. Get your butt over here and say you’re sorry. No one likes a bully. Come on!” The girl did as she was told, looking frightened, and Aimee stopped her whimpering. “It’s okay,” Aimee mumbled.

  Rosie returned to her screen, waving away Emma’s thank-you. Emma then watched as the girl ran across the playground and collapsed her body into one of the nannies. The woman shot a dirty look in Rosie and Emma’s direction, which Rosie seemed to ignore. Although under her breath she spat, “Stupid cunt,” in reference, Emma hoped, to the adult and not the little girl.

  It was exhausting trying to keep track of Caleb and Aimee among all the small bodies flitting around at a fever pitch, and it seemed like hours later when Max finally appeared at the park gate. He waved to Emma, and Rosie looked up from her phone, as if she had a radar for the arrival of testosterone in the estrogen-heavy play space.

  “Holy shit, is that your man?” she said, then whistled. “Lucky you.”

  “My brother, actually.”
>
  “Ooh-la-la.”

  “Hey, Em,” he said, oblivious to the woman next to him who was now thrusting her chest forward. “We’re all packed. How’s it going out here?”

  Aimee and Caleb must’ve heard their father’s voice; they tumbled over, yelling, “Daddy,” and flinging themselves into his arms.

  “Did you guys have fun? You’re covered in filth!”

  “That’s city living for you,” said Emma.

  “I got into a fight, and my knee is scrapened up, and Auntie Emma watched me go down the slide, and Caleb found a brokened glass bottle in the sand.”

  “Wow, Aims.” Max’s eyes widened. “Let’s go clean you guys up.”

  “Nice meeting you,” Emma said to Rosie, but the woman barely glanced up. Emma felt a funny stab of hurt, like she’d been cast out of the mom club (a club she’d wanted no part of in the first place). She hoisted her niece into a piggyback, and they set off to find Nick and the van full of all of Emma’s belongings.

  Annie’s building featured on-call daycare, so they dropped off the kids then set about hauling their things, some into basement storage and some into the guest room, which was already crowded with parcels from Barneys and Tiffany and Jonathan Adler—the wedding gift bounty.

  “You know, it looked a lot like this when Alysse and I first moved in together,” said Max, rolling a suitcase into the guest room. “We were staying in her parents’ basement while we looked for our own place. We had nowhere to put any of our things, so we just lived among the boxes. It was still a thrill.” That’s right, Emma remembered—the day after their wedding, Max had moved into Alysse’s childhood home in New Jersey, where she’d still been living while commuting to the city for work. They’d wanted an apartment in Hoboken—Alysse’s parents would’ve never stood for their daughter living in big, bad Manhattan—when the Feits announced their move to Spain, and Max and his new wife swooped in to claim the house in Westchester. It seemed odd and old-fashioned that the two of them had only ever lived in their parents’ houses.