Lauren Takes Leave

by Gerstenblatt, Julie

  And later:

  I have searched through all your Facebook friends. Of the 126 of them, there is no one named George, first or last. Not even a maiden name, like Alice George-Hamilton or something. Who is Georgie?

  And later still:

  Darn.

  It just occurred to me that I may not be your one and only fling-relationship-flirting-guy thing.

  The last one makes me smile, even though the others are cringe-worthy and slightly stalkerish. I write back and tell him so.

  Then I find my headphones and listen to another new mix I’ve made. It takes him the length of about three songs to reply. Eleven minutes. Playing hard to get, I see, I think as I open up his response.

  Ah, yes, flirtationship is the perfect word for what we have. Sorry to have accused you of cheating on Doug and me. Still curious about why you won’t spill on the mysterious Georgie, though.

  Now that I know we’re solid, I’ve got to join in on a conference call for the next hour or so. Will you be available again tonight for some late-night witticisms?

  From: laurenworthing@gmail.com

  Sorry. Can’t. Have a friend’s 40th birthday party to attend.

  From: lkatzenberg@yale.alumni.edu

  Perhaps it will be naughty nasty girl fun.

  From: laurenworthing@gmail.com

  Only in your imagination will it be that. ;)

  Now that he mentions it, the invitation did arrive with a long red feather boa that I’ve been instructed to bring to the party. Not that I’m going to admit this to Lenny.

  Although, suddenly I’m curious, and more than just slightly worried about what this party might entail.

  Kat’s been invited to Leslie’s party, too, and, even though she doesn’t want to go, I’m making her show up to keep me company. Leslie’s husband is Kat’s distant cousin (“From the drunk side of the family, not the alcoholic side,” Kat explained when we both showed up at Leslie’s 35th, surprised to see each other).

  She’ll know the scoop on the party. I pull out my phone and begin dialing. I don’t want to annoy my fellow train passengers, but sometimes e-mail just won’t do. Scanning the seats around me, I notice that most are empty. A few passengers are plugged into their iPods or have their eyes closed in a sleepy train trance. I think I’m okay for a few minutes of chatting as long as I keep my voice low.

  She’s not answering her cell, which means she’s still in her classroom, probably working with kids after school.

  I should wait a half hour and try her cell again. I could text her, or send an e-mail.

  I decide to call the school line.

  I expect to hear the voice system, giving me prompts, like “If you know your extension, you can dial it at any time.” Instead, I get a real live human on the phone.

  “Hadley Elementary School, this is Dara speaking,” the office secretary answers.

  “Damn—Hi!” I bark out, overly loud in my surprise, startling a neighboring dozer on the train. “Sorry,” I whisper across the row. He makes a frowny face and then closes his eyes again.

  “Dara, it’s Lauren,” I say in as low a voice as possible. I hunch down into my seat and move even closer to the window.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. Which is weird.

  “Yeah, why?” I ask.

  “Because you don’t sound like you,” she says, cracking gum through the phone. How fresh out of precalculus are school secretaries these days? Didn’t they used to have blue hair and dentures? “Are you sick or something?” she adds. “And how’s your trial or whatever?”

  And are you a pain in my ass?

  “Dara, can you please just connect me to Kat’s classroom?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Listen, I know the phone system seems complicated, but all you have to do is push three little buttons…” I begin.

  “Ha!” she says, and I imagine a Bubblicious balloon protruding from her lips before she sucks it back in. “No, I mean, she’s not there. She was in the office a moment ago, and she seemed really upset about something. But she just left.”

  “Oh,” I sigh.

  “Wait!” she says, and I hear her hand the phone over to someone.

  “Kitty-Kat!” I say, relief filling my tone.

  “No.” It only takes one syllable to be sure: Martha. What is she doing in there? Martha never comes out of her office, even after school hours. She’s always tucked away in the far corner of the building, yelling at some prepubescent miscreant or his parents. “Hello, Mrs. Worthing.”

  The sensation I have at this very moment is of riding on a train while also being hit by that very same train. It’s meta, it’s surreal, it’s awful.

  My first inclination is to hang up. But then I improvise.

  This train’s not stopping yet. Metaphorically speaking.

  “So, Martha. How’s the teaching going?” I swallow.

  “And how is your jury duty?” I decide that her non-answer means she’s sucking at my job big-time.

  “Not as boring as you might think,” I say.

  “Same here.”

  Touché.

  “That was you I saw at Dr. Grossman’s yesterday, wasn’t it?” she prods.

  “Why, yes!” I fake-laugh. “I thought it might have been you, but I was in such a rush to get home to my children after that long day in court, I couldn’t stop to chat.”

  Which does nothing to explain my presence in a medical building at 3:30, but whatever. I’m acting without a script here, people.

  “Yes, but, that does not explain…” Martha begins.

  “Oh shoot, Martha, my battery is dying. Gotta run!” I say, as cheerfully as I can, my voice on the verge of chipmunk, it’s so high-pitched and strangled.

  It’s an hour later and Kat has not responded to my texts, e-mails, or voice-mail messages. I send her one more text for good measure. IMPORTANT: What the hell happened at school? And what’s the deal with Leslie’s party tonight?!?!

  I check in with Laney. “We are fine without you,” Laney states matter-of-factly. I am not sure if this is a purposeful dig or just something lost in translation, but either way, it makes me feel lonely.

  “Can I talk to Ben, please?” I ask, rolling my eyes at my own desperation.

  “It’s piano lesson time,” she reminds me.

  “Oh, right!” I say, feeling like the world’s most out-of-touch mom.

  “How about Becca, then?”

  “Playdate at Jane’s house.”

  “Of course, I just forgot!” I say, startled by how fast I can move from knowing everything to remembering nothing about my children.

  “I’ll tell Ben you called,” she says, like I’m a telemarketer that she’s trying to blow off.

  “Thanks!” I fake-chirp as we get disconnected.

  I close my eyes for a few minutes and lean my head against the cool glass window.

  I force an image of Lenny and me locked in an embrace, in some parallel universe where real life hangs in suspension, where it’s okay to kiss someone new, someone who is not Doug. I try to make the fantasy work, but no matter what I create (on the dance floor of a crowded nightclub, by the fire in a hotel suite, in a hot tub), I don’t feel any spark.

  Has midlife robbed me of the capacity for both real and imagined passion? Instead, I find myself thinking about Doug, of all people. Of the way his hair curls up under his collar when he lets it grow too long. Of his dimples, which are most noticeable when he’s laughing at something funny I’ve whispered to him when we’re in a crowd.

  I smile and send my husband an e-mail, reminding him of my plans to attend Leslie’s party. Then I tell him that, after jury duty, I had just enough time today to run over to Neiman’s and pick up something nice to wear on our date tomorrow night.

  Some of that is true. For the record.

  Next, I e-mail Lenny, explaining in full detail my day of leave and admitting just who Georgie is, in all her grand femaleness.

  My phone rings as we pull into the New Roch
elle station. I grab my bag and exit onto the platform while yelling into the phone, “Kitty-Kat! Where you been?”

  There is a moment’s pause before she answers, and I think the line has gone dead. Then I hear her faintly utter something. “Mygehfired.”

  “Repeat that, please. I got a train in my ear.”

  “I might get fired!” she says. “From my job! I friggin’ met with the Heads of State at three o’clock today about yet another ridiculous issue I’m having with Psycho Mom, and they told me I have to apologize to her, and I told them that’s never gonna happen!”

  “Dear God.”

  “There is no God.”

  I sit down on a bench.

  The call I made to school must have occurred right after that meeting took place. Martha knew. She caused Kat’s emotional breakdown of the day, and yet she made it sound like Kat was upset about something unrelated to her. “Sadistic bitch,” I whisper in disbelief.

  “You hate me, Lauren, I know,” Kat says. “You hate me for telling them off. But I finally stood up for myself against that Psycho Mom and the weak-ass diministration and it felt damned good!” She sounds strong and together. She sounds feisty. She sounds like my Kat.

  “First off, I don’t hate you!” I just think you’re stupid for putting your job in jeopardy when your husband left you completely broke. I want to add this, but, at the moment, I don’t think it’s the route to follow. So I mentally edit it out of my dialogue and save the sentiment for another time, like when we’re figuring out how she can ingratiate herself again with the Heads of State.

  I recently read an article about girlfriends who give each other a false sense of confidence, distorting reality for them by bolstering them up with the wrong advice in times of crisis. I don’t want to do that either. I settle on something in between Disney Princess advice and Cold, Hard Fact. “You were one-hundred percent right to speak up about that mom, and the injustice of having to apologize when she’s clearly at fault. But, Kat, I just have a feeling that you went a little bit too far in your own defense.”

  There is a pause. I imagine her pulling on a curl, chewing a fingernail, or otherwise fidgeting her way through her thoughts. “Perhaps.”

  “Okay, then. That’s something. You don’t want to lose your job, do you?”

  “I don’t know…maybe I do.”

  I worry that I’ve now planted a bad seed, given her an idea that I didn’t intend would grow thick and weedy in her mind. “It was a rhetorical question,” I backtrack.

  “No, no…it’s right. It more than right, it’s brilliant!” Kat says. Uh-oh. I just gave her Varka-style advice, which only fuels the negative Kat.

  “We should totally quit our jobs, Lauren. We should, like, head back to school right now and just go right in there and resign! Together! Take a break!”

  Great, just great. I’ve created a monster. Now I have to find a leash big enough to rein in her unyielding enthusiasm for destruction.

  One should never toy with the fragile mind of a cuckolded kindergarten teacher.

  In response, I state the obvious, the fact that I’m the only one in my family with a steady paycheck while Doug tries to get some new clients. “It’s not that easy, Kitty-Kat. There’s Doug.”

  “So quit Doug, too!” she yells. I feel the comment like a blow to my middle.

  Kat senses my hesitation and reconsiders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m kind of…”

  “On the verge?” I offer, thinking back to Georgie.

  “Off the deep end, is more like it,” Kat clarifies. I can hear her exhale, and know that’s a real cigarette this time, not one made of powdered sugar. Kat gives up smoking for Lent every year, and then celebrates Easter by buying a carton of Marlboro Lights.

  “Me, too.” I decide that a little of my own honesty might help Kat right now. Hell, honesty might even help me, for all I know. “Hey, Kat?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I kind of took a leave of absence from work. Went to Boston for the day.”

  “Wait a second…” Now I’ve caught her off guard. “But…what about jury duty?”

  “They settled yesterday morning.”

  “Fucking lawyers!”

  “I know. They totally ruined my week. Unlike you, I do actually like my job most of the time, even though it doesn’t seem like it right now. I just needed a little…time off from it. To clear my head. To…” I run out of words to explain how I feel. “I don’t know, exactly.”

  And then I come clean about MC Lenny.

  “You little sneak!” Kat declares.

  We contemplate that for a moment.

  “Huh,” Kat says. “But you’re the rational one.” I thought she’d be psyched for me, pulling that kind of a fast one, but she sounds upset. “I mean, if you go all AWOL, what does that mean for Jodi and me? You’re our Metamucil, our prune juice. We count on you to keep us regular.”

  “Well, that’s kind of insulting.”

  “It’s a compliment to your normalcy.”

  “Kat! Really? Because it feels like a burden.” I mean, I keep it together for Doug and the kids. I go to work every morning at 7:30, even on days when I don’t always feel like it, to a tenured job with 100% family health coverage so that Doug can build his company from the ground up. I go into work when I have a fever so that I can save my sick days for days when I need to be home with my sick children. I work evenings and weekends, grading papers and creating new and exciting lesson plans for my hundred students. And, unbeknownst to me, it turns out that I have been holding it together for my best friends, too? Do I have to be everyone’s poster child for stability?

  “I’ll see you tonight, Kat. We’ll talk. We’ll figure it out,” I say, trying to sound strong and sure, but only feeling wrung out. I stand and begin to make my way out of the station.

  “We’ll drink, smoke and spin down a pole, is what we’ll do,” she says, by way of hanging up.

  Chapter 13

  I am the world’s worst mom. No one else would be gone from her children all day and then blow them off again all night. It isn’t right, and I feel a searing sense of guilt telling me to stop, slow down, play with them for a while, to be an attentive mommy.

  Instead, I kiss Becca and Ben hello, pretend to listen to them tell me about their day, dash up the stairs, take a quick shower, and pile on the makeup.

  When I went back to work, I found that leaving my children in the morning was hard, but that coming back at the end of the workday was even harder. This surprised me. It seems that I need time to transition back into the setting and the pace of my own home after a day of working with a hundred other children. I have to mentally switch gears, dump the work thoughts from my mind, and settle back in to being a good mom. This is almost as exhausting as the work itself.

  But if I’m gone all day and all night, doing completely self-centered things, then there’s really no need to worry about making that transition!

  “Bye, everyone. I love you guys!” I call down to the basement, where the kids are playing a Wii game with Laney.

  I grab my boa and leave, feeling both sick to my stomach about my behavior and sort of psyched about the night’s upcoming festivities.

  Although I took a cab, Leslie’s street is jammed with suburban-mom vehicles of every shape, size, and color. It seems that everyone I know has huge cars for carpooling their three or four children—plus friends of said children—around town. I feel like a real underachiever having only two children, as compared with today’s supersized suburbia.

  Leslie has four kids. Unlike most of the moms in Hadley, who lose their baby weight and then some, Leslie has proudly added ten pounds of padding for each child, which she wears much in the way some wear necklace charms for each offspring. At some PTA event a few years ago, she and I ended up seated at the same table and became what I’d call relatively friendly. In terms of ranking our friendship, I’d say Leslie is positioned in the front mezzanine of my life’s auditorium. Not quite orchestra-
seat worthy, like Kat and Jodi, but not in the nosebleed section, either.

  Another cab moves off the street and I see Kat tottering toward me up the driveway on her fuck-me pumps, and I pause to wait for her. “Hug,” I instruct, arms wide. She leans in and lets me rock her like a baby. Her head fits in the crook of my neck. “In those heels, you are almost normal size!” I pronounce.

  “Nah, still Lilliputian.” She shrugs. “Though smokin’ hot, if I must say so myself.”

  I pull back to inspect her. Her tight black curls are shiny and set off her porcelain complexion. Her green eyes are bright and fierce, probably made more intense by some crying earlier in the day. “You actually look amazing. I think ‘over the edge’ really works on you.”

  “Bitches!” someone shouts, making us jump. We turn to see Leslie standing at the front door of her supersized faux castle under the glow of a red light bulb, waving us over with something in hand.

  “Is that…a whip?” Kat asks, sounding more than a little bit afraid as we make our way up her flagstone walk and come face to face with the birthday girl. Four mammoth Grecian columns announce her “porch.”

  “Ouch!” I call out, momentarily stung by a slash of leather against the leg of my skinny jeans. “It’s a whip all right.”

  “Bitchaaaaas!” Leslie calls again, making the word last for at least six seconds, like some kind of ohm or other mantra.

  “Hey! Leslie! You look…” I begin, taking in the patent leather corset, fishnet stockings, and over-the-knee, zip-up stiletto boots. Leslie is wearing tons of makeup, with black kohl eyeliner and ruby-red lipstick. Her black hair is pulled back into a high, tight ponytail. She has an extension woven into it, so that the hair falls well past her back, grazing her generous bottom.

  The complete effect is not flattering or sexy in any way. She looks more slut than high-end escort, more Britney than Madonna. I start again. “You look…”

  “Completely fucked up,” Kat concludes. I jab her in the side.

  “What?” she asks, turning to me but speaking so Leslie can hear. “She does. She’s dressed like a whore.”