Carpool Confidential (29 page)

“Not at all,” he said.

“It's just that my husband dumped me to become a Barry Manilow impersonator of sorts and took most of our money and I have two sons and my teenaged niece, who's a complete disaster, and pregnant, showed up out of the blue. Things have been stressful, that's all. In fact, that's who I thought I was swearing at, my husband.” I couldn't believe I was telling him this.

“I see.” The poor man sounded like he'd bitten off way more than he wanted to chew, and who could blame him? “How old is your niece?”

“Sixteen.” Saying it made me sad.

He laughed lightly. “She's not cooperating.” He had that British inflection where I couldn't really tell if he was telling me something or asking me something.

“No.”

“I don't usually do this,” he said, then gave me his home, as well as his office, number, and told me not to hesitate to let him know if there was anything he could do.

By which I'm sure he didn't mean anything like what flashed through my mind.

“I don't suppose,” I said, before any part of my brain could switch to
function
mode, “you'd be interested in going to a sex club with me?”

He was quiet for a minute. Well, probably a minute. But it felt more like a year. A year in which the blood rushed by my ears and I debated why and how I could have just said that. I began formulating apologies, none of which could possibly go any distance toward mitigating this— Oh my God, what if he was married? And thought I was propositioning him? I'd taken no wedding ring to mean unmarried, but who knew? “You're not married, are you? Because if you are, you're uninvited. I mean, you're uninvited anyway, I don't really want you to go, it's just that you're the first attractive man without a wedding ring that I've met in probably eighteen years.” Very slick, Cassie, who says you're not ready to date?

He said he wasn't married, and then, with a nice sense of understatement that I was too humiliated to appreciate properly, added, “Perhaps lunch would be more appropriate as we've only met once?”

*New Orleans. I looked it up later. He certainly was getting around. At Randy's suggestion, I was keeping a log, writing the number down every time he called.

“Does Daddy still love us?” Jared stabbed his fork into the drum-stick on his plate with so much force I figured the chicken was probably glad it was already dead.

“Of course he does, sweetie,” I said. “More than anything.” (Translation: debatable.)

Sitting with them, telling them the truth—well, not the whole truth, I didn't think they were ready for Barry Manilow, financial sodomy, and abandonment; I know I wasn't—and feeling their anguish was heartbreaking but, at the same time, relieving. I didn't have to pretend any more. I wanted to pull them into my arms and make everything better for them.

“Then how come he doesn't want to live with us?”

“Because sometimes grown-ups need time to figure things out on their own.” (Translation: because he's a self-centered jerk.)

“Are you going to need time to figure things out on your own?” Noah looked even more worried.

“I already have things figured out, and where I want to be is right here with you two.”

“Are you going to have to go work in an office and we'll have to stay at afterschool really late or get picked up by a babysitter?” Noah wanted to know.

“No,” I said. “I'm going to work right here at home.” (Translation: when I'm not out trolling sex clubs.)

“When will Daddy come see us?” Jared wanted to know.

“I'm not sure. Soon, honey.” (Translation: Good fucking question.)

“Are we having a Christmas tree this year?” Noah asked.

“Of course! A huge one!” (Translations: I was already compensating and, Oh fuck, better get a move on Christmas.)

They seemed relatively satisfied to let it rest with this, plus a couple of scoops of Häagen-Dazs. I knew the coming days weren't going to be easy, but I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I read to them, and then, since they had opted to both sleep in the bunk beds in Noah's room, they asked if I would stay with them while they fell asleep.

I sat in the rocking chair and leaned my head back, watching them, in the glow of the night-light. Was it unfair of me to have told them right after Rick had hinted he might want to come home? And if he wanted to come home and I didn't let him, did that make it my fault if we got divorced? The feeling of groping through uncharted territory was constant and exhausting.

The phone rang. I grabbed it, hoping it was Harmonye, but it was Harry, the ex-caretaker.

“Mom?” Noah asked, half asleep, “is it Daddy?” I felt like my heart was going to split at the hope in his voice.

 

I fell asleep in the rocking chair, so I was cleaning up from dinner at midnight when the doorman buzzed to tell me “M.A.” was on the way up.

Who the hell was M.A.?

“Your niece. She goes by M.A., you know.”

No, I hadn't. “No,” I said into the intercom. “When did that start?”

“Today,” he said. “Around threeish, the way she tells it.” I doubted there could be anything more exhausting than keeping up mentally with a sixteen-year-old girl. One of the only positive things I had to say about the whole experience so far was that she'd turned out to be a serious prodigy at figuring out how to sell things on eBay and was overseeing what was essentially the cottage industry of selling Rick's personal effects. It did occur to me that he might one day regret having left everything behind with me. I certainly hoped so.

She came in the door and looked like she was ready to head right past me. I was pretty sure she was stoned again, which, among many other things, couldn't be doing the baby any good. I stood in her way. “Hi. We need to talk.”

She looked wary but sat down. “What's up?”

“It wasn't exactly considerate of you to go up to the grocery store yesterday and disappear for fifteen hours. Not to mention turning up stoned.” I held up two fingers. “Twice. I don't need the extra stress of not knowing where you are or who you're with. What I do need is some sleep, and plus I have little kids who worship you. It doesn't seem like much of an example to be setting.”

Her arms were crossed, her chin was jutted out. You didn't need to be a body language expert to read hers. “What makes you think it's your business? It's like really uncool of you to bug me, Cassie.”

Breathe, I told myself. “It's my business because you're here, M.A.,” I told her. “And as long as you are, you're my responsibility, and that means I know where you are, who you're with, and what you're doing. It also means you need to see a doctor and get into school, either back to prep school or we'll find you one here. If you don't like those options we can try to track your mother down—”

“My mother doesn't want me. She never has.” From angry teen to hurt little girl in an instant. “No one does. Not Griffin, not you, not my dad.” Tears started to run down her face.

“I do,” I said, “I absolutely want you, but there have to be rules.”

She brushed the tears away and stared stonily ahead. “I hate rules. They're so like useless. You totally live by the rules and look where it's gotten you. Dumped and abandoned, so what's the point?”

“Maybe there isn't any,” I said. “But the idea that I can still live my life right despite other people's choices is about all I have to keep me going through this quicksand right now, and I plan to stick to it. So this is the deal”—I tilted her chin up—“if you're going to stay here, things have to change.”

For once, a day started better than the previous one had ended— with an early morning wakeup call from Charlotte. As I groped for the phone, I had a panic that I'd somehow managed to sleep through my alarm. “What time is it?” I croaked after she'd identified herself.

“Six,” she chirped.

“Jesus.” I rolled back against my pillows, my heart doing its usual it's-not-Rick deceleration. Why did it still do that? “Do you sleep? You're like a Manhattan vampire.”

“A little. I don't need much. Anyway, the good news is you're getting tons of hits.” And then she started babbling about unique users, returning unique users, sessions, page views, and direct requests. Gawker had run an item. It was snarky—
Overpriviliged Private School Brat Spawner Bares All. Can we bear it? Oh, well, at least she's not Alex Kuczynski
.

“And then, after the jump, it says: ‘Over at
NYMetro
the eds are apparently convinced it will be entertaining for us, the unsuspecting public, to watch a newly single mommy bring her bald, um,
you know
and her Park Slope sensibility (or do we mean Tribeca? Upper West Side? See, we can be coy, too!) to some outer borough orgy thing. An occasional witty moment but a lot of neurotic ramblings that seem to be whizzing over our heads, or, could it be? Oh, right, we fell asleep. Wake us up if she does anything at the orgy. And for God's sake, if anyone knows who this woman is, please unmask her so this will be gone.'”

“Ouch.”

“Are you kidding? Coming from them, that's practically praise, and we're getting zillions of hits from the link, so who cares if they like you? Get your lazy ass out of bed, go on the site, and read the comments.”

Then she made up for everything unpleasant and/or unsavory she'd ever said, done, implied, or thought by inviting me to lunch
today
with the senior editor.

I had a blazingly glorious moment after we hung up when I realized I had a half hour to lie under the warm covers wallowing in the fantasy of becoming the next Maureen Dowd. Or would I rather be a modern, more urban Anna Quindlen? A female cross between Russell Baker and Thomas Friedman? That lasted somewhere under twenty seconds.

“Cassie?” I lurched upright, expecting a small boy.

But it was Harmonye at my bedroom door. “Are you awake?”

I switched on the lamp. “What's up?”

“The phone woke me up.” She padded into my room, rubbing her eyes and looking about ten. She was so tiny it was hard to imagine her body accommodating a full-term baby. She climbed into my bed and curled up next to me, with her head on my shoulder, like the boys did. “I'm sorry I was such a beyotch last night.”

“I understand.” And I did, even though her behavior was making me insane. I put my arm around her. “Do you want to talk?”

She yawned. “I don't know. I'm like scared about starting school, I guess.” She rolled over, buried her face in the pillows, and went back to sleep, taking up more than her half of the bed.

I got up, wandered into the study, and flipped the computer on. When you're writing a lot, you get used to seeing your own words in print. Some writers love it. For me it's always been kind of like looking at a car accident—you don't really want to but you can't quite not. But after that it essentially falls into a hole. You might get other work based on it, or a compliment from an editor on a job well done, maybe the occasional letter (generally pointing out how wrong you'd been about something), but that's about it.

But blogging, this was so weird—the words were right there, ones I'd written yesterday. Tightened and improved by Charlotte, but recognizably my words. And following each entry were comments. She hadn't been kidding. When I went back into the archives, the first blog only had four, yesterday's, over a hundred.

They ranged from
shut up, you're boring, who cares?
to sex club recommendations. There were people who thought I should dump Rick, people who hoped he'd come back, reminiscences from people about their firsts as newly single parents, dumping stories so spectacular they topped mine easily—one from a man whose wife had walked out days ago. People told me their waxing horror stories, offered tips for preventing ingrown hairs. One person wanted to know if I was Hattie Lucas and had I been in fourth grade at PS 6 in 1984 (no).

I called Charlotte. “Your readers,” I said when she answered, “they're amazing.”

“Oh, Cassie, don't you get it?” She paused. “They're
your
readers.”

 

When I left Harmonye in the capable hands of the Meetinghouse admissions director, her lip was quivering the same way Noah's had on his first day of preschool. And despite the fact that she did not, like him, hang on around my legs with superhuman strength and wail, I felt just as conflicted and guilty as I had then.

I didn't know what I was the most nervous about. That she wouldn't adjust and make friends. That her pregnancy situation would meander along for so long that her indecision would make a decision for her. That she'd adjust OK but do something to screw things up. That I'd eventually have to admit to the school that (one) she was pregnant and (two) I had no idea how or when her tuition bill would be paid.

The fact that they were taking her at all, practically sight unseen, mid school year, was a favor so big I knew they were expecting both for her to be a model student and an enormous annual fund contribution by way of thanks. I couldn't promise to deliver on either. I'd debated public school but frankly knew nothing about them for kids her age and didn't have time or energy to research them. I just hoped like hell Katya would be willing to fork up a check.

“Yeah,” Randy said, when I bumped into her on the front steps as I was leaving, and told her how hard it had been to leave M.A. “It's one of the great myths of parenthood, that the guilt and intensity lessen.”

“So are you really up for it all over again, from the beginning?”

“I know it's crazy, but I am. I want a chance to do it again, differently.”

Those words pulled at my heart. Wasn't that what we all wanted? To have the time back, to have a second chance?

“Do you have time for a quick coffee?”

I hesitated. It was hard to get used to this new, relaxed, time-on-her-hands Randy. The weird thing was that I didn't really have time. Humphrey was coming. I was having lunch with Charlotte. I looked at Randy, thought about how many times she'd been there for me. “Sure.”

Over coffee I filled her in on the last few days. She confessed that she was getting together with Sue to talk about getting more involved in the PTA. “You know,” I said, “when I make the very long list of things I wish I could go back and redo,
more meetings with Sue and Ken
is not on it.”

She laughed. “I see your point, but this is my do-over, not yours.”

She thought she could make a difference, make something better in her childrens' lives, give this last, still theoretical, baby the perfect experience. I knew all about that. “Fair enough.”

She smiled. “Thank you for not saying any of it.”

I gave her a quick, impulsive hug. “You're welcome.”

 

The lunch was fabulous. I felt like a grown-up (mostly). There were three of them—Russell Levenger, the web editor, Tanya Eisenberg, the senior editor, and Charlotte. I told the story of the no-shower-doggy-Heimlich-sexy-doctor lunch and the subsequent blurted orgy invitation. By some miraculous process it lost in the retelling the edge of utter humiliation it had carried IRL, and they were all almost rolling off their chairs with laughter.

“That has to be your next entry,” Russell said. And then we started discussing the blog in earnest.

“You're up over a hundred thousand page views a day,” Russell said, “squarely in the A-list of bloggers. People are linking from all over.” Which led to a lot of discussion of other bloggers I'd never heard of, advertisers, and momentum. What it amounted to was they wanted more.

“Maybe make the entries shorter,” Charlotte said, “but more frequent.”

“The most important thing for a blog is to stay in motion.” Russell broke his roll in half. “Ideally, you'd update several times a day.”

I looked at them. “Who wants to read about my life in different installments all day?”

Charlotte laughed. “Try looking at it the other way—anyone desperate or bored or fucked up enough to care about your life at all is probably those things enough to care about it four times a day.”

“Have you been reading other blogs at all?” Tanya asked.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“You should be. You should know what's out there and how they do it.”

Russell nodded. “The successful ones are the ones that stay in motion.”

“It's part of a thought process,” Charlotte said, “seeing yourself as a professional.”

“A professional blogger?” I paused, my fork in midair. She was right; I hadn't and didn't. “Really?”

“Does it help if we offer you more money?” Tanya asked and named a figure that, while still not anywhere near supporting-a-family money, was verging on respectable.

“I'll join the union tomorrow,” I said. “But how does the blog growing help the magazine?”

“Advertising,” Russell said. “People come onto the site to read our articles once a week, but they come back several times a day to read our features that change, and right now yours is the one they're coming back for most. So we figure the more it changes, the more they'll come back. And since we charge our advertisers by the number of page views, repeated visits mean more revenue.”

Then they started talking about how they could make things easier for me. Did I need a BlackBerry? How would I feel about them trying to line up television appearances once the time came to reveal my identity? Had I ever worked with a media coach?

All three of them were smiling at me. I looked at them and almost wanted to stand up and run. This had clearly gone from Charlotte doing me a favor to me having something they wanted. Once again, I felt like my universe was reorienting around me. It was an almost completely unfamiliar sensation to be in the position of feeling like I had something to offer the world other than hugs, Band-Aids, and finding lost PSP games.

 

A week passed. Humphrey had to reschedule because his case in California was dragging on. I immersed myself in being a blogger—wrote, read, ate, breathed, and slept blogs until I knew all the cool, the boring, the edgy, the overhyped, the fascinating. There were an overwhelming number out there. I was beginning to understand how lucky I'd gotten. Janice Streitmeier called to say she had another prospect on the Nantucket house (apparently the first had lost patience) and could I get her in?

As I gave her the alarm codes and told her to call Harry directly for the keys, my insides twisted at the thought of the cozy family Christmas we wouldn't be having there. Aside from the hassle of getting to it, I'd always loved that house. Despite the trappings we'd added to the outside—a pool and tennis court— it was a very imperfect house. Creaky and old, filled with our cast-off furniture, funky mismatched antiques we'd picked up here and there, and a healthy sprinkling of IKEA. The rugs were old and threadbare, the wide board floors mellowed with age and slanted, the windows let in gusts of cold air. It was a lovely place to be in the summer, with the smell of beach roses and the sea, but Christmas was my favorite time there. The air of expectation when we arrived, reassuring the kids that we'd remembered to leave Santa a note in Brooklyn reminding him of where to find them. The fog rolling in, making us feel marooned together on the unusually quiet island.

Rick and I, in front of the fire wrapping gifts at 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve, laughing as we made plans to get around to all the things we'd forgotten (notably the duck for Christmas dinner one year and the boys' stockings another), the silly carol singers in Victorian costume in the town square, our friends Zoe and Mike and their kids wandering up the hill through the fog for Christmas morning breakfast. Rick theoretically teaching the boys to fly kites as breaking waves arced up the rainy beach but ending up tied up in the string. The place on the wall above our rickety antique iron bed where there was a little, barely perceptible, dent from the headboard hitting the wall so many times over the years.

I realized it was the first time since Rick left that I'd allowed myself to mourn the house and our time there. I was still pragmatic about needing to rent and eventually sell it, but I was letting myself feel it as a loss. I reminded myself to ask Dorothy whether that was a sign of healing.

Rick called from a variety of locations around the country, which I duly jotted down. He was making noises about missing us and heading this way. I asked him not to say that to the boys because it would confuse them, but he did anyway.

“Do you think he'll be home for Christmas?” Noah asked.

Jared put
Daddy home
on his Christmas list. Above Nintendo Wii.