Kate Jacobs (3 page)

* * *

"I'm glad you're back," said Anita.
Darwin looked up, expecting to see sarcasm but found only warmth and welcome in
Anita's eyes. A wide grin spread over her face. She was embarrassed to admit
it, even to herself, but Darwin was glad to be back. She had missed them.
Officially, Georgia was nonplussed by the presence of the club. "You all
sit here and no one buys anything!" she would say to Anita during the day.
Sometimes, when they had a lot of drop-ins, she hung back at the counter. It
felt overwhelming to have this group here, laughing and chatting. Her entire
adult life had centered on work and her little girl for so long that Georgia
felt out of practice at just hanging out with women of her own age. She'd felt
awkward unless she was helping them to calculate how many balls they needed for
this pattern or that. But she loved that Anita had an activity for her mornings,
getting revved up about whatever knitting topic she would discuss that week,
and that Dakota was happy to stick around the store on a Friday night and not
retreat to watch the TV upstairs.
Keeping Dakota safe, making her happy: That was what mattered most to Georgia.
The store was truly theirs together, because it was Dakota who began it all.
And savoring the end of each day that they were still in business—and doing
well, thank you very much!—was a triumph for Georgia. She had been awash in
panic when she discovered she was pregnant, barely out of college and working
for poverty wages as an assistant at an amorphous publishing conglomerate. Her
boyfriend, James, had dumped her the month before, saying he "just wasn't
into exclusivity." The truth of it was that he had already started dating
a woman in his office. And not just any woman: he was fucking his boss, the
lead architect in a major Manhattan firm.
Georgia had wanted James the first time she saw him at Le Bar Bat, had felt a
connection to this tall, handsome black man. She tugged at her curls, walked
over to him, and popped the question: "I like my eggs scrambled for
breakfast. You?" It was a gambit. James looked at her with cool authority;
he liked what he saw, charmed her with his lopsided grin. First waiting at the
bar to get drinks, then standing off to the side shout-talking until the middle
of the night. They went home together, something she'd always been too cautious
to do, Georgia feeling that she had been chosen, believing everyone looked at
her with envy. And without even having a big discussion about it, they became a
couple. Going to parties and to the movies and meeting for egg rolls after
work. James was energetic and filled with big ideas; he loved to save up for
more than a month so he could take them to luxurious restaurants like Le Cirque
or wait in line to buy half-price tickets to Broadway shows. Other nights they
stayed in, Georgia reading manuscripts in bed, James working at the battered
old drafting table taking up most of his living room. They were young, often
broke, and infused with the energy and passion that fills the New York air. The
relationship was easy, comfortable, exciting. It was meant to be. For eight
months, they shuttled back and forth between apartments, had late-night chats
in which they discussed whose furniture they'd keep when they moved in
together, walked hand-in-hand through the city streets fantasizing about where
they should live. The Upper West Side, they decided. Georgia recalled nights in
bed with James, her pale hand tracing lines on his dark chest as she would ask
in a singsong voice, "Will it
reeealllly
bother
your family that I'm white?" and he'd laugh and say, "Hell,
yes!" They fell to giggles and tickles, empowered by the intensity of
their recent lovemaking and disbelieving their relationship would fall to any
challenge.

* * *

She never did meet his parents. She only
realized that after he was gone.

* * *

And then James had moved on, having let himself
into her apartment during the day and gathered up his clothes. He returned her
things from his home, left them piled on the couch. Georgia's mind swirled. She
called him, screamed, begged him to come back. She stopped eating, stopped
sleeping, then began eating way too much. Snickers bars and Pringles and giant
bagels with cream cheese, soda and ice cream and pizza and cookies. She ate
anything she could get her hands on. Anything cheap and filling.
"If you keep eating like that, everyone will think you're
preggers
," observed her wafer-thin, pain-in-the-ass
cubiclemate
.
A pause. Georgia did the math: Her period was late. Way late. And then she
knew.
Should she take it on the chin and go back home to small-town Pennsylvania?
Could she endure the humiliation of moving back home to her parents, of being a
single mom with a failed big-city career at twenty-four? Or should she call her
doctor and then just pretend the pregnancy had never happened? Georgia fretted
over her lack of appealing options, in between photocopying endless manuscripts
and opening looming piles of other people's mail and running out to buy the
oversized, fat-free muffins her boss never ate.
Her indecision was her decision, and it became clear that she and this baby
were going to stick together. Then came the day when Georgia, visibly pregnant,
made her final pilgrimage to Central Park. It was to be her last weekend in the
city before she moved home to her parents; she'd dialed them when there was no
going back and choked out the news, feeling brave and sorry for herself at the
same time.
"We'd be happy to have you home with us," said her father with gusto,
before being drowned out by his wife's sighs.
"You've made a stupid mistake by trusting this man, Georgia," said
her mother. "It's clear he only wanted one thing. And you've set yourself
up a hard road to hoe—not everyone will be as welcoming to this child as we
are."
Georgia could see her mother's tight-lipped expression in her mind; it was one
she'd seen many times growing up. She could barely hear them discuss the
details of which train she might take; she was too overwhelmed by emotional
regret and physical nausea.
The day was a scorcher. The air conditioner in her Upper West Side walk-up had
konked
out, leaving her sweat-soaked and uncomfortable. Her
dark, curly hair had frizzed and stuck to the back of her neck, her belly
jutted out of her slender frame, and her fingers, always so slim and nimble,
were swollen. Her eyes were red, puffy. Georgia had finally worked up the nerve
to call James late one night and reveal the pregnancy. He was shocked, angry,
apologetic…and bedded down with his newest girlfriend. And no, she wasn't his
boss. He had already found someone else. "This isn't a really good time
for me…perhaps we can meet tomorrow? At the park?" And so she made her way
that morning to an empty bench under the trees, sat down with the half-finished
blanket she was knitting for her baby-to-be, and waited. James never showed.
"That's an impressive pattern you've worked out there." Georgia was
startled by the elegant older woman standing before her, her linen suit still
crisp and a wide-brimmed sun hat framing her face. Georgia smiled weakly,
embarrassed by her cheap clothes, her fat belly, her youth.
The woman sat down anyway, began talking about the blankets she had knitted for
her own children and about how working the needles always helped her sort out
her emotions. Georgia just wanted her to go away, but she had been raised to be
a good girl, so she pretended to listen politely. Tears of rage and frustration
stung her eyes.
"You don't find very many people who can knit with this type of
precision," she heard the woman say as she fingered the piece. "It's
a dying art, and one I imagine people would pay for." She reached over and
patted Georgia's left hand; there was no ring, but the woman knew that already.
"If I were you, I might start asking around, see if anyone needed sweaters
or scarves for gifts. Perhaps see if you can put up a sign at the baby store
over on Broadway and Seventy-sixth? Get the word out. You could buy a
classified ad in the
New Yorker
—it worked for Lillian Vernon."
Georgia sat there, at a loss for words, doubt and confusion oozing from every
pore. The woman stood up to leave, motioned to a man in the distance.
"You have a gift, my dear, and I have an eye for talent." She handed
Georgia a cream calling card on heavy stock. "Just to prove it to you,
I'll buy the first sweater you make. Make it cashmere, and make it quickly.
I'll expect a call when it's done." Her heels made a soft clip-clop on the
sidewalk as she walked away.
Georgia turned over the card.

* * *
Anita Lowenstein. The San Remo. 212-555-9580.

two

Marty Popper could set his watch by her: every
afternoon
at
2:52 P.M., Anita would struggle to open the heavy glass door of his first-floor
deli.
He waited behind the counter with a fresh-brewed pot of coffee, just as he had
been doing every Monday through Friday for the past decade. The lunch rush had
ended and his knife was down; only a few lonely sandwich rolls were left in the
bins, the ham and smoked turkey breast lined up neatly alongside the Swiss in
the refrigerated case. His broom leaned against a wall, resting after a recent
push across the floor. Marty was a tall, solid sort of man who kept busy enough
that his middle hadn't grown soft over the years. Now he savored the quiet, the
chance to gaze at the potato chip display he'd just rearranged, to survey the
business that had once been his father's. It was a good operation and he liked
getting people on their way to work, sending them off with a nosh and a joke,
chatting with the same neighborhood faces day after day. The deli had provided
well for him and for his younger brother Sam, paid for a fine home on the Upper
West Side, season tickets to the Yankees, and a couple of weeks at the Jersey
Shore each summer. Then came the day his brother was ready to make the
long-awaited pilgrimage to Delray Beach, the permanent vacation for a
generation of retirees. Marty bought him out, giving his brother his final
payout the year before. But Marty had no plans to shut down or sell out to a
chain; he'd-never married and had never seen the need to come up with a
retirement plan. It was the family joke: Uncle Marty was tied to his own apron
strings.
Still, it wasn't exactly the life he had planned years ago. There had been the
prospect of a high-profile business career, his father making it clear that
college was an option. But things happen, in a way that most kids nowadays
don't really understand. Marty had snuck off to fight in the Pacific, a few years
underage, at a time when manpower was so scarce that his recruiter made a point
of not paying attention. It was colder and scarier than he'd ever expected, and
when he came home, he didn't really care so much about going away to college.
He just wanted to stay home and shut out the images that haunted him. He had
the blues, they used to say. It'll pass, they said. And it did, eventually. By
then it was clear that Marty wasn't about to climb the corporate ladder, even
though he followed up on the GI Bill and took a college course or two.
"I think I'll just stick with you, Pop," he'd said over fifty years
ago. It was okay with his parents. They were thrilled he had come home in one
piece, and it eased his anxiety about coming back to the world after the war.
So, he looked after his parents at their home until the very end (no nursing
homes for his mom and pop), and let Sam take over the family apartment, even
suggested it. He was the kind of uncle who spent Sunday afternoons with the
kids at Coney Island so their harried parents could get a little peace and
quiet. That Marty's a good guy, people said. And he was. But there was one
thing he couldn't do, not after everything he'd seen in the war. He couldn't
settle. Not that he couldn't make a commitment—Marty had always wanted a wife,
a family. You'd be a great dad, his nieces and nephews used to say. But it was
more than that. Family friends introduced him to daughters, nieces,
cousins—nice girls, then nice ladies, then sweet spinsters well into middle age—but
Marty wasn't willing to marry someone unless he absolutely, positively fell
head over heels. He'd been in some serious like, even lust, but it was never
the true love he was holding out for. I've seen the worst, he would tell his
brother Sam, and I'm waiting for the best. And then came the day ten years ago
that she walked into his deli and Marty had been overwhelmed by her citrusy
perfume, her tailored clothes, her shimmering eyes, the soft hands that he
touched, ever so briefly, as he handed over her order.
Mister Marty Popper, war veteran, happy-go-lucky uncle, fell in love at first
sight. The only problem was that he'd never said anything. All these years, and
not one word.
Anita glided past the tables pushed up to the wall. Five or six
schoolkids
lolled on their plastic chairs, dazed from
lugging their heavy homework-filled backpacks, fortifying themselves with
black-and-white cookies for the assignments and television viewing that awaited
in the evening ahead. The kids talked about who liked whom and said what when
and why, occasionally glancing at the two old folks at the counter to see if
they were listening.
"One medium coffee, white!" Marty chimed a little too loudly, the
disposable blue cup looking small in his large hands. A dollar ready in hand,
Anita smiled as she paid him. She took a sip; steam rose off the top.
"Thank you, sir, you remembered." She said that every time even
though Marty hadn't forgotten how she liked her coffee since the first day she
walked into his deli and ordered a medium, to go. Please and thank you. Anita
remained the most elegant woman he had ever seen.
"I always do, miss," said Marty. Beaming. A pause. He handed her a
white plastic lid, watched her take another sip, savoring. He had long ago
stopped trying to convince her to take a doughnut or biscotti. Just coffee for
me, she used to say, just coffee. As usual, he switched to their favorite
topic:
"You know, Dakota stopped by not more than fifteen minutes ago, told me
she needed to look around to do some research."
"That might have just been an excuse to convince you to sell her
muffins—she's writing a pitch letter to the Food Network about a show on kids
who can cook." Anita tilted her head, proud of Dakota's gumption, but also
remembering the previous day when Dakota begged her mother to buy her a bike so
she could sell her products to joggers in Central Park. Who will go with you?
Georgia had asked, trying to lead Dakota to see the potential problems in her
business development. Anita knew just how much Georgia wanted her little girl
to realize the world was hers for the taking. Georgia had even chosen the name
Dakota for that reason, figuring they'd get a start by having at least the
names of two states between them. Yes, Anita knew the impulse: she remembered
holding her own babies and promising to herself that they would be able to do
anything. But she also knew that Georgia was flummoxed by the swiftly
approaching teen years. Many a night the two women would close up the shop
together, Anita listening intently as Georgia fretted that she had confused
setting limits with crushing her daughter's spirit. Sure, there had always been
times when Dakota resisted not being the one in charge, when Georgia had to say
no and suffer silently, secretly hating herself for seeming mean. But things
had been increasingly tense. The push-pull had started in earnest last summer,
when Dakota began going into her room and shutting her door with frequency.
"I need my space," she'd say to Georgia, acting more like a harried
adult than a preteen. "I have a lot to think about." Georgia had
always made it a point to allow Dakota her privacy, had always knocked before
entering. So she was taken aback that her little girl felt she was being
intrusive. Increasingly, her suggestions were met with resistance:
"How about we watch a DVD?" Georgia might ask, loudly, through the
door.
"I'm not available right now," her daughter might say.
Or the more curt, "I'm busy."
Other nights, Dakota would tumble out into the hallway, ready to pour out her
heart to her mom, fascinating and confusing Georgia with the comings and goings
of her classmates. Kids were in, kids were out; it was a never-ending
merry-go-round of drama.
"You don't know what stress is," Dakota told her one night, as they
lay on Georgia's bed with a bowl of popcorn between them. "You know how to
handle things. But my life is seriously stressed out, Mom. Seventh grade is
hard."
And if the day-to-day business of growing up wasn't hard enough, there was now
an added wrinkle. Shortly after the beginning of the current school year—after
more than a decade of being completely absent (except for the sums, originally
quite modest, that he wired into a custodial bank account for Dakota)—James had
suddenly, inexplicably decided that he wanted to do more than send money. Now
he demanded to be a part of things. And the man had returned to New York City
to make it happen.
His preferred method, it seemed, was to buy his way into Dakota's heart. Not
that she'd needed much convincing, desperate as Dakota was for James's
affection. Georgia had always assumed that if she could just be enough parent
to Dakota, her little girl wouldn't miss James.
After all, it's not like she ever knew him, right?
It doesn't work that way with kids, she'd learned. Dakota was ecstatic at
James's appearance.
Georgia had first adopted her daughter's "I'm busy" attitude when it
came to James, trying to put him off seeing Dakota. She took a gamble, figuring
that if he'd given up easily the first time around, he was likely to do it
again.
Wrong.
James had been an absolute pain in the ass, his assertiveness about his right
to see his daughter bordering on aggressive. Calling, stopping by the shop,
coming up to her outside Marty's deli after she dropped off Dakota at school.
That was how she'd found out he was back in town: he just waltzed up to her,
plain as anything, and said hello.
Her first impulse was to scratch and hiss. She considered it, briefly, then
opted for the old maxim: Kill with kindness. So she returned his hello as if
seeing her former lover was no big deal, then walked up to her shop—back
straight—without looking back.
Once safely inside the four walls of Walker and Daughter, she locked the door,
ran into the office in the back, and grabbed a pillow off the loveseat, holding
it over her own face as she screamed with frustration and fear and shock.
Georgia didn't trust the man one bit, and as she confided to Anita, she feared
that he would take some sort of legal action if she kept up with her
stonewalling. She agreed to talk to her daughter. So she knocked on that damned
closed door, waiting in the hallway between bedrooms in the apartment, admiring
the carefully stenciled sign announcing PLEASE REQUEST PERMISSION TO ENTER.
Dakota cracked open the door.
"Yes? Can I help you?" As if she didn't know who would be knocking in
their own apartment.
"It's your mother," said Georgia dryly. "I was hoping to have a
chat."
They'd been talking about James, in a roundabout way, for years. That he worked
overseas and that he and Georgia had come to an agreement before Dakota was
born. Come to an agreement! Georgia always marveled at how she said these
things to her daughter with a straight face, how she had always been careful
not to badmouth him—a decision she sorely regretted when she saw how eager
Dakota was to meet the philanderer who was her father.
She'd gritted her teeth through a soda at Marty's and watched with increasing
anxiety as Dakota fell for James's hearty laugh and his praising compliments.
And, especially in the first few weeks of the father-daughter reunion, for
Dakota there was only the joy of knowing that he'd come for her.
Her father had finally arrived.
Oh, Dakota had a lot of emotion about James's return, but she saved most of her
questions and hostility for Georgia.
"Did you do something to make him leave?" Dakota stared down her
mother over cereal one morning. (It was these times that Georgia repeated
Anita's advice like a mantra: The truth about her father will only hurt
Dakota—and she'll hate you for telling her.) So Georgia danced around the
subject, talked vaguely about relationships not working out, repeated that
Dakota was loved and had nothing to do with their breakup.
The recriminations continued, more a drizzle than a downpour, as fall turned to
winter.
"You may not have loved him, but I'm the one who has been punished,"
said Dakota, leading Georgia to muse that she was hiding self-help books
between the covers of
Cook's Illustrated
.
Around this same time, Dakota stepped up her challenges to Georgia, demanding
to wear flashier, more grown-up clothes and eye-shadow and mascara to school.
She wanted to go to PG-13 movies by herself with her friends. (She tried to
sneak in the occasional R-rated horror flick, too.) Or the night when Georgia
overheard Dakota and a friend talking animatedly about some teacher at school,
sentences sprinkled liberally with the F-word.
"I don't approve of that language I heard last night," Georgia said
while doing dishes the next night, in what she thought was a casual reprimand.
Dakota pulled a face, burst into tears.
"So now you're policing what I say in private?" she screamed.
"What are you, the CIA?"
She stomped out of the room and slammed the door shut with such force that her
sign fluttered down to the floor.
Who could match it up to the times when she was all soft little girl, wanting
cuddles and foot fights on the couch. Was it seventh grade? Was it the crazy
hormones of puberty? Was it James's sudden drop into their lives? It was as
though Dakota was caught in a tug-of-war, not just the one simmering between
her parents but the one within herself.
"I just want her to like me," Georgia had sniffled to Anita after
saying no to the bike that Dakota desperately wanted. The very expensive bike
that cost almost $1,500—and that Georgia strongly suspected would be a passing
fad, like the keyboard and the music lessons her daughter simply had to have
when she was a wee thing of nine. Back when she still thought Georgia was cool.
"In the teen years, it's better she hates you now and loves you
later," Anita had said, patting down Georgia's wild curls.