A Window Opens: A Novel (36 page)

“Who’s Ann?”

“Greg’s support. She says—”

“Wait,
support
? What are you talking about?”

Usually I had an endless appetite for laughs at the expense of Scroll terminology, but now I was impatient. “Ann is Greg’s assistant, Nicholas. They call them ‘supports’ in Cleveland. It’s more . . .”

“Supportive?”

“Yes. Inclusive. Anyway—”

“I’m imagining Ann carrying Greg around in an adult-sized Baby Bjorn, patting him on the back between meetings and feeding him dog biscuits.”

“Nicholas! Here’s the thing: I need to meet with Greg on the Friday of the weekend you’ll be in Atlantic City. So we’ll both be away. I was thinking of asking Jessie if she could spend the night, and I’ll fly home early Saturday so I can be here in time for Oliver’s game.”

“Sounds great. I mean, we’ll have to talk it over with Jessie, but I
think the kids would love that.” He threw an arm around me at the sink. “Aren’t we so high-powered? Both out of town at the same time?”

A door slammed upstairs. “OLIVER! I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT OF THE BATHROOM!”

Margot was like Ann, minus the happy-face emoji.

•  •  •

The Scroll travel gods were smiling upon me: they agreed to a slightly higher-priced hotel than they were usually game to spring for. I quietly decided not to tell Judy and Elliott that I’d be in their city—it was such a short trip after all. My mom agreed to be on standby on the home front and even refrained from pointing out that the date of my meeting with Greg would have been my dad’s seventieth birthday. We’d talked about going out for fried clams in his honor.

Jessie was game to sleep over on the one night my trip overlapped with Nicholas’s. But later she texted, “Can we talk tomorrow? I know the timing isn’t great, but I have two things I need to check in with you about.”

I was on the train—wasn’t I always?—when I received this message.

I wrote back, “Everything OK?”

Jessie’s response: “Yah, but a friend’s film company is looking for a receptionist and I’m going to interview for the job on Monday at eleven. Will be back in time to pick up kids.”

My heart stopped. Me: “Got it. Keep me posted.”

Jessie: “Just feel like I should have the interview. Really looking forward to my sleepover with the kiddos.”

Me: “Totally get it.”

I stared out the train window at the gray tree branches that look like arms reaching up to the sky. In the distance was the Newark Cathedral, bathed in the rosy glow of sunset. From inside this vacuum-sealed train car, I could almost fool myself into believing it was warm outside.

I thought of the countless nights I’d walked home from the train station to find Jessie playing soccer in the front yard with Georgie or
hanging out on the porch with Margot, listening to the latest in middle school crises. I hadn’t signed a permission slip or looked at Georgie’s homework since I started my job at Scroll. Suddenly—and, I’m embarrassed to admit, for the first time—I wondered what all my outsourcing had been like for Jessie.

Also, what was the second thing she wanted to check in about? I’d forgotten to ask.

There was Oliver, waiting at the train station. The embankment up to the tracks was slick with ice, so he stood on the sidewalk next to the parking lot, wearing royal-blue snow pants, with Cornelius on a sled.

“Hi, gentlemen.”

He smiled.

“You had a good day?”

“Yeah. We had an assembly about mummies.”

“And did you guys have ravioli for dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“How are Margot and Georgie?”

“Annoying.”

“And Jessie?”

“She’s fine. She let us play Angry Birds on her phone.”

“Fun. So what else happened today?”

“Nothing. We have to do a report for women’s history month.”

“I’d write about Susan B. Anthony.”

“It can’t be someone you know. By the way, what’s infinity?”

We reached the corner of North Edison and Flower, and we clambered over the mountain of snow that had been pushed to the side of the road by the snowplow.

“It’s complicated. It means something that goes on forever, like numbers.”

“H
i, Mrs. Bauer?”

“This is Alice.”

“This is Elaine Murphy? I’m the school nurse at Alcott. No need to panic, but I wanted to let you know, I have your daughter, Georgie, here in my office. I’m afraid she was sick to her stomach in art class.”

“Oh, no! What happened?”

“Well, at first Miss Pasquariello thought it might have been a reaction to the smell of the papier-mâché—that’s potent stuff, you know—but then Georgie got sick again in the hallway.”

“In the hallway?”

“Yes. And then one final time in my office, on my cot. On the pillow.”

“Oh, no, poor girl. I’m
so
sorry to hear that. I’m going to call my husband and ask him to come by and pick her up right away.”

“That’s the thing, Mrs. Bauer, we already tried Mr. Bauer. He isn’t answering. Neither is your babysitter or Georgie’s grandmother, who is listed as a contact on Georgie’s emergency card.”

“My mother? You called her already?”

“Yes, ma’am. Georgie said you wouldn’t be able to come. She told me to try her grandmother.”

“Oh. What did my mom say?”

“No answer. So, can you?”

“What?”

“Come pick up your daughter.” Mrs. Murphy said this slowly, as if she was talking to another kindergartener.

“Yes! Of course. I have a meeting in fifteen minutes, and then I’ll get on the next train which is . . . oh, I think . . . 2:37? Arriving at 3:13?”

“Ma’am, school is over at 3:00.”

“Shit, you’re right. I mean—sorry! I’m leaving my office now.”

From the backseat of a yellow cab, I dialed Nicholas. No answer.

My phone lit up with a call from Jessie. “Hey, Jess.”

“Alice? I just got a voice mail from the school nurse. Did she reach you?”

“She did. I’m on my way home right now. I’m in a taxi—we’re just about to—”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I would have been happy to pick up Georgie—poor little muffin—but I’m on my way to Brooklyn to grab an amp from a friend. We have a wedding on Saturday and—”

“No, it’s fine.” Actually, as long as I kept my eyes off the meter, it was kind of peaceful to be hurtling down Route 3 in the middle of the afternoon, my life in someone else’s hands. “Hey, Jessie, do you have any idea where Nicholas might be?”

There was a silence. We passed Raymour and Flanigan and I experienced a momentary yearning to be the kind of person who has a matching brass-handled bed set. I never imagined I’d be on the brink of forty and still storing my clothes in a dresser I found in the trash on Lexington Avenue when I was twenty-two. “Jess? Are you still there?”

“Alice, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

For a second, I thought she was referring to the state of my bedroom furniture. “Wait,
what
?”

“It’s Nicholas. I think he—”

“Wait. Hold that thought.” I put my hand over the phone, leaned forward, and stuck my face through the bulletproof partition separating the back seat from the front. “Excuse me? You’ll want to take the Bloomfield Avenue exit, coming up on your right in about two miles after the Tick Tock Diner. Jessie? I’m back. So, you were saying Nicholas . . . ?”

“Alice, I don’t know how to tell you this, but he’s been drinking during the day in the basement. He comes home and goes down there through the bulkhead doors in the yard—I guess so the kids can’t see him. When I went down to switch the laundry yesterday, he was on the couch. Passed out.”

I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. “Are you sure he wasn’t just taking a nap?” Denial is not just a river in Egypt. But I really believed Nicholas was sticking with one drink a day.

“He’s wasn’t taking a nap, Alice.” Jessie’s voice switched from apologetic to annoyed; I imagined this was the tone she used with tipsy wedding guests experiencing stage lust for the lead singer. “There’s a jug of vodka hidden behind the elliptical machine. I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I haven’t been able to get you alone.”

I don’t know which bothered me more: the fact that Nicholas was coming home from work to get drunk in the basement or the fact that he knew I would never find his stash if he hid it behind the elliptical trainer, which I never used.

Ten minutes and $102 later (not including tip and tolls), I found Georgie in the principal’s office, clutching a little tied-shut plastic bag containing her puked-on overalls. She wore an unfamiliar Hello Kitty sweat suit, borrowed from the shoebox of another kindergartener; naturally, the clothes in her own shoebox were way too small.

Her face lit up when she saw me.

•  •  •

Nicholas’s car was in the driveway.

After I tucked Georgie in on the couch to watch
Alvin and the Chipmunks
, and after I gave Cornelius a quick belly rub and gently stirred
the stew in the slow cooker, I clomped downstairs to the basement. I half hoped the sound of my boots would wake Nicholas, but he was out cold on the couch when I found him, exactly as Jessie said he would be. Smashed into a cushion covered in used dryer sheets, his face looked slack, as if it had dropped from the sky and landed that way—
splat.
He wore his work clothes and dress shoes, the mocha wingtips we chose together from Johnston & Murphy when he worked at Sutherland, Courtfield. The only way to describe the Smirnoff bottle on the floor by his side was half-empty—and normally I pride myself on having a half-full perspective on the world.

I nudged Nicholas’s shoulder and stood over him, arms crossed. “Wake up.” No reaction. I leaned down and enunciated, loudly, right in his ear. “
Nicholas
.
Wake
.
Up
.”

His eyes opened and took an instant to focus. Then he lifted himself to a seated position, looking confused, then scared, then embarrassed. He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand.

“Please don’t. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I just want you to know, Georgie is sick. You were too drunk to answer a call from the school. I want you to ask yourself one question: are you the person you want to be?
Right now?
” Nicholas hung his head and rested his elbows on his knees.

I turned on my heel and headed for the stairs, stalking past a dusty ExerSaucer and a Tupperware bin of Matchbox cars. I missed my dad, but I missed my husband more.

Behind me, he muttered, “Are you?”

•  •  •

At our weekly meeting, Genevieve suddenly had a lot of questions about Filament. “I’m curious, you guys have an Anthropologie and a Williams-Sonoma out there, right?”

“We certainly do! Both within walking distance of my house, in fact.” Just that morning, Nicholas had assured me that our prime location justified every penny we were now pouring into the kitchen—and there were
many. Pennies, that is. The kitchen was a safe subject, a distraction from the real issue, which we hadn’t discussed since our showdown in the basement.

“What about foot traffic? You have that?”

“Of course. People move to Filament because it’s a walkable suburb. Our neighbors don’t even have a car.” Now I was confused. Was Genevieve considering a move to New Jersey? Perhaps she had been inspired by her trip out for my dad’s funeral?

“Interesting. Very interesting.” She clicked on the larger of her two monitors and waved her hand at a picture that popped up. “Welcome to the future home of Scroll Filament!”

“Excuse me?” It took me a minute to place the squat building in the photograph, but a tiny sliver of blue awning next door brought it all home. “Is that . . . ?”

“Yes, it’s an empty property we’re considering. Of course, we’ll have to see how we do in our beta markets, but the location team has concluded that Filament contains a critical mass of target customers—what they call the Desperate Housewives.” She unleashed a short bark of a laugh. “Shit, you probably
know
them.”

“That store—” I leaned forward on Genevieve’s couch, squinting at the picture on her screen. “Isn’t it a—”

Genevieve nodded. “A deli? Yes, currently. But MainStreet can erase the smell of salami in no time, don’t you worry.”

Of course. I was looking at the deli owned by Phil Mercadante. Nicholas’s client, who had dropped off homemade mozzarella with the first payment on his legal bill.

“Are we at all concerned that this storefront is adjacent to a bookstore? The Blue Owl?” My voice went up an octave on those last three words, dangerously close to cracking. I pictured Susanna on my front porch, handing over a piping-hot quiche and the hot mitts to hold it.

Genevieve rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding? We’ll show Filament readers how it’s done: fast, cheap, good coffee. Their kids will be begging for video game tokens. Game over for
that
bookstore, right? So, listen—” She leaned
forward, offering me a Peppermint Pattie from a little ceramic bowl. “Everything we’ve just discussed is in the cone of silence, right?”

“Yes, of course.” The night before, I’d seen Susanna restocking shelves as I crept by outside in the dark, on my way home from the train. In the old days, I might have popped in for a glass of wine left over from the No Guilt Book Club. Now there were too many subjects to be avoided—the future of the Blue Owl, the rift between Margot and Audrey—so I kept going, shivering under a Harry Potter umbrella.

“Okay, I need to move on to less fun stuff. I know you’ve been jammed up, and I want to take your temperature about when you’ll be up to speed.”

“Well, I’m doing my best—”

“Can I stop you right there?”

You just did.
“Of course.”

“Sometimes our best isn’t good enough, Alice. We have to push ourselves to excel. We’re innovators, right?”

“Right.” Actually, the status quo suited me just fine.

“And what do innovators do?”

“Innovate?”

“We turn adversity on its ear. You’ve had a setback, Alice, and now I need to know your head is in the game. Because people are wondering. Your hand scan records indicate majorly reduced hours.” She made a V of her index finger and middle finger, pointing at her eyes, then mine. “
Is
your head in the game?”