Dating Big Bird (20 page)

The two big birthdays were coming up: Lynn’s on April 3 and Nicole’s on April 5. In order for me to go to Maine with a semiclear conscience and without worrying that Karen would call me on my cell phone about something I hadn’t done or something she just thought I hadn’t done, I first needed to get through the mountain of work on my desk.

Samples of the fall line had just come in. They were all black, and gray (“the new black”), and brown (“the other new black”). Suit jackets, skirts, pants, sweaters, shorts, socks, underwear, shoes were draped and hanging and laid out on every possible surface in my office.

And I was starting to hear the
they’re just clothes
voice.

“It looks like a Loehmann’s dressing room in here,” Renee said. She was standing in the doorway, herself wearing one of Karen’s long slim wool couture skirts in dark brown. I mean,
moccachino
. “It’s a fucking mess.”

“You make it sound like it’s my fault.”

“It is your fault. It’s your office.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as pathologically neat and organized as you are.”

“You should be.”

Renee had been extra sweet to me ever since the denouement with Malcolm. Not that she felt responsible for the breakup, because she didn’t. Yes, she was sorry I was sad, but she wasn’t sorry the conversation had taken place. In her mind, I was better off knowing where I stood with him. And if that meant I was alone now, then so be it. “At least you’re not wasting your time anymore,” she’d said. And as usual, she was right. Intellectually, anyway. Loneliness and loss might not have made logical sense, but that didn’t make those feelings any less real to me then.

I looked at my watch and then at the pile of proofs I’d just gotten back from the photographer for our fall promotional materials; it was two minutes past eleven, and Karen was waiting for us. “Listen. Let’s just get this over with, and then we can talk about—”

“What a slob you are.”

“And what an obsessive-compulsive you are.”

When we got to Karen’s office, she was on the phone. She waved us in, and we sat down in the two guest chairs on the opposite side of her desk.

“Uh-huh. And that was, what, an hour ago? So what’s her temperature now?” Karen took a long sip of water from her glass and reached for the small tin of Altoids she kept by the phone. She popped a mint into her mouth but spit it out into the palm of her hand the minute she got her answer. “Around a hundred and three? What do you mean,
around
a hundred and three? Aren’t you using the electronic thermometer?”

The expression on Renee’s face indicated that the last place on earth she’d want to be was on the other end of that phone line being grilled by Karen as her nanny apparently was. I couldn’t have agreed more.

“Listen to me,” Karen barked. “The electronic thermometer is
not
too difficult to use. I’m going to hold on while you get it out of the medicine cabinet in Arthur’s bathroom, and then I’m going to tell you exactly what to do. I want to know
exactly
what her temperature is.” She glanced at us absently, then returned her attention to the nanny—explaining, in great detail, what button to press and what beep to listen for and where to look for the temperature reading. A few seconds passed while the nanny presumably followed the instructions, and then Karen gasped.

“A hundred and
five
? Oh, my God. I’m on my way.” She sprang out of her chair, grabbed her coat and bag, and ran out. When she flew by Simon’s desk toward the elevator without breaking stride, I regretted all the times I’d been scornful of her as a parent. Certainly Karen was no earth-mother type and never would be, but in her own way she clearly cared about her little girl a great deal. That much anyone could have seen from the look of absolute terror on her face as she raced out the door.

Sometime after three o’clock that afternoon, Simon appeared in my doorway clutching his heart.

“Did you hear about Marissa?” he asked dramatically.

I put down the plastic sheets of slides I had been looking at. “No. I mean, yes. She had a fever earlier.”

Simon pulled a cigarette from the box of Dunhills he kept in his jacket pocket, but his hands were shaking so much as he tried to flick his lighter that he gave up and dropped the unlit cigarette down on my desk. “Marissa had a febrile seizure.”

“A what?”

“A febrile seizure.
Febrile:
from the Latin for ‘fever.’ It’s a seizure caused by a fever that spikes too quickly in an infant.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Poor, poor,
poor
Karen. She just called. She was on the phone with the pediatrician when the child started to, well,
seize
.”

What a terrible word that was.

“Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she began to convulse—her limbs jerking this way and that. Then her breathing became so shallow that Karen actually thought Marissa was dying right there and then! Can you imagine?”

No. I couldn’t.

“The doctor called 911, and paramedics arrived on the scene in mere minutes. They got the fever down immediately with cool compresses, and then they took her to the emergency ward for observation. They’re home now, thank goodness.”

“So how is she?”

“Karen or Marissa?”

“Either. Both.”

He reached for his cigarette and lit it, finally. “Marissa is absolutely fine. I called my mother, and she said this sort of thing is quite normal—she was a nurse, you know. And if it’s rectified in time, which it was, there are no lasting effects.”

“You mean, like—”

“Yes.”

Brain damage
, neither of us wanted to say.

“And Karen?”

“She’s quite shaken,” he said, leaning into my desk. “I’ve never heard her sound so—so frightened. Usually she’s, well, you know, impervious to this kind of thing.”

“Well, it’s not like this kind of thing has ever happened before.”

“No, of course not. But she’s had me cancel everything for the rest of the week because she wants to be home. Karen has never canceled the rest of any week. Except, of
course, when she gave birth.” He stubbed his cigarette out. “Which I hope doesn’t happen anytime soon. After all, a scare like this can’t be good for someone who’s seven and a half months pregnant.”

I was haunted by the incident for the rest of the day. The mere idea of something happening to my Pickle made my brain shut down from fear. I even called Lynn to reassure myself that everything there was okay.

“How frightening,” Lynn said when I told her about Karen’s scare. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Me, either.”

“But children are incredibly resilient,” she said.

“They are?”

“Of course they are. You were.”

“When?”

“When your appendix ruptured. You could have died, but you didn’t. Remember?”

Of course I remembered. I was four years old; there was a raging blizzard the night my stomach started hurting; and by the time morning came and my parents realized something was really wrong with me, the ambulance had a hard time getting through the storm. But they made it, and I made it, and while Lynn had made me feel better temporarily, I still couldn’t help feeling shaken. Life was so fragile, so dangerous, so precarious. Especially a child’s life. And it made me wonder if I would be strong enough to handle such a thing were I to have a child of my own—a moment when life and death were all too closely linked.

Later that night as I lay in bed unable to fall asleep, I wondered how Malcolm could have survived losing Benjamin. I had often wondered about that while we were still together—wondered how he had endured the fear all those months and years while his little boy was sick and in
and out of the hospital, and then how he’d endured the loss and grief after it was all over—but I’d never actually asked him. The thought of what he had lived through—and what he lived with every day since then—made my eyes fill with tears, and I ached to hear his voice. I realized, suddenly, that I had never told him how sorry I was about Benjamin, and it seemed inconceivable to me that I could have known him as long as I had without ever saying that. I reached across the bed for the phone, but as I held the receiver in my hand, I had no idea of what I would say and where I would start. He and I had not spoken since that terrible night and while I’d had the urge to call him countless times since then, I had always suppressed it. A weepy, wordless, late-night conversation wouldn’t change anything, nor would it do either of us any good. So I went to my dresser and got the Big Bird Nicole had given me out of the drawer. And putting it in bed next to me, I finally fell asleep.

I had planned on renting a car (I was transporting gifts after all: lingerie for Lynn despite her squawking and an easel and tempera paints for the Pickle) and driving the five hours up to my sister’s that Friday afternoon—the day before her birthday—and driving back to the city Monday evening. Despite the residue of the previous day’s trauma and the fact that Karen was still out of the office, she and I had spoken several times on the phone, and due to her distraction she had, miraculously, not asked me to change my plans.

Simon, on the other hand, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Even though I was only going to be out of the office for a day and a half, to Simon I might as well have been going on a three-month cruise to Alaska.

“I know, I know, I know,” I said, swatting him away the day before I left.

“You only have thirty days left to get Karen’s gift,” he wailed, practically in tears.

“That’s four weeks—four and a half weeks. Jesus Christ, they probably built the bomb in less time than that.”

He kept his eyes glued to me as if I might fly out the window and vanish without ever getting the present.

“So?”

I stared at him.
“So?”

“So what are your thoughts? Your ideas? The whole event absolutely
hinges
on the gift, and if there
is
no gift, well, I don’t even want to
think
about that scenario right now.”

“There’ll be a gift, Simon. Don’t worry.”

He looked at me as if I’d just told him that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy really did exist and that they’d both RSVP’d “yes” to the shower. “There will be? Oh, joy! Do tell me what it is!”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, hoping to intimate that there existed a limited though fabulous selection of items from which I would soon choose.

His excitement grew. “Well, what have you narrowed it down to?”

“A few things,” I lied.

Nothing
.

Nothing
.

Or nothing
.

“I’m going to think about it while I’m in Maine, and then I’ll make my decision when I get back.”

“Then I’ll have something to look forward to. I
love
surprises.”

Lynn, however, had never liked surprises—especially surprise birthday parties and especially when she was turning
thirty-eight and almost five months pregnant—and so nothing about my impending visit and the celebratory dinner Paul and I had planned for her and Nicole had been kept secret.

The Pickle, she said, when I called her from a rest stop somewhere in Connecticut late Friday afternoon, was beside herself with excitement, even though Lynn wasn’t sure whether she understood that it was also her birthday (Lynn’s), and not just her own (Nicole’s).

“The only thing that matters is that you’re coming, and that we’re having cake.
Bur-day
cake.”

“Don’t tell me you’re making your own. Bur-day girls aren’t supposed to make their own bur-day cakes.”

“No no no,” she said. “Paul ordered one from Petula’s in town. That’s your big outing tomorrow afternoon. After you pick up the balloos.”

“Ball
oos?
”

“Ball
oons
. Besides a visit from her Auntie LaLa, that’s the most exciting part about her turning four.”

The next morning I awoke to the sound of heavy breathing in my face. I opened my eyes and saw the Pickle staring at me intently.

“Auntie LaLa,” she said.

“Hhhmmm,”
I said, then closed my eyes.

“Auntie LaLa!”

I opened my eyes again.

“Guess what, Auntie LaLa?”

“What?”

“We’re going to have bur-day cake!”

I smiled, still half-asleep. “I know!”

“And you know what else?”

“What?”

“We’re going to have ballooooos!”

“I know!”

She put her little hands over my mouth and giggled. “Because you know why?”

“Why?” I tried to say under her fingers.

“Because it’s my bur-day.”

“Yes, it is!”

“And you know what else?”

“What?”

“It’s Mum-Mum’s bur-day, too.”

“That’s right!” See? She did know. “Hey, you know what else?” I asked.

“What?”

I winked at Lynn. “It’s my bur-day, too.”

“No way!” she said, giggling again.

“Yes way!”

“No way!”

“Yes way!”

Just then Lynn appeared in the doorway, and Nicole ran to her. She picked her daughter up, and Nicole grabbed Lynn’s nose with her hand. When she threw her head back, the giggle she let out was so contagious, we all started laughing. “It’s not your bur-day, Auntie LaLa, it’s Mum-Mum’s bur-day and my bur-day!”

“Come on, you two,” Lynn said, putting Nicole down and giving her a fake spank on her Pull-Up. “Daddy’s waiting to go to the bakery with you to pick up the bur-day cake.”

BUR-DAY CAKE AND
balloooos!

After breakfast the Pickle must have repeated that a thousand times in the few minutes it took Paul to strap her into
the car seat of their dark green Jeep Cherokee—let alone when we were actually in the car driving.

First we stopped at the party store to pick up the balloons (pre-balloo-pickup word-repetition count: 312). Then we headed back into town and stopped at the bakery (pre-bur-day-cake-pickup word-repetition count: 688). And once we’d found a parking space and were all unbuckled and unstrapped from our seats, we went inside.

The bakery was warm, and the windows were foggy. I went up to the counter and got in line while Paul and Nicole explored the store. The line was long, and when it failed to move even an inch in five minutes, I found myself getting edgy—me being the tense, uptight, high-strung psycho in from New York for a weekend. Nicole, who was now frantically pointing to gingerbread cookies at the far end of the glass case, didn’t seem to be doing too much better mood-wise than I was.