Lauren Takes Leave (17 page)

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 Rochelle 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
di
ministration 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.

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.