Lauren Takes Leave (48 page)

“Miami?” I joke.

“Any place but.” He’s not smiling.

“How about Boston?” I say, checking my e-mails and reading
quickly through one I just received from Georgie.

“Boston? Don’t you want to go someplace warm? Tropical?”

“Well, the reason is…I kind of wrote to Georgie this
morning with an idea I had, and it seems…” I trail off as I continue to read
the e-mail, verifying its contents, my excitement growing. “Georgie just
offered me a job for the summer.” Although I am beyond surprised to hear from
her so soon, I knew it was a great idea, a Georgie idea, a really big idea, the
moment it came to me. “As a researcher and adjunct professor. At Harvard!” I
say, unable to keep the enthusiasm out of my voice. “Bye, bye middle school!”

Doug brakes too hard at a stop sign and glances my way. “Researching
what?”

“Women in midlife who want to switch careers!”

“But that’s…brilliant. It’s you in a nutshell.”

“I know! I’m brilliant! All it took was a week of cutting
school to figure it out! And now I’m going to get to write a book about women
like me.” And Jodi. And Kat.

“Who knew that your lack of interest in your job would be
so inspiring, Mrs. Worthing.” Doug holds out his right palm and I slap it.
“We’ve both failed at our jobs, and yet we’re awesome,” he concludes.

I read through the e-mail several more times before we
pull into the driveway, and quickly jot
I accept
back to Georgie. It’s a
part-time gig, which is perfect for me because it will give me some time to try
out stay-at-home motherhood and the perilous PTA. Georgie says I’ll have to
prove myself over the summer before she can offer me a more substantial salary
in September. That is, if I want to continue into the fall. She says the
position requires two full days on campus, but that I could stay over in Boston
one night a week at staff housing and commute back and forth via train.

Good thing I’ve tried that train and I know it works.

And Boston isn’t that far.

From New York…and Nantucket.

So, for now, anyway, it looks like I’m keeping my day job.
I won’t be storming into Martha’s office tomorrow to resign alongside Kat,
which is probably a blessing in disguise. I’ll take my time and make sure
Doug’s project really pans out first, wait until his company gets back on its
feet before I formally resign.

In the meantime, I’ll get to carry that little sparkly
secret around with me for the rest of the school year, knowing that I am
charting a new path for my own future, and that, although it might be risky, it
will certainly be rewarding.

I’d say it was quite a productive week, all in all,
culminating in one of the best Sundays on record.

Late that night, Doug and I sneak quietly down the
stairs, turning off lights as we go. I’m careful to avoid that third step, the
one that always creaks and brings Becca from her bed before she’s drifted
soundly off to sleep.

Somehow, though, she hears me anyway. My heart drops into
my stomach as I realize she’s standing right behind me on the landing between
the first and second floor.

“You woke me up!” she yells, her fists clenched by her
side, tiny balls of rage.

“Shh!” I say. “Don’t wake your brother.” Doug starts to
climb back up the stairs to help me with Becca, but I shoo him away.

“I can if I want to!” My daughter’s got some seriously
powerful lungs.

“No, you cannot!” I whisper-shout back. I’m about to get
into a screaming fight with her, I know it. This will wake Ben, who will then
want to play on his DSi or go on the computer. It will take me another hour to
get them both back to bed, thereby shattering my precarious sense of domestic
bliss and squelching any interest I might have had in having sex with Doug
tonight.

Which makes me think of Tim Cubix.

Tim Cubix and star charts.

“Hey, Bec!” I say, making my voice sound full of wonder
and excitement. “Do you want to draw a
star
on your
door
?” I make
sure to be vague enough to keep her wanting more information.

“Why?” she asks, her huge blue eyes not quite trusting me
yet. At least she’s not screaming bloody murder.

“Because,” I whisper, gently guiding her back toward her
room. “That’s what good girls do. They get stars.” She nods several times to
let me know that this makes perfect sense. I reach into her art supplies and
tape a purple piece of construction paper to her bedroom door. I hand her a
marker.

“And then, once you get enough stars, the stars turn into
presents!” I explain. She nods again and concentrates on neatly making the five
points. Then she places the cap back on the marker and hands it to me so she
can slide back in under the covers.

I blow her a kiss good night and touch the star chart.

Because I know that, in some cases, the star himself is
the actual present.

A moment later, I slip into the darkened kitchen to face
the piles of mail, kid artwork, magazines, and newspapers that Doug and I still
have not cleaned up, and which look like hilly landscapes against the smooth
countertop of the kitchen island.

Doug joins me from the sunroom and the two of us scan the
scene.

I feel like grabbing a big trashcan and dumping it all,
without sorting or deciding exactly where the paper trail of our lives should
go. Doug sighs, and I know he’s thinking the same thing.

“The last thing I want to do right now is face this mess.”
I mean it literally, but it feels like a metaphor.

“We have to,” he says, turning on the sharp overhead
lighting. I squint. He dims it so that the atmosphere mellows.

“That’s better. Where to begin?”

“Think of it as spring cleaning. We’re clearing out the
old baggage so that we can start fresh, with our new lives, tomorrow morning.”

“That’s optimistic of you,” I say, picking up some old
mail and looking through it.

“After today’s funeral, I believe in miracles. I believe
in fate, in destiny, in…” He trails off, searching for the right term.

“In the transformative powers of jury duty?” I ask,
fingering a crisp, unopened blue envelope from the Alden County Courthouse.
It’s addressed to Doug.

“Good one,” he says. I pass the envelope to him as proof
that I’m not joking.

He reaches out to take it from me, but misses. We both
watch as the blue envelope slowly falls in the empty space between us, as if
being carried on a gentle breeze. It lands softly at Doug’s feet.

“It’s like the thing is
daring
me to pick it up,”
Doug says.

I smile knowingly.

Then, in one swift movement, I reach down, grab the
envelope before he can, and rip the seam open.

After all, I’ve had some practice with these things.

I unfold the paper within and scan the printed
information, reading aloud. “Mr. Doug Worthing…Your services are
requested…yadda, yadda, yadda…County Courthouse…yadda, yadda…ten a.m. on
Monday, April seventeenth.”

I look up from the paper, spooked. “But…that’s tomorrow!”

“Huh.” He nods, a small smile playing on his lips.

“Did you know about this? Did you…
plan
it?” I ask.
He says nothing. “Doug?!”

“No.” He smiles.

I shake my head disbelievingly.

“Honestly!” Doug balks. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t
enjoy your entertaining reaction to the news.”

I return to the paper, my heart beating fast. “Failure to
show up on appointed date…yadda, yadda…incarceration or fines!”

“Now, we wouldn’t want that,” he says.

“Doug! This isn’t funny!” I say. “Jury duty’s not a joke,
you know.”

“Oh yes, Lauren, that I know. Sometimes, jury duty is
truly a matter of life or death.” His dimples are fully creased. “Life or death
in Miami
.”

“Doug!” I say. “You can’t go! Laney’s on vacation and I
have to go back to work tomorrow, and I could really use your help.”

“Lauren, I’d love to be able to assist you, really I
would. But, see, America needs me.”

I try to pout. I try to seem defiant, cocksure, like Jodi
on the verge of getting her way.

Doug’s not having it.

“First of all, do we even need Laney anymore?” he asks.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m being serious. When the kids were small, we needed
her. But now, they’re in school all day. Laney’s a terrible housekeeper. She’s
lazy and overly dramatic and…”

“Probably stealing my stuff,” I conclude. I think about
life without Laney. Without waiting for her to show up, without wondering
whether the laundry is done, without finding out there is no more milk only
upon opening the refrigerator to pour some milk. Mostly, I think about Laney
sitting in my house all day, flipping through magazines and waiting for my kids
to get off the bus.

What a colossal waste of time and money.

I think about what a relief home life without Laney would
be.

“Can we just…do without her?” I ask, a lightness growing
in my chest. “Can’t we do this—raising a family, taking care of our home,
juggling work responsibilities—just you and me, together?”

Doug inhales and exhales theatrically, like he’s about to
make a big concession. “I tell you what. I’ll take the kids to the bus each
morning, so that you can get to school on time. But beyond that, I can make no
promises, in the short term, anyway. After all,” he says, “I start jury duty
tomorrow.”

And then Doug smiles, snatching the envelope from my
hands, a definite twinkle in his eye.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, life is a series of
trials. And whether we like it or not, a jury of our peers continuously judges
our actions and bears witness to our everyday embarrassments and triumphs.

I mean, who hasn’t dabbled in adultery, petty larceny, and
the occasional inebriated foot-in-the-face debacle from time to time, right?
Maybe you were caught in the act of such impropriety. Maybe not.

Fact: we all need to break out of our molds once in a
while, so that we don’t become…moldy. Stuck. Predictable. Bored to the point
that we go looking for distractions instead of solutions.

And that was me.

But for all the wrong choices I made, I also learned from
my risk-taking, probably a hell of a lot more than I would have learned by
sitting in a real courtroom, listening to a rehashing of others’ mistakes, or
by hiding behind my desk in a sixth-grade classroom. By kicking up my heels
this past week—both literally and figuratively—I have come to better appreciate
human nature, in all its complexities and shades of gray.

Fact: No one is to me now what she appeared to be on
Monday. Not even I am.

And that is why, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, your
services are no longer needed. I have decided in favor of myself. I am not
guilty.

Well, not guilty any more than you are. No offense. See
that guy over there? He’s done something he’s not proud of, and yet he’s lived
to tell the tale. And same with the woman sitting next to you on the train
every morning, and the barista who prepares your double espresso, and the piano
teacher, the soccer coach, the dry cleaner. What I’ve learned this week is that
there is a slippery slope of crimes and misdemeanors swirling invisibly all
around us.

Jodi and Kat and I have lied and cheated and stolen. Turns
out, we humans are
all capable of outstanding acts of generosity one
minute and incredible acts of mean-spiritedness the next. We are corrupt,
immature,
and
fabulous. Luckily, we have the capacity to love and
forgive and to support our friends and family even when they take leave of
their senses.

Especially when they take leave.

In summation, this great country of America is grateful
for your service as a sequestered juror in the now infamous case known as
Lauren
Takes Leave
. And, on a personal note, I wish to thank you for being
impartial as you listened to my side of the story, which may or may not be
fictional.

I hope that, should life present you with small, open
windows of opportunity, you choose to slip through occasionally, just to see
what’s out there on the other side. Grab control of your life by taking a
vacation from it. Swim with dolphins. Invent your own cocktail. Pretend to be
someone else.

Whether or not you chose to return to your place of work
after that—or ever again—is entirely up to you.

And upon returning from your adventures, however innocuous
they might be, may you, too, find an attentive, intelligent, attractive, and—above
all—
forgiving
jury of your peers waiting to hear all about it.

This case is dismissed.

To invite Julie Gerstenblatt to
your book club either in person or via Skype, e-mail her at
[email protected]
.

Before I began writing full-time, I was a middle school
English teacher. And that is why, even though
Lauren Takes Leave
is a
bona fide beach read and all I want for you to say when you reach the end is “wow,
that was fun,” I had to include discussion questions at the end. I am used to
assigning homework.

So, here’s what I’m thinking you should do. Get a bunch of
your friends to read the book, too, and then have a really informal book club
meeting at someone’s house. Or at a bar. Or, for authenticity, in Miami. You
can be as committed to this endeavor as you wish. Make sure to drink a bit and
to discuss a lot of other topics before getting to these questions. That’s what
my book group does and it works really well. In fact, try not to spend more
than ten minutes discussing the novel, because a night out is a night out, and
I’d hate to deny you that by bumming you out with symbolism.

Below the questions is the recipe for a great and easy
cocktail favored by my book group. I call it the Literati.