The Scenic Route (21 page)

“No problem,” Naomi said, smiling sweetly. Then she grabbed Noah and started moving quickly.

“You're going to make me spill my martini, and pomegranate stains,” he said. “What's up?”

“Nothing. Why do you think something's up?” She jammed her way through the throng, with Noah in tow.

“I'm spilling!” he squawked. “It's a good thing your boyfriend is paying me a lot of money.”

“He's not my boyfriend!”

They searched the dance floor and the hallway to the bathrooms. “Why are you so eager to see Mom?” Noah asked.

“Mom?” Naomi asked. “Right. Mom. Just want to make sure she's not getting into any trouble.” Fortunately, there was no sign of Lila before they spotted Steffi as they headed toward the roof deck.

“Steffi!” Naomi called out. “Have you by any chance seen Austin Gittleman?” A blast of Lady Gaga surged from the sound speakers.

“Who?”

“Austin Gittleman!”

“No!” Steffi said sharply. “Why would you think I would have seen Austin Gittleman?”

“I think there's a chance he's here somewhere.”

“There's a chance of lots of things, Naomi,” Steffi said, wobbling on her heels, her voice thick and sour. “But the chances are usually slim.”

Austin walked in a daze down another fog-filled, mirrored corridor. He emerged in what seemed to be some kind of pool room. And not the billiard kind.

A giant disco ball hovered over a triangular-shaped whirlpool in a glass-walled lounge floating eighteen stories above the Hudson River. There was a 360-degree wraparound view mesmerizing enough to almost keep Austin from noticing two bare-breasted nymphettes frolicking in the pool with a fully dressed guy in leather. Above their heads was a sign made out of incandescent electric bulbs spelling out
SPLURGE
.

Despite the aquatic theme, Austin felt like a fish out of water. He didn't know anyone at the party. Other than Steffi and Naomi, and he had yet to lay eyes on Naomi. He should have guessed that she would have a boyfriend. Why wouldn't she? It was surprising she wasn't married. But if Austin couldn't be with her, he was at least glad she'd found someone who seemed good-natured and successful. Far more successful than Austin could ever hope to be. Though, shallow as it might be, Austin had noticed that the guy was shorter than him.

It had been a rash decision to come to New York. He didn't know what had come over him. It was really Mandy's doing. Not that she'd forced him to come. But she had gotten him thinking about the choices he'd made in his life. He tried so hard to make the right choices, but maybe he had defined “right” as safer rather than better.

Ever since Dallas had left him, he had been mourning not just for her and Coal, though he missed them terribly, but for the predictable life he'd had with them. He had known exactly how many minutes he could spend making Coal breakfast or having coffee with Dallas and still get to the office on time. He had looked forward each day to having two hours with Coal before reading him a bedtime story, and
he could count on sex with Dallas twice a week (more if they didn't like the guests on the
Daily Show
).

He no longer had a reason to dawdle in the morning or to rush home after his last patient. He was acutely aware of having extra time on his hands, and the irony was he no longer had a job that demanded as much time. He was soon likely to have no job whatsoever, since he was constantly being reprimanded for spending too many minutes with each patient. With no need to stay late at work and nothing to come home for, he felt lost. The weekends were the worst. There was no reason to go to a park or a video arcade. Or to take a trip to the Belle Isle Aquarium. There were no mad dashes to the grocery store for more Cheerios. And no candlelit dinners after Coal was in bed. Sometimes he'd pretend Dallas and Coal were just out of town for a weekend custodial visit, as they had often been. Except it made Sunday nights even worse when they didn't return.

He felt like an amputee, suffering spasms from a phantom limb, but when he wasn't feeling overwhelmed by the vast emptiness of his days, he thought incessantly and obsessively about Naomi. As soon as Dallas left, his first instinct had been to pick up the phone and call Naomi. But it wasn't fair to do that to her. Or to himself. He needed time to grieve. He needed time to feel sorry for himself. And the truth was he didn't have the strength at the time to bear finding out that Naomi was with someone else. It turned out he still didn't.

He shouldn't have come to New York. No, the problem wasn't that he'd come. His mistake was that he'd come too late. He actually liked the city, much more than he expected. The crowds, the fast pace, the energy. He couldn't really see moving there. That was more Mandy's idea. He had scheduled a job interview while he was in town mostly to humor her. And it provided a good pretext for the trip. Still, Mandy was right about taking chances, though he continued to have reservations about her going to the Congo. But since she was scheduled
to leave in the morning, she was unlikely to change her mind. He'd been hoping to hear from her when she finished packing, but she was probably still annoyed with him for the article he'd e-mailed her about a British tourist kidnapped in Kenya. He had sent the article to remind her how easy it was for people to take their safety for granted. It was only now that he realized that applied to emotional safety as well as physical.

All his effort to be careful about the things in life he could control had somehow led him to be careless with the things he couldn't. There was a lesson to be learned. A lesson he could contemplate on the flight back to Michigan. He wanted to find Naomi and congratulate her—on the Web site and the boyfriend. And then he wanted to leave. The mass of bodies surrounding him felt oppressive. He had never seen so many people at a party. Surprisingly, many of them looked vaguely familiar. Austin saw a teenage starlet whom he recognized from gossip stories posted on Facebook, and he spotted Barbara Corcoran, the real estate mogul. He and Dallas used to sometimes enjoy watching
Shark Tank
after Coal was in bed. Austin also recognized the woman standing next to Barbara Corcoran, but he couldn't place her face. Maybe she was also on a reality show. Then it hit him. She wasn't a celebrity; she was Naomi's mother. She was much older than when he had last seen her, but it was impossible not to recognize her; she looked like Naomi.

He could ask Naomi's mother where Naomi was holding court. Or, maybe better, he could just ask her to give Naomi a message. Nothing too complicated. In fact, just congratulations would do the trick. That's all that was necessary. Just let her know he was there and that he offered his good wishes.

No, man up,
he told himself. No wimping out. No messages. He had come all this way, made up that cock-and-bull story with Steffi about Stu inviting him, and he wasn't going to leave with his tail
between his legs. He was going to ask Naomi's mother where he could find Naomi. And he was going to see her one last time. He could do this. He wanted to do this. And he was about to do it when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket, but it was a number he didn't recognize.

When he looked up, Naomi's mother was gone. Or she was no longer standing next to Barbara Corcoran. Austin swiveled his head from side to side. She couldn't have gone far. He navigated through the crowd in the direction he had last seen her. He shoved and shimmied between fashionistas and Silicon Alley swashbucklers, turning his head left and right, and he almost walked right into her.

“Mrs. Bloom?” he said.

“Yes?” Lila looked at him expectantly.

“I'm a friend of your daughter.” Austin was relieved that they could hear each other talk. Though he still had to shout.

“I'm meeting so many wonderful friends of my daughter's tonight,” she shouted back. “I can't tell you how happy it makes me.”

“I'm actually a friend of hers from back in—”

“Godwin!” Lila called out.

An attractive dark-skinned man embraced her. “Are you having a good time?”

“I'm having the best time! This is a friend of Naomi's.” Lila turned to Austin. “I'm sorry I didn't get your name—”

A waiter came between them with a tray of shrimp and some kind of green dipping sauce. There was a commotion around Austin as guests flocked to the shrimp, clearly a popular item, and he found himself cut off from Lila. His phone buzzed again. This time it was Mandy. Her timing was impeccable.

He answered, cupping a hand around his opposite ear. “Hello?” he shouted, hoping she could hear him.

“Mr. Gittleman?” It wasn't Mandy.

Austin pressed his hand tighter against his ear. “Who is this?”

“My name is Dr. Chun Kwan—”

“What?”

“My name is Dr. Chun Kwan. I'm a doctor in the emergency room of Beaumont Hospital, and I'm calling about your sister.”

A
ustin didn't know why Mr. Douglas had called him out of his fourth-grade math class. He didn't think he had been doing anything wrong. Or not terribly wrong. He was doodling in his notebook, making pictures of Superman fighting extraterrestrials, when he should have been doing his math problem set. But wasn't it his choice whether or not he wanted to do the math problems? If he didn't do well on the next quiz, then that would be his punishment. But if he could do well on his quizzes without doing all of the boring problem sets, he didn't see why that shouldn't be his choice. Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Hadn't they just studied that in social studies class? Austin thought his social studies teacher and his math teacher needed to have a conversation.

Mr. Douglas opened the classroom door and followed Austin into the hallway.

“How are you doing, Austin?”

“I'm okay.” Was he supposed to confess to his crime? Wasn't there a law that said you didn't have to? Your Amanda rights. That's what he heard them call it on TV. He remembered thinking it was the
same name as his sister. But his sister didn't like the name Amanda. So everyone called her Mandy. Sometimes Austin called her Amanda just to get her upset. Mandy was pretty funny when she got upset. Her face would get all red until it almost matched her hair. Then she would try to hit him. But she was too small to hit him very hard. And she was a girl, so it's not like she really knew how to hit. Sometimes she scratched him pretty good, though. She was a good scratcher. He had to watch out for that.

“Austin,” Mr. Douglas said, “I'm going to take you to the principal's office.”

“I'm sorry about the doodling,” Austin confessed. “I promise if you let me go back to the class I'll do all the math problems. I'll even do extra ones.” Austin was not at all happy to make that offer. But he thought it was a good idea to sweeten the deal. He
really
didn't want to go to the principal's office. He had been sent to the principal's office only one other time, and his father gave him a spanking afterward. Of course, that time he had done something a little worse. He had called Charlie Flugelheimer a bad name. Austin thought Charlie Flugelheimer deserved it because he had spit at Austin. But the principal didn't agree. And neither did Austin's dad.

“Austin, don't worry about the math problems,” Mr. Douglas said.

“I don't want to be in trouble,” Austin said.

Mr. Douglas seemed very upset when he looked at Austin. But he didn't sound upset when he spoke. “You're not in trouble, Austin.”

“I'm not?”

“No, you're not.”

That made Austin feel a little better, but he still wasn't happy about having to go to the principal's office. And if he wasn't in trouble, he didn't know why he had to go.

When they arrived at the principal's office, Austin was surprised
to see that Mandy was sitting in the waiting area. Had she also done something wrong? Daddy was going to be
really
angry this time. Austin sat next to her and asked her what she did.

“I ate a pink marshmallow,” Mandy said.

That didn't sound all that terrible.

Principal Higgins came out of his office and Mr. Douglas left. Before he left, he clutched Austin's shoulder and squeezed it tight. He was acting kind of strange. Austin wondered if there was something wrong with Mr. Douglas. When Grandpa Joe had acted strange, he was taken to a hospital. And now he was living in a prison for old people. They had bars on the beds, and they weren't allowed to leave. Grandpa Joe rarely smiled anymore. Sometimes he didn't even say anything when they visited. But Daddy said he liked it when Austin visited, even if Grandpa Joe didn't tell him. But Austin didn't like visiting Grandpa Joe. He didn't like it at all.

Principal Higgins crouched down on one knee to talk to them. Austin didn't think he looked very comfortable. He told them that their mother was coming to pick them up from school.

“Are we being kicked out?” Austin asked.

Principal Higgins also looked upset. “No, Austin,” he said.

Everyone seemed upset, and they were making Austin and Mandy leave school early. But no one was saying what Austin and Mandy had done wrong. That seemed very unfair to Austin. It was also unfair they had to wait in the principal's office. It seemed like they were waiting forever. Principal Higgins's secretary, Ms. Clark, kept asking if they wanted some water. Austin wasn't thirsty, but he asked Ms. Clark to give Mandy a cup of water.

When their mother finally arrived, she didn't look like herself. It wasn't that she didn't look like their mother; she just looked like a different version of herself. This version had puffy red skin, and her eyes were also red. Her shoulder-length dark hair looked like it hadn't
been brushed and Austin's mother always spent a long time brushing her hair. A very long time. Sometimes Austin thought he was going to die waiting for his mother to finish brushing her hair. Then she would try to brush his, but he would shake his head until she left him alone. When it was Mandy's turn, there was always a lot of crying. Mandy didn't hate having her hair brushed the way Austin did, but she sure acted like it sitting on the bathroom counter and looking at her reflection in the mirror with her hair sticking out like a Chia Pet. Austin's mother would always tell Mandy afterward how nice her hair looked, but Mandy didn't seem to believe her. Austin thought it usually looked better before his mother brushed it.

But Austin's mother's hair didn't look better unbrushed and clumpy. She came running over and put one arm around each of them. And she held them tight like the time he got separated from her at Walmart, and he couldn't find her until a store manager helped him and called over the loudspeaker for her, saying, “Will the mother of Austin Gittleman come to the Sports Department.” Austin was worried his mother would be upset with him because he wasn't supposed to give his name to strangers. But when she saw him, she came running up to him just like she did in Principal Higgins's office, and she held him just as close, so close not even air came between them. She rocked him back and forth and kissed his forehead, saying over and over how much she loved him and that everything was going to be okay.