How to Be a Grown-up (10 page)

“Fuck the plan. You’re not hearing me. I’m not happy, Rory.”

“Of course you’re not happy; your agent fired you.”

“No.” He twisted to face me, his eyes grabbing mine. “I’m not happy with you. With us. How we are, how we’ve been. I’m not happy.”

I was hearing him. Hearing him so hard I felt like I was being flung from a car accident. “Um . . . so, I’m sensing you’re not coming home after this.”

He shook his head.

“Okay.”
It’s just a tantrum, just a tantrum, just a tantrum
. “Well, while we continue working this out . . .” I was biting my tongue, which was clamping on my throat, which was squeezing my larynx, which was compressing my stomach, which was gripping my intestines, which were hanging onto my colon. “. . . we have kids who need to see their dad. Every day.”

“I—”

“Every day.” I could speak for them. Speaking for them was all I could do. “You will pick them up from the extended day program. You will bring them home. We will tell them you’re in a show. And leaving early every morning before they get up. Okay?”

Stewing silence.

“Blake,
okay
?”

“Okay!”

Dr. Brompton leaned forward. “This was very productive. Shall I put you down for next week?”

“I’m so sorry,” Jessica said for the tenth time as she sat on my kitchen counter eating out of a bag of Skinny Pop that night. “Dr. Brompton came so highly recommended.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said as I stirred the leftover meatloaf into the leftover crushed tomatoes for what was hopefully going to morph into bolognese sauce.

“But do you
blame
me?”

“I do.” I laughed. Then, in a burst of magical culinary thinking, I switched spatulas as if that might do the trick. “The thing is I know what’s running him. He’s mad at himself, mad at his agent, mad at the world, but the only person in the room is me, so he’s decided I’m the problem.”

“You’re suddenly a stranger,” Jessica added.

“Exactly. Only that knowledge does me a fat fuck of good because I’m not the one who has to get it. He does.”

Without moving, she opened the door to the fridge and grabbed a Fresca. “So he just trashed you for an hour?” She popped it open.

“Please. Forty-five minutes. I shudder to think what a whole hour would cost.”

“I am coming back as a high-class therapist,” she said, flexing her feet, and we both saw the heel of her shoe coming away from the sole.

“You want to borrow a pair to wear home?” I offered.

“Nah. It’s been like this for weeks. I keep thinking elves are going to repair them while I sleep, but no luck.”

“Miles isn’t also a cobbler?” I asked of her husband.

She didn’t answer, but sat on the granite absentmindedly stroking the lip of the can. “I’m never going to make out in the back of a cab again.”

I looked over at her. “Go on.”

“I mean, just, speaking of strangers, no one tells you. No one slows you down that night you first hook up with the person you’re going to be with for the rest of your life and says, ‘sign here if you’re willing to never make out in the back of a cab again.’ ”

“Or in the rain.”

“Now I’d be too worried about getting sick.”

“When I first moved in here, we’d go on the roof and fuck whenever it poured,” I said wistfully as I stirred.

“On the ground?”

“No. It’s landscaped. They have benches. I’d sit facing him in a long sundress.”

“See! You will never do that again. And we are not old.”

“But, Jess, we did it. We crossed the finish line without AIDS or crabs or chlamydia. And those guys, those make-out-in-the-back-of-cabs guys, they sucked for the most part.” I poured the spaghetti out over the sink, jerking back from the steam.

“Okay, yes, well, there’s that. It’s just sometimes, when Miles wants to have morning sex when we had garlic the night before, I just wish I could go back to being unknown. To being someone he’d brush for.”

“Hel-oh-ho!” Blake called jovially from the front hall. Having picked the kids up as agreed, he was in Dad mode. I would not be surprised if they both had Starbursts tucked away somewhere on their persons.

“Mom!” We heard the kids stampede to find me.

“I’ll be going.” Jess hopped to the terra-cotta tile and slipped out the back door, whispering, “Keep me posted.”

Blake stuck his head in the kitchen. “So, I’m gonna go.”

I blew out, realizing that I had been hoping he’d stay for dinner, that if I could just plug him back into our lives this would be over. “Okay— Blake?” I stopped him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.” I stepped forward. He was standing next to Wynn’s faded Spider-Man collage. “If I’ve done something to make you feel like you can’t be here, I’m sorry. We love you.” It was the opposite of what I felt, but it was my Hail Mary.

“Rory . . .” His eyes lifted to the ceiling. “I don’t think we should see her again. That, uh, got a little out of hand.”

“Right?” I said, relief drenching me like a hydrant had been opened. “That was nuts.” The kids bounded in as I moved to set a place for him at the dining table.

“Dad, Dad, Dad, look at my new baseball card/headband/slime/dance move!”

“Guys, guys, guys,” I said. “Dinner’s ready. Wash your hands and clear the floor before I step on a calico critter. I made spaghetti.” We would eat like a family and then we would talk this through like people who’ve been married for ten years—

“Sorry, you two, but I’ve got to hit the road.” Blake turned for the door. “Night shoot.”

“Aw.” They stomped out to follow him to the vestibule while I stood there alone.

“Bye, Rory,” he called out.

“Bye,” I said, his words from this afternoon lacerating me afresh, making me think we had a bad marriage. I ladled out the pasta.

We did
not
have a bad marriage. Of course it didn’t help that I’d gotten pregnant right after we got engaged, that we didn’t have a lot of memories of prechild days to draw on, but we would get through it. I mean, yes, the last year had been tough. Blake was crabby a lot of the time. He was impatient with the kids in the morning, withdrawn from me at night. But this was just a phase; I knew that.

Every couple has a Fight. When Jessica made the mistake, once every few months, of asking Miles if he had, say, taken the boys to get their flu shots, Miles would blow up and say something to the effect of,
You do not get to breeze in and out of here and then fucking backseat-drive how I get all the shit done.
And she would scream back,
Keeping our health insurance and 401k is not fucking breezy, and do you think I wouldn’t trade it all in a heartbeat if you made more fucking money?
Every few months, same fight.
Every couple we knew had one
, I reassured myself when Blake inevitably forgot something pertaining to the kids, like Friday is early pickup, and I lost it, then he called me a controlling bitch and I called him an irresponsible human being. We had to take ourselves in context.

I ladled the pasta into three bowls, the fourth sitting empty on the counter. And suddenly a thought made my stomach go cold.
What if he didn’t know we were in a context?

Chapter Seven

You are going the wrong way!
Someone needed to show me how to turn off my virtual assistant or I was going to throw my phone in a mailbox. It was my first photo shoot for JeuneBug and, without Blake, I wasn’t able to get to the flower market at five and on set by six, as Zoe would have. So as soon as I got the kids to school, I settled for a bale of branches from the local florist at ten times the price.
See, Taylor, an assistant pays for herself.

When I raised the gate on the industrial elevator, I found Glen lying on the cement floor of the studio I had rented. I stood over him with the branches in my arms, ready to make a Blair Witch crib. “Rough night?”

“My . . . back,” he grunted, “is out.”

“No.”

“I am not supposed to be loading in cases of equipment like a fucking twenty-three-year-old. I love you, Ror, but I’m not doing this shit again.”

“Don’t move. I’ll call someone.”

“Just leave me be. Set the whole thing up, and I’ll talk you through it.”

“Me?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

I looked at the clock. I had three hours to turn ten cartons of unassembled designer furniture, a chandelier that necessitated its own guard, and five bolts of black silk into something Rosemary’s Baby would sleep-train in. “Let me know if you need a pillow.”

I started by pulling out my power drill and assembling the most ornately carved single bed I could get my hands on. It was sent over from the Tribeca showroom and cost more than everything in my apartment combined. I didn’t have the time to install the brackets so no one could sit on it or breathe too hard in its direction, but it would do for pictures. Painter’s mask in place (following much negotiating with the designer’s publicist), I sprayed the whole thing black, then hung the Tim Burton images I’d downloaded and blown up myself. Getting the chandelier hung was kind of like the first time we flew with the kids: I just left myself and made it happen.

Hours behind schedule, the touch I was most proud of was the $600 Wednesday Addams getup from the Jaeyoon Jeong Collection that I laid out on the custom rocking chair, as if this were her room.

“Glen, how are you doing?”

“I really need to take a piss.”

I heard Taylor’s shoes come off the elevator. “Okay!” Clop-clop. “How’s it going?”

“I need to pee,” Glen reiterated from the floor. “And some oxycontin wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Can I see my money?” She peered around.

“Tah-dah.” I gestured to the set.

“In the laptop.”

“We haven’t shot anything yet.”

“Rory.” The bare arms crossed. “We only have the space ’til six. There is no budget for overtime.”

“I know, but without assistants, it takes a full day to put this together.”

She scowled. “Honestly, Rory, what about your app package?”

I walked over to the next furniture box to be unpacked and lay my phone atop it. “Go,” I commanded the device. “Nope.” I turned back to Taylor. “My phone cannot assemble a bureau, hang fabric, or paint a set. All it can do is keep prompting me to order coffee and lunch, but I don’t have time to stop and, you know, physically do that.”

“What’s that?” She pointed disdainfully to the bundle of twigs.

“The next setup—the nursery, but I planned to be assembling that while Glen shot the first space and—”

“Rory.” She held her palm up, which had a faded doodle of a dollar sign on it. “You
have
to be more efficient. You know what we learned in B-school?” She tilted her head in pity for everyone who would never make it to B-school. “Things will take as long as you decide they’re going to take.”

I wanted to see her assemble a single Ikea dresser. “Taylor, my goal is to walk out of here tonight with three setups in the can.” She winced at my old-school vernacular. “I’m doing as much as humanly possible with two hands. So either pay for the overtime or pay for an assistant.”

“Why did you log in from Stellar?” she asked bluntly.

“Pardon?”

“Tim noticed you logged in last night from 525 Madison Avenue.” I what?
Wait—could Kathryn do that?
My password was WynnMaya so, yes, very likely she could. “What were you doing at Stellar?”

“Waiting for a friend to have dinner.” I didn’t blink.

She didn’t blink back. “Fine. Get your assistant here. But tomorrow we’ll have a postmortem to review why you failed.” She tried to stride out regally, but her heels were so high it was more like a newborn camel. I dialed Zoe, the first useful thing my phone had done all day. Calling Kathryn would have to wait until I got home. I wasn’t exactly sure what my app package did, but transmitting a phone log to Taylor did not seem out of the question.

“Oh, Ror, I would’ve loved to,” Zoe said, “but I’m assisting on a shoot in Milwaukee. Some bottling magnate. His pool is tinted yellow to look like beer—I
cannot
convey how gross it is.”

“Zoe, that’s great, I’m so excited for you.” Shit.

“Do you want me to send my roommate? She’s in a carpal tunnel brace, but she means well.”

I declined, wished her a safe flight home, and hung up. “Okay, overtime it is.”

I called Blake. He answered. Progress. “Hey, Blake, thank you for picking up.”
I am not the problem.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m stuck here. I probably won’t be home until after midnight. Can you stay?”

“Oh.” He bristled.

“What?” I asked tentatively.

“It’s just that Robbie texted—he has house seats to
Long Day’s Journey
and he wants to introduce me to the director after.”

“Oh.” NottheproblemNottheproblemNottheproblem. “Okay.”

“I really think I should go,” he said firmly.

“I hear that.”

“You’re managing me.”

“You want to go, great, just get a sitter.” At twenty-five dollars an hour to see the longest play ever.

“Who should I call?” he asked.

“Just go down the list.”

There was a pause. We both knew he had to ask. “The list?”