How to Be a Grown-up (13 page)

“He was never a voluble kid,” she said, raising her hands, her mandala beads clacking. “He’s retreating, it’s what he does. When he didn’t get the Six Flags commercial, he didn’t say a word for an entire week. Dr. Weinstein, down the hall, finally had to look at him,” she summarized dismissively, like she’d called in pest control.

“Blake stopped talking?” I asked, thrown. Riveted. “How old was he?”

“Oh, I don’t know—seven or eight the first time.”

“The first time?” I looked out to where our son was reading sheet music, his cheeks full of bagel, his sweatshirt streaked with mud.

“I mean, he wasn’t catatonic, just, you know, glum. He’s an artist. But unlike his shithead father, his kids are his heart. He knows the best thing for him is to be with you.”

“He said that? Recently?”

She patted my back as I blinked back tears. “Focus on gratitude, Rory.”

I blew my nose in a paper towel. “Sorry. The indefiniteness of him being gone is making me nuts.”

“He gets embarrassed, doesn’t know how to return to the party. I mean, that’s what Weinstein said. So how are you doing?” She gave me her most supportive expression. “Talk to me.”

“Well, it’s hard.” Dixie cup, Dixie cup. “Two kids, two schedules, Wynn applying to middle school, Maya gets frustrated that the older kids can do more so I’ve had to meet with her teachers, and this new job—”

“Think who you’re talking to,” she abruptly cut me off. “I mean, at least you have a community.” She pulled a baggie of acupuncture herbs out of her canvas tote, which she yanked open, causing a puff of brown dust to settle on the counter. “We didn’t have blogs or meet-ups. Being a single mother was embarrassing. We had failed.”

“No, I know.” I stepped back. “I’m hardly a single mother, not even close.” I poured the boiling water over the brown powder, which instantly gave off the scent of monkey.

“Our generation got turfed out of our apartments, our social standing. We didn’t know to lawyer-up yet. We didn’t know to fight. I looked at the divorces in Blake’s class as he hit high school—those women came out swinging. You want to fuck the girl at the Porsche showroom? It’s gonna cost you, buddy. Not that I’m carrying regret. Regret’s cancer. No.” She shimmied her shoulders and dropped her head back to exhale a yogic breath.

“I don’t . . . this is not that,” I said, feeling, as I frequently did with Val, like I had to apologize on behalf of the 1980s.

“Now that I’m here we’ll talk. He’ll take his mom for a cannoli from Roccos and get it all out in the open.” She tilted her head conspiratorially. “What do you want me to ask?”

I hated having to depend on Val as my go-between. Her opinions were strong but quixotic, and inconsistencies were embraced with equal fervor. She could tell Blake to cut the shit—or that sabbaticals are a vital part of the life journey. And she’d consider both pieces of advice helpful.

But I didn’t want to be like that parable where the guy’s lost at sea and God sends help via dolphins and driftwood, but the guy drowns because he’s so fixated on getting a rescue ship. We just needed out of the water. Were the means that important?

“Just find out when he’s coming home,” I asked what I vowed I wouldn’t.

“Rory, just trust. Trust he will return when he is meant to return. So kids,” she called, turning her back to me, “do you love the honey? I know the beekeeper personally. Great guy.”

But, with far more skill than I had shown, Blake evaded Val all weekend, so I was teetering from tedium to full-on despair by the time she left Sunday morning to catch the ferry to the starting line. Then, because the universe decided I was never going to be allowed to stew in my pajamas like a normal wife in crisis, I received an unexpected call to bring the kids to a Marathon viewing brunch at Kathryn’s. Much frantic lint-rolling ensued. “Of course I’ll meet you there!” Claire said over the phone. “Don’t be nervous.”

“Kathryn is Editor in Chief. While friendly, she does not invite the likes of me to her home.” Which meant that metaphorically I was either about to be hit with a headwind, or a tailwind, and there was no way to tell which.

On the eighteenth floor we were greeted by a server offering champagne.

“Do you have chocolate milk?” Maya inquired as Claire helped her off with her coat.

“Can you imagine?” I asked Claire, having been unable to let go of it all weekend. “Your kid not talking for
a month
? And she takes him to see the guy down the hall—who grows his own pot?”

“The seventies.” Claire shuddered. “I’m amazed he didn’t advise her to roll Blake in a rug and rebirth him.”

“Rory.” Kathryn emerged from the cluster of guests. There had to be at least a hundred people there.

“Your home is gorgeous,” I said as she kissed my cheeks. The gallery stepped down into a vast room with French doors onto a terrace running its length—the
New York Post
had called the apartment her trophy. Twenty years her senior, Kathryn’s ex left her for someone twenty years her junior. “My divorce,” she once told me, “represented a complete failure of his imagination.”

“Maya, Wynn,” I prompted, “say hello to Ms. Stossel.”

“Hello!” Wynn stuck out his hand to shake, and I squeezed his shoulder in pride.

“Do you have chocolate milk?” Maya continued with her agenda.

“Even better, we have chocolate croissant. Lachlan?” She summoned her fifteen-year-old son from a group of similarly cashmere-clad teens. “Would you escort these two to the pastry?” Confident and at ease to a degree that must obliterate girls his own age, Lachlan was the poster child for single motherdom. He led my kids away while Kathryn grabbed my elbow and steered me on a tour.

“Dining room, guest room.” Kathryn continued at a steady clip. “And this is mine.” She pulled the double doors shut behind us, blocking out the party chatter and jazz quartet.

“Jesus,” I murmured as I took in the curtains. Only they weren’t curtains, they were Grace Kelly in a Dior gown.

“Yes.” She acknowledged the layers of swooping silk. “Sailcloth was having a moment—but Ikea is supposed to imitate us—not the other way around. Look, Rory, I need your help. I’ve gathered every major luxury brand in my living room. Pitch JeuneBug.”

“Of course. For what?” Headwind, tailwind?

“Those girls think they’re above advertisers because they’re in the bassinet of flush funding.” She picked an errant string off my dress and tucked it in the pocket of her camel slacks. “If Asher was managing our investment properly he’d be making these relationships so JeuneBug can diversify their revenue. That’s not old thinking, it’s solid thinking.”

The doors cracked open and she spun around. “Oh, Kathryn, sorry.” A man stuck his head in. “I lost Charlene.”

“Bob, wait, this is Rory McGovern. Rory’s with JeuneBug, the new endeavor I was telling you about,” she said as she walked us both out. “Bob and his family are in from Dallas.” That was all I was given to go on. I knew several major accounts were based out of Dallas—Audi, Lexus, DeBeers. Bob turned to me. I went blank.

“I—uh—do you run?” I managed to ask.

While he took me through his knee surgery I screamed something like a pep talk at myself.
Channel Taylor, channel Taylor, channel Taylor!

“So . . . JeuneBug,” he gave me another opening.

Deep breath. “It’s unprecedented,” I enthused. “JeuneBug’s seeding brand loyalty at the ground floor. We’re a digitally native business, a technology company that produces media instead of a media company that uses technology. Everything we’re doing is optimized—” As I talked at every executive who crossed my path the Nigerians crossed the finish line below, the cheers and cowbells muffled by distance, but clanging just the same.

“I have to go poop.” Maya brought me back to earth.

“So sorry, nature calls,” I apologized to the account executive from Hermès Home and took Maya’s hand.

“This way.” She tugged me down a hall.

“You’ve already been?”

“With Claire. But for poop, I want you.” We arrived outside the guest bathroom to find a woman whose hair cascaded so perfectly down her back that, had I seen it in tenth grade, I would have spent my Dairy Queen paycheck trying to achieve that wave.

Eyeing us, she leaned into the door. “Fly, are you done?”

“There’s a fly in there?” Maya looked up at me.

“No!” a boy yelled back.

“It’s just a boy, honey,” I clarified.

“The boy’s a bug?”

“You know what? I’m sure there’s another bathroom—”

The paneled door swung open, and a boy Maya’s age, ambitiously dressed in a long rock star sweater, stood with his skinny jeans around his motorcycle boots. “Wipe me.”

“Fly.” The woman wrinkled her tiny nose. “Can’t you?”

“Consuela does it. Wipe me, Mommy.”

She stepped inside.

“Don’t close the door!” he ordered.

She bent down, her suede dress sliding up her toned thighs as she grabbed the toilet paper. It only had two squares left on the roll. “Ugh.”

Swiping a box of tissues from a side table, I leaned in. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She took it from me. “So!” She pulled out a social smile as we found ourselves in this together. “Who are you here with?”

“JeuneBug.”

“Oh, how’s that going?”

“Fantastic.”

“Mommy.” Maya tugged my hand down with her full weight as if trying to make the rest of me ring.

“My husband mentioned it. You’re ramping up, right?” She wrestled Fly’s jeans back up. “You just got more capital.”

“We did?” Seeing the toilet free, Maya shoved down her tights and grabbed the hem of her dress. “Well then assistants can’t be far behind. Apologies, but this is happening.” We switched places as Fly sat on the floor to watch.

“No, I need pwivathy,” Maya said, and Fly slumped out. I closed the door.

As soon as we left the powder room, Maya skipped back to the kids, and Kathryn was suddenly at my side gripping my arm. “He’s here,” she said through a tight smile as she touched the flowers in the arrangement beside me. “Uninvited.” I followed the other swiveling and straining heads to see Asher Hummel handing off his coat by the door. Preternaturally tan, chin nearly tripled over his signature white collar, he smiled pleasantly. “He can’t know that I know you,” she whispered before gliding over to him.“Asher, lovely of you to come!”

“Seems I almost missed the fun.” Asher let her kiss him on both cheeks.

“Isn’t JeuneBug his daughter’s company?” Bob, passing by me, mused as he looked on.

“Sorry?” I asked, distracted by the fact that the woman I’d just been talking to was taking Asher’s hand proprietarily. Fly, a child with a shockingly unfortunate combination of their attributes, squeezed between them.

“JeuneBug.” Bob dropped a handful of spiced nuts into his mouth. “Someone said it was Asher’s daughter’s site. The one from the first marriage: Taylor.”

And all at once I placed the wide brow and the rounded lump that must have been the original provenance of Taylor’s nose. No, I recalled Kathryn’s initial concern, Asher
wasn’t
thinking with his head. Oh my God.

Was I staking my family’s solvency on some girl’s graduation present?!

Kathryn met my eyes as she handed off the flutes, her telegraphed request reaching me as if our foreheads were connected by wire. Excusing myself, I quickly ducked into the kitchen where I wove around the caterers to the back door and slipped out.

“Kathryn Stossel sweats. I’ve learned so much today,” Claire said as she handed over my coat a few minutes later in the lobby. I waved Wynn over from where he and Maya were circling the marble table with extended arms as if performing modern dance for the doormen.

“Of course she’s sweating!” I took Wynn’s hat from his pocket and handed it to him. “This whole time I’d stupidly assumed, regardless of where Kathryn’s ego fell in this, that those girls must know what they’re doing or they’d never have gotten the money. But they got the money because it’s Daddy’s.”

“Easy, there.” Claire attempted to rein me in. “It’s not Daddy’s; it’s Stellar’s. Besides, build an eight-thousand dollar toddler bed and they will come. They
have
come. You’ve already proven that. Your vertical sold out, right?”