How to Be a Grown-up (17 page)

My day planner told me it was attending a holiday party for the soccer team, an event I was having mixed feelings about for two reasons. First, we’d be attending as a threesome when we should have been a foursome. Birthday parties didn’t count—they were always a tag-out, with one of us making small talk while the other stayed home to glue model trains or play princess. But holiday parties? It was going to be me and forty some-odd couples.

Second, it was being hosted by Josh and his wife. Josh, who was always so easygoing and unpretentious. He let Matt put his cleat right on this thigh to tie it. And though he made jokes at his own expense about the hours he worked, he had a great rapport with both boys. Not like those dads who were a little awkward when they stepped back into their families on the weekends, pushing a stroller they didn’t quite know how to maneuver, comforting a child who wouldn’t be comforted, a look of mild panic on their faces.

Josh had wipes in his breast pocket, snack bars in his jeans, and Band-Aids in his wallet. He told me when he messed up at work, when I had spanokopita in my teeth, and when he unintentionally insulted the plus-sized mom by saying he had a big fat headache. Hanging out with him two hours every weekend had been the highlight of my shitty fall. I would miss it.

And now I was going to see inside his perfect life. And meet his perfect wife. And I wanted to. And I didn’t.

“How’s this?” Wynn asked for the sixth time, coming out of his room in yet another variation on an Iron Man T-shirt and khakis.

“A collar. A collar. A collar. And brush your hair.”

“Bu she ikes iuhn mah,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“She likes Iron Man!” he shouted.

“Emily Strang?”

“Yes, okay! Yes!”

“Then when you see her, unbutton one button and tell her how lame I am that I made you cover it up!”

“Fine!” He slammed his door. I put my hand over my heart. He liked a girl.

Wynn ran off as soon as the greeter took our coats, Maya tentatively negotiated a détente with Dylan, and I pulled up that half-smile I’d perfected years ago in the playground that I hoped said,
I’m having a great time
.

I was surprised by the apartment. It was a four-bedroom facing the park, which was inherently impressive, but it didn’t feel like Josh—or the woman I realized I had spent an inappropriate amount of time imagining. Though he’d never mentioned a dog, I expected one, the kind that sheds. I thought there’d be a lot of smushy sitting spots and a clear traffic path for three rambunctious boys, family photos, and kids’ art.

Instead the decor was a look I call
interchangeable
. The same sunburst mirror over the same white marble mantel flanked by the same Mitchell and Gold side chairs over the same key-patterned Stark rug, in a building where men came home from the same bank to women wearing the same white blouse and halfheartedly fucked them in the same position. If they got off on seven instead of eight, no one would be the wiser.

Even the holiday decorations were uniform—silver bells, balls, and baubles. No baby shoes or hand-painted blobs of clay. No ice-skating mice or penguins in woolly scarves. But, I noticed, the curtains were hand-print-free, the mohair couch had not a trace of Gogurt, and there was nary a skateboard scuff on the baseboards.

I took another sip of my champagne. Maybe this was the kind of woman I needed to get to know and learn from. The one who married the Right Guy. Who knew how to keep her kids Away From The Furniture. Who was Pulling This Off.

I saw Emily arrive with her parents. She had curled her hair and was wearing a short-sleeve dress. She looked around nervously. “He’s in the back!” I wanted to shout, but I played it cool.

Suddenly Stella’s Mom was at my elbow again, staring down her nose at the peppermint bark. “It sucks that we’re fattened like calves for a month and then thrust into bikinis. I should have picked skiing, but who has the energy?”

“Travel plans?” I asked my go-to.

“Peter’s family’s been going to this compound in the Bahamas for New Year’s since the triangle trade. It is the stuffiest thing you can imagine. Old people sit in the dining room and audibly fart. It is so depressing. What do you guys do?”

We
did
take the kids to Jessica’s Christmas Eve, let them stay up late, stay up even later assembling their toys, get up at five, do the whole Currier and Ives thing, eat bread pudding from a family recipe, then fall asleep by the tree.

“Do?” I repeated.

“Over the break?” We never traveled during high-priced blackout dates. But we took the kids ice-skating, we baked brownies, and we hit the museums. We blobbed around in our pajamas. We were a family.

“I just started a new job, so I drew the short straw to work over the holiday.” I managed to retain my smile, applauding my facial muscles like a heeling dog.

“Oh.” She had no idea what to say to that. Then her face brightened. “Have you met Gillian?”

“No—I—”

“Gillian, this is Rory, Wynn’s mom.” Dammit, she knows my name. “This is Gillian, our hostess.”

“So lovely to meet you.” With her corn silk hair and blue eyes, she was definitely attractive, but it really had more to do with her diamond earrings and sleeveless white cashmere packaging.

“You look fabulous,” Stella’s mom said to her. “On me winter white just looks blah.”

“Have you reached out to my shopper?” Gillian asked like she was her boss following up on an overdue marketing report.

“Not yet,” she admitted.

“She’ll save you so much time. And I’ll give you the name of my makeup person—she comes over with a steamer trunk. Every brand. Every product.” She was describing a piñata for grown-ups, but she was all business. “She creates looks for whatever you want—then has it all sent to you with video tutorials for your phone.” Gillian not only read Goop, she actually
did
all of it.

Looking around I saw that all of her friends were The Tense; women who had married in their mid-twenties when their hotness was on par with their husbands’ salaries. Now, fifteen years later, his worth had only grown exponentially, while her value was waning. Hence the tension.

Then the sickening thought passed through me: If I was going to be single, if someone who had not put the babies in me was going to see me naked, I really had a
lot
to learn. Because I’d be competing with women like Gillian, women whose appearance was their full-time job.

And I did not want that to be true. Any of it.

“Does she do skin care too?” Stella’s Mom asked.

“You
have
to go to a dermatologist, Polly.” Polly! “Do not buy shit off a shelf.”

“It’s a wonderful party,” I jumped in. “Don’t you think, Polly?”

“We like to get everyone together at the holidays.” Gillian cast a vague glance over the room, as if she were the first lady, and had gathered us here but had no idea who we actually were.

Which, in my case, was true. “Are you traveling over the holidays?” Orbitz should have given me a kickback.

“Josh likes to visit his family in Delaware. I mean, the house is fine. It’s on the river. But, like, get some new sheets, Betty. Treat yourself. And I have to bring all my own food,” Gillian explained. “And someone’s always trying to get a football game going on the lawn. Then his dad organizes story time.” She rolled her eyes. “That happens in the den with sherry. You can’t have seltzer. You have to have the sherry.” Sign. Me. Up.

Suddenly there was a waist-high blur as Dylan and his friends cut a racetrack through the living room, past the cookie table, and out. “Gotcha!” I heard and the next thing I saw, Dylan was upside down over Josh’s shoulder in the double doorway to the dining room where the buffet was set up.

“Put. Him. Down.” Gillian’s biceps flexed. “What is this, a barn?” she asked scary brightly, like light glinting off ice. “Boys, there are snacks for you in the den. Please stay in there or Matt’s room. Chris?” she called and a teenager turned away from his group of friends. He looked like his mother. “Can you keep an eye on them, please?”

He looked like he was going to get right on that.

Gillian turned back to us, her eyes pinched open. “It is just nonstop.”

I simply couldn’t picture her with Josh.

Suddenly “Joy to the World” came over speakers embedded discreetly into the gray grass cloth, and the room quickly rearranged itself. Song sheets appeared. Children flowed out from the back on cue, finding their family cluster like penguins returned from the coast.

Where were my children? Was I just going to be left singing alone like a sad aunt? I made my way to the other side of the apartment. “Maya? Wynn?” I whispered as I moved through empty bedrooms filled with custom-made bunk beds and turtle aquariums and field hockey gear.
Where were they?

I opened a door to find Wynn and Emily watching
Elf
in the oldest son’s room with some of the other kids. They had the love seat to themselves, but they were as far apart as humanly possible. I knew she would talk about this for weeks. “Wynn, where’s Maya?”

“Making a gingerbread house with the little kids.”

“Okay.”

I doubled back up the hall, shimmied behind everyone caroling in the dining room, and from there through to the kitchen where the catering staff was in a black-tie frenzy.

Where, in this apartment, would you let a group of preschoolers use icing sugar?

I opened the door to a maid’s room that had been converted into an office. And, pausing my quest, shut it behind me, momentarily appreciating that the center panel had been wallpapered in the matching bamboo-pattern as the custom shade and desk chair upholstery. Then I started sobbing.

The door cracked open. “Oh, God, sorry,” Josh said.

“No, no, this is your house.” I leaped up from the daybed. “I should not be hiding in it.”

“Having the most wonderful time of the year?”

I ran my sleeve across my face.

“Wait, no, here, let me get you a Kleenex.” He reached into the bathroom and pulled out a linen-covered box.

“Thanks.”

He sat down next to me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be out there falalalalaing?”

He raised his hand, then let it flop down in his lap. “I don’t know why she throws this party every year. I mean, I don’t know why it has to be such a big production. She gets so stressed she just screams at me and the boys starting around Thanksgiving.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“I’m Jewish.”

“And there’s that.”

He laughed. I wanted to put my head on his shoulder. “I should go find the kids,” I said.

“First you need to wash your face. Your makeup’s in kind of a crisscrossed pattern.”

“Note to self: not the time in life to be wearing statement eyes.” And before I let anything else slip, I stood up.

“What’s the statement?” he asked.

“Very tired raccoon.”

He stood up too. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “Whatever you’re going through, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to miss soccer.” He reached out and squeezed my hand, then turned to leave, his warm reassurance imprinted on my palm. “What’s Wynn taking this winter?” he asked, half out the door.

“Karate at the Y.” I sniffled.

“Is it too late to sign up?”

“I don’t think so.”

He turned back and smiled at me. “Merry Happy.”

“Happy Merry.”

And he left me in peace to put myself back together.

Chapter Eleven

As the elevator chugged up to JeuneBug in its ominous way Monday morning, I decided I had hit on a brilliant plan. I was going to call, pretending to be that woman from Audi I’d met at Kathryn’s house, and ask Taylor for the revenue numbers. I was going to wear a false moustache, auto-tune my voice, and use Claire’s phone, which came up blocked. I was going to move to Uruguay and open an ecohotel. No, not an ecohotel. A coffee farm? Like Karen Blixen? I was going to—

The door slid open to audible sobbing.
Oh good, audible sobbing. I can get in on that.

I crept through the bullpen where everyone who had their headphones off was awkwardly frozen, while those around them tapped on obliviously.

Across from a stoic-looking Kimmy, Taylor sat at her desk, ugly crying.

“Can I help?” I asked. Because I was a mom. It was a reflex. Better than my old mom reflex, which would have been to shove my boob in her mouth.

“Gah—gah,” Taylor spluttered.

“Gavin’s in love with someone else,” Kimmy said, passing over another tissue with a crown embossed on it.

“And she’s, like,
forty!”
Taylor coughed out.

“It’s repulsive,” Kimmy agreed.

“Did he say who she was?” I asked, bracing myself for Taylor’s stiletto through my forehead.

“No, just that she has kids,” Taylor spat, a clump of false eyelashes dangling.

“It sounds awful,” I said comfortingly. “I should get back to—” I pointed over my shoulder.

They both nodded.

At my desk I had improbably matching texts waiting for me, the same word from both Gavin and Kathryn:

“Well?”