How to Be a Grown-up (3 page)

But then he went up for this new Netflix series. It was a leading part, the game changer, his Don Draper. The closer Blake got to forty, Jon Hamm, who was still waiting tables when he auditioned for
Mad Men
, was referenced in our house with the frequency some families talk about Jesus.

The studio flew Blake to LA, put him on camera, tested him with Maria Bello, tested him with Katherine Delaney, although he couldn’t get a handle from the dialogue if they were supposed to be his wife—or his mother. Back and forth through the spring and into the summer. He didn’t want to take another job in case he had to “jump.” I took as much freelance work as I could scrounge up, but things were getting very, very scary. I leaped for the mail every day like a teenager, looking for the residual checks that were getting us through.

“Blake, I’m so sorry,” I said as we pulled up at our building. “But as soon as the kids are down, we really need to start to figure this out.” He was dropping us off with all the gear before going to return the car.

“Sure,” he said, without looking at me as he left.

While he was gone the kids and I unpacked, then started laundry and had dinner. Then went to the park to enjoy one of the last summer evenings. I was laying out their school clothes for the next day when a text finally came from Blake: “Ran into Jack. Grabbing a drink.”

It seemed that I’d been asleep for hours when I felt him slide in next to me. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to curl into him, feel his fingers in my hair, his heartbeat under my cheek that told me I wasn’t alone, that we would figure this out. Team Turner.

But he didn’t move any closer. He was sweating whiskey.

“Did you have fun?” I whispered.

“Got a call from Pete. Someone dropped out of that short he’s directing in Rhode Island,” he said groggily. Outside, the late-night traffic made a soft whir, a stop/go in time with our conversation. “Ten-day shoot.”

“Okay?” I said it like a question. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“But you haven’t seen the kids in two weeks.”

“We’ll FaceTime. I’ll catch the train in the morning after we drop them off.” He wasn’t asking; he was telling.

Ten more days. As a solo parent. I could do it. If this was what he needed.

“But when you get back, Blake, we’re going to talk.”

Chapter Two

“Jesus, are you okay?” Jessica asked the next morning as I knelt on the floor of Maya’s room brushing her hair for her first day of pre-K. Jessica was already at her office at the Time Warner Center, just a few blocks away. I could picture her chewing on a pen to give her nails a break. Now the editor of the parenting vertical of the
Huffington Post,
she worked hours that should have completely precluded parenting, only her sons, Henry and Gus, were seven and five.

“I’m bummed for him—for us. This really seemed like it was finally The Thing. Maya, stop wriggling,” I said through teeth clenching a Hello Kitty rubber band. “But at least now Blake can’t fight me on finding a full-time job.”

“Oh, Rory,” Jessica said, which was shorthand for,
Full-time job? Where? Doing what?

“How’s it going on your end?” I asked.

“Well, we started the day with Henry down on the living room floor with Minecraft saying, ‘Mom, I’m trying to figure out how to kill the most people.’ And I said, ‘Honey, let’s not call the dweebils or weebils or whatever they are “people,” because it sounds bad.’ And in a way it’s so sweet because he can’t even process why that would be. Death has no cognitive underpinning for him. Kill probably doesn’t even have anything to do with death. So Henry and Gus tried to leap into an explanation of the game, but of course, I was already late for work. I have to try to make it home before they’re asleep so they can teach me.” Jessica had so made the right move when she decided to get back together with Miles after his MFA. He ran a successful graphic design company from their brownstone and did the drop-offs, the pick-ups, the sick days, the grocery runs—everything Blake should also have been in charge of and yet, mysteriously, wasn’t.

“Ooh, there’s Claire on the other line,” I said. “Let me get this.”

“Tell her I love her and I want my blouse back. Bye!”

“How’s my girl doing?” Claire asked, huffing on the Stairmaster. Claire was an abstract painter whose “yes, but” was now working in the planning department of the Museum of Modern Art.

“She’s getting pigtails for her big day.”

“Mommy’s making me!”

“Put me on speaker. Hi, Maya. It’s your Godmama.”

“Hi, Claire!” Maya adored Claire, who, at forty-one, was convinced she would never have children of her own and lavished her with everything Sanrio could dream up.

“I’m just calling to say, rock it hard. Keep an eye out for anyone who looks nervous and offer them some Play-Doh. You could have a friend for life. Then call me tonight and let me know how it went.”

“Okay!”

“What are you wearing?”

“The gween dress you gave me with the heart shoes and my pwincess undies.”

“Princess undies, nice. You’re not worried you’ll anger the Upper West Side progressives?” Claire asked me as I took her off speaker.

“I have zero objection to the whole princess thing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the last hurrah of being the center of the story. After Disney, it’s just a fast downhill slope to being Dead Stripper 3 on
Special Victims Unit
.”

“Oops, here comes the next incline. She’ll do great. Call me later.” And she was gone. That was quintessential Claire. Remembering it was a big day, calling to pump Maya up, knowing that I was nervous because she is a December birthday and would always be the youngest in her class, and then—poof—back to her glamorous life of shaking down the rich and famous for cash.

“Okay, guys, go kiss Daddy good-bye and we’ll meet by the door.” Despite his promise of a family drop-off, he was still sleeping it off.

I grabbed my purse from the front hall bench and checked my reflection. This had been an aging week. In my opinion, aging happens in bursts, like how presidents go gray overnight. I’d been treading water for about eighteen months, but suddenly the lines around my mouth were deeper. This is when Jessica would say,
Because you smiled so much with the kids all summer
. She was an optimist.

I did a quick spin to check my profile. While I, like pretty much all other New York moms, had kept my figure through a steady program of stroller pushing and subway-stair navigating, I knew if I lifted my blouse, the ravages of two pregnancies were memorialized around my belly button. Some days I’d like to grab my thirty-year-old self and scream,
Do not eat a single salad, do not waste a second worrying about your butt or your imaginary cellulite! You are firm! Your nipples face upward, and your vagina is like a vise! Go forth and be naked in confidence!

I sighed and put my bag on my shoulder.

“Daddy, Daddy, look, I have pwincess undies!” From the hall I could hear Blake laughing.

“Let’s not let everybody at school know about how cool your undies are—not on the first day.”

“Okay.”

He chatted effortlessly with the kids for a few minutes, reassuring Maya and pumping up Wynn, while I stared at the pinstripe wallpaper we had hung together when Wynn was still in his bouncer. I was about to call out to keep them moving when Wynn asked, “You want to say good-bye to Mom?”

“Already did, buddy. You guys get going.”
Huh.

“Okay, it’s eight o’clock,” I shouted. “Everyone grab your backpacks!”

We could never tell anyone at school that we had trouble with the bus—or waited for the train—because technically we were supposed to live within walking distance.

While the area around Columbus Circle had been populated with oligarchs, none of them were sending their kids to the Hell’s Kitchen public schools, which remained sketchy at best. So I held onto and sublet the lease to my old studio to secure them spots in the coveted zone for PS 87. A major no-no. But with private school tuition hovering around the $40,000 a year mark, so worth the risk.

And if I ever told my parents those numbers, they would have driven down and forcibly taken me home to Oneonta—where my brother and his wife were happily sprawled in 3,000 square feet, a decent school was a given, and having a car wasn’t more work than having a dog.

Wynn, who’d been very quiet on the walk, suddenly clutched my hand. “This is my last first day.”

“Here, yes, but I promise you have so many firsts coming up in your life, buddy.”

“But I like it here. I don’t want to leave.” We were about to run the middle school admissions gauntlet, which was supposedly more confusing and stressful than applying to college. “But you’re a fifth-grade senior! You’re gonna rule the school!”

Wynn spotted his best friend, and they ran in together, leaving me to focus on getting Maya situated. I kissed the top of her lovely head and then had to extricate myself. Not from Maya, who was already ambitiously building a Hello Kitty out of blocks, but from the other mothers.

The mom scene at PS 87 was sharply divided into two factions—and I knew what they said about each other because I’d been on both sides. When Wynn was born, I tried to keep working, but the challenge of being freelance was that jobs would come up at the last minute, or change dates, or be in Miami and just when Blake would say, “No sweat, I’ve got you covered,” he’d get an audition and we’d fight over which was more important: my paltry day rate or the chance of Blake booking a show that could pay our rent for months.

Meanwhile, I risked being called the worst name in the business: unreliable. So I slowed down, figuring that when Wynn started school I could ramp back up. Which I did for three years.

Then a particularly rigorous bout of makeup sex knocked my Mirena loose and—oops!—Maya.

So I’ve done those post-drop-off coffees. I’ve heard the smug tut-tuts about what the harried office moms are missing, and why did they bother having kids? And I’ve dashed to the subway, overhearing the condescending dismissals of the moms with “nothing to do all day.”

But I look at it this way: imagine there are no working moms. Suddenly we’re plunged back two hundred years. Now imagine there are no stay-at-home moms. Who the hell is keeping my kids’ school running? Who am I going to for advice? So the world needs all of us, and we should stop writing shit about each other on the bathroom wall that is UrbanBaby.

That day, I was the harried one with twenty minutes to get back down to midtown. I nabbed a cab, stared at my phone, took a deep breath, and dialed.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

“Hello, Clive,” I said to my agent. He had been my booker for fifteen years and still liked me, despite the many times Blake’s schedule had interfered with my taking an assignment.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the shoot?”

“First day of school, but don’t worry. I already prepped the site, and Zoe is there.” Zoe was my assistant. She’d been with me since she’d graduated Parsons because she Figures Shit Out. The story’s about wallpaper, and the apartment doesn’t have any? She would never sidle up to me and whine, “But they took down the wallpaper.” She’d buy some wrapping paper and invisible tape. She was a solution rolled in an answer stuffed inside a miracle—a turducken of efficacy.

“What can I do for you?”

“I need a job.” I’d been planning that I’d work more frequently now that Maya would be in school from nine until six, but freelance. “A full-time job. As soon as possible.” I felt like one of those grizzled farmers in disaster movies who stare at the cloudless sky and abruptly say, “Get in the basement.”

“I don’t know of any staff positions coming up, but you know you’re front of mind for freelance.” I was hearing daily about editorial staffs being cut like snowflakes from copy paper, leaving teams most notable for their holes. And the more experienced (read: old) the employee, the more glaring her cost on the payroll. With women my age the first to go, competition in the freelancing sector was quadrupling while opportunities disappeared. Right as our confidence ripened—right as our children were finally loading the dishwasher—we were being reduced to low-hanging fruit.