How to Be a Grown-up (9 page)

“Taylor?”

“Yep.” She didn’t look up.

“My first shoot is Thursday and I wanted to ask about the invoicing procedure for the staff?”

“Staff?” she echoed.

“The photographer and assistants.”

“Rory,” she huffed my name. “No assistants.”

“Sorry?”

“Those are the calories we cut,” she stated.

My eyebrows furrowed. “But I need an assistant.”

She let the phone flop down but stayed prone. “You think you need an assistant because you’ve always had an assistant.”

“Right.” Hookah-smoking Caterpillar. “I’ve always had an assistant. Glen, the photographer who is already making time in his schedule as a favor to me, has always had an assistant since he
was
an assistant.”

“My guru says anything that comes after the words ‘I need’ the universe is going to give you the opportunity to let go of.”

“On Thursday?”

She resumed typing. “That’s what your app package is for. Didn’t Ginger hook you up?” she asked.

“I’ll check with her.”

At reception I approached Ginger, who was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Boys (heart) BJs.”

“I almost wore my shirt that says, ‘Duh.’ ”

“Sorry?” Ginger asked.

“Never mind. Who do I speak to about my app package?”

She made a sound like gargling. “Tim.” She pointed me back to the bullpen.

“Tim?” I called hesitantly over the heads of the other vertical directors.

A halo of dark red frizz rose into view and then dipped back down behind a massive screen. “Tim?” I asked again as I approached. He glanced up fearfully, small eyes blinking behind thick spectacles. His hair blended into a scraggle of a beard, which, coupled with his general roundness, gave the impression of a mole or badger, like he was the programmer from
Wind and the Willows
.

“Yes?”

“Apparently, I need an app package.”

He held out his hand.

“Oh, hi, I’m Rory.” I shook it.

“No.” He yanked away like I had warts. “Your phone.”

“Oh, sorry.” I tugged it out of my blazer pocket and handed it to him.

He swiped across the screen. “It’s already on here.”

“It is?” I looked down with him.

“It clouds with your computer. You want me to enable everything?”

“Just me. Just enable me. Thank you.”

You are . . . late. You are . . . late.

“Guys!” I shouted for the kids from the front hall the next morning as I grabbed my keys. “My phone says we’re late.”

“How does it know?” Wynn asked, lugging his french horn to the door. His auditions for performance-based middle schools were coming up. I guiltily realized that with all that was going on, I hadn’t been as on him as I should have about practicing. I didn’t honestly care if he was a french horn prodigy. Except he kind of was. And maybe all ten-year-olds were just incapable of making themselves do anything but play World of Warcraft. I was the opposite of a Tiger Mother—a hamster. I was a Hamster Mother.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It clouds with my computer. Maya, why did you change?” She had removed the outfit we’d agreed on and put on a party dress. With her Miss Piggy pajama bottoms.

“I wathn’t feewing it.”

“I see.”

You are . . . late,
the voice said louder. I would have to name it. “Maya, we can’t wear pajamas to school.”

“I want the piggy pants!”

Before I had children, I wondered why little girls were dressed like Fruit Loops, as if we all had cataracts and it was the responsibility of children’s clothing manufacturers to make sure we could discern form. Even after Wynn, the mystery lingered. To this day, he is relatively fine to throw on whatever, barring that summer he wouldn’t take off his Thomas the Tank Engine rain boots and we had to sneak into his room while he slept to spray antifungal on his little feet.

Then I had a daughter whose opinions are violent and quixotic. When she was a baby, she would burst into tears for no reason. Dry, fed, burped, rested, she would wail at me like I was an imbecile. I now know that she will not wear anything with a tag, discernible seam, or reverse stitching—like polka dots. Any kind of texture against her skin is unbearable to her. And she
loves
purple. With pink and turquoise and banana yellow. Loves it.

So until Blake got back, she would be that kid. The one in the tutu and the rash guard. And I could not give a fuck.

You are . . . late.

“Okay, fine. Let’s go!”

We were halfway to the train when the rain that wasn’t supposed to start until lunchtime broke. “My thandals! My thandals are getting wet!” Maya screamed as if lava were falling from the sky. I heaved her onto one hip, feeling my vertebrae do something that looked like an accordion midperformance.

Blake had been away for weeks at a stretch before, but always with an end date. Now, not knowing when I was going to be able to tag myself out and catch my breath was unnerving. I realized that I depended on his returns as if they were finish lines. I used them to determine when to flat-out parent (impromptu giant art projects) and when to conserve my energy to go the mothering distance (Dora).

You are moving in the wrong direction!

“Mommy, are we?” Maya asked as Wynn and I ran with our jackets raised over our heads. My phone rang. We tried not to slip down the subway stairs.

“Hello?” I answered breathlessly as I pulled out my Metrocard.

“Rory,” Kathryn said, sounding like she was dry in a town car. “Listen, I’d be curious to see the mechanicals for the launch pages as soon as they’re compiled.”

“Uh, sure,” I said, unsure if it was actually an “uh, sure” situation. Guessing that if Taylor wasn’t allowed to know I knew Kathryn, it probably wasn’t.

“Thank you.” She hung up, and I tapped at the settings as we waited for the subway but couldn’t figure out how to disable it. Wynn even gave it a try. When we turned off the sound, my phone shook without stopping like a vibrator going for a Christmas bonus.

“Mom,” Wynn said sharply as we approached school. “Turn that
off
. You look
weird
.” What, with the Cuisinart in my purse?

I set it on a low volume.
You are moving in the wrong direction,
she whispered urgently from my bag. It was starting to feel that way.

By the time I got to the therapist’s office, I had to take off my ballet flats and tip the water out. The bottoms of my pants were dripping.

Blake smiled at me as he opened the door to the waiting room, his hoodie sweatshirt similarly sodden.
Aren’t we a pair?
he seemed to say as we glanced around at the other couples sensibly covered in Burberry.

This was the kind of thing I had loved about us when I moved in with him, two creatives on the edge of the old Hell’s Kitchen, ordering off the early-bird menus, buying the day-old bread. When we carried the buckets of paint and sanders into the apartment, our neighbors kept complaining that a “crew” was coming and going after-hours. They couldn’t imagine anyone doing the work themselves. We sat on the floor and ate $5 pad thai and Blake listened for Wynn’s heartbeat and we felt special. Our own little Bohemia in the Bergdorf’s triangle.

But now I was forty-one and suddenly felt like an asshole for trusting the forecast and being married to someone who also trusted the forecast. One of us should have an umbrella! We didn’t both need to have one. I didn’t have a penis. There was a differentiation of responsibilities, but someone should have an umbrella.

“Mr. and Mrs. Turner?” a woman beckoned from a doorway. Behind her I could see pickled floors and white walls, like a beach house. “I’m Dr. Brompton.” She looked like a former dancer in an oatmeal-colored wrap sweater over white jeans, her gray blond hair twisted up with a pencil. “Please have a seat.”

Blake did his actor thing of sitting with his legs crossed under him, which he did when he was getting down to work on something.
Great. Let’s get down to work.

“Okay.” Her voice was syrupy yet breathy as she placed her notepad in her lap. “What we’re going to do today is root out whose fault the problems in your marriage are. We’re going to dig into the blame. Who wants to go first?” Wait—what??

“I will, I guess,” Blake said as I tried to process what the hell had just come out of her mouth. He exhaled. “Okay. Rory’s really judgmental.”

“Wait,” I interrupted before I could even let that land. “I’m sorry, I thought we were going to have to use ‘I’ statements and own our feelings.”

“See, there you are, judgmental,” he said in a tone that indicated he was just warming up.

“You think I’m judgmental?” I asked. How long had he been festering about this? About me?

He addressed Dr. Brompton: “Part of what attracted me to Rory at the beginning was that we were both artists, but really, deep down, she’s just like her parents.”

“Mommy, I hate you!”
I saw myself standing over four-year-old Wynn at the playground, tears streaming down his face because I wouldn’t let him stay and play in the thunderstorm.
“I hate you!”

Blake’s just angry at life right now,
I told myself.
He doesn’t mean this; he’s hurt and he just wants to strike at something and I’m the safest thing
.

“I don’t know if she’s changed or that’s who she’s really always been, but it’s definitely not the kind of person I would have been attracted to, wanted to build a life with.”

“Wait,” I said again, swallowing my reaction, trying to get this back on track. “We’re supposed to be coming up with a blueprint for moving forward. For your career change.”

“See, just like them.”

“Um . . . we should be so lucky.” I swiveled to Dr. Brompton, stunned smile on my face. “My parents own their home outright. Have no debt. Have a retirement account. Long-term care insurance. And living wills. And nobody ever forgot to pick me up from school.”

“I did not forget,” he said through gritted teeth. “I was late.”

“Because you forgot.” Why was this relevant? I didn’t want to sound like this.

“Losing track of time is not the same as forgetting!” He was baiting me.

“You want to know the last time I ‘lost track of time’?” My heart sped. “I was in labor.
That
is not a luxury I have. I do not go grab a beer with my friends after an audition and then look up and realize my eight-year-old— I’m sorry.” I appealed to Dr. Brompton, trying to steady myself. “How is this productive?”

She squinted behind her glasses. “Someone is to blame. We’re here to figure out who.”

I struggled to think clearly. “But your book is called
No More Blame
.”

“Oh. You haven’t read it.” She sat back. “Couples therapy is traditionally a gateway drug to divorce. Why? Because people pay hundreds of dollars to have these polite
useless
conversations. Then they go home where I can’t help them and tear each other apart. So in my process we dive
into
the blame.” She arced her pressed palms. “We become blame warriors. So, Blake, continue.”

“It’s gotten to the point where nothing I do is good enough. Seriously, nothing.”

What? “That’s not true, Blake.”

“It is.”

“Can you be specific?” she prompted him.

“You don’t let me flow with the kids. Every morning, you’re just go, go, go.”

I was dumbfounded. “When we’re trying to get out the door and you stand there like you’ve never seen them before, when they don’t have shoes on, which is a pretty obvious place to start, I get angry.”

“I was never on time for school. I skipped out on whole years. You’re so focused on what’s not happening. The important thing is that they’re not just being hustled from one place to the next. That they love to learn. That they read.”

“Well, that’s what they’re learning right now. In school.”

“Let him finish,” Dr. Brompton interrupted me.

He pressed his palms together. “You always have to control what I say, me, the whole process.”

“Blake, I don’t want to control you, or the process! It’s just that”—at $250 an hour —“I think we should focus on the plan.”