Authors: Anna Quindlen
So when they merely want to eat and relax, the Borowses always go to a venerable midpriced French restaurant on Fifty-eighth Street that they’d been going to since they were young. It has a middling rating in their guide because it has middling food, although like most French restaurants in New York it serves a good salad, good steak au poivre and tartare, and good liver. When we eat there, it is like eating normally instead of being Olympic judges at a skating rink. No figure eights. The elderly waiters pull their lips tight when we order something of which they disapprove, and then we change our orders. Unfortunately, now people go there because they have heard it is where the Borowses eat when they’re not working.
“Oh, no,” Kate muttered under her breath when she saw a woman approach our table with a bright white Chiclets smile and a cashmere shawl draped around her shoulders.
“Just the person I’m looking for,” she said, bending for the air kiss. “Or people. I love you, too, Sam, as you know.”
“And I appreciate it, Lisa,” Sam replied. I didn’t know the woman, but she must be truly awful for Sam to have taken that flat dry tone. He even manages to be nice to the mayor.
“I know you don’t talk business at dinner, and neither do I, it’s my new policy. Lunch, yes. Dinner, no. But I just wanted to give you my card because I have a young couple who are very interested in a certain apartment in a certain building that I keep hearing will go on the market soon. And I know you’d be the first to know when that happens, and I just thought I could make it easy for everyone. Cut out the second broker, all the look-sees. I know high-profile types hate having people traipse through their homes, and in certain situations, you don’t know, instead of real prospects you might have reporters, although we try to screen and prequalify, as you would imagine—”
“I’ve got the card, Lisa. I’ll call if the occasion arises.” Kate’s voice would have frozen a daiquiri. I suppose New York real estate agents are immune to that.
“Please don’t think I’m trying to jump the gun. But this young couple have a toddler and another on the way, and the place would be perfect for them. He’s a Wall Street guy, so they’d pay the full asking price. Honestly, I think she’s a fan. You know how it goes, she’ll tell her friends, Guess whose apartment we’re buying? It’s absurd, but it can jack up the price. Two years ago I remember that singer’s apartment was on the market, what was her name—”
“I have the card,” Kate said, and now the tone of contempt and dismissal was unmistakable. Sam had his foot atop my instep.
“Did that woman just try to sell my sister’s apartment?” I said as Lisa Real Estate crossed the room, adjusting the shawl.
“Jesus Christ, people are unbelievable,” Kate muttered from between her teeth. She took the card and stuffed it in the bread basket, then took it out again. “I’m not going to take the chance that someone will find it and actually call her,” she said.
“That’s the third one this week,” Sam said.
“The third what?”
“The third real estate agent. It’s a big apartment with good views. On Central Park West.”
“Someone lives there!” I said.
“I know, but Leo’s in college, she’s out of a job. And people have seen Evan out—”
“With a woman?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“God, I hate New York. Don’t you hate it sometimes? Hate it and love it at the same time. That’s what’s so infuriating.”
“Just like your relationship with Meghan.”
“Oh, stop, Kate.”
“Okay, I know. Bridget doesn’t hate Meghan. Bridget loves Meghan. She loves Meghan, and Meghan makes her totally crazy. I feel exactly the same way. And if anyone else tries to talk to me about buying Meghan’s apartment, I will personally kill and eat them. None of them seem to realize that it could be them, that all it would take is one misstep and suddenly your name is wiped off of every benefit committee list in New York.”
“Is that happening?”
Kate shrugged. “A bit. Who cares?”
“That’s weird. I’m supposed to go to a dinner next week at the home of one of our board members and I tried to weasel out because I hate those things. And she really really wanted me to come. And she knows Meghan is my sister.”
“God, Bridget, you are an innocent. She’s thrilled you’re coming. She’s telling everyone you’re going to be there. They’re going to read you like tea leaves. By the next day there will be women all over Manhattan having coffee and describing you as a good friend and saying that Meghan is fine or Meghan is terrible or whatever the hell they can divine from whether you eat dessert or take cream with your coffee. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll wind up at an entire ladies’ lunch made up of decent people. Yeah, that’ll happen. Speaking of which, guess who I ran into the other day on the street? That woman Ann Jensen.”
“I remember her. She chaired that dinner for Manhattan Mothers. Oh, God, please don’t tell me she wants to buy the apartment. That night she was acting like Meghan was the greatest thing since the face-lift!”
“Honey, no offense to your sister’s place, but Ann Jensen is strictly East Side. And I believe she has a triplex with a lap pool.”
“Isn’t she the one who was a call girl in L.A. and then married somebody really rich?” said Sam.
“I don’t think so. I think she was somebody’s assistant, then somebody’s girlfriend. Then the wife of somebody.”
“So she’s not the one whose husband died in some weird accident and there were rumors that she or her trainer, I think, were involved?” I said.
“I know who you’re talking about,” Kate said. “That’s somebody else.”
“My God,” said Sam, “this conversation is surreal.”
“So what did she say?” I asked.
“Well, she has this annoying way of leaning in as though she’s going to tell you the secret of life,” Kate said. “And she told me about the Manhattan Mothers event, and how great Meghan was that night, and how it was only two days before what she called ‘the incident.’ And I was standing there thinking, What the hell will Sam say if it says in the tabs that I punched this woman’s lights out on Fifty-seventh Street? So she leans in really close and asks if I’m touch with Meghan, and before I can answer she says in this really tough voice, not at all like the way she usually talks, ‘Tell her not to let the bastards break her.’ And she got into a Bentley with a driver at the curb. Believe me, she meant it. It was as though her real self popped out right in front of Bergdorf’s.”
“Wow,” I said. “You just never know.”
“You don’t, do you?”
“You don’t?” said Sam.
“Oh, Sam,” said Kate indulgently.
“You are ready to order?” said one of the grumpy waitstaff to me, since Sam and Kate always had the same thing, steak frites, every time. So do I, for that matter, but the waiters, like my sister’s friends, have a hard time remembering my face. Liver and creamed spinach. My favorite meal is the kind of thing children are forced to eat as punishment. Sam tried to pour red wine into my glass, but I shook my head and took a deep breath.
“I’m pregnant,” I said.
“Aaaaah!” Kate screamed so loudly that the real estate agent and her table stared over at us. The Borowses have three sons and two grandsons, and either will pull out baby pictures at the slightest provocation. This, too, sets them apart from most New Yorkers, especially the ones who insist their grandchildren call them something age-neutral, like Cherie or Belle. The first time a little boy with a full diaper called Kate “Nana,” she became so unhinged with joy that her daughter-in-law had to put an ice bag on her eyes.
“Henri! Champagne over here! Cristal!”
“Sam, you idiot, she can’t drink. You can’t drink, right? None of them drink now.”
“I don’t believe I can drink. I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but everything I’ve read suggests I shouldn’t drink. Or eat swordfish, sushi, or processed meats.”
Henri had a bottle of Cristal in one bucket and a bottle of Perrier in another. There’s little he misses. “That’s bull,” Kate said. “I ate street dogs when I was pregnant. I loved street dogs.”
“And salami,” said Sam. He took her hand across the table. “And blue cheese. Saga blue with pear slices.” They were, after all, food people.
“I’m beside myself. What does Irving say? Are you getting married?”
“Married? God, no.”
“You should get married. Children need structure. Two parents. I know it’s old-fashioned, but I am old-fashioned.”
“What does Meghan say?” said Sam, clinking glasses with me.
“I haven’t told Meghan yet.”
I had, however, told everyone else. I told Ricky at the Cubana Sandwich Shop, my dry cleaner, and my dentist, who said some women have terrible trouble with their teeth during pregnancy. I told Alison and Tequila, both of whom screamed and danced around the office. “Girl, it’s about time,” Tequila shouted, shaking her butt in some ritualistic baby dance.
I told the women in my parenting group, who started screaming so loudly that the security guard from the front door, who manages to ignore blood in the lobby, came to the community room to make sure nothing catastrophic had happened. Once they quieted down, it was Maria who said thoughtfully, “Miz Fitz, you’re too old for this.”
“Get out, girl,” said Charisse. “My mama had her last baby when she was thirty-seven years old. That’s her best child, too, my sister Tanisse, who works the desk at the precinct typing and all that.”
“I’m forty-three,” I said.
“Oooooh,” Charisse said thoughtfully. “You’re not looking it.” I was wearing a sacklike denim sundress I’d been wearing for five years. “When you due?”
“I think it’s November.”
“You need that prenatal stuff,” one of the women said. “You know, the checkups, they give you vitamins, check you out.”
“Don’t go to that doctor up to Hillside Hospital,” another said. “He’s rough and he won’t give you drugs for the pain.”
“They don’t give us drugs for the pain,” Charisse said. “You on Medicaid, they go, Oh, none of that epidural stuff for you. You just lay there and yell.” Charisse narrowed her eyes and picked at her cornrows. “Hold that dress tight against your belly.” I had suddenly passed from teacher to student. They knew things, these women, that I had yet to learn. It was a mistake to focus on their deficits, as so many of the official types did. They knew things.
“Twins,” Charisse said.
“Jesus God,” I said. “Don’t say that.”
“Too big for just one. You what, three months? Look. She’s big.”
The entire parenting class tilted their heads to one side. Lips pursed, foreheads furrowed, fingers raised to lips. The rumination was broken by the security guard again, and all of us turned on him like a witches’ coven interrupted by a feckless human. He proffered a big square box with a stack of paper plates atop it. “That young man drives the van, he thought you all might be needing this,” he said.
“Can’t argue with cake,” Charisse said with a satisfied smile.
I’d told Leo the day after I’d told Irving. He was a wizard in our old van, adept at skirting the busiest intersections and maneuvering through the narrow side streets to get to the welfare offices or the Tubman projects. I had a late-afternoon meeting with a housing official so that we could see if a Tubman apartment that kept turning over would do for a family who had been in our transitional housing for more than a year.
It’s difficult to believe that sentient humans designed most New York City housing projects, but Tubman is a particularly bad example of planning. One of its buildings backs up to the expressway. As a result, its residents are treated to car tires hitting pitted asphalt at fifty miles an hour at night and, during the day, the fumes from hundreds of idling engines working their way through stop-and-go traffic. Some years ago a researcher at one of the medical schools did a study showing that rates of upper respiratory infection, asthma, and attention deficit disorder were three times as high in that building as in the one farthest from the highway. It was the third story on the local news networks that night, after a pretty blond accountant who’d been found dead in her East Side apartment and the mayor’s plan to offer free opera every week in Central Park.
Leo had found a parking spot at the side of that building, right across from a hydrant that is never used in the winter and is on all the time in the summer so the neighborhood kids can play in it and the guys can wash their cars. There were two cabdrivers there with buckets and rags, both black, both middle-aged, the kinds of black men who shame the young miscreants and criminals into leaving them alone by giving off an unmistakable but uncommon daddy vibe. The bravado boys avoid guys like this, ministers, store owners, cab and livery drivers, token clerks, as though they know that the men, as modest as their jobs may be, have achieved something they can never dream of. Most of them were still sleeping in their mothers’ apartments even this late in the afternoon, or talking tough on the packed-down earth of the center courtyard that anchors the Tubman towers. An old woman in the building once told me that she had been among the original tenants, and that the city had sodded the four quadrants divided up by cement walkways and even planted a skinny shivering tree of some sort in the center of each. No one seemed to have made allowances for the facts not only that the children of Tubman would use the grass instead of the sidewalks but also that the four towers were so tall and boxy, so monolithic and forbidding, that except for about an hour in midsummer they blocked out the sun. The jagged stump of one of the trees still sticks out of the bare earth, and every couple of years a kid falls on it and pierces a cheek or a knee.
The good thing about the bulk of the buildings is that on warm days they provide plenty of shade, although after dark, shade becomes cover and crime blooms there in a way the trees never had. Both of the cabdrivers looked us over thoroughly as we sat in the car. Leo waved at one of them, who inclined his head slightly. Leo’s freckles had darkened, and even wearing a Yankees hat and a T-shirt that said “Amsterdam Rocks!” he looked like Tom Sawyer’s East Coast cousin.
There was such an improbability to the progression of him. My own life seemed a seamless skein unfurling beneath my feet, but Leo in my mind was a herky-jerky series of Leos, like a silent movie or a flip book. Meghan in a hammock in the first house they’d had in Connecticut, the one with the low ceilings and enormous Federal fireplace, reading some government report and drifting off to sleep as I watched random movements beneath her maternity shirt. Evan looking up from the toilet and missing Leo’s first real boy pee, Leo’s face as he looked at me the face of someone who has done something incredible. Meghan pointing my camera as Leo went to Biltmore for the first time in the navy uniform polo shirt and the khaki shorts. Leo diving in the lake, Leo debating the question of the flat tax in the auditorium, Leo taking his friend Samantha to the prom at the Waldorf. Leo driving me to Tubman, knowing his way around.