Emmaline Waters, This Is Your Life Page 9

  That about sums it up, I think.

  Sincerely,

  Em

  (Oh, by the way, my number is 828-2128—in case you need to get in touch with me. If I don’t answer, leave a message. I’m probably screening for politicians or telemarketers.)

  The sun is peeking over the horizon as I save the letter to my computer (because what are the chances I’ll have the nerve to send the damn thing, anyway?). But at least I’ve written it. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and blah, blah, blah.

  Who knows? Maybe I will send the note careening for Mark’s inbox. If not, I’m going to have to find another way to break the news, because with him back in Boston—as the owner of a shiny, new restaurant, no less—life is about to change. For all of us.

  I’ve barely caught a breath when my phone rings with the early-morning call Mom and I have arranged. As exhausted as I am, I try not to let on. “Hello?” I answer, forcing an undercurrent of pep into my voice.

  “Oh, good. You’re up.”

  I’ve been up for twenty-plus hours, but who’s counting? “How’s Dad?”

  “Better,” Mom says, her voice sparkling with relief. “His heart rhythm’s stabilized, so the surgery’s on the back burner—for now. They’re talking about discharging him in the next hour or two. Did Angie do all right last night?”

  I should be insulted by this question, as in: Don’t you think I can take care of my own child for twelve hours straight? But I know Mom only means well. “Yeah, she was pretty wiped out,” I say. “She fell asleep on the ride home.” I purposely don’t mention the fact that Trent abandoned us and Dex, as he so often does, swept in to the rescue. Furthermore, I withhold the news about Mark Loffel, since information of that caliber is best delivered in person—if at all.

  “That’s good,” Mom says offhand. “What time do you think you’ll be bringing her home? She’s got a playdate tomorrow with Olga’s boy, Xander.”

  “Um, do you even want her back today? I mean, shouldn’t Dad be resting? She can stay another night with me, if that’s easier.”

  A long pause gives the impression that Mom is thinking the idea over. “What about her clothes? She can’t wear that dress three days in a row. And her toothbrush? She won’t use anything but that powered Barbie thingamajig we got her at Costco.”

  “You bought her a Barbie toothbrush? At Costco?” What in the world has happened to my progressive, shop-local-and-avoid-anything-that-smacks-of-consumerism parents?

  “It’s pink. She loves pink.”

  Well, then . . .

  “I’ve got an extra toothbrush,” I claim, though this probably isn’t true. “I promise, her teeth will be squeaky clean. And she can wear one of my old BU T-shirts as a dress.”

  Mom sighs. “It’s October, Emmaline. Halloween’s next week, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s plenty warm in here,” I assure her. “And we’re not going anywhere. My article’s due today.”

  “All right,” she relents. “Why don’t you bring her over in the morning, around seven? Your father should be settled in by then.”

  She’s playing hardball with the crack-of-dawn drop-off, but I asked for it. “Sure. Give Dad a hug for me, okay?”

  “Will do,” she agrees. “And tell Angie I love her.”

  “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  In search of something Angie can eat for breakfast, I shuffle through my and Jung’s shared food cupboard. “We’ve got half a bag of marshmallows,” I report, holding the blobs of sugar out for Angie’s inspection. “They’re rainbow colored too.”

  She squeezes the bag and grimaces. “They’re hard. Yuck.”

  Zero for one. “How about some butterscotch pudding?” I ask, jimmying a box of the instant stuff out from behind Jung’s protein bars.

  Angie licks her lips. “Mmm. Butterscotch.”

  It dawns on me that I don’t have any milk with which to transform the box of powder into a gooey cereal substitute, so I sneak it back onto the shelf and continue sifting through the cupboard’s meager contents—a jar of marinara sauce, two cans of tuna fish, a rubber-banded sleeve of crackers, and (hallelujah!) my old standby: SpaghettiOs. "How about this?” I ask, offering Angie the can. “I’ll even let you open it. Have you ever used a can opener before?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  I pull a chair over to the counter and help her up. For the first time, it strikes me that we’re having a mother-daughter moment, a normal interaction everyone on earth probably takes for granted. But not me. Maybe that’s the benefit of how things unfolded for Angie and me: we know what it’s like to be apart, so we’ll always treasure being together.

  Or so I hope.

  As it turns out, Angie is a whiz with an electric can opener. Once I get her situated at the table, I retreat to the living room to put the final touches on my article—the same article that, once the letter to Mark Loffel was out of my head, gushed forth like Niagara Falls (and, if I do say so myself, turned out pretty smashing, though it’s still no contender for that Pulitzer my mother has penciled in on her calendar).

  But Mitch Heywood had better love—and I mean LOVE!!!—the pithy, humorous, down-to-earth spin I’ve put on my debut column, because I’m pretty sure I sprained a finger or two (I was on quite a roll for a while there) making it happen. I even thought of a new title for the whole shebang: Dishing with Em. It hits all the right notes, I think (unless, of course, Mr. “Grouchy Pants” Heywood vetoes it).

  “Emmawine!” Angie abruptly calls from the kitchen.

  I’m three sentences away from completing the last editing pass on my critique before cutting the cord and letting it go. “Just a sec!” I call back.

  She cries, “But I need you.”

  Which is all I need to hear.

  Chapter 13

  I’m not sure whom I like least at the moment: Trent, who has yet to call following his vanishing act in the middle of dinner, or Sharon “Wonder Woman” Fleming, who has sent my article boomeranging back to my inbox four times in the last two hours with corrections I’m supposed to implement, posthaste.

  Her latest directive reads as follows:

  I don’t know how I missed this before, but you confused “there” with “three” in the first sentence. Also, in ¶ 4, you used “through” for “though.” And in ¶ 7, you reversed the error: “though” for “through.” Seek and destroy. I changed my mind on the metaphors too. Cut all of them. We’re waiting on you to put this issue to bed.

  She’s claiming I have a typo in the first sentence (and that I made the mistake because I was “confused”)?! Mark my words, there is no way—NO WAY!!!—I overlooked something so glaringly obvious. In fact, the suggestion is outlandish enough to make me doubt the veracity of her other editorial finds.

  I steal a sideways glance at Angie, who is curled up on the living room floor with a stack of printer paper and every felt-tipped pen in the apartment. If she illustrates a storybook, I’ve promised her, we’ll work together on crafting a narrative to go along with it. “How’s the book coming?” I ask, partly to encourage her and partly to stall the inevitable: coming face-to-face with my own imperfections.

  With a broad grin, she holds up a stick-figure drawing of . . . a dinosaur, maybe? “Wow, that’s good. Show me another one.”

  She obliges, pinching a second sheet of paper—this sketch resembling a grassy plain with a number of lollipop “beings” shooting up from the ground—between her fingers. “Know what it is?” she asks, in a tone that suggests, if all goes well, I’ll be too dumb to guess correctly.

  I squint. “A herd of elephants?”

  She giggles and rolls her eyes. “Nope.” She crawls over to my side and dangles the picture in my face.

  “Hmm . . .” I say. “Porcupines?”

  “You’re silly,” she proclaims, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Want me to tell you?”

  “I guess you’ll have to.”

  “They’re sunflowers,” she sa
ys. “See?”

  I should’ve known. After all, Mom and Dad have a perky little flower garden in their section of the brownstone’s backyard that prominently features the gargantuan things. “Are they alive?”

  She tucks her lip under her teeth and nods.

  “Do they talk?”

  More nodding.

  “Well, then, we’re gonna have a great story, aren’t we?”

  “Yup.”

  “Just let me finish this,” I say, motioning at my laptop, where the latest message from Sharon beckons. “Then we’ll get to work.”

  She scampers back to her makeshift art studio and starts the next panel of what is shaping up to be a superhero-less comic book (though we could turn the sunflowers into SuperSuns—and maybe even color their stalks red, white, and blue—and send them off to rid the world of pesticides).

  I force myself to open the attachment and, for the umpteenth time, scan my article for the errors that need correcting.

  Dammit. Sharon was right. Not only is there a typo in the first sentence, it’s actually the first word. Let me repeat that: THE FIRST WORD OF MY CRITIQUE IS A TYPO!!!

  I quit.

  Not so fast, though. What if Sharon, in her infinite bitchiness, changed my article and inserted the typo herself. I mean, stranger things have happened, right? The only way to know for sure is to compare the source file to the Franken-attachment.

  Easy enough—if my desktop weren’t such a jumbled mess, that is. Also, I should probably stop saving multiple versions of the same file under different names. I’ve got about eighteen windows open at once searching for the final draft of my article when my phone rings.

  I shouldn’t answer it; I really shouldn’t. Then again, it could be an emergency about Dad’s health (please, no). Or Trent calling to grovel (please, yes—just not right now). I reach for the phone, which is near enough to be classified as an artificial appendage.

  It’s Trent. Which is good, because maybe he’s sorry for being such a thoughtless cad. Plus, an apology would cheer me up at the moment, as I’ve just discovered that—AHA!!!—Sharon did insert that typo, my original article clearly beginning with the word “there” and not “three,” as my back-stabbing editor has claimed.

  They’re not paying me enough to deal with this bullshit.

  “Hello?” I say, glad my voice sounds annoyed. After all, Trent should know I’m upset about how things went down last night. I mean, I get that he had an unexpected meeting, but he could’ve at least done the gentlemanly thing and offered to take Angie and me home first. If he’d displayed even a shred of human decency, I might not have crossed paths with Mark Loffel again.

  If.

  The first thing out of Trent’s mouth is: “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I say, dialing back the edge in my voice. “Why?”

  “Because, well, um . . . you don’t sound normal.”

  “Who said I was normal?”

  He chuckles uncomfortably. “Good point.”

  “So, what’s up,” I ask, my attention consumed by the edits I still need to make (as it turns out, my original file does contain a number of the other errors Sharon has flagged).

  “I’ve got a bag full of beignets from that bakery you like, Lucarelli’s.” He pauses. “Should I come over?”

  My gaze drifts to Angie, who is elbows-deep in creativity, her forearms resembling a Jackson Pollock canvas. “I’m going to have to take a rain check,” I say. “Sorry.” Despite his nonchalance at the news of my parenthood (and in contradiction of what I’ve professed to Mark in the letter), I’m far from making my boyfriend a permanent fixture in my daughter’s life.

  “Really?”

  “I’m on a deadline,” I say. “My editor wants final copy ASAP.” All of which is technically true—heck, I’m editing as we speak—making the Angie situation secondary and, hence, irrelevant.

  A sniffing sound fills Trent’s end of the line. “But they smell so good.”

  He must want sex, I realize. He’s calling to bribe me into consummating our relationship, an act that is overdue, I think, in both our minds (though he should’ve selected something other than a greasy pastry as a copulation offering). “Jeez, you play hardball, don’t you?”

  Did I honestly just say that? Leave it to me to mention hard balls when my boyfriend is in the throes of desire.

  “I could drop them off,” he says. “I won’t even come inside.”

  Double entendre, anyone?

  “Yeah, um,” I say with a wince (this is not the right time for our first time, let alone a bang-zoom quickie), “I appreciate the thought, but I’m afraid I must decline.” He can’t ask for a politer rejection than that, can he?

  “How about I leave them in your mailbox? I’m like a block away.”

  “It’s pretty narrow,” I say about the mail receptacle. “Good luck fitting a beignet in there, let alone a bag full of them.”

  He spends another minute pleading his case, which hinges on deliciousness and ease of delivery, while I finish my edits and attach the corrected file to the ongoing exchange between Sharon and me. Then I type a one-word reply: DONE. With a sigh of relief, I send the e-mail on its way. “So,” Trent is saying as I tune back in, “have I convinced you?”

  “I tell you what: I’ll meet you downstairs. But, just so you know, I’m still in my pajamas.” Again, not good information to share if he’s hinting around for a roll in the hay.

  “Is that supposed to dissuade me?”

  Ooh, he used the word dissuade instead of stop or some other mundane quasi synonym. Maybe I can get past his narcissism, after all. “Absolutely not. Five minutes?”

  “More like three,” he corrects. “But I don’t mind waiting.”

  * * *

  The beignets were as tasty as advertised and made a nice calorie-laden midafternoon snack—or, well, lunch, since Angie and I somehow skipped that meal—once I got Trent to accept the fact that, no matter how hard he tried, he was not going to slither upstairs for a bout of naked anything.

  Continuing the dinner-for-breakfast (and breakfast-for-lunch) theme, Angie and I turned our evening meal into a midnight snack, gorging on microwave popcorn (two full bags), spray cheese (and I call myself a food critic!), and the butterscotch pudding that eluded us this morning (compliments of Jung, whose half gallon of whole milk, I happily realized, was on the fast track to expiration destruction).

  Midway through a showing of Matilda, my darling daughter drifted off to sleep, her head cradled in my arms, her tiny legs curled beneath her like a kitten’s. It wasn’t long before I began nodding off too, despite my fear that Angie would slip out of my arms and crash to the floor, proving that 1) I am a narcoleptic klutz who shouldn’t be trusted with so much as a football, let alone a human being and 2) I am—or would be, given half a chance—a terrible mother.

  But then . . .

  The ticklish terror of spider legs skittered over my hairline and advanced toward my eye. My reflex, of course, was to bang my head against the nearest hard surface, either 1) disabling the treacherous arachnid or 2) turning my brains into liquid Swiss cheese. Or maybe both, which would suit me just fine if I didn’t have a daughter to live for.

  Without an inkling of self-preservation, the spider traversed my nose, stopped and pivoted, as if he—or she, I suppose, though I’ve always cast spiders as serial killers, which are mostly male in my nightmares—was gearing up for a sprint over my trembling (and hastily retracting) lips.

  I told myself: Do. Not. Panic.

  Chalk it up to a mother’s protective instincts, but I kept cool long enough to shift Angie off my lap, hop to my feet, and bash my head as if it were a Cinco de Mayo piñata. I’d like to say I was able to identify a few errant fragments of the spider’s body as they drifted toward Jung’s geometric area rug, but that would be a lie.

  At least I kept Angie safe from the beastly vermin, though. As my daughter’s belly rose and fell with sleep, it occurred to me that her wellbeing was
all that mattered anymore—the way things should have been from the start.

  Chapter 14

  When Angie and I arrive at the brownstone, I’m thrilled to find Dad mellowing by the fire, a mug of steaming tea on the table beside him. Before I can get the door closed behind us, Angie squeals, “Daddy!”

  My heart sinks. Mark Loffel is her father, if not her “daddy” (through no fault of his own).

  Clutching a dish towel in one hand and a rose-patterned plate in the other, Mom meanders over to join us, her gaze drawn (disapprovingly, if I’m reading her right) to Angie’s dress—the same one she wore to The Olive Branch. “She just put that back on,” I feel obligated to say in my defense. “Didn’t you, Ang?”

  Angie buries her face in Dad’s chest, her arms hinging together behind his neck. Dad gives her a tender kiss on the top of the head. “Gee, I think I’ll get sick more often, if this is what I’ve got to look forward to,” he says with a chuckle.

  I join the group hug. “Welcome home, Dad.”

  Mom hangs the dish towel over her shoulder and lays a hand on my back. “It’s wonderful to have everyone here,” she remarks, her voice wet with emotion.

  Suddenly, Dad shudders, as if he’s caught a chill. “That’s enough,” he announces. But he’s not fooling me: what he can’t stomach is the fawning.

  Mom backs off and, eventually, Angie and I break away too. “You look good,” I tell Dad after completing a meticulous once-over. “Your eyes are”—I tilt my head and squint—“sparkling. Maybe even dazzling.”

  I grin.

  He grins back.

  “Have you girls had breakfast yet?” he asks, adroitly changing the subject. “Your mother made a delicious veggie frittata.”