The gift bag chronicles, p.3
The Gift Bag Chronicles, page 3
“Okay, I’ll go,” I say, opting for the high road and praying it’s worth it. “I just want to be back in time to pick up Charles.”
2
… One Step Back
As it turns out, I don’t have to be back to pick up Charles because Charles never catches the train out of New York. A meeting that ran late and what with the rush-hour crowds at Penn Station, Saturday noon is now his ETA. So much for my buffer. So much for my boyfriend.
“I’m sorry, I told Taryn to give you the message,” he says when we finally connect while I’m standing in the produce aisle helping Helen pick tomatoes for the tart she’s having Maria make.
“Yeah, I got it,” I say as brightly as I can, given that Helen and Amy are within earshot and there’s no way I’m letting on how disappointed I am, not to say still a little pissed about him having Taryn call me from his cell. I mean, we are both agency presidents, both superbusy, but I would never have Caitlin call him for me.
“Tell Charles I say hi and we can’t wait to meet him,” Helen says, sidling by me, her hands full of apples, her suede jacket catching on my suede jacket.
“Mom says hi,” I say dutifully.
“Is it terrible? Can you handle it until I’m there?” he says in that joking, intimate way he has that always makes me forget I’m mad at him.
“Yes and yesss,” I say, dropping my voice and then adding more loudly, “Charles says hi too.”
“Oh, you are the dutiful daughter,” he says. “It’s why we love you.”
“Oh, that’s the reason?” I say, turning away from Helen and into a bin of oranges for some privacy. I’m just about to remind him of a few other reasons why he loves me when I hear my other line click. “Oh, hang on a second,” I say, not totally annoyed that I have to put him on hold. “Hello?”
“Can I give you your messages now?”
Caitlin/Kaitlyn/Princess.
“Umm, not really,” I say, staring at the bin of oranges. “I’m going to have to call you back.”
“Well, it’s just that the office is closing and I’m about to leave.”
“Well, are you leaving this minute?”
“They’re locking the office and I don’t have a key.”
“You can always get out,” I say and realize how pointless this is. First Jennifer, then Helen and Charles, and now Caitlin. I mean, if I have such an important job, why do I always wind up accommodating everyone else? “Okay, hang on,” I say, clicking back to Charles.
“Hey, it’s Caitlin with my messages, so let me call you back when I get home.”
“Fine,” he says. “If you don’t reach me later, I’ll be on the ten-thirty train tomorrow morning.”
I hang up and click over to Caitlin. “Okay, just give me the important ones,” I say, reaching into my bag for a pen and something to write on, given that my BlackBerry is back at the house along with my laptop. I root around in my bag and come up with a deposit slip from my checkbook.
“Uh, okay, shoot,” I say, shoving the phone against my ear and propping my purse on the oranges to make someplace to write. There’s the usual long list. “Look, just give me the ones that matter,” I say, tearing out another slip as Caitlin drones on. My ear is starting to ache, and I don’t have enough hands to juggle the phone, the pen, my purse. I try to wiggle everything more securely onto the oranges.
“They all seem important,” Caitlin says, sounding hurt.
“Look, just put the rest in an e-mail, and I’ll get them when I log on.”
“That’s going to take a while.”
“Well, not that long, since we’ve already gone through most of them.”
Silence.
I can either be the boss from hell or just forget about my job for seventy-two hours, which might actually do us all some good.
“Look, is there anything that needs doing by Tuesday?” I say, trying for some middle ground. “I’m not in until the afternoon.”
I hear her sigh and shuffle through the list. “Just this one,” she says finally.
“What is it?”
“A meeting Jennifer Schwartzbaum has scheduled with you at ten A.M. She says you know about it.”
I close my eyes. “Steven can cover that,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
“Well,” she says, pausing, and I hear her fumbling with more slips. “I think he’s out of the office all morning at a walk-through.”
“Alex, we’re at the checkout stand.”
I look up. Amy. I nod and hold up my hand. “Look, call Steven and see if he can move the walk-through back and babysit Jennifer. If he can’t, then call Jennifer back and reschedule the meeting.”
I hear her sigh.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I say before I realize what I’m doing, that I’m apologizing to my assistant. My assistant, who has just gotten out of doing exactly what I asked her to do. Not only have I not yelled at her for giving Jennifer my parents’ number but now I’m actually apologizing for asking her to do her job.
“Okay,” Caitlin says sulkily. “But if I can’t reach her, I’m just going to leave a message.”
“Fine,” I say, rushing to end the call before she realizes what a complete failure I am as a boss. As any kind of authority figure. “Now go. Make the calls and I’ll see you Tuesday.”
She hangs up without saying goodbye. God, why had I hired her? Some niece, or a cousin, or some niece of a cousin of Suzanne’s. Well, never again, I don’t care what they say about the favor bank.
“Do you always work on your days off?” Amy says, eyeing me as I’m trying to shove everything back into my bag.
“Actually, I do,” I say, giving everything a final shove and stepping away from the bin of oranges. At least there’s a moment — a moment that means it could, technically, not be my fault — before they all give way, tumbling to the floor like a flood of tennis balls.
“In fact,” I say brightly, striding past Amy, “it’s actually amazing how much work you can get done in a grocery store.”
Amy splits with Bevan right when we get home. He was fussy after his nap, and she wasn’t much better after our hours of shopping. Between the grocery store, the florist, the card shop to get the actual gift bags, the cleaner’s, and wherever else Helen insisted we had to go — God, does every party have to be a production? — we were all a little worse for wear. I still have no idea what I’m going to come up with for the gift bags — miniature vodka bottles and, given the season, an ear of corn? — and I have even less of an idea what time zone my circadian rhythms are in, but wherever they are, they could kill for a nap. Or a drink.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Helen says, kissing Bevan goodbye. Jack’s already in the kitchen uncorking a bottle of wine. “You must be ready to drop,” he says, handing me a glass.
“According to Amy, I should just be hitting my stride,” I say, checking my watch. 6:30 EST. 3:30 PST. Normally, I’d be on my third latte with hours of work left to do. And maybe a yoga class if my third eye was still open. “But when in Rome,” I say, hoisting the glass in a toast.
At least dinner tonight should be gimme. Just the three of us. Followed by the first real night’s sleep I’ve had in months. The lull before the storm of the rest of the weekend. And it is pretty much as I expected. Chitchat about the lawn, the new weed killer Jack is having the lawn service use, their trip to Bermuda back in May, the fact that my rental house needs a paint job and how much my landlady is willing, or rather not willing, to spend on hiring painters. Just the usual nonconfrontational but semi-intimate stuff any grown child turns to when spending hours with her parents. I’m actually starting to relax when Helen breaks the news. That she and Jack have bought a place on Cape Cod where they plan to spend the summers after Jack retires next spring.
“You’re kidding,” I say, startled that (1) my parents are thinking about retirement already and (2) it involves leaving Philly. One trip to Florida when Amy and I were still in high school was as much travel away from the Quaker State as they could take. And then there was their disastrous trip to L.A. to visit me three years ago, when all it did was rain. They’re such homebodies, I’d always envisioned them in their golden years hanging out in Bryn Mawr being older, more palatable versions of themselves. Like Siamese cats that finally stopped screaming because they just didn’t have the energy anymore.
“Well, they’ve got a great little course on the property,” Jack says. “Plus a center with a gym and a concierge, and the food’s not bad either, although nothing like the club here, of course.”
Center? Food? Concierge? A little alarm bell goes off in the back of my mind. “Wait, is this some kind of sheltered living thing?” I say. A vacation house is one thing, but a senior center, or whatever they call them, is a totally a different story.
“Honey, it’s a planned community,” Helen says, annoyed that I’ve glommed on to the worst possible characterization of their plan.
“You mean like a condo except with houses?” I say, still not sure I’m getting the picture. Not sure if I’m supposed to be getting the picture.
“Well, most of them are duplexes,” Jack says, spearing another stalk of broccoli from the platter.
“Duplexes?” If there’s one place I couldn’t see Helen, it’s in a duplex, sharing a wall — or anything — with neighbors.
“Obviously, ours isn’t a duplex,” Helen says. “No, it’s a gated community. With more services. The Brookses — you remember them from the club — bought in there last year and loved it.”
“We spent a week there with them last August,” Jack says, reaching for the soy butter or whatever Helen has them eating now. “Got in a lot of golf. Plus your mother liked the weather.”
“We both liked the weather,” Helen says, eyeing him. “You said so every time you came off the course without looking like you were about to pass out from the heat.”
Great. Not only are my parents throwing cocktail parties in my honor without asking me but now they are sailing off into the sunset without consulting me. Their oldest child, a fully functioning adult who has demonstrated an ability — a highly paid ability — to be consulted on many subjects. Senior publishing executives seek my counsel about their event planning needs. Marketing executives at international luxury brands — Gucci! Fendi! Target! — consult me on how best to infiltrate Hollywood. Celebrities, okay, mostly B-listers but still stars, retain me to plot their media campaigns. But my parents still have me on a need-to-know basis only.
“Aren’t you a little young to be rushing into all this?” I say, trotting out my best corporate mode. “I mean, Dad, I know you’re retiring, but you’re not sixty-five yet, and Mom, you aren’t—”
“Honey, we are not ‘rushing’ into anything,” Helen says, cutting me off. “This is something your father and I have talked about doing for a while now. This is a lot of house to take care of, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she adds, gazing around the dining room, which is large — okay, very large. “And at some point we may not even need it anymore,” she adds, straightening the silverware on her plate. “Or maybe we’ll work something out with Amy and Barkley as their family grows. It just seemed like the right step at the right time.”
Oh, now I get the picture. Or at least a big piece of it. They could so easily leave, because Amy, who obviously has been consulted, is the heir apparent of the family manse. No wonder she’d been so eager to turn my bedroom into the guest room. No wonder Helen had had that garage sale.
“Well, it sounds like you’ve really thought it through,” I say as chipperly as I can, because I’m not about to let them know how I really feel. Not when I’m not sure how I feel. About any of it. My parents leaving Philly. Planning for their retirement. Getting older, which means I’m getting older, which is technically impossible since I haven’t even started yet.
Well, okay, I’ve started, and actually more than that, but still, it’s not like I planned it this way. It all just kind of happened and I’m going along with it. For now. Like I’m in a holding pattern, circling forever up here, waiting to land, waiting for a gate — my gate — to open up. When I can find the time to figure it out for real.
Meanwhile, it’s all there on my to-do list. The list that always has about five thousand things on it, no matter how much I get done, how much I accomplish. It’s like Sisyphus: The Hollywood Years. Good job? Check. Boyfriend? Check. For the time being. Career? Well, that’s still a question, but technically any job you have for more than five years counts as a career, so yes, check. House? Rental and needs that paint job, but check. But then there are the issues I thought I’d rolled to the top of the hill. Marriage? I’ll get back to you. Kids? Yeah, right. I mean, I’m still working out “Ashtanga or Iyengar?” “Caf or half-caf?” “Atkins or Zone?” Meanwhile, my parents have everything all planned out. Years in advance.
“Great,” I say again, raising my glass. “Sounds like a plan.”
“We knew you’d see it our way,” Helen says, smiling in the candlelight. “Once we explained it to you.”
Two hours before the cocktail party on Saturday night, I’m upstairs in my former bedroom sitting in the lotus position. Okay, half lotus, because nobody except yoga freaks can do the full lotus. Travel noise machine on; the “Woodland Brook” setting, even though it always makes me want to pee. I’m trying to envision myself back in my house in L.A. I’m just seeing myself in my own living room — far from my parents, far from Jack hitting balls in the backyard with Charles, from this party I can already hear the beginnings of downstairs, and really far from my last-minute, oh-so-rustic gift bags of first-crop-of-the-season organic Heritage apples and a wedge of artisanal goat cheese from the local farmers’ market tucked in a small brown paper bag tied up with a red-and-white-checked ribbon — when my cell rings. Shit. Without uncrossing my legs, I kind of hop-drag myself over to my bag and pull out the phone. Steven.
“I can’t talk now because I’m doing yoga.”
“You only do yoga when you’re trying to calm down.”
“You’re supposed to do yoga to calm down. Otherwise why would anyone do it?”
“My point exactly. Actually, why aren’t you having sex with Chuck to calm down?”
“Because Charles is out hitting balls in the backyard with Jack. Because Helen put him in the other guest room. Because, because, because,” I say, slumping against the bed. “Any other questions?”
It’s true. Ever since Jennifer’s call at God knows what hour yesterday, the whole weekend has been a blur. Or maybe I’m just a blur — an overworked, jet-lagged blur — and everything else is totally clear. Jack and Helen seem very clear, and God knows, Amy is never anything but clear. And don’t even get me started on Jennifer’s and Caitlin’s capacity for clarity. Even Charles seems annoyingly clear. Maybe I need to reconsider that macrobiotic diet. Or bring this up with my yoga teacher. Like it’s that simple. “No dairy, no sugar, stand on your head.” “Oh, now I get it!”
By the time I picked up Charles at the station Saturday morning, my jet-lagged blur had coalesced around suburban America circa 1950. The train doors opening, the passengers pouring out into the long-shadowed late-summer sun. I was even driving Jack’s old Volvo. For a second, I had a vision of what my life would have been like if I’d stayed in Philly. If I’d never gone to New York. Or L.A. It looked something like Julianne Moore in a twinset and a long-suffering smile.
“Hey,” Charles said, sliding in next to me with that slightly unreadable grin of his. “You in a Volvo,” he said. “Thought I’d never see the day.”
I wondered briefly if that was some kind of dig, if he really would prefer me in a twinset, barefoot and pregnant.
“So you like the whole Cheever country thing?” I said, leaning across the seat for a kiss. A really fast kiss, because here in my dutiful Julianne Moore mode I’m starting to chatter away mindlessly about my parents, Amy, the weekend, so that he can’t get a word in. Maybe it’s nerves. The fact that, after all this time, Charles is finally meeting my parents. Or maybe it’s because we’re actually together so infrequently that I’m talking really really fast to get everything in. Before he leaves again.
“Hey,” he said, reaching across the seat to finger my hair. “It’ll be fine. I’ve met parents before. I was married once, remember?”
“Yeah, well, so was I, but it turns out my parents have outlasted any relationship I’ve ever had.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said, shaking my hair free of his fingers. “You’ll see.”
Turns out, he didn’t see. Or actually he did. Charles and my parents saw each other across Jack’s freshly weeded and mown lawn and fell completely and totally in love. I mean, Charles Evers of Chevy Chase and Georgetown U. and the salt-and-pepper hair, blue blazer, and khakis was made, just made for lunch in Bryn Mawr with Jack and Helen Bradford, iced tea and cold chicken on blue willow plates. Merchant-Ivory could have filmed it.
“Charles is marvelous,” Helen said when she and I were back in the kitchen, stacking the lunch plates and getting out the lemon icebox cookies for dessert.
“Yes, he is,” I said from deep in my fog, where I was no longer Julianne Moore but Emma Thompson in an Empire waist gown and a chignon. A Jane Austen spinster with a BlackBerry and one last shot at true love.
“I had no idea such normal people worked in Hollywood,” Helen said, never lifting her eyes from the cookies she was painstakingly arranging on the blue and white china plate.
I was tempted to ask her what she meant by normal. But even in my Emma Thompson fog, I knew exactly what she meant. That she’s amazed, stunned to find in the moneygrubbing, back-stabbing, synagogue-worshiping tribe that is Hollywood in her mind, there’s a college-educated, Emily Post, paper-trained WASP. Like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. If anybody still eats Cracker Jacks. And what’s even more amazing: he’s with me. “Well, Charles handles a lot of our corporate clients, if that’s what you mean,” I said, treading carefully, because suddenly I was no longer the Emma Thompson lonely spinster but a slutty Britney Spears wannabe stuck in a Woody Allen fantasy sequence with my Rittenhouse Square lunch-at-the-club mother. A fantasy sequence with subtitles.
