Kerry wrapped up her monologue with a question. “How’s your gorgeous brother these days? Is he still in Geneva?”
I hadn’t seen or spoken to Noel since his fly-in for my wedding, also known as the beginning of my marriage’s end. “He’s posted in London, now, I believe,” I said, but Kerry’s attention had shifted. “Look,” she said. “Jane Whitney and her husband just came in. Do you know them?”
A fortyish couple was being greeted by my mother across the room. “No. Who are they?”
“James is a lawyer at your dad’s firm. Jane is a curator of something or other at the museum. I’ve known her since we were kids, but they just moved onto this block a few months ago. Their daughter is in my Heather’s class at Rose Park Elementary.” She lifted her hand to her mouth, spoke from behind it. “I always feel awkward when I see Jane, because her daughter’s a bit of a strange bird. To be perfectly frank, Heather and her friends can’t stand her.”
I looked down at the floor, diverted the glare meant for Kerry towards the faded patterns on the rug. Kerry was enough older than me, and enough uninterested, not to remember that I had inhabited my own strange bird phase during my elementary school career. “I guess someone always has to be excluded so the rest can feel superior,” I said, and the taste of childhood hurt was so strong on my tongue I wondered if Kerry could smell it on my breath.
But Kerry yakked on as if she were named Blithe. “This Alexandra is a bright girl, no question, but she just doesn’t fit in. She just doesn’t get it. You know?”
I knew all too well, and was saved from making further barbed comment on the subject by the ringing of the silver bell that my mother used to announce the serving of dinner. The guests drained their cocktails and began to make slow progress towards the dining room, directed by Mom, who assumed a rear guard position from which she used both arms to make forward pushing motions. With a hitherto unnoticed third arm, she hailed me to come within muttering distance.
“You see my friend Marge there?” She indicated with a head gesture a well-groomed, Hermès-scarf-wearing woman of her generation, who was leading the charge.
“Is she the golfer or the bridge player?”
“The golfer. And she has a recently divorced son. His name is Phil. He’s thirty-six, a lawyer, attractive. He has two small children, but he only sees them every other weekend. Should I pass on your number?”
“Are you kidding? No. Please. I do not want to be set up.”
“Why not go out with him? One time. For fun. Take your mind off things.”
“Mom, I said no.”
She pursed her lips. “I was just trying to help. If you want to spend the summer sulking, go ahead.”
The setting, my irritation with Kerry, my mother’s tone, my insecure state — they all combined to make me rise to her bait. “I won’t have time to sulk. I’ve lined up a summer job.”
Mom’s lips relaxed. “Why, that’s wonderful, dear. What kind of job?”
Researching for Mrs. Greer, apparently.
~ Chapter 2 ~
Mrs. Greer acted thrilled when I called to say I was interested in the research job, and after consultation of her fully loaded appointment calendar and my completely empty one, we settled on the following Friday morning to meet and discuss the details of the project, at a midtown haunt called Bagel Haven. “I go there every morning,” she said. “I’m of the firm belief that breakfast should be consumed outside the home. Just because I don’t work in a proper office doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share the rituals of those who do. Don’t you agree?”
Did I? I wasn’t sure. So on the Friday, I rode my bicycle to Bagel Haven, arrived early, and sat down at one of the small tables to observe the rituals in question. To see if, before Molly arrived, I could acquire a semi-informed opinion on the subject. On any subject other than my rapidly-becoming-boring state of woe.
In the five days since our phone conversation, I’d enjoyed the coach house’s quiet, at least when the hammering and wrecking crews renovating a house two doors down took their lunch break, and between the debris-blowing and lawn-mowing sessions conducted by various gardening teams vying for the title of best simulator of jet takeoff noise. I’d also indulged in some spells of meditative solitude in the flat between visits from my mother, who dropped by daily with essentials like an extra pillow and blanket, fresh flowers, or rolls of toilet paper. (I’d have to start tipping her soon, and/or make up a Do Not Disturb sign for my doorknob.) But there were only so many hours I could sit in a chair with an open book in my lap, staring out the window at tradesmen’s trucks jockeying for road space with sunglassed women in SUVs, and contemplating my inadequacy as a human, before I began to yearn for a change of scene and preoccupation.
So it was with interest that I watched the morning bustle at Bagel Haven. A grey-haired, jolly man with a British accent manned the till, a quick-handed woman in her thirties toasted and buttered, and a young guy in jeans, T-shirt, apron, and baseball cap periodically emerged from a back kitchen to unload hot bagels from a trolley into the display baskets at the front of the store.
A steady flow of people in office clothes took food to go, but those who ate in were a more mixed crowd. A man of about seventy, with a jaunty white visor on his head, chatted up the staff by name, ordered “the usual,” dropped a dollar in the tip jar when his coffee and bagel together cost less than two, and sat down to read his newspaper. Seated in a corner with an infant in a baby seat was an exhausted-looking woman of about my age, clad in sweats, who closed her eyes in ecstasy when she took her first sip of latte. At five minutes to nine, in sauntered three city maintenance workers, dressed in orange coveralls and construction boots. All three ate bagels toasted with butter, and they sat at the table in the window to eat them, where they talked loud and laughed between bites. As if they liked their lives, the coffee break part, anyway. My eavesdropping on their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Greer, who, when I addressed her as such, said I must call her Molly, urged me to try a focaccia bagel, and introduced me to the jolly shop manager, name of Arthur.
“Welcome to Bagel Haven,” he said. “What are you having today? A focaccia bagel and fresh-squeezed orange juice? That’s a wise choice, to mix the bitter and the sweet. The choice of someone who’s experienced both in life, I wager.”
I smiled uncertainly, hoped my unhappiness wasn’t so obvious that this stranger had seen it in an instant, paid for my order, followed Molly to a table, and said, “Does everyone get their breakfast order analyzed for its symbolic meaning, or was I just lucky today?”
She set down her tray. “Arthur considers himself something of a philosopher, but he’s a good guy.” In a more concerned tone, she said, “Was your divorce very hard? Are you bitter?”
To my dismay, tears welled up behind my eyes. I swallowed, said, “No, not too,” and ran off to the condiment station, ostensibly in search of napkins but really so that I could blink the tears away, admonish myself to exhibit better self-control, and return to the table with a composed face and a change of topic. “What news do you have of Hannah? Is she still taking pictures for that wire service?”
She was. Somewhere in Africa that week, Molly thought. Israel the month before. “Wherever there’s trouble.”
“Hannah