Good news, however. Found this great restaurant in a parallel universe. No veal and they can do us a corner table. How are you fixed?
love, Jack
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
The twelfth of Never looks good for me. Can we sit by the window?
K xxxxx
Out in the garden, through a night as dense and soft as cloth, I swear I can hear Jack calling to me. When I was young I left men like I left clothes, in heaps on the floor. It seemed better that way. You see, I had figured out that it was hard for someone to leave you when you’d gone already. Emotionally, I always had my suitcase packed. A therapist, if I ever had time to consult one, would probably say it was something to do with my dad walking out on us. Besides, I took the Groucho Marx line: Why would I want to be in a relationship with anyone dumb enough to be in a relationship with me? It took Richard to show me that love could be an investment, something which could silently accrue and promised long-term returns instead of a gamble that would leave you broke and broken.
Before Richard, and before children, leaving was easy. Leaving now would be nothing but grief. To the kids, Richard and I are an all-purpose love hybrid called mum’n’dad. To split that unit in half, to teach them there are two people they must learn to love separately — I just don’t feel I have the right to ask my children to do that. Men leave their children because they can; women, in general, don’t leave because they can’t. A mother’s life is no longer her own to leave.
To be with Jack, I would have to go into exile from my homeland. To find the courage to do it, I would need to be so unhappy that staying was harder than jumping. And I’m not there yet.
Debt you owe to your children. Debt you owe to yourself. Figure out how to reconcile the two. Minutes of meeting to be written up (Secretary Lorraine says she’s off sick, but Lorraine always off sick in heat wave). Self-tan must; look like Morticia Adams’s younger sister. Grovel to clients over completely disastrously hideous performance for May (–9 percent versus index of –6 percent). May has wiped out all hard work for previous four months; great results now drowned in sea of red. Suggest to clients that performance is only temporary and am taking measures to address it. Think of measures to address it. Deflate bouncy castle, confront Rod over shameful sexist/racist treatment of Momo. Stair carpet??? Book stress-busting spa day, including protein facial as recommended by ace Vogue beauty woman. Wedding anniversary. When is wedding anniversary? Oh, God.
30 The Patter of Tiny Feet
THURSDAY, 11:29 P.M. Impending visit from the parents-in-law fills the air with apprehension like the thunder of distant wildebeest. “Don’t go to any trouble, darling,” says my husband. “What have you got planned for Sunday lunch?”
“Don’t go to any trouble, Katharine,” says Barbara, calling for the third time. So then you don’t go to any trouble and she takes one look in the fridge when they arrive, tugs on her string of pearls as though it were a rosary and drags Donald out to the car. They return with the entire contents of Sainsbury’s, “So we have a bit in for emergencies.”
Everything is under control this time, however. I will not be found wanting. There are clean sheets on the guest bed and clean white towels snatched up in M&S at lunchtime. I have even put a nodding sprig of lily of the valley in a bedside vase for that graceful, womanly touch of the sort practiced by Cheryl, my über-housewife sister-in-law. Also I must remember to dig out and display in prominent positions all Donald and Barbara’s presents from down the years:
Watercolor of sunset over Coniston by “the celebrated local artist Pamela Anderson” (no relation, alas)
Royal Worcester egg coddlers (4)
Electric wok
Dick Francis novel in hardback
Beatrix Potter commemorative cake stand
Also—
There was definitely another also.
Swab down the kitchen worktop, then check Em’s book bag ready for the morning. Inside, slotted among the pages of Lily the Lost Dog, is a note from school. Could parents please contribute an example of food typical to their child’s cultural background and bring it in for World Feast Day?
No, parents could not. Parents are very busy earning a living, thank you, and happy for school to do the job for which it is paid. I read down to the bottom of note. Great Feast is tomorrow. All welcome! Next to this threatening injunction, Emily has inscribed in her fiercest pressed-down writing: My Mummy Is a verray gud kuk much betaa than Sofeez mum. Oh, hell.
Start to search the cupboards. What qualifies as English ethnic for heaven’s sake? Roast beef? Spotted Dick? I find a jar of English mustard, but it has a disgusting rubbery collar of ancient gunge, like Mick Jagger lips, pouting around the lid. Fish and chips? Good, but no fish and never made chips in my life. Could take in McDonald’s large fries wrapped in newspaper, but just imagine the faces of the whole-food Nazis led by Mother Alexandra Law. At the back of the cereal shelf, I discover two jars of Bonne Maman jam. Strawberry preserve is an excellent example of the indigenous culinary arts, except this stuff is made in France.
Brilliant idea. Boil the kettle. Picking up one jar and then the other, I hold them over the steam till the label wilts and slips off. In the freezer-bag drawer, I find some new labels and on them I write, in rounded bucolic lettering, Shattock Strawberry Jam. Overconfident now, I attempt to draw a luscious strawberry in the corner of the label. It looks like an inflamed pancreas. Glue labels onto jars. Et voilà! Je suis une bonne maman!
“Kate, what are you doing? It’s gone midnight.” Rich has come into the kitchen in boxers and T-shirt carrying a Furby. I detest the Furby. The Furby is a hideous cross between a chinchilla and Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Both Furby and husband squint dubiously at me through the half-light.
“I’m making jam. Actually, I’m remaking jam, if you must know. Emily’s school is having this ethnic feast tomorrow and she has to take in something English.”
“Couldn’t you just buy something in the morning?”
“No, Rich, I couldn’t.”
His sigh is almost a shout. “God, how many times do we have to go through this? I’ve told you, you have to learn to let go. When women are working as hard as you are, Kate, other people are just going to have to accept that you can’t do all the stuff your mothers did.”
I want to tell him that even if other people accept it, I’m not sure I ever will. But the Furby gets there before me, breaking the silence with a crooning chirrup, and Rich disappears upstairs.
12:39 A.M. Too tired for sleep. I put the Furby in a black bin bag and tie a knot in the neck. In the dark kitchen, I open my laptop and sit here bathed in its milky metallic light. I call up the Salinger file. The figures on-screen comfort me — the way they do my bidding so readily, the fact that I cannot lie to them. Whereas at home, I’m a forger, a faker. I’m not ashamed of it; I don’t see any alternative. A good mum makes her own jam, doesn’t she? Secretly, we all know that. When they start naming preserves Jet Lag Maman or Quality Time Mum, when bread comes in wrappers marked Father’s Pride, it will be safe for us bad, exhausted mothers to come out with our hands up.