“I’m sure Remi will be just fine,” Elodie said as she stood up to escort them out to the school’s cheerful foyer. “Children are so much more resilient than we are.”
JUST AS ELODIE predicted, every morning since school started, Remi bounds in as if she is on the payroll, and Elodie has to shepherd Elizabeth out the front door.
“Elizabeth, your daughter is not the least bit fragile anymore. Look at that happy smile. You have to relax,” Elodie insisted earlier that morning, not unkindly. “Let her go.”
Let her go. Elizabeth shuddered. I’ll never be able to do that.
Elizabeth had knelt down in the doorway to the classroom so Remi could wrap her arms around her neck. “Have a great day, sweet girl,” Elizabeth whispered, smoothing Remi’s unruly hair behind her ears. Remi gave her mother a quick air peck near her cheek, then hurried across the room to study the “jobs” that lined the wall. She picked up a small bowl of plastic animals and carried it to a mat on the floor. Watching as her daughter lined up the figurines by size, Elizabeth arranged her face into a smile. Elodie was right, her daughter was fine. Look at her, so happy to be out in the world, making friends. Elizabeth was holding her back.
“Remi has been very interested in sifting the flour,” said Elodie, peering cautiously at Elizabeth over her glasses. “You should ask her about it later.”
“Well, what can I say? She’s a natural-born sifter, from a long line of accomplished sifters,” Elizabeth said.
Elodie took Elizabeth’s arm and guided her out to the school entrance like a reluctant child. “Trust me, Elizabeth. She’s really thriving here.”
Elizabeth nodded and mumbled while fumbling through her bag for her black sunglasses that would obscure the tears welling in her eyes again. She hurried past the parents who were still peeling their toddlers off their pant legs, nodding at a few, but too paranoid about botching a name to say hello.
Outside on the sidewalk, away from the waxy smell of crayons and the astringent sting of hand sanitizer, she inhaled deeply. She wondered how she must look to passersby in her studied urban gear—the discus-sized sunglasses under her razor sharp bangs, platform wedge heels, a giant tote bag with hardware too heavy to be practical, and a shapeless sleeveless dress in an arty print that was cooler than it was flattering, which she’d smarten up with a blazer once she got to the office. If she ever got to the office. If she could ever lift herself up from the purgatory of the brownstone stoop.
IT’S NOW 9:43. Elizabeth checks her email and starts to reply to the forty-two unread messages that show up in her in-box, tapping quick replies with her thumbs. The clock is ticking on the biggest project of her career, an estate sale of more than 350 lots, including rare prints and lithographs from Picasso, Magritte, Kandinsky, Munch, and Mary Cassatt, that is less than two months away. She is dangerously behind schedule. Her assistant, Nina, sent her a message the night before at around midnight to remind her that the public relations department needed some answers about promoting the auction in The New York Times, and there were still contracts from the heirs that needed to be finalized and signed. The auction catalogue is due at the printer in a week, and she is going to have to work overtime to finish it. But she can’t manage to peel herself away. She clicks on an email from Jessica, her closest friend in New York, asking her to lunch next week. She starts to write back, and then stops. She’s been avoiding Jessica, too.
At 9:57 the phone rings. A picture of Remi as a wrinkly faced newborn, wearing a cap with tiny brown bear ears knitted onto the sides, pops up on her screen. She panics, considers letting the call go to voice mail, then decides it’s best to answer or he might call the office instead.
“Hey, Gav,” she says as breezily as possible. “What’s up?”
“Nothin’ much. Whatcha doing?” he asks. Gavin never rushes his speech, but a pace this slow is deliberate, and suspiciously casual. He is crunching something, loudly, in her ear.
“Not much, sweetie.” She eyes the ragged cuticle of her left thumb, and the deep navy polish that is starting to lose its sheen. “Just finished my coffee outside, getting a last blast of fresh air before work, you know. Sort of makes me miss smoking. I don’t get to linger on the sidewalk on a nice day anymore.”
“Oh, really. That’s weird . . .”
She listens as he takes another bite and munches in her ear.
“Because Elodie just called. She tells me that you’re camped in front of the school,” he says. “Again.”
Elizabeth’s eyes dart across the street to the window on the left of the front door. The blinds are raised and there is Elodie, peering over her hateful little glasses with pursed lips. Elizabeth offers a smile and a limp wave. Elodie does not wave back.