Allison Pearson - I Don't Know How She Does It

I look at Alice now, gaunt as an addict. From a distance, she looks as youthful as when we first met, but up close you see how motherhood has stolen her bloom: the boys seem to have literally sucked her blood. She may have won a Bafta, but her sons are even needier by night than the talent she corrals by day, and how would she find the time to meet a new man, even if there was one out there willing to take on the bolshie scions of another male? Reading my thoughts, she says with a grim smile, “My only fix now is the boys, Kate.”

I place my hand on the golden orb of my own boy’s head. A clump of chocolate Rice Krispies is nesting in his left ear. Time to sing “Happy Birthday.” Paula produces a Zippo from her pocket to light the candles (Christ, she’s not smoking now, is she?). I carry the cake to the table. Ben’s eyes are watery with wonder, mine with regret at the fleetingness of it all. Is this the last time I’ll see a baby of mine turn one? And how much of that first year have I actually seen?

“Oh, Kate, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” says Alice, eyebrow raised and gesturing at the Teletubbies icing.

“Bad mother,” I mouth silently at her across the table.

Laughing, she whispers back, “Me too.”

Nits, cheese, Valentine’s card.

IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN how my relationship with Jack began. I really wasn’t looking for anyone. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t unhappy either; I was in the gray survival zone where I imagine most of us live most of the time. When a badly injured patient gets admitted to Casualty, the hospital staff do what they call triage. Triage is the assignment of degrees of urgency to decide the order of treatment of wounds. I first heard the term one night when I was watching ER on Channel 4—it was that riveting period when we were all wondering how things would work out between Hathaway and Doug — and I thought how much triage sounded like my life. Daily existence was a constant assessment of who needed my attention most: the children, the office or my husband. You’ll notice I leave myself out of that list and that’s not because I’m a good and selfless person. Far from it. Selfishness just wasn’t an option: no time. Most weekends, on the drive home from the supermarket, I would look through the steamed-up windows of a café and see a couple, fingertips touching over cappuccino, or a lone man reading a newspaper, and I would long to go in there and order a drink and just sit and sit. But it was impossible. When I wasn’t at work, I had to be a mother; when I wasn’t being a mother, I owed it to work to be at work. Time off for myself felt like stealing. The fact that no man I knew ever felt that way didn’t help. This was just another area in which we were unequal: mothers got the lioness’s share of the guilt. So the last thing, the very last thing I needed was someone else to love — and then the e-mails started.

In the weeks that followed our first dinner in New York, Jack e-mailed me, first daily and then hourly. Sometimes we would reply to each other within seconds and it felt like one of those rallies in a tennis match where a great return spurs the other player to an inspired lob. I was cool at first, but he was so playful and persistent that natural competitiveness took over and I was soon running to the back of the court to retrieve the ball and return it with some topspin. So, no, I didn’t need him, but he created a Jack-shaped need in me, a need that only he could satisfy. Does the woman in the desert know how thirsty she is till they press the bottle to her lips? I started to look forward to the name Abelhammer dropping into my Inbox more than I have looked forward to anything in my life.

To: Kate Reddy, EMF

From: Jack Abelhammer

Nasdaq hit like Pearl Harbor. heavy casualties. Client seeks considered professional opinion of respected British fund manager: should I shoot myself now or wait till after lunch?

Jack

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate Reddy

Rest assured respected fund manager has you constantly in mind. Awaiting interest-rate pronouncement from Al Mighty Greenspan.

Professional opinion: long-term recovery inevitable. Don’t shoot.

Unprofessional opinion: hide under desk till shelling stops, go out and see if any stock left standing. Eat turkey club sandwich. Then shoot.

Katharine xxxxx

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Did you know Alan Greenspan’s wife said he was so oblique that when he asked her to marry him she didn’t even notice? That guy’s harder to read than Thomas Pynchon.

Hey, shouldn’t you be in bed? Middle of the night there, right?

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate Reddy

I like the night. More time in it than the day. Why waste it in bed?

K xxxx

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Bed not invariably a waste of time. Do you know that speech where the guy tells his lover he wishes that seven years were rolled into one night? Must be Shakespeare, right?

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate Reddy

Seven years in one night sounds just about enough hours to pay off my sleep debt. Not Shakespeare. Marlowe, I think. That’s the unfair thing about Shakespeare, though — everything beautiful belongs to him whether he wrote it or not. He’s the Bill Gates of emotional software.

How come you read Marlowe anyway? Did the Wall St J predict a resurgence in Renaissance playwrights?

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Unfair, milady, unfair. Don’t judge a man by his portfolio. Was once a poor struggling English major but had to find a way of financing my first-editions habit. Some men buy boats, I buy a first edition of Ulysses. What’s your excuse?

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate Reddy

Was once a poor struggling English minor. Poverty, when it’s not being boring, is really quite scary. I didn’t want to be scared all my life. In Britain, there are plenty of people who will tell you money doesn’t matter; these are the people we call the middle classes.

Owning first editions such a boy’s own thing. Respectfully suggest, sir, you should spend your money on something really important, like SHOES.

K xxxxxxxxxxx

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Do you realize you have now sent me exactly 147 kisses and I have not sent you a single one?

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate Reddy

It had crossed my mind.

To: Kate ReddyFrom: Jack Abelhammer

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