Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

Caitlin was talking about Williamsburg. Sadie had missed the answer to her own question. “But I was also glad to get out. By the time I left it had changed so much. It used to be a real neighborhood. Everyone was an artist. Now it’s, like, filled with trust-fund kids and lawyers. Starbucks is trying to open a branch on Bedford.”

“ No! ” Sadie shouted.

“Seriously,” Caitlin nodded. “A Starbucks on Bedford.” She sighed. “And the new people in the neighborhood are excited about it. That’s the thing.”

“But I’m sure the old-timers are protesting. Rob must be planning something, right?” Sadie was pleased she remembered the name of Caitlin’s husband, though he hadn’t ever bothered to remember hers.

“ Rob ,” Caitlin scoffed, rolling her eyes, “is in North Carolina solving the problems of displaced migrant farmworkers.”

“North Carolina!” said Sadie, stunned—and strangely pleased—that she and Caitlin had somehow wound up in this same corner of Manhattan, their husbands off in distant regions, their babies cleaving to them alone. “But what about his prison project? What was it called?”

“PrisonBreak,” Caitlin told her. “His old assistant took over for him. It’s huge now. They have a staff of, like, twenty. And they’re running Crown into the ground.” She paused. “Lil didn’t tell you? We’re divorced.”

“Oh,” said Sadie, glancing down at Ismael, who, she saw, looked nothing, of course , like the pale, wormy Rob. She had heard this news, hadn’t she, maybe? From Emily? Perhaps. “I’m so sorry.”

“Ismael’s not his,” she said, following Sadie’s glance. “He’s Osman’s. My partner.”

“Oh,” said Sadie, who had stopped short when she realized that—miracle of miracles—Jack had fallen asleep in his stroller.

“It’s so funny,” Caitlin went on. “When I married Rob I thought I was rebelling against my parents’ bourgeois values, marrying an activist, you know? But I was really just buying into them. Marrying a rich Jew, just like they wanted. Not that they’d ever said so.”

“Hmmm,” said Sadie. She had grown tired of Caitlin and was unsure of what to do now that Jack was suddenly—and without any effort on Sadie’s part—asleep. He hadn’t fallen asleep in his stroller in months. Could she move him into his crib without waking him? Could she even stop walking? If so, she could buy a second cup of coffee and sit in the park and read.

“It all came out when I married Osman. They were furious. I’m so out of touch with them that I thought they’d be thrilled. He’s a programmer. He works for, like, Google. Totally solid. But he’s Pakistani.” She pulled her sunglasses out of her stroller bag and clumsily slid them onto her face. “He worships Ed, you know. All those guys do.”

“Wow,” said Sadie, uncomfortably. “So what did his parents think?” She was interested against her will. “Were they okay with you?”

Caitlin nodded. “They’re professors, just like my parents. Class is the great equalizer, right?”

“I suppose.”

In silence, the women walked past Moishe’s Bakery, gazing at the black-and-white cookies and prune hamantaschen in the window.

“So you’re still in touch with Lil?” asked Caitlin as they reached the corner of Columbia Street, where they’d soon part ways.

Sadie shook her head. “No, not really. Not since she left Tuck.”

“Me, too,” she said, nodding her head solemnly. “We weren’t as close after she got out of the hospital. She was really in a bad way.”

“I was under the impression that there wasn’t really anything wrong with her,” said Sadie, keeping her gaze fixed ahead of her. “Emily saw her right after she was admitted and said she seemed fine. She was just upset about the miscarriage. And angry with Tuck.” She could not prevent herself from narrowing her eyes at Caitlin. “Emily said she got worse in the hospital.”

They had reached the entrance to Caitlin’s building and stopped. “That’s not how it seemed to me,” she told Sadie, with a shrug. “And remember, I saw her a lot more than all of you did right before she got sick.”

She wasn’t sick , Sadie started to say, but before she could, Caitlin had cocked her head toward the archway leading into her building. “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” said Sadie. “I really should get him home and try to put him in his crib.” Caitlin pushed a lock of yellow hair behind her ear. “He can sleep in Ismael’s crib.” She gestured toward her son. “And you and I can have some coffee.” A broad, almost loony smile suddenly sliced across her face. “Oh, and we have kittens! We just brought them home from the shelter. Do you remember our old cats? Those fat things.” Sadie smiled faintly. She did indeed. “They died a year ago. All three within a month. It was like they had a pact.” For a moment, her jaw softened. “I miss them. But the kittens are cute. If Jack wakes up, he can play with them!”

Sadie sighed and succumbed, as she’d known she would. She was too tired to argue. “That sounds great,” she said, and followed Caitlin down the ramp, through the brick archway, across the pretty courtyard, with its oblong fountain, and into the small foyer of the building.

“The contractor’s not here today,” Caitlin explained as they trundled themselves into the small, clunky elevator. “So it shouldn’t be too loud. The kitchen guy might be taking measurements or something, but he shouldn’t bother us too much.” The door closed loudly and Caitlin pressed the cracked black Bakelite button, the “4” long rubbed off its face. With a jolt, the ropes and pullies and gears started up their low thrum. The truth was, Sadie loved these buildings. Caitlin was right. They were the most beautiful in the neighborhood, modeled on a Parisian complex of the 1920s. Her own building, constructed some seven or eight years later, was a brute.

“Have you guys renovated?” Caitlin was asking her. “It’s total hell. We have, like, twenty guys . The architect. The contractor.” She began ticking them off her fingers. “The soundproofing guy. The cabinet guy. The stone guy. The concrete guy. The tile guy. The floor guy. The electrician. The plumber.” Sadie nodded sympathetically, though her apartment still had the original 1948 kitchen, complete with a monstrous white BiltRite stove and painted oak cabinets that leaked sawdust onto her pots and pans. She had to wash everything before she used it. “It’s not functional,” Rose had cried two years earlier, when they’d cleaned out the apartment after Minnie’s death, Sadie so pregnant she could barely bend over, and still with a month to go.

“I like it,” Sadie had insisted. It seemed barbaric, somehow, to just come into the apartment in which Minnie had lived for fifty years, nearly half her life, and start ripping things up. But then there was also, again, the money. They didn’t have forty grand on hand.

“No,” she told Caitlin as they landed, with a jolt, on the fourth floor. “We haven’t had any work done.”

“It’s such a pain dealing with all these people roaming around your house.” Woefully, she jangled her key ring in the direction of the green metal door to the right of the elevator. “Osman leaves for work before they arrive and I’m supposed to tell them what to do—and I have no idea . He’s used to ordering people around. He grew up with servants. But I just have no idea.” A couple of short bangs and the low murmur of voices issued forth from the apartment. “Steve is here,” Caitlin sighed, selecting a gold Medeco key, similar to Sadie’s own, and inserted it into the dull brass lock. With a thwack the tumblers fell—and Jack’s eyes popped open. For a moment it seemed as if he might close them again. Then his face contorted into a familiar expression—the silent scream, Ed called it—and it was clear things would not end so easily. The wail that followed seemed magnified a thousandfold by the hallway’s stucco walls; and yet, somehow, Ismael slept on.