CHAPTER 42

Annabelle Starts School

At a certain point Leda preferred to apply makeup using the mirror from her bronzer compact, which was covered in a thin layer of powder and gave her reflection a generous, warm filter. It hid the lines on her face that had solemnly begun to appear and would allow for momentary escape from her neuroses about aging.

“Oh for god’s sake,” her mother said, “if I hear you complain about wrinkles I’ll open a vein. Get some face cream and forget about it. You young people never stop with obsessing about being young.”

“But look, I have lines here, and look here.” She leaned up close to her mom to show her a line going from her nose to her mouth.

“You’ve always had that.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m really getting wrinkly.”

“Wrinkly in the brain. Or maybe you don’t have enough wrinkles in your brain and that’s the problem,” her mom said.

At about the same time that Leda switched from regular mirrors to powdered mirrors Annabelle started kindergarten. She was very excited about it and carried a My Little Pony lunch box around the house the weeks leading up to the start. On her first day Leda packed her more food than would be necessary to survive a weekend in the wilderness. When Annabelle got home Leda discovered that she only ate the cookies.

“You only ate the cookies, Anna-B.”

“I ate some of the sandwich.”

The sandwich was pulled apart and the peanut butter had been licked off.

“You have to eat more than cookies and peanut butter, honey. Weren’t you hungry all day?”

“No, we had snack.”

“Well, I’m not going to pack cookies anymore if you don’t eat your actual lunch too, okay?”

“Okay, I will.”

The next day the cookies were eaten and three bites of sandwich.

During those first few months of kindergarten very often Leda found herself in total awe of her daughter. In five short years she’d turned from an infant unable to hold her head up to a little girl who kept a sticker collection and could count off jumping jacks. Her knees are just like a grown-up’s knees, she thought, seeing her daughter standing on a kitchen chair one morning.

John took Annabelle to school whenever he didn’t have to be in early for work. He was a really good dad, and this was something Leda admired greatly about him. He seemed to genuinely enjoy the company of his child, which was disappointingly unusual for many men. Whenever Leda would see John tenderly hand his daughter a cup of juice or lean down to scoop her up, she felt a pang of love so intense. With little notice, the love between her and John had changed over the years. Bits and pieces of what it had been fell away and new surfaces emerged that heartily sustained them. Their love was marching forward, evolving, becoming bigger. Love now was the brisk partnership of facilitating the healthy and happy life of their child. The two of them could silently maneuver together and get their daughter dressed and fed in mere minutes. If you’d told Leda then that John was not in fact part of her body, she may not have believed you.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” he asked her as they watched Annabelle walk, wobbly and resolved, through the school yard her very first day.

“I think she will,” Leda said. “She’s strong.”

“She’s stronger than I am,” John said, and Leda knew just how much he meant it.

She hadn’t realized it the first few months of the school year, but many of the stay-at-home mothers spent their time walking around the elementary school during the day. She’d come to pick Annabelle up early one day for a doctor’s appointment when she bumped into Helen, a thin, young-looking woman with graying hair and a six-month-old baby she carried in a sling at all times.

“Oh, hi, Helen. Are you picking up early too?” Leda asked.

“Oh, no, I stay,” Helen said, rocking back and forth as she stroked her baby’s head.

“You stay?”

“Yes, I usually just hang out at the school until the day is out. I’m a stay-at-home mom so I can do that.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. Is that something people do?” Leda tried not to sound shocked or judgmental, but Helen didn’t seem to be aware of how peculiar the whole scenario was; she just swayed back and forth holding her sling baby.

“Yes, myself, Patrice, Lisa, Sara, and usually Kelly all stay. You should stay with us sometime!”

“What is it you do, though? I mean for all those hours?”

“We walk around and talk and usually visit the office and see if we can be of any help with any upcoming school functions or anything like that. Honestly, the hours just fly by. I feel like I’ve just dropped Lucy off, and then it’s time to pick her up again. I mean, if you think about it what do you do at home without her all day?”

Leda tried to think of a good answer to this, but, really, Helen was right. There wasn’t all that much to do at home with Annabelle gone. Most days she found herself counting down the hours until it was time to go back to pick her up. Luckily, the school day wasn’t all that long, or she might have started feeling similar to how she’d felt in California. Maybe if I were a better housewife I’d clean things and organize and keep a home like Martha Stewart or that lady I once went to the house of who made homemade wreaths, but I am not these women at all, she thought. Before she’d made it to Annabelle’s classroom she’d resolved to go back to work.

After some consideration, Leda decided not to go back to tutoring because the hours were afternoons and weekends. She wanted to be home as much as she had been. Her friend Katrina told her of a local publishing house looking for a receptionist.

“The pay is abysmal and the work is tedious, but hey, at least it’s working in publishing, right? I’ll e-mail Liz and get you an interview. She’s a good friend of mine.”

Leda didn’t even come in for an in-person interview. Liz was so happy to be getting someone who wasn’t just out of college that she hired her over the phone. “I want you to start as soon as possible, if that’s okay?”

“Sure, I could do Monday?”

“You can’t come in tomorrow? The girl I had quit without giving me any notice at all. She had some kind of issue with her boyfriend or something. She left me high and dry and I’m really swamped.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. Yes, I could come in tomorrow.”

Her first day was slower than she’d anticipated. The work was mostly answering e-mails and doing little odd jobs around the office. Liz was tall and disheveled in a professional kind of way. When she talked on the phone she’d say, “Well, who’s to say?” and “I just can’t deal with that.” Leda kept to herself mostly. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for herself on occasion as she’d print something out or make copies of something else. At lunch she ate a salad and thought about the woman she’d been in college. It was hard to imagine her now. When she got home she cried to John, and he told her to quit the job.

“Why are you doing it if it’s making you miserable?”

“It’s only been one day, John. Don’t you think I should give it a chance?” She felt that this is what John should have been saying to her instead of telling her to quit.

The next few weeks, things got a bit better in the office. Leda settled into a routine, and it was nice to get out of the house. Being a stay-at-home mom had for the most part been a considerably thankless job, but being in the office had so many little rewards throughout the day that she always felt like she was accomplishing something.

“Thanks, Leda,” Liz would say.

Or a client would email: “That’s perfect, thanks!”

One Friday a delivery man said, “You make my day,” when Leda took a package from him and offered him some candy from her desk. It was nice to be appreciated, and then at 2:45 she was out the door and could go pick up Annabelle and settle into the job she really loved.

Annabelle started her second year of school and Leda was invited to a party that Helen was throwing. “It’s back to school for us mommies too!” the invitation said. It was all women and they drank mimosas and talked about summer camps and after-school activities. A smartly dressed woman named Janette talked with Leda for a long time about an article they’d both read in The New York Times that morning. She was funny and bright. Leda didn’t recognize her from the playground at drop-offs in the morning.

“You know, I don’t remember you from last year at all. Are you new to the school?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I just don’t drop off. My nanny, Eloise, does. I have to be at work early. I’m a lawyer,” Janette said.

“Oh, okay. I think I remember seeing Eloise.” She tried to think of who Eloise might be, but it wasn’t coming to her.

“What is it you do?” Janette asked.

For a second Leda hesitated. She was used to the judgmental stares of working moms when she’d explain that she stayed at home. There was always an apologetic effect to the way they’d nod as she talked about giving up her own ambitions to prepare afternoon snacks and listen to a six-year-old explain how many planets were in the solar system. But then she stopped herself.

“I work as an administrative assistant in a publishing house,” she said.

“Oh, wow.” Janette seemed impressed. “That must be interesting work.”

“Yeah, I like it. The hours are flexible so I get to be home with Annabelle a lot.”

“Wow, it sounds like you have it all.”

Leda nodded. For a moment she couldn’t help but believe it to be true.

That night as she got ready for bed she told John about the party and about all the other women. She told him about Annabelle and her first day of first grade.

“It was a good day,” she said, washing the makeup off her face. As she stood up from leaning over the sink she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her face was dripping wet. She could see no lines and no wrinkles. It was just her young face staring back at her, brilliant and elegant and ready to face the next day.

“I look just like my mother,” she said.