arrive on time was just one of several things that bothered Susan. She was, in general, a bit sloppy, leaving the lunch dishes in the sink and only occasionally bothering to clean the stroller and diaper bag before she left for the day.
There was also a collegiate looseness about Marni, an easy sexiness of tousled hair, multiple-pierced ears, and tight T-shirts that rubbed Susan the wrong way. She knew very little about Marni’s personal life, but the young woman had never mentioned any particular boyfriend, and Susan had at some point decided that this indicated not chasteness but rather the opposite: an active and unsettled romantic and sexual life. Susan frequently imagined (and reprimanded herself for doing so) that Marni was coming to her nannying job directly from her latest one-night stand.
Alex’s days started early, and he was usually gone before Marni arrived and home long after she left. He never paid any particular attention to her, which was just fine by Susan.
“So, Emma-roo,” said Marni, tossing her little H&M jean jacket casually on top of a packing box as they returned from their circuit of the apartment. “Were you aware that Brooklyn has its very own children’s museum?”
“It does? Let’s go there! Let’s go there!” Emma bounced around Marni in a loopy circle. “Mom! Mom! We’re going to a children’s museum!”
“Is that OK?” Marni asked Susan, who obviously couldn’t say no, not now.
Oh, stop being so annoyed
, Susan told herself, digging her wallet from her pocketbook to pay for museum admission and lunch. She wondered in passing whether her occasional distaste for Marni came from her own annoyance at herself, mild but ever-present:
you’re not going to work, and we’re
still
shelling out four hundred bucks a week for child care?
She gave Emma a shower of kisses, handed Marni a pair of twenties, and headed out the door.
*
Susan’s first stop was Trader Joe’s, at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street, so she could fill the fridge with milk and yogurt and stock the pantry with applesauce and juice boxes and cooking oil. Alex did most of the cooking, but Susan generally handled the shopping. She moved swiftly through the aisles, bopping her head to “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” and lingering briefly in the frozen meat section before adding FIND A BUTCHER to her to-do list and moving on. Next to Trader Joe’s was a spacious wine shop run by twenty-something hipsters, where she picked up two reds and two whites from a “ten-and-under” table. “This Montepulciano is the
bomb
,” said the girl behind the counter, who sported auburn pigtails, oversized plastic-framed glasses, and an arm sleeved with colorful tattoos. “Oh? Rad,” said Susan, thinking,
I love Brooklyn
.
Back home, Susan unpacked the cold stuff and then took a half hour to line her drawers and cupboards with wax paper before unpacking the pantry items. She turned on the radio, found WNYC, and spent the rest of the Leonard Lopate Show slicing open boxes marked KITCHEN , rinsing off dishes they had stupidly packed innewsprint, and finding counter space for the KitchenAid, Cuisinart, and hand mixer. Settling down with her laptop at the kitchen table, Susan filled out a numbing series of address-change forms and then composed a mass e-mail with her new address, appending the de rigueur postscript about how “my cell phone number and e-mail will of course remain the same … ”
Susan’s brisk march through her task list was slowed by a headline on her Yahoo! homepage: Anna Mara Phelps, the young mother accused of killing her daughters, had been arraigned and pled not guilty by reason of insanity, as expected. Susan noted, before forcing herself to get back to work, that Phelps was a former actress, had moved to New York from Minneapolis in 2002, and was thirty-four years old, same as Susan.
Upstairs, Susan swept out the closet in the second bedroom and opened a box marked CLOTHES: EMMA . She was
There was also a collegiate looseness about Marni, an easy sexiness of tousled hair, multiple-pierced ears, and tight T-shirts that rubbed Susan the wrong way. She knew very little about Marni’s personal life, but the young woman had never mentioned any particular boyfriend, and Susan had at some point decided that this indicated not chasteness but rather the opposite: an active and unsettled romantic and sexual life. Susan frequently imagined (and reprimanded herself for doing so) that Marni was coming to her nannying job directly from her latest one-night stand.
Alex’s days started early, and he was usually gone before Marni arrived and home long after she left. He never paid any particular attention to her, which was just fine by Susan.
“So, Emma-roo,” said Marni, tossing her little H&M jean jacket casually on top of a packing box as they returned from their circuit of the apartment. “Were you aware that Brooklyn has its very own children’s museum?”
“It does? Let’s go there! Let’s go there!” Emma bounced around Marni in a loopy circle. “Mom! Mom! We’re going to a children’s museum!”
“Is that OK?” Marni asked Susan, who obviously couldn’t say no, not now.
Oh, stop being so annoyed
, Susan told herself, digging her wallet from her pocketbook to pay for museum admission and lunch. She wondered in passing whether her occasional distaste for Marni came from her own annoyance at herself, mild but ever-present:
you’re not going to work, and we’re
still
shelling out four hundred bucks a week for child care?
She gave Emma a shower of kisses, handed Marni a pair of twenties, and headed out the door.
*
Susan’s first stop was Trader Joe’s, at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street, so she could fill the fridge with milk and yogurt and stock the pantry with applesauce and juice boxes and cooking oil. Alex did most of the cooking, but Susan generally handled the shopping. She moved swiftly through the aisles, bopping her head to “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” and lingering briefly in the frozen meat section before adding FIND A BUTCHER to her to-do list and moving on. Next to Trader Joe’s was a spacious wine shop run by twenty-something hipsters, where she picked up two reds and two whites from a “ten-and-under” table. “This Montepulciano is the
bomb
,” said the girl behind the counter, who sported auburn pigtails, oversized plastic-framed glasses, and an arm sleeved with colorful tattoos. “Oh? Rad,” said Susan, thinking,
I love Brooklyn
.
Back home, Susan unpacked the cold stuff and then took a half hour to line her drawers and cupboards with wax paper before unpacking the pantry items. She turned on the radio, found WNYC, and spent the rest of the Leonard Lopate Show slicing open boxes marked KITCHEN , rinsing off dishes they had stupidly packed innewsprint, and finding counter space for the KitchenAid, Cuisinart, and hand mixer. Settling down with her laptop at the kitchen table, Susan filled out a numbing series of address-change forms and then composed a mass e-mail with her new address, appending the de rigueur postscript about how “my cell phone number and e-mail will of course remain the same … ”
Susan’s brisk march through her task list was slowed by a headline on her Yahoo! homepage: Anna Mara Phelps, the young mother accused of killing her daughters, had been arraigned and pled not guilty by reason of insanity, as expected. Susan noted, before forcing herself to get back to work, that Phelps was a former actress, had moved to New York from Minneapolis in 2002, and was thirty-four years old, same as Susan.
Upstairs, Susan swept out the closet in the second bedroom and opened a box marked CLOTHES: EMMA . She was
Similar Books
Mad for the Billionaire
Charlotte DeCorte
Commander-In-Chief
Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney
The Quest of the Missing Map
Carolyn G. Keene
Between the World and Me
Ta-nehisi Coates
Bellefleur
Joyce Carol Oates
Sinners and Saints
Ambear Shellea
Count on Me (Petal, Georgia)
Lauren Dane