Читать книгу A Perfect Pair - Jen Safrey, Jen Safrey - Страница 10

About a year and a half later

The Mother’s Day pageant was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Twenty-seven third-graders ran amok backstage, darting around abandoned, faded backdrops, hiding behind black curtains and giggling as they tripped over their own baggy, assorted animal costumes and landed on the dusty wooden floorboards. Fifty-four little sneakered feet thundered back and forth in a frenzied pre-performance game of demented tag, no one knowing who was it, but everyone joining in, anyway, for the sheer joy of running in circles and screaming.

Josey squinted at her watch, straining in the dank backstage dimness to see the clock. Five minutes until curtain time. The best way to get a grip on this eight-year-old hysteria, she knew, was her piercing, unladylike taxi-hail whistle, the one she used when her pumped-up kids returned to the classroom from either recess or gym class, the one that made them cover their ears in mock terror and shriek, “Miss St. John! That’s so loud!” But she hated to use it here, aware of the mothers and handful of fathers currently seating themselves out front, and dreading what they would think of her archaic method of crowd control.

“Kids! Kids, settle down!” she hissed in—appropriately—a stage whisper, but no one heard or cared. Arms and legs flailing, they continued their chase around and around until finally, Josey felt forced to take her drastic measure. She put two fingers in her mouth and blew with all her might.

Small hands flew to heads. “Miss St. John! Ow!”

Josey winced, remembering the parents, but then she heard several amused titters and one outright laugh come from out front. She should have known they’d understand—and approve. Relieved, she turned to her class.

“Okay, everyone,” she said, widening her arms and allowing all the children to gather around her. She did a silent head count, did it again and was satisfied. “Just remember to do your best. If you forget your lines or a song, it’s okay. We’re just doing this to have fun, right?”

They all nodded, suddenly very serious in their fuzzy costumes and rainbow feathers and painted-on whiskers. My kids, Josey caught herself thinking, and smiled to herself.

“And,” she added with a wink, “I’ll be right in front of the stage like I showed you this morning, if you need help remembering anything. I’ll wave right at the beginning so you all can see me. Our rehearsal today was awesome, right?”

Enthusiastic nods.

“Your parents are going to be so proud. And if your parents couldn’t come today—” she focused on a few specific faces “—I’m especially proud of you for being good sports.”

Ally Berenson, the music teacher, poked her head through the curtain then. “Hi, Miss Berenson!” a chorus of voices called, and Ally waggled her fingers at them.

“Hi, gang. Are you ready to rock and roll?”

“Yes!” they all yelled happily, even though Josey was sure the expression went right over their heads. Ally was a kid favorite. With her wild mop of brassy hair tumbling around her face and her ability to make up a silly spontaneous song about any student, it was easy to understand why.

Ally flicked her gaze to Josey. “Are you ready?” she asked more quietly, grinning. “Full house out there. Somehow, when they dim the lights, I forget it’s a gymnasium with folding chairs.”

Josey smiled back. “Just soothing some opening-night—uh, make that opening-afternoon—jitters.”

“Your own or the kids’?”

“Well,” Josey admitted, “I am a little nervous.”

“Me, too,” Ally whispered. “And I have no excuse. I write songs for every class, kindergarten through sixth, for plays every year. I deserve a Tony by now. Maybe two.”

Josey turned back to her class. “Everyone get in your places!” she called. And as the third-grade zoo animals scrambled around the stage, she added in a low voice to Ally, “You’re terrific. I thought when I came up with this year’s Mother’s Day play idea you were going to kill me.”

“No, it’s great!” Ally said. “I had a lot of fun with them. The tiger song was tough, but hey, I’m a genius.”

“Anyway,” Josey pointed out, “this audience didn’t come here to see you and me.”

Ally chuckled. “True enough. Good luck! See you at the cast party. I hear Mel Gibson may show.” She laughed and ducked as Josey took a playful swat at her, then disappeared again behind the curtain.

Josey hustled a few children around, and when all seemed in order, she took a small lion named Jeremy by the hand and led him to where the curtain parted. She put Jeremy’s hand—now a golden paw—on the curtain in the right spot so he wouldn’t have to fumble, then knelt by him.

“Okay, Jeremy. All set?”

“Yeah,” the boy answered in a shaky but definitely determined voice.

“I’m going to go out front. You stay here and count to twenty-five slowly, then come on out.”

“Okay, Miss St. John. I’m not scared,” he added, more to himself than to her.

Touched, she put a playful finger on his now-brown nose. “I know. Okay, start counting!”

Josey tiptoed offstage so as not to make a clatter, then once safely in the wings, she ran down the stairs, leaping off three steps from the bottom. She smoothed her long, swirly rust-colored skirt and tucked a strand of hair behind each ear before pushing open the door and stepping out before the audience.

She opted out of an opening speech, aware that Jeremy was probably counting fast. Instead, she waved an acknowledging hand to the clapping parents and took her place in front of the stage just in time for Jeremy to hustle his way through the curtain. The crowd behind Josey murmured at the adorable costume.

“Moms and dads,” Jeremy began, and Josey was relieved to hear he’d remembered to speak very loudly. “Miss St. John’s third-graders are proud to present ‘Wild Moms.’ We take you now to the zoo. The animals are all getting ready to celebrate Mother’s Day.” He ad-libbed a growl, which elicited an auditorium full of laughter, then moved stage left as the sixth-grader Josey had hired for the day pulled open the curtain.

The play went amazingly well. Ally’s songs were perfect; the parents loved the one about the mama tiger teaching her cub how to growl. One child, Jamie Cranston, forgot her lines, and though Josey called them out in a whisper for her, it clearly distressed Jamie, one of the smartest little girls in the class, to have been the only one helped by the teacher. She watched as Jamie slunk backstage in humiliation. Josey made a mental note to talk to the little girl after the play and tell her how brave she was.

But then she saw that she wouldn’t need to.

A moment later, out of the corner of her eye, she spied Jamie’s parents. They slipped into the side aisle and climbed quietly up the side stage stairs, pushing behind the heavy black curtain. No one else in the audience seemed to notice, all focused on their own children. But the black curtain didn’t fall all the way behind the Cranstons, and through the open space Josey saw them approach their miserable daughter, and then saw the father scoop Jamie up in his arms.

Josey turned her eyes back to her job, back to the play, but it was going without a hitch, and she just couldn’t help herself from peeking at the backstage family again. Jamie’s father lifted his mouth to her ear, blew away a strand of flaxen hair and whispered. Josey watched his lips form words that only his little girl could hear, words that produced a small wisp of a smile. Then the mother leaned in closer and added her own soft comments, which elicited an even larger smile. And then Jamie snuggled her face happily in her dad’s shoulder.

And Josey, suddenly distracted from her onstage class, her gaze on the backstage drama, was sure she would never forget, in her whole life, the look on the mother’s face. As the woman gazed at her husband and daughter, there was a glowing serenity about her, a sweet combination of love and satisfaction that reminded Josey of a holy madonna statue.

And although Josey couldn’t hear her voice, she instinctively knew that when the woman bent her head toward her husband, her murmured words were, “I love you.”

Then the pair slipped quietly back to their seats, and Josey returned her attention to her class, and the show went on.

When the curtain closed, all the parents jumped to their feet, clapping and whistling. Josey leaped onto the stage, pushed behind the curtain and lined up the children, holding hands, for their bow. When one little boy and girl in the middle refused to touch each other’s hand—fear of cooties, no doubt—Josey alleviated the problem by stepping between them and taking a small hand in each of hers. She nodded at the stage girl to pull the curtain open again, and as cameras flashed and camcorders whirred, Josey took the deserved bow with her hardworking, exhausted kids.

But in that moment, when she expected her heart would swell with its usual pride, it felt achy and hollow—a first for her.

When the last straggling child had gone for the day, Josey looked around the room, abandoned for the afternoon. Rays of sunshine filtered through the window blinds and lit up the desks in the front row. Everything was so familiar and yet felt strange to her. She felt strange, really. As if she’d never really seen anything before and now it was all suddenly clear.

Instead of rummaging through her desk for her take-home work—papers to grade, lessons to plan—she just went to the closet, grabbed her spring trench coat and flung it over her arm. She picked her keys absently out of her top desk drawer and left the classroom, slamming the door behind her.

The subway ride home passed in a daze. Josey hung on to the overhead bar, the car’s motion bumping her into fellow Boston commuters. She didn’t notice. She just stared at her own face, reflected in the window as the train moved through the darkness in between stations. She looked at herself, standing in the crowd, the way someone else on the subway might have looked at her, and she didn’t feel anything at all. She got off at her stop automatically, and walked the three blocks to her apartment building. It was a pleasant walk, and usually Josey thought about how nice it was to live in such a historic, if slightly overpriced, neighborhood. But today she may as well have been walking through a war zone, for all she knew.

She turned her key in the front door and without stopping at her mailbox, started up the stairs to her apartment. She didn’t bother knocking on Nate’s door to see if he was home yet, just dragged up one more flight and let herself into her own place.

The answering machine was blinking—two messages—but Josey didn’t care. She threw her coat over a chair and flopped onto the sofa, listlessly staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t care at all. She felt…empty. She kicked off her beige suede pumps.

What had happened to her? This day had been turning out so well. The play went off with barely a hitch. She was able to talk to parents without stammering… Even this morning, her kids had done so well on their spelling tests—

Her kids. Her kids.

They weren’t her kids. They were all someone else’s kids.

In the peeling ceiling plaster, Josey suddenly saw Jamie’s mother’s face again, beaming with pride and love at her family. Josey didn’t know what the woman did for a living, but she suspected family was the woman’s first priority.

Having a family had never been her priority.

She liked—no, loved—being single. She liked having different dates on different weekends, and getting to know a variety of people. Her girlfriends—Ally, for one—thought of dating as a necessary step to finding the right man and getting married. But Josey didn’t think that way. It was too much pressure. How could you go out to dinner with a man you just met and be checking him out for commitment potential? Josey knew she wouldn’t even get to dessert if her mind worked that way. She just liked talking to new people and having fun. Her dates were platonic, anyway, for the most part. She’d only had two boyfriends that she would have called serious—one in high school and one in college. Both relationships had run their course, though, and Josey, a resilient woman, had gotten over them. Plenty of fish in the sea…

Josey shifted her weight on the sofa and picked the remote control off the floor. She pointed it at the television, but dropped her arm almost immediately and began toying with the device, fingering the rubber keys.

She remembered Ally lamenting once, after a particularly horrendous date, “I know the perfect man is out there for me, and I can’t find him. You can’t find yours, either, but it doesn’t even bother you. You’re in the same boat as me, but if you have a lousy date, you just shrug it off.”

“Sure, I do,” Josey had said. “What’s the rush?” And she had believed it, then.

So why was she sitting here now, thinking maybe Ally and all those other single women were right? Thinking that maybe dating really was a means to an end, and she’d never get to that end if she just continued on the way she had been, accepting dates with nice people just to have a good time.

Did she really need more? Were there possibilities she had ignored?

Josey suddenly bolted up from the sofa and walked into the kitchen. She usually had a beer and watched TV before fixing a simple dinner, but when she opened the refrigerator, the thought of downing a beer and yelling at Oprah Winfrey’s guests seemed too…bachelorette. She slammed the fridge door and grabbed the mostly unused teakettle off the stove. She filled it with water and set it back down on the range, turning up the heat. Then she rummaged through the overhead cabinet for a clean mug. Tea. Very domestic.

Domestic?

Josey stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor. Was she really considering this? A family? Her? Born-to-have-fun, sworn-to-single-life Josephine St. John?

A husband?

The phone rang, startling Josey so much a small gasp emerged from her throat. She lunged for the phone, not wanting to hear one more offensive ring. “Hello?”

“Oh, you’re home early. I was going to leave you a message.” Nate’s rich baritone filled her ear. The reserved, slightly detached tone of his voice was typical of someone making a personal phone call from work, but then, Nate often sounded like that. Besides, Josey knew he had to be at work, because if he were at home, he’d be knocking on her door instead of calling her.

“Hey, Nate.”

“You sound exhausted. The kids wear you out? Oh no, wait, the play. How’d it go?”

“All right. I mean, fine. It went fine.” Josey, frustrated with her inability to communicate, pushed back a corner of the kitchen curtain and glanced outside. The bright late-afternoon sunshine made her squint, so she dropped the gauzy material.

“It’s Friday once again,” Nate continued. “And it’s your turn to choose. Japanese, Italian, Thai? Hamburgers?”

Oh, damn. Josey couldn’t believe she’d forgotten her weekly dinner out with Nate. But she was in no shape to go anyplace tonight. She was just going to get into her bathrobe and turn on some Billy Joel and stare into space. She was in the midst of some kind of epiphany, and she needed to stay here and sort out her mind. And maybe replan her future.

“Nate, you know what? It’s not really a good night for me.”

Nate paused, then asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Why does something have to be wrong?”

“All right, strike that.” Spoken like a true lawyer. “What’s going on?”

“Why does something have to be going—”

“Because you never cancel out on me. I tried to cancel on you twice, but I didn’t succeed because no matter how much work I have to do, you always convince me otherwise.”

“Mmm…”

“And you know what? You’re always right. So, no excuses. I’ll stop by in about two hours. I’ve got a few more things to handle here, then—”

“Nate, I’m serious. I’m sorry. I really can’t do it tonight.”

“All right. Don’t worry about it. I’m not insulted. Just tell me why you’re canceling.”

Josey began pacing in a slow circle, wrapping the phone cord around her body. “Why do you sound so worried?”

“Because I am worried. No one likes to go out and have fun more than you, Josey. You wouldn’t ditch a night out on the town unless something was up.”

“Nate,” Josey insisted, “I’m fine. Okay? I just have to—well—I have to stay here and…think for a while.”

Not normally one for spontaneous good humor, Nate laughed out loud. “That, I have to say, is a new one. Do you usually go through life not thinking?”

“Nate, please. I’ll talk to you tomorrow about it, okay? Don’t get on my—”

“I’m not, I’m not.” Nate was suddenly serious again. “I didn’t mean to laugh. Whatever this is with you, I hope you figure it out. Do you want a rain check for tomorrow evening? It’s a Saturday night. I wouldn’t want to impose on any big date plans.”

As it happened, Josey didn’t have a date. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know. That should be fine,” she added, distractedly.

“Hold on.” The sound was suddenly muffled, as if Nate had covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and she heard voices. Then he came back. “Josey, listen, I have to run. One crisis after another around here.”

“Yeah.”

“So I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Don’t forget to call.”

“I won’t, Nate.”

They said their goodbyes and hung up, and Josey rested her hand on the receiver for a moment, trying to get control of her thoughts again.

But despite her effort, all that went around in her head was I want a family.

Well, she thought, why fight it? My mind is made up.

She glanced up at the framed poster on the far wall, of the Patriots’ quarterback. Nate had bought it for her birthday last month, in remembrance of their first meeting. Her mouth turned up slightly at the memory of tall, dark, handsome, subdued Nate crashing into her apartment, afraid all hell was breaking loose, and intending to do something about it. Sweet, reliable, responsible Nate.

Nate, Josey realized with a start, would be perfect to help her.

When she had told Nate she’d call him tomorrow, she had said it automatically, so that he’d stop worrying about her. But, she thought now, he was the perfect person to help out.

If anyone would understand what she was going through, it would be him. He didn’t have a wife and kids—hadn’t even dated anyone seriously since Josey had known him—but he was goal-driven and ambitious, and she needed someone like that now that she was planning to restructure her own life around a new objective. A family.

Besides, Josey thought, walking down the short hall to her bathroom and shedding her work clothing on the way, good old responsible Nate ought to be able to help her figure out how to do a responsible thing like settle down. She’d just ask for his help. Tomorrow.