Through Thick and Thin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  part one - get into the zone!

  one - blurry vision

  two - lasagna

  three - a little more about josh

  four - trouble sleeping

  five - what would jennifer do?

  six - a rose by any other name

  seven - the strangest things seem suddenly routine

  eight - go ouest

  nine - the detox diet

  part two - you say you want a revolution?

  ten - as lonely as you wanted to be

  eleven - what you don’t know can’t hurt you, or not

  twelve - db sweeney

  thirteen - women who lock themselves away and only eat leeks don’t get fat

  fourteen - fun, interactive activities

  fifteen - thunderstorm consolation

  sixteen - the waiting is the hardest part

  part three - watch this

  seventeen - i’m here because of db sweeney

  eighteen - join us

  nineteen - try easy

  twenty - not one gold star, but two

  twenty-one - oh, the heart

  twenty-two - reverse your namaste

  twenty-three - la bonne fin

  twenty-four - did you come here to dance?

  twenty-five - king of the fairies, ruler of the elves

  twenty-six - good things come to those who wait

  adopt a dog today!

  PRAISE FOR

  Pug Hill

  “Smart and witty.”

  —Library Journal

  “A delightful romp! Dry and breezy wit . . . a delightful, funny read for pugs and humans alike.”

  —Wilson the Pug with Nancy Levine, authors of The Tao of Pug

  “Pug Hill is all at once touching, witty, and so very smart. I love this nervous and self-deprecating narrator who makes low self-esteem not only funny and endearing but enviable. There’s a terrific comedic eye at work here and a tender heart—a most satisfying combination.”

  —Elinor Lipman, author of My Latest Grievance

  “Playful, funny . . . Pug Hill is the story of a woman confronting her fears and the adorable pooches that can help her do it.”

  —Pages

  “Pitch-perfect and deftly written . . . a funny, charming, and touching novel.”

  —Robin Epstein and Renée Kaplan, coauthors of Shaking Her Assets

  “Alison Pace isn’t afraid to tackle serious subjects, even as she delivers a wry and witty portrait of growing up and growing into herself at long last.”

  —Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama

  “To paraphrase Woody Allen, love is too weak a word to describe how I feel about this novel. I loove it!”

  —Melissa Senate, author of See Jane Date

  PRAISE FOR

  If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend

  “If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend is pure, guilt-free pleasure. When you’re not laughing your head off, you’re in the middle of a remarkably honest and heartfelt story about a woman who has to find love inside herself before she can find it outside.”

  —Joseph Weisberg, author of 10th Grade

  “Laugh-out-loud funny.”

  —Booklist

  “Alison Pace takes us on a whirlwind transcontinental journey (first-class, of course) with a loveable main character who, amid the crazy world of abstract art, discovers a little inspiration of her own.”

  —Jennifer O’Connell, author of Bachelorette #1 and Off the Record

  “A funny, feel-good fairy tale set improbably in the high-powered international art world. If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend will give hope to the most relationship-weary heart.”

  —Pam Houston, author of Sight Hound

  “A poignant and very funny look at the dating life of a fictional New York gal.”

  —The Washington Post

  “This book is GENIUS! I stayed up all night laughing hyena-style.”

  —Jill Kargman, coauthor of Wolves in Chic Clothing

  “Art lovers, dog lovers—even EX-lovers—will love this fun, funny book.”

  —Beth Kendrick, author of Fashionably Late

  Also by Alison Pace

  IF ANDY WARHOL HAD A GIRLFRIEND PUG HILL

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Alison Pace

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pace, Alison.

  “Berkley trade paperback”—T.p. verso.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-04370-7

  I. Title.

  PS3566.A24T47 2007

  813’.54—dc22 2007008010

  p

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  to my sister

  acknowledgments

  For the myriad and vast ways in which they contributed to this book, many, many thanks go to Susan Allison, Joe Veltre, Jessica Wade, Lisa Mondello, Leslie Gelbman, all the great people at Berkley Books, Sarah Swidler, David Corcoran, Andrea Strong, Joanna Schwartz, Cynthia Zabel, Jennifer Geller, Christine Ciampa, Robin Epstein, Sarah Melinger, Lynda Curnyn, Wendy Tufano, Mom and Dad, and of course, Carlie.

  part one

  get into the zone!

  one

  blurry vision

  It wasn’t always like this, Meredith thinks, as different towns—towns she has never been to and, truth be told, has no great interest in ever going to—all pass by, all in a blur. If you don’t pay attention to it though, anything can be a blur. Can’t it? Can’t all of New Jersey be a blur, just like all the houses passed by, and the picket fences? And then, maybe even the distance, and the marriages, and the babies. They could be a blur, too. Except, actually, the babies don’t seem to know how.
Babies, though so soft by their very nature, refuse to be a blur. They are sharp and in focus, solid, completely and utterly defined. They leave everything else, everything less important swirling around them.

  But, right, yes. Meredith tries to go back a few steps in her thoughts, to make it so that they, her thoughts, don’t branch out in the ever forward-thinking way they have always liked to do. She tries not to think about blurs, and suburbs, and the babies who bring people here. And she tries not to think the thought that is bound to come next, the one that is not going to crown her “World’s Best Aunt.” She is, she imagines, not the best aunt. But maybe that’s just because she’s so new at it. Maybe all she needs is more time. It’s only been six months after all. Could be that in the seventh month, or even the eighth (the eighth would be okay, too), she’ll be better at it. It’s not that she doesn’t love her still-new niece, Ivy, because she does, she just feels so completely removed. From Ivy. From Stephanie. From all of it. She thinks that it might have a lot to do with New Jersey. She thinks that so much these days, that it, all of it, might have a lot to do with New Jersey.

  Right as the train approaches the Ridgewood station, right as the announcer is earnestly and helpfully, though also more or less unintelligibly, reminding her to gather her belongings and to double-check that she hasn’t left anything behind, Meredith finds herself back at her initial thought. She thinks again, it wasn’t always like this. And it really wasn’t.

  She gets up and gathers her things; she does not double-check for her belongings. Meredith is tired of earnest and helpful suggestions that fall under the category of What She Should Do Next. She stares down at her feet, at her more functional than stylish Nikes, the type of sneakers that a person would run in, if she were so inclined to run. If running didn’t make her knees hurt, her lower back ache, didn’t always put her in mind of an overweight hamster on a never-ending Habitrail wheel of despair. If only running made her feel as if she were leaving all her troubles behind, if a journey once around the reservoir in Central Park made her feel as if she were on a path toward the ever-elusive adjectives, slender, thin, fit (even fit would do), she could use these very sneakers.

  She keeps her gaze fixed on the sneakers as she steps off the train, over the subtly scary space between the train and the platform. Subtle, because it would in fact be quite difficult, would actually take some maneuvering, to really fall down to the tracks. Scary, because even though it would take some doing, you could get down there. And then she looks up, and right as she does, she sees Stephanie waving.

  “Meres! Over here,” Stephanie calls out. Meredith waves back and smiles. She smiles mostly at the “Meres,” because it’s only Stephanie who ever calls her that. She hitches her bag, a cream-colored canvas tote with navy blue handles and a logo from the Aspen Food Festival, higher on her shoulder and quickens her pace. Stephanie is half-hidden, well, slightly less than half-hidden, behind Ivy’s stroller—one of those bright green Froggy things that Meredith has learned from Stephanie are very important. And she’s sure Ivy must be in it somewhere, swaddled under all those blankets, and as she gets closer, she can see a little pink fleece hat sticking up. She wonders, with all the swaddling, why Stephanie didn’t just wait for her in the car. And then, she sees that standing next to Stephanie, there is another. Another with a Froggy stroller, too.

  And yes, by the way, Meredith does in fact know that it isn’t technically called a Froggy, but something else that sounds like that. She’s also pretty sure that she should never call it, out loud, a Froggy. And she definitely should not say it in front of this other one, because it will, as probably so many things do, reveal her to be childless, urban, career-driven, and possibly even a spinster. All things, except for maybe the part about being a spinster, that Meredith has long maintained as not necessarily bad things. All things perhaps long maintained in Ridgewood, New Jersey, as not necessarily good. She makes a mental note to steal a closer look at the prized stroller, an informative glance. Because, and it’s not just people in Ridgewood who think this, it’s Meredith herself who thinks this, too: it’s one thing to be without your own child, it’s quite another to not be head over heels in love with and to not know every last thing about your new (still fairly new) niece, Ivy. The offspring of your sister, who isn’t just your sister, isn’t just a run-of-the-mill sibling, but your best friend in the world, the person with whom you shared everything. Until you didn’t.

  For the last few steps of her approach, Meredith takes quick stock of this other one standing next to Stephanie. Both she and Stephanie are in sneakers, too, but they’re both in the kinds that are expressly not for running; Velcro is involved. They’re both wearing identical ski jackets, two-toned shells in black and royal blue, hitting mid-thigh, the kind that always puts Meredith in mind of snowboarders or men who live on the Upper West Side. They’re both wearing hats. This other one’s hair is all tucked up into her hat, no wisps or strands escape to frame her angular face, which is quite red from the cold. Stephanie’s hair hangs down, out of her hat. Stephanie’s hair, so recently thick and shoulder-length and dark brown, exactly the same as Meredith’s, is now thick and shoulder-length and dark brown with blonde and red highlights. Meredith thinks the highlights were a mistake, but has not said so. Meredith wonders if this other person has highlights, too.

  “Meres. Hi, love,” Stephanie says stepping out from behind the stroller. They reach out to each other and hug, holding on for a moment. Meredith looks down over Stephanie’s shoulder into the froggieboo and smiles at the tiny slice of Ivy, just two tiny closed eyes peeking out.

  “Hi,” she says, once she and Stephanie have separated, turning her attention, extending her hand, “I’m Meredith.”

  “Hi, Meredith,” comes the reply, very happily, very perkily. “So great to meet you. I’m Caryn.”

  “Caryn’s in my New Mommy Group and lives just a few doors down,” Stephanie explains.

  “And since it’s not even ten minutes, we power-walked to get you!” Caryn volunteers helpfully, and Meredith thinks, Annoying. “Stephanie’s told me all about you. That’s so cool that you’re the restaurant critic for The NY and you know, I used to read your reviews first thing every week. Every Monday, New York would arrive and The NY would arrive and I used to go right to The NY, right away, to read your reviews. Loved them. Always used to go to the places you wrote about.”

  “Thanks,” Meredith says cautiously, thinking to herself, Why used to?

  Caryn continues, “I mean, we still get the magazines but it’s just so much harder to get into the city for dinner these days.”

  “I can imagine,” Meredith says and follows Caryn’s loving gaze down to her own little blanketed bundle in her own important stroller. “This is Ashley,” Caryn says joyously and Meredith smiles in the direction of the other baby, a purple-hatted one, who is not Ivy, whose eyes are wide open, and who is peering up into the brisk air looking mildly horrified.

  “Hi, Ashley,” Meredith says, and then turns slightly and motions to Ivy in her stroller, and mouths to Stephanie, “Is she asleep?”

  “She is. Finally,” Stephanie says, without any sound coming out. Ivy has not been big on sleep lately. To be fair, Ivy is not completely against sleep during the day, she has in fact dabbled in it, but she has not at all warmed up to sleeping at night. Meredith thinks that if she had a baby who didn’t ever sleep at night, she’d probably drive to the train station, she doesn’t think she’d “power-walk” there. “You can say hi to her at home, she’ll no doubt be up when we get back,” Stephanie offers.

  “God,” Caryn says next, her eyes darting quickly from Meredith to Stephanie and back again, perhaps more for effect than anything else, “you two look so much alike.” And Meredith thinks that the God, it really does come out sounding like Gawd. “It’s like you’re twins!” she exclaims.

  “We’re only eighteen months apart,” Stephanie answers proudly. Stephanie had taken, throughout their adult lives, to informing people of th
is fact, happily, sweetly, even when they hadn’t inquired. It was only recently that Meredith had started to hear this statement as something of a declaration of victory, as if Stephanie was pointing out that she had accomplished so much more, had acquired so much more—the husband, the house, the baby—and yet she’d only had a relatively short head start.

  “Oh, that’s so cool,” exclaims Caryn, as she and Stephanie both pull back on their strollers and maneuver their froggieboos through graceful one hundred eighty degree turns. Their movements are almost perfectly in tandem; they look to Meredith so much like a practiced skill, like a water ballet, only on land and with strollers. Once everyone is turned and facing away from the station, the three (or, wait, make that five) head slowly, so as not to jostle, in the direction of Linwood Avenue. Meredith is in the middle, thinking she’d rather be on the outside of Stephanie. Stephanie takes one hand from the handle of her froggieboo and slips it through Meredith’s arm.

  After a moment, Caryn leans forward, almost across Meredith, and says, “See, Stephanie. You guys, you two, so close in age and everything and so close. There’s an argument right there for having your second baby right away.” Meredith raises a subtle eyebrow at Stephanie. Perhaps the eyebrow is too subtle though as Stephanie, as far as Meredith can tell, seems to have missed it altogether. Once Stephanie and Aubrey’s white brick house is in view, Meredith remembers and focuses her gaze on Ivy’s triumphantly green stroller.