Through Thick and Thin Page 2

  It’s called a Bugaboo. A Bugaboo Frog to be exact. She was close enough.

  two

  lasagna

  Once they’re standing on the sidewalk in front of Stephanie’s house, just in front of the gate, Caryn thrusts her arm out to shake Meredith’s hand again.

  “Meredith,” she says, “it was a pleasure to meet you.”

  Meredith takes the offered, gloved hand, shakes it, and says it was a pleasure for her, too. It was not a pleasure. It was a ten-minute walk in the cold during which Caryn talked mostly to Stephanie.

  Meredith tries, with a certain though not complete degree of success, not to take Caryn personally, not to see her very existence as an affront. But it’s not like there wasn’t an occasion or two during the walk when Meredith didn’t consider how much nicer it would have been if Caryn weren’t there.

  “Stephanie says you come out to visit all the time,” Caryn says, and Meredith nods in agreement, says yes, even though she doesn’t. Visit all the time. She should, or at least she should visit more than she does.

  “So, I’ll look forward to seeing you again,” Caryn adds on.

  “Yes,” Meredith says again, and maybe the way she says it, maybe it’s a little blankly.

  And with that, Caryn turns to Stephanie, tilts her head to the left and then to the right. “See you Monday for lunch after music class?” she sings more than says.

  “See you then,” Stephanie says, smiling broadly, happily, and the way she says it, it’s not even a little bit like she secretly hates her. Stephanie has always had a much greater capacity for love than Meredith has. They have both always thought so. Even when the term “a greater capacity for love” was used euphemistically, in college, when Stephanie was going through her recreationally slutty phase, they still believed it.

  “Here, Meres,” Stephanie says once they’ve walked through the gate and she’s backed the stroller flush against the stoop and climbed up the few steps, “Just grab that end, and help me get this up the stairs and inside?” Before Meredith has even made a move for the stroller, Ivy, sensing an imminent cosmic disturbance, wakes up and starts to cry. Meredith looks to Stephanie, unsure of what to do next, amazed, as she has been before, at how Ivy manages to put her entire being, her heart and soul, into her crying.

  “It’s okay,” Stephanie says, to both of them, Meredith thinks. And then, as she grabs the back of the stroller, Ivy’s crying ceases, just like that. Meredith, again, is amazed; even though peace is so fleeting for babies, so fragile, and so tenuous, so is despair. Which is nice, she thinks; it almost makes up for the peace being so fragile in the first place.

  Together, Meredith and Stephanie maneuver the stroller—or let’s call it the Bugaboo now that we know not only its importance, but also its name—up the side steps and into the small laundry room that leads through to the bright and airy country French-inspired kitchen. The air smells like Bounce, and like something else, too. Air maybe, the air you can’t ever smell in the city because there’s always too much else. Everything here is open. Beyond the kitchen, through an archway, is the living room—family room rather—and it all looks so effortlessly perfect. This house, where Stephanie and Aubrey and Ivy have only recently arrived, already feels so lived in, stretched out in, but not cluttered. Organized and neat but not sterile or stifling. Stephanie’s rooms have always been nice rooms, inviting rooms, the rooms you might see in the background of a J. Crew catalog: natural and fresh, clean with a preppy flair. Meredith is so often reminded of a J. Crew catalog when she is at Stephanie’s, because of things like the white-painted hooks where she is presently hanging their jackets, and because of Aubrey. She’s always thought of Stephanie’s husband, Aubrey—and she means this, really, in only the complimentary way—as being from the J. Crew catalog of husbands. If only, she has thought on occasion, there actually was such a thing.

  “Okay,” Stephanie says authoritatively as she unsnaps Ivy’s down onesie, the one that Meredith has admired from afar. On colder days in New York she has thought the world would be nicer if she had her own down onesie to swaddle herself within. “Someone is going to watch her Baby Mozart in her bouncy seat!”

  As Meredith watches the swift transfer of Ivy, through the kitchen and into her bouncy seat in the family room beyond it, she almost says, Are you sure? But she catches herself, and is glad she did, because she thinks it wouldn’t have come out the way she means, which is more along the lines of, Is there something else that I’m supposed to do? more, Am I supposed to be better at this, to want to play with Ivy more before she is relegated to the baby bouncy seat? Meredith opts for saying nothing and follows Stephanie’s lead through the kitchen and into the family room and watches as Ivy is once again snapped, secured into the bouncy seat. Two deliriously chubby arms stretch into the air toward Stephanie.

  “Da Da!” Ivy says.

  Stephanie looks annoyed, just for a flash, before saying, “Yes, Da Da.”

  “Da Da Da Da Da Da! Da Da Da Da!”

  Stephanie picks up the remote and aims it at the flat screen TV mounted on the wall. She talks to Meredith without facing her as she scrolls through the DVD menu options on the screen. “I’m sure you want to play with her and all, but I think the Baby Mozart is good for right now. I think she’s wound up and the Baby Mozart works wonders at chilling her out.”

  The lava lamp shapes and soothing colors of the opening scenes of the Baby Mozart DVD fill the screen and Ivy’s vision, and she is instantly mesmerized, becoming almost as globular as the images on the screen.

  Meredith and Stephanie, from where they have finally sat on the couch, both sigh exaggeratedly, loudly, in unison. Ivy turns to look at them, her eyes momentarily wide, perhaps perplexed, and just as quickly returns her complete and utter focus to her Baby Mozart. As she stares at the screen, she opens her mouth and keeps it that way.

  Meredith, from her reclining position on Stephanie’s couch, is suddenly very aware of how her body feels, the way she sometimes is whenever she isn’t busy. It happens sometimes when she comes here, or even when she’s home alone, whenever it is that she sits down, relaxes, stops for a minute. She notices how strange it feels, so foreign, it’s almost like it hurts. She wonders if staying home, as Stephanie does now, if being a mom, not going to work anymore, feels anything like this? Or is it the exact opposite? Is it in fact so much busier, busier than she ever could have imagined, in her most frenetic dreams? Everyone stares at the screen.

  “Thank God for Baby Mozart,” Stephanie says.

  “It’s like a baby tranquilizer,” Meredith marvels.

  Stephanie adds, “It’s a whole series, Baby Einstein, there’s a ton of them, did you know that?”

  Meredith shakes her head, No, I didn’t.

  “Right, no, I mean why would you?” Stephanie says quickly, “But really, thank God for them, for all of them.” Stephanie pauses for a moment, marveling at the screen, before adding in a slightly different voice, a higher tone than the one she usually speaks in, “And thank God for the blonde, very skinny, not freaked-out-at-all mom who pops up at the end of each DVD and talks about how she developed the whole Baby Einstein series. The one who doesn’t make you feel like a tremendous underachiever just because you can’t imagine finding the time for a shower that lasts longer than forty-five seconds, let alone find the time to start an educational media empire.”

  “Yes, thank God for her,” Meredith says even though she’s never seen this blonde, and skinny, and apparently rather unsettling woman at the end of the DVD. She wants to say, Are you okay? Because something like that, that’s an okay thing to say, right? That’s not making a thing, that’s not making the drama that Stephanie insists not be made. Stephanie does not like things, does not subscribe to what she thinks is the drama people can make out of stuff, out of anything. Even if a lot of other six-month-old babies are already quite settled in to a sleep schedule, a nighttime sleep schedule. Stephanie says she has heard of these babies who sleep from seven to s
even, and for the life of her, she just can’t imagine that it could be true.

  “Aubrey thinks it’s like baby pot,” Stephanie continues. “Baby crack. I try not to let her have too much TV, especially with the way this zones her out, but I just get so tired, and especially since you’re here and I don’t get to see you, I think it’s fine.”

  “It’s educational,” Meredith assures, and then for a while, for a full five minutes or so, they watch the soothing colors and shapes and sardonic sock puppets on the big screen; Meredith wonders if maybe she should get a Baby Einstein video for herself, or whatever the adult equivalent is. Though actually the adult equivalent is probably, as Aubrey says, pot, or crack. Probably not the best idea. Probably.

  “Speaking of Aubrey, where is he?” Meredith asks.

  Stephanie stares at the screen for a second more. “Oh, I think he’s in his workroom,” she answers vaguely as she glances briefly in the direction of the door across the room.

  It could be the inherent 1970s implication of a finished basement—like the one they never had growing up in their house in Washington, the District, not the state, because the house was too old, the basement wasn’t the type that could be finished. It could be that. Whatever it is, something always makes Stephanie time-travel back a few decades and call Aubrey’s corner of the basement a workroom, as if there’s a toolbox in there, and a saw, some drills, a wooden sawhorse perhaps, as if it’s the site of various and sundry manly man crafts. But it’s not that at all. It’s just a different part, a sectioned-off area of the basement. Aubrey has a desk set up there, and his seventeen-inch MacBook Pro that Meredith has on occasion felt lust for, having the fondness she does for shiny new things. Aubrey also has about five million CDs down there, and his golf clubs, and both his and Stephanie’s skis and snowboards that were never used this winter, for the first winter ever. He has all these Sports Illustrated magazines, hundreds of them, and for some reason, a mini-fridge.

  “I should get him,” Stephanie says after a moment, and the way her voice turned before, becoming higher when she talked about the woman who pops up at the end of the Baby Einstein videos, her voice gets that way again, as if an anxious glaze has just been painted onto it. “He should say hi. I didn’t even think. So rude, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine, Steph,” Meredith tells her, “don’t be sorry.”

  “I guess he thinks if it’s just, you know, you, and not an actual guest, he doesn’t have to come up and say hi,” Stephanie explains. “But he should. I’ll get him.” The only movement she makes is flipping her hands up and making quotes in the air around the word guest. Normally, Meredith would want to address the subject of air quotes with Stephanie. Meredith has long thought of the use of air quotes as a matter of concern. But right now, it doesn’t seem important.

  “No, don’t, it’s fine,” she says, with some manufactured urgency. She extends a flexed palm, as if to quite physically stop her sister’s mad dash to the basement door. She wants Stephanie to think it really does seem like she’s about to go down there and get him. She has no idea why, but she thinks that it’s necessary. “It’s fine,” she says again, “I’m here all day. It’s fine, it’s nice to see just you for a little bit.” And it is, even if there might be something about it that’s lonely.

  “I just don’t want you to think he’s rude,” Stephanie adds, still concerned.

  “I don’t think he’s rude,” Meredith assures.

  “No, I know, and it’s nice to see just you, too.” Stephanie brightens as she angles herself on the couch until she is completely facing Meredith, the door to the basement/workroom now out of her line of vision. The sounds from the Baby Mozart hit a crescendo and then settle down again.

  “So,” Stephanie says, reaching out, touching Meredith’s knee, “Tuesday? Big day.” Tuesday is Valentine’s Day. Big day, Meredith thinks, and smiles; possibly it is closer to smirking than smiling.

  “Josh is still coming up?” Stephanie double-checks.

  “Yep, still is,” Meredith replies, noticing how they both felt it necessary to use the word still.

  “Where are you going?” Stephanie asks, now beaming a little bit. The beaming, just so you know, isn’t because she’s a fan of Josh, Meredith’s vanished and now reappeared ex-boyfriend, but because she is a fan of Meredith having a date for Valentine’s Day again. She is a fan of Meredith giving romance a chance again, even if it is with Josh. She is a fan of Meredith finding her happy ending, even if with Josh, the ending was not so happy at all.

  “Bouley,” Meredith says with more restraint than Bouley would normally be said with. Yes, she’s been there four, even five times before, as she’s been to so many wonderful restaurants four, even five times before. But the restraint in this instance is less because she’s jaded and more because she thinks restraint is important to have with Josh. Restraint, really, is the only way to play it. Especially with Josh.

  “Oh, I do love Bouley,” Stephanie says dreamily. She sighs and looks a little wistfully off at nothing in particular, some point above Ivy’s head, past the flat screen. “I miss coming with you.” And something in Meredith surges, and she wonders if it’s just that she misses her sister so much, even if they are sitting less than two feet away from each other, even if there’s really no way to explain what it feels like when things, husbands and babies and suburbs, happen to everyone around you but not you, when everyone changes, when everything changes, and you just stay the same.

  “I miss you coming with me, too,” she says, “You’re my favorite dining companion, hands down.”

  “I miss the wigs, too.” Stephanie says, still wistful, perhaps even more wistful. Stephanie always liked the secret agent aspect of Meredith’s job, the disguises and the aliases and all the different credit cards, almost as much as the food. Stephanie used to come over beforehand and disguise herself, too. And Meredith would always happily accommodate; she understood, she’s always liked the disguises very much, too.

  “You can always come, whenever you want.”

  “Right,” she glances at Ivy, “tell me when you get switched to the New Jersey beat.” Stephanie does have a sitter for Ivy, or maybe the correct word would be nanny since it’s the same person who comes every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons and is available on Saturday nights, too; something that Stephanie had, at one point, been quite pleased about, so representative it seemed to her of freedom. But Meredith isn’t sure when a person stops being a sitter and starts being a nanny, or if she is in fact technically either since Stephanie has yet to let her stay alone with Ivy. At some point, freedom stopped being at the top of the list of things Stephanie got pleased about.

  “Steph,” she suggests, treading lightly, “you should really come in one night. I have to go back to 66 in the next few weeks, twice probably. You know, it’s Jean-George Vongerichten’s Chinese-themed outpost in Tribeca?” Meredith asks, and Stephanie shakes her head, as in No, Meredith, I didn’t know, because really, how could she, out here in Ridgewood, not living, breathing, and sleeping (poorly) the New York City restaurant scene? Or maybe she shakes her head, no, as in No, I’m not coming with you. Meredith continues on quickly, “You’d love it there, he does this soy-cured salmon with Asian pears and a crème fraîche that is just exceptional. He uses cilantro in it, in the crème fraîche. You should come,” Meredith says invitingly, and when Stephanie looks a bit more wistful, a bit more like she’d really quite like a nice night out at a restaurant, Meredith adds on, “You can wear the red wig if you’d like.”

  “The long red one?” Stephanie asks longingly, just a hint of elasticity in her voice. Meredith considers it for a moment, braces herself, and then ever so cautiously adds the thing she’s been thinking should have been added onto almost every sentence for the past few months.

  “Steph,” she begins, in a tone she hopes strikes only the right level of impassioned, “at some point you need to be okay with letting Ivy stay with her sitter, or even just with Aubre
y for the night.” (Was it impassioned? Impassioned enough?) Stephanie stiffens. Meredith isn’t sure when exactly Stephanie stiffened, when the 66-long-red-wig glimmer went out of her eye; if she lost her at sitter, or at Aubrey. Surely it was at sitter. She reapproaches, “Steph, lots of people, lots of really excellent mothers, almost as dedicated as you, use sitters. Nannies.”

  Stephanie tucks a new highlight behind her ear, and repeats the motion on the other side. She considers the lava lamp shapes on the screen for a moment and then she glances at the door to the basement before turning again to Meredith, her forehead slightly clouded. “It’s not just that. I can’t go to a big dinner, I’m starting a new diet on Monday,” she explains. “I haven’t lost hardly any of the baby weight.”

  Meredith doesn’t say anything for a second, she hates the word diet, always has, and wonders how the topic changed so quickly away from 66. Stephanie is looking at her expectantly. “You look great,” she tells her, and she thinks so, she does.

  “No, I don’t. I’ve lost none of the baby weight.”

  “Steph, that’s an exaggeration.”

  “But it’s not a big one. I’m a cow.”

  “You are absolutely not,” Meredith protests. Sure, Stephanie’s been thinner before. Sure, she could be thinner than she is now. But who hasn’t, who couldn’t? Meredith looks quickly at Stephanie’s middle, first at her stomach, then at her thighs, and then, even more quickly, down at her own. She reminds herself that thighs, just by their very nature, look a lot bigger when sitting down on a couch, stomachs do, too. She tries not to compare. Comparing herself to Stephanie has never worked out well for her. Stephanie had always been the nicer sister, the sportier sister. She’d always been the prettier sister even though they looked so much alike; people had never noticed that because Stephanie had always been the thinner sister. She tries not to judge herself or her sister. And then she does anyway. She’s still heavier than Stephanie is, and she remembers (how could she forget?) that Stephanie, for all intents and purposes really, should probably be the heavier one. Stephanie has a new baby. Meredith just has The NY, and ten thousand restaurants in New York City, so many of them needing to be reviewed. But she shouldn’t compare. She tells herself it’s not a contest. She tells herself that a lot.