Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [20]
I flip through the July issue of Esquire as the train pulls away from New York. I’d read all of these pieces before, of course, but they are distant enough—like a memory of a story that happened to someone else—that they still feel somewhat fresh. The train barrels forward and eventually spits me out in Rye, only five miles from my future home with Henry, only a stone’s throw from my other life, which now seems not like just another life but like another world entirely.
A mother and young daughter exit the train hand in hand in front of me. The little girl wears a peach smocked dress with white lacy socks and shiny black patent leather shoes. Her curls jingle as she walks. I watch the pair disappear in a patterned rhythm down the platform steps. Katie. A surge rushes up inside of me, and then, just as quickly, is gone.
I move my own feet forward and down the same steps. As the person behind me looks on, surely, I, too, disappear as I go on my way.
ALLIE, JACKSON’S NOW six-year-old niece and star of the party, was having a meltdown. A meltdown of epic proportions. The magician her mother, Leigh, had hired had magically not appeared as promised, and thus olive-colored snot was flying down Allie’s chin, sticky fists were being thrown around with abandon and fury, tears were flowing, angry and unstoppable. Parents huddled around the pool and feigned sympathy (with just a small dose of judgment and disdain) while Leigh, Jack’s sister, older by four years, attempted to forge peace. But Allie offered no such white flag.
I survey the scene from behind the sliding door just off the patio. Jack and Vivian are hovering near the bar set up for “grownups,” and Bentley, Jack’s father, is nursing what I imagine to be a very, very stiff martini and wishing that he were on the golf course, much like he was almost every other Saturday. I smirk: I could almost detect him trying to calculate a getaway; he usually was. Nearly all of the time, I didn’t blame him.
Take me! I invariably wanted to cry out, just after he’d hop up from the dinner table or the breakfast buffet, citing an emergency in the office or a crisis at one of his plants. Most times, he’d then catch my eye and wink, a sly recognition that if anyone wanted to be the hell away from there more than him, he knew it was me. Bentley and I had a tacit understanding—he placated Vivian because he had to, but he didn’t want me to hold their forty-year marriage against him.
The bartender refills Bentley’s glass, and still, Allie wails.
It’s time for action. I’ve seen this tantrum before, only today, I’ve come prepared, complete with the requisite supplies. I push the glass door to my side, my sweaty palms leaving imprints as I do.
“Allie!” I say, skipping over to her. “Guess what?”
“Whaaaat?” she sputters.
“Turns out that you don’t need that lousy magician! Because I went to magic school, and I can show you a few tricks.” I raise my eyebrows knowingly, and Allie’s screeches stop so abruptly, everyone turns to stare. It is as if all the noise in the world has been sucked into a dry vacuum.
“I don’t believe you,” she says with mixed doubt in her voice.
“Fine, don’t believe me. I can go do my magic tricks inside.” I turn to go and notice Jack now watching me with curiosity. Even Vivian is looking at me with something less than derision, which I suppose is something.
“WAIT!” Allie shouts. “I want to see magic!” She pauses and crosses her arms. “Prove it.”
“Well, before I do, I think you have something stuck in your belly button.”
“Do not!”
“Do too!” I reach down to the waist of her shirt and tuck my hand in. “Told you!”
I pull out a gleaming silver dollar, and Allie squeals. The gaggle of other first graders quickly rush around us, and I turn toward a towheaded boy who had just lost his front tooth. “And you! What do you have behind your ear?” I produce another coin to thundering applause and deafening shrieks of joy that can only