Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [7]
It was hard not to admit that the sweatshirt felt a bit like home.
IN THE LIVING ROOM, the clock glares 10:27 A.M.
So if it is July 13, 2000, that means that, as Megan suggested on her message, I should be at work. I am, at present (or at past), an account manager at Dewey, Morris, and Prince, the leading advertising firm for consumer products.
I notice a Filofax on my desk, and now, more appropriately clad so my neighbors don’t get a midmorning peep show, I make my way over and plunk down in the wrought-iron chair that we’d bought at Pier 1 when we moved in together last December: We’d apartment hunted for three months and finally discovered this modern, yet still-funky-with-prewar-details one-bedroom in the West Village.
“To us,” Jack had toasted on Christmas Eve, a week after we’d wrestled a tree into the apartment, a match that left the tree nearly victorious and left both of us with swollen gashes from head (above Jack’s eye) to tip (I couldn’t type for three days due to gnarled fingers). “To living together, and to us.”
I smiled sweetly and pushed up on my tiptoes, kissing him softly on his too-chapped lips, and agreed. “Yes, to us.”
“Jack and Jill,” he chuckled, then moved toward the kitchen to refill his wine. “Everyone says that it was fated.”
“Everyone does,” I agreed, and plopped down on the (itchy, stupid, I-hate-it-so-much) couch and waited for him to do the same so we could zone out to ER reruns and pretend that we didn’t regret declining my father and his girlfriend’s invitation to join them in Belize, even though it was subarctic in New York and we both felt nearly smothered from all the tourists.
Now, I run my fingers through the pages of my date book until they land on today.
Blank. Nada. No helpful reminders at all of what, precisely, I should be doing. I flip a day forward.
Aha. A note to myself that tomorrow, my team at DMP is set to meet with the executives from Coke. I remember that, in my old (or current?) state, I spent hours and days and weeks crafting the perfect pitch, the pitch that would eventually shoot me on a trajectory toward the advertising stratosphere, the same trajectory that I’d abandon at the very hint of Henry’s suggestion that, now three months pregnant, we should “trudge” (my word, not his—I believe he said, with glee in his voice, “pack it in for greener pastures”) toward the suburbs to find more serenity for our yet-unborn child.
Katie!
I break from my nostalgia-filled mind trip and remember. Katie! Is she okay without me? Is she hungry? Is she in her crib clutching her doggie and screaming her face off because she hasn’t had her morning oatmeal and her daddy is in London and her mommy is stuck in her ex-boyfriend’s apartment from 2000? Katie!
My eyes flood with tears, and I feel my pulse beat through the skin on my moist neck. I reach to call Nancy, my nanny, again, but realize it’s to no avail.
It hits me suddenly, brutally and instantly. If I am here, if I am stuck in this wasteland from 2000, then there is no Katie. Not yet. Maybe not ever. She’s not rolling around in her crib or working on pushing out her nineteenth word or gazing blankly at the Wiggles while a look that can only be described as lobotomized washes over her face as they sing about their (fucking annoying) Big Red Car over and over and over again. She’s nothing but a memory trapped inside of me, an ephemeral, intangible glimpse of where I’m supposed to be headed.
Only now, as I survey the contents of my former life, I’m not sure which direction to go.
Chapter Three
A cell phone is ringing, and I can’t find it. I’ve flipped over the tan fleece blanket that (slightly) covers our (horrid) couch, I’ve run into the kitchen and cased the counters, and I’m now burying my hands into