fine new shoes and fine old friends

Mon­day morn­ing found us at brunch in West Hart­ford with the fam­i­ly, being enter­tained by Jane who is clear­ly a favorite with the staff at the cute din­er AC Petersen Farms, which they fre­quent. “When are you head­ed off to the sun­shine, lit­tle one?” our wait­ress want­ed to know. Joel and Jane are des­tined for the Flori­da sun to join my sis­ter who is slav­ing away for ESPN on NASCAR busi­ness. My mom told hilar­i­ous sto­ries about many of Jane’s tricks that we have not yet seen, like her “blap gui­tar,” made by strum­ming on her favorite bird­s­eye dia­per secu­ri­ty item (don’t ask, it’s a fam­i­ly tra­di­tion), and the relat­ed “blap accor­dion.” Sud­den­ly then there was a beep­ing sound and Jane announced, “Cof­fee’s done.” Joel looked sheep­ish. “Well, our cof­fee mak­er beeps when the cof­fee’s done, so…” Sev­er­al hun­dred omelettes and pan­cakes lat­er, we played in the snow at Joel’s house for a bit, John using Jane as a shield against Avery’s snow­ball fights. “You would­n’t hit an inno­cent baby, would you?” Then good­byes all round, and we were off to the city.

The apogee, of course, of the day, was Avery’s long-antic­i­pat­ed reunion with Cici. They had­n’t seen each oth­er since August, and the excite­ment was at fever pitch. We pulled up out­side the Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty School in the West Vil­lage and there it was: a com­plete­ly typ­i­cal urban New York school, red brick, high fence sur­round­ing the play yard with its bas­ket­ball hoops, the chil­dren’s voic­es at wine­glass-shat­ter­ing octaves. And the uni­ver­sal sen­sa­tion that is school pick­up. It does­n’t real­ly mat­ter what the accents are (Wash­ing­ton Square or Sloane Square), or whether the cars wait­ing out­side the yard are moth­er-dri­ven SUVs or chauf­feur-dri­ven Bent­leys, or whether the kids are boys and girls in every out­landish out­fit you can imag­ine, or lit­tle girls in pris­tine uni­forms. The feel­ing is the same: how was Eng­lish? Did you eat your lunch? Hur­ry and jump in the car because your sis­ter is hav­ing a meltdown.

And there was Cici’s moth­er wait­ing out­side the yard, ready for our hugs and a bot­tle of cham­pagne. “Cici’s right there, Avery!” and there she was. Much scream­ing and jump­ing up and down, and Avery’s lit­tle glow­ing face, being intro­duced to Cici’s cir­cle of friends, all of whom looked bemused, fas­ci­nat­ed and a lit­tle skep­ti­cal, but friend­ly. Clear­ly there had been some advance press for the vis­it. We walked in the bit­ter, bit­ing cold to their new apart­ment not far away, and had tea and caught up on fam­i­ly life. “I remem­ber these plates!” Avery said in delight, and “Here’s that pic­ture of you and me eat­ing a strand of spaghet­ti togeth­er, one on each end, until we kissed!” and show­ing off pic­tures of Cici rid­ing at their sta­ble in Con­necti­cut, and sto­ries of the embalm­ing-chick­en project that Cici is involved with at school. “We’re study­ing King Tut!” Final­ly Kath­leen and I left them draw­ing togeth­er while we nipped down to the gor­geous bou­tique on the ground lev­el of their build­ing, Zero by Maria Corne­jo. She’s a fas­ci­nat­ing Chilean design­er, and thank good­ness there was an enor­mous sale, because Kath­leen found a pair of real­ly chic and use­ful black culottes that I put on imme­di­ate­ly while the lan­guid and bored shop assis­tant strug­gled might­i­ly with the com­put­er sys­tem. Gorgeous.

Then I was off to meet John in SoHo for a trip down mem­o­ry lane, in our old stomp­ing grounds of Spring and Broad­way, look­ing up fond­ly at the sec­ond-sto­ry bal­cony (OK, OK, it was a fire escape) on which we had so many, many after-par­ty hang­outs, good­ness, near­ly 15 years ago. Look­ing down­town to the Wool­worth Build­ing and uptown to the Chrysler Build­ing, there was nev­er a cool­er loft. Many cats, fur­ni­ture styles, din­ner par­ties and one child’s entire life lat­er, we looked up there and felt very… old. But hap­py. Off for my long-await­ed shop­ping trip to Var­da, quite sim­ply the best shoe bou­tique in the world in my opin­ion. In our most recent clos­et purges, I final­ly said good­bye to two pairs of boots that had last­ed (so to speak) me near­ly 15 years, and I was ready for a bit of a blowout. Oh my, though, painful as it is to say, prices have increased in that peri­od of time! Nev­er­the­less, I came away with some gor­geous choco­late brown boots, flat-heeled, sad­ly, as John objects to any heel, and I am fool enough to want him to be hap­py. And a pair of pil­grim shoes, with a glossy lit­tle fold­ed flap. The shop­keep­er actu­al­ly remem­bered me! Then it was off to Old Navy for t‑shirts for Avery.

It’s strange: nor­mal­ly I am not a shop­per, at all. I have black turtle­necks and oth­er black turtle­necks. Huge dis­plays of cloth­ing make me ner­vous, and shop assis­tants, too. In Lon­don of course I get stick­er shock and nev­er buy any­thing. But there was some­thing sort of youth­ful and fun-lov­ing about a lit­tle shop­ping spree! I think it’s a SoHo thing, a mix­ture of old hap­py mem­o­ries of what John used to call the “oppor­tu­ni­ty cost” of liv­ing at the cor­ner of Spring and Broad­way: there was always an oppor­tu­ni­ty for some­thing to cost mon­ey! And I was a care­free young art his­to­ry pro­fes­sor who felt it was part of my job to look chic. A bit of myself that has def­i­nite­ly got­ten if not lost, then firm­ly pushed aside under lay­ers of moth­er­hood, mov­ing into my scary 40s, many moves, job changes and oth­er stress­es. It was fun to out shop­ping with my hus­band, in a spend­ing mood. All we were miss­ing were John’s par­ents, whose shop­ping trips used to cut a swathe through SoHo, John’s moth­er’s cred­it card in her hand as she said, “Charge!” Self-indul­gent and fun.

Then we raced back up to the Vil­lage and col­lect­ed Avery, arranged to meet every­body back at Cici’s school in the morn­ing, and raced back down to Tribeca for drinks with Alyssa, Annabelle and Elliot. As the girls imme­di­ate­ly turned on their “Bop to the Top” sound­track and began danc­ing, Alyssa said iron­i­cal­ly, “Can it real­ly have been TWO WHOLE MONTHS since we saw this dance?” She turned to Amy, the girls’ babysit­ter from years gone by and explained, “It turns out that ‘Bop to the Top’ is appro­pri­ate for any occa­sion. Chang­ing of the Guard? Bop. Wait­ing in line at the British Muse­um? Bop.” Elliot skat­ed around them, try­ing for a moment in the sun. All too soon, how­ev­er, we were off in the cold to walk to the nice qui­et Indi­an restau­rant we had cho­sen for our evening with Jeanne and Cyn­thia. Alyssa went with us and we decid­ed to pass by our old loft on Jay Street. So sad to look up into the win­dows and see that my miles and miles of zinc book­shelves, so lov­ing­ly designed and always chock-a-block full, were near­ly emp­ty. “And the place is lit up like a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio!” John wailed, think­ing of his sub­tle and beau­ti­ful light­ing schemes. We all sighed, think­ing of the home that had been.

Just as we approached Salaam Bom­bay for din­ner, John said, “I won­der how long it will be before you see some­body you know?” and there in our path was… Augus­tus, the painter from my gallery who had so famous­ly (not that he knows that I told every­one the sto­ry) announced to me that we were meant to be togeth­er. Des­tined for a great pas­sion­ate love. Intend­ed by fate to join our cre­ative instincts togeth­er in a great part­ner­ship of love and the arts. “But Augus­tus,” I object­ed, “what about my hus­band and child, and your wife?” I don’t even remem­ber his response, but good­ness he was appeal­ing. So we stood there in the windy bit­ter­ness, my fam­i­ly and I, lis­ten­ing to him extol his own virtues, a past­time at which he is amaz­ing­ly tal­ent­ed. Give him cred­it, I thought to myself, he is a great painter. But it was a fun­ny encounter, and lit­tle did he know he had pro­vid­ed excel­lent copy for my fic­tion class, in which he appeared as a mur­der sus­pect. Too funny.

Into the cosy restau­rant, and a glo­ri­ous evening of gos­sip and catch­ing up with our dear friends. Avery, how­ev­er, stayed awake only long enough to unwrap a present from Jeanne, a book on horse mythol­o­gy, and to say thank you nice­ly, and then was down for the count under a drift of every­one’s coats. Cyn­thia brought us up to date on the awful and cost­ly ren­o­va­tion of her real­ty office (she is quite the most clever real­tor that ever lived, hav­ing once described a house in an ad as “entire­ly uphol­stered”), and the pres­sures of hav­ing young job-hunt­ing rel­a­tives liv­ing with them, and the health of var­i­ous friends in com­mon. And pos­si­ble plans for them vis­it in May! They are try­ing to con­vince us to join them on their upcom­ing cruise on the Queen Mary II, but as far as vaca­tions go, that one does­n’t grab me. How won­der­ful, though, to be warm and well-fed, chat­ting with old friends, and mak­ing plans. The food was not quite as remark­able as I had remem­bered, the many times we ate there and more often ordered out, all the dish­es except for the vin­daloo tast­ing a bit as if they had all been cooked in the same sauce, albeit tasty. But a love­ly evening. Back to the hotel with a bone­less Avery, and to sleep. Because the next day was slat­ed to be… busy, to say the least.