I Heart Forever

  ‘Sure,’ Jenny nodded, raising a glass of white wine to her lips. ‘That’s why he gave up a huge job at Hearst to run the women’s magazines at Spencer.’

  ‘It’s kind of a side step,’ Erin said as I picked up my own wine, wet my lips and then put it right back down on the table without drinking a drop. Self-restraint was so hard sometimes. ‘I’m sure he’s there on a promise of moving up fairly quickly.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s not there on another kind of promise?’ I asked. ‘But thanks for the heads-up. If he starts sending me notes asking me to ask her out for him, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘I know you’re joking, but the media industry in New York is even more like high school than actual high school,’ Jenny said. ‘Only we have HR instead of guidance counsellors and the lunches are slightly better.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ I said, accidentally on purpose letting the tiniest sip of wine pass my lips. Oh, so good. ‘I have a meeting with him on Tuesday. He’s really dragging this new strategy stuff out. Honestly, I think he’s just trying to make me sweat and it’s totally working.’

  ‘It’s all so macho,’ she replied with a judgemental tut. ‘Leave you hanging, make you wonder what’s going to happen. He’s just trying to keep all the power.’

  ‘But he already has all the power, he could fire me tomorrow if he wanted to,’ I reminded her, wilting at the very thought. Maybe I could have one more tiny sip of wine. ‘Keep your fingers crossed that’s not in his “strategy”. How are things going on Ghost, Mason?’

  He sucked the air in through his teeth and Jenny squeezed his huge bicep. It was a sweet gesture, but his arms were so massive I wondered whether or not he could even feel it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Lincoln, our new guy? He seems like he’s going to be cool but there’s something about him I don’t trust. He’s all “hey, we should all go see the Jets next game” to your face then goes to his office and sends you a brutally direct email insisting we pull any article that actually requires budget. I feel like staffing cuts are coming.’

  ‘We’ve had the budget cuts talk as well,’ I commiserated. ‘I honestly don’t see where we could cut anything and keep the magazine going.’

  ‘Just keep a slot open for me,’ Mason said, adding an awkward chuckle to the end of the sentence. ‘You never know, I might need you to find me a job.’

  ‘You’re not really worried, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ Jenny answered on his behalf. ‘How could they fire Mason? He won a Penny? He interviewed Kanye West and managed to make him seem almost entirely sane?’

  ‘That kind of thing doesn’t matter to the corporate folks,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I’ve asked Gregory, my editor, but he’s keeping this one close to his chest and that’s not a good sign. He tells me everything – seriously, he told me about his affair and he won’t tell me about this.’

  ‘Gregory’s having an affair?’ I asked, stunned. Mason pulled an awkward face and I wondered if that was why Gregory hadn’t told him who was getting fired. ‘Sorry, not the point.’

  ‘He told me not to stress, maybe we’re not losing anyone. There’s always growing pains with a new structure.’

  Everyone around the table made agreeing noises.

  ‘And I have better things to think about right now, right, Lopez?’

  ‘Yeah, you do,’ she replied, kissing the tip of his nose.

  ‘How’s the wedding planning going?’ Erin asked. She and Thomas looked away from the PDA at the exact same moment.

  Never missing an opportunity, Jenny flashed her ring around the table for everyone to enjoy. It really was bloody beautiful.

  ‘It’s only been a few days.’ Jenny rested her hand on Mason’s forearm and gazed at the ring, turning it this way and that so it could catch the light from different angles. ‘We haven’t really decided on anything yet.’

  ‘We decided Maui, didn’t we?’ Mason asked, smiling down at her. ‘But we’re not totally sure where or when. We want to keep it real low-key.’

  ‘I wish we’d done a destination wedding,’ Thomas said approvingly. ‘Or eloped. Or just gone to City Hall. The whole thing is an insane waste of money.’

  Erin gazed calmly down the table at her husband, resting her chin on her woven-together fingers, never saying a word.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jenny said. She bobbed her head from side to side, making her hair bounce as she spoke. ‘I’m kind of going off the idea. Maui is so far away from New York, it’s going to make it really hard for a lot of people to come.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mason replied with a mouthful of pumpkin pasta. ‘I know, that’s the point. Hopefully, my parents included.’

  ‘But what about your brother and his kids?’ she said, counting off excluded guests on her fingers. ‘And I want to invite Angie’s parents. They’d already be coming all the way from England, I can’t ask them to fly to Hawaii.’

  ‘Really, don’t,’ I insisted. ‘We’ll do just fine without them.’

  ‘And I wanted Arianna to be a flower girl,’ Jenny said, turning to Erin. ‘You don’t want to have to lug her and TJ all the way out to Maui, do you?’

  Thomas leaned across the table to give Mason the full benefit of his manic eyes.

  ‘Elope,’ he hissed. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘So you don’t want to go to Maui?’ Mason asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jenny pinched her shoulders together, innocently spearing a lettuce leaf I had assumed was just on my plate for show. ‘There are a lot of things I hadn’t considered. Doing a beach wedding means doing a beach dress. Maybe I don’t want to.’

  ‘You could get married in a Hefty bag and I’d still love you,’ Mason replied. ‘Whatever you want, babe, we’ll figure it out.’

  I watched the muscles in her face tighten as he went back to his starter. I knew her well enough to know something was up.

  ‘Has Sadie mentioned anything about her wedding?’ Jenny asked, pushing her plate away.

  And there it was.

  ‘She emailed me yesterday to see if I knew anyone at Bravo,’ Erin replied. I tried to kick her under the table but instead bashed my toe on a very hard table leg. ‘Some producer approached them about doing a reality show or something.’

  ‘How awful would that be?’ I said loudly. ‘Imagine someone following you around constantly, telling you what you can and can’t do for your own wedding. You wouldn’t want that; your wedding is going to be so classy and anything reality TV gets involved with ends up being tack central.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Jenny sniffed, her cheeks burning red. ‘So tacky.’

  ‘That’s my idea of a nightmare,’ Mason added. ‘Some company pitched the idea of making a reality show at Ghost once, like a guy’s version of The Devil Wears Prada? They killed it after two days. A bunch of dudes sat at laptops typing and scratching their asses didn’t make for good TV.’

  ‘And that’s why all reality shows are scripted,’ Erin replied. ‘Reality isn’t really very interesting.’

  ‘Maybe we should have our wedding after theirs?’ Mason said, nudging a still-silent Jenny in the ribs. ‘Just so we know exactly what we don’t want.’

  ‘She sent me a photo of some custom Louboutins,’ Jenny replied with forced lightness in her voice. ‘I don’t know if they’re for the actual wedding or the rehearsal dinner, but they were kind of cute.’

  ‘For two thousand dollars, shoes need to be more than kind of cute,’ Erin said. ‘Besides, Loubies are hell to stand around in all day. Don’t sweat it, babe, you know we’ve got you. Your wedding is going to blow hers out of the water.’

  Jenny’s shoulders slipped back down and a small smile reappeared on her face.

  ‘It’ll bankrupt you, if you’re not careful,’ Thomas muttered as Erin rose to clear our plates. ‘And if the wedding doesn’t, kids will.’

  Now it was my turn to colour up.

  ‘And if the wedding and the ki
ds don’t do it, the divorce definitely will,’ Erin said, kissing him on top of the head. ‘Right, babe?’

  That shut him right up.

  Two hours and several courses later, Mason and Thomas were comatose in front of a football game in the TV room while Jenny and Erin were poring over bridal magazines. It was like I’d fallen asleep and woken up in the 1950s.

  ‘Just going to pop to the loo,’ I said, picking up my glass of wine and venturing off alone when neither of them looked up from the latest issue of The Knot.

  Fully aware that Mason and Thomas had both availed themselves of the ground-floor facilities in the last hour, I slipped off my ankle boots and tiptoed upstairs. The second floor was deadly quiet but I could hear music coming from the very top floor. And not just any music, Disney music.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, pushing open the door to the playroom. Arianna and TJ looked up from their child-sized sofa. Neither seemed especially impressed.

  ‘Don’t mind them, they’re in turkey comas,’ a voice called from the adjoining room. It was, of course, the nanny. ‘Does Erin need something?’

  ‘No, I just came to say hi.’ I waved meekly, never quite sure how to talk to her. We’d met so many times but always in passing when she was either whisking the kids away or delivering them to say goodnight. ‘What are we watching?’

  ‘Pocahontas,’ Mandy the nanny said with a healthy scoff. ‘It is Thanksgiving, after all.’

  ‘That is dark,’ I replied, crouching down beside Arianna. ‘And entirely admirable.’

  The playroom was almost the same size as my entire apartment, I realized, and full of more toys than your average Toys R Us. I knew Erin tried not to spoil the kids, but it seemed Thomas had no such qualms. TJ, not quite three and Arianna, already four and a bit, were transfixed by the TV. Mouthing the words along with the characters and quietly holding hands, full of turkey and mashed potatoes and the joy of being a small, wealthy child.

  ‘They have no idea how good they have it, do they?’ I asked.

  Mandy grinned from the little kitchen that peeked out onto Horatio Street.

  ‘Not a clue,’ she replied. ‘And I hope they never do. There are kids in Arianna’s class at pre-school who already have their own iPhones.’

  ‘No way,’ I breathed. ‘That’s insane. Who are they calling?’

  ‘They’re mostly playing games and watching Peppa Pig,’ she replied with a dishcloth over her shoulder. ‘But there was one boy who ordered a series pass for Game of Thrones and believe me when I say that was an exciting day in show and tell.’

  It seemed impossible that these teeny-tiny pink-cheeked angels could ever be any kind of trouble. They looked just like every other kid in the history of kidkind. They didn’t know they were rich, they didn’t know they lived in New York. They didn’t even know it was weird that it was Thanksgiving and they were upstairs with a Swedish woman everyone called Mandy, even though that wasn’t her actual name, instead of downstairs with the rest of their family. But that was for them – and their therapist – to work out in years to come.

  ‘I know I’m going to sound like a knob however I ask this,’ I asked, resting my wine on the little mid-century modern sidetable I was fairly sure TJ hadn’t chosen from the Pottery Barn Kids website by himself, ‘but is it weird? Looking after someone else’s kids all day when they’re right downstairs?’

  Mandy laughed and poured herself a glass of water. Mandy laughed a lot, I noticed.

  ‘No, because it’s my job,’ she replied, joining me on the floor. I watched as TJ’s eyelids began to flicker, his little blond eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. ‘People think of the nanny as someone to take the kids off the parents’ hands, but it’s not like that any more, at least not for me. My job is to give them peace of mind and hours back in their day. They’re busy people, they have big jobs. If they didn’t have a nanny, they would have to compromise part of their lives. It’s kind of like having a cleaner, just on a bigger scale.’

  I thought about the state of the apartment and Alex’s any-day-now return from his trip. A cleaner would come in handy.

  ‘I don’t hide the kids away in the attic,’ Mandy said, glancing around at our surroundings. ‘Well, except for today. We’re laying low today, huh, babies? TJ doesn’t feel too good and Arianna is keeping him company.’

  Ari nodded and stroked her brother’s sleeping head before kissing him on the forehead and I shoved my entire fist in my mouth to stop myself from crying.

  ‘They’re good kids,’ Mandy whispered. ‘Erin is a great mom. Thomas is a New York dad.’

  I gave her an understanding nod, fighting the urge to bawl my eyes out at the sight of Erin’s angel babies, cuddling each other in front of my eighth favourite Disney movie.

  ‘I know they both work ridiculous hours,’ I said, imagining two other children, a brother and sister with Alex’s black hair and my blue eyes. ‘I know they need help.’

  ‘It’s hard being a parent here,’ she agreed. ‘Kids start school so early. How do you have them in class on the Upper East Side by seven forty-five and get yourself to work on time? How do you collect them at 2 p.m. without missing a meeting? Get them to soccer practice, or ballet class, or make sure they do their homework before it’s time for bed?’

  ‘School starts at seven forty-five?’ I asked. She nodded. Surely she was mistaken. Maybe they read the time differently in Sweden. ‘At least Erin doesn’t have to worry about the homework bit just yet.’

  ‘They have homework,’ Mandy corrected. ‘They’re not doing quantum physics just yet, but they have a project or reading to do every day. Parents paying tens of thousands of dollars a year want their children to be challenged at school.’

  ‘That much?’ I whispered, very glad I was already sitting down. ‘Arianna is four years old!’

  ‘But if you don’t get them in the right pre-school, they don’t get in the right middle school, and some prep schools will only take from certain middle schools. And I don’t need to tell you how important it is about which college you go to here in America.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shuffling forwards until I was resting on my knees. ‘Please don’t.’

  I tried to remember exactly how much money we had in the bank at that exact moment. The fact I didn’t know worried me almost as much as the fact that my baby would not be going to nursery with TJ and Arianna. Or middle school, or high school, or, apparently, university. My baby wasn’t even born yet and it was already a failure.

  ‘So, to me, it is not weird,’ Mandy said, stretching to touch her toes. I was really starting to not like Mandy. ‘Sometimes it is more strange when a parent comes to collect their child from school, you know? That’s just how it is in New York.’

  Puffing out my cheeks like a distressed blowfish, I looked out the windows at the cotton-wool clouds as they puffed past. We were in the roof of the house and each window had a little recessed seat with a padded cushion and a mini reading light, perfect for story time, or working on your trigonometry, or generally plotting to take over the world. Erin’s kids might be the luckiest kids on earth, but it was all so much. Every second of their day was supervised and planned. How could someone already be strategizing for their child’s university place when they were still walking around with a dummy in and watching Disney movies with their nanny?

  ‘Oh, Arianna, no!’

  I looked back to see Mandy wrestling my wine glass out of Arianna’s tiny hands. She was already halfway through her second gulp, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, before she managed to snatch it away. On cue, Arianna opened her mouth wide and began to wail at the top of her tiny lungs.

  ‘Like mother like daughter,’ I said, hastily standing up as TJ followed his sister’s lead and began to bawl. ‘I’m sorry, is there anything I can do?’

  ‘No,’ she replied with a forced smile. Not laughing now, are you, Mands? ‘We’re all good. I wish I could tell you that was her first taste of wine.’

  ‘I wish you could too.??
? I backed out of the room with my hand on my stomach. Maybe it would be for the best if our baby didn’t spend too much time with their West Village buddies. ‘I’ll leave you alone, sorry again.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she promised. ‘So nice to see you, Happy Thanksgiving!’

  ‘Happy Thanksgiving,’ I repeated, bolting down the stairs with my ankle boots in hand, wishing I’d never ventured up in the first place.

  Even though we’d eaten an obscene amount of food at dinner, I was hungry again almost as soon as we walked out of Erin’s house.

  ‘The baby must be sugar deficient,’ I explained, happily swinging my Duane Reade bag full of Ben & Jerry’s through the air as Jenny and I walked home. When it was on offer at two for the price of one, it was rude not to get four. ‘I would never eat this much if I wasn’t pregnant.’

  ‘Were you pregnant that first winter you lived here?’ Jenny asked. ‘When we got snowed in by that blizzard and you made a delivery guy come out and bring you Häagen-Dazs?’

  I still felt bad about that and she knew it. By the time he got up to the apartment, the guy’s fingers were blue. ‘Remind me again why you aren’t on your way upstate with your fiancé?’ I asked.

  ‘Because even though I would love to spend the remainder of the holiday in the bosom of my soon-to-be family, even though Mason’s mom keeps suggesting I wear her 1980s Princess Diana-inspired wedding dress, I am so busy with my very important job, I have to work tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Or it could be because I want to hit up the Black Friday sales at 6 a.m. tomorrow and he really doesn’t. They’re both super-feasible explanations.’

  ‘You’re such a martyr to your job,’ I said, mustering up as much sympathy as I could. ‘What a trouper.’

  ‘This up-and-down weather is freaking me out.’ Jenny rubbed her own pale hands together as we rounded the corner to her apartment. ‘Make your mind up, New York. Is it autumn or is it winter? My hair can’t cope with this.’