The Good Neighbor (6 page)

“So, have you talked to Jade about the concept change? What is the new concept, anyway? I'm not sure I have time for a redesign before tomorrow.” Holden scratched his head. “You know, they're really sure this is going to be the answer.”

Who was they? And the answer to what?

I squinted, watching Holden as if I could memorize his actions, absorb his knowledge. His constant tapping ate into my brain. How. Am. I. Goingtodothis. What. The. HellwasIthinking.

Holden pushed my laptop toward me as if he thought I couldn't see it was right there in front of me. But then I finally saw what he was showing me. A skillfully designed page with mock headlines and columns for text and advertising, all color-coordinated with the rest of Pop Philly. I was entranced, thinking of my
Bizzy Blog
with its free polka-dot template.
Philly over Forty
was sophisticated. Not too old. Not too young. Just right. Words and pictures rearranged every time he clicked to another page and then back to my own. Blank as a new canvas, where I'd be painting unicorns. My pulse quickened. This was big. Too big. This was Broadway, not dinner theater.

“I don't think I can do this.”

“Sure you can. Or Jade wouldn't have asked you.”

“Why is this so important to her?”

“It's the direction she wants to go with Pop Philly. And Drew's all for it. So that definitely helps. We need something unique—something special—to help us bring in more advertisers.”

“I thought the Web site was doing really well.”

“There's a lot of competition. We always need more traffic to attract more big advertisers. People like Drew.”

There was Coat Guy again.

“Jade can explain. She's the brain and the face behind the site. But I don't have to tell
you
about Jade.”

Maybe he did.

“I'm setting you up with our software, and hooking you into our network.”

Forty minutes and seven pages of shorthand notes later, I was logged in behind the scenes.

“I'm not sure I can do this.”

“Of course you can.”

Holden was very wrong.

“What will happen if I don't?”

“Nothing.”

Silence followed. Then Holden smiled. “C'mon, you'll be fine. This part is like a closet where you hide all your junk before company comes over.”

If only he knew.

“You really enjoy this, don't you?”

“Yeah. How'd you know?” He didn't look at me, but he smiled.

“It's my job to notice things. I like figuring out people and what they need to do to get what they want.” I'd helped hundreds of students over the past fifteen years. Holden could even have been one of them.

“What do I need?” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the chair. He wasn't challenging me, he was asking me.

“Right now you need to find a way to convince me not to back out.”

Holden laughed. “What do
you
need?”

It was the question of the day. Month. Year. Lifetime. I shrugged like one of my students.

“Then how do you know
this
isn't it?”

I didn't, but doubt crept into my psyche. Plus, trying to say no to Holden was like trying to say no to a two-year-old who handed me a toy phone and said, “Answer it.”

Holden pulled out his real phone. “I can text the team and tell them to pull the page.”

“No, don't. I'll do it.”

Just then, Darby walked into the room with Noah.

“Hey, kiddo,” I said. “Having fun?”

Noah looked up at Darby and nodded. She rustled his hair and smiled. For that moment, my misgivings subsided.

“Noah says you haven't lived here very long,” she said.

Because five-year-olds are great arbiters of time. “Technically, he's right. But I grew up in this house.”

“So now you've come home to roost. The neighborhood is so cute.”

I turned away before I smacked her.

“So, you're all set?” Darby didn't wait for an answer; she just leaned over and tapped on my laptop. “Looks great. I can't wait to see what you come up with.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can't wait to find out more about Mac.”

Me, too.

“It's all a little strange, wouldn't you say?” Darby added.

“What do you mean?” She couldn't mean …

“Darb, stop,” Holden said.

“I have a following on Pop Philly, but Jade brings in not only an
unknown
—but someone who wants to be anonymous.”

Holden stood. “You know we need ad revenue. And you know Jade was looking for something new and different. Cut it out.”

“Fine. Just—it must be nice to have your best friend for a boss and a great gig.”

She didn't say
one you don't deserve,
but I heard it anyway.

“What's a gig? Can I have one?” All of a sudden Noah was paying attention to what the grown-ups were saying. Again.

I opened my eyes wide at Holden.

“Hey, buddy, I'm thirsty. Would you walk me to the kitchen to get a glass of water?”

One point for Holden. Okay, ten points. I shifted my attention to Darby, who was racking up the demerits.

“I don't discuss my social life, or my blogging, with Noah,” I whispered. “So I'd appreciate it if you didn't either.”

Darby zipped her lips and threw away the key.

 

Chapter 6

Freeze Tag

M
RS.
F
ELDMAN SAID
M
AC
was my secret, but I'd never thought of him as that. My stash of chocolate-covered espresso beans behind the oatmeal in my pantry—that was a secret. Being accepted to law school—a secret. Doubling up on Spanx under my Rosh Hashanah suit—a secret.

Mac wasn't a secret at all. He was a
lie
. Secrets belonged to their keepers. Lies belonged to everyone. I'd enlisted innocent bystanders in my ruse, elicited emotions, garnered interaction. Secrets were kept. Lies were shared. When I wrote about my first real date, comments soared. And the date had been awful! Then I wrote about another date. I didn't know why, but I embellished a bit with descriptions and dialogue, used my imagination, added a little flair. Then I did it again. The worse the date, the higher the hits. I was a living social experiment gone awry. Then I wrote about the sweatshirt twins, and about telling Bruce (“The Ex”) and Amber (“The Girlfriend”) about my having a boyfriend. The next day the comments had surged. I should have known that all single parents dealt with raging feelings of inadequacy—whether they acknowledged them or not. The post had been pinged and linked and forwarded all over the Internet. Comments and e-mails poured in from women who were thinking about divorce, women who were divorced, and even from a few men. I was lauded for my bravery and chided for my cowardice, all with a few taps of the touch pad. It had become too real too fast. And now the lie was on steroids.

Welcome to
Philly over Forty,
your one-stop shop for all things dating-over-forty. I'm your host—the one in the cap, the one you can't really see. That's because I work with kids, have a kid of my own, and an ex-husband of my own to boot. You don't have to be a single parent to get what that means. It means there's a line that I won't cross. But that doesn't mean I won't share. I will. I'll share my dating experiences. (Like the guy who asked me to pay for my croissant because “the date was for coffee.”) I'll share my notes on the best places to go. (Good Dog Bar's happy-hour vibe is reassuring for the nervous dater.) And the worst. (I've never been to Wedge + Fig when at least one couple wasn't celebrating an anniversary.) Mostly, though, I'll share the madness, the angst, and that euphoria that accompanies dating over forty in our city and beyond.

Dating is hard. But you don't have to go it alone.

I blinked. I blinked again. This might actually work. I might actually be able to pull this off. But that was just the intro. How was I going to write about a weekend date I didn't go on with a boyfriend I didn't have? Had I misjudged my capacity to lie? And why on earth would that be a bad thing?

I may not have had an idea for a blog post, but I did have ideas about Noah. We were together in the house, breathing the same air, yet—stellar mother that I was—I had plugged Noah into a movie in my bedroom along with a peanut butter sandwich, sliced apples, and a snack-size Milky Way. A bed-top picnic instead of a playdate. I had ignored the lure of the snow, the tug of the sky, the compulsion to be together instead of apart. I might as well have been in California with Bruce and Amber, or have been my mother, who spent most evenings of my childhood lounging on our sofa, wearing a housecoat. My dad would be doing paperwork. I never knew what that was. My parents had been close at hand but far away. I sat on
my
sofa and stared at my lap. And my yoga pants. Oh no. Yoga pants were the new housecoats.

“Noah? Want to play outside with Mommy?” I yelled as I walked to the foot of the staircase. He still coveted our time together. I knew I always would.

I yelled it again. Nothing. Those yellow minions had latched onto his brain and stolen his attention. Or more likely, they'd allowed him to forget that he hadn't talked to Bruce the night before. Still, I couldn't believe that the promise of a snowball fight and snow angels would go unheeded.

I was halfway up the stairs when Noah appeared before me wearing so many layers of clothing he looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

He'd heard me loud and clear.

I was sure our block was the last to be plowed, but I liked the way the snow made the street bright as day at night, and how it covered the sidewalk's imperfections always. The cement had so many cracks that as a child I wondered if there weren't broken mothers' backs all over our neighborhood.

I still labeled each house on Good Street with its long-ago residents' names. The house right across the street was the Mason house. I looked toward the Baker, Elliot, and DiNardo houses, then toward the Roberts, Maxwell, and Perry houses at the far end of the street. All those kids were grown, like me, and the families had long ago left for the shore, the suburbs, or Florida. But their ghostly presence warmed me. If I stared long enough at any front door and closed my one eye (with one eye on Noah), I could see my friends at various ages as if they'd never left. I could hear their parents calling them in for dinner through screen doors and out of windows. But they hadn't stayed like Mrs. Feldman, or come back, like me. We were the old-timers, the resident minders of memories.

“Uncle Ethan and Uncle Eddie built an igloo one year for me.” Having older brothers had been wonderful. Sometimes.

“What's an igloo?”

A cooler that holds beer. “Where Eskimos live.” Now I was perpetuating ethnic stereotypes.

“Where do pirates live?” Noah's speech was still speckled with tricky
r
's. “Where do pirates live?” He said it extra slow so that I would both hear and understand.

“Probably on their ships.”

“Then I better build some beds.”

Noah smiled at me and crinkled his runny nose. I held out a tissue and he waddled over; I wiped, then joined in the building.

Soon we were surrounded by new friends—none other than Snow Captain Hook and Snow Mr. Smee, who donned eye patches, bandannas, and even a plastic hook stuck into the spot usually reserved for an arm branch. Our patio became the ship, the same way it had been the house or the school or the restaurant when I was growing up. We had a real American flag and a brown cardboard plank, and the ship's steering wheel was an aluminum-foil pizza pan. We stood our broom mast in the corner against the railing, near the beds that we'd made out of lawn chairs.

Noah's lips were still pink when I checked beneath his scarf. We had time to finish our pirate scene before we turned to pillars of ice.

I watched my boy, his deliberate movements packing snow in small handfuls into divots on the side of Snow Smee. Then Noah stepped back, far enough to see the pirates, the ship, the plank, the flag. He smiled so wide his eyes closed. Perhaps he was just imprinting the memory, too special to let go. I closed my eyes as well.

Like a little old lady who pulls up her chair to the edge of the water at the beach, just waiting for the edges of a spent wave to wash over her feet, I sat and waited for Noah to finish with his boy touches. An extra-big nose for Snow Hook and some muscles. I wiggled my toes and willed them to warm, as my thoughts filtered back to me and Mac
.
He was the kind of guy who'd build snowmen. Or he would be if he existed. I could make that part of our magical imaginary weekend. I'd make it fabulous. That would be fun to write. Although as Noah threw his wet, frozen arms around my neck, I knew nothing could be better than what I was doing right now.

A white Mercedes sedan drove up the street and stopped in front of my house. Mrs. Feldman's house. Same place. Then her front door opened. I hadn't even thought to invite her to sit with me in the snow, to direct snow-pirate and snow-ship building. Would she have liked that? Sitting in the snow wasn't something my mother would have done. But then, my mother was not Mrs. Feldman. She emerged bundled in faux-fur-topped boots and a long quilted coat. Was this another of her ladies' days out? A book club? A movie? She had a better social life than I did.

“You've been busy,” she said, grasping the metal railing.

I rose to help her down our shared steps. In the middle of the street, someone emerged from the driver's side of the car.

“You okay, Ma?”

“Ray, I'm fine.” The Feldman boys were older than my brothers, so I knew them only as visitors as I was growing up. But I did look at family photos as I dusted the frames on occasion. The photos had given me some insight into their lives; I made up the rest. I was good at that.