Lauren Takes Leave Read online

  Lauren Takes Leave

  ~ A NOVEL ~

  Julie Gerstenblatt

  Copyright © 2012 by Julie Gerstenblatt.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Lauren Takes Leave is a work of fiction. Names, characters, e-mail addresses, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover concept and design by Brett Gerstenblatt and Gary Tooth

  Illustrations by Liz Starin

  FIRST EDITION

  www.juliegerstenblatt.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Midlogue

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Questions and Topics for Discussion

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.”

  —ALGERNON MONCRIEFF, from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

  “Hey, Cameron, you realize if we’d played by the rules, right now we’d be in gym?”

  —FERRIS BUELLER, from John Hughes’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

  Prologue

  A Confession or Three

  Now, this is going to sound crazy, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but it’s true. All of it. Except for the parts that I made up, of course. Those are false.

  My first confession is this: I wanted to get placed on a jury. Yes, bizarre as it sounds, I longed for it.

  Only, I didn’t know how badly I wanted it until it was almost too late.

  Fact: I received a blue jury questionnaire in the mail in January of this year.

  Fact: I filled out the form and sent it back to the return address, promptly forgetting all about it.

  Fact: As luck, fate, or divine intervention would have it, in April I was called for jury duty at the county courthouse in Alden, New York.

  This one act led to several random incidents, including a bit of travel, some outpatient cosmetic procedures, and, of particular note, a brief adventure with a cross-dressed burlesque dancer named Dixie. It also led to my so-called incarceration.

  I am standing before you now to beg your forgiveness. It is my desire to explain, with almost complete candor, as much about the past week as I can recall. Those bits from when I was inebriated notwithstanding, I will do my best to piece it all together for you.

  Why you? Because, dear reader, by picking up my story and cradling its contents in your hands, you have become my jury.

  Unwittingly, perhaps, but isn’t that how all jurors come to be? One minute you’re in your office cubicle, playing Scrabble against the brain in the iPad, or running on a treadmill somewhere, trying to will your thighs into submission, and the next, you’re responding to a summons from the local courts and deciding the fate of a schoolteacher who may or may not be guilty of the types of wrongdoings that we’re all guilty of, to a degree.

  And so, please read without bias. The decision lies in your hands.

  Fact: I am mostly innocent.

  Chapter 1

  Monday

  “Ben, you need to change. Those pants are way too short,” my husband, Doug, says, passing Ben on the stairs.

  My nine-year-old son checks himself out by looking down at his feet as he reaches the bottom step. “They’re fine,” he concludes. “I’m not changing.”

  Doug appeals to me, calling down from the second-floor landing. “Lauren!”

  “Okay,” I say, wondering for the thousandth time why it is automatically my job to clothe, feed, and bathe the offspring we produced together.

  “And did you get to pick up my shirts from the dry cleaner’s yet?”

  “Yes!” I shout. But then I remember a small detail. “They’re still in the trunk of the car.”

  Silence.

  “Dad, I like my pants like this,” Ben calls up the stairs, daring Doug into a full-on, 7:30 a.m. brawl.

  There is a heartbeat’s length pause as the house holds its breath, waiting for the next move.

  I, for one, know what will happen next, because this conflict occurs between them in some variation every weekday morning. Doug puts on his glasses after showering and his critical eye wakes up, begins to focus.

  It’s the hair not brushed, the dishes unwashed, the frogs unfed. The bed unmade, the shoes untied, the homework incomplete.

  I nod and smile, brush the hair, clean the dishes, feed the frogs, make the beds, tie the shoes, finish the homework. (Which is hard, by the way. Since when does third-grade math include algebra?)

  The conversation between them goes on over my head, and snakes between my chores. It always boils down to “You didn’t do this or that” from Doug and “Why do you care? You’re never home” from Ben.

  Both have a point. I referee. I acknowledge to Doug that Ben is a bit spoiled and we’re working on it, and then, when Doug is out of earshot, whisper to Ben that Dad’s stressed out because his start-up company isn’t doing that well in this economy and we have to be understanding. I try to make peace by cheerleading for both sides.

  It’s almost enough to make a person want to run out of the kitchen to go teach middle school.

  Almost.

  “Lauren? Did you call the electrician yet? And Ben needs to apologize.”

  “No,” I call up the stairs.

  “No, what? Electrician or apology?”

  “Yes,” I shout back, emptying last night’s clean items from the dishwasher.

  That should be sufficiently inconclusive. There’s no word from Doug upstairs. Ben just shrugs and saunters into the kitchen for breakfast.

  Like in a finely choreographed ballet, the next dancer comes onstage just as the other one exits. My kindergartener, Becca, yells from her room at the top of the stairs. “Everyone be quiet! I need my sleep so the monsters don’t come into my head!”

  “What does that even mean?” Ben asks.

  “Not sure,” I say, following him.

  Ben sits at the kitchen counter and waits, like this is a restaurant and I’m serving up his favorite.

  “We’ve discussed breakfast, Ben. You are old enough to get it for yourself,” I say, as I set up his breakfast for him—bowl, spoon, milk, Cinnamon Toast Crunch—the irony of which is not lost on me, and move on to the making of lunches and snacks—mine, Ben’s, and Becca’s.

  Becca stumbles into the kitchen moments later, her hair a testament to her fitful sleep; it looks like she was caught
in a wind tunnel. Oblivious to her appearance, she slides onto a stool at the island. “Kix, Mommy. Now.”

  “Now, what…?” I lead.

  “Now, please,” she says, rolling her eyes. There’s a dormant teenager living inside my five-year-old, like an ancient volcano that could explode at any moment. These days she just rumbles. But in a few years, I’m going to have to move out of the house in order to protect myself from the hot lava that will be Becca.

  I scan the shelf of cereal boxes to find that, although we own approximately forty-two kinds of General Mills and Kellogg’s varieties, we are fresh out of Kix.

  “How about limited-edition Froot Loops Sprinkles?” I say.

  “Kix.”

  “Berry Berry Kix?”

  “Regular!” she says, clearly not amused.

  I know how this is going to end, and it’s not pretty.

  “Bec, I’m all out of Kix.” I make a pouty face, to let her see how devastating this moment is to me. Maybe if I feign distress, she won’t have to.

  Her mouth opens wide, but no sound emerges. Her face wrinkles and contorts. Ben takes his bowl and moves to the other side of the room with it, so as not to be caught in the path of whatever tornado is about to be unleashed.

  A piercing wail breaks the silence and reverberates around the room. Fat tears sprout fully formed, running down her pink cheeks and drenching her pajamas in seconds. She is a tsunami, a typhoon, a series of natural disasters from around the globe bottled and unleashed in my kitchen.

  “Mommy!” she hollers. “Ooooouuugghh!”

  Little people, little problems. I try not to laugh at her need for drama, then I console her, as I do every other morning when I can’t give her exactly what she wants. If I have plain bagels, she wants sesame. If I have apples, she wants pears. If I’ve made pancakes, she wants waffles.

  Today, I offer up all the other cereals like they are contestants in a beauty pageant. “Look, Bec, Lucky Charms has swirly horseshoes! The unopened Frosted Flakes holds a prize inside! Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  I’m all slick gloss on the outside, and I know that I’m supposed to be the one in charge here, but my heart is beating a million miles a nanosecond. Just to be clear: I am a tad bit petrified of my five-year-old.

  Becca considers my overwhelmingly enthusiastic response. Her puffy eyes meet mine and, for a moment, I think the storm is blowing over. There may be a spark of reason there, behind the psychotic glaze.

  Instead, she reaches over and grabs the opened box of Lucky Charms, sniffing its contents like a fine connoisseur. Then she takes a handful of the sugarcoated puffs, slides off her seat, and considers me. She opens her fist and pops the entire contents into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. A stray purple star ends up on the floor, where Becca steps on it, perhaps accidentally, on her way back to the sunroom’s television.

  That poor Lucky Charm is like a fine dust now, and Becca is trailing it with her sock across the white kitchen tile.

  “Miss Rebecca Eliza Worthing!” I say. As if what? The use of her full, formal name will whip her into shape? “Shake that off your foot!” She does. “Now, please come help me clean that up or I’ll…” But she’s gone before I can come up with a suitable threat, perhaps to work through the rest of her displeasure with an unsuspecting Barbie.

  “Good job, Mom,” Ben says, deeming it safe to approach the kitchen island once more.

  He places his empty cereal bowl in front of me and mocks my parenting with a thumbs-up signal and a sardonic grin.

  “What? You can’t put the bowl in the sink, twelve inches that way?” I snap at him. “Or, God forbid, inside the actual dishwasher?”

  “Whatever,” he says, heading to the den to watch cartoons. “You and dad are both in bad moods this morning.”

  Amidst deep, cleansing breaths, I write sweet little notes on paper napkins and slip them into my children’s lunch bags, hoping that by doing so, I will actually feel the scribbled sentiment.

  After I finish putting Ben’s and Becca’s lunches and snacks, in their color-coordinated containers, into their rightful pockets of the correct backpacks, I place my lunch in my school bag along with a folder of graded essays and three folders of not-graded essays. I move it all to the door, ready for launch in eight minutes’ time.

  Becca sheepishly re-enters the kitchen, fully dressed for school. She leans against the doorframe and looks up through long lashes. “Can I have some more of that cereal? It was good. I’m sorry. Please?”

  “Sure, honey,” I say, biting my tongue. She’s only five, Lauren, I think. She doesn’t know any better. I pour some cereal into a plastic cup and hand it to her for breakfast on the go.

  “Laney, could you find Ben and make sure he brushes his teeth, please?” I call. “Laney?” There’s no response. I try a few more times. “Laney?” My mantra eventually brings Ben in from the den.

  “Where’s Laney?” I ask the kids, looking around. The already cluttered kitchen is now covered with breakfast detritus. Laundry is piled by the basement door, ready for washing. “Where’s dad?”

  “Dad said he had to go make money,” Becca replies. “Is that what he doos at work? Makes things?”

  “That’s not quite what he does, Bec. He’s trying to start a new company, a graphic design start-up. All by himself. It’s very hard work.”

  “Dad says it’s risky, but it’s better than working for someone else,” Ben adds sagely.

  “And dad is right about that,” I say, trying to sound optimistic as my brain focuses on the adjective risky.

  “Which is why it’s good to have a teacher in the family!” my kids say in unison.

  I roll my eyes. “Doug!” I call up the stairs. My husband believes that if he brainwashes our children, I, too, will eventually fall for his propaganda surrounding the necessity of my stagnant career.

  “He went to work, I told you that.” Becca goes to the front door and licks the glass heartily, like it’s an ice-cream cone.

  “Ew, stop! Gross!” I pull her away and wipe the saliva with my sleeve. “Ben, where are your sneakers?” He stares blankly at the floor, as if they will materialize in front of his imagined Darth Vader–like laser-beam eyes. “Find. Them. And. Put. Them. On.”

  I rummage through my pocketbook and grab my cell phone. My husband picks up on the first ring, and I can hear him panting as he walks briskly down our street and toward the Hadley train station. He’s probably trying to catch an express train into Manhattan, which only takes thirty-eight minutes on Metro North.

  “You left for work? Without saying good-bye to me?”

  “Maybe?” he asks, his voice an octave higher than usual.

  “You are never supposed to do that! September eleventh!”

  Step, step, pant. Step, step. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry accepted.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ben putting on his sneakers. It’s starting to drizzle, so I help Becca into her raincoat and Hello Kitty boots, then shrug on my own parka.

  There is still no sign of Laney anywhere.

  Doug continues. “It was crazy in the house and no one was paying attention to me after the pants episode, so I just made a break for it.”

  “Nice move. Detonate a bomb and then clear out.”

  “You don’t get it. This deal with Nickelodeon could be huge, but I’ve got to stay on top of it, every moving piece. Today was a chance to head into the office early.”

  I’m a working mom with two children, a largely absentee husband, and a flaky babysitter-slash-housekeeper who, I’m pretty sure, steals my clothing, and I don’t get it? “I’m deeply sympathetic to your hardship, Doug, really. You should file a complaint with the management.”

  “I’ve tried,” he says half-jokingly.

  “You’re dying to go to work and I’m dying to take a break. What’s wrong with this picture? Why can’t I just quit my job?”

  “Because you love it.”

  “I do, or I did? Which verb tense are we using
?”

  “Well, I sure as hell do, present tense, Mrs. English Teacher. The salary, the benefits, the lifetime tenure. I’d kill for a job like that.”

  “You can have mine without murder,” I say.

  “Lauren, not now.” It’s a running dialogue, a continuous loop day after day, and it always ends with “Lauren, not now.” I wait four seconds, knowing he will deftly change the subject. One, two, three… “Is that rain? I forgot my umbrella.”

  “Sucks to be you, I guess.”

  “I guess. Love you.”

  “M-hmm,” I mumble.

  “I could die today in a horrible terrorist attack, remember?” Doug says.

  “Yeah, yeah. I love you, too.”

  Only half-listening now as Doug tells me about a meeting he has later today, I scan the messy kitchen and locate a pile of what looks like art projects of Becca’s and old homework of Ben’s, corrected and returned, that I never know what to do with. I’m about to move on when I uncover some legal-size envelopes.

  “What’s this?” I ask, holding up the mail as if Doug can see it, too. “Did you know about this?”

  “Oh. Um,” Doug says, which isn’t an answer, so I give him a hint and wait for more.

  “Mail.”

  “By the toaster?”

  “Yes, by the toaster!” I say. “Which is not where we keep bills and other important-looking papers.”

  “I must have put them aside to show you and then forgot.”

  “How convenient of you.”

  He sighs. “Better check the dates. Some of them are probably past due. You’re going to have to call.”

  Great. Bad credit is just what I need to make this day even better. “Why am I the one who has to call? This was your mistake!”

  “I don’t have the time, Lauren.”

  Like I do. “I detect some condescension in that statement,” I say. “And I don’t appreciate it.”

  “There is no ‘condescension,’” he says, in a definitely condescending tone. “You’re being dramatic.”

  “At least say you’re sorry! And…argh, I am not being dramatic!” I slam the pantry door closed to prove it, but since the hinge is broken, it bounces right back open in my hand.