Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt Read Free Book Online Page A

Sammy. “Nobody’s perfect,” I say, and tell him a story that makes my and Hannah Montana’s point. We were living in Cambridge. Carl was five, Amy two. It was the night before Easter and the Easter Bunny was about to pay his nocturnal visit. Carl had grown apprehensive at the prospect of an oversize egg-bearing mammal skulking about the house. At 11:00 p.m. Ginny and I were headed for bed. Carl emerged from his room and asked, “Is the Easter Bunny here yet?” No, we said, and he went back to his room. At about one a.m., he reappeared at our bedside. “Is the Easter Bunny here yet?” No, we said. “Go back to bed,” said Ginny. “You’ll hunt for the eggs in the morning.” At2:00 a.m., there was Carl, with the same concern. I don’t think he had slept. Again at three. He stood by our bedside at 4:00 a.m. and awakened us one more time. Before he could get out his question, Ginny sat straight up and shouted, “There is no fucking Easter Bunny!” Instead of being alarmed at his mother’s using a word she had probably never used before, an expression of relief washed over Carl’s face. He returned to his room a happy boy.
     
    An Amy story I do not tell Jessie and Sammy involves the time we were moving from Cambridge to Washington. We had applied to several schools for Carl and Amy, including one with a snooty reputation in which we had little interest, but we were obliged to cover the bases. In a taxi on the way to the children’s interviews at that school, Ginny and I realized we’d left Nanny, Amy’s security blanket, back at the hotel. After a while, so did Amy. Nanny, in spite of having been reduced to the size of a matchbook cover, had lost none of its supernatural powers. “Where’s Nanny?” said Amy. She was three and a half. I told her we’d forgotten Nanny, but not to worry. We’d talk to the people at the school and get back to Nanny as soon as possible. She took the news of our error unsympathetically, since the whole purpose of Nanny was to alleviate tense situations like that one. When we arrived for the interviews—Carl’s for second grade, Amy’s for kindergarten—a woman whose demeanor confirmed the school’s reputation appeared and went off with the disgruntled Amy. When the interview was over, Amy looked more disgruntled, and she had trouble slipping her arms into the sleeves of her little green coat. On the way out, still battling the coat, she stomped on ahead of us down the hall, muttering but loudly, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”—language she undoubtedly had picked up from her mother. The school accepted Carl.
     
    I teach only one writing workshop in the spring term, on the novella, so I drive to Long Island on Sunday, hold class on Monday, and return on Monday night or on Tuesday. The drive from Bethesda to Quogue feels longer than the drive back. I have mentally mapped it into segments, to help the time pass. The first and longest leg of the trip is from Bethesda to the New Jersey Turnpike, through Maryland and Delaware, which usually takes an hour and thirty-five minutes, if I don’t get pulled over. From the southern end of the Turnpike to the Verrazano Bridge takes about an hour and a half. The Belt Parkway in Brooklyn takes twenty-five minutes and the Southern State Parkway, extending to eastern Long Island, another thirty-five. The last leg of the trip, consisting of the Sunrise Highway and the connecting roads to Quogue, takes about forty minutes. As one music station fades out, I pick up another, having preset the call letters for each part of the trip. Classical till the Turnpike. Jazz through New Jersey and into Brooklyn. Classical again most of the rest of the way, until the last fifteen minutes, when I listen to rock. I am learning a little about classical music as I go. I have developed a low opinion of Telemann and a high opinion of Haydn and Handel. In terms of emotions, I can take most anything but Rachmaninoff, the second symphony in particular.
    Hands-free