Through Thick and Thin by Alison Pace Read Free Book Online Page A

to the small room in the front as “our office.” “This room, here,” they said smiling, standing in its doorway, “it can be our office.” When they’d found the great partners’ desk at an estate auction in Far Hills, they said, “Look at this fantastic desk, we should get it for our office.” And when their partners desk arrived, at their new house, they’d placed it in their office, right under the window with two matching chairs from Pottery Barn on either side. They added their laptops, their papers, their things.
    Even after Stephanie had left her job in PR and no longer had any work to bring home, even after Aubrey carried his laptop down to his workroom, where it remained, with all his papers and God knows what else, on what was turning out to be a permanent basis, Stephanie had continued to think of it as “our desk.” Even now that it is only her laptop, her papers, her things, even now that his side of the partners’ desk looks extremely empty, glaringly so, especially in the mornings when the sun glints across its surface like a spotlight, she still calls the desk “our desk.” She still calls the office “our office.” She thinks that even if it is not reality-based, it is important to continue to call them that. She thinks that maybe somehow it could help.
    Stephanie startles slightly, snaps back to attention as she hears the familiar rustling through the baby monitor, the one that precedes Ivy’s waking up. Through the monitor, Stephanie can see Ivy stirring. A fist slides into view over her little face and is just as quickly gone. Ivy. She is so beautiful, even through the baby monitor that lends a green pallor to her skin. The convex angle of the baby monitor makes Ivy look as if she were looking through a peephole, the kinds they have in the doors of apartments, as if Ivy is just a guest visiting, coming to the door of the apartment she and Aubrey had on Seventy-third Street between Columbus and Central Park West. Aubrey loved that apartment, because of the outdoor space (he had a grill) and the close proximity to the park.
    And you would think, wouldn’t you, that if those were the things that were among his favorite things about their apartment, that he’d be so happy here in New Jersey. They still have a grill. And what are the suburbs about really other than outdoor space? Are they not just one great land of proximity to the park? But Aubrey is not happy in New Jersey. She wonders if he would have been different, less catatonic, less subterranean, less completely changed, had they moved instead to Connecticut.
    Ivy’s fist is back on the baby monitor’s screen. She watches as it waves in the air, side to side like maybe Ivy thinks she’s at a rock concert, the rock concert of her mobile. She looks through the motion of her daughter’s fist at her peephole face, and thinks in a way that’s what happened; Ivy, the promise of Ivy, stopped by. Her promise rang the doorbell of their New York City apartment and they decided it was time to go.
    The phone rings, and Stephanie looks at it. She thinks that if she doesn’t answer it, then whoever it is—most likely some New Mommy Group person calling to announce that her six-month-old can recite the alphabet—will go away. Or it’s Aubrey calling to monotonously personify disappointment and disillusionment, “Hey, Steph. I’m working late again tonight. I have a client meeting tonight. Uh, actually, it’s not really either of those things, it’s uh, actually, something else that neither of us will acknowledge and maybe if we keep refusing to acknowledge it, then by virtue of that, it’ll all go away. Okay?”
    She wonders if it’s entirely possible that she simply no longer has the energy left in her reserves to participate in either of those conversations, regardless of how minimal her participation would actually have to be. She wonders when it was that she stopped applying her Approach Everything With a Positive Attitude