Tales From A Broad (12 page)

Get house painted, per realtor's instruction

Shampoo carpets, per realtor's instruction

Call snowplough guy per realtor's instruction

Call gardener per realtor's instruction

Take car to Baltimore

Take train home

Say goodbye to everyone

Work for a living

Cook breakfast (hmmm, what can you do with bread crumbs and candy corn)

Cook dinner (damn, I used all the candy)

Go to supermarket.

One minute, my biggest worry is sitting on a plane again for 24 hours with nothing to do and the next, I'm back in New York with a staggering amount of organisational activities swirling in my head like a snow globe. We need to come back in order to leave again for the long haul. We need to … oh, I already mentioned the list. But I can't get the flakes of ‘to do' to settle. It feels like a blizzard, a haphazard series of words. The caterwauling duet of Sadie and Huxley is accompanied by ringing phones, incoming faxes, lawn mowers, leaf blowers … It's really just Daily Life, but I can't live with Daily Life now that Big Picture has landed on the doorstep with a steamer trunk.

On any given day, I am confounded by logistics. How am I supposed to exercise, bathe, dress, brush three sets of teeth, clothe, feed, pack the necessity bag, find a parking spot, buy a paper and make the train all in the space of two hours when it takes me an entire hour just to drink my coffee?

Frank tiptoes around waiting for me to fall apart.

I don't let him down. Within a couple of days or so, I am paralysed. I became a human pinball, bumping into things to do and careening back into things undone, zinging around, then staring into space in the gutter.

At eight o'clock at night, Frank is dutifully, efficiently, logically wrapping and boxing, and writing comprehensive notes in a manifest. A blur of industriousness, he is labelling everything according to some Franky-decimal system. He waves and smiles at me through the glass doors as I take up my familiar position on the deck and he travels that well-trodden path to another beer. Sometimes I see him stop suddenly, jerk the pen from behind his ear and scribble away. Still, I sit huddled in layers of outerwear, smoking, drinking, and thinking. Occasionally, I perform a little pantomime for Frank indicating I'm just ‘on a break'. I stridently stub out my cigarette and move toward the door as if I were equally eager – compelled! – to resume the same such busy-ness. When he's out of view again, I just sit back down.

Sometimes Frank slides open the door and puts his head through, asking in an amiable tone something like: ‘Do you think you're going to want to take the crystal?' Automatically I say ‘No', because if it was ‘Yes' then one might wonder why I didn't pack it myself. I try to convey during the one-millionth of a second it takes to say ‘No' that I have given it a lot of thought and, in the end, determined it best to leave it here. I just haven't had the time to tell him … busy, busy, busy. The truth really is that, yes, I do want my crystal and now it's too late and the tenants are going to get in a big fight and smash my goblets against the walls and floors.

Before the week is over Frank has finished the packing, despite having gone into work every day well groomed, despite being fuelled by a handful of pepper for dinner. He is also loving and playful with the kids, bathing them, dressing them and taking them to daycare (which I lined up, thank you).

My pace at work is a different story. There, I am frenetic. First of all, I sit in the office and swivel in a chair. I watch Jason, my assistant, make sounds to me. I pick up the phone and speak to grown-ups who call themselves clients. I write pages of notes that only look like doodles to the naked eye. Eventually, though, as the house gets tidy and I warm up to this being back in the office instead of in a bathing suit, I do actually get my act together. I arrange a party for a celebrity client (famous, mostly, for being insane, but why should that stop us from throwing a party?) and schedule meetings for a book fair in Germany where I will be making a huge amount of licensing deals for an upcoming movie. Everyone is positively kissing my ass because I have a hot property, I have two books on
The New York Times
bestseller list, and my clients' royalty statements are going through the roof. I am finding myself getting juiced, feeling like ‘the man', loving the pressure, ‘on the phone'.

There are two problems: I don't want to go back to Singapore any more, and we haven't found a renter yet. Perhaps that is one problem and one solution? Not a chance. I have to go. Frank has to go. We're a family. He never would have made this decision had I not complained so. How was he to know that when I said ‘My job is killing me; I never see the kids' I meant, ‘Oh, wait a second, I'm alive again. What's to see? They're kids.'

And anyway, they've already lined up a new agent to take my office.

My heart tightens as I imagine tenants in our living room, sitting by the fire where, after putting the kids to bed, Frank and I would play Trivial Pursuit and eat Chee Whiz on crackers and body parts. Suddenly the house symbolises my life and I know I don't want to leave. I mean, what the hell was I thinking when I decided to stay on in Singapore? I'm a New York literary agent. This is my home.

Our house is on the edge of a nature preserve. The deck where I constantly seek refuge is just off the living room and looks out over a large forest. Before we moved in, there was just one tiny window in the corner of the room. We knocked out a wall, put in huge sliding doors, built the deck and made a fantastic place to watch the seasons change, from inside and out. (Which reminds me, there are no seasons in Singapore. They think they have two – rainy and not so rainy – but they don't. They are lying.)

There is a catwalk library off the master bedroom, which also has a great view of the trees. I set up a desk there and used to look at the woods as I worked. The built-in shelves were lined with all the books I loved and those I couldn't wait to read. We had two fireplaces. The problems with the house became fewer as we poured thought, money and man-hours into it. We had a cool house and in it we brought new people to the planet.

George Groves is the best realtor on the face of the earth. We found him when I was pregnant and we decided to move to Westchester. He showed us – literally – 200 houses. He was never vague. He was never fatigued. He never seemed annoyed that we just didn't get it: we were too poor to be rich. He never tried to sell. He would point out the good, the bad, the fixable, the ‘whys' and ‘why nots'. He didn't just drive us to a site and drone, ‘Here's the bedroom … Here's the kitchen.' Not our George. He saw me get larger and larger with Sadie, and I heard all about his life. My mother-in-law joined me on many of these house hunts and he responded to her challenging questions with unwavering calm and educated answers. When we finally bought our house, he remembered – from almost a year before – that we had said we wanted ‘funky'. He also thought to comment, ‘You realise you are 500 yards from your mother-in-law?'

So when George says, ‘Don't worry, we'll get you a renter,' I know I shouldn't be so nervous. The clock is ticking, but just as the alarm is about to go off, a wonderful grown-up family fall for the place, the deck, the nature, the kitchen and library.

I like her, the wife, in particular. She's warm and effusive. She doesn't ask things like, ‘How old is the drier?' Instead, she asks, ‘What will it be like for your kids in Singapore?' She tells me all about her kids and her sister's kids, and unabashedly gushes over things I did to the house.

I guess that's why I choose to ignore the, um, import of all those ‘must do's' right there on her personage. She has buttons missing, resident stains on her slacks and a way-past-due-date on her roots. She's the sort of person who would marvel at a crater in the ceiling of her own bedroom
if she
noticed it at all, and, if it rained, she'd just put a hand over her head. But she would love our forest.

The deal is signed. The tenants move in, the kids and I move over to the in-laws. Frank goes to Singapore to get stuff sorted out. I go to daycare, work, and the grocery store. By eight at night, I have the kids in bed. Sometimes Frank and I talk on the phone, but, given the fact that one of us is just waking up and one of us is ensconced in happy hour, we're forever struggling to find a common mood. Emails are safer.

When it is time for me to go to the book fair in Germany, Frank returns to New York victorious. We have a fantastic apartment ready and waiting back in Fortune Gardens – two floors, a sea view from every window, the works. He swings me around the room. Thrilled for me.

I hand over the diaper bag and head off to Frankfurt. For the first time in a long time, I am without kids, doing my job, being on, partying without my husband. I am getting a great workout from kicking myself about the whole Singapore situation. I don't want to go. I belong here. (Well, not exactly here in Germany, oy …) But then I lose the videotape. The one that has the words ‘DO NOT LET OUT OF YOUR SIGHT' written all over it. The one that, if ever seen by anyone but authorised individuals in a secure environment, will mean thousands of lives at risk – or at least a couple of people out of a job. I have no idea where I left the almost final edited copy of
Lost in Space
but my plane is leaving in one hour without it. I call people in their hotel rooms from the plane so many times they answer their phones with ‘No, it hasn't turned up'.

When I land and Frank meets me at the airport, I vomit.

‘I lost Dave's video … I left it at someone's booth … it's gone … I'm dead … he's dead … we're all dead, dead, dead … killed and dead … (vomit).'

And then Frank reminds me. ‘They'll have to find you first!'

The next day, just before we board the plane for Singapore, the video is reported to be in safe hands and on its way to my New York office. I kiss the phone. I never tell the client. I go joyfully to my seat in business class and snap for champagne … and keep them coming … For the next three years, they'll have to find me first. Goodbye, New York!

Frank gets all his merit badges at once when he shows us into our new apartment. We have ample storage, large rooms and huge balconies, and every window in the entire joint has an unobstructed sea view.
And
, we have carpeting. This may not seem worth mentioning but it is rare here. No more crawling around with the kids on a cold, hard, marble floor. If that's the icing on the cake, then the cherry on top is Sadie's pink bedroom and the pink velvet headboard over her queen-sized bed.

Frank is all aglow as the three of us cheer and hug him. ‘Hooray for Daddy!' We dance. He can't hide his pride and relief. He shows us around every nook and cranny and gives us a tour of all the wonderful features in our new home. He has taken it upon himself to purchase things we need, like a microwave, toaster oven and blender. He has had phone jacks installed on the balcony so I can work at night, watching the ships' lights, and, when it's clear, see Indonesia twinkling in the distance. We have remote-controlled lights, airconditioners, ceiling fans, boom boxes and VCRs. The place is filled with cables and thin little palm-held devices that are the only way to turn everything from the overhead light to the coffee maker on and off. Forget where you put one of these remote control suckers and you're screwed. What the heck is wrong with a toggle switch? I guess the marketing people are sure that the only way to edge past the competition is to appeal to the paraplegic and terribly lazy.

After the ‘oohs' and ‘ahhs' I'm faced with brochure overload. I flick through dossier after dossier about the stuff that is to make our lives easier. Ninety-eight pages of text come with the microwave; 160 pages come with the sound system. I decide to tackle it room by room, and start with the kitchen. I flip through the microwave book. The convivial little introduction starts with ‘Welcome To Your Breezy New Lifestyle'. I get bored after the diagram of the appliance broken down into pieces labelled AA–ZZ. I just pull the microwave and all the accessories out, tossing styrofoam peanuts around and ripping through bubble wrap (saving enough so the kids will have a new toy tomorrow). Frank is watching me with that enormous – but now starting to get on my nerves – grin on his face. It must hurt to have it like that for so long. His eyes are moist when he points and says, ‘
This
one came with a mirror. Special promotion.'

I give him a sceptical look. This isn't Frank; it's Ernest. I move on to the blender and in that box there is a Filofax. Frank is still over the moon.

‘Special promotion?' I ask. Frank's head goes up and down in the enthusiastic affirmative.

I'm not unhappy about these little extras but I am confounded by their relevance. I mean, I can understand the whole ‘But wait … there's more! If you order now …' thing. But there was always a correlation between the freebie and the product, something that would, say, enhance your cooking experience. But a full-length mirror with my microwave? A Filofax with a blender? Hey, I just checked my schedule, no time to chew, better get out the blender – ha ha.