A Window Opens

A Novel

Elisabeth Egan

• Publisher: S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781501105463
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

What happens when having it all proves too much to handle? In this "fresh, funny take on the age-old struggle to have it all" ( People ) a wife and mother of three leaps at the chance to fulfill her professional destiny—only to learn every opportunity comes at a price. "A winning, heartfelt debut" ( Good Housekeeping ), A Window Opens introduces Alice Pearse, a compulsively honest, longing-to-have-it-all, sandwich generation heroine for our social-media-obsessed, lean in (or opt out) age. Like her fictional forebears Kate Reddy and Bridget Jones, Alice plays many roles (which she never refers to as "wearing many hats" and wishes you wouldn't, either). She is a (mostly) happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. She is not: a cook, a craftswoman, a decorator, an active PTA member, a natural caretaker, or the breadwinner. But when her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in—and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up which promises to be the future of reading. The Holy Grail of working mothers?an intellectually satisfying job and a happy personal life?seems suddenly within reach.Despite the disapproval of her best friend, who owns the local bookstore, Alice is proud of her new "balancing act" (which is more like a three-ring circus) until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up, and her work takes an unexpected turn. In the midst of her second coming of age, Alice realizes the question is not whether it's possible to have it all but, what does she really want the most?"Smart and entertaining…with refreshing straight-forwardness and humor" ( The Washington Post ), "fans of I Don't Know How She Does It and Where'd You Go, Bernadette will adore A Window Opens " ( Booklist, starred review).

SPRING

1

In my book, January and February are just frozen appetizers for the fillet of the year, which arrives in March, when you can finally wear a down vest to walk the dog. That’s when I commit to my annual resolutions: become more flexible in all senses of the word, stop snapping at my family, start feeding the parking meter, take wet laundry out of the machine before it mildews, call my mom more, gossip less. Throughout my thirties, the list has remained the same.

On this particular sunny and tentatively warm day, I was driving home from spin class, daydreaming about a pair of patent leather boots I’d seen in the window of a store near my office. They were midheight and semi-stylish, presentable enough for work, with a sole suited for sprinting through the aisles of the grocery store. Maybe I recognized a little bit of myself in those boots; after all, I fit the same description.

When I stopped for a red light in front of the high school, my phone lit up with a photo of Nicholas. The snapshot was three years old, taken on wooden bleachers at the Y while we were waiting for our son, Oliver, to finish basketball practice. Splayed across Nicholas’s chest was the paperback edition of The Cut by George Pelecanos; while he grinned at my then new iPhone, our daughters, Margot and Georgie, each leaned in and kissed one of his cheeks.

“Hey, what’s up? I’m just driving back from Ellie’s class. Since when does ‘Stairway to Heaven’ qualify as a spin song?”

Silence on the other end. I noticed a spray of white crocuses on the side of the road, rearing their brave little heads. “Nicholas? Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Another pause.

“Nicholas? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just—”

More silence.

I watched as a group of high school kids trampled the crocuses with their high-tops and Doc Martens. The light turned green.

“You just . . . what?”

“Listen, Al, I’d rather not have this conversation on speaker while you’re driving. Can you call me when you get home?”

I felt a slow blossom of anxiety in my throat. When someone starts talking about the conversation in the third person, you know it’s not going to be pretty.

“Nicholas. What’s going on?”

“I can’t . . . You know what?” I heard a noise in the background that sounded like a big stack of papers hitting the floor. “Actually? I’m coming home. I’ll be on the 11:27 train. See you soon.” There was a strain in his voice, as if someone had him by the neck.

“Wait—don’t hang up.”

But he was gone.

Suddenly, I felt chilly in my sweaty clothes. I distractedly piloted my minivan down Park Street, past a church, a temple, a funeral home, and a gracious turreted Victorian we’d lost in a bidding war when we first started looking for houses in Filament.

My mind raced with possibilities: Nicholas’s parents, my parents, his health, an affair, a relocation. Was there any chance this urgent conversation could contain good news? A windfall?

What was so important that Nicholas had to come home to say it to me in person? In the seven years we’d lived in New Jersey, he’d rarely arrived home before dark, even in the summer, and most of our daytime conversations took place through an intermediary—his secretary, Gladys, doyenne of the Stuyvesant Town bingo scene.

I called Nicholas back as soon as I pulled into the driveway of our blue colonial. When the ringing gave way to voice mail, I suddenly felt dizzy, picturing the old photo pressed to my ear. The girls had grown and changed since then—Margot’s round face chiseling down into a preteen perma-scowl, Georgie’s toddler legs losing their drumstick succulence. But what struck me was Nicholas’s jet-black hair. It had been significantly thicker in those days, and a lot less gray. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him kick back with a book, let alone look so relaxed.

I was about to find out why.

• • •

I spent the next hour repairing damage wrought by the daily cyclone of our kids eating breakfast, getting dressed, and supposedly cleaning their rooms but really just shoving socks, towels, and Legos under their beds. Eggshells in the garbage disposal, Leapin’ Lemurs cereal in the dustpan, Margot’s tried-on-and-discarded outfits directly into her hamper even though I knew they were clean. I filled out class picture forms—hadn’t I already paid for one round of mediocre shots against the backdrop of a fake library?—and called in a renewal of the dog’s Prozac prescription: “His birthday? Honestly, I have no idea . . . He’s not my son! He’s my dog!” Cornelius lifted his long reddish snout and glanced lazily in my direction from his favorite forbidden napping spot on the window seat in the dining room.

I kept checking my phone, hoping to hear from Nicholas, but the only person I heard from was my dad. Ever since losing his vocal cords to cancer, he’d become a ferocious virtual communicator. His texts and e-mails rolled in at all hours of the day, constant gentle taps on my shoulder. The highest concentration arrived in the morning, while my mom played tennis and he worked his way through three newspapers, perusing print and online editions simultaneously. Many messages contained links to articles on his pet subjects: social media, the Hoyas, women doing it all.

That day, in my state of anticipation and dread, I was happy for the distraction.

Dad: Dear Alice, do you read me?

Alice: I do!

Dad: Just wondering, are you familiar with Snapchat?

Me: Sorry, not sure what this is.

Dad: Reading about it in WSJ. Like Instagram, but temporary. Pictures only. No track record.

Me: I’m not on Instagram either. Have nothing to hide anyway.

Dad: I can educate you. These are great ways to stay connected.

Me: I’m on FB. That’s all I can handle.

Dad: Yes, but why no cover photo on your timeline?

Dad: Hi, are you still there?

Dad: OK, TTYL. Love, Dad

We live four houses from the station, so I headed over as soon as I heard the long, low horn of the train. By the time I’d walked by Margot and Oliver’s school and arrived at the steep embankment next to the tracks, Nicholas was already on the platform. He looked surprisingly jaunty, with his suit jacket hanging from his shoulder like a pinstriped cape.

He kissed me on the cheek—a dry nothing of a peck that you might give to someone who baked you a loaf of zucchini bread. He smelled like the train: newsprint, coffee, vinyl. I shivered inside my vest and pulled him in for a tight hug, wrapping my arms around his neck.

“What is going on?”

Nicholas sighed. Now I smelled mint gum with an undernote of—beer? Was that possible?

The train pulled out of the station and we were the only two people left on the platform. I was vaguely aware of a gym class playing a game of spud on the school playground behind us. “I called it and he moved!” “I didn’t move, she pushed me!” Nicholas leaned down to put his leather satchel on the ground. It was a gift from me for his thirtieth birthday: the perfect hybrid of a grown-up briefcase and a schoolboy’s buckled bag. As he straightened his back, his green eyes met mine. He put his hands through his hair and I thought of the photo, my chest tightening.

“Alice, I didn’t make partner.”

At first, the news came as a relief. A problem at work was small potatoes compared to a secret second family or an out-of-control gambling problem or the middle-age malaise of a friend’s husband who said, simply, “I don’t feel like doing this anymore,” before packing a backpack and moving to Hoboken.

Just a backpack!

Then: the lead blanket of disappointment descended gently but firmly, bringing with it a sudden X-ray vision into our past and our future. The summer associate days when we dined on Cornish game hen and attended a private Sutherland, Courtfield–sponsored tour of the modern wing of the Met; the night Nicholas’s official offer letter from the firm arrived, when we climbed a fire escape to the roof of our apartment building and started talking—hypothetically, of course—about what we would name our kids; the many mornings I’d woken up to find him, still dressed in clothes from the day before, with casebooks, Redwelds, and six-inch stacks of paper scattered willy-nilly across the kitchen table. You don’t know how big a binder clip can be until you’ve been married to a lawyer.

What next, if not this?

But first, why?

“Oh, Nicholas. I’m so sorry. I mean, just . . . Really. Wait, I thought the partners’ meeting wasn’t until November. Why are they—”

“It’s not. Until November, I mean. But I had a feeling—”

“You had a feeling? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Alice, I don’t know, okay? I’m working with Win Makepeace on this bankruptcy—the one I told you about with those bankers who wanted to go out for karaoke? And he let slip that it’s not going to happen for me. Actually, he said it, flat out, as if I already knew. Should have known.”

I pictured Win in his spindly black chair with its smug Cornell crest, how he would have smoothed a tuft of sandy hair over a bald spot that was permanently tanned from a lifetime of sailing on Little Narragansett Bay. Who names their kid Win, anyway? Not Winthrop, Winston, or Winchester, just Win. I was proud to come from a family where all the men are named Edward.

Then I snapped back into the moment, shaking my head as if to dislodge a pesky thought. “So, wait, he just said, ‘Nicholas Bauer, you are not going to make partner at this law firm’?”

“No, not like that. I made a tiny mistake on a brief—a comma instead of a period—and he said, ‘Bauer, let’s face it, you’re not Sutherland, Courtfield partner material.’ ”

“He did not.”

“He did.”

“Nicholas, is this even legal?” I grabbed his hand and pointed us in the direction of home.

“Of course it is. He just stood there in his fucking houndstooth vest and basically told me I had no future there. That, in fact, the partners decided last November, and they weren’t going to tell me until a year from now—”

The swings on the playground were empty, swaying lazily in the breeze by their rusted chains. Sadness kicked in at the sight of them. Hadn’t Nicholas given up enough for this law firm? How many times had I watched him knot his tie, lace his dress shoes, and board the train on a Saturday? How many vacations had been interrupted by urgent calls from clients and arbitrary deadlines from partners?

Nicholas kept going, spelling out the logistics of how these decisions are made and the arcane, draconian methods law firms use for meting out information to their unsuspecting workhorse associates. But I already knew the drill. My dad was a retired partner at another midtown law firm; I grew up hearing about the personality quirks and work ethics of candidates who didn’t quite make the cut. There had been eighty aspiring partners in Nicholas’s so-called class at Sutherland, Courtfield; by the time they were officially eligible for lifelong tenure—the proverbial golden handcuffs—they would be winnowed down to five, at most. Even knowing this, I’d never imagined Nicholas would be part of the reaping.

By this point, we were in our kitchen, where Cornelius wove among our legs, whimpering anxiously as if he sensed the tension. I made a fresh pot of coffee that neither of us would drink. Nicholas and I were rarely home alone without our kids, but my mind didn’t go where it normally would in such a situation.

Only two weeks before, my parents had taken the kids for the weekend, and before their car was even out of the driveway, we’d raced upstairs to our room. Suddenly, Georgie had materialized at the foot of our bed, looking perplexed. “Wait, why are you guys going to sleep?”

Nicholas and I leapt apart, and he grabbed a book from the floor and made a show of reading it. I tucked the sheet under each arm and reached for her hand, which was dwarfed by a plastic ring from the treasure chest at the dentist’s office. “Georgie! You’re back so soon?”

“Pop brought me back. I forgot Olivia.” Olivia is a pig in striped tights; she came with a book by the same name, and she’s a key member of Georgie’s bedtime menagerie, which also includes Curious George and a stingray. “What are you two doing?”

Nicholas put down the book: Magic Tree House #31: Summer of the Sea Serpent. “We’re . . . napping.”

Georgie chewed the end of her scraggly braid, beholding us suspiciously with hazelnut (her word) eyes.

“Okay, well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” She turned on her heel and ran downstairs. The minute we heard the front door close, we picked up where we’d left off.

• • •

Now Nicholas leaned against the counter, absentmindedly peeling the clear packing tape we used to hold our cabinets together. Our kitchen was in dire need of a facelift—the black-and-white checkered floor was so scratched, it looked like the loading dock at a grocery store. We’d been saving up for a renovation.

“But at least you can stay at the firm until you find a new job, right?”

“No, that’s another thing.”

“What?” I envisioned sand pouring through a sieve: vacations, restaurant dinners, movies, a new car, college savings, retirement— every iota of security spilling out and away.

“Alice, I can’t stay there.”

“What do you mean you can’t stay there?”

“Oh, come on. You know how i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue
• Part 1: Spring
• Part 2: Summer
• Part 3: Fall
• Part 4: Winter
• Part 5: Spring
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Reading Group Guide
• About Elisabeth Egan
• Copyright