Sally Koslow - With Friends Like These

S ALLY K OSLOW is the author of The Late, Lamented Molly Marx and Little Pink Slips. Her essays have been published in More, O: The Oprah Magazine, and The New York Observer, among other publications. She was the editor in chief of both McCalls and Lifetime, was an editor at Mademoiselle and Womans Day, and teaches creative writing at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College. The mother of two sons, she lives in New York City with her husband.

www.sallykoslow.com

Then Again

Jules stood back to admire her platters and bowls destined for eggs, for roasted asparagus, for scones, and for a cartload of berries. Champagne was icing and a sour cream coffee cake rising, the mother-love aroma of cinnamon wafting upstairs to fill the tiny nostrils of Sienna Julia de Marco. As Jules straightened her smiling sunflowers, Arthur walked through the front door. Want one? he asked, hoisting a Dunkin Donuts bag, a grease spot catching the morning light. Jules bit into a doughnut, and raspberry glop oozed onto her lip. Arthur kissed it away. Wheres my doll?

Jamyang is getting her dressed, Jules said.

When Chloe had to let Jamyang go, shed beseeched Jules to hire her. Since one of Jules Rules was to know when to throw money at a problem and whistle for help, she did, though shed pictured a different sort of nanny, half Auntie Mame, half matryoshka doll. Jamyang was living now in a bedroom next to Siennas, and when she crept out of hiding, she went about her business for a remarkable number of uncomplaining hours. Like that day. Jamyang had been up since six, helping prepare brunch in honor of Quincys visit.

Jules and Quincy had called a truce. When Talia had told Jules that Quincy was moving, Jules thought Quincy had eaten one too many corn dogs at the fair. Minnesota might have ten thousand lakes, but what about the leeches on their slimy bottoms, the mosquitoes the size of nickels, the way folksfolks!rhyme roof with woof? If you wanted to live where the sun set at four on a winter afternoon, why not move to Sweden and get universal health care? But Jules pulled a Chloe and sent Quincy a peace offering, knee-high moccasins with five layers of fringe, plus a tiny pair for the papoose. She was rewarded with an instant text from Quincy, who suggested that they have coffee.

The conversation was nothing baroque.

Jules said, Quincy, I fucked up. I was wrong. I had no business telling Arthur about that apartment, or seeing it myself. Im sorry. Can you forgive me?

I can, Quincy answered. I do. Lets move on.

It was enough for both of them. Jules didnt see herself as magnanimous. She saw herself as sincere and happy, because there was no one in the universe as deliriously content as a forty-four-year-old who became the accidental mother of a daughter with eyes as dark as chocolate truffles, gazing at her with love. Sienna had brown hair curling around her scalp like miniature potato vines and chubby fingers that Arthur insisted were exactly like his. Dont all babies have short, pudgy fingers? Jules wondered. They will grow.

She was about to order Arthur to sweep the front steps when she looked out the window and saw the Blues tumbling out of a rented minivan. A small warehouses worth of equipment was in Jakes hands and Quincys held J.J. When she brought him inside, Jules could see he had large blue eyes that searched the room like headlights and a head as bald as an egg. Before the greetings were over, the doorbell rang again. Talia and Tom entered with Henry in tow, hurling himself toward J.J. like a bowling ball.

Ready or not, the party had started. Arthur hung coats, Jamyang put Sienna in her high chair, and Jules invited everyone to sit. She swept her arm above the table, the gesture one of benediction. Benvenuto. Its been way too long, she said. She looked at each of them, one by one, but reserved her most admiring glance for Sienna, plump and trussed, a small Jules who banged tiny starfish hands to the music of her mothers voice, then squealed with delight. Either that, Jules thought, or the kid had gas.

Hear, hearI second that. Not unlike his daughter, Arthur knocked the bare wood table with his knuckles. Talia and Quincy returned his smile. Being obnoxious, each privately concluded, wasnt a crime after all.

Each of the women had grown in ways they couldnt have imagined when they shared their walled paradise near the Hudson. Jules was basking in contentment delivered by accident. While she doubted that she deserved the richness of her life, she was grateful, almost ready to speak of her happiness out loud.

Quincy had unpacked her life, blue cradle and all (which Jake had refused to leave on the curb, along with hope), halfway across the country to fashion a family from fresh air and fresh startsQuincy, Jacob, and James J. Blue, with Tallulah barking for attention. Whenever Quincy turned a corner, she could feel her moms spirit watching over her.

Talia was restless. She had begun to conjure her own gauzy fantasy of escape and longed for the salty air of Santa Monica, though for all its crumbling bungalows it was as out of her financial grasp as Fifth Avenue. Talia did not speak of this to anyone, especially not Tom, yet he knew his wifes disappointment as well as he knew that he loved her and couldnt fix what had gone wrong.