The Smart One

Chapter 24





Claire slept on Katherine’s couch for a few weeks, while she started her new job and looked for an apartment. It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but Katherine offered and Claire didn’t want to be rushed into finding a place she didn’t love. Plus, Katherine had a new boyfriend and as long as she had someone at the apartment to stay with Mitzy the dog, she could stay over at his place as often as she liked.

Most mornings, Claire woke up with Mitzy breathing on her, asking to be taken outside. She wasn’t the best-trained dog by a long shot, and she often just squatted in the apartment, relieved herself right where she was, looking right at Katherine or Claire, like she was daring them to punish her. The whole place smelled a little bit like urine, no matter how quickly Katherine cleaned up after her.

Also, Katherine had become very eco-conscious, and while Claire admired this, it could be a little hard to live with. She’d stopped one day to buy paper towels and cleaning supplies, and had spent the afternoon dusting and cleaning, but when Katherine came home to find her Windexing the front windows, she’d screamed like she was watching the execution of a near-extinct animal. “What are you doing?” she’d said. “I have rags for that. And this”—she held up the blue solution with two fingers—“is basically poison.”

Katherine also kept a compost bowl in the kitchen, which smelled and attracted flies. “She’s just a little too green,” Claire told Lainie over the phone. Claire was grateful for the place to stay, but she knew she couldn’t stay too long.

Claire interviewed for almost a month before she contacted her old boss, Amy. She had just started to panic and think that she was never going to find another job, that she shouldn’t have quit any job in this economy, and she felt desperate. Amy was happy to hear from her, probably because she was just happy to hear that Claire was still alive and functioning and hadn’t had a complete breakdown. “I’ll put the word out,” Amy said. And true to her promise, Claire had three calls in a week, one from a nonprofit called Gallery 87 that was looking for a project manager to replace someone immediately. “We’re in a bit of a bind,” they kept telling Claire during the interview. She figured this worked in her favor.

The office that they gave Claire was a mess. All the drawers were still full, and there was a long sweater hanging on the back of the door, like the woman that had been there before had just not bothered to come back one day. The office assistant, Abigail, apologized when she showed Claire the office. “She moved to California with her new boyfriend,” Abigail said. “They hadn’t even been dating that long, like two months, and one day she just came in and said she was leaving.” Abigail shook her head. “We think she was dying to get out of New York and just looking for an excuse.”

Claire had no idea what she was doing at the job, but no one seemed to care. They were all just happy to have a body there again. The purpose of Gallery 87 was to pay high school kids to beautify the city—they painted murals on the sides of graffiti-covered buildings and in the subways, and spruced up parks, and playgrounds. Claire was thrown into the middle of projects that had been in the works for months, accompanied teenagers to parks and watched them paint benches with designs they’d created. They would descend on the park in the morning, and at the end of the day the benches were bright spots of color, some painted with checkerboards and swirls, one with tiny animals marching all over it. Claire was surprised at how much better the park looked when they left, how much it had changed. She wondered if she could get the kids to come paint her new apartment when she moved.

Every night when Claire left work she was so tired she was almost dizzy. Her head swam with information, and she felt like she’d never catch up. She slept better than she had in a year.

Whenever she had a few free moments, Claire would go through the drawers and files in her office. She threw out old receipts and packs of gum, and kept paper clips and pencils. In a cardboard box, she put all of the woman’s personal stuff—her sweater, an old pair of heels, a stuffed duck, and pictures that were on the bulletin board. She was going to throw it all out, but it seemed nicer to put it all in a box together first.

In one of the drawers, Claire found a shopping list that read: Tulips, Carrots, Q-tips, and Celery. She taped the list up on the wall behind her computer. It made her smile. She liked reading it out loud, reciting it under her breath like a prayer or a poem, a crazy little list of the things someone needed.

A BROKER SHOWED HER TWO APARTMENTS in Manhattan before Claire decided she was going to live in Brooklyn. Most of her friends were there now anyway, and she didn’t want to go back to the Upper West Side. She’d walked by her old building one day, expecting to feel drawn to it, but instead she found herself speeding up to get past it quickly. She waved at the doorman when she passed, but didn’t think he remembered her. He waved back like she could be anyone.

Katherine tried to convince Claire to live in Windsor Terrace near her, but Claire was set on Brooklyn Heights. She’d fallen in love with everything about the neighborhood. Even the street names were adorable—Poplar, Orange, Cranberry, Pineapple, and Vine. She didn’t care how small her place was, she just wanted to be there. It was too perfect for words.

“I think you should try to widen your search,” Katherine told her. Sometimes she looked at Claire like she’d lost her mind, like she’d forgotten how hard it could be to find a decent apartment in New York and would end up living on Katherine’s couch forever. But Claire remained hopeful.

THE DAY THAT CLAIRE MOVED OUT OF THE HOUSE, Max followed her around with Nina, making Nina’s arm wave. “Say good-bye to your aunt,” he said. “Tell her how much you’re going to miss her.” She remembered how, when she left for college, Max had cried in her dorm room. He was ten at the time, and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He seemed sort of the same now, holding Nina up and talking behind her, saying, “Aunt Claire, how can you leave me? You’re going to miss me so much.”

And she did miss them, of course. As soon as she left, she missed them all, more than she had before she moved back. It was like she felt their absence more now. That was the worst part about leaving home—no matter what, it always felt a little sad. But not for one second did this mean that she doubted her decision. She was leaving and that was that.

When Claire told Lainie she was moving, she nodded like she’d been waiting for the news. “I hoped maybe you’d stay. That you’d like it here so much you wouldn’t want to go back.”

“Lainie,” Claire said, “I can’t stay here.”

“I know, I know. I knew you’d go. I just thought maybe you’d change your mind.”

“I’ll come visit, I promise. Probably more than I ever did before.”

“Good,” Lainie said. “Because once I have this baby, I’ll probably never be able to leave the house again. I’ll be under house arrest, so you’ll have to come to me.”

“I will,” Claire said. “I promise.”

And she had been home three times already since she moved out. She loved seeing Nina, holding that sweet little baby. And then Lainie had her fourth baby, a boy that they named Tommy. Lainie and Cleo got the babies together pretty often, would put them next to each other on blankets and let them play side by side. They referred to Nina as Tommy’s girlfriend and talked often about their future wedding. Claire knew they were kidding, but she swore those little babies smiled at each other.

Every time Claire came home, Weezy made a big deal of it. They all had dinner, and Martha came home to be there too, like it was a special occasion, like they all hadn’t eaten together every single night just a few months ago.

WHEN THE BROKER TOLD CLAIRE that there was a studio on Pineapple Street that was for rent, she almost screamed. She tried to stay calm, but she knew that barring a major disaster (a serious mice infestation, for example), she was going to take it. Pineapple Street had been her favorite one from the start, the place where she hoped to find an apartment. She started to think that she was getting very lucky.

The apartment was one of the smallest that Claire had ever seen. But it was clean and solid and the girl that was moving out told her that she loved it there. (And she seemed honest, even if she did have Care Bear sheets on her bed.) There was a little half wall that hid the bed from the rest of the apartment, and enough room to put a tiny couch and TV comfortably. Claire didn’t have any furniture anyway, since she’d sold it all, and she promised herself that she was going to get only the basics—a bed, a couch, and maybe a little table.

Katherine had come to see it with her, had looked around and then at Claire. “You could find a much bigger place by me,” she said. But Claire took it and Katherine just shrugged. “It’s your overpriced apartment,” she said.

The night Claire moved in, she had a few friends over and they sat on the floor and drank wine out of plastic cups. They ordered Thai food and ate it out of the containers, passing around spring rolls and noodles. After dinner, they left to go to a bar, since they were all feeling a little cramped by then. Claire was almost hyper that night, was excited at every suggestion someone made, could barely keep from skipping to the bar.

“You look like you just moved to New York for the first time,” Katherine told her. “You’re acting like a tourist or something.”

Claire knew it was true. She was so happy to be back in New York that sometimes she’d be walking down the street and she’d get a rise in her chest and a giddiness that bubbled out of her throat. It made her smile at strangers. She couldn’t help it. These strange surges of happiness seemed to come out of nowhere. Even if she’d wanted to stop herself from bouncing up and down and smiling, she didn’t think she’d have been able to.

It was strange. Claire was back in New York, working for a nonprofit, just like she had been a year ago. It was almost like she was right back where she’d started, but it didn’t feel that way at all.

There were things that Claire didn’t even know she’d missed until she moved back. At home, everything was done for her—grocery shopping, laundry, dusting, cleaning the bathroom. Now, she was responsible for all of it again. The first time she went to the grocery store after moving into the apartment, she had the best time. She bought a random assortment of things—sugar, cereal, Diet Coke, yogurt, cheese, crackers. There was nothing in all of it that could make a meal, but it didn’t matter. She was only a little embarrassed at how free she felt, how grateful she was to throw whatever she wanted into her cart.

Weezy came to visit, carrying a potted plant and a new afghan that she’d made. “Oh,” she said when she stepped into the apartment.

“I know, it’s small,” Claire said. “But I love it.”

“It’s adorable,” Weezy said. She set the plant on the kitchen counter and arranged the afghan on the back of the new couch.

“It looks perfect,” Claire said.

Claire and Weezy walked around the neighborhood, and then on the Promenade. Weezy kept looking over her shoulder, like she thought someone was following them. She’d never been a fan of any of the places that Claire lived in New York, and this one was no different. Claire tried to ignore it.

They talked mostly about Nina and Max and Cleo, but also about Martha’s new condo. They’d never really addressed the fighting that took place during Claire’s year at home, the accusations that she’d made. Weezy had tried to bring it up before she’d moved out, saying, “You have such a support system that we don’t have to worry about you as much,” and she had looked like she was going to cry and so Claire just said, “It’s fine, Mom, it’s fine.” Claire had apologized for her behavior, and then really wanted to drop it. There was no use in talking about it, in making everyone uncomfortable. It was just the way it was.

Now Weezy was talking about the shore again, telling Claire that they’d pay for her train ticket, that the whole family was going to be there, that Martha really missed her and would love it if she came.

“Of course I’ll come,” Claire said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Oh good,” Weezy said.

It was so much easier to be gracious with distance.



THE END OF AUGUST WAS COOLER than normal, and everyone seemed to shift with the weather. Usually when they were at the shore, it felt like they were waiting for summer to end, dreading the return to fall. This year, it felt like summer was already over. There wasn’t the same sense of longing in any of them.

They didn’t spend much time at the beach. It was hard to take Nina down there and everyone seemed just as happy sitting out on the deck in the morning and going for walks in the afternoon. Their days revolved around Nina, and they could spend hours watching her, talking about how much she ate or what she was wearing or how funny and cute she was. Nina was a topic they all agreed on, and Claire couldn’t remember what they’d talked about before her.

One afternoon, they had Nina set up in the middle of the room, lying on her back on a blanket, a mobile set up above her. She was looking intently at a stuffed corn on the cob, frowning at it, like she didn’t like the way it was smiling at her. She sized it up for a while, then wound up her arm and swatted it. She looked pleased when it went flying, and waited for it to settle down, then gave it another whack with her arm.

“I wonder what the corn said to piss her off,” Max said.

“She’s so focused,” Claire said.

“Oh, she is so smart,” Weezy said. Everyone laughed a little, but Weezy just shook her head. “She’s one smart cookie, I’m telling you.”

Claire woke up one morning before anyone else and went down to the kitchen to find Cleo and Nina. She started a pot of coffee and then took Nina from Cleo. Nina had a habit of curling up when anyone tried to put her over their shoulder.

“She’s like a roly-poly bug,” Claire said.

“That’s what Max called her,” Cleo said. “It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about. We used to call them pill bugs.”

“Max loved poking them with sticks and watching them curl. It used to make him laugh so hard when he was little.”

“That’s what he told me. I can imagine it.”

“So, how’s it been going?” Claire asked.

“Okay,” she said. “I mean, it’s good. Just overwhelming, you know? I keep thinking that this baby’s parents will be by soon to pick her up and take care of her, and then I remember that it’s me. I’m the parent. Is that crazy?”

“I’m sure it’s normal.”

Cleo nodded. “It’s not that I want someone to take her, I just sometimes forget that I’m the one in charge of her. That she’s really mine. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I promise. But don’t worry, I think it’s normal. Once, right after Lainie had Jack, we were out at the bar and she all of a sudden looked shocked and said, ‘I just forgot I had a baby. Just for a second.’ ”

Cleo laughed. “Thanks,” she said. “That makes me feel better.”

It was strange watching Max with Nina. He picked her up with so much ease, changed her diaper and fed her with authority. He burped her with a great amount of confidence, patting her back hard, then smiling when he was successful, always laughing when she burped especially loud, saying, “That’s my girl.”

It was the first time ever that Max couldn’t and wouldn’t ask for Claire’s advice. What did she know about babies that could help him? It was so bizarre and a little sad to watch Max going ahead of her, to picture herself having a baby someday and asking Max for tips. But most of the time, she was just impressed with him, how unafraid he was of Nina, how in control he seemed when he held her with one arm or buttoned her into a new outfit.

Martha kept saying, “Thank God for this vacation,” and shaking her head. Her new patient was apparently difficult and Martha loved to talk about her. “She’s running me ragged,” she said. “She’s sort of a wretched old woman. Last week she told me that I should dress for my body type. Can you imagine?”

Claire found herself actually laughing at Martha’s stories. Now that they weren’t living under the same roof, and Martha was no longer pushing for sisters couple therapy, Claire found her kind of amusing. She even managed not to get annoyed when Martha talked to her about the benefits of owning her own place. “You really should make that a goal,” she told Claire. “What you’re paying in rent, just throwing that money away month after month.” She shuddered, like the thought was repulsive.

“I’ll think about that,” Claire said.

Maybe it was because of the weather, or maybe it was because she’d just had a baby, but Cleo didn’t wear a bikini once. Whatever the reason, Claire was grateful.

THE LAST NIGHT THAT EVERYONE was at the house, they barbecued and ate outside. Claire and Weezy had marinated cubes of chicken and beef, and skewered them with red, green, and yellow peppers, mushrooms, and onions.

It was a nice night and everyone was laughing a lot. They were sharing Nina like a toy, passing her around nicely, even if they were all a little reluctant to let her go. Claire noticed the way that everyone leaned down to smell Nina’s head before they had to hand her off to the next person, how they breathed in deeply, like teenagers sniffing glue to get high.

Nina fell asleep while Claire was holding her, and she didn’t make a move to pass her to anyone else. She wasn’t trying to be a baby hog, but Nina was her goddaughter and they were all leaving tomorrow, so it seemed only fair. Nina snuffled in her sleep, like a tiny little pig. She was a beautiful baby, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone.

Everyone talked late into the night, like they didn’t want to go to bed and admit that it was the end of vacation. Claire was a little sad to leave, but also excited to get back to her new apartment, to spend time there. The apartment was new enough that it didn’t quite feel like hers yet. She still had the sense when she opened the door that she was walking into an unfamiliar place. It didn’t bother her, though. She knew that would change soon enough. She knew that one day, she’d walk in and it would be like she belonged there. All of the dust and dirt would be what she created, the smell would be her own. And she would be able to walk barefoot everywhere without thinking that someone else’s foot germs were there. It would be like no one else had ever lived there before, like no one else would be there after; it would feel like home.

Maureen went into the house and came out carrying a new bottle of wine. “Just one more splash for everyone,” she said. “It’s our last night here, we can’t go to bed early.”

They all obeyed, holding out their glasses like children, while Maureen stood in the middle of the circle, turning and pouring. Claire wrapped the blanket a little bit more up around Nina’s face, even though it wasn’t cold out. Will was talking about his new teaching schedule, listing all of the things he had to do to get ready as soon as they got back.

It was quiet for a few moments, and Claire could tell that everyone was getting sleepy. But then Martha started talking about her job again, explaining how her patient sometimes tried to sneak away from her in the store. And they all turned to her to listen, gave her full attention, and watched her as she said, “I have to chase her down, scream her name in the supermarket like a crazy person.” Martha looked pleased as everyone laughed, then looked down at her lap for a moment and twisted her hands around, like a middle school girl, embarrassed by the attention. They were all silent for a few seconds, waiting. And then she recovered and went on.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





For my husband, Tim Hartz, who lets me take over the dining room table with piles of papers for weeks at a time and talk about my characters over dinner—when I come out of my writing haze, I’m so happy that you’re the one there to greet me. Thanks for everything, friend. I think marrying you was a good decision.

My agent, Sam Hiyate, always, always believes in my writing and in me, which means more than I can ever say.

As far as editors go, Jenny Jackson is the very best. She is thoughtful and wise in her edits, so fun to gossip with, and always starts e-mails to me by saying, “this is a no-pressure e-mail.” For all of these reasons (and because she makes my books better), I am delighted to know her.

I am a lucky writer to have such a great family. My parents, Pat and Jack Close, are the best cheerleaders ever. They are willing to attend multiple readings, assure me things will work out if I get nervous (Mom), and try to sell my book to strangers (that’s you, Dad). Thanks, you guys.

Kevin Close, Chris and Susan Close, and Carol and Scott Hartz are a constant support and eager readers. I couldn’t ask for more.

My adorable and brilliant niece, Ava Close, responded to the cover art for this book by saying, “Ooooh, Santa.” Ava, I am always happy to have your honest feedback.

Wrigley Close-Hartz keeps me company while I write and also makes sure that I get outside at least once a day, by demanding his walk.

I AM ALSO GRATEFUL TO:

All of my students at George Washington University, who remind me of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.

Tom Mallon, who was kind enough to give me a job teaching creative writing at GW.

My virtual coworkers—all of the people who make my days a little less lonely, by chatting over e-mail, answering writing questions, reading drafts, and always offering encouragement: Megan Angelo, Jessica Liebman, Martha Leonard, Lee Goldberg, Courtney Sullivan, and Molly Erman.

Moriah Cleveland is forever willing to talk to me about imaginary people as though they were real. There is no first reader/e-mail companion that I would rather have. You are invaluable.

My friends are constantly telling me funny things, and sometimes I have to steal bits of their dialogue and stories for my writing. Thank you, and I’m sorry, but if you guys weren’t so funny I wouldn’t have to do it—Becky Schillo, Margaret Hoerster, Mairead Garry, Erin Claydon, Erin Bradley, Mary Colleen Bragiel, and Hilary Murdock.

Being at Knopf has been a dream come true, and I am thankful every day for all the people there who support me, and my books. This team is superb at what they do and are also just genuinely nice people. I am indebted to: Sonny Mehta, Paul Bogaards, Ruth Liebman, Nicholas Latimer, Julie Kurland, Jennifer Kurdyla, Andrea Robinson, Elizabeth Lindsey, and Abby Weintraub.





A Note About the Author

Jennifer Close is the best-selling author of Girls in White Dresses. Born and raised on the North Shore of Chicago, she is a graduate of Boston College and received her MFA in Fiction Writing from the New School in 2005. She worked in New York in magazines for many years. She now lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches creative writing at George Washington University.

Follow: @jenniferclose


Other titles by Jennifer Close available in eBook format

Girls in White Dresses 978-0-307-70041-4

For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com