Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,58
admiring the view of the tall trees out the front windows.
It was, kid crap infestation aside, a nice apartment, Laura admitted to herself with some pride. She and Matt barely made enough to afford the rent, which made it necessary for Matt to do freelance film editing on top of his nine-to-five job and for Laura to spend a lot of time examining the family budget and transferring credit card balances. But it was worth it to be close to the girls’ school, and the park, and to be able to look out the windows on a summer day and see well-kept nineteenth-century town houses on their block keeping the heat at bay with their thick dark walls and cool wide-planked wooden floors. If she could not actually live in one of these houses, it was nice to at least be able to see them from her window.
The girls obediently came and said hi to Callie, who gamely pretended to admire their mermaids and their identically French-braided hair. Then they traipsed off to their bedroom to throw things and shriek at each other while Callie and Laura sat at the kitchen table and drank tea. The area around Marie’s injured eye looked pinkish still, Laura noted as they left, but she hadn’t been complaining about it, so it didn’t seem worth fussing over.
“I’m so glad you’re coming out tonight! Is Matt coming, too?”
“He’s staying here with the girls. But I’m bringing my friend Mara, I hope that’s cool. She’s a big fan of the band.”
“That’s totally cool. I hope she can hang out afterward, too.”
“Maybe. Both of us have to get up early. She has a kid the girls’ age.”
“So she’s old?”
“Not that old. I don’t know, actually. I think she’s, like, thirty-five?”
“That’s old!”
Laura shrugged. Most of her friends were mom friends, and most moms were over thirty-five. It was still sometimes initially an uphill battle to win older people’s trust and respect. They tended not to believe that Laura really understood the gravity of the situation, that life was fraught with pitfalls and consequences. They thought that because she still had elasticity in her undereye-skin and a torso that had emerged relatively unscathed from the rigors of housing and feeding a baby, she wasn’t really in the shit with them. But then they hung out with her a little bit and talked about sleep and viruses and the impossibility of getting men to proactively plan to accommodate other people’s needs. Eventually, they always came around to the idea that Laura really was a mom, even though she could, in the right lighting, still pass for a member of the enemy class: unfettered women.
Matt came out of the bedroom, where he’d been either working or just dicking around on his laptop, and nodded a quick hi to Callie on his way to root around in the fridge.
“Honey, Callie’s playing a show tonight. You saw it on the calendar, right?”
“Yeah, of course. Wait, are you going to it?”
“Why else would it be on the calendar?”
Matt stopped munching halfway through a string cheese, stumped. “I don’t know, just so we’d know it was happening, I guess, in case we wanted to send good vibes?”
“Callie got me tickets. I’m bringing Mara. So you have the girls for dinner and bedtime.”
“Shit, really? I mean, I can do it, I just also have to finish this project. Maybe we can get a sitter?”
“At five thirty on a Saturday? You’re welcome to try.”
“Okay, well, it’s not ideal, but we’ll manage. I’ll get it done after they go to bed.”
Laura knew that meant he would sleep in the next morning, which meant she shouldn’t stay out late partying with the band—she hadn’t really wanted to, but it was sad to have the choice taken out of her hands.
Matt left with his cheese. Callie rolled her eyes after him, but Laura hesitated to sell him out by complaining. She wanted Callie to admire her marriage like she’d admired the apartment. “He’s actually so great at remembering stuff like that usually. I mean, if it weren’t for him, I’d have to get a sitter every single time I wanted to leave the house.”
“Yeah, and if it weren’t for him, you’d only have one kid to take care of and it would be twice as easy for you to get away,” Callie said lightly.
“Away to where, though? I want to be with them, most of the time.”
“Well, you’re very lucky then! You have exactly what you want.” Callie smiled and