Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,25

overwhelmed me: While I was away? What about him? The feeling was as familiar as a toothache. Things may be better now—although I have my doubts—but in 1999 when a child got sick at school, the nurse never called the father. Working men did what was convenient; working women did everything else. And felt constantly guilty: No matter where you were, it always felt like the wrong place.

Later, when young editors came to tell me they were pregnant but planned to keep working, I’d find myself warning them about the guilt to come. Because all the talk about “quality time” is utter nonsense; children don’t need quality time. They need your time. Lots of it. And they let you know it.

When Nick was six, he made it very clear that he was not getting enough from his work-obsessed parents. “You need to spend more time with him,” Michael said. And I agreed; it did not occur to either of us that he might be the one to change his schedule. As a restaurant critic, I had no way to spend my nights at home, but days were a different matter. So no more nanny: I was now the one who picked Nick up at school, standing on the sidewalk at 3 o’clock alongside a posse of hired caregivers.

The change in Nick’s attitude toward me was dramatic. He had always been the sweetest child, but as he began to trust that I would be there every day, he stopped being on his best behavior. Now every bad thing that happened was my fault. And that was fine with me; I didn’t want my son treating me with kid gloves. Children, I came to understand, need you around, even if they ignore you. In fact they need you around so they can ignore you.

“But how will I find the time?” the young editors always asked. It’s a reasonable question; you have to give up something. We each find our own answers. In my case, I gave up sleep; after Nick was born I discovered I really didn’t need that much, or at least that I could get by on just a few hours. To this day, I feel guilty spending more than five hours in bed, as if I’m being profligate with precious time that could be better spent. I also saw less of my friends. That is, until Nick was a talking, sentient being and they all wanted to be his adopted relatives.

Now, as Nick and I walked home from school, I realized the book tour would also have to go. We had no New York relatives, and I could not possibly leave town for a month. I tried figuring out how I’d break this to my publishers, who had spent months working on the tour schedule. They were not going to be pleased. I was so distracted that when we entered the apartment to find my brother there, it took a moment to register. My brother lives halfway around the world.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as Nick ran joyfully to greet him.

“You sounded desperate when we spoke last week,” Bob said simply. “So I decided I should come help out.”

I’m not a crier, but I was so overcome that I burst into tears, unable to believe this unexpected answer to my problems. “Can you spare a month?”

“My kids are grown. My marriage is a mess. And I have some time off. If you want to know the truth, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend a month in New York with Nick.”

Bob has always been the perfect brother. Thirteen years older than me, he’s the child of my mother’s first marriage, and we’ve never really shared a house. He lived in Pittsburgh with his father when I was growing up. But he’d come home on holidays, arriving late to sneak me out for hot-fudge sundaes in the middle of the night. He came to visit when I was at camp, sometimes took me along on dates, and was always the first person I called when Mom was at her craziest. Even when he was living abroad with a family of his own, he’d always been there when I needed him. But this time it had seemed too much to ask.

Bob’s one of those extraordinarily gregarious people who make instant friends with strangers; after two days of school pickups he was intimate with mothers whose names I didn’t even know. He organized games in