All Fall Down(19)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

Back in the kitchen, I stowed my phone, picked up my mug of coffee, and grabbed Ellie’s lunchbox from the counter. The instant I felt its weight—or, rather, its lack of weight—in my hand, I realized I’d forgotten to pack her lunch the night before. “Crap,” I muttered, and then looked at Ellie, who was busy taking her shoes off. “Ellie, don’t you dare!” I yanked the refrigerator door open, grabbed a squeezable yogurt, a juice box, a cheese stick, a handful of grapes, and a takeout container of white rice from when we’d ordered in Chinese food that weekend. I’d probably get a sweetly worded e-mail from her teachers reminding me that Stonefield had gone green and the Parent-Teacher Collective had agreed that parents should do their best to pack lunches that would create as little waste as possible, but whatever. At least she didn’t have any tree-nut products. For that, your kid could be suspended.

It was 7:41. “Honey, come on.” Sighing, in just socks, Ellie began a slow lope toward the door. I grabbed her jacket, then saw that her hair was still wet, already matted around her neck. Steeling myself, I set down the mug and the lunchbox, sprinted back upstairs, and grabbed the detangling spray, a wide-tooth comb, and a Hello Kitty headband.

Ellie saw me coming and reacted the way a death-row prisoner might to an armed guard on the day of her execution. “Nooooo!” she shrieked, and ducked underneath the table.

“Ellie,” I said, keeping my voice reasonable, “I can’t let you go to school like that.”

“But it HURTS!”

“I’ll do it as fast as I can.”

“But that will hurt MORE!”

“Ellie, I need you to come out of there.” Nothing. “I’m going to count to three, and if you’re not in your chair by the time I say ‘three’ . . .” I lowered my voice, even though Dave was gone. “No Bachelor on Monday.” Obviously, I knew that a cheesy reality dating show was not ideal viewing for a kindergartner. But the show was my guilty pleasure, and Dave usually worked late on Mondays, so rather than wrestle Ellie into bed and have her sneak into my bedroom half a dozen times with requests for glasses of water and additional spritzes of “monster spray” (Febreze, after I’d scraped the label off the container), thus risking an interruption of the most dramatic rose ceremony ever, I let her watch with me.

Moaning like a gut-shot prisoner, she dragged herself out from under the table and slowly climbed up into her chair. I squirted the strawberry-scented detangling spray, then took a deep breath and, as gently as I could, tugged the comb from her crown to the nape of her neck.

“Ow! OWWWW! STOBBIT!”

“Hold still,” I said, through gritted teeth, as Ellie squirmed and wailed and accused me of trying to kill her. “Ellie, you need to hold still.”

“But it HUUUUURTS!” she said. Tears were streaming down her face, soaking her collar. “STOBBIT! It is PAINFUL! You are MURDERING ME!”

“Ellie, if you’d stop screaming and hold still it wouldn’t hurt that much!” Sweating, breathing hard, I pulled the comb through her hair. Good enough, I decided, and used the headband to push the ringlets out of her eyes. Then I scooped her up under my arm; snatched up her jacket; half set, half tossed her into her car seat; and, finally, got her to school.

THREE

My cell phone was ringing as I pulled into the driveway. “Did you see it?” Sarah asked.

“Just the headline,” I told her. I’d been late again. Mrs. Dale, the take-no-shit teacher who was on drop-off duty that morning, had given me a tight-lipped smile as I’d made excuses over Ellie’s still-damp head.

“It’s mostly great. Seventy-five percent positive.”

My skin went cold; my heart contracted. “And the other twenty-five?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

“Oh, you know.” She lowered her voice until she sounded like Sam the Eagle of The Muppet Show fame. “ ‘Some in journalism question the proliferation of female-centric websites, and whether the issues they cover—such as sex, dating, and the politics of marriage and motherhood—and the way that they cover them, with a particular off-brand, breezy sense of humor, are doing feminism any favors.’ ”

“ ‘Some in journalism,’ ” I repeated. “Did he quote anyone?”

Sarah gave her gruff bark of a laugh. “Ha. Good one. As far as I’m concerned, ‘some in journalism’ are his girlfriend, his mom, and a pissed-off intern who couldn’t cut it at Ladiesroom.”

I flipped open my laptop, saw that the battery had died because I’d failed to plug it in the night before, and then started hunting the living room for Dave’s. I knew that Sarah was probably right. I’d been in journalism long enough to know that anonymous quotes usually came from disgruntled underlings too chicken to sign their names to their critiques. But I was the one who’d written about—how did the Journal put it?—“the politics of marriage and motherhood,” and whatever the piece said was sure to sting.