Left Neglected Part 3

"Two!"

He's not moving.

"Three!"

Nothing. I want to kill him. I look down at my three-inch Cole Haan heels and wonder for an insane moment if I could climb in them. Then I look down at my Cartier watch. It's 7:30. Enough of this.

"Charlie, now, or no video games for a week!"

That does it. He stands, turns, and faces out, but instead of reaching down with his feet for the next bar level, he bends his knees and launches himself into the air. A few of the other mothers and I gasp. In that split second, I imagine broken legs and a severed spinal column. But he pops up from the ground, smiling. Thank G.o.d he's made of rubber. The boys who witnessed this death-defying stunt cheer with admiration. The girls playing nearby don't seem to notice him at all. The mothers continue watching to see how I'll handle the rest of this drama.

Knowing he's still a flight risk, I put Lucy down and grab Charlie by the hand.

"Ow, too tight!"

"Too bad."

He pulls on my arm as hard as he can, leaning away from me, trying to get away, like an excited Doberman on a leash. My hand is now sweaty, and he's beginning to slip out. I squeeze tighter. He pulls harder.

"Hold my hand, too," whines Lucy.

"I can't, honey, come on."

"I want to hold hands!" she shrieks, not moving, balancing on the edge of a tantrum. I think fast.

"Hold Charlie's."

Charlie licks the entire palm of his free hand and offers it to her.

"Gross!" Lucy squeals.

"Fine, here."

I slide the two backpacks and Charlie's coat to my elbow, and with a kid in each hand, I drag us into Welmont Elementary.

The gym is overheated and set with the usual cast of characters. The girls are sitting against the wall, reading, socializing, or just sitting and watching the boys, who are playing basketball and running all over the place. As soon as I let go of his hand, Charlie takes off. I don't have the will to holler after him for a proper good-bye.

"Have a good day, my Lucy Goose."

"Bye, Mommy."

I kiss her on her beautiful head and dump the backpacks onto the pile of book bags on the floor. There are no mothers or fathers lingering around in here. I don't know the other drop-off parents. I know some of the kids' names and might know which parent belongs to which kid. Like that woman is Hilary's mom. Most are flying in and flying out, no time for small talk. Without knowing much about any of them, I relate to these parents completely.

The only parent I know at Before the Bell by name is Heidi, Ben's mom, who is on her way out as well. Always in scrubs and purple Crocs, Heidi is some kind of nurse. I know her name because Ben and Charlie are friends, because she sometimes drops Charlie home after soccer, and because she has an approachable energy and a sincere smile that has many times in the last year communicated a world of empathy.

I have kids, too. I know.

I have a job, too. I know.

I'm running late, too. I know.

I know.

"How are you?" Heidi asks as we make our way down the hallway.

"Good, you?"

"Good. I haven't seen you with Linus in a while. He must be getting so big."

"Oh my G.o.d, Linus!"

Without offering any explanation, I sprint away from Heidi down the hall, out of the school, and down the front steps to my running car, which, thank G.o.d, is still there. I can hear poor Linus wailing before I even touch the door.

Bunny is on the floor, and the DVD is sitting idle on the menu screen, but my mother's ears and heart know his cry isn't about a stuffed lovie or a red Muppet. Once the video ended and Linus came out of its magical trance, he must've realized he was trapped and alone in the car. Abandoned. The number one primal fear for any baby his age is abandonment. His red face and hairline are soaked with tears.

"Linus, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"

I unbuckle him as fast as I can while he screams. I pick him up, hug him, and rub his back. He smears a gob of snot onto the collar of my s.h.i.+rt.

"Shhh, it's okay, you're okay."

It's not working. In fact, the intensity and volume of his sobs are escalating. He's not willing to forgive me so easily, and I don't blame him one bit. But if I can't console him, I might as well get him to day care. I pin his distraught body back into the car seat, place Bunny on his lap, hit Play on the DVD player, and drive while he screams murder to Sunny Horizons.

I hand a still-heaving Linus, Bunny, and diaper bag over to one of the day care a.s.sistant teachers, a kind young Brazilian woman new to Sunny Horizons.

"Linus, shhh, you're okay. Linus, please, honey, you're okay," I say, trying one last time to convince him. I hate to leave him like this.

"He'll be fine, Mrs. Nickerson. It's better if you just go."

Back in the car, I exhale. Finally, I'm on my way to work. The clock on the dash reads 7:50. I'm going to be late. Again. Clenching my teeth and the steering wheel, I pull out of Sunny Horizons and start rummaging through my bag for my phone.

My bag is embarra.s.singly huge. Depending on where I am and whom I'm with, it functions as a briefcase, a pocketbook, a diaper bag, or a backpack. Wherever I am and whomever I'm with, I feel like a Sherpa carrying this thing. As I grope around for the phone, I touch my laptop, crayons, pens, my wallet, lipstick, keys, Goldfish crackers, a juice box, business cards, tampons, a diaper, receipts, Band-Aids, a Handi Wipes container, a calculator, and folders stuffed with papers. I do not touch my phone. I upend the bag, dumping the contents onto the pa.s.senger seat, and look for it.

Where the heck is it? I have about five minutes to find it. I'm aware that my eyes are spending significantly more time on my pa.s.senger seat and floor than on the road. The guy gunning past me on the right is flipping me off. And talking on his phone.

I suddenly see it, but it's in my mind's eye. On the kitchen table. c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p! I'm on the Ma.s.s Pike, about twenty minutes from work. I think for a second about where I could get off and find a pay phone. But then I think, Do pay phones even exist anymore? I can't remember the last time I saw one anywhere. Maybe I could stop in a CVS or a Starbucks. Some nice person there would probably lend me their phone. For a minute. Sarah, your meeting is for the next hour. Just get there.

As I race like a NASCAR driver on crack, I try crystallizing my notes for this meeting in my head, but I'm having trouble concentrating. I can't think. It isn't until I pull into the Prudential garage that I realize my thoughts are competing with Linus's video.

Elmo wants to learn more about families.

CHAPTER 3.

I am sitting in the front row of the w.a.n.g Theatre, just to the right of center. I check my watch and look up again, stretching my neck, searching the faces of the densely crowded aisles for Bob. A small elderly woman walks toward me. At first I think the woman must want to tell me something important, but then I realize that she's eyeing the empty seat to my left.

"This seat's taken," I say, placing my hand on it.

"Is someone sitting here?" the woman asks, her brown eyes murky and confused.

"Someone will be."

"Huh?"

"SOMEONE WILL BE."

"I won't be able to see if I don't sit in front."

"Sorry, someone's sitting here."

The old woman's muddy eyes suddenly turn lucid and piercing.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that."

A man two rows back gets up from his seat and heads up the aisle, maybe to go to the men's room. The old woman notices this and leaves me alone.

I touch the collar of my snakeskin coat. I don't want to take it off. It's nippy in the theatre, and I feel beautiful in it. But I don't want someone to steal Bob's seat. I check my watch and my ticket. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Where is Bob? I take off my coat and save Bob's seat with it. A chill slithers up the base of my back to my shoulders. I rub my bare arms.

I search for Bob again but soon get taken in by the magnificence of the theatre-the regal red velvet curtains, the towering columns, the Greek and Roman marble statues. I look up. The ceiling is open air, a breathtaking view of the night sky. While I am still enchanted with the stars above my head, I feel the subtle weight of a shadow fall upon my face. I expect to see Bob, but instead it's Richard, my boss. He tosses my coat to the floor and plops down next to me.

"I'm surprised to see you here," he says.

"Of course I'm here. I'm so excited to see the show."

"Sarah, the show is over. You missed it."

What? I look back at all the people standing in the aisles and see only the backs of their heads. Everyone is leaving.

T U E S D A Y.

It's 3:30, and I have a half hour, the first gap of the day, before my next meeting. I begin eating the chicken Caesar salad my a.s.sistant ordered me for lunch as I return a call to the office in Seattle. While I'm chewing lettuce and the phone is ringing, I start skimming the emails that have acc.u.mulated in my inbox. The managing director picks up and asks me to brainstorm with him about who of our four thousand consultants would be available and best suited for an information technology project coming in next week. I talk to him while I alternately type responses to a number of emails from the UK about performance evaluations and eat.

I can't remember when I learned how to have two completely different professional conversations going at once. I've been doing it for a long time, and I know it's not an ordinary skill, even for a woman. I've also mastered the ability to type and click without making a sound, so the person on the other end of the conversation isn't distracted, or worse, offended. To be fair, I choose to answer only the emails that are no-brainers, the ones that just need my yay or nay, while on the phone. It feels a little like having a split personality. Sarah talks on the phone while her crazy alter ego types. At least the two of me are working as a team.

I'm the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting. Berkley has about five thousand employees in seventy offices located in forty countries. We offer strategic advice to companies all over the world in all industries-how to innovate, compete, restructure, lead, brand, merge, grow, sustain, and, above all, make money. Most of the consultants who work to deliver this advice have business degrees, but many are scientists, lawyers, engineers, and medical doctors. They are all extremely bright, know how to think a.n.a.lytically, and excel at finding creative solutions to complex problems.

They are also mostly young. Consultants at Berkley typically work where the client is. The consultants for any given project can be based anywhere in the world, but if the client is a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, then that is where the consulting team will live for the duration of the project. So for twelve weeks, a consultant from our office in London, staffed on this case because of his medical background, will live Mondays through Thursdays in a hotel in Newark.

This lifestyle is workable for the young and single, and for a while, even the young and married, but add a few years and a couple of kids, and living out of a carry-on starts to get old fast. The burnout rate is high. That poor guy from London is going to miss his wife and kids. Berkley can throw more and more money at him to keep him, but at some point for most people, it's not enough to make it worth the toll this job takes on families. The few consultants who persevere beyond five years go on to become managing directors. Anyone still standing after ten years becomes a partner and, as a result, extremely wealthy. Almost all are men. And divorced.

I came to Berkley with a background in human resources and an MBA from Harvard, the perfect hybrid of experience and pedigree. My job requires a lot of hours-seventy to eighty a week-but I don't have to travel like the nomadic consultants. I go to Europe once every eight weeks, China once a quarter, and New York for one or two overnights a month, but this kind of travel is all predictable, finite, and manageable.

My a.s.sistant, Jessica, knocks and enters my office with a piece of paper that reads, "Coffee?"

I nod and hold up three fingers, meaning a triple shot of espresso and not three coffees. Jessica understands my sign language and leaves with my order.

I head up all recruiting, the a.s.sembly of high-priority case teams, performance evaluations, and career development at Berkley. Berkley Consulting sells ideas, so the people who think up those ideas are our most important a.s.sets and investments. An idea that any one of our teams comes up with today could easily be on the front page of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal tomorrow. The teams at Berkley guide and even create some of the world's most successful companies. And I create the teams.

I have to know the strengths and weaknesses of each consultant and every client to fas.h.i.+on the best fit, to maximize the potential for success. The teams are asked to crack all kinds of cases (e-commerce, globalization, risk management, operations) in every kind of industry (automotive, health care, energy, retail), but not every consultant is best suited for every project. I juggle a lot of b.a.l.l.s-expensive, fragile, heavy, irreplaceable b.a.l.l.s. And just when I think I've got as many in the air as I could possibly handle, one of the partners will throw me another. Like some highly compet.i.tive Cirque du Soleil clown, I never admit to having too many. I'm one of the only women playing at this level, and I don't ever want to see that look in one of the partners' eyes. There it is. She just banged her head on the ceiling. We've maxed her out. Go see if Carson or Joe can handle this one. So they toss me more and more responsibilities, and I catch each one with a smile, practically killing myself at times to make it all look easy. My job is very far from easy. It is, in fact, very, very hard. Which is exactly why I love it.

But even with all my years of training and experience, my determined work ethic, and the ability to simultaneously eat, type, and talk, the hardness of it all does sometimes get overwhelming. There are days when there is no room for error, no time for lunch or to pee, no extra minutes to squeeze one more of anything out of me. On those days, I feel like a balloon blown to capacity, ready to burst. And then Richard will add another case to my pile with a Post-it stuck to the top page. Your input is needed ASAP. A big puff of air. Jessica will email me with a new meeting scheduled into the only unscheduled hour of the day. Puff. I feel transparent, uncomfortably taut. Abby will call. Linus has a rash and a fever, and she can't find the Tylenol. The final puff.

When I feel like I'm about to explode, I lock my office door, sit in my chair, spin to face the window overlooking Boylston Street in case someone should look in, and let myself cry for five minutes. No more. Five minutes of silent crying to release the pressure, and then I'm back. That's usually all I need to reset. I remember the first time I let myself cry at work. It was in my third month here. I felt weak and ashamed and as soon as I dried my eyes, I swore to myself that I'd never do it again. So naive. The stress at Berkley, like at all consulting firms of its caliber, is off the charts and gets to everyone. Some people drink martinis at Legal Sea Foods during lunch. Some smoke cigarettes outside the revolving doors on Huntington Avenue. I cry for five minutes at my desk. I try to limit my teary vice to twice a month.

It's now 3:50. I'm off the phone and drinking the coffee Jessica delivered. I needed it. The caffeine hurries my sluggish blood and splashes cold water on my sleepy brain. I have ten unclaimed minutes. How should I fill them? I look at my calendar.

4:00, phone conference, General Electric project.

4:15, Lucy piano lesson.

4:30, Charlie's soccer game. LAST ONE.

I always list the kids' activities in my calendar so, like an air traffic controller, I know where everyone is at any given time. I hadn't considered actually going to Charlie's game until just now. Bob said he didn't think he could make it again this week, and Abby won't be able to stay and watch after dropping Charlie off at the field because she'll have to loop back to the other side of town to pick up Lucy from her piano lesson. It's his last game of the season. I picture the end of the game and all the other kids running off the field and into the celebrating arms of their moms and dads. I picture Charlie's fallen face when he realizes his mom's and dad's arms aren't there to receive him. I can't stand the image.

Fueled by three shots of espresso and two additional shots of guilt and compa.s.sion, I check my watch one last time, then grab my cell phone, the GE folder, my bag and coat and leave the office.

"Jessica, tell the four o'clock meeting I'll be phoning in from my cell."

No reason why I can't do it all.

I'M TALKING ON MY CELL phone, about forty minutes into the 4:00 meeting, when I arrive at the Welmont town fields. A baseball diamond is situated adjacent to the parking lot, and the soccer field is beyond that. From my car, I can see the kids in the distance already playing. I've been talking for a long stretch now about who our rising experts are in green technology. As I'm walking across the baseball field, I suddenly realize a lack of throat clearing, pen clicking, and general background conference room noise.

"h.e.l.lo?"

No response. I look at my phone. No Service. c.r.a.p. How long have I been delivering that soliloquy?

I'm at the soccer field now but not at my meeting. I'm supposed to be at both. I look down at my phone. Still no service. This is not good.

"Hey, you're here!" says Bob.

I'm thinking the exact same thing in my head but with an entirely different inflection.

"I thought you couldn't come," I say.