Excerpt: Seven Minutes to Noon

The following is an excerpt from the book Seven Minutes to Noon
by Kate Pepper
Published by Signet; May 2005; $6.99US/$9.99CAN; 0-451-21579-6
Copyright © 2005 Kate Pepper


Chapter 1

Alice Halpern waited on a bench in Carroll Park in the sticky heat of early
September. She drained the last of her iced decaf from a waxed-paper cup
that buckled in her grip. Lauren was late. Her cup, sealed with a plastic
top, had formed a skin of tiny droplets. The ice had probably melted by now.
She would be disappointed; she liked her drinks icy cold.

The sun shifted and Alice felt its rays burn into her skin, still milky
white from months of pampering with sunblock. A redhead, she knew better
than to go out without her wide-brimmed hat, which she had left hanging on
the coat stand as she hustled to get the kids out the door to school this
morning. She moved down the bench into a remaining patch of shade and
glanced again at her watch; it was now ten to three.

In a few minutes, the neat brick school building across the street from the
park would open its doors and spill the little ones back into the world in a
rowdy convocation. Alice took a long, deep breath, savoring the relative
calm of these last minutes before the riptide of motherhood dragged her
forward until night. She wondered now if she should have stayed in the
air-conditioned store, unpacking the latest shipment of autumn shoes. She
should have confirmed with Lauren before heading out early into the scalding
afternoon. The heat felt like a woolen blanket cinched around her, dark and
suffocating. Six months into her third pregnancy -- with twins, double the
trouble, double the fun -- she could already feel the babies pressing
against her lungs.

She tried to remember what Lauren had said yesterday about her plans for
today: morning errands, then her Pregnant Pause Pilates class at noon in
Park Slope. Lauren loved the class and had been urging Alice to join, but
she felt she didn't have the time; between work at Blue Shoes and
obligations at home, she couldn't squeeze in one more thing. But Lauren was
devoted to her Pilates class and always went. Still, she was more than eight
months pregnant with her second child and the heat wave may have dissuaded
her.

Alice found her cell phone at the bottom of her purse and speed-dialed
Lauren's cell. When her voice mail came on, Alice left a message. Then she
called Lauren at home and left another message on the machine.

She dropped the phone back into her purse and pulled out the folded, now
crumpled letter she was eager to share with Lauren. Flattening it across her
lap, she read it again, with its bold, blunt title: THIRTY DAY NOTICE OF
EVICTION. She had been served the summons at the store just an hour ago,
feeling betrayed that her landlord, Joey -- former landlord, as of the sale
of his brownstone two days ago -- had supplied the new owner with her work
address. The letter was signed Julius Pollack, owner. Why hadn't Mr.
Pollack, owner, contacted them first? Discussed it? Found out how diligently
Alice and Mike had been house hunting lately? Lauren and her husband, Tim,
had received a similar notice earlier in the summer -- hers signed by a
managing agent for Metro Properties -- giving them the same thirty days to
vacate their apartment before eviction proceedings would begin. Both
lawyers, they were fighting it; but they lived in a multiunit dwelling, the
litmus test of responsibilities and rights that apartments in private homes,
like Alice and Mike's -- no, Julius Pollack's -- lacked. Their lease with
Joey had expired and Pollack was under no obligation to renew it. Alice and
Mike had hard decisions to make now: should they undergo the exorbitant and
exhausting project of moving twice, first to a rental, then to a house they
owned? Put the kids, and themselves, through all that? Or dig in their heels
and demand the time they needed to move just once to some place they could
rightly call their home? Alice needed facts. Where was Lauren? Surely she
could offer sage legal advice and also commiserate over the shock and
humiliation of being summarily tossed out of your home.

As the minutes ticked by, Alice's disappointment grew at the missed
opportunity to quietly dissect the new development with Lauren. It would be
hard to discuss the notice in front of the kids. She had already spoken with
Mike on the phone and they had agreed not to worry the children until it was
figured out. Alice and Lauren would have to break their conversation into
bits, fitting it into random pockets of privacy during the children's
after-school playground time. It was better than nothing.

She carried Lauren's soggy cup of iced decaf with her, just in case she did
come soon, and walked across the street to the entrance of P.S. 58, where
parents and babysitters had gathered in force. The kindergarteners came out
first, led single file by their teacher. Peter and Austin were at the end of
the line, holding hands; they had been best friends almost from birth and
were said to be inseparable in class. Alice knelt down to their eye level
and kissed both boys hello.

"How was school?" she asked Peter, shifting forward to plant an extra kiss
on her son's irresistibly soft cheek.

"Good."

"How was school for you?" she asked Austin. He had Lauren's light brown
hair, cut short, and tufted after a day at school.


"Good."

"What did you guys do today?"

"Good," Peter said, drawing giggles from Austin.

Alice stood up and scanned the crowd for Lauren. It was chaotic; she could
easily be missed. Alice didn't see her but there was no point sending up
alarms quite yet. She would just stand here until Nell came out, and if
Lauren still wasn't here, then she would decide what to do about Austin.

Nell was at the front of the second-grade line, swinging her purple lunch
box loosely from her hand. Alice waved. Nell said good-bye to her teacher
and darted away from her classmates.

"Hey, sweetie, how was school?" Alice asked.

"Good," Nell said. "No homework again today!"

Alice figured that by Monday, homework would make its unwelcome appearance.
But she didn't want to burst Nell's bubble, so she just said, "Great!" and
took her hand.

All of the kindergarteners had been picked up. Peter and Austin stood by the
fence, thumb wrestling. Their teacher, Gina, was herself now scanning for
Lauren.

"I think I should just take Austin," Alice told Gina. "I have a funny
feeling Lauren might have gone into labor."

"Really?" Gina smiled. She was a young woman with long brown hair and tiny
but piercing eyes. "How exciting!"

It had already been prearranged for Alice to pick Austin up from school when
the baby came, so Gina didn't question the suggestion. She told the boys to
enjoy their weekends, and to Austin added, "Congratulations, big brother!"

Alice cringed; she wished Gina hadn't said that. What if Lauren was just
plain late?

She took the three children back across the street to the park to wait a
while longer for Lauren, just in case. Once on the curb, they bolted
straight to the big kids' side of the playground, where the jungle gyms were
taller, the slides steeper, and innocence noticeably dampened by age.

Alice sat on the bench and tried calling Lauren again at both her numbers,
but again, there was no answer. Maybe Maggie was still at Blue Shoes; maybe
she had heard something. Alice dialed the store phone but it rang and rang.
Strange, she thought; Maggie was either in the bathroom or she wasn't there
at all. Five minutes later, Alice tried again. And again, no luck.

A Mr. Frosty truck pulled up at the park entrance nearest to them, and the
children hurdled out of play. Nell, Peter and Austin accosted Alice with
demands for ice cream money, issuing varied tones of pleases calibrated for
results. She dug into her wallet, producing dollar bills. The children took
them and raced off, returning a few minutes later with beady-eyed,
fluorescent popsicles fashioned after action heroes and their nemeses, which
may or may not have derived from actual ice cream. Nighttime baths would
remove most of the colored streaks from their faces and arms, but Alice knew
that a slight fluorescent shadow would still be visible come morning.

The children wove themselves back into the cacophony of play. Phone cradled
in her hand, Alice watched them reel from ladder to slide to monkey bars.
Then she thought to try Maggie's cell, this time with success.

"Mags! Where are you?"

Somewhere behind Maggie, Alice heard the fading wail of a departing siren.

"Getting Ethan from school. As soon as you left the store, Sylvie called in
sick," Maggie said in her crisp British accent. Sylvie, Ethan's babysitter,
normally picked him up from his private school in the Heights. "Can you
imagine? What about a little advance notice?"

"Do you think she was lying?"

"She said she'd just come down with a stomachy thing, maybe something she
ate," Maggie said. "Ethan! Please wait for the walk light!"

Alice could picture them: tall, glamorous, blond Maggie at the mercy of her
little boy. Ethan was the spitting image of his father, Simon, whom Maggie
had summarily divorced last year despite all evidence that she still loved
him. They equally shared Ethan, this little boy with his father's haunting
good looks, tugging on his mother's hand.



Reprinted from Seven Minutes to Noon by Kate Pepper by permission of Signet,
an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Kate Pepper. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any
parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.


Author:
Kate Pepper is the pseudonym of author Katia Spiegelman, who teaches fiction
writing at New School University and lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband
and two children. She is the author of Seven Minutes to Noon (Signet; May
2005; $6.99US/$9.99CAN; 0-451-21579-6) as well as Five Days in Summer.



For more information, please visit the author's website at
www.katepepper.com.