Excerpt of Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman

Chapter One

"Don't be so rigid, Peter," I called after my husband as he went to answer the door. "Everybody loves breakfast-for- dinner. Breakfast-for-dinner rocks." My redheaded five-year- old, Ruby, and her younger brother, Isaac, nodded, slurping up their Cheerios with obvious delight. These were the very same Cheerios that, had it been morning, they would have left disintegrating in a sodden mess at the bottom of their cereal bowls. Kids are such suckers for a change of context. Breakfast-for-dinner. Pajamas to school. Chocolate syrup on their toothbrushes. Okay, maybe that last one would be going too far, but don't think I hadn't considered it. Anything to get them to brush.

"That's the last time I take you seriously when you offer to cook," Peter said as he came back into the kitchen. He was following in the wake of my best friend Stacy. Stacy is one of those women who was born to make the rest of us feel like we woke up a few hours late and have been scrambling to catch up ever since. She's one of the top talent agents at International Creative Artists. Her kid is a math prodigy and a soccer whiz, and competes all over the state - I'm never sure if it's the matches or the math Olympics that keep them traveling. By them I mean Zachary and his nanny. Stacy's too busy to take a bus to Stockton for the semi-finals of either algebra or foul- kicking.

In addition to everything else, Stacy is just about the most beautiful friend I have. All this gorgeousness isn't necessarily natural. She's a wizard at putting together a good-looking package. She has her hair done by a man who flies in from London once every six weeks, and her makeup is hand-churned from the urine of blind Parisian nuns. Or something like that. Anyway, it comes from France, and a tube of lipstick costs more than a pair of my shoes. And I'm a sucker for expensive shoes. Over the years I've gotten used to feeling intimidated in the face of Stacy's perfection. I've even developed the ability to laugh about my lack of self-confidence. I accept the fact that flawlessness is pretty much out of the question for me. Hey, I'm happy if I manage to brush my teeth before noon. Makeup is way beyond me, and the only thing I can remember using a blow-dryer for in recent memory is to dry out a particularly nasty diaper rash. Isaac's, not my own. I'm ashamed to admit that it probably doesn't hurt my self- esteem that Stacy's marriage is, sadly, in a state of semi- constant upheaval; her husband has a weakness for tall, blond twenty-two-year-olds. Women who look just like Stacy did when they met. My marriage, albeit not necessarily the hotbed of romance it once was, is absolutely solid. Peter and I love each other, and have come to accept one another's flaws and failures. Well, except that whole cooking thing.

"Hey, are those real diamonds?" I said.

Stacy rolled her eyes at the question. Of course they were real. Stacy has an agreement with Harry Winston. She makes her movie star clients wear the jewelers' designs at the Oscars, the Emmy's and every other awards show, and in return they bedeck her in precious stones whenever she demands it. I've seen Stacy draped in ropes of rare, black Tahitian pearls worth tens of thousands of dollars. She showed up at a dinner for the president of our university in a choker so thick with rubies that she looked like she'd had her throat cut. She's even managed to snag a pair of ten-carat diamond earrings to wear to the odd movie premiere. I'd never before seen her looking quite so magnificent, however.

"Is that a tiara?" I asked. Ruby's head shot up from her bowl, and she stared at the glittering crown on my old friend's head. She jumped down from her chair, and bolted out of the room. Weird little kid; that one is.

Stacy stared at me, tapping one pointy-toed, stiletto- heeled shoe. "It's a hairband," she said.

"A diamond hairband?"

"Yes, a diamond hairband."

"Are we wearing those nowadays?"

"We seem to be wearing pajamas nowadays. Might I ask why?"

I presented my bowl of instant oatmeal with a flourish. "Breakfast-for-dinner!" I said. Then, eyeing her burnt orange, floor-length, taffeta gown, I hugged my frayed flannel bathrobe around me a little more closely. I cursed myself for not looking harder for the belt for the bathrobe and instead resorting to cinching it with one of Peter's old ties. "Why are you so dressed up?"

"Think about it," she said through gritted teeth

"You and Andrew are renewing your vows...in Vegas."

"No."

"Um...it's Oscar night and you're going to the Vanity Fair party?"

"No."

"You're a fairy princess!" Isaac piped up.

Stacy smiled at him, then glared at me. "No."

Suddenly, I groaned, overwhelmed with that all-too- familiar feeling of hormonal brain implosion. "You're going to the Breast Cancer Benefit that you invited me to last month. And that you reminded me about two days ago when we were at yoga."

"Bingo," Stacy said.

I smiled weakly. "I guess I don't have to finish my oatmeal."

As I tore through my closet trying to find something that even approached evening wear, I cursed my failing memory. "I swear this has nothing to do with you," I said, poking my head out and smiling weakly at my friend. She stood in the middle of my messy bedroom like Cinderella in grimy kitchen, after the fairy Godmother has dressed her, but before she's gone for her pumpkin ride.

"I know," she said.

"Last week I made it all the way to Ruby's school before I remembered that I was on my way to drop off the dry cleaning, not pick up carpool. How about this one?" I held up a pale green crepe gown I'd worn to my cousin Marcie's son's black tie Bar Mitzvah the year before. Stacy shook her head, and I went back into the bowels of my entirely unsatisfactory closet. It wasn't that there weren't enough clothes in there. On the contrary, the shelves and bars were overflowing. The problem was that nothing fit anymore. Two kids and a lifetime of physical sloth had made my once svelte body a thing of the past. The distant past.

"And yesterday I had to go back to the grocery store three times because I kept forgetting things. This?" I waved a dress at her.

"It'll do," she said.

"I blame the children," I said as I crammed myself into a cocktail dress that I'd last worn long before Isaac had made his appearance. If it weren't for the fact that every woman I knew was suffering from the same ailment, I would have seriously considered having an MRI. What is it about child-bearing that lowers a fog over the brains of normally intelligent women? Here we all are, competent professionals, used to managing companies, handling crises, hiring and firing people, and now we stumble through our days with yesterday's underwear peeping out the leg of our slacks. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe all the other moms juggle carpool, lunchboxes, doctor's appointments, piano lessons, religious school, parent/teacher conferences, karate, diaper changes, soccer, and babysitters with the same aplomb they brought to graduate school and appellate arguments. Maybe I'm the only one with drifts of unwashed laundry taking over the living room and toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

I pinned a large broach to the bodice of my dress and stuffed my feet into a pair of three-inch black heels with silver buckles that had fit before I'd had two children and grown half a shoe size. They were too fabulous to throw away.

"Okay?" I said to Stacy, as I executed a limping pirouette.

"Hair? Makeup?" she barked.

"Right. Right." I ran into my bathroom and scrawled a bright red smile on my chapped lips. A little mascara and I was done. My hair, however, was hopeless. I wrapped a towel around my shoulders and dunked my head into the sink. I slicked my wet hair back with most of the contents of a bottle of hair jell and hoped that the cresting wave of 80s nostalgia had reached Joan Jett.

"Done," I said, coming out of the bathroom. Just then Ruby walked into my room, her hands behind her back.

"I found it, mommy."

"What sweetie, what did you find."

"My princess crown!" With a flourish she presented me with a silver plastic tiara. Much of the paint had chipped away, and one side had been chewed to a frayed stub.

"Wow," I said. "That would definitely complete my outfit."

"Now you can have a tiara just like Aunt Stacy's. Put it on!" my daughter ordered.

"It is not a tiara," Stacy said. "It's a diamond hairband." She had the grace to blush.

"Um, honey, I just did my hair. I'll put it on later, okay?" I said to my daughter. Her eyes began to fill, and her plump lower lip trembled. "Okay, I'm putting it on right now!" I said, and balanced the tiara on my head. "It's perfect!"

She smiled and said, "Don't take it off."

"You know why we're friends?" I asked Stacy, as I disentangled the plastic teeth of Ruby's crown from my hair, and struggled to buckle my seatbelt while Stacy peeled out of my driveway.

"Because we know each other better than anyone else does, and that includes our husbands," she said.

"Nope. Because I make you look so good."

She smiled at me and, reaching over, pinched my cheek. "You look beautiful, Jules. Fix your pin so it covers up more of that stain."

© Ayelet Waldman