Through the Children's Gate by Adam Gopnik

Author:Adam Gopnik [Gopnik, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49190-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Once I sensed the nature of his predicament, I began to feel more sympathetic toward Charlie Ravioli. I got to know him better, too. We learned more about what Ravioli did in the brief breathing spaces in his busy life when he could sit down with Olivia and dish. “Ravioli read your book,” Olivia announced, for instance, one night at dinner. “He didn't like it much.” We also found out that Ravioli had joined a gym, that he was going to the beach in the summer, but he was too busy, and that he was working on a “show.” (“It isn't a very good show,” she added candidly.) Charlie Ravioli, in other words, was just another New Yorker: fit, opinionated, and trying to break into show business.

I think we would have learned to live happily with Charlie Ravioli had it not been for the appearance of Laurie. She threw us badly. At dinner, Olivia had been mentioning a new personage almost as often as she mentioned Ravioli. “I talked to Laurie today,” she would begin. “She says Ravioli is busy.” Or she would be closeted with her play phone. “Who are you talking to, darling?” I would ask. “Laurie,” she would say. “We're talking about Ravioli.” We surmised that Laurie was, so to speak, the Linda Tripp of the Ravioli operation—the person you spoke to for consolation when the big creep was ignoring you.

But a little while later, a more ominous side of Laurie's role began to appear. “Laurie, tell Ravioli I'm calling,” I heard Olivia say. I pressed her about who, exactly, Laurie was. Olivia shook her head. “She works for Ravioli,” she said.

And then it came to us, with sickening clarity: Laurie was not the patient friend who consoled you for Charlie's absence. Laurie was the bright-toned person who answered Ravioli's phone and told you that unfortunately, Mr. Ravioli was in a meeting. “Laurie says Ravioli is too busy to play,” Olivia announced sadly one morning. Things seemed to be deteriorating; now Ravioli was too busy even to say he was too busy.

I got back on the phone with my sister. “Have you ever heard of an imaginary friend with an assistant?” I asked.

She paused. “Imaginary friends don't have assistants,” she said. “That's not only not in the literature. That's just … I mean—in California they don't have assistants.”

“You think we should look into it?”

“I think you should move,” she said flatly.

Martha was of the same mind. “An imaginary playmate shouldn't have an assistant,” she said miserably. “An imaginary playmate shouldn't have an agent. An imaginary playmate shouldn't have a publicist or a personal trainer or a caterer—an imaginary playmate shouldn't have … people. An imaginary playmate should just play. With the child who imagined it.” She started leaving on my pillow real estate brochures picturing quaint houses in New Jersey and Connecticut, unhaunted by busy invisible friends and their entourages.

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