Other People's Houses, page 20
“The art school?” Ava had taken over the conversation. Frances had started to sweat, and now she took her daughter’s sleeve and literally tugged.
“Come on, Ava, we’ve got stuff to get.” She turned back to Richard and her expression suddenly said, Look, go the fuck away, we definitely know each other and either you’re pretending not to know me, in which case I will fuck you up if you continue this charade, or you really have forgotten me, in which case you’re in worse shape than I thought.
He stepped back. “Sorry, my mistake.”
“I’ve sometimes thought about going to art school, and that’s a good one, right?” Oh my God, Frances thought, Ava’s flirting with this guy because, let’s face it, he’s cute and closer to her age than he is to Anne’s, but there is simply no way this is happening.
Richard was still not getting it. “It is. I’d be happy to show you around sometime, if you like. We have open houses all the time.” He pulled out his wallet. “I’ll give you my card, you can e-mail me.”
That’s when Frances turned to look at him with an expression of extremely explicit warning and Richard suddenly remembered who she was, where he’d seen her, and why she was tugging her cute little daughter away from him down the clay aisle.
* * *
• • •
Ava was pissed. “Why wouldn’t you let me talk to that guy?” She was sitting in the front seat, the art store bag on her lap, clearly simmering.
“He was too old for you,” Frances replied, eyeing the ice cream store across the street. She wanted a milkshake so badly, no wonder she was overweight. She ate whenever she felt bad, which was more frequently than you might think. Also when she felt good. And sad. And angry. OK, she ate whenever she fucking felt like it, and having run through the familiar “I want to eat that, no, you’re too fat, no, I’m a feminist and I reject your body-shaming bullshit, but what about your health, what about my health, like you care about my health, you just want me to conform to some cultural norm, I’m talking about a milkshake and I’m a grown-ass lady and fuck you” thing, she suddenly turned the car off and got out. It was more than a milkshake, it was a political stand, and she was going to add malt. Ava didn’t move, so Frances leaned down to the window.
“Do you want ice cream?”
“He wasn’t too old for me, one. And two, ew, he was like thirty—you shouldn’t even be thinking about him like that—and I was only asking about school. I thought you wanted me to go to college?” Ava went to open the car door and Frances stepped back to put money in the meter.
“I do want you to go to college, but I didn’t want you talking to some strange guy in an art store. He’d be asking you to pose nude next.”
“Which would have been reasonable if he’s an artist, right?” Ava wasn’t as mad now, because ice cream, and because she was finding this conversation amusing.
They entered the store, with its high ceilings and metal tables and chairs and familiar faces.
“Chocolate malted?” The guy at the counter had seen Frances so many times, and she never wavered. She didn’t let him down and nodded. Unbeknownst to her they called her Mommy Malted. Not that she would have cared. “And for you?” The guy looked at Ava, and his expression altered, subtly. Not so subtly that Frances missed it, and it struck her that the days when she got that “Hey, I see you, attractive young woman” look, were long gone. She got friendly, she got recognition, eventually, but she no longer got physical awareness. She didn’t mind, although she knew many women who hated it, who hated becoming slowly invisible, fading away. Like Marty McFly in his family photo.
“I’ll get a shake, too, but cookies and cream, please.” Then Ava smiled at him, the smile that said, “Hey, attractive young man, I see you and I see you seeing me and it’s nice that we see each other, ciao babe.” Then they turned away to wait. So much communication, so little time. Ava turned her back on the cashier and spoke again to her mother.
“Like, if he’s an artist and wants to draw me that’s a different getting nude than any other kind, right?”
Frances shook her head, looking at the cakes and cookies in the case. There was a blue velvet cake that perplexed her, even as she wanted to try it. “No, and you know it. You’re fourteen. You shouldn’t even be thinking of getting nude.” She paused, struggling to be honest. “Actually, that’s not true. At fourteen you probably will be thinking about it a lot, but you shouldn’t be doing it.” She wrestled a little more, thinking back to her own teen years, her virginity lost at fifteen, quite happily, with a fellow fifteen-year-old she still knew on Facebook, and whose two sons were around the same age as Ava. “Or at least, not with a man twice your age.”
Ava laughed. “You just revised your position, like, fifty times in one sentence.” She looked at her mom’s face, pondering. “You did know him, though, didn’t you?” She made the connection. “Was he Anne’s friend from the other day?”
Frances shrugged. “Maybe he’s a parent, or maybe I see him at the café a lot or something. You must have people like that, kids you see at school a lot but don’t know. You’d recognize them on the street, but you don’t know them.”
“Sure.” Their milkshakes arrived, and they headed back outside.
Richard was standing there, clearly waiting for them. “I need to talk to you,” he said to Frances, starting to cry.
* * *
• • •
Ava had been sent back to the car, where she was doubtless sorting through her throwing stars collection, waiting for her mother to get back within range. She had Very Much Wanted to stay and hear the conversation, but Frances had been firm. Now she and Richard were standing on the street, twenty feet away. Out of throwing star range, but Frances kept one eye on the car windows, making sure they stayed closed.
“Is Anne OK?” Richard had stopped crying for a moment, but he didn’t look all that composed.
Frances shrugged. “She’s alive. Her life is fucked, but I guess you know that.”
He shook his head, and Frances realized he was both young and not as young as she had thought. He had to be thirty, maybe a little less. He wasn’t a child, he was a man, a grown man who could easily be a father, a husband, even an ex-husband. Suddenly she felt bad for him. Who knew what Anne and he had had together? It had been a bad idea, in her humble opinion, and not worth the price in any way whatsoever, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have some value.
“She’s not talking to me. I haven’t spoken to her since I spoke to her husband.” His voice was full of tears, though his eyes were dry.
“You spoke to Charlie?” Frances was confused.
Richard looked at her, noticing the kindness in her eyes, feeling his own eyes fill with tears in the face of such obvious pity. “Yes, he answered her phone and told me to fuck off. He threatened to break my arm if I came anywhere near him and the kids.”
“He did?” Frances suddenly grinned, unable to stop herself. She covered her mouth and tried to get it together. This was so very awkward.
And just as suddenly, Richard grinned, too, close to hysterics. “Yes. He was very articulate. I’m ashamed to say I had never really thought of him as an actual person, you know. I didn’t know what he looked like. He was just the Other Man.”
Frances stopped grinning. “To be honest, he was the First Man, the Husband Man, but I get it.” She looked over at the car, and caught Ava staring at them. Great, God only knew what she was making of this. Better wind up this weirdness. “Didn’t you realize this was going to happen? You’re not a teenager.”
Richard wiped his face with the back of his hand and Frances fought a desire to hand him a tissue. “I guess so, but I love her so much. I want to marry her. She won’t speak to me.” He started crying again and stepped into Frances, blindly, someone else’s son, but someone’s child nonetheless, however tall he was. She put her arms around him as he rested his head against her shoulder and cried and cried and cried. Frances patted his back, murmuring little mommy sounds as she had so many times in the last fourteen years. She looked over at the car and saw Ava watching them with a surprisingly sympathetic expression. Next to her Frances’s chocolate malted was slowly melting in the heat of the car. God fucking dammit.
Twenty-eight.
Yet another day dawned bright and clear. Sometimes Frances looked through the curtains and suspected Mother Nature of phoning it in. Really? Sun and blue skies again? Birds sang, flowers waved their frilly skirts and wafted perfume into the noses of homeless and hypocrite alike, and Frances hoped today would be less exhausting than yesterday.
She scratched her boob and farted thoughtfully, which unfortunately alerted the dogs that she was awake and available to feed them. Jack stepped on her stomach in his enthusiasm and she cursed, struggling to sit up with a comic level of arm flailing. Life was full of such inelegant moments, and Frances felt she had far more than her fair share of them. She made it to standing without snapping a bone, and headed to the bathroom.
She’d gained three pounds. How was that even possible? It couldn’t have been that third slice of banana bread. Or the ice cream. She stepped off the scale and decided it must be sabotage by a foreign power. They were clearly after her, there was no other satisfactory explanation.
She headed downstairs, followed by the dogs who’d put on tap shoes, judging by the shocking noise. She stood in the kitchen doorway and thought for a moment they’d been robbed: Every drawer and cupboard door was open, packaging was scattered on the counter, a half-empty milk carton stood insultingly close to the apparently locked refrigerator. Surely it hadn’t been this bad the night before? Ava must have been up in the night, making herself a snack. Coffee, let’s just get to the coffee, people. Face reality in ten minutes.
Frances pulled the jug from the coffee machine, dumped the old grounds in the trash, and went to fill the jug with fresh water. It didn’t start well. She inserted the faucet into the wide sleeve of her dressing gown and filled that instead of the jug, an experience that was so much less pleasant than you might think. She rolled up her dripping sleeve and tried again.
That achieved, she fed the dogs and, while the coffee machine did its work, swept off the counters, closed all the drawers and doors, stepped in cold pee of some kind, swore, put down layers of paper towels, put half-and-half into a cup and wrote half-and-half on the shopping list. Then she put the pee-soaked paper towels in the trash, washed her hands, and couldn’t find anything to dry them on. She used the nearest dog, wrote paper towels on the shopping list, and poured her coffee.
It can only get better from here, she prayed, and headed back upstairs, with her coffee, to wake Ava. She made it far enough into Ava’s room to open a single curtain before getting yelled at, inarticulately. Ava was not a morning person, so Frances had created a system of repeated, darting attacks not dissimilar to poking a bear with a stick. First step, curtains. Second step, lamp. Third step, insertion of cup of tea. Usually that did it. It was in no way guaranteed, and every morning was Russian roulette—optimal outcomes were sulky silence or grudging conversation, less optimal would be full-on screaming and door slamming. It was really a great way to start each day, and Frances was beginning to understand why parents were so relieved when their kids left for college.
She went back down to get hot chocolate for the other two, feeling momentarily grateful for nonteenage children. Milo and Lally both woke up like little buds unfurling, smiling and reaching for their mom. She gave them each their hot chocolate, and went back downstairs to fetch Ava’s tea, pausing on the way to run in and turn on a lamp. She was yelled at again, this time with discernable words. It was working.
After she’d delivered the tea (this time just muttering from under the duvet, which was progress), Frances went to get dressed herself. She took her time, flipping through the racks in her walk-in closet, spinning her shoe tower, and steaming her face to open her pores and maximize the effectiveness of her skin regime. None of that was true: She pulled on the same pair of jeans she’d had on the day before and the hooded sweatshirt she found under them. Look, if they hadn’t wanted to be worn a second day they would have run away, but instead they just lay there overnight, asking for it.
She leaned over Michael who, like his daughter, was not a morning person. “Hey there . . . coffee?”
“Go away, woman. It’s the middle of the night!” Her husband groaned, sticking his head under his pillow and reaching behind himself to try and bat her away.
“It’s after seven.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Frances patted the pillow where she thought his head must be, but he just shuddered. He’d explained to her once that he and Ava slept more deeply than other people and that, for them, waking up was physically painful. He’d said, “You know that bit in science-fiction films where the crew of the spaceship wakes up from hypersleep and they’re all throwing up and shivering?” She’d nodded, but frowned skeptically. “Well, it’s like that for us.”
“Every morning you wake up feeling like you’ve been traveling through space for several years in a state of suspended animation?”
“Yes. And with a feeling of terrible dread, like you’ve woken us up to go investigate a distress beacon from some alien planet or abandoned spaceship.” He’d looked pretty serious. “It’s terrible.”
Nonetheless, Frances had continued to wake them up, but she did try to do it gently and with caffeine in hand. When she got downstairs again Milo was already dressed and sitting on the sofa, eating Cheerios and watching SpongeBob. No one ever really saw him get dressed anymore, it was so quick. If you passed his room at the right time you might hear a zipper, or the whoosh of a sweatshirt passing over his head, but that was it. Then he’d make his way downstairs and get his own breakfast—Frances wasn’t sure he was her child at all.
Taking Michael his coffee, she checked on Ava and found her half dressed, hunting through her drawers for some specific pair of socks that were almost certainly not where she was looking for them. Frances backed out before she could get blamed, and went to help Lally.
Lally wasn’t a morning person, either, but in a different way. She woke up filled with joy that another day had presented itself for her amusement, and would wander about naked for a long time if you let her, playing with her toys and singing to herself. It was charming, but it was also deeply irritating when you needed to be somewhere, like school. And she resisted clothing as if she were a cat you were trying to get into a wet suit: Not only did she not like the garment itself, she was convinced putting it on was only the beginning of her problems. However, Frances wheedled and cajoled and then threatened and bribed, and eventually she was dressed.
Frances looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes until departure. She went and checked on Michael, who was sitting up in bed looking like a baby chick who’d just gotten coldcocked with a cricket bat. Wide eyes. Staring. Sheet marks. He looked at her and asked why the dog was wet. She explained. He nodded, cupping his balls under the sheet in case someone ran through and tried to take them. It could happen.
OK, time to make lunches. Peanut butter and jelly for Lally, cheese for Milo (this year, second grade was a no-nut classroom). Frances threw in individual Tupperware containers of cherry tomatoes, secure in the knowledge she and they would meet again that evening. It was the same with the banana, but half the time she was making lunches for the teachers, imagining them looking into the lunchbox and nodding approvingly at her appropriate and healthy choices, and ignoring the Jell-O and the chocolate chip granola bars—which were the only things that ever got eaten.
Ava appeared. She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that read: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings” and Frances clucked her tongue at it. Ava frowned.
“Go back upstairs and change. That is in no way dress code, and you know it.”
“Because of what it says?”
“No,” Frances said. “Because it shows your shoulders.” Ava opened her mouth to argue, but Frances help up her hand. “I know. It’s bullshit, it’s patriarchal overreach, it prioritizes the primacy of the male gaze over the individual right to self-expression, and it’s a kick-ass T-shirt. I get all that, but last time they made you put on a Justin Bieber oversize hoodie and someone posted it on Instagram and you were miserable.”
Twenty minutes later they all left the house. Kate and Theo were ready, standing outside the house with comb marks in their hair. Charlie was clearly Bringing Order to Chaos, the poor sod. Then came Wyatt, who was holding a piece of toast in one hand and his shoes in the other. Then finally Lucas, who was carrying a plastic bag of Cheerios. Frances realized it was just the inner bag from the box of cereal, which she admired as an efficient choice.
Right then. Time for school.
* * *
• • •
At recess Kate was cornered by some of the other girls in her class.
“Hey, is it true your mom left?”
Kate frowned and looked around. There were four of them, all of them girls she’d known since kindergarten. Alison, Jemma, Becky, and the other one whose name she could never remember. She nodded, but then shrugged.
“I guess so. She’s not living at our house right now. She’s coming back soon.”
Alison shook her head. “She’s not coming back.” Alison was one of those kids who was always very definite in their opinions. Often wrong, but always definite.
“Yes, she is,” Kate said, no wishy-washy kid herself. “They said they’re having a problem right now. When that’s over she’ll come back.”
Alison sighed. “My dad was supposed to come back, but he didn’t. And Leo’s mother went away and was supposed to come back and didn’t. They always say they’re coming back, but it’s not true.”
