Other People's Houses, page 6
Anne sighed. “OK. No computer tomorrow at all. You have to do homework first, OK?” She walked out, saying over her shoulder, “Get ready for bed now, we’ll read the chapter together and you can do the math sheet in the morning before school. It’s too late to do it now, you need to get some sleep.”
Behind her Theo’s eyes cleared. His mom always knew what to do; she was as reliable as the sun. If he was naughty she would issue a consequence, if he was good she would issue a reward, and if he needed a hug her arms would already be open. He was by nature a worried child, concerned about unseen dangers, worried that somehow he had messed things up. His mom never seemed to worry, and she was the trellis his little vines twined around.
She walked back into her bedroom, where Kate was drifting off to sleep next to Charlie, who was on his phone and paying no attention. He looked up as Anne came in and raised his eyebrows in a question, indicating their daughter.
Keeping her voice low, Anne said, “You keep her, I’ll deal with Theo, then sleep in her room, OK?” Anne and Charlie slept in the same bed maybe twice a week, moving from bed to bed as their children dictated. Both of them would rather sleep than get a chance to be intimate with each other. Charlie, at least, was glad his libido seemed to have gone into hibernation. As a younger man it would have killed him to be next to Anne but not able to reach out for her in the night, tugging at her nightgown until she woke up and came to him. But now he loved the gentle sounds of a sleeping child, the occasional foot in the face a small price to pay for the feeling of being a family. Sometimes he would wake in the night and walk from room to room, counting his blessings as they slept.
He nodded at his wife and blew her a kiss, which Anne pretended to catch and press to her lips, tossing him one in return. He turned out the light, pulled the sheet over Kate who was now gently snoring, and went back to checking e-mail on his phone.
* * *
• • •
Iris sat on the edge of Wyatt’s bed and watched him breathe, his face smoothed out in sleep, his cheeks flushed. How could eyelids so small lift lashes so long? He held Gubby in his hand, a small rabbit that had once been soft and gray, but was now worn and torn, the cream feet and ears more like gray, the gray more like brown. When I die, he had once asked, will Gubby die with me? Iris had nodded, taking the question at face value and trying not to let him see how the thought made her feel. She prayed he’d die about eight decades after he’d forgotten Gubby, or more, maybe breaking the world record for longevity, oldest man ever.
Sara coughed gently at the door and held out her hand. Iris smiled and got to her feet, after tucking the sheet more fully around Wyatt. She held her wife’s hand as they walked down the hall toward their bedroom. Sara was looking at her in a way that meant she wanted to fool around, and Iris was wondering if she could ask her, afterward, if another baby were possible. That’s what it was doing to her, this longing: Everything was related to it, somehow. Every breath, every kiss, every bite of nutritious food, every baby smiled at in the grocery store, was a wish for another. She was going mad and the madness was coloring everything. She and Sara had a good marriage, a strong friendship, yet Iris was worried her request for another child would sound like a demand. What if Sara said, “It’s me or a baby”? And why did Iris even think that was a possibility? Sara was never like that, had never been like that. Iris was losing her fucking mind.
* * *
• • •
Lucas slept horizontally, like a stave. He had fallen asleep in his parents’ bed, and pretty much stretched from one side to the other. Bill had slowly moved to the very edge of the bed to make room. He folded one leg down to stop himself sliding off, and to help him balance the computer on his lap. The lights were off and he was miles away, immersed in the music he was composing. As his heart slept beside him in superhero pajamas, Bill fought dragons one phrase at a time and didn’t think of his wife at all.
Eight.
Frances tapped the horn. Lucas was supposed to be running down the slight slope of his front yard right now. Actually, several minutes ago. She sighed, turned to Ava, and opened her mouth.
“No, honk again. Louder.” Her daughter’s tone was cool, but her eyes were ready to start a fight.
Frances raised her eyebrows. Ava was working on her passive resistance this morning, and had been ever since Frances had dared to suggest that something with sleeves might be a good idea.
“Here he comes,” said Lally, from behind her, saving Frances from another bout with the standing featherweight champion of in-car boxing.
“Sorry, Frances.” Bill had come with his son, and stood next to the car as Lucas clambered in. “I overslept. Then he didn’t want to get dressed, and it took a while to compromise.”
Frances looked in the rearview. Lucas was wearing pajama pants, but a regular T-shirt. She smiled at Bill. “Looks like a perfect outfit to me,” she said. “He’s covered, right?”
Bill smiled back, thinking for the hundredth time how much he liked Frances. She was easy, Frances was. No muss, no fuss. Just us humans here, no need to panic.
Frances smiled at him, put the car back into gear, and got ready to pull away. “See you later, Bill.” She waved as she headed down the street, and Bill raised his hand in return.
Frances looked at him in the side mirror, still waving after her as she reached the end of the block. As she swung around the corner he swiveled on his heel just as smoothly, and went back into the house. She wondered anew where Julie was. Once Lally and Lucas had started at the same preschool she and Julie had begun a tentative friendship, but then, suddenly, Julie wasn’t at home anymore. She’d asked Bill if Julie was away for work, and Bill had just shaken his head and said nothing.
That had been a couple of months ago, and somehow the moment for inquiry had passed. She and Iris had joked that maybe Bill killed his wife and buried her in the yard, but she’d heard Lucas talking about his mom to Lally, so presumably that wasn’t true. It was strange, and the neighborhood gossips had tried Julie in absentia and found her guilty of abandonment with a side order of failing to keep them all informed. Frances hadn’t known her well enough to have her phone number, and certainly didn’t know Bill well enough to ask where he’d stashed his wife. Frances mentally shrugged her shoulders, and focused again on the road. People did weird shit, usually for boring reasons, and Frances tried not to judge people without knowing all the facts. She flashed on Anne’s face, her eyes closed with pleasure as her boyfriend’s tongue teased and pleased, and found it all too easy to judge and sentence that one.
* * *
• • •
After dropping off the smallest kids, Frances circled back to the high school. She sat there with her windows down and the radio on quietly, waiting to hear the first bell. Frances had an appointment to talk to the school counselor about Ava’s grades. They’d argued about it the previous night.
“My grades are fine,” Ava had insisted. “A solid B is totally OK. Why are you so focused on achievement? Aren’t we supposed to be embracing a growth mind-set these days?” She’d been sitting on her bed, her long legs in stripy tights folded up under her, one side of her hair shaved, the other streaked with purple. She was the cool kid Frances had always wanted to be friends with at school, but now Frances understood that the independence she’d admired had come at a price at home. The coolest girl at her school, six million years previously, had brought a pet rat to school every day, hidden somewhere on her person. At the time it had seemed bold and daring, a declaration, a manifesto. Now it struck Frances that the rat must have represented a daily argument with her mother that only got her revved up for the potential half dozen others she would have once she got the rat to school. Frances wondered what had happened to that girl. The rat was dead, of course, time being what it was.
To be honest, Frances admired the way Ava was starting to bring serious artillery to these discussions, reinforcing her arguments with actual information and well-researched ideas. Frances thought she spent too much time online, but it was clear she wasn’t just watching cat videos. Ava often regaled her mother with facts Frances didn’t know, sometimes casually, sometimes with enormous excitement. She had almost weekly obsessions, her future plans changing accordingly: She was going to restore old houses, she was going to breed rare lizards, she was going to be a psychologist, she was going to be president, she was going to move to Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand, New York.
Everyone loved to warn you about teenagers, particularly teenage girls. They’d raise their eyebrows as they watched your four-year-old cartwheeling about: “Oh, wait till they’re teenagers, then the trouble starts,” or something equally dark. Sure, Ava gave her way more attitude than she had at seven, but she also came to her full of enthusiasm about things Frances had never heard of, and asked her questions about morals and metaphysics. Frances had privately decided the world just didn’t like teenagers to have fun, or to be enthusiastic and confident, so they told everyone teens needed squashing or fearing. It was the same old bullshit, and ignored the thrilling excitement of watching your child’s world open up in front of them, unfurling like the yellow brick road, the emerald spires of adulthood a distant, shimmering dream. Anything was possible, they could do and be anything, they could try on eighteen different personalities a month. Frances believed in Ava, and held on tight, even as her daughter bucked and bitched and tried to throw her off.
The bell rang, and after waiting a few minutes for the kids to mill to their various rooms, Frances stepped out of the car. She believed in her kid, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need to go talk to the counselor. Trust, but verify.
* * *
• • •
The counselor’s name was Jennifer, and she was approximately half Frances’s age. She had been born perky, but had also refined her natural talents through years of pep rallies and cheer squad at school, and was now pert and energetic enough to jump-start a tractor trailer.
“Your daughter’s doing great!” she said, her eyes strafing across Ava’s file. “Her teachers love her, she appears relatively popular, the nurse hasn’t seen her all semester . . .” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Although, she has dropped all her extracurriculars. Did you know that?”
Frances didn’t. “Like what? The school paper?”
Jennifer nodded. “Yeah, she quit that, and the orchestra. She used to go to animation club once a week, and she quit that, too.” Her eyes lifted to meet Frances’s. The poster behind her urged everyone not to eat the marshmallow, which was making Frances hungry. She thought back . . . Ava had definitely stayed later at school the week before for “orchestra practice.” What the actual fuck?
“Well, could she just need more time for her schoolwork? I’m concerned that her grades are slipping a bit.”
Jennifer smiled. “Grades aren’t the only metric we look at here, as you know. They are only one of many indicators of success.”
Frances hated it when neonates lectured her about things she already understood. Youthsplaining. But outwardly she smiled. “I understand that, Jennifer, but last year she got A’s in English and Art, for example, and this year she hasn’t gotten above a B. I just wanted to check in to make sure you aren’t aware of any problems here I might have missed?”
Jennifer looked back at the file, and lifted a piece of paper. A Post-it caught her attention. “How are things with Piper these days?”
Frances was surprised. “Who’s Piper?”
It was Jennifer’s turn to be surprised. “Piper is a new student who arrived from New York over the summer. Ava hasn’t mentioned her?” Frances shook her head. “Huh. Ava was assigned to be her buddy, you know, when Piper first got here. For the first month they were inseparable, a great pair, a good match. Then something happened, and Piper and Ava stopped hanging out overnight.”
Frances frowned. “Well, couldn’t that just be natural? You know, you get a buddy at a new job, or whatever, and after a week or so you make your own connections and kind of stop hanging out with the buddy . . .” Jennifer was looking at her blankly, but Frances pushed on. “Have you read The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker? He talks about it, he might even give that relationship a name, it’s an awesome book . . .” Now Jennifer was looking openly concerned, so Frances trailed off and cleared her throat. “No,” she said, “Ava hasn’t mentioned Piper at all.”
Jennifer shrugged. “Well, that’s the only thing her file mentions, that and the extracurriculars. Are you seeing behavior at home that concerns you?”
Frances shrugged back at her. “No, just the usual crankiness and complaints that we don’t give her a phone.”
Jennifer was shocked. “She doesn’t have a phone?” Brief pause. “Pretty much every kid in ninth grade has a phone. What if she needs to call you?”
Frances said, “Well, apparently she could borrow one of the many phones around her. I can’t believe every kid has a phone. They’re very expensive and that’s not including the monthly bill.”
Jennifer looked genuinely concerned. “No, really, they all do.” She got to her feet, the meeting apparently over. “I’m sorry, I have a staff meeting to go to.” She held out her hand. “Always a pleasure, Frances. You should consider getting Ava a phone, though. Not having one really singles her out.”
Frances walked down the school hallway perplexed. Had she missed a memo? Pencils, paper, textbooks, iPhone? Really? She looked up and realized she’d walked the wrong way out of Jennifer’s office. A bell rang for the end of class, and suddenly the hall was filled with kids, as tall or taller than Frances. They all had backpacks large enough to support a three-month exploration of Europe, and Frances was nearly knocked over several times before she managed to find a clear channel down the center of the hallway.
“Mom?” Shit, she’d come face-to-face with Ava, who at first looked pleased to see her, then suspicious. “Is there something wrong? Is everyone OK? What are you doing here?” The other kids pushed around them, and Frances got a sudden mental image of the buffalo stampede in The Lion King. She really needed to spend less time with Disney.
“Everyone’s fine. I had to see Jennifer about something.” She looked at her daughter. “Is that eyeliner?”
“You came to see if I was wearing makeup?”
“No, I’m just asking a question. And while I’m asking: Is that lipstick?”
Ava narrowed her eyes. “Seriously?”
Frances took a breath. “Let’s start over, OK?”
“OK.”
“Hi, Ava, funny meeting you here.”
“Not really, I’m here every day. You, however . . .”
“I’m here to see your counselor, because I had some questions for her.”
“About me?”
“Of course, what other topic would we discuss?”
“Your secret desire to become a cheerleader?”
Frances laughed. “Busted.”
Ava smiled, then the bell rang again. “I have to go. Mom, really, why are you here?”
“To spy on you. We can talk about it when I pick you up later, OK?” Frances went to hug her daughter, expecting to be rebuffed, but Ava hugged her back, tightly.
“I miss you when I’m at school,” she said quietly in Frances’s ear.
“Me, too,” her mom replied.
They let go of each other, and Ava put on a believable expression of unconcern. “See ya later, Mom.”
Frances nodded and Ava walked off. After a moment Frances turned to leave, so when Ava turned around to smile at her mother one more time, she only saw her back.
Nine.
Driving away from school, Frances called Michael, putting the call on speaker.
“Sup, dog?” His voice always cheered her up.
“Do you have five minutes to chat?” She slowed to let an extremely slow old lady cross the street, causing the person behind her to honk his horn. She raised her hand in front of her driver’s mirror, the middle finger extended. What was she supposed to do, run the woman down? We’re all getting old, asshole, she thought, it won’t be long before it’s you shuffling along and peeing anxiously into your adult diapers because some dick, who isn’t brave enough to chivy you face-to-face, is happy to lean on his horn. Fuck you, asshole. The guy honked again and she rolled down the window and extended her other hand: tipped up palm, emphatic point at old person, middle finger. Frances knew that mime documentary she’d watched would come in handy one day. She tried to focus on her husband.
“Yup, as long as it’s five minutes. I have a meeting at ten.” He sounded busy, but relaxed, which was pretty much his default state.
Frances looked at her watch, nine forty-five. “OK. I went to school to talk to Jennifer the counselor.”
Michael laughed. “And now you want to become a cheerleader?”
“Ava said the same thing. What is with you people?” The lady had reached the other side, and stood there panting. Frances wondered what she thought about, whether she paid any attention to the world around her or just focused on making it across street after street. She suddenly hated the young guy behind her and then, as he pulled past her and honked angrily one last time, saw he was a middle-aged woman like herself.
“Ava was there, too? Why didn’t you have me come?” He sounded slightly less amused.
“No, she wasn’t there at the meeting. I ran into her in the hallway.”
“Busted! Was she mad?”
“Not really, although she was wearing makeup that she hadn’t been wearing when I dropped her off half an hour earlier.” Frances wondered why this even mattered to her, why she was even mentioning it. Sometimes she was critical for no real reason she could discern, and didn’t like it in herself. If it had been conscious she could stop herself from doing it, but it seemed to come from nowhere. She’d heard somewhere that a sad portion of your thoughts are just society’s opinions, disguised as inner monologue. A depressing thought, or was that just society telling you it was a depressing thought? She was getting a headache.
