Today Will Be Different

by Maria Semple

“No, no—”

  “Oh, hello.” Lila now! “How’s Timby feeling?”

  “Much better.”

  The three of us stood there.

  “Can we help you with something?” Lila asked.

  “I wanted to sign out,” I said. “I forgot to this morning. And didn’t you send an e-mail reminding everyone to sign out if they left early? Citizenship or something?”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to make a special trip,” Lila said. “I was here when you picked up Timby.”

  “That’s just for parents who take their kids directly out of the classroom,” Stesha clarified.

  The whorl of dull information had a mysterious, paralyzing effect.

  “Is that for me?” Lila finally said of the envelope in my hand.

  “Nope!” I said, ripping it to pieces.

  “Tell Timby we hope he feels better.”

  I went out to the hallway where my son was kneeling, his face close to a padlocked Lucite box filled with dollar bills.

  “Mom, look! There must be a thousand dollars in here!”

  Above the box, a sign: DOLLAR DROP. Beside that, a Post-it note. LAST DAY TO GIVE!

  “It’s to buy socks and blankets for a homeless shelter,” Timby said.

  “Sheesh,” I said. “Homeless I get. I just don’t know why it has to be all homeless all the time.”

  “The parents are counting the money today,” Timby said. “If Galer Street beats the other schools, we get to go to Wild Waves.”

  The lights now blazed in the conference room. Two young moms and one young dad were on hand (the same ones? You’re asking me?) clearing space on the table for the counting party. (Galer Street’s policy: If a job requires two volunteers, why not send out harassing e-mails asking for six?)

  It gave me an idea.

  “Timby, go to your locker and get your backpack.”

  “I have my backpack.”

  “Get your gym shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can wash them.”

  “How do you wash gym shoes?”

  “In the washing machine.”

  Timby made a face. “You do not.”

  “I’m not having this conversation,” I said. “Go.”

  Timby trudged up the staircase to his locker.

  The fifth-graders’ Lewis and Clark journals lined the wall. Feigning interest, I took the keys from my purse and slipped them into the dollar drop. They hardly made a sound, that’s how many dollars these do-gooders had dropped.

  In minutes, one of those parent volunteers would open the box, find the keys, and return them to Delphine’s mom. No harm, no foul… ish.

  Through the second-grade classroom window I could see the school yard. Wee ones carrying rakes formed into columns, preparing to come inside.

  Time to scram. I fished in my purse for my car keys. They felt funny. I looked down.

  D-E-L-P-H-I-N-E.

  Gah! I spun around.

  My keys! In the dollar drop! The padlocked dollar drop!

  A flashback to the days when I belonged to the New York Health and Racquet Club. They’d been experiencing a rash of locker break-ins; it turned out a bad element had been popping open the padlocks. How? By slipping a gym towel through the loop, holding both ends, and yanking down really hard. I’d always wanted to give it a whirl.

  Farther down the Lewis and Clark wall, the kids had hung tomahawks: sticks and stones tied together with… leather strips!

  And they say God doesn’t provide.

  I unwound the leather from a tomahawk and folded it back and forth a few times.

  The coast was still clear, but the kids were now on the march. In a minute they’d burst in.

  I threaded the leather through the loop in the lock and got a firm grip on both ends. I gave a sharp tug, and…

  The box flipped off the table and crashed to the floor!

  I dropped to my knees. The goddamned box was still locked. I grabbed another tomahawk and began pummeling the lock. The stupid thing wouldn’t give up the ghost. Finally, the hinge screws popped free. I pried off the lid and reached in, dollar bills splashing everywhere. I grabbed my keys, jumped up, and threw D-E-L-P-H-I-N-E onto the money spill. Success! And nobody saw me.

  Except Timby, standing there holding his dirty sneakers.

  “Have you ever heard of the word subconscious?” I asked Timby in the mirror as my car tipped down Queen Anne Hill.

  “No.”

  “Your subconscious is a hidden part of you that does things you don’t realize and thinks things you’re not fully aware of.”

  “Oh.” Timby’s head was turned; he was looking out the window.

  “It’s almost as if there’s a separate person inside of you who has ideas all their own. And often those ideas aren’t good ideas.”

  Timby twisted his mouth. The rush of brick apartment buildings still held his gaze.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is, this morning, a part of me grabbed Delphine’s mom’s keys.”

  “Your hand.”

  I readjusted the mirror.

  “What do you want to do when we get home?” I asked. “Play Rat-a-Tat Cat? Make pizza? We can watch I Know, Right?”

  “Can I watch it by myself?”

  We stopped at a light outside the Key Arena. A half dozen monks with shaved heads, wearing saffron robes and those cloth shoulder bags you make in Sewing 101, crossed in front of us. On another corner, pedestrians with a DON’T WALK sign waited even though no cars were coming.

  “Seattle,” I said. “I’ve never seen a city of pedestrians less invested in crossing the street.”

  “Maybe they’re just happy,” Timby said.

  I passed the gift basket back. “Tear into that thing, will you?”

  With a frightening single-mindedness, Timby tried sliding off the bow, but it only tightened. He pulled at the ends, but the knot was glued. He clawed at open folds in the cellophane but could only jab a finger in. Finally, he grabbed a pencil out of the cup holder and viciously stabbed at the wrapper.

  “Gee,” I said. “Nice follow-through.”

  The monks reached a food truck and stood in line. On the hood was a chrome snout. PIG ‘N’ SHIT it said.

  “You know what might be fun to watch together?” I said. “Looper Wash.”

  “Kate O. watches Looper Wash,” Timby said, biting into an olive roll. “Her moms have the DVDs. It’s their favorite show.”

  I pulled into our alley and clicked open the garage.

  “What does it even mean?” Timby asked. “Looper Wash?”

  “The woman who wrote the pilot had four daughters.”

  “Violet Parry,” Timby said. “She’s your best friend.”

  “That’s right. The oldest was hers and the rest were adopted from Ethiopia, Cambodia, and somewhere else.”

  “If they’re adopted, they’re hers too,” Timby corrected.

  I glided into our space and turned off the engine. “Violet wrote a pilot about four girls who hang out in a wash in a town called Looper. Looper Wash.”

  “What’s a wash?” he asked.

  “A dry riverbed.” I adjusted the mirror so we could see each other. “I know, it’s kind of weird. You always need to explain it. The girls are hilarious. They hate technology and progress. And hippies and food waste.”

  Timby, eating cookies now, looked unconvinced.

  “Trust me,” I said. “It’s funny.”

  “It sounds mean.”

  “When you get older, mean is funny.” I turned around. “Because Violet and I were women doing a show that both adults and children loved, that was full of social satire and girl power—it was just a really big deal.” I turned to face the front.

  “Are you crying?” Timby asked.

  I opened the door and got out.

  “We don’t have to watch it if you don’t want,” Timby said, still cradling the gift basket, now a hangover of raffia grass, empty wrappers, open jars, and loose Dutch mints.


  “I do want,” I said. We got into the elevator. I pushed L and the doors sealed us in.

  “Let’s start with the pilot,” I said. “It’s a little slow, but there are funny things to watch for.”

  “Like what?”

  The doors opened and we rounded the corner to the mailboxes.

  “The show was hand-colored in Hungary…” I opened the mailbox. Junk, junk, junk. “And the script had the girls feeding their ponies Junior Mints.”

  “Really?”

  “We had a guy on staff who claimed ponies love Junior Mints—”

  A large envelope from Jazz Alley. SEASON TICKETS INSIDE. Despite my protestations, Joe must have re-subscribed. At least he heeded my pleas and seemed to have chosen only a couple of shows.

  “Anyway,” I said to Timby, tucking the tickets under my arm, “in Hungary they got our designs but I guess they weren’t familiar with Junior Mints and decided they were a type of meat.”

  Timby hung on my every word.

  “We didn’t have time to correct it,” I said. “It goes by quickly, but if you slow it down, you can see Millicent feeding her pony bloody hunks of meat.”

  “I want to see that!” Timby said.

  Suddenly, a cry from across the lobby.

  “There she is!”

  Sydney Madsen! Rushing at me with her skinny runner’s body and weird water shoes.

  I gasped, realizing.

  Ajay the doorman was by her side. Whatever Sydney Madsen had just put him through, it was above his pay grade.

  “Eleanor, you’re okay!” Sydney grabbed my arms and shook me. “What is going on?”

  “I totally messed up! I thought we were having lunch.”

  “Which I gathered from the number of voice-mail messages you left.” It took twice as long to say as a normal person due to her plodding enunciation. “My phone was turned off because I was in a two-and-a-half-hour conference. When I came out, there were five messages from you.”

  At water parks, certain rides have a sign: YOU WILL GET WET. Sydney should have to wear a sign: YOU WILL GET BORED.

  “I feel so stupid,” I said. “I’m totally fine.”

  But Sydney Madsen wasn’t done. “I tried calling your cell phone but there was no answer. I tried calling your house. I called the restaurant. I came here and this young man let me up to your floor to knock on your door but he wouldn’t let me into your apartment. I called Joe’s office and they said he was on vacation.”

  “She hit her head,” Timby chimed in. “In the museum. She passed out. She threw away her phone.”

  Sydney brushed aside my bangs and looked startled. I raised my hand to my forehead.

  “Ooh,” I said with a flinch. A goose egg had formed.

  “Have you gone to the hospital?” Sydney asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Let me go upstairs and lie down.”

  “That’s exactly what you don’t do,” she said. “Eleanor, there’s a concussion protocol. Have you tested yourself with the concussion app?”

  “There’s a concussion app?” Timby asked.

  “Wait,” Sydney said. “Please tell me you have not been driving with a head injury.”

  “Umm,” Timby said, smiling adorably.

  “I’ve held my tongue for years,” Sydney said, off on another slow, insistent tear. “But I’m concerned enough by your pattern of behavior to say it now: you must start taking some agency over your life.”

  Is there anything more joy-killing than hearing agency in that context? Consider yourself warned. Say agency all you want, just know you won’t be hanging out with me.

  “You’re walking around half in this world and half who knows where,” Sydney droned on. “I’m a busy person. I canceled an appointment so I could come find you. I walked up and down the parking garage looking for your car. I saw Joe’s but not yours. I was sick with worry. It’s almost as if you have zero consideration for others.”

  “She got you this.” Timby handed Sydney the ravaged gift basket with its ripped cellophane and half-devoured food items.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital.” Sydney held out her palm. “You’re not driving.”

  “Okay.” I handed her my car keys. “I’ll go.”

  “You will?” asked Timby.

  “Let me run upstairs and get my insurance card. I’ll be right down. Come on, Timby.”

  Up in our apartment, I went straight to the utility closet. I pulled the top off the vintage flour canister where we kept our extra keys.

  “Mom, what are you doing?”

  “Something fun.”

  Back in the elevator, Timby reached for L. I stopped him just in time. I pushed P2.

  “Sydney said she saw Dad’s car,” I explained. “If it’s true, that’s a significant development.”

  “It is?”

  Timby followed me into the garage.

  Sure enough, Joe’s car sat in his space. He parks one level down from me (don’t you love him, giving me the better parking space!), which is why I hadn’t noticed it on our way in. I used his spare key to unlock the doors.

  “Are we getting in?” Timby asked.

  I started the engine and waited for the display to boot up. The speakers blared inane jam-band music from the Sirius channel Joe likes.

  “Yech,” I said, slapping it off. “A live concert needs to be listened to live. Otherwise, it’s like eating day-old salad.”

  Timby hooted with laughter from the backseat.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Day-old salad! That’s hilarious!”

  “Gee,” I said. “I always thought you didn’t get my jokes.”

  “I get them,” he said. “Most of the time they’re just not funny.”

  Our neighborhood appeared on the GPS. I cycled through the menu options until I found TRACE ROUTE.

  On the screen, our neighborhood again, but this time overlaid with dotted lines showing the routes Joe had driven. I zoomed out to get a sense of Joe’s big picture.

  The thickest line formed between our apartment and his office. But there was another line, nearly as fat, between our apartment and a mystery destination about five miles away. In Magnolia, a sleepy neighborhood on a hill where we never went. Where there was no reason to go.

  “What are you doing?” asked Timby.

  I zoomed in. A residential neighborhood. Not good.

  “Get in,” I said. “Seat belt on.”

  We screeched up the parking-garage spiral and into traffic. I couldn’t resist a peek. In the lobby, Sydney Madsen had her back to us, talking with flapping arms to poor Ajay. His eyes widened when he realized it was me and Timby smoking up Third Avenue.

  “You know how I said your subconscious is a deep-down part of you that sometimes has bad ideas?” I said to Timby. “This isn’t that. This is me, your mom, doing something I know full well is a bad idea.”

  Following the trail of electronic bread crumbs, I rounded the corner north onto Denny Avenue. The sun seared my eyes. I frantically lowered the visor. A photo fell out. The three of us, last year, petting angora rabbits at the state fair in Puyallup. A wave of unease: happiness in retrospect.

  “Aww,” Timby said. “Can I see?”

  I passed the photo over my shoulder.

  Right after Joe and I moved to Seattle, we went to the state fair, my first one ever. It has since become a tradition. Of course this native New Yorker was horrified at the parolee vibe and average weight of my fellow milling attendees. Around every corner, teardrop trailers sold raspberry scones. PRIDE OF WASHINGTON, the signs beamed. I thought, How sad for Washington State, to be so proud over so little.

  Such could be said of the entertainment offered. We were expected to marvel over goats in pens, be amazed at vegetables arranged to look like the Washington State flag, gather around for jewelry-cleaning demos. I must have been on my feet too long, or maybe it was the September heat, but when I saw the genuine delight Joe took in cheering his entry in a pig race (“Look at that! They
’re chasing an Oreo!”), my defenses went kaput. I actually felt at one with the doughy white mass of humanity, these Washingtonians with their guns and Jesus and BluBlockers.

  And I thought, How sad for you, New York City, you self-absorbed crack whore, with your status-obsessed, edgy, darting eyes, your choked sidewalks, your cancerously reproducing starchitect-designed Prada stores, your breathless yak about real estate prices drowning out all civilized conversation, your deafening restaurants impossible to get into, your cheap TV stars muscling out real talent on Broadway, your smelly streets clogged with blacker SUVs with darker-tinted windows ferrying richer and richer hedge-fund creeps. And where does it leave you? Still chasing yesterday’s high.

  In that moment I loved our new life in dumpy Washington State and especially Joe for dragging me here and saving me from my Manhattan-centric worst self.

  “Remember how last year you wouldn’t let me get a funnel cake?” was Timby’s takeaway. He passed the photo back up.

  “Why are you sad?” Timby asked.

  “I worry I haven’t been paying enough attention to your dad,” I said.

  “It’s okay, Mama. That’s just how you are.”

  I pulled over and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. My breath flittered about high in my chest.

  “I don’t want to be that way,” I said, tears filling my voice. “I really don’t.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt and turned around.

  “What are you doing?” Timby asked, his voice edged with alarm.

  I was all butt as I attempted to clamber into the back.

  “I need to hold you,” I grunted, struggling to pull my foot up and over.

  “Don’t,” Timby said, a sitting duck in his car seat. “Mom, stop.”

  “I want to be worthy of you,” I said, panting like childbirth. “You deserve better than me.” I became stuck between the console and the roof in an unsightly gargoyle crouch.

  “Oh God, look at me,” I cried. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “Go back.”

  I screwed my shoulders around to face front. Timby’s foot gave me a shove into the driver’s seat.

  I grabbed my hair at my scalp. “And now on top of everything, I just acted really weird and scary.”