“I’m a teacher, too,” I said. We talked about school, and students, and more about dolls. Mrs. Santamaría brought out a tea set and she and Nola put out a big spread while I folded t-shirts and balled up our socks. I was then invited to go get Nola’s Pinky the bear so she could participate in the party.
On my way back down with the bear, I ran into the clothes dumper from 3-F. “Oh, hello,” I said, as he froze in the door to the laundry room. “Are you doing your laundry today?”
“I’m waiting for that one to finish,” he said, pointing at my machine.
I narrowed my eyes. “Hm. Where are your dirty clothes, then?”
“I’m just going to go get them,” he told me loudly.
“Well, be very careful. Someone has been dumping clean clothes from the machines out onto the floor. It must be some rude kid, because I’m sure no grown adult would act that way. No normal, sane adult, I mean.”
He just glared at me.
“I have an idea of who it is, and when I find out for sure, I’ll be telling our landlord. And the police!” I added, as if our local cops put in a lot of work on solving laundry crimes. And as if I would ever mess with the police.
He glared at me more and took off toward the stairs.
“Jerk,” I muttered. I sat Pinky down at her spot for the tea party in Mrs. Santamaría’s apartment and did some school work while they played with the dolls, her snow globe collection from all the places she had traveled, and her box of miniatures, which fascinated Nola to no end. It lasted while I put the wet, clean clothes into the dryer with no sign of the laundry jerk around, and continued as I folded everything. After that, I thought we had imposed on her enough, and it was also time to try to force some lunch in Nola’s stomach, if there was room after the cookies.
“It was lovely to meet you,” Mrs. Santamaría told us as we left. She reminded me of a teacher too much for me to call her by her first name, but she was Mrs. Santa to Nola. “Please come by, any time. And I do some babysitting for children in the building. I don’t like to advertise, because I want to know the children first…” She lowered her voice. “I didn’t want the little boy in 3-E.”
I knew him. A holy terror.
“But I’d love to have Nola over,” she continued.
It was like she was heaven-sent so I could go to San Francisco, if God got down to the nitty-gritty enough to involve himself in things like my search for a babysitter. “Um, are you free tomorrow?” I hazarded, and just like it was truly God’s plan, she was. In the meantime, I’d have a chance to ask for references among other moms in the building, most of whom I knew slightly. She seemed thrilled, as was I that she didn’t charge any more than my normal sitters. You could make a mint in that babysitter racket.
Another message from my ex, Ty, came up on my phone as I put away our clean clothes: “JoJo, fucking call me. Now.” I shook my head at the phone. Sweet and respectful, as always, but I was extremely curious about what he wanted to talk about so desperately. For a while, I fought the urge I had to get back to him, which I did by hiding my phone under the couch cushion.
Ty made me feel a little out of control, and at this point in my life, I was used to being the person in charge, of Nola, of my classroom, of myself. But knowing that he was dangerous, different, unbound by the rules—that was part of what had made him so compelling, too. So, I tried to pretend that I didn’t know where my phone was, and I didn’t “fucking call,” like he wanted me to.
That worked for the rest of the day. In fact, I managed to stave it off until most people my age were going out that night and I was trying to pick slime out of the carpet where it had fallen, unnoticed, and hardened into something not fun. I pulled the chair closer to the old trunk we used as a coffee table to cover the slime problem in the carpet, and then I picked up the cushion and gave in to the desire to retrieve my phone. “Hi. What’s up?” I wrote.
It rang almost immediately with a call from his new number and with my heart starting to pound, I answered. “Hello, Ty.”
“JoJo. What took you so long?”
“I have a life, and I’m busy. What do you need?”
“I wanted to tell you that I’m in San Francisco. I wanted to see you and Nola.”
“Really?” I squeaked. I pinched my own leg, I was so angry about how eager and excited I sounded. It was just that Nola hadn’t seen him in forever, more than a year. Almost more than two years. “You’re really in San Francisco?”
“Sure,” he said offhandedly.
“You really came down here to see us? I mean, to see Nola?”
“Sure,” he said again, but I had known him long enough to recognize when he was lying. “I’m busy tomorrow, so why don’t you come next week? Monday. Come on Monday.”
“I work, remember? It will be hard for us to come on a weekday.”
“Then Tuesday. Early in the week.”
I got suspicious. “Why the rush?”
“I haven’t seen my little girl in a long time. Or you, JoJo. I’ve been thinking about you, about us together. Remember back in high school, how you used to ride on the back of my bike?”
Yeah, I remembered. I remembered the feeling of clinging to him and trying to hold on to the motorcycle with my burning thigh muscles, the thrill of him riding way too fast down our country roads. It had been thrilling, yes, but I had also been terrified.
“You used to scream your damn head off,” he remembered.
“You went too fast,” I retorted. “And that’s why you want to see me? Because you were thinking about me being scared of your motorcycle?”
“Nah, I miss you, babe. Come see me. Monday.”
“Well…” I thought about it. “I can’t Monday, but we could drive in after school on Tuesday for dinner. An early dinner, because Nola goes to bed at eight and we’ll need to drive back up here.” I knew Ty’s proclivity for staying up to all hours, sometimes all night, then sleeping all day. “Where are you staying?”
“I’ll meet you,” he told me instead. “Let me work out a place.”
“Somewhere that has kid food,” I reminded him.
“Sure, yeah. You’ll hear from me soon.”
We hung up, with me not sure if I believed him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done this before; our history together was full of broken dates, missed plans, silent phones. Me sitting around waiting for him; me crying, alone. So of course I wouldn’t tell Nola that we might be going to meet her dad. And I wouldn’t be crying this time if he stood me up, not anymore, because he no longer had that power over my heart.
∞
The next day, Nola went to hang out with Mrs. Santamaría after every other mom in the building had sung her praises as a babysitter to me. I drove alone to the city, and sat in a very fancy living room—the salon, the lady who had let me in had called it. I had my pen in my hand and my notebook open on my lap to write down all the important tips and rules to help my cousin Maia get into college. So far, I had written down just one word, right at the time when I broke into a cold sweat: HELP.
Coming to this college admissions seminar had been a huge, astronomical error, but one which I hadn’t immediately spotted. Greta Khan, the friend of Luca’s who was putting it on in her lovely house, was very nice. “Jolie?” she had welcomed me when her assistant showed me into the fancy salon. “I’m so happy to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too,” I said, feeling a little awed as I looked around the beautiful room, and checked out all the anxious-looking parents.
“Luca told me about you,” she commented, and I wondered exactly what he had said. It couldn’t have been terrible, because she said it with a smile, not with a remark about how I had awful taste in men (e.g., Stoney).
“Let’s get started. I’m sure you have more interesting things to do with your Sunday!” she told me, and cleared her throat for attention. The room became completely silent and every single person there besides me snapped open an ultrathin laptop and leaned forward.
And that was when I realized that I needed help. First of all, when we had to go around introducing ourselves, I learned that all of these parents had kids younger than my cousin, who was a high school senior and had already finished applying. She was just waiting to get in or maybe not get in, but the other kids represented here hadn’t even started. These were parents of freshman, sophomores, and even some eighth graders. One set of moms had a daughter in her junior year, and everyone looked at them so sympathetically. “Well, you’re getting a late start, but know that it’s not the end of the world,” Greta, the seminar leader, told them. “Be prepared to work doubly as hard.”
“We are. We will!” one of the moms answered fervently.
No one even knew what to say when I introduced myself not as a mom, but an aunt, attending on behalf of a high school senior. The parents looked very surprised, and mighty horrified. “Has she already applied to her schools?” Greta asked, puzzled. “Why…”
Why was I here? I didn’t really know either. “Yes, I thought this was, um, Luca seemed to imply that this was about how to help your cousin, I mean, your kid get in, to increase their chances of getting in.”
“Yes, but the majority of the work is already done once applications have been submitted. Unless you have more information, or additional scores, awards…” Greta Kahn trailed off again, waiting.
I did not. “Apparently I had my timelines mixed up,” I said vaguely, and I sat with a thump back on the couch. She smiled a little, clearly still troubled, and turned to the next set of parents.
The other major, terrible thing, was that I saw it was too late to correct all the places where Maia had already gone so wrong. She hadn’t had a professional editor to go over the essays she had submitted. Sure, she had sent them to me to read, but who the hell was I? She hadn’t had a coach for her alumni interviews—I didn’t think she’d even had alumni interviews. How did you get those? She hadn’t done test prep classes, or tutors, or anything. She had been totally winging it, it seemed, when actually this college application process was an exact science.
And, even worse, I sat there remembering all the parents who had talked up their kids on that college tour in Berkeley, the ones I had thought were just blowing up their children’s accomplishments, and, well, lying through their teeth about all the amazing things their kids had done in high school. I realized at this meeting that they probably hadn’t been making that crap up, that their children really had cleared mine fields and developed vaccines. From what this new group of parents was saying, their kids had done even more than that. All Maia had was her job working at the car dealership, being captain of the basketball team, representing her class in the student council. None of that seemed good enough, and anyway, Greta Kahn said that you needed to have an application coach to figure out the best way to write about the accomplishments so that they would get the most attention from the admissions people. All in all, it sounded to me like Maia was royally screwed.
I felt terrible. I felt like I had failed her. I had helped her look at schools based on what she was interested in, helped her apply for scholarships, read her essays, offered advice—and that was nothing, a mere drop in the bucket compared to what she really needed. I had been like an ostrich with my head in the sand about this college stuff and I was just so, so upset by the time I walked out of the salon. Why hadn’t I gone to this seminar the year before, two years before? How selfish was I that I had let Maia fight this terrible college battle on her own, without any sane adult to guide her? Her parents were as hapless as mine had been; I had thought that I was the person who would help Maia, and I had just found that I had been going about everything wrong.
Well, fuck.
I sat in my car, wedged in between driveways on Russian Hill, and considered for a while after I left Greta Kahn’s house. It turned out that for the bargain price of several hundred dollars per hour, I could have hired her as our personal college coach, and most of the parents who had been in the salon with me were lining up to do just that (including the parents of the eighth graders). Obviously, that was a no, unless she would accept an IOU or eternal gratitude for payment, and depressingly, it was probably too late to help my cousin, anyway. But I thought that there had to be something I could do for Maia.
But I had other fish to fry, first. Mrs. Santamaría had been sending me all kinds of reassuring pictures and messages about the fun she and Nola were having, so I decided I could let that situation go a little longer. I had texted Luca when I got to the college meeting, saying that I was there in San Francisco, thanking him again for setting it up for me. And he had answered: “Great. I hope it’s helpful. Coffee after?”
I ran my finger over the words on the phone as I sat in my car, making the letters jump back and forth. I wrote back quickly, “Sure, let’s meet up. I’m done. Where?” and almost immediately, he sent a map. I eased off the parking brake and threw the car into drive, leaning forward so I wouldn’t go backwards down the hill.
Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ, he was a handsome man. Luca sat at a table in front of the coffee shop, his thick hair blowing a little in the stiff wind coming off the water, his eyes looking even bluer with the white shirt he had on. His skin a more beautiful olive than I had noticed when I had seen him at night. His features even stronger, more attractive…ok, Jolie, take a moment. He wasn’t actually what would happen if Errol Flynn and Gary Cooper had a perfect baby, he was handsome, that was all. Ok, gorgeous. Ok, a woman had just crossed the street and I thought she was taking his picture. Jesus!
“Luca!” I called loudly, and when he looked up, the woman scuttled away. He smiled and stood.
“Hi,” he told me when I walked up. He leaned forward and kissed both my cheeks, like we were old friends. Well, maybe after being puked on together, we were. “How is your ankle?”
“Fine. Almost back to normal.” Chad had come to check on me also, to make sure that I would be ready to run with him. My lungs hurt just thinking about it.
“How was the college meeting?” Luca asked.
“Well…” I thought. “I learned a lot,” I said finally.
“Mmhmm.” He looked at me. “Have a seat. Can I get you something?”
I was thirsty and starving, but thinking of the woman crossing the street for Luca and also of my hips, I requested black coffee, calorie-free. Just like that, he went to get it for me, ignoring the money that I started to fish out of my purse. He brought back a piece of lemon tea bread, too, which I happened to love, and which he said was “for the table.”
“Thank you, Luca.”
He nodded. “Tell me more about the meeting with Greta,” he asked as he stirred his own coffee.
I explained that the seminar was really informative. “She knows her stuff,” I said, taking a sip of the bitter drink. It needed about a cup of sugar to make it palatable and just as much milk.
“And? Why are you making a face when you say that?” he asked.
“It’s the coffee. It’s a little strong.”
And just like that again, Luca got up and got a pitcher of milk and a bowl of those natural-looking sugar cubes that seemed like they would have been fun to eat, except I was a grown woman who was a mother and teacher and shouldn’t have been eating sugar cubes. I plunked one in my coffee instead of my mouth.
“Thank you,” I said to him, a little amazed. Was he maybe a waiter part-time? It would explain his attentiveness to table/food issues.
“I understood from my friend, Greta’s husband, that she does quite a business with this college advising,” Luca said.
“She does! I mean, it sure looks like she does. There were people there practically begging to give her money. If I had some, I would hand it right over to her, because I was impressed for sure.” I sighed. “But the thing is, it sounds like I should have been doing this a few years ago. I mean I should have been getting test tutors and essay help for Maia, and we should have been working on some kind of portfolio with an advisor, and gone college visiting all over th
e country…” As I said it, I knew how out-of-reach it all was. “Or I should have been doing something else, anything else. All I did was go and talk to the college counselors at Starhurst and stuff like that.” And they had never mentioned any of the pricey stuff to me, either thinking (correctly) that I wouldn’t be able to afford it or assuming (incorrectly) that it wouldn’t matter because Maia wouldn’t be going to a good school. I sighed again. “My cousin is a senior, which I hadn’t mentioned to you. No one there could believe she had applied without all the tutors and advisors and help. I guess it’s really all over for her. I spent the whole time I was at that meeting realizing that it’s too late.”
Luca laughed suddenly. “She’s a high school senior, and it’s all over for her already? Yes, she may as well head to the retirement home right now, and call it quits.”
That made me laugh too, and feel a million times better. “Ok, that was maybe a little dramatic,” I admitted. “It made me feel bad when I listened to what all the parents were doing compared to what we did.”
“Why does it seem like you’re in charge of the process? What about her own parents?”
“They’re, well, useless,” I admitted. “They’re major anti-establishment, all about sticking it to the man, so they aren’t interested in stuff like school. School is run by the man, teaching you things the man wants you to learn.”
“The man,” he repeated.
“Mostly they’re interested in smoking up, and that’s where their time and energy goes.”
“That’s a shame.”
I nodded. “Right? I’m as close as she gets to a responsible adult, poor thing! I’m trying my best to help her, but it’s all new to me, too.” I had been crumbling the lemon bread between my fingers as I spoke, and now I ate a piece. Oh, Jesus. It was heavenly. I ate another, larger portion. “Did you do all those things to get into college? Test prep, tutors, advisors, counselors?”
“No. No, none of that. My parents didn’t believe in it. But most of the people in my class at Starhurst, yes. They had a lot of help getting into college.”
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