Double Pop

by Jamie Bennett

  “Yes, you’re coming?” Luca confirmed.

  “I hope you have eggs there, and yes, thank you, we would like to.” Nola was already running around grabbing things for our excursion and making a pile on the floor: her plastic fruit, the frying pan I stored in the oven, ridiculous biking gloves that we had gotten as a hand-me-down from another little girl in our building and that Nola insisted on wearing when she rode the tiny bicycle she pushed along with her feet. She disappeared into the bedroom, thumping as she walked in a way sure to make the downstairs neighbor happy. “Send me the address.”

  He did. “I’ll see you soon,” Luca said and we hung up, just as Nola emerged with her too-small bathing suit, socks, and bike helmet on.

  She donned the biking gloves, too. “I gave it some gas,” she announced. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s going to take me a minute,” I answered. First, coffee. Then, a lot of grooming would have to go on before we went to see Luca.

  I finally got myself ready, which actually took less time than I spent persuading Nola to wear a suit that fit her and some actual clothes, and also informing her that she didn’t need to wear the biking gloves and her helmet in the car on the way. We walked carefully down the stairs with all our stuff—well, I carried all our stuff, and Nola carried a note of explanation to Eva, Mrs. Santa, that the babysitting job was cancelled because the “booty call” evening had turned into family day at the park. I had written, Nola had illustrated and added a big N with her favorite pink crayon.

  “Let me give it to her,” Nola requested. She carefully taped the paper to the door. “We can play another time. I want my bike!” She skipped ahead of me, around the corner to our little storage area next to the parking lot. It was only big enough to hold the wooden bike that another teacher had passed on to me and some plastic bins of school papers that I didn’t want to see every day in our apartment. We didn’t have too much stuff, anyway.

  That was weird; from far away, it looked like the padlock I used was hanging crookedly in the metal bracket. “Open it! Open it!” Nola called, hopping a little as she waited for me. “Let’s go to the pool!”

  When I got closer to her, I saw that the lock had been cut. “Nola, stand back,” I said sharply, and I put her behind me before I carefully swung open the door. The little space was a mess of my school papers and the plastic bins were broken into shards. And Nola’s bike was in pieces, hacked up into parts. All that was left of it was the hard-plastic seat, some bolts, and splinters of wood.

  I closed the door quickly, breathing very hard. “We aren’t going to be able to bring your bike.” I picked her up and rushed to the car, my ankle twinging hard.

  “Why? Why?” she asked as she bounced along.

  “Some mean kids played a trick and broke our stuff. We’re going to have to get a new bike.”

  “What?” Her face crumpled as I fumbled with the straps of her seat. Who would have done that? They didn’t even take anything, just destroyed it. “Who broke my bike? Is it wrecked up?”

  “It is. I’m sorry,” I told her, and she burst into tears, saying that she didn’t want a new bike, she wanted her real bike. I drove us away with my heart still pounding. Maybe someone had broken in and been so mad not to find anything of value that he trashed it, or maybe it really was just mean kids. Super mean and vicious. “I’m sorry, Noles,” I said again. “I know it’s not the same, but we will get you another bike.” More crying. “I think you’re about ready for real pedals.”

  She sniffled. “Pedals?”

  “Sure,” I said wildly. “A pink bike with pedals, and a basket where you can put a doll.” This fantasy was making me feel better, too, but I was still freaked out.

  “And snow globes.”

  “Snow globes, whatever else you want to ride around with,” I agreed. For the rest of the way to Luca’s parents’ house, we discussed light versus dark pink and if it would maybe have butterflies on it like her bike helmet did. It got her mind off the destruction, but it took seeing the house where Luca had grown up to distract me.

  In fact, I wasn’t just distracted—I almost fainted when I saw where his parents lived. “I wish I wore my princess dress,” Nola said sadly, and I knew why she felt that way. The long driveway from the tiny, twisty road had led us to a multi-level, columned, stone…palace? It was three or more stories tall, but I thought its true size was hidden by how it was built into the hillside. In other words, it was a mansion, and I was almost afraid to get out of the car. My beach towels were too ratty to use at a place like this!

  Luca emerged from the front door and jogged over before we had moved too far, smiling a welcome at us.

  “Someone wrecked up my bike,” Nola announced. Her lip started to quiver again.

  “And hello,” I greeted him.

  “Hi.” He knelt down next to Nola. “What happened?”

  “A mean kid wrecked it up. I can’t ride it anymore but I’m going to get a new pink one with pretty butterflies and candy in the basket.” She looked like she was having a hard time holding it together.

  Luca nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds like a great bike.”

  “I told Nola that we can walk to the playground today, right?” I put in.

  “Definitely,” Luca said. “But first, come inside. I would like to swim before we go.”

  The quivering lips turned up. “Me too!”

  He stood and turned to me. “Hi.” The force of his smile made my knees get all jello-y. Then he kissed both my cheeks and I inhaled a little of him and that made it worse. He just smelled manly. I had been too long without the opposite sex, apparently, if sniffing Luca’s neck was making me get…excited.

  Nola was already chatting about swimming, explaining how she liked to do it mostly with her arms instead of her legs. She had no qualms about entering the palace and Luca and I walked after her.

  “You must be Jolie,” a woman said to me when we came in.

  And she had to be Luca’s mom. He had been right; they looked so much alike, except she was the feminine, beautiful side of Luca’s masculine, handsome coin. “Hi. Yes, ma’am, I’m Jolie.” Ma’am? Oh, Jesus. I tried again. “I’m Jolie Fraser, and this is my daughter, Nola.”

  “I’m happy to meet you,” she said. “I am Raffaella Mair.” She turned to her son and said something very fast in Italian, or something that sounded like it, and he answered. Then she smiled at Nola and me. “Welcome to our home. I look forward to talking to you soon.” She hurried up the stairs to the second floor, or maybe she continued on to the third or fourth. I watched her go, hoping that some day I would look that put-together this early on a Saturday morning. She looked like she rolled out of bed well-dressed. Like she slept in monogrammed pajamas, maybe silk ones.

  “‘Ma’am?’” Luca asked me. “You can call her Raffaella.”

  “A woman like that? No, I can’t. I’m lucky I didn’t say ‘Highness’ or ‘Your Holiness’ by mistake.”

  “Don’t say ‘Your Holiness.’ She’s definitely not the Pope.” He started to laugh. “Come have some breakfast before we swim,” he said to my daughter. “I heard that you like how I cook so I made something, a little different from before but I think it will be good.”

  “Different?” Nola’s lip stuck out. She was nothing if not a creature of habit, and as her mother and role model, so was I.

  “We can try it,” he said, and then he held out his fingers, gesturing to me to take them. “Come to the kitchen.” Our linked hands swung back and forth as we walked. I looked up at Luca.

  “You’re smiling at me again,” he said.

  “Thanks for holding my hand. I needed a little moral support walking around this house. Intimidating, much?”

  He did the frowny, angry face. “That’s my father. He likes to show. To display. You’ll see when we go to the pool.” I squeezed his hand, and the look went away. He glanced down at me again, and the smile even came back.

  Luca walked us a mile or so to the kitchen, where h
e had been in the middle of making omelets for us with all kinds of vegetables. “I don’t like those,” Nola said immediately, pointing at the mushrooms chopped in a pile on the counter. “Or those.” Peppers. “Or those.” A pile of spinach. Sadly, I was right there with her. I did not want a vegetable omelet, unless it didn’t have the vegetables. At which point, it wouldn’t have been much of a vegetable omelet.

  “Oh, those aren’t for you,” he said. “Only for me.”

  Nola frowned. “Only for you? Luca, you need sharing and kindness.” She explained the concepts while he cooked.

  “I see,” he told her gravely when she paused for breath. “You’ve convinced me. I think I should share.” He set out three plates and we all ended up eating. I had to remind Nola to chew, she went so fast, and yes, I thought it was really good, too. I only had to push the mushrooms into a little pile on the side, but Nola ate hers.

  “Tell us about your week,” I said before Nola could get on a roll about Pinky the bear or her bike again. Luca filled us in on things at his non-profit, how they were working on graphics and menus and food testing for the kids’ healthy school lunches, which I had already heard a little about from him over the phone.

  Then he asked me to tell him about my week. He listened when I told him about some of the problems the school was having with the athletic director getting fired due to a relationship with a student, the head of the lower school (my boss) employing a small army of spies to monitor us, and some other things that I had to spell instead of saying so that Nola wouldn’t understand. And yes, he actually listened. He listened to everything, every word, so I stopped trying to talk fast so I could get it in before he got bored or changed the subject. It felt a little magical.

  “I remember that athletic director from when I was at Starhurst. He was a PE teacher then. And an a-s-s-hole then, too, but it sounds like he got much worse.” He looked at me. “Is your headache gone?”

  I thought for a moment. “Yes, it is. How did you know I had a headache?”

  “You rub your forehead a lot. Do you sleep enough? Eat well?”

  “Sure do, doc.” I looked down at my plate, off which I had eaten steadily as I listened and chatted. It was empty, like I had licked it clean. Even the mushrooms had disappeared. Well, sure, maybe having a vegetable now and then wouldn’t kill me.

  “I have a great idea.” Luca got very excited. “You can be one of our testers! We have a group of people trying out my company’s school lunch menu items. They’re delivered to you, and all you’ll need to do is bring them to school each day to eat and fill out a comment card after. Like this.” He showed me an image of a card on his phone. “Not a big deal and I’d appreciate your input.”

  “Sure, I could do that,” I said. “That would probably be really good for me.” I studied the picture. “Wait a minute, are the testers adults? And if so, why are there bunnies, hearts, and robots on these comment cards?”

  “Can I see?” Nola requested. “Can I have a bunny and a heart?”

  “Most of the other testers are not adults,” Luca admitted. “But I could be your delivery person. For the meals, I mean.”

  I had a sudden vision of a certain movie that my brother had been watching late one night in our living room. A movie with a lot of “delivery” people showing up to “deliver” things (yes, that kind of movie, delivering exactly that). I had turned it off after the third delivery and told him to go read a book to improve his mind, but now I thought of Luca as one of the guys showing up at my own door. Oh, Jesus. “I’ll take free food, sure,” I said, very casually. “Thanks.”

  “Are you all right? You just turned all red,” Luca said, staring. I nodded.

  “Can I have a bunny and a heart? Please?” Nola asked again patiently, and we had to explain it was just a picture, and then Luca and I cleaned up the kitchen a little and we adjourned to the pool wing. We would have to wait a little bit before swimming since Nola and I had stuffed ourselves, but I thought it would probably be a very long walk, judging by the size of the house.

  “Is that gold?” Nola asked in a hushed voice as we approached the pool. “Is this from pirates?”

  “No,” Luca told her. “They’re just trophies.”

  I understood her confusion. The hallway that led to the pool room was lined with at least 10 glass cases, and the cases were full to brimming. Trophies, medals, framed certificates, crystal cups, engraved platters…someone had been successful. I stared as we walked, just like my daughter was doing. “Are these all yours?” I asked Luca. My voice sounded awed, too.

  “No,” he said, biting out the word. “Those were mine.” We had reached the end of the hall, and I saw that one of the cases was empty. “I took everything out because it was ridiculous. This room is like a shrine.”

  “Then…”

  “My father was a very famous athlete. He was the captain for the Italian water polo team when they won their world titles. He’s won every gold medal in existence. A star.”

  I nodded. Luca wasn’t saying this with a lot of pride. More like bitterness. “I don’t know a lot about the game,” I commented blandly.

  “Polo is a much bigger deal, over there. It’s a popular sport and he was a celebrity. You can see that I didn’t achieve the same level of greatness. Just the one space for me.” Luca’s voice was sharp enough that Nola looked up at him, confused.

  “Are you sad?” she asked. “Or mad? You can use your words.”

  He looked at her and swallowed. “I was sad, when I was a kid. I’m not, not anymore.”

  But he was clearly still angry. I put my hand out, like he had done for me, and he took it.

  “Let’s go swim,” Luca suggested.

  “Don’t we have to wait?” I said, hanging back. “Thirty minutes after eating, right?” The bathing suit situation loomed large in my mind.

  “That’s a myth,” he told me. “Unless you’re going to swim so hard that you throw up what you just ate, like I did a few times at workouts when I didn’t plan my meals well.”

  “Yuck!” Nola said, and then told him about when she had thrown up in my lap at a movie theater. It was a great story.

  “Wait for me,” I instructed as she quickly stripped down to her bathing suit and approached the edge of the giant pool. It was fully as big as the public pool where we usually went, but it was so strange that it was empty except for us. Luca tore off his clothes and dove right in before I could get more than a quick glance at a lot of abs that were quite enticing. He surfaced and tossed his hair off his forehead with a flick of his chin. It was like watching that delivery man in my brother’s porno, it was so damn sexy. Then he held out his arms to Nola and smiled at her and I was almost overcome. He liked my daughter. He was going to catch her.

  “Get your goggles,” I croaked, and smiling hugely also, she let me put them on her. “Go ahead to Luca.” She immediately leapt off the side, into his arms, with total trust that he would catch her. I swallowed and watched as they went underwater together, then popped back up, laughing. Oh, Jesus. It was making my heart just about burst.

  It took me a minute to calm back down before I was ready to get in. I was not the best swimmer in the world, or even probably in the top one billion, and I was not going to throw myself in the way Nola and Luca had done. Quickly, while their backs were to me, I yanked off my clothes and got into the water via the ladder. When I turned, Luca was fully staring at me. Awesome!

  “I’ll be in the shallow end,” I told them, and Luca swam closer too, with Nola attached to his neck. She had absolutely no fear of the water, in a way that freaked me out, because she couldn’t actually swim alone. But she was definitely safe with Luca, because he was as careful as I was with her. I walked, rolling my ankle around under the water, and I watched as they talked and swam. Luca went back and forth and held her as she kicked, and the two of them chatted together every second that her face wasn’t under the water blowing her bubbles. I picked up my feet and floated, the weight all off my a
nkle. The pool was refreshing but not cold, and it was clean, crystal clear. I didn’t stop to think once about all the gross things floating around me because there weren’t any. I swam with my head above water, watching them, my mind drifting.

  “Ready? Here comes your daughter,” Luca called. I watched with a huge smile as he swam alongside her, holding her with a hand under her tummy as she used both her arms and her legs. She was panting as I picked her up for hugs and kisses.

  “You’re such a good swimmer!” I congratulated her.

  She kissed my nose. “I’m like a fish. But Luca calls me topolina and that means ‘little mouse.’ We speak Italian. Sì.” Luca surfaced next to us and she patted him on the head.

  “That’s very impressive,” I congratulated. “Maybe you can be on the Starhurst swim team next year.” She nodded and pushed back her pink goggles.

  “Maybe,” she yawned.

  “I was on the Starhurst team,” Luca told her. “I think you would be a great addition.”

  I tried to hold Nola away so she could kick but she clung to my waist with her legs. “I can’t wait until she’s on campus. That’s why I teach at Starhurst,” I explained. “The salary would be better at a public school, but with Nola there with me, it will be pretty perfect. And you can’t beat the opportunities the students have. It will give her such a boost for her future.”

  “Do you like it?” he asked. “Do you like teaching at Starhurst? Do you like teaching, in general?”

  “Um, sure. I mean, I guess.” I had never really thought about it too much. “It’s a steady career and I have afternoons off and vacations to spend with her. It doesn’t much matter if I like it or not, right? I have to do what I think is best for Nola.”

  Luca nodded, his chin dipping under the water.

  “At first, I was planning on something different, but when I found out I was p-r-e-g-g-o, I changed paths. I was able to use a lot of the credits I’d already earned and I didn’t have to go to graduate school, like I was going to have to for the other thing. I needed to start working ASAP. I saved a lot of money, right?”