The One I'm With

by Jamie Bennett

  It was still really cold outside, and a little rain had started to fall. I hurried through the parking lot, too.

  “Lanie!” I stopped, because Jolie had yelled really loud, in her teacher-on-the-playground voice. “What the hell? Why did you just run out of there?” She stopped next to my car, huffing. “God, we were living out my fantasy, and you left! We were drinking in a bar, with no children, surrounded by hot men.”

  “Sorry. I just wanted to go.” I swallowed and decided I wasn’t going to act like a jerk. “Your fantasy is drinking in a bar without kids? How often are you in a bar with children, anyway? If that’s your best fantasy, it’s weak.”

  “In my best one, my ex is also being burned at the stake outside of the bar. Seriously, why did you take off like that?”

  I unlocked the car doors to get us out of the rain and we hopped in. I hesitated for a moment, then said, “I heard the guy next to you, Eoin, call me one of the nicknames they used for me in high school. I just don’t want to hear it anymore.”

  “Lame-y?” she asked.

  “Something like that.” Or something else, that indicated I was loose and readily available. I swiped at a spider web in the corner of the windshield. “That was one of the things they called me.”

  “I wish I’d had a nickname in high school. It seemed like everybody did, but not me. It meant you belonged, right?” she asked me.

  “Not so much. They made fun of me, a lot. Isn’t that what you were talking about with those guys?”

  “No, they were saying how different you seem, how different you look. It wasn’t anything bad,” she told me. “I wouldn’t have sat there and laughed if they were being rude about you.”

  Yeah, that made more sense. Jolie and I had gotten to be friends since I had started teaching at Starhurst.

  “High school sucked for you, too?” she asked.

  “Totally.”

  She sighed. “The best thing about getting older is being able to tell people to fuck off and not having to worry about going to the principal’s office.”

  “I wouldn’t try it at work, though. I think you may end up having a little sit-down with Shirley,” I offered, and Jolie laughed.

  “I should get home. Do you have any idea what you have to pay babysitters now? She makes as much as I do,” she told me, and I directed the car to her house to drop her off.

  My phone rang while I was driving home, and I saw that I had a message when I pulled up to a stop. It was from a 917-area code number that I didn’t know and I hit play.

  “Lanie, this is Brooks. Can you call me when you get in? Tonight, if possible.”

  I listened to it three more times and thought about calling him. Instead, I took Maisie out for a walk around the yard, not wanting to venture into the trails in the hills at night where she would be prime mountain lion bait. Then I sat on my loveseat and thought about Christmas gifts for a while, made a list, and ordered some. It was right around the corner and my mom was always so hard to buy for. I thought more, working on my tablet and avoiding my phone. Maybe a necklace. No, she hated my taste in jewelry, and also in clothes, so that idea was out also. I thought back to when I had been fourteen and presented her with a bowl that I had made in the same Ceramics class I had taken with Luca. Remembering the look on her face (pure horror) as she studied it made me smile now.

  I felt like I couldn’t wait any longer because I was dying to call Brooks. At the same time, I really, really didn’t want to and the idea of doing it made me so nervous that I felt a little sick. My stomach warred with my heart as I picked up my phone.

  “Lanie?” he answered. “Hi there. Thanks for calling me back.”

  “Sure.” There was a weird pause. “Um, what’s going on? Did you need something?”

  “Are you free for dinner tomorrow? I’m going back to New York on Wednesday, but I’d like to see you before I go.”

  “Tomorrow?” I paused, as if I had to look through my packed calendar to decide if I could spare the time to see him. My heart pounded. “Yes, tomorrow night would work for me.” I was inordinately proud of how cool I had become! Brooks was asking me out and I was acting just like…oh, God. Brooks was asking me out. I started to get nauseated again and the fear-puke wasn’t going to be far behind.

  “Great,” Brooks said. “Why don’t I come by—”

  “No, I have a meeting with parents that will run late,” I interrupted him. “I can meet you, that would be better.” Better for me not to be trapped in the car with him if things were weird—if I was weird—and I really did have a meeting. We settled on a place and time and hung up, and I looked at the phone in my hand for a long, long time. Then I added Brooks to my address book. Just in case he ever contacted me again, his name would come up and I would be able to see it on my screen.

  ∞

  I took another sip of water. A large one.

  “You’re saying that something is wrong with my child?” Coco von Schaffgotsch, née Hadley, demanded. “My precious, wonderful child?”

  I wanted to vomit, and it wasn’t all fear puke this time. This woman was absolutely the limit. I remembered the morning drop-offs when she had physically removed her precious child’s hands from her body and walked away, already doing something on her phone while Felix wailed and I tried to comfort him.

  I remembered the time that she hadn’t picked him up from school when the nanny had a doctor’s appointment. Kindergarten dismissal conflicted with the hot yoga class that Coco hadn’t wanted to forgo and oops, she forgot to mention it to the school. So Felix had waited with me, asking where his mom was while all the other children left, then had to go (wailing again) to aftercare.

  Then there were the two permission slips that Coco had never signed and I’d had to chase after her as she sped away in her car in order to get her name on them, and then she forgot to give him bag lunches for those field trips and I’d had to run to the school cafeteria and find something, anything, for Felix to eat.

  I even thought about the Friday take-home folder that returned to class each Monday still full of the last week’s work, never having left his backpack. I had learned to skirt Coco and go straight to the nanny whenever I could because Felix was so low on his mother’s list of priorities. And now he was precious and wonderful?

  “We are not saying that there’s anything wrong with Felix. Not at all,” my boss Shirley told her smoothly. “What we’re saying is that Felix is having some difficult episodes in the classroom and we’d like your help to ease the way for him. For example, last Thursday—”

  “I think the larger problem is his relationship with his teacher,” Coco said, turning her gaze on me. “Felix tells me that he’s afraid of her.”

  “What?” I asked. “No, Coco, Felix isn’t afraid of me. Just the other day, when we were working on the letter L, he told me that he loves me.”

  Coco flushed and glared at me, practically shooting poison out of her eyes. I looked away. That hadn’t been the right thing to say.

  “I haven’t seen any evidence that he’s fearful of Lanie, either,” the school counselor, Jacqui, put in. “Mrs. von Schaffgotsch, I know it’s hard for you to hear that your son is experiencing some difficulties in his first year of school. I want to assure you that many children do. We need to work together—”

  “I don’t think that Felix is having any difficulties in school,” Coco announced, shaking her head, her pretty hair bouncing a little. She indicated me with a hand laden with a gigantic ruby solitaire. “If there’s a problem, it’s either because she’s not a qualified teacher, or she’s making things up. I know Lay—Lanie March quite well and there are a few things that I want to share.” She smiled at me, opened her mouth, and drew in a breath, and I knew what was going to come out: everything she had spread about me when we were in high school. I was actually amazed she had kept it in so long.

  “Mrs. von Schaffgotsch, the issue here is not with Ms. March or her qualifications. I have also been a witness to some of the beha
vioral problems that Felix has exhibited in class, unrelated to his relationship with his teacher. Let me give you some specific examples,” Shirley said quickly. Before Coco could speak again, Shirley started listing some of the times that she personally had seen Felix’s behavior going totally off the rails. But she phrased it in a much more professional, child-centered way than “your kid went bat shit.” And I had to hand it to her, she didn’t let Coco have the floor again until it was clear that the school’s position was that Felix’s behavior would need to improve, and that we expected both Coco and her husband to work with us to get his little butt straightened out. Again, expressed much better.

  Coco’s cheeks were flaming and her eyes sparkled in anger. God, she was so pretty. She stood up and tugged on the fitted down jacket that stopped at her waist to show off her butt in the stretch pants. “I have to get to my barre class. I can’t be late for that,” she told us scornfully. She turned to go.

  “Don’t forget that you need to pick up Felix. He’s in aftercare,” I blurted out, and she quickly turned her poison-shooting eyes at me, her glossy hair tossing.

  Coco drew herself up and tilted her chin in the air. “I love my son more than life itself,” she announced. With those dramatic words, she left Shirley’s office, doing the butt-waggle walk. Through the one-way glass window to the courtyard, we watched her stop just outside the door and pull out her phone. She typed for a while, scrolled a little, then put it to her ear, smiling. She swung her bag over her shoulder and waggled off in the direction of the parking lot, chatting away. It was the opposite direction from the aftercare room.

  Shirley picked up her walkie-talkie and let the security guard at the front gate know that he would have to remind Mrs. von Schaffgotsch that her son was waiting for her in aftercare. “Let’s process a little before we regroup and discuss our next steps,” Shirley told me and the counselor, who looked skyward and shook her head.

  Jacqui followed me back to my classroom. “You’ve got a real live one there,” she told me. “I’m guessing that this family won’t get their renewal contract in February. I’ve seen this story before, and it never works out well for the kid.”

  “Poor Felix,” I said.

  “Poor you, because you’re going to have to deal with that woman. Remember to copy Shirley on any communication you have with her, and if you have to talk to her about something face to face, call me and I’ll come down.” Jacqui smiled at me. “Just seven more months!”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I can handle her.” My voice didn’t sound very assured. Jacqui waved and clicked off in her tall boots back to the counselors’ offices.

  I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the makeup bag I had stashed in there earlier. I played with my hair a little, trying to replicate how my hairdresser made it look both messy yet also styled at the same time. I had thought it was fine in the morning but “messy yet stylish” had turned into “rat’s nest deluxe” and a ponytail was seeming like the best option. I gathered up my brown curls in my fist. As my mom had said the night of her party, now we wouldn’t have to see it as much. Then I turned to fix my face.

  As a kid I had spent hours watching my mom and her beauty aides, the hair and makeup people that she called in from time to time. My mom was awesome at doing her own look, too. Right now, I drew on all the lessons I had learned, because I needed help. I looked pale and tired after a long, kindergarten day, so I put on blush while smiling so I could highlight the apples of my cheeks. I didn’t like eyeliner, so I wiggled the mascara brush back and forth at the base of my lashes before I drew it out. I studied the effect. Not bad, I would do.

  Still, though, I procrastinated, looking at the various tubes of lip gloss I had brought, arranging them on my desk, dark to light, all the different sample shades from my mom’s upcoming “Napa Valley Summer” makeup collection. I wanted to make sure to leave enough time so that Coco would be long gone (hopefully with her son) before I made my exit. I was so nervous about meeting Brooks, I was having a hard time making that exit, anyway. But finally, I forced myself to get up, lock the classroom door, and go.

  I walked by the aftercare room to look for Felix, but only three bigger kids were busy doing homework at the desks, so I was happy to see that either Coco had gotten him or the nanny had stepped in. Then I made my increasingly reluctant feet head down to the parking lot to get into my dark car. There was a spiderweb on the gearshift and I swiped it away with a napkin. No more spiders.

  As I drove out of the staff parking lot, I thought about seeing Brooks and how this time would go better. I imagined myself walking confidently into the restaurant, wearing…I thought a little. Not what I had on currently. No, I would be wearing Ava’s red cocktail dress from my mom’s party, the one with the flower on the shoulder. But it looked even better on me, and my hair was sleek and flowing, like Coco’s. And red nails, definitely. Wow, in my head, I looked really awesome! Brooks saw me and smiled and there was that dimple. I drove the rest of the way to the restaurant thinking just about that, that one tiny feature on his face that a person could stare at for hours. I would try not to do that over dinner.

  He was already seated when I got to the restaurant. I saw him sipping a beer at a table by himself.

  “Can I help you?” the hostess asked. She and her friend at the podium smiled at me.

  “I’m meeting someone,” I told them, and now their eyes got bigger as I ducked behind some large plants and a coat rack to spy on Brooks.

  “Can I have your name please?” one of them asked in a louder voice.

  I straightened up and tugged on my dress. “I’m meeting the guy over there.” I ran my hand over my hair kind of convulsively and actively did not clench my jaw as we walked to the table. Brooks stood up and smiled, just like in my daydream.

  The hostess stopped in her tracks and muttered, “Wow.” It was pretty life-changing, when he smiled like that, the dimple and all. Plus, when he was looking right at you, you kind of got that feeling like going upside-down on a roller coaster.

  Brooks leaned over and kissed my cheek before I sat down. “I’m glad you could come, Lanie. Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Sure,” I nodded, clinging to his arms briefly and trying not to mash my face into his. “I’m glad we could see each other before you leave,” I lied through my teeth. I did want to see him, all the time, but it was also just so excruciating. I checked around the other tables a little to see if there was anyone else I knew nearby. It looked like the coast was clear. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “How was your day? What was your meeting about, that you had to stay so late at school?” he asked instead. He waited, like he was actually interested.

  I ended up telling him about Felix, and about Coco, not using their names and changing a few details so it wasn’t obvious who I was talking about. “I just feel so, so sorry for him,” I told Brooks. “He acts so terrible in class, and is disruptive to the point that even the other kids get mad at him, but he’s just desperate for attention and love. It’s awful to watch,” I explained. “It’s like he’s starting off life with things stacked against him.”

  “Except that he’s coming from what I assume is a very wealthy family, with resources to help him, right?” Brooks asked. “And you said he has a nanny who loves him. That’s a lot more than a lot of kids have.”

  “Right.” I frowned unhappily. “But he’s the one I’m seeing every day in my class, the one who’s my responsibility. I wish I could do something more. Talking to his awful mother isn’t going to help. She had forgotten about him by the time she got to her car in the parking lot after the meeting!”

  We talked a little more about my job and my other students, and then I ventured to ask about his reason for coming to California: starting a new company, maybe with funding from his grandmother.

  “Did things, um, work out with Verity? Was she able to give you a loan?” I asked carefully, and I knew that it hadn’t worked out by the look on his face. “I’m
sorry,” I said immediately. “What’s your next step?”

  “Back to New York tomorrow. Then I’ll figure out how I’m going to get this off the ground without my family’s help. How most people do things. It’s better to do it that way, even though it will be harder.” He stopped, frowning. “All my dad’s life, my grandmother controlled him like he was her marionette. And despite her control, he couldn’t ever do anything right anyway, as far as she was concerned. No matter how hard he worked, she never, never would have let him take over Wolfe Industries. She’s still doing that with everyone in the family. My dad left us an inheritance, but she convinced him to do it in a way that still lets her keep a hand in it. Strings. Always strings. I don’t want any more strings. I don’t want to be under her control.”

  “You’ll get your trust when you turn thirty, string-free,” I encouraged him. “It’s only two more years.”

  “Or sooner, if I get married.” He smiled. “Are you available?”

  It was absolutely ridiculous that my heart almost stopped. Just like my first kiss, my first marriage proposal was from Brooks (because I was going to count this one as my first proposal for sure). But just like our kiss, it was only a joke.

  “Sorry, I won’t be able to marry you. I’m devoting my life to my dog,” I answered, and he laughed. I breathed out, relaxing. “What about you? Aren’t you seeing anyone?” I asked him. I knew he had been, from his mom. Well, from overhearing part of a conversation she had with my mom. But it had sounded like things had been heading south with that woman. I crossed my fingers under the table and then mentally shook myself. Why would I be hoping that he had broken up with his girlfriend? I wanted him to be happy. And as if I had a chance…I uncrossed my fingers. Then I crossed them again.

  “No, there’s no one,” he told me.

  It didn’t seem to disturb him. I wiggled my fingers.

  We ate—well, Brooks ate, but at first I was too fear-pukey. I relaxed as the night went on and we talked more. It was Brooks, and I had known him forever. We had a lifetime, practically, of memories that eased the way between us once I stopped overthinking everything. Not all of the memories were bad, either (like, for example, when I had shut the car door on my uniform skirt in ninth grade and my nanny had driven away, dragging me in the parking lot while I shrieked and Brooks ran over to save me). Instead, we talked about our vacations together when we had been kids and other fun things, no near-death experiences at all. I had a good time with him and it made me also remember why I had liked him so much. He was easy to be around, cool to talk to, smart and witty and interesting. I realized I had been smiling a lot when my jaw started to hurt, and not from grinding my teeth.