by Josie Brown
“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”
—Shirley MacLaine
5:27 p.m.
So, you say you think you can get my forward back on the team?” Pete ducks just in time to miss being slammed in the head by one of the many basketballs hailing down upon us as they ricochet off the school gym’s backboards.
I’m not so lucky: one wings me in the arm, knocking my purse strap off my shoulder. The contents of my purse scatter under the Red Devils’ shuffling feet. Just in time I pluck my brand-new Benefit lipstick out from under Marcus’s size-thirteen sneakers. However, my own son has pulverized my new MAC compact.
“Sorry, Mom!” yells Tanner, now in a full-tilt boogie toward the other end of the gym.
Pete is desperate to entice Jake back on the team. Since the kid went AWOL, the Devils have lost two games, both by around eight points, which just so happens to be three points lower than Jake’s average per game. Not only that, he’s always been the heart and soul of the Red Devils.
Whether his teammates still feel that way about him is debatable. According to Tanner, Jake has discovered that his quick wit can be used to be cruel as well as funny. His choice of victims has no rhyme or reason. Depending on his mood, they are geeks, freaks, or his jock buds. In fact, Tanner no longer considers Jake a friend, but an “asshole.”
Laurel still adores him. Go figure. Needless to say, it’s eating Margot alive.
“Look, I can’t promise he’ll show up at the next practice, but it’s certainly something his father wants to see happen and is willing to discuss.”
Pete nods grudgingly. He wants me to believe that he’s doing Harry the favor instead of the other way around.
To get Harry some domestic backup, I’m willing to play ball. “You know, Harry says you’re the best coach Jake has ever had.”
“Oh! Well, that kid has a lot of potential. In the right hands, he could be the next Kobe.”
“Yes, Harry agrees. He also feels you deserve a lot of credit for the big leap in the whole team’s play-off potential.” As I say this, I bat my lashes. It’s no secret that poor Pete doesn’t get much flirting at home. His wife is too busy making eyes at practically every other man in the neighborhood.
Pete shrugs, but his pinkening cheeks give him away. “Okay, I’m up for a Jake confab.”
I can’t help but feel giddy. I love matchmaking! “So, listen, are you free for coffee, say, after school drop-off tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that should work. The ’Bucks?”
I can feel my smile slip a bit. Hell, no, not Starbucks! Not with the board there, passing judgment, snickering, shaking their smartly coiffed heads in pity.
“Harry—well, I think he’d much rather go where you guys can grab a bite. Maybe pancakes or something. How about the IHOP by the expressway?”
He nods, then jerks me out of the way before I’m wiped out by another storm of balls. “Yo, Parker! Balls like that will keep you on the bench. Challenge yourself! Challenge!”
One down, one to go. Right, Coach. I’m inspired. I’m up for my next challenge. I think.
I hope. . . .
5:56 p.m.
“You’re not selling Tupperware, are you? Sorry, but we don’t believe in plastics. Too toxic. You know, PCBs and all. It’s the reason my generation will be barren.”
Paradise Heights’s only disaffected Goth girl, Sabrina Bullworth, peers out of the peephole of the Bullworths’ massive front door, which looks eerily similar to the one that welcomed the damned hotel guests in The Shining. It took Sabrina five minutes to answer my insistent gonging of the Bullworths’ version of a doorbell: chimes that sound like the ringing of Big Ben on the half hour. “No? Um, let me guess: Avon calling, right? Well, sorry, we don’t use products for which animals were mutilated, and which are sold through multilevel networks.”
The Bullworths moved into the neighborhood when Sabrina was only five. Even back then, what with her dark pigtails, large sad eyes, and deadpan countenance, she could easily have passed for Wednesday Addams. This resemblance was enhanced by her parents’ choice of a home: the oldest of the original Victorians in Paradise Heights—“because it was a steal,” her realtor mom, Bev, proudly reminds everyone.
Well, of course it was. Besides squatting on a dark, lonely street far from the center of town, it had been a stronghold of refugees from the Summer of Love, with all that implies. Even after the last tenants finally grew up and got real lives, their old crash pad stayed vacant for decades.
Whereas a systems renovation has finally been completed on the inside, apparently the Bullworths ran out of money before they were able to do any interior decoration, let alone scrape what was left of the peeling original paint off the exterior fretwork. No matter, since not much of the house can be seen through a choke-hold of bushes and vines. If none of this leaves the local Mary Kay representative quaking in her kitten heels, the fact that the property backs up to a century-old cemetery will certainly have her turning pale under her creme-to-powder foundation.
Yep, a real steal.
“Sabrina, wait! Don’t you remember me? I’m your class mother. You know, Tanner’s mom, Mrs. Harper.” As my cheeriest Mary Poppins lilt echoes through the massive foyer, I squelch an involuntary shiver. “I’m here to see your dad. Is he around?”
Sabrina opens the door just a sliver. The darkness inside is barely penetrated by the sunlight pushing its way in. She gives me a wary look. All of a sudden I realize she’s wondering if my introduction means this is in some way official school business, which perhaps puts her in the one position she and every other odd-kid-out innately hates:
Anything that might bring her odd-parents-out within gawking distance of her peers.
“No. He’s . . . out of town. Europe, I think.”
But before she has a chance to shut the door in my face, Calvin’s voice drones out through some tinny intercom: “Sabrina, please invite our guest in and send her back to my study.”
Sabrina sighs. Resigned to her fate, she yanks open the massive oak door with all the solemnity of a crypt-keeper. “He’s in the last room down the hall.”
She disappears into the indigo darkness before I can thank her.
For what, I’m sure I don’t know, since she hasn’t left me a flashlight to find my way back out.
The eerie glow that leads me to Cal’s office turns out to be from a wall of large flat-screen computer monitors. The digital centipedes crawling across each screen seem to have no rhyme or reason. Calvin doesn’t even turn around to see who has invaded his secret lair. Why should he, when there I am, larger than life (yeah, really: video is not a friend of anyone over a size four) on the far right screen?
When he finally does turn toward me, I hope he can see me better than I can see him, since he’s the one who’s looking through Coke-bottle-thick glasses. “I’m sorry, you say you’re with Sabrina’s school?”
“Huh? . . . Oh! Well, not exactly.” It takes me a second to come back into the real world, as opposed to the virtual one up on Calvin’s giant computer screen. “I was just pointing out to her that she might remember me from school. Really, I’m here to talk to you about a nonschool matter. Just a fun, friendly, neighborly gathering. Um . . . do you mind me asking: what are those things crawling across your computer screens?”
“Computer code. I helped design the government’s satellite surveillance system.” Calvin blinks twice. “And why would you want me there?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to answer, Because you’re a lonely guy, and now there are enough of you in the ’hood to be doing three-part harmony. . . .
But I come to my senses before I blurt that out. “Another couple of the Heights’s stay-at-home dads were hoping you’d join them for breakfast tomorrow. They thought you could work out carpool backup, hang out—you know, guy stuff. You all have kids around the same age, so who knows?”
Calvin thinks about this for a very long moment. I imagine he has never been asked
to join a team that didn’t involve computer code, and certainly no one ever asked him to a prom.
So, yes, I wait patiently as he enjoys his moment in the sun. As it is, the only light emanating in this, his cave, comes from several thirty-inch TFT-LCD computer monitors.
Finally he breaks the spell with a gentle smile. “Sure, okay. Getting out of here would do me some good.” Calvin follows my eyes back to the big screens. “It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say.” New friendships usually are.
Tuesday, 19 Nov., 9:18 a.m.
The true-blue roof of the International House of Pancakes glistens under a sheen of dew. Harry pulls into the spot closest to handicapped parking. I presume he’s preparing for a quick getaway in case this playdate ends up being a bust.
He turns off the engine and lets it gasp to a stop before giving me a sidelong glance. “Okay, the truth now: how bad is this going to be?”
“Personally, I like the pancakes here. The thin Swedish ones are my favorites. I think it’s the lemon zest they add to the batter.”
He sighs and steels himself to get out of the car. But as he helps me out my door, he mutters, “Glad to know. By the way, breakfast is on you.”
Frankly, it’s a small price to pay for my guilt over the board debacle. Where I went wrong was my presumption that the girls could be just friends with Harry, despite the fact that apparently he’s a live version of their Mystery Date dreamboat.
Then again, fantasies require less maintenance than friendships.
The realization that it takes a village to be a single parent dawned on Harry last week, around the same time his kids devoured the last of Colleen’s casseroles. Since then, they’ve lost a pound or two, and they’ve been grousing about the number of times they’ve had to eat his signature dish, tuna mac.
Worse yet, yesterday they were rhapsodizing out loud about their mom’s homemade beef stew. Lucky the Airedale is now the proud recipient of a six-pack of Dinty Moore as Harry, not to be outdone, attempts the impossible: to follow his wife’s grandmother’s recipe, which is written in Norwegian.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, even if that means carpooling with the neighborhood outcasts. I fully realize that this thing can break one of two ways: either kisses and giggles, or farts and merde.
I’m not making book on either.
When you place a low-priced national chain restaurant at a busy exit off one of America’s superhighways, it shouldn’t surprise you that its patrons look as if they’d be at home inside the Star Wars bar. I’m just saying that there is no genteel way to wolf down a tall stack of Butterscotch Rocks pancakes with a chaser of link sausages, is all.
We find our party in an alcove booth. Both men are studying large, glossy menus, as opposed to conversing or making eye contact. They view us warily, and immediately Harry does the ultimate ’chismo move: you know, the glad-hand-and-backslap, which is accompanied by a far-too-cheery “Coach! Cal! Been too long! Great to see you again!”
To men, is insincerity the sincerest form of flattery? Hey, I know we women fall for it, but guys do too? Go figure.
Or maybe the goal of the flatterer is to put the flatteree off his game. Pete shuffles to his feet and grumbles something that sounds like a cross between “Good morning” and “Don’t get the eggs here, they are too runny,” while Cal swallows a whole wedge of toast, as if stashing away evidence before the breakfast police come to haul him away. Unfortunately, he doesn’t take the time to wipe his greased fingers before Harry pumps what little life there is from them.
The look of doom on Harry’s face is priceless.
The waitress is hovering the second we sit down. She has us pegged as the biggest tippers in the group. I guess that’s because Pete has only ordered tea, and Cal refuses to take the bait and stare at her breasts. Since now Harry expects me to order the Swedish pancakes, I do, along with coffee and a side of bacon, under the assumption that I’ll seem more like one of the boys.
That illusion is blown to smithereens when Harry orders a typical Master of the Universe breakfast: a bowl of fruit.
That’s it.
Oh yeah, and an ice water.
Great. Now with my “hearty breakfast,” I feel like a refugee from the palace of Jabba the Hutt, particularly with Calvin, he of the amazing toast-vanishing act, sitting at my side.
The men sit in silence for almost five minutes before Pete finally breaks the ice. “So, when is Jake coming back to the team?” Obviously, he is not one for beating around the bush.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Harry stares into his glass of water as if searching for the answer in the sole crystalline ice cube floating in it. “Truth is, I didn’t know he was skipping practices.”
“Since that game with Bohemian Grove, in fact,” Pete murmurs absentmindedly.
Harry is staring at Pete, but it’s so hostile that it stops the waitress from refilling our blueberry syrup pitcher. That’s okay. I’m not a fan of the blue stuff anyway. “I don’t get it. You’re his coach! Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me?”
Pete glares back. “I did call. I called the only number I had. Your wife’s cell.”
Harry closes his eyes in dread. I know what he is thinking: that this is just one more thing DeeDee can use against him in court.
This is not going at all like I’d planned. Sure, I expected some male posturing, but nothing like this. I use a tried-and-true trick learned in my years of mothering three competitive siblings:
Focus all parties on a joint goal.
“You see? This is just what I’m talking about: communication. I’ll just bet that, among the four of us, we can come up with a way to ensure the safety of Jake and all of our kids.” I look helplessly at Calvin.
He blinks twice, then takes a deep breath and goes for it. “You know, it’s simpler than one might think: satellite surveillance for the whole neighborhood.”
That catches Pete’s attention. “How would that work?”
“It would take some doing, but that’s just a matter of plotting coordinates and syncing them to video satellites already in use.”
Harry looks up, impressed. “How do you know all this?”
Calvin studies his eggs modestly. “I’ve consulted with the Feds on satellite security issues. I’m retired now. Ideally, we’d create a secure zone through and around Paradise Heights; you know, so that we can stop break-ins and the like before they happen.” He looks over at Harry. “Or help our kids, before they get into trouble.”
Harry downs his water in one gulp. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying, we can’t be everywhere we need to be all the time. And . . . well, my son, Duke, gets picked on a lot. If he gets in trouble, this is one way I can be of some help.”
Harry fidgets with his fork. He’s now well aware of Jake’s new form of acting out. I can just imagine him wondering, Is he talking about Jake?
Calvin turns and stares at a guy who’s just poured a whole pitcher of syrup over his French toast. “In fact, I suggested to the Paradise Heights Women’s League board that they introduce a measure to the city council so that this surveillance system can be added as an amenity for the town. The price is negligible, really, when compared with the security benefits. But those women didn’t think it was important enough.”
“Really?” I put down my coffee cup. “Because, personally, this is something I would have supported, and I’m on the board. Who turned it down, exactly?”
Cal shrugs. “The bitchy one.”
Harry laughs. “Well, that could be any one of them. Oh, um, present company excluded.” He winks at me.
“No, not the catty one. And not the schizoid, either. And not the one who thinks she’s hot shit on the tennis court but can never make her first serve. And the one who still breast-feeds, she’s harmless, anyone can see that. It was the really, really bitchy one.”
“Margot,” Pete and Harry say in unison. They look at e
ach other and snicker in solidarity. Suddenly they are long-lost brothers.
And Cal—well, he’s the strange cousin with a few screws loose. But family is family, right?
Especially when you’ve all been abandoned in one fashion or another by the women in your lives.
Pete looks at Cal, as if seeing him for the very first time. Which, I’m guessing, is not far from being the case, since his son isn’t on Pete’s team. “Hey, so this SATCOM thing. How long would it take before it was up and running?”
Cal thinks for a moment. “Maybe a week. That includes the beta testing period, of course. But the whole ’hood would be covered, from every angle. And its zoom capability would be awesome! Seriously, the system can pick a gnat off an elephant’s ass.” Cal is enjoying the admiration of his new BFFs.
I know this should spook me, but instead I’m elated. It’s the answer to every tween parent’s dream. I think of all the times I’ve called Tanner to ask what he’s up to and gotten a mumbled “nothing” through the wail of sirens.
I turn to Calvin. “I’m still trying to figure out why the league was so against it. Are there any legal issues with personal privacy?”
“There aren’t any,” says Harry. “Surveillance via webcams is used in both public and private buildings, and in communities all over the country. Not to mention on public streets. This just takes it to another level.”
“Man, I could get behind that!” Pete beams, just thinking of the possibilities for his neighborhood watch program. “No more dealing with volunteers who flake, or who fall asleep on the job. Too bad that idiotic city council is a social club. Just a bunch of hobbyist deadbeats who kowtow to that pack of witches—”
“Why is the league board’s approval necessary, anyway?” Harry’s question stops the other guys dead in their tracks.
“It’s a symbiotic relationship, sort of like the alligator and the scorpion,” I explain. “The board lobbies for the changes it sees fit to support, but the council has to vote them into law. And because it’s easier to just put up and shut up than to have the board make your life miserable—”
“By dissing you at all the town’s social functions,” says Cal.