by Marly Swick
Teddy looked surprised at the mention of Lois’s name. He didn’t knock her arm off when she rested a hand on his shoulder.
The path to the student union led past the day care center where she used to leave Trina. Looking straight ahead, Giselle tugged at Teddy’s hand, dragging him as quickly as possible past the gaily painted jungle gym that dominated the small fenced-in yard. She remembered dropping off Trina there for the first time. She was so little. Giselle had steeled herself to hear heartrending wails as she walked away, but Trina was sitting in the corner sandbox with two other toddlers, poking at the sand with an orange plastic shovel, seemingly amused and content. Giselle had felt relief at first, followed by a swift descent into self-doubt. Shouldn’t a child cry and cling to her mother’s skirt? She remembered Teddy’s first day of kindergarten. How he’d thrown up in the car and then clung to the chain-link fence, screaming at her not to leave him. She had slunk away feeling like a murderer. But that was preferable to feeling so dispensable. This was like leaving your lover at the gate — a long tender embrace, the slow shuffle down the Jetway — then turning back for one last tearful look, only to see him chatting blithely to some stranger. When Dan called to ask how it had gone, she found herself fibbing. “Not too bad,” she had said, “only a few tears.”
The student union was brightly lit but deserted. Only a handful of solitary figures sitting at small tables, drinking coffee and munching hamburgers or burritos, with books lying open in front of them. She had never seen it like this before, only during the day when the lines were long and tables hard to come by amid the deafening dissonance of a hundred conversations going on at once.
“I want an ice cream cone,” Teddy announced, daring her to just say no.
“Okay.” She walked over toward the ice cream stand, eager to make amends for the broken Talkboy. She imagined his telling the therapist what she had done, his voice quivering with righteous indignation. “One chocolate cone and one small Diet Coke,” she told the young woman behind the counter, who looked vaguely familiar, as if she had been in a class with Giselle. But then, from the vantage point of age, most of the students looked alike to her. This girl was more striking than most, though, with deep-set brown eyes and glossy blunt-cut platinum hair straight out of a Vidal Sassoon commercial. Giselle immediately felt frumpy and certain that the girl could see her red-rimmed eyes through the lenses of her dark glasses. Ray•Bans, a birthday gift from Dan.
“Aren’t you Professor Trias’s wife?” the girl asked as she handed Giselle Teddy’s cone.
Giselle nodded, taken by surprise.
“I was in his Fitzgerald and Hemingway seminar. We had a party at your house, you know, for the last class.” Her face lit up. “It was a really great class.”
Teddy tugged at her purse, and Giselle handed him his ice cream with a wad of paper napkins. She could tell that the girl was about to launch into a little speech about what a prince Dan was, praise that she was in no mood to hear, so Giselle snatched her Diet Coke, mumbled a thank-you, and beat a hasty retreat.
She settled Teddy at a table where she could keep an eye on him while she used one of the pay phones next to the candy counter. She looked up AAA in the Yellow Pages. To her surprise, someone answered right away and said a tow truck should be there within twenty minutes. Then she dropped a second quarter into the slot and dialed the Beemers’ number, which she still knew by heart. Her palms were sweating. She prayed that Bill wouldn’t answer. Maybe it was unfair, pushing all the blame onto Bill, but that was how she felt. His Corvette hadn’t been around for the past several days, so she figured he was probably away. The phone rang and rang. She counted six rings and was about to hang up when Eric answered. “Beemer residence.” Like some sort of child butler.
“Hi,” she said. “Is your mother there?”
“Mom!” Eric shouted, dropping the receiver with an unceremonious clatter. “Hey, Mo-omm!” After a minute he picked up the receiver again and asked, “Who is this? She’s in the bathroom.”
Giselle almost hung up, but she knew if she did, then she would have to talk to Dan. She felt caught between a rock and a hard place, a familiar feeling these days. They couldn’t sit in the parking lot all night. “It’s Giselle,” she mumbled and was about to add that he shouldn’t disturb his mother if she was busy, but he was already shouting, “It’s Teddy’s mother!”
From the phone booth she watched Teddy licking his ice cream cone methodically to catch any drips. She tried to imagine how a stranger would see him, whether he looked like a normal nine-year-old. When she looked at him these days, she was reminded of news footage of children in refugee camps, staring at the camera with a world-weary distrust. He avoided eye contact. And when, on occasion, she would turn his face toward her, it gave her the creeps. What paramedics called “doll’s eyes,” that fixed glassy stare that signaled the end was in sight.
“Hello?” Lois sounded breathless and tentative. It occurred to Giselle that Lois might be afraid she was calling to berate her, to unleash the full force of her smoldering anger at long last.
“Hi, I was, uh, just wondering if —” A group of rowdy students jostled past her, shouting and laughing, drowning her out.
“What?” Lois shouted. “I can’t hear you.”
“I was wondering,” she began again, “if I could ask a favor. Teddy and I are at the university. Our car broke down and —”
“Of course!” Lois jumped in eagerly, before Giselle could even finish the request. “Where are you? I’ll be right there.”
“We’ll be waiting in the parking lot, but you don’t need to rush. Triple A said it would be about twenty minutes. And they tend to be optimistic.”
“It’s no problem,” Lois said. “Just give me directions.”
As Giselle told her the quickest way to get there, she thought about how Dan’s pride would never allow him to ask Lois for a favor. Giselle knew that he would rather crawl home on his hands and knees. A couple of attorneys had called them right after the accident, offering a free consultation to discuss a possible cause of action against the Beemers. Giselle had been adamant; she did not want to pursue it. A lawsuit would only spark more publicity and drag things out. For Teddy’s sake they needed to move on. What would they gain from a lawsuit anyway? But Dan was more ambivalent. It wasn’t revenge, he argued, to want them to admit responsibility. But, at her urging, he told the first lawyer no. Then when a second lawyer called a few days later, Dan couldn’t help himself. He went to his office for a consultation. When he got home, he refused to say anything about it beyond the fact that the lawyer was willing to take the case. Giselle had met this bit of news with tight-lipped silence. She prepared herself for a major battle. But, for whatever reason, he decided not to pursue it. A couple of days later when the lawyer called back, she overheard Dan telling him that he didn’t want to proceed any further. The lawyer must have tried to argue with him. After a brief silence Dan snapped, “Yes, well, but you aren’t in my shoes, are you?” and hung up. She had breathed a huge sigh of relief. Maybe they weren’t exactly in the same boat, but they were at least steering the same course. And she felt as if she’d just got her first glimpse of dry land. But now there was this book. Which he had been working on in secret, knowing damn well what her reaction would be. The full depth of the betrayal had yet to sink in fully. She supposed she was still in shock. She couldn’t believe it. She flashed on an image of him communing with Oprah. And Teddy’s new school friends saying, “Hey, I saw your step-dad on TV yesterday. What’s it feel like to shoot someone? So how come you’re not in jail?”
When she hung up, she bought Teddy a roll of Life Savers from the candy counter. She still felt guilty about the Talkboy.
“Let’s go back to the car and wait for the tow truck.” She handed him the Life Savers, which he accepted without comment. As he was busy unwrapping them, she took a quick swipe at his mouth with the wadded napkins. He frowned and ducked his head so quickly that she ended up poking him in
the eye. “Ow!” he protested in a shrill, aggrieved tone, as if she had hurt him on purpose. She glanced back at the ice cream counter to see if Dan’s former student was watching. The girl was wiping off the machines, getting ready to close up. “Okay then, do it yourself.” She handed Teddy the napkins.
As they walked across the campus to the parking lot, her stomach grumbled. Teddy snickered. She supposed she should have grabbed something to eat. Teddy kicked at stray stones. She had noted a new aggressiveness in his movements that worried her. He slammed drawers, punched the buttons on his computer, stabbed at the paper with his pencil, yanked on his clothes in the morning, crunched his cereal as if he were chewing gravel. The other night he had brushed his teeth so hard that his gums bled, whereas before, he had merely waved the brush in the general vicinity of his teeth. And Mrs. Shimono, his teacher, had sent home a note recently saying that Teddy had broken Chandra Patel’s new fountain pen. When Giselle had asked him why he’d done such a thing, he claimed it was an accident. He had just pressed down so hard, the metal point snapped off. He hadn’t meant to break it. Giselle believed he was telling the truth. Even so, she had made him write a note of apology to Chandra and give it to her along with five dollars from his own private stash in the Band-Aid box. “But it wasn’t my fault,” he’d grumbled. “You said sometimes things are nobody’s fault, remember?” He had stood there gripping the Band-Aid box, staring straight at her, waiting for a response.
“I never said that,” she lied, and walked out of his bedroom.
Sometimes she couldn’t believe what a lousy mother she was. It seemed as if, in some sick way, she derived a certain pleasure from reminding herself just how low she could go. Then, later, her conscience would bother her and she would try, unsuccessfully, to make amends. When she was kissing him good night, she had said, “It’s true that sometimes some things aren’t really anybody’s fault. But if you have it within your power to make up for it, like Chandra’s pen, then you should. Even if you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Understand?” She had smiled down at him as if he were little Timmy and she were June Lockhart. As she turned off the light, she could almost hear Lassie wagging her tail in the dark.
“It’s your fault for leaving my dad,” he’d mumbled. “If you didn’t get a divorce, we’d still be in Lincoln and I’d never of shot Trina.”
The smile died on her face. “That’s a stupid thing to say,” she snapped. “If we hadn’t got a divorce, Trina wouldn’t even have been born.”
“See?”
She’d slammed his door shut and walked away.
***
In the parking lot, while they were waiting for the tow truck, Teddy found a red Bic lighter lying on the asphalt next to a beautifully restored black GTO. She noticed something flicker out of the corner of her eye and saw that he was playing with the flame. She sighed. After the Talkboy incident she didn’t feel like getting into a hassle over the lighter. But she couldn’t very well sit by and let him incinerate himself. She had seen a terrible thing on one of the newsmagazine shows the other night. A young couple had bought a defective crib monitor that caught on fire. The baby had died and their other child, sleeping in the same room, had been badly burned. Giselle had to shut her eyes when they showed a close-up of the disfigured boy. Since then she had thought of the couple often, when she was lying in bed at night not sleeping. They had seemed genuinely close, united against a common enemy: the negligent crib monitor manufacturer. At the same time that she could not imagine how they could endure such loss, she envied them this enemy outside the gates. Someone they could blame with all their singleminded wrath. Someone they could point their finger at on national television. She was sure that it was the only thing that saved them. She sighed again, then got out of the Honda and walked over to Teddy. “Give me that, please?” she said as affably as possible.
“Why?”
“Because it’s dangerous. You know that.”
“It doesn’t even work,” he said.
“Let me see.” She held out her hand, palm up.
“I won’t light it,” he pleaded, changing his tack. “I promise.”
“I don’t know,” she said, wavering. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Teddy.” But even though she knew it wasn’t a good idea, she was about to weaken, anything to preserve peace, when he said, “You broke my Talkboy Jr.” Pissed off, she grabbed the lighter out of his hand and shoved it into her pocket.
“I hate you,” he informed her calmly.
She stuck out her tongue at him, something that used to make him laugh even when he was in a bad mood, but he didn’t crack a smile. She sighed and massaged her temples. She felt a headache coming on. There was aspirin in her purse but nowhere to get any water to take it with. She remembered the time she was sitting in the car in front of Teddy’s school, waiting for him. Trina was throwing a tantrum, shrieking in her ear, and Giselle’s head was pounding. She’d been up half the night studying for an exam. She popped two Tylenol into her mouth and then grabbed the juice bottle away from Trina, who shrieked even louder. Giselle was sitting there sucking on the plastic baby bottle, attempting to swallow the two pills, when Teddy and his friends appeared. One of the boys elbowed him in the ribs and shouted, “Look, your mom’s drinking from a baby bottle!” Teddy’s face had flushed bright red, and he’d stalked over to the car and hissed, “Don’t do that! It looks stupid.” Laughing, she had handed the bottle back to her fussing daughter, then turned to her sulking son and said, “Oh, lighten up! It’s not the end of the world.” And that evening at supper Teddy had related the whole incident to Dan, giggling so hard that he could hardly get the words out.
She sighed again and looked at her watch. The tow truck was behind schedule. Big surprise.
“There’s Lois.” Teddy pointed to the Jeep Cherokee turning into the parking lot. “Eric’s with her!” He perked up and waved.
Giselle could see that Lois was smoking. Last New Year’s Day she had made a resolution to quit, and she had. She was worried about gaining weight, but Bill had quit smoking the year before and was hounding her to quit, too. She had gone to the doctor and got a patch. On April Fool’s Day Bill had surprised her with a diamond bracelet as a reward for having kicked the habit. Giselle and Dan had been invited for dinner, and as Bill presented Lois with the velvet box, Dan and Giselle had rolled their eyes at each other behind his back while Lois oohed and ahhed and Bill went on about what a great deal he’d got on the bracelet in Bangkok.
She was glad when the tow truck rumbled into the lot right behind Lois. The awkwardness of the reunion, of sorts, was smoothed over by the sudden bustle of activity. The two boys buzzed around the tow truck driver, asking him questions while Giselle signed the charge slip and told the driver where to take the car.
While they were waiting, she turned to Lois and said, “I appreciate your coming. Dan’s teaching.” Which wasn’t true, of course, but she thought Lois must be wondering where he was.
Lois just nodded. “I’m glad to help. You must know that.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head away and called out something to Eric. Giselle noted, with some satisfaction, that Lois did not look good. Her hair was too blond and her eyes were too green, a startling emerald. Tinted contact lenses that glittered in her pale face like stoplights.
“Bill’s moving out,” she said abruptly. “He’s rented an apartment in the Marina.”
Giselle replayed the sentences in her mind, attempting to get a fix on Lois’s tone. Did she catch an undertone of resentment? Was Lois somehow blaming her for the inevitable demise of her crummy marriage? As if reading her mind, Lois said, “He blames it on you. I mean, on what happened. It makes me sick.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled. “He never could accept responsibility for anything. He’s just an overgrown child with pilot’s wings.”
Giselle didn’t know what to say. She watched as the tow truck driver, a tall blond surfer type in a faded pink Maui T-shirt, hopped into the cab of
his pickup and drove off with her old Honda trailing behind like a hooked fish. The boys ran over, and the four of them climbed into the Jeep, the two boys in the back. Giselle turned around and smiled at Teddy, to make sure he was doing okay with Eric. They were huddled over some Gameboy that was giving off little beeps. For a moment he seemed just like his old self. Then, feeling her eyes on him, he looked up at her, a wary expression on his face as his smile faded. She turned back around. A Chieftains tape was playing sprightly Irish music at full volume, too loud for conversation.
Giselle was remembering how Lois used to fuss over Trina, bringing her presents from their travels — a plaid tam from Scotland, a tiny aloha shirt from Honolulu. Lois had always wanted a daughter. Bill, of course, had wanted a boy. When Eric was born, Lois had consoled herself with the thought that their second child would be a girl. But then she’d had two miscarriages and a hysterectomy. Even though Bill wasn’t keen on the idea, Lois had been looking into the possibility of a private adoption. But now that Bill was leaving, that was that. Giselle thought it was only fair. Imagine how she’d feel if Lois and Bill had a baby girl. Maybe that was mean and irrational, but she didn’t care. After all, she was paying $130 an hour to be reassured, once a week for fifty minutes, that such irrational anger was perfectly normal.
“I’ve really missed talking to you,” Lois said. “But I understand.” She reached over and tentatively touched Giselle’s hand. “I still can’t believe it happened.” Giselle nodded. Her hand flinched involuntarily and Lois pulled hers back. She needed both hands on the wheel to make the turn onto their street.
***
The front door was open and Dan was standing there, looking out through the screen, as the Jeep pulled into the Beemers’ driveway. Giselle was surprised, although she supposed she shouldn’t have been. No doubt, he’d returned to his office and found the ripped-up letter, then hurried home to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything really crazy. Like slash his clothing and burn his books. Her stomach knotted.