Are We There Yet?

by Kathleen West

  As Julienne’s phone rang in Evelyn’s car on the night of Teddy’s suspension, Evelyn felt a stab of guilt. She wanted to break down the pantsing incident with Julienne. She wanted to strategize about Adrian’s reading. But it seemed wrong to air Alice’s difficulties before she’d even told Alice about the existence of her sister. In fact, to keep things fair, she hadn’t even told Julienne Alice’s name. “Control the process,” Evelyn told herself. “Control what you can control.”

  This had been among Evelyn’s most effective mantras for as long as she could remember. When she’d decided to leave Frank, she’d read umpteen studies on the best way to break the news to Alice. She’d made the decision to get a divorce for Alice’s benefit, after all. It wasn’t really about her own preference or convenience. While she, the adult, could handle his mood swings and unpredictability, she could see the toll it took on their daughter. She’d rehearsed her announcement over and over again until the words sounded at once calm and sincere when she delivered them to Alice. She still remembered the feel of the microsuede upholstery beneath her Saturday jeans as she delivered her speech, Alice’s cool fingers between her palms as Evelyn assured her they’d keep the house. Evelyn had timed the separation for the moment she’d saved enough to buy Frank out of their modest story-and-a-half bungalow in Mills Park, the same house she’d sold last spring in favor of a downtown Minneapolis condo. She’d moved into her new place—new life, really—right before Julienne had contacted her for the first time.

  “An older sister,” she imagined herself saying to Alice now. She’d have to tell her soon. Evelyn could feel the secret wedged between them. She anticipated Alice’s manifested anger. Her daughter had always been stoic, except in the few electric moments she hadn’t been. But then Alice would get over it, just as she had the divorce. Evelyn had kept Julienne a secret for Alice’s benefit, after all. That was what Frank had always said: Telling Alice would be selfish and pointless. For once, Evelyn had agreed with him. They hadn’t known Evelyn would ever meet Julienne. The adoption was closed, just as Alice’s had been. She and Frank had only the most basic information about Alice’s origins. Although they had told Alice she was adopted as a toddler, they also repeated as she grew that they didn’t have much additional information to share.

  When Evelyn had had so much trouble getting pregnant a second time, it felt like karma. She’d called the first pregnancy a “disaster,” after all. And then she’d sped through graduate school as if studying other people’s grief and regret were a penance for her indelible mistake. When they’d finally brought Alice home, she seemed like an absolute miracle, more than Evelyn thought she deserved after abandoning her first baby.

  And then she’d gotten a second miracle: meeting Julienne again.

  “Hey!” Julienne answered after the third or fourth ring as Evelyn drove away from Alice’s house. “How’s your daughter?” She’d texted Julienne that she was helping “A,” as Evelyn referred to her.

  “She’s despondent,” Evelyn said. “I don’t feel comfortable sharing the details, but her son got in trouble at school.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Evelyn wondered if she detected exasperation in Julienne’s tone. Evelyn delighted in the shop talk she and Julienne could employ, as they were both psychologists. When Evelyn had read that detail in Julienne’s first email, she felt a shiver up her spine. It turned out that they shared research interests as well, though Julienne had a much larger private practice, and she also facilitated nature therapy groups, a technique about which Evelyn had known virtually nothing.

  Evelyn pictured Teddy sprawled on his bed, unwilling to talk to her even though they’d always been close. “I shouldn’t tell you exactly,” Evelyn said, “but he humiliated a kid in front of his peers. I guess there’s been some bullying on his part, though I find that so hard to believe. He’s suspended for four days.”

  “Well,” Julienne said, her voice steady, “we know twelve and thirteen are prime years for experimentation with identity permanence.” Over the previous months, Evelyn had been studying Julienne’s facial expressions. She imagined her now with a slight frown, a wrinkle above her right eyebrow. “I think therapeutic intervention is indicated, don’t you?” Julienne said. “A kid who’d previously been steady and well-adjusted, no behavioral record to speak of, suddenly lands a four-day suspension for bullying? Have you noticed any signs of dysregulation?”

  Evelyn felt defensive, suddenly. Julienne didn’t know Teddy; she hadn’t seen his impish brown eyes, half-hidden beneath his wavy blond hair. This blip, as Evelyn had been thinking of it, was hardly indicative of a personality disorder.

  Evelyn’s vision flashed a bit, like a lightning strike that made the streetlights flicker. “He isn’t dysregulated.” Anger clipped her words.

  “Hey,” Julienne said, her voice softer. “I don’t know him. You do.”

  Evelyn let her shoulders drop. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” To her horror, she felt tears well. “I guess maybe I’m not ready to talk.” She’d been in so many sessions like this, where the person sitting across the coffee table, ensconced in her aging couch, started to lose control. Calm down, she told herself. “I’m overly invested,” Evelyn said. “I shouldn’t have brought this to you. I’m not ready.”

  Julienne cleared her throat.

  “What?” Evelyn felt wary.

  “Maybe it’s time,” Julienne ventured. “Like I said, I don’t know your grandson . . .” She stopped. Evelyn bit her lip. “But I’d really like to.”

  Evelyn let a silence stretch between them as she kept her eyes on the road in front of her. In a minute, she’d pass the McDonald’s she loved to take the kids to after Teddy’s soccer games. Everyone ordered caramel sundaes, but Evelyn’s was the only one with nuts.

  “Not to analyze him, obviously,” Julienne said, “but because I want to be part of the family.” Her daughter’s voice sounded thicker. Was she crying, too? “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I do want that. I’m just trying to get the timing right.” Control what you can control.

  Evelyn could hear Julienne’s breath before she spoke next, a raggedy inhale. “I think we should probably reevaluate,” Julienne said. “I thought we were headed in one direction, but it seems like we might want different things. I want to be like family. But if you can’t even tell me your other daughter’s name? I’m not sure we can get there.”

  Evelyn’s vision flashed again, the streetlights wavering in the suburban mid-darkness. “I promise you I want to get there.” She said it because it was true and also because it was the only thing to say. She slid past the McDonald’s, and on the speaker for the drive-thru Evelyn noticed some lewd graffiti in bright pink.

  Alice Sullivan

  When Patrick finally made it home that night, Alice accosted him in the mudroom. She grabbed his arm and yanked him to sit next to her on the custom storage bench she’d had built for the space. Behind her, the divider between Adrian’s and Teddy’s cubbies dug into her back. Usually she lingered in here, staring at the Schumacher Birds and Butterflies wallpaper she adored. Now, she felt borderline frantic.

  “It’s been awful,” she said.

  Patrick bent over and untied his oxford. “I’m so sorry you had to do it all alone.” He lifted a hand to the back of his neck and massaged. “Maybe—” he started, but Alice rushed on, breathless.

  “First, Miss Miller tells me that Adrian is a failure, and then I miss the Kerrigan meeting, so I’m a failure. And Teddy? Teddy’s more than a failure, he’s a . . .” She glanced over her shoulder to check for the children in the kitchen, though she knew very well they were upstairs. “He’s a criminal.” She accentuated each syllable of the word, and an image of Teddy in an orange jumpsuit flashed in her mind’s eye. She covered her mouth.

  “No.” Patrick put his arm around her and squeezed. She rested her head on his shoulder and breathed in
the sandalwood shampoo. She loved its scent a little less now that she knew that Whittaker also used it.

  “Teddy pulled Tane Lagerhead’s pants all the way down, Patrick,” Alice said, insistent. “In front of the entire seventh grade. They saw everything.” If Patrick had been in the meeting with the assistant principal that morning, he’d understand.

  She felt him shudder as he pulled her closer. “Kids are impulsive,” he said. “We’ll make him apologize.”

  Alice hoped it would be that easy. “Will you talk to him?” She pulled back, and Patrick leaned over again to untie his other shoe. “My mom didn’t even have any luck with him.”

  “Where is he?” Alice pointed toward the ceiling, indicating his room upstairs. Patrick padded through the kitchen, and Alice set his shoes into the cubby where they belonged.

  As she waited for him to return, Alice nervously scrolled her phone. But just as she’d clicked from Pinterest to NextDoor for the latest on the pink graffiti, he was back. The “rocket ships,” as Shirley MacIntosh had called them, had been so funny that morning, but now that Teddy had exposed Tane, the paintings felt ominous.

  “No luck.” Patrick shrugged.

  “Nothing?” She balled one fist and gripped her phone tighter in the other.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “He’s a kid. I did so many stupid things when I was in junior high.”

  “Like what?” Alice couldn’t remember a single story either Patrick or his parents had told her about him misbehaving as a young teen.

  “It’s a secret.” His impish smile materialized, and once again, she could see where Teddy got his charm.

  Alice rolled her eyes. “What?” she demanded.

  “Okay, look.” Patrick pulled her close, but Alice let her arms hang at her sides. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I had planned to take this to my grave, but if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll tell you now that I stole a pack of gum from the Tom Thumb on the corner up the street from my parents’ house.”

  Alice snickered. “Okay, fine,” she said as Patrick let go.

  “And I’m really sorry, hon,” he said, “but I have a million documents to review.” He pointed at the dining room table, where he set up his de facto office in the evenings. He slid back into the mudroom and grabbed his backpack.

  Alice wandered for a few minutes around the kitchen, trying to land on a task, but she couldn’t shake her restlessness. Patrick would be leaving that Sunday for a full week in Cincinnati, the first of several such weeks away. She pictured her husband eating a room service cheeseburger on a stiff hotel comforter and realized she wouldn’t be free again in the evenings until the Energy Lab case was over.

  Alice sent a text to the group chat. She wasn’t sure that Nadia and Meredith would take her up on an outing, but she felt desperate to escape the house, to distance herself from her parenting failures. “Quick drink at Cork & Cask? I’m going crazy. Promise we’ll be home by 9:30.”

  Much to her relief, they both took pity on her.

  Nadia responded first. “Always here for you,” she said. “Just let me change out of my pajama pants.” And then Meredith chimed in, affirmative as well. Alice couldn’t wait to leave. Teddy’s shuffles on the second floor, his intermittent trips to the bathroom and, once, to the kitchen, unnerved her. Thinking about him on the stage with Tane—the poor kid’s pants around his shins—it was like the Teddy she’d birthed had disappeared. She didn’t know the kid who would have done something like that, plus the textbook in the compost bin and the spaghetti in Tane’s lap. None of it seemed real, and yet her misery hung on her like the weighted blanket she draped over Aidy each night at bedtime. Alice hoped her friends knew her well enough not to think she’d failed completely at motherhood despite the day’s revelations.

  At least in the case of Aidy’s reading, there was an easy fix. Alice would start practicing with her immediately. Well, tomorrow. And, she realized with a measure of relief, she didn’t have to tell Meredith and Nadia about Adrian’s level E. Neither of them had actually been to the conference. They could think she was I or J with the rest of the second graders. Alice could limit her public failure to her preteen.

  As Alice settled at their usual high-top in the back corner of the dim restaurant, she remembered coffee with Nadia just that morning. Thirteen hours ago, her biggest concern had been the Kerrigan meeting. At the office she’d sort of salvaged that disaster with a series of sincere and confidence-inspiring texts to Bea Kerrigan and a grovelly apology to Ramona, her boss. And then, in a miraculous bright spot, she’d gotten word, finally, that the Elle Decor feature was a go. A local freelancer would shoot “before” photos of the Kerrigan project as well as one other, and then they’d also feature Alice’s own dining room. Photos of her house in one of the nation’s leading design magazines? Despite everything, Alice smiled. Ramona would have to make her partner, she thought. The feature would draw a whole new set of clients.

  Alice didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that she hadn’t actually finished her dining room yet. She had all of four weeks still, and the upgrades were just cosmetic—paint, fabrics, tablescapes, maybe a new piece of art with the perfect unexpected frame. Or, if she could work the budget and call in a scheduling favor, a custom paint job by the uber-trendy design duo she had in mind for the Kerrigan rumpus room.

  She could get it done. She had to. It was Elle Decor.

  Meredith arrived just as the server delivered the olives Alice always chose, along with a glass of sparkling rosé. If Cork & Cask had had a full liquor license, she might have ordered a shot of something.

  “How’s Teddy?” Meredith asked. Alice noticed the twinkle in her eye, a hint of excitement where Alice would have preferred sympathy. But this was Meredith. Even if she enjoyed Alice’s misfortune a little bit, she’d still have her back. She had been the one, after all, to get her reinstated at book club after Alice had gotten slightly tipsy and inadvertently insulted Lacy Cushing’s selection, The Scarlet Letter. Who chose The Scarlet Letter for a suburban moms’ book club? Alice stood by her assessment that the novel was “incomprehensible drivel,” although she regretted the fervency with which she’d declared it.

  Alice bit through the skin of an olive, stopping before she gnashed the pit. She took her time stripping it and deposited the seed as delicately as she could in the empty ramekin, trying to decide how to spin things for her closest friends. She couldn’t exactly hide the facts—Sadie and Donovan would have reported them, and besides, she’d invited Meredith and Nadia here to talk.

  “Can I tell you what happened when Nadia gets here?” Alice asked. “I’m not sure I can get through it twice.” It was true, Alice reasoned, and it bought her some time.

  “Good idea.” Meredith waved the server over and asked for her usual unoaked Chardonnay. “While we’re waiting, let me tell you about this new opportunity at school. I’m so excited.”

  Alice grabbed another olive and watched the color rise in Meredith’s cheeks. Her friend’s skin glowed in the low light, her black T-shirt looking somehow a million times more sophisticated than Alice’s own camel-colored sweater. Alice wished she’d kept on the necklace she’d worn that afternoon. Statement jewelry could save any outfit.

  “Jason Whittaker asked me to start a new discussion group as part of the parent education series.” Meredith leaned forward, her hands flat against the dark wood tabletop. “And I’m just so excited, you know? That I’m already being included in Parent Association stuff even though we just got to the junior high? I’d sort of worried that all that time I put in at Elm Creek Elementary wouldn’t mean anything now that we’ve—I mean, the kids—have moved on.”

  The server slid the wine in front of Meredith, who glanced up with a quick smile. “Any food?” the woman asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. Meredith never snacked after seven p.m.

  “That’s great!” Alice raised h
er glass to clink it with Meredith’s. “What’s the discussion group?” Somehow, Meredith always had time for these extras, even though she also worked nearly full-time at the physical therapy clinic. Meanwhile, Alice could barely put dinner on the table, or help with homework, she remembered with a surge of guilt.

  “Raising Ethical Teens. Timely, right? In this political climate?” Meredith sipped. “It’s so complicated, and there are always missteps. Like this thing with Teddy. I pitched a few ideas to the PA, and this is the one they thought filled a need.”

  Alice drank again. Raising ethical teens. She’d probably have to go to the meeting, both to support her friend and also because, well, Teddy’s behavior that day hadn’t exactly been ethical. And there had been that text she’d received that morning. “Can’t you do something about this?” People knew about Teddy’s behavior, his recurring failures.

  Before Alice had time to respond or to show Meredith the text, Nadia rushed in. Alice felt immediately better. Nadia had changed out of her pajama pants as promised, but Alice could see her University of Minnesota sweatshirt beneath her ancient North Face fleece. Nadia wouldn’t talk about ethical teens. She had her hands full at home as it was.

  “Honey.” Nadia put her arms out as she got to the table, pulling Alice to her in an awkward but fervent side hug. “I’ve been thinking about you all day. So glad you texted. Tell us everything.” She kept her arm on Alice’s shoulder as she pulled out a stool. Alice chewed two more olives as Nadia got settled.

  “Actually,” Alice said, “before I get into it, can you give me the name of Donovan’s therapist? You’re in with a good one, right?”