Are We There Yet?

by Kathleen West

  One of the bully indicators in the article was if a kid’s friends had “aggressive tendencies.” Alice remembered Landon Severson’s leering smile at Teddy through the office glass, the admiring way he’d called Teddy a “clown.” She pictured the yellow card the ref had held in Teddy’s face at a soccer tournament last summer. Did those things count as aggressive? Alice had started to feel ill by the time she got to the section in the article on bad parenting. If you had “a bad relationship” with your child, that might be a sign he was a bully, she had read. She ran past the playground at the local park, the same place she’d spent hours watching Teddy on the slide and pushing him on the swings. The park board or the porta-potty company, she noticed, had painted over the graffiti. Hopefully whoever was responsible for the tagging would be deterred by the quick cleanup, although she did catch one more “rocket ship” on a trash can at the trailhead.

  Before this week, Alice would have said her relationship with Teddy was good, but she couldn’t exactly remember the last time they’d spent time together, just the two of them. When Teddy had been little, they’d laughed over board games and silly YouTube videos. Now, Teddy grunted through dinner and spent his free time on the Xbox and buried in his phone. Before last week, she’d assumed that was normal for a twelve-year-old.

  Were Meredith’s and Nadia’s relationships with their kids much better? She thought of the Instagram photos Meredith had posted of Sadie’s last synchronized skating competition. The final photo in the series showed Sadie holding up a trophy, her glitter-adorned face peeking out from behind its wide base. Alice had frowned at Sadie’s exaggerated makeup. Was that sort of veneer healthy for a tween girl? That much eyeliner? Did Sadie know Meredith loved her just as she was, without any adornment? Alice wouldn’t let Adrian wear makeup, she thought, until much later than seventh grade.

  A text buzzed in, and Alice looked at her Apple Watch. Nadia had written, “How’s it going over there? Need another check-in?”

  Alice raced on, heading for the same dirt trail she usually power-walked with her friends on Sunday mornings. Did Nadia, Alice wondered, spend time googling her insufficient parenting? When Donovan had the most minor upswings, Nadia amplified the gains. During one of their September power walks, Nadia had bragged that he’d made it six days without a visit to Jason Whittaker’s office.

  “That’s great,” Alice had cooed, while at the same time brainstorming ways to inquire about Donovan’s meds and perhaps day-treatment options. Was it really fair, after all, to ask other kids to navigate Donovan’s erratic behaviors?

  Nadia had peeled off on that walk after an SOS text came in from her husband, Ajay. “Meltdown.” Nadia had taken off in a run toward her car.

  Teddy and Sadie, by contrast, had pretty much left their meltdowns behind in preschool. Alice had turned her head that day to watch Nadia jog away. “Shouldn’t he be more under control by now?” she’d asked Meredith when their friend was out of earshot.

  Meredith had shaken her head, the wide brim of her hat almost bonking Alice’s forehead. “I know,” she’d agreed. “And since Nadia works from home, doesn’t she have more time to, like, process with him?” They’d motored past a sluggish-looking set of new parents, a tiny baby strapped in an Ergo to the dad’s chest. Alice had flashed a knowing smile. It hadn’t been so long ago that she’d pushed Adrian on these walks with her friends, struggling to keep up with Meredith’s punishing pace.

  “Maybe she’s not consistent with her consequences?” Alice had said. “Not following through can really torpedo an entire discipline system.”

  Meredith had nodded. “That’s Thinking Mother 101.”

  Now, a light breeze rustled through the foliage as Alice ran to the lake path, her breath already ragged. Alice decided she’d hit the hills hard. Her legs tensed, anticipating the effort as she charged up the first one. She wondered if Meredith and Nadia ever talked about her when she wasn’t there. Had they seen Teddy’s problems coming and just never told her? Maybe on the days when she’d been the one to peel off early for a soccer game or to take over for Patrick, who’d had to work, Nadia and Meredith had remarked on her laissez-faire failures. Maybe she’d become aware of her obvious deficiencies only when Jason Whittaker had thrown them in her face. Alice’s heart pounded and, finally, the intensity of her effort distracted her from her thoughts. All she could do was swing her arms and put one foot in front of the other.

  When she got home, she grabbed a warm Coke from the secret stash she kept in an unmarked basket in the mudroom and texted Nadia back. “Thanks,” she began. “I think things will be okay, but I’m always up for a coffee or a glass of wine.” She searched for the right “cheers” GIF, Leo in Gatsby raising his champagne, just to be clear that she wasn’t overly worried. There was a vast difference between Teddy, who’d just had the one trip to Whittaker’s office, and Donovan, who was such a frequent flyer.

  Alice toggled to her email. She’d been holding her breath all day for an update from Elle Decor. Instead, she had a notification from NextDoor. She’d replaced that yard sign on her way home the other day. The ruined Ramona Design one still lay in the trunk of her car. As far as she knew, she’d hidden the graffiti before it had made the app. She opened the latest digest, which featured a lead story about an owl sighting in Elm Creek Park, where she’d just run. Next came a rant about too-fast driving on Appletree Road. Alice rolled her eyes and glanced at the comments. If you bought a house on the throughway, you had to expect some traffic. She sipped her Coke and felt calmer, grateful for the endorphin rush of the hard workout.

  And then she gasped at the last item from NextDoor: a pixilated photo of Teddy and Weasley, the two of them stopped on a walk. Weasley crouched in that comical way of dogs doing their business.

  “For some reason, this kid is home on a school day,” Shirley MacIntosh had written. “And he left dog poop right on the boulevard. Unacceptable!!! Clean up after your animals!!! It’s probably kids like this who are responsible for that vile new graffiti tag, too, don’t you think?!!?! And YES, I read your many comments about it not being a rocket ship.”

  Alice would have laughed if her face hadn’t burned with embarrassment. Lots of people used NextDoor. Alice even regularly found clients on the app after someone queried the neighborhood about freshening a room or choosing a paint color. Many users would recognize Teddy and Weasley. Alice didn’t need to be identified as responsible for dog waste. And the graffiti? That couldn’t be Teddy. Alice had studied the defaced yard sign. The tag was drawn with some kind of paint marker, and she didn’t have any of those in her garage workspace.

  Alice scrolled down on NextDoor and her nausea returned. Agnes Godfrey, from whose lawn Patrick had extracted many a sports ball over the years, had left a comment on the dog post. “That kid is Teddy Sullivan on Stable Creek Pass. I’m assuming he’s gotten himself in trouble because he’s been home from school these last three days, and he doesn’t look sick.”

  Fuck you, Agnes, Alice thought. She felt inclined to leave a countercomment, but instead she texted Meredith. Meredith would come to her defense. Alice was sure she could defuse the whole thing with some pithy remark about the fleeting nature of youth.

  “Can you come to my rescue on NextDoor?” Alice typed. “Our uptight neighbors are threatening to tar and feather Teddy for leaving Weasley’s business on the wrong lawn.” She hoped that even though Meredith strongly believed in the civic responsibility of picking up dog waste, in this case, she’d do Alice a solid.

  Teddy Sullivan

  Teddy had been thrilled that morning when his mom decided to leave him alone. He’d even snuck in a little ESPN, grateful that cable didn’t rely on the Wi-Fi she had disabled. But by the time his mom had come back and then left again on a run at noon, he was almost bored enough to start reading. He had even eyed his boxed set of illustrated Harry Potter books on the shelf above his desk and was about to grab Prisoner of Az
kaban when she burst in without knocking.

  Teddy sat up. His mom was shouting something about dog poop, her voice high-pitched and harsh. He occasionally heard this tone from the sidelines of a tight soccer game, a shrillness that made his face hurt. Now, she kept repeating “Weasley,” which had prompted their cockapoo to appear in Teddy’s room, jumping excitedly, his ears level with the side of the bed on each bounce. Teddy tried to turn away from both his mom and the dog, but Alice grabbed his shoulder. “God,” he said. “Can you just give me a minute?”

  “It’s on the app!” she yelled. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Chill.”

  She dropped his shoulder and went silent.

  Teddy held his breath. He’d told his mother to “chill” once before, and he’d ended up with a two-day Xbox ban.

  “Chill?!” Alice yelled, and Teddy moved one hand from his face to his ear, blocking her volume.

  Jesus, he thought again.

  “Get your ass out of bed,” she said, her tone cold, the shrillness replaced with fury. He startled as she slammed the door, leaving him alone again inside.

  Teddy rolled onto his back and blinked at the U.S. Soccer Team poster he and his dad had stuck to his ceiling. His mom had insisted they use this putty stuff to hang it. She’d spent, like, an entire weekend scraping off the popcorn ceiling two summers ago. But the poster kept falling, so his dad had added some double-sided tape. “Our secret,” he’d said, offering a fist bump.

  As he lay there, Teddy tried to figure out what exactly he’d done to get in this new round of trouble. Something about the dog. But he hadn’t even done anything related to the dog. He’d walked Weasley each time she’d asked, happy to get out of the house. Although the walks weren’t fun, they were something different. It was the same with the yelling, Teddy realized. It was unpleasant to get screamed at, but at least it provided a break from the utter boredom. He wasn’t allowed Internet or phone while he was suspended, except to access the school’s portal. He finished all of the assignments within an hour each day. Instead of relaxing at home, he knew he was missing everything at school and online with all of his friends.

  And besides that, his mom kept trying to “fix” him. She left her stupid parenting books upside down and open, marking her pages. She appeared in his room and repeated lines he knew she must have read in these books, their covers featuring smiling parents and their well-adjusted teens. Teddy and his mom had looked exactly like one of these pairs on last year’s holiday card. She still had it stuck to their fridge. And now she’d basically sworn at him and slammed his door. Would they even send out a Christmas card this year?

  “Get down here!” his mother yelled from the kitchen. Teddy wished she’d leave again—go back to the office or for another run.

  When he got downstairs, his stomach grumbling, she shoved her phone in his face. It was a picture of Weasley taking a dump. “What the hell is that?” Teddy asked.

  “Don’t say ‘hell,’” his mother said.

  Teddy turned up his palms. “You just told me to get my ass out of bed, but I’m not allowed to say ‘hell’?”

  She grabbed a Coke from the countertop and took a long swallow. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “We have Coke?” Teddy asked.

  His mom slammed the can back on the counter. “Not for you.” She looked just like Adrian then, so much that he almost laughed—Adrian refusing to share a Calico Critter. “And why would you leave Weasley’s poop in someone else’s yard?”

  “I ran out of bags,” Teddy said. Chill. He could feel his mother’s anger deflating a bit. He was telling the truth. Sometimes you just didn’t have an extra bag. It had happened to his mom, too. He knew it. “Someone took a picture of that and posted it online?” Teddy asked.

  “People post all kinds of stuff online.” His mom untied the running jacket she had around her waist and put it on. “You can’t do stuff like that, especially when you’re already in trouble. People are just looking for ways to make you seem like a bad person.”

  Teddy’s arms felt heavy at his sides. “I’m not a bad person,” he said. “What are you even talking about?”

  “I know you’re not a bad person.” She said it, but she wouldn’t look at him. Instead, she stared into the backyard. Aidy’s swing swayed in the breeze out there, and yellow leaves covered the ground all around it. Probably, later, Teddy realized, one of his parents would make him start raking. “Do you know anything about that pink graffiti we saw?”

  “The dicks?” Teddy remembered them from the porta-potty and the neighbor’s lawn sign. “That’s hilarious.”

  “I’m going to take a walk,” his mom said suddenly. “I’ll bring Weasley and the extra bags.”

  “Didn’t you just go running?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t take the dog.” She just wants to get away from me. Teddy swallowed. He watched her shuffle back out through the mudroom and saw that she’d left her work bag on the bench. A minute later, she passed Aidy’s swing, her shoulders rounded, her shoes kicking up the leaves. As soon as she let the back gate slam behind her, he went to the mudroom himself and shoved his hands into her bag, feeling for his phone. Finally, he found it in a pouch with a bunch of random gift cards.

  He felt a tiny bit guilty for going behind his mom’s back, but he had to know what was happening at school before he returned the next day. He grabbed a charger from the junk drawer in the kitchen island and headed for the upstairs bathroom. He planned to stash the phone under the sink behind the extra rolls of toilet paper if she came back too quickly. His fingers shook a little as he plugged it in and waited for it to power up.

  And then suddenly his screen filled with notifications. He dismissed a bunch from Instagram and Clash of Clans, and then he opened Snapchat. The first message was from McCoy. In his pic, McCoy’s eyes bugged out. “DUDE,” he’d written as the caption. “A stuffed OTTER?” And that was when Teddy started to panic.

  His stomach lurched. He pictured the soft toy he kept under his pillow, shoved in his pillowcase whenever he had a friend over. It was cute, with tiny plastic eyes that Teddy liked to run his thumb over as he went to sleep. On the tail, the fur was almost totally worn, the fabric like a web where the fuzziness used to be.

  But how did McCoy know about the otter?

  “What otter?” Teddy messaged back, one eyebrow raised in his selfie.

  McCoy’s next photo was just his forehead, but the message said it all: “Tane made an Instagram live. #TeamTane is blowin UP.”

  Teddy gazed at the closed bathroom door. He listened for his mother. Nothing. He opened Instagram and relogged in to his Finsta, @TedBaller420, and clicked on @SadeeLux’s story. “Wasn’t that epic?” she said into the camera, her eyes shining and her lips a weird orange. “I mean, if you weren’t already hashtag-Team-Tane, you probably are now, right? I mean, right?”

  Teddy collapsed onto the closed toilet lid, his arms and legs weak. “What the fuck,” he whispered as her video picked up in the next story. “I mean, regardless of what you thought of him before, you’ve got to respect him now, rebounding like that from the assembly.”

  Teddy didn’t follow Tane on Instagram, but he found @Tanger easily enough. He clicked on his story, and a video came up, the one McCoy had mentioned.

  Holy shit, Teddy thought as Tane delivered reasons one through four that people should like him. As he watched, Teddy recalled last weekend’s soccer practice, Tane’s long legs wheeling past kids who’d been on premier for years while Teddy ran punishment laps around the field. He remembered the high fives Tane had exchanged with Coach and McCoy. He saw Sadie in PE, smiling at Tane even when he was in the final moments against Teddy in dodgeball.

  Tane’s video moved to reason number five, and Teddy’s back molars ground together as he heard Tane casually, meanly expose his biggest secrets. He
could still feel the Pull-Up against his skin, feel the warmth of its fullness in the mornings when he had to throw it away. An eleven-year-old in diapers. He’d hated himself. And now everyone knew.

  In spite of his age, he found himself beginning to cry. He rubbed furiously at his eyes with one hand and gripped the iPhone hard between the fingers of the other.

  “Fuck,” he said again. He heard the downstairs door slam and Weasley’s nails clicking against the kitchen floor. He was out of time. He flushed the toilet to cover for himself and clicked the DM button. He was so mad at Sadie he almost didn’t care about getting caught with his phone. She knew him better than almost anyone. They’d been at car pool and day camps and their parents’ dinner parties together. And now Sadie had told everyone what a loser he was, what a baby.

  “SLUT,” he wrote in his message to her, the word appearing at his fingertips without his having to think about it, the worst thing he could imagine writing. “YOU STUPID FUCKING SLUT.”

  Meredith Yoshida

  Meredith frowned at Shirley MacIntosh’s photo of Teddy on NextDoor as Nadia sat down next to her in the conference room at Elm Creek Junior High.

  “What are you doing here?” Meredith asked. She hadn’t expected Nadia at the Parent Association meeting.

  “Hello to you, too.” Nadia smiled. “I’m the chair of the learning differences subcommittee, remember?”

  “Oh right.” Meredith should have been glad to see one of her oldest and best friends, but something about Nadia sitting so close threw her off. She wanted to make her own impression on this new group of parents—without her posse from elementary school. Oh well. “Have you seen this?” Meredith tipped her phone toward Nadia and tapped the picture of Teddy.