Are We There Yet?

by Kathleen West

  Patrick hadn’t had time to review Alice’s noncompete, not with the Energy Lab case in its final push, but he’d be home soon. Until the next time we get Sachman’d.

  Teddy was waiting for Alice when she and Aidy tramped through the mudroom after pickup. “Aidy, take off your shoes!” Alice called. Her daughter stopped, braced herself against the door frame, and slid each of her light-up sneakers off, leaving them in the middle of the runner, the same one Alice purchased for at least eighty-five percent of her mudroom clients. “Nope!” Alice corrected as Aidy ran out, her tights sliding on the wood floor.

  Aidy sighed and slumped back in. She grabbed her shoes, roughly pulled out her assigned seagrass basket, and dumped them inside with an imperious look at Alice.

  “Thank you!” Alice went overboard cheerful and then shared an eye roll with Teddy. Her irritation morphed into a genuine smile. Teddy had been a fun kid before junior high, she remembered. Maybe he could be fun again.

  He held out his locked phone to her. “Let’s text Landon,” he said.

  She hung her jacket on a hook and traded her shoes for slippers. “Okay.” She took the phone and pointed at the dining room table. They sat together on one of the sturdy benches. Alice loved the family feel of the thick half-trunk seat. She navigated to the app on her phone that let her control his device and pressed the requisite buttons.

  She set his phone on the table between them, and they both watched it come to life. She and Patrick had flat-out deleted Instagram and Snapchat, but a long string of texts popped up, including a zillion messages on a group chat with Landon and McCoy and a couple of other kids from soccer.

  “Let’s just start by texting Landon,” Alice said. She glanced at Teddy, whose eyes sparkled at the prospect of connecting.

  Teddy typed and then tipped the phone, so Alice could see. “Dude,” Teddy had written. “HBD. Maybe we can hang soon.” He’d added a cartoon avatar of himself with a party hat on.

  She nodded, and he pressed send.

  “Now, can I read the group chat?” Teddy’s hands shook as he asked her, and she almost laughed at his anticipation.

  “Sure, but I have to see.” Teddy didn’t argue. He clicked the thread and scrolled back. There seemed to be hundreds of messages. “Whoa,” Alice said.

  “Yeah, and just remember most of it’s on Snapchat.” She tried to read some of the comments, but Teddy paged back too quickly. Finally, he stopped. “Okay,” he said. “Soccer . . .” He flipped ahead more slowly.

  “Great win?” Alice read aloud. “They won against Liston Heights last weekend?” A message from Landon read, “I didn’t think we could do it without T & T, but we did. Way to show up, boys.” Alice put a hand on Teddy’s shoulder, not sure if he’d prefer that the team won or lost without him, but he shrugged her off. He’d stopped smiling and scrolled down a little further.

  A day or two later, McCoy had written, “Tane at striker? What do u think?” Alice frowned.

  Teddy dropped the phone. “Tane’s playing?” He flipped through a couple more messages with the screen flat on the table, his friends’ assessments of Tane in Teddy’s old position.

  “Maybe this is—” Alice reached for the phone, but Teddy yanked it away. “Hey,” she said, a warning in her tone.

  “Sorry,” Teddy spat, though he sounded sincere. “I just have to . . .” His breath caught. Alice leaned farther over Teddy’s shoulder.

  “Why does Tane get to play, but not Teddy?” Landon had asked.

  Derrick had written, “My parents say it’s because Tane has a better lawyer.”

  “He has a lawyer? Do we have a lawyer?” Teddy sounded desperate.

  Alice had no idea whether the Lagerheads actually had a lawyer, but Derrick’s mom was an assistant coach. She might know. “Honey, we don’t have a lawyer,” she said.

  “But Dad’s a lawyer!” Teddy stared at her. “Can he get me back on the team?”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.” Alice picked the phone up and moved to delete the group chat. She also felt angry about Tane but tried to hide it. Consequences should be consequences for everyone. She’d call Patrick as soon as she could distract the kids. Just then, a reply text came in from Landon, the notification louder than either of them expected.

  Teddy grabbed the phone back. “Let me see.” Alice let him hold it away from her and watched his face. As he read, his eyes went flat. She saw nothing of the mischievous sparkle she’d enjoyed during his persuasive speech the night before. Eventually, he put the phone back on the table, stood, and stared over her head at the swing in the backyard.

  “Take it,” he said. “I don’t need it.” He walked toward the stairs without looking back.

  Alice’s chest ached as she picked up the phone and read Landon’s reply: “Oh man! You’re alive. Hey, thanks. I’m having a party this weekend, but I know you can’t come. And actually, since you’re not on ECSC anymore, my parents say it’ll be good to have some distance. And, like, I know I need to think about my reputation. L8R, man.”

  Alice’s fury made her vision blur as she held the power button on the side of the phone until the whole screen went black. As if none of those kids had ever made—or would ever make—a mistake.

  * * *

  LATER, PATRICK GROANED when Alice told him about the texts, about Tane at Teddy’s old position.

  “Walt Cushing is the head of commercial lending for Twin Cities Federal,” Patrick said. “I know they’ve done a bunch of work with Prince Development. Doesn’t Janna Lagerhead work there?”

  Alice googled. She found Janna’s gorgeous headshot on the Prince Development webpage. Alice pictured her leather pants. “She’s the CFO,” Alice said, breathless. She’d known Janna had a high-powered career, but she hadn’t realized she was an executive.

  “Ugh.” Patrick sounded dejected.

  “What?”

  “She’d be involved in every transaction, and she probably does millions of dollars’ worth of business with Twin Cities Federal. With Walt Cushing.”

  Alice felt sick. So Meredith’s connection with the Cushings was enough to get Teddy barred from the club, but not enough to overpower Walt and Janna’s financial relationship. Plus, there’d been whatever lawyer Derrick referenced.

  She’d try to explain all this to Teddy, but he wouldn’t understand how these kinds of adult negotiations sidestepped fairness. She was glad, at least, that Teddy didn’t have to go to school, to see the kids in their uniforms on game days and experience the isolation firsthand.

  Before she walked upstairs to Teddy’s room, she poured a Maker’s Mark on ice. It was Patrick’s favorite, but it would steel her nerves. When she got to Teddy’s room he hid his face in his pillow. “Mom,” he said, “I’m fine, but I just don’t want to talk.”

  “But I have some answers.” Alice pressed on. “I could try to explain—”

  “Tomorrow,” Teddy said. He stuck in his earbuds to make sure she got the message.

  Evelyn Brown

  A week had gone by since Evelyn had told Alice about Thanksgiving. It had been a week without phone calls and without her usual Tuesday with Aidy. Still, Evelyn sent periodic text messages and hoped that in a few days, they could move on from the risotto incident. Evelyn had been angry, obviously, when Alice responded so negatively to the Thanksgiving change, but in the days that followed, she reminded herself that Alice was under a great deal of stress.

  “Just remember,” Evelyn wrote to her midweek, “you can do this!” She’d included a GIF of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the “Hans & Franz” days of SNL. Aidy had shown her how to text those. She hoped the humor would break Alice’s silence, but Evelyn didn’t get a response.

  “Did you try nature therapy?” she wrote a few days later. Julienne couldn’t confirm whether Alice had agreed to go ahead with care at Green Haven, but she hoped so. She smiled as she im
agined Julienne’s earthing protocol. It was hard to picture Teddy doing it, wiggling his toes in the mud and again in the drying grass. Most often when Evelyn had seen Teddy outside, he wore soccer cleats. Evelyn pictured him sitting quietly during forest bathing.

  “Yes.” Alice wrote back the one word, and that was enough. The fact that he was doing the program delighted her.

  “Good for you, honey.” Evelyn wanted to prop Alice up, to tell her that despite every setback, she was doing okay. It wasn’t easy to get an almost-teenager into therapy, and Alice had gotten him not only to the office, but to the nature group. Teddy, Evelyn knew, was in the best possible hands, in the care of each of her brilliant daughters.

  And so, a few days after Teddy’s first nature therapy group, Evelyn thought the timing might be right to send her first family email—one to both Julienne and Alice at the same time—about her desires for Thanksgiving. She’d write in the spirit of admiration she truly felt for each of them. They were in a good place with each other, she reasoned. Teddy was safe at Green Haven, and Thanksgiving was only two weeks away.

  Evelyn wrote “THANKSGIVING PLANS” as the subject line of her email, and couldn’t help but start with “Girls!” as a salutation. She grinned to herself and clapped her hands, the sound echoing in the exposed ceiling of her condo. What a thrill to address them collectively. She kept typing: “There’s been a slight change in the plans I shared with you, Alice, in that Julienne has agreed to host us. Rafael is going to offer a Spanish take on the traditional Thanksgiving feast, and I think it’ll be really something.”

  Please accept this, Evelyn pleaded with Alice from afar as she continued.

  “This will be a special Thanksgiving for many reasons,” Evelyn went on. “For one, I’m hoping to get my first full family photo. I know I might be overdoing it, but I’m thinking it would be great if everyone wore blues and greens to unify the look. I’d love to frame this shot! I know blue and green aren’t typical for Thanksgiving, but I figure not everyone has red, orange, and yellow.”

  Alice, Evelyn knew, looked great in red, but it really wasn’t flattering on her or Julienne. Evelyn smiled again thinking about Julienne’s coloring. It still amazed her she and Julienne shared so many physical features.

  “Now for assignments,” Evelyn typed. “Rafael is going to provide us with some Spanish flavors, but that doesn’t mean we have to forgo the Brown family favorites.” Evelyn wanted the Sullivans to feel comfortable, too. “Alice, I already asked you to bring some cornbread rolls. Julienne said it would also help if you’d do the mashed potatoes. I’m sure that will work, right? I remember Aidy liked helping with those last year.”

  Evelyn realized she didn’t know what Laura and Miguel liked to help with. She’d pay close attention this year, file every detail away.

  “Love you, girls.” Then she cut and pasted the time and address. Evelyn felt so overjoyed that she cried a little as she clicked send. Never in a million years would she have imagined a Thanksgiving with both of her daughters and all four of her grandchildren. Although Alice had been angry about the change in plans at first, Evelyn knew she’d pull it together for the big day. She had always made Evelyn proud, and she certainly would in this case, when the holiday had always meant so much to both of them.

  Sadie Yoshida

  On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Mr. Robinson frowned at Sadie’s forehead when he put her ecology test upside down on her desk. Sadie knew right then that she hadn’t pulled it off. She’d thought that maybe the last-minute cram session—the emergency texts with Chloe about population sampling and food supply—would carry her through. She grabbed the stapled test packet and closed her eyes. She could hear other people’s high fives and sighs as she crossed her ankles and rubbed the tops of her boots together.

  When she opened her eyes, she looked directly at Tane. He smiled down at his paper, flipping the pages. Of course he’d done well. He did as well as anyone in Quiz Bowl on the science questions. He’d probably read dozens of articles already about the food chain, about biological diversity and consumptive use, and about whatever other terms Sadie had forgotten when it came time to take the stupid test. Tane, she noticed, didn’t think to look back at her. That was one of the worst parts of this. His reaction to the photo and the aftermath had been the ultimate cliché. He hadn’t messaged her since they’d been back at school. Officer Larson had been right when she’d said Sadie had ceded her power to a boy.

  Sadie peeled the top of her test off the desktop just high enough to see Mr. Robinson’s purple felt-tip writing. She dropped it again before she could make sense of it, not wanting to internalize the truth that she already knew. The bell rang then, and everyone stood. Sadie did, too, placing the facedown test on top of her notebook and folder. “What’d you get?” Chloe asked.

  “I haven’t looked yet,” Sadie said. “I know it’s bad.”

  While she was afraid to see the results, she felt oddly detached from them, as if caring about how she’d done on a science test was something the old Sadie would have done.

  “Sadie?” It was Mr. Robinson.

  Chloe’s mouth formed an O. “See you at lunch,” she whispered.

  Sadie nodded and turned toward Mr. Robinson’s desk. “What do you think?” The teacher leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his belly.

  “Um,” Sadie said. She looked down at the upside-down test. “I haven’t looked yet. I know it’s not, uh—” She looked over Mr. Robinson’s shoulder at the set of three test tubes he kept in his bookshelf, each with a single daisy sticking up over the lip. “I know it’s not good.”

  Mr. Robinson raised an eyebrow. “It’s a D.” Sadie swallowed.

  “And, since you’ve already used your retake this quarter, that grade sticks, Ms. Yoshida.” Sadie hated when teachers called kids by their last names with Ms. or Mr. Maybe it was supposed to make her feel older, but it actually just made her feel embarrassed and weird.

  “Okay.” She backed toward the door, hoping that was all.

  “Hold on.” Mr. Robinson sat up straight. “I want to make sure you know that means your midterm grade is a C.”

  A C. On my report card. Sadie tried to imagine her mother’s face, her mother who said that grades weren’t important—that hard work was what really mattered—but who had never gotten anything lower than an A– in her life.

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “What?”

  “What’s your idea,” Mr. Robinson said slowly, “about how to change course? You don’t seem like the kind of person who gets Cs. Am I right?”

  She felt herself blink a couple of times. She wondered if he was saying this because she was Asian, if that was why he thought she wasn’t the type to get a C.

  “Aren’t you on Quiz Bowl?”

  “Was,” Sadie said. “I got bumped.” And then an idea came to her. “I know what I’m going to do.”

  Mr. Robinson turned his palm up and pursed his lips, signaling for her to continue. He looked like such a weirdo. Did he know that?

  “I’m going to quit synchro.”

  “Synchro?” Mr. Robinson asked. “Like swimming?”

  “Skating,” Sadie said. “It takes a ton of time, and it’s sometimes late at night. If I quit synchro, I’ll have more time to study.”

  The idea seemed perfect to Sadie just then. Her mom had told her, after all, that she’d have to become a completely different person in order to leave the photo behind. She’d also leave the glitter and the hair bows and the leotards. They didn’t look right anyway with her bigger boobs.

  Mr. Robinson seemed pleased. “We all have to make tough decisions sometimes when things are spiraling. Talk to your parents about it.”

  Sadie walked out of the science lab thinking about her mom. She usually had a tea in hand as she sat in the stands during practice watching the team move in and out of their f
ormations. She had her own Elkettes sweatshirt that she wore for competitions. She’d tell her mom that night, Sadie decided, about both the team and the C. Both at the same time.

  Meredith Yoshida

  Meredith dropped her cell phone into the center console and closed the lid as soon as Sadie was buckled into the back seat after school. The most important factor in whether teen drivers adhered to distracted driving laws was parental role modeling. Meredith never touched her phone when Sadie was in the car. On days like today, that was especially difficult. There were a million things to check on before they drove the three hours south to her mother’s house for Thanksgiving.

  “Everything go okay today? Ready for vacation?” Meredith asked as they passed the school’s empty baseball diamond. The grass in the outfield had turned a rusty brown. Meredith hated Minnesota winters, and the damp air smelled like snow. The weather matched Sadie’s gloomy energy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Classes fine?” Sadie used to give unlimited details about her school days without prompting. Not that long ago, Meredith and Bill used to roll their eyes behind Sadie’s back, wishing she’d skip some of the play-by-play. But now, in seventh grade, it seemed like Sadie told only the bare minimum, especially after all of this trouble.

  “It was all good, Mom, but I have to tell you something.”

  Meredith gripped the steering wheel hard. “What?” She glanced at the rearview, checking to see whether Sadie was crying or looked scared. “Did something happen with the boys?”

  Sadie shook her head. “No, it’s not like that.”

  “Then what?” Meredith’s voice had gone high. Calm, she reminded herself, though the mantra sounded like a shriek in her head.

  Sadie tipped her chin up, her throat exposed. Meredith forced herself to watch the road. “It’s just science.”

  Meredith felt her grip relax a bit. Academics, she could deal with. “What about it?”