Claire Cook

by Seven Year Switch (v5)

  Anastasia shrugged. Her shoulders stayed up around her ears. I knew that meant she was hoping against hope that her embarrassing mother would go away. This was a good thing. It was developmentally appropriate that she bond with her friends at my expense.

  I walked down the long center hallway while I finished the rest of my spiel. “How can I help you?” I finally said.

  “I’m in Spain?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Is that a question?” I asked.

  “No, no, I know I’m in Spain. But I’m wondering if I should take the side trip to the Dalí museum in Figueres, or just stay here in Barcelona, since we went to the Picasso museum yesterday.”

  I opened a door off the hallway and stepped into a huge master bathroom: dual vanities, huge tumbled travertine tiles everywhere, a curved glass block wall that reminded me of an igloo, a toilet, a urinal. No, actually it was a bidet. Apparently someone forgot to tell Cynthia that bidets went out in the ’80s.

  I wasn’t the kind of person who would normally snoop, but it was just a bathroom. I stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind me. A wisp of a pink negligee dangled from a heavy metal hook on the back of the door. I looked closer and saw that the tag was still on it. Maybe it was only a prop.

  I walked across the room and peeked into the master bedroom, which had an unmade bed the size of a small continent, then closed the door again.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’m not sure I’m following your question.”

  On a raised platform in the corner of the bathroom, a double, or even triple, garden tub looked out over the manicured backyard through a bay window. A remote rested on the ledge of the tub, and at one end, a flat-screen TV covered most of the wall.

  “I mean, if I go all the way to Figueres, is it going to be same old, same old?”

  You mean, are there going to be a lot of Picassos in the Dalí museum? I wanted to say, but I restrained myself. Surely this woman couldn’t think if she’d been to one art museum, she’d been to them all.

  I kicked off my shoes and climbed into the tub. I stretched out and picked up the remote, turned the television on and the volume down low. I flipped through the channels and imagined what it would be like to do this every night after Anastasia was in bed, only with water. I’d soak and I’d soak until I was a total prune.

  “You have to go to both,” I said. “As artists, they’re completely different in many ways, but you’ll also be able to see how Dalí’s work was in part a reaction to Picasso’s. And don’t miss Miró while you’re there, whether you’re a big fan of Miró’s work or not. It houses an incredible collection of contemporary art by other artists, too.”

  I slid down in the tub and tilted my head back. “Go, go. Go to every museum you can find. Just drink it all up, every single drop, because you can never really know for sure if you’ll ever have the chance again. And when you finish with Miró, make sure—”

  “Okay, thanks,” the woman said. She hung up with a click before I could launch into my litany of regrets.

  Even more than the museums, Seth and I had loved wandering the streets of Barcelona, from the harbor to the Gothic District, through the twisty, tree-lined avenues to the straight shot of Las Ramblas, listening to the tourists chattering, checking out the kiosks that sold everything from flowers to canaries. Our hostel was in a great location, a former pension within walking distance of just about everything. The shower stalls had doors, but no temperature control for the lukewarm water that dribbled out when you pushed a button. There was no hot water at all in the sinks and no power outlets in the big dormitory-style rooms.

  Sheets cost extra, but when we’d arrived in Barcelona, we were both flush with money, me from the check I’d received just before I bailed from a job guiding Asian tours for an American company, Seth from a job he’d just quit teaching English in a Japanese school.

  Breakfast with juice, coffee, cereal, and bread was served from seven-thirty to nine-thirty, so almost everybody was up and out of the hostel early. Seth and I would roam the streets for a while, looking for pieces of the Roman wall or examples of Gaudi architecture, but we’d circle back again and again to the hostel until we found our eight-bed room empty.

  Because the best thing about this hostel was that each bed had a hospital-like curtain that pulled around it to create a small oasis of privacy. And you haven’t really made love until you’ve made love in the middle of the morning in Barcelona.

  I shook my head and picked up the remote from the edge of the tub. I started hunting for the volume button. Maybe it would drown out my entire memory bank.

  Before I could find it, a male voice called out from the other side of the door.

  “Hey, babe, I’m home,” it said.

  5

  I JUMPED OUT OF CYNTHIA’S TUB FAST ENOUGH TO GET whiplash. I couldn’t seem to fit my feet into my shoes, and when I tried to turn off the TV, the remote slid out of my hands and crashed into the tub. I dove for it and clicked off the TV, a hammering shitshitshitshitshitshit playing in my head.

  I picked up my shoes and yanked the other bathroom door open. I literally slid on my socks out into the hallway, like a bad imitation of Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Fortunately I was wearing pants.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Cynthia’s kids were yelling.

  “What are you doing home?” Lexi, or maybe it was Treasure, said.

  “Is it the weekend, Daddy?” Parker said.

  I followed the sound of their voices, down the hallway, through the kitchen, to another hallway. I wondered if houses like this came with built-in GPS stations in case you lost your family.

  Finally, I poked my head into an exercise room. Anastasia and the two other girls were jumping up and down on a row of three minitrampolines. Cynthia’s husband was down on his hands and knees, and Parker was riding on his back.

  “Faster, Daddy,” Parker yelled. “Giddy-yap.”

  Cynthia’s husband, Decker, looked up and smiled. He looked like the Pictionary definition of cute, rich husband: white button-down shirt with tie removed, top button open, sleeves rolled up. Premature five-o’clock shadow, gelled hair, blue eyes, brilliant white smile.

  “Weren’t you a blonde when I left this morning?” he said.

  “Ha,” I said. “Uh, um, Cynthia should be back any second.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” he said.

  Treasure jumped off her trampoline and grabbed Parker by the back of the shirt. “Daddy, it’s my turn.”

  Lexi jumped off hers and grabbed Treasure by the arm. “It’s my turn, Daddy.”

  Anastasia was still jumping up and down. Her face was flushed and her ears were red, the way they sometimes got when she was too excited.

  “Daddy,” she yelled midjump. “It’s my turn, Daddy.”

  The room went horribly, painfully quiet. Anastasia stopped jumping. Everybody stopped everything.

  I knew I should say something, but I couldn’t think of what.

  Finally, Cynthia’s husband reared up on his hind legs and neighed. He bucked Parker off his back. Lexi and Treasure lunged for him, but he shook them off and cantered over to Anastasia.

  “Hop on, kiddo,” he said.

  I WAITED TILL Anastasia and I were sitting down to dinner to bring it up. I took a bite of the boxed macaroni and cheese I’d upgraded with fresh steamed broccoli. Anastasia loved broccoli. When she was a toddler, she used to call it little trees. She’d point to it from her high chair and say, “Mo little trees, please?”

  She was a two-fisted broccoli eater back then. She’d hold a stalk in each chubby fist, and alternate bites from first one, then the other. Seth and I would smile at each other, enthralled by her sophisticated palate. Enthralled by her.

  To night she picked at the food on her plate with a fork. Maybe it was just an overdose of Go-Gurt and Perrier.

  I took a deep breath. “So,” I said. “It must be hard sometimes to see the other kids with thei
r dads.”

  She shrugged.

  “It’s okay to feel that way,” I said.

  “Duh,” she said.

  I let it go. I took a sip of my milk.

  “Sometimes,” I said, “what you know in your head and what you feel in your heart can be two different things.”

  Anastasia speared a piece of broccoli. “Sometimes,” she said to her plate, “kids have two mommies. Sometimes they have two daddies. Sometimes they don’t have any parents at all. Sometimes they don’t even have arms or legs.”

  My phone rang. Anastasia looked up.

  I pushed the button. “Great Girlfriend Getaways,” I said into the mouthpiece.

  “Are you going to keep doing that for the rest of my life?” Anastasia said. She picked up her plate and headed for the living room.

  I REPLAYED IT over and over again after Anastasia went to bed. Had I only made things worse? Obviously it had to be hard for her to see other kids with their dads. But, then again, one-parent families were practically the norm these days.

  I did my best to be honest, matter-of-fact, and nonjudgmental when I talked about Seth, and I was pretty sure I’d pulled it off reasonably well, given the circumstances. I mean, what the hell do you say?

  I told Anastasia Daddy had gone away, but it didn’t mean he didn’t love her. I told her he was in the Peace Corps, in Africa, and that made us sad, but he knew Mommy was taking good care of her. Actually, I only knew the Africa part secondhand, from Seth’s parents, but I didn’t tell her that.

  I told Anastasia I didn’t know if he’d be back, that sometimes grown-ups do things that don’t make sense, and it’s okay to be sad about it. That I was sad about it, but I knew we’d be okay without him. We were a team. We were fine. I’d always be there for her. Mommy wasn’t going anywhere.

  I knew I could have gotten Seth kicked out of the Peace Corps. It would only have taken a phone call. I could have gone after him for child support, too, which would probably also have gotten him kicked out of the Peace Corps, since I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have taken him if they knew about Anastasia and me.

  I could have done lots of things, but I just didn’t. A part of me kept thinking he’d call, or he’d write, or he’d come home because he missed us, but he just didn’t.

  And the years went by.

  The funny thing about life is that even the most unbearable things start to feel normal after a while. Hearts heal. Memories fade. Anastasia had a scrapbook filled with pictures of her dad that we kept on the bookcase next to the fireplace. I couldn’t even remember the last time she’d taken it out to look at it.

  She was fine. The daddy slip didn’t mean a thing. She’d just gotten caught up in the moment. It meant she wanted a horsie ride, goddammit, not that she was desperate for a daddy. A daddy who would probably visit her twice before he took off and broke her heart again.

  It was after nine, an hour past the end of my shift, and I realized I was still wearing my headphone. I took it off, threw it onto the kitchen counter, opened the refrigerator, closed it again.

  I paced a lap around the living room. Then another.

  Eventually I opened the door to Anastasia’s room just a crack. She’d kicked the covers off and had one arm wrapped around the neck of her favorite stuffed animal, a monkey named Banana.

  She still slept with the same night-light she’d had since birth. It was a cow jumping over the moon. I knew soon, very soon, she’d notice it and say it was a baby light. She’d insist on trading it for something covered in pink and purple daisies. And not long after that she’d declare a moratorium on night-lights of any kind.

  But to night it bathed her face in its soft yellow glow.

  I tiptoed into her room and reached for her covers to pull them up, so she wouldn’t wake up cold in the middle of the night. Her pink plaid diary was sprawled open on the sheet beside her, the key sticking out of its lock.

  I picked it up.

  I was so not the kind of mother who would ever snoop in her daughter’s diary. But I did it anyway, standing in the hallway outside her bedroom, my heart beating wildly, because I knew my daughter would totally flip out if she caught me. Maybe most mothers eventually break their own code of ethics this way, and in our defense I would have to say it comes from the fiercest kind of love. The world is a tough place, and children are so terrifyingly fragile. Making sure your kid is okay trumps everything.

  I’d only look at the last page—just a quick mom check. I flipped quickly through the blank lined pages in the back of the diary, listening for footsteps from Anastasia’s room.

  And then I came to this:

  Did you have to go away?

  All I do is miss you all day long

  Do you have to stay so long?

  6

  WHEN I GOT TO STARBUCKS, BILLY SANDERS AND TWO venti cappuccinos were waiting at the same table we’d sat at last time.

  He stood up, put his palms together, and bowed.

  I burst out laughing.

  “What?” he said.

  He was wearing a knee-length red silk kimono, tied around the waist with a white obi that matched his sneakers.

  I knew it was unprofessional, but I couldn’t seem to stop laughing. My eyes were tearing, and I was gasping for breath. When I tried to get myself under control, I made a sound that was a cross between a neigh and a snort.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “Sorry.” I cleared my throat.

  “Tell me you didn’t ride your bike in that,” I said. I bit down on my lower lip so I wouldn’t lose it all over again.

  He held out my chair. “Why, is there some sort of Japanese bicycle/kimono rule I should know about?”

  I burst out laughing all over again. Most of Starbucks was looking at us. I sat down fast and reached for my cappuccino.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Billy Sanders whispered, “but I’m wearing bike shorts under it.” He raised an eyebrow. “Matching.”

  I put my head on the table. “Stop,” I said. “Please stop.”

  Finally I lifted up my head.

  “So,” I said. I reached for my folder.

  “So,” he said. He handed me a check. “Nice to see you laugh, even if it was at me. You were pretty uptight last time.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  He smiled. “I know uptight when I see it.”

  He had one of those vast, infectious smiles that probably made everyone he met want to hang out with him. I thought there might even be a little spark between us, but it had been so long since I’d been in such close proximity to a man, albeit one wearing a kimono with bike shorts, I could easily be hallucinating. If I had the extra energy, or could even remember how to flirt, I might have considered testing the waters. “Okay,” I said. “First thing. I hope you saved the receipt on that kimono….”

  Billy took a sip of his cappuccino. “I don’t know what the problem is. It worked for David Bowie in Ziggy Stardust.”

  “It makes you look like a total weeaboo.”

  He crossed his legs, and I got a little peek of his red bike shorts. He had amazing thighs, wiry and muscular. Must have been all that bike riding.

  “A whatahoo?” he said.

  “A weeaboo. It’s short for ‘wannabee Japanese.’ You know, someone who wears manga T-shirts, lives on ramen noodles, and bows a lot.”

  “Hey, I only bowed once. But I see your point. Kind of geeky, huh?”

  I smiled. “Historically, it’s geek meets goth.”

  “You mean the vampire kids?”

  “No, goths and vampires both wear black, but goths smoke and drink, while vampires are actually healthy, at least the New Bloods inspired by Twilight. They’re more into drinking tomato juice and pretending it’s blood. All of this, by the way, is simply an extension of the whole jock-versus-stoner thing from our own high school days.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Remind me to hire you again when my kids get a little older.”

  My stomach fell
like a descending elevator missing a floor. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been kind of hoping that Billy Sanders was single. I glanced at the ring finger of his left hand.

  He saw me do it. I looked away quickly.

  “Divorced,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” I said. I could feel a blush burning my face. I flipped my hair out from behind my ears to camouflage it.

  “You were looking at my ring finger,” he said.

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said.

  “See,” he said. He adjusted the front of his kimono. “You are uptight.”

  “Well, compared to a guy who wears a red kimono in broad daylight, who wouldn’t be?”

  We stared at each other.

  “How many kids do you have?” I finally said.

  “Two. Both boys.”

  “I have one daughter.”

  He gave my ring finger an exaggerated look. “Anybody else in the family?”

  I actually giggled. “Just us,” I said, and for the first time in a long time it didn’t feel like such a bad thing.

  WHEN I GOT TO the Great Girlfriend Getaways office, Joni Robertson pushed herself up from her chair to give me a big hug. Her coarse gray hair smelled like violets, and hugging her always made me think of homemade bread just out of the oven.

  She pushed me away to get a good look. “You hangin’ in there, kid?”

  I nodded. “How ’bout you?”

  “Don’t ask.” She pushed me away and headed for her desk. She was wearing jeans and a Great Girlfriend Getaways T-shirt with a hip new pair of Skechers Shape-ups. Joni was well into her seventies, solid and vibrant in a matter-of-fact way that sometimes inspired me, and other times made me wonder if I’d ever get there myself.

  I pulled up a chair and took out a small notebook. “Okay, what do you need?”

  She scrolled through some files on her computer. “That snippy little Kiki just quit on me. Can you pick up her four-to-midnight to night? I’ll try to get someone else in place by her next shift.”

  “Got it. What else?”

  “That new resort we’re using in St. John wants to exchange Web site banner links. Can you whip up something for them—logo, hyperlink, plus something fun and girlfriendy?”