Barrett is watching the Fabulous Life of someone or another, some teen singer who claims she wants to be a mom before she gets too old to enjoy it.
“I want to be able to play with my kids,” the pop star is saying. “I want to go shopping with them. I want two boys and two girls.” The singer giggles, as if she has said something funny.
Barrett’s son, Jake, flips the channel—he always flips it right when she’s starting to get into the groove of a show.
“Just pick something,” she says, eager to relax while she has one kid down, but Jake’s cell phone rings and he tosses the remote to the other side of the couch. His ring tone is a jazzy riff that makes her panicky. It’s so strange—Jake’s phone is ringing and yet both she and Gary, the only people who call him, are in the room. This has been happening all week, but still, she can’t get used to the sound, to the way Jake will jump a little, feeling his pants pocket, then looking at the screen, casually, as if it were something common. It’s been happening ever since his commercial aired a few weeks ago.
She supposes it’s a good thing—she has always wanted him to have more friends, yet at the same time he was perfectly fine without them. Active, funny, charming. She never really noticed his lack of friends except those times when a crew of boisterous boys would pass them on Chestnut; she’d feign the need to duck into a shop, pulling him in after her, but when she did this she felt guilty because it forced her to admit he needed protection, or that there was something wrong with him in comparison to those other boys. But ever since his cell has been ringing “off the hook” and he was starting to say things like “I’m going over to Hat’s house” (Hat? Hat!), she wishes he were the old, friendless Jake, because that Jake seemed to work harder.
“What’s up?” he says into his phone. “Nothing much. Yeah, I know who you are.”
Barrett scans her son slumped on the sofa, then tries to get Gary’s attention, but he has gotten hold of the remote and is watching, openmouthed, a show about battleships. She bets he doesn’t even notice the changes in their son. He’s as observant as a carton of eggs. When he finally looks over at her, she gestures to Jake, but Gary looks behind Jake to the back door.
“What?” he says.
“Never mind!” she yells, furious his mind isn’t tuned to the same station.
“Um, I guess so,” Jake says. His legs are spread so wide on the couch! He never used to take up that much room. He puts his hand over the crotch of his jeans and pinches at himself like he’s trying to pluck a grape.
She sighs loudly, and both boys look at her and give her peevish little smiles. They’re trying to lull her, because she has complicated moods and desires and they both know that talking to her only makes it worse. If they only knew that these crooked little grins made it doubly worse.
Jake ends his call. She makes herself wait five seconds before speaking. That’s another thing about her husband and son. They can talk on the phone and when they hang up they’ll just sit there like nothing happened. You’re supposed to talk about what you talked about on the phone! It’s like they’re from the Paleolithic period.
“Who was that?” she asks. Cool tone. Nonviolent posture. Eyes on the television, the ships marching across stormy seas.
“This girl from homeroom,” Jake says.
“What did she want?” Barrett asks.
“Dad, change it back to what I was watching, please.”
Poor Dad, Barrett thinks. He’s so transfixed you’d think he was watching porn or football. He never gets to choose, but when you have no opinion or knowledge of program schedules, you have no authority, so that’s his problem. Gary changes it back to the singer’s fabulous life. She displays the contents of her refrigerator. “I’m obsessed with Coke Zero,” she says.
“You guess so about what?” Barrett says.
“What?”
“You said, ‘I guess so,’ on the phone. You guess so about what?”
“Jeez. Listen much?”
“Well?”
“She was asking if she could come to my birthday party.”
“To Waterworld with you and Tyler?”
“No, remember I said I wanted to have something at the house now, like at night.”
“That’s fine,” Barrett says, even though she had her mind set on the water park. She loves water slides and amusement park food, and enjoys seeing her son with Tyler, a boy with hair as red as a rooster’s wattle, because he, too, is cool yet solitary, the kind of kid who’ll grow up to be a drummer.
“What, exactly, is this party going to be like?” Barrett asks. “I need to know what to buy, what to expect. Should I invite the parents?”
“No!” Jake yells. “Just, like, I want to ask a lot of people. And we’ll just hang out. I’ve never really had a big birthday.”
“Your second one was huge!” She remembers the balloon man they hired. He twisted the balloons into a jet pack Jake could wear. She couldn’t fathom it on him now. It would be so small—like a growth.
“That doesn’t count,” Jake says.
The pop star walks into her bedroom and points at various things from her childhood, which was what, a month ago? From watching this show Barrett has learned that no one reads and everyone loves the movie Scarface.
“How many kids are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. Fifty?”
“Fifty! Do you know fifty kids?”
“Yes,” Jake says, and Barrett senses that this is strange for him to admit.
She wants to ask where these kids were before the commercial aired, but feels this would be cruel. Jake is aware of the connection. It’s the reaction to sudden fame that serves as the true test of character, and so far he’s doing very well.
She doesn’t really get the appeal of the whole thing. About six months ago a cereal company called for video submissions from kids ages ten through thirteen doing whatever they do on an average day. Jake sent in clips of himself skateboarding at Golden Gate Park, riding his bike in the Presidio, and playing in the water at Crissy Field. For some reason it won. They probably liked the whole San Francisco thing: the Haight, the bridge, a kid in the city eating Jumbo O’s on the Muni. Now Jake and Stubs, their feral corgi, can be seen running out of the ocean. Jake can be seen walking down Union, reaching into a box of Jumbo O’s, tossing some in the air, then catching them in his mouth as his friends laugh and pat his back. She doesn’t like this supposed “reality” ad. Who are these friends? And who is that fake mom pouring the cereal for him? Like a twelve-year-old can’t do that for himself.
“I want one of those cool parties,” Jake says.
“No way, mister!” Barrett yells.
“Honey,” Gary says. “Why are you yelling?”
“Because! We’re not going to be one of those families who do those sweet parties!” Gary’s expression is blank and dumb. “It’s this trend,” she explains. “There was this show years back about kids who throw extravagant birthday parties. They’ll come in on the back of an elephant, they’ll wear designer clothes, they’ll belly-dance in front of their peers, and then at the end they get a car, and not like a Corolla. They get a Mercedes or a BMW. One girl got a sports car and an SUV. Two cars! It’s just insane. The parents should be neutered.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Jake says.
“We will feed you, educate you, love you,” she says, “but it’s not our job to hire Kanye West to come to your birthday party, nor am I required to buy you an SUV.”
“I wouldn’t want Kanye anyway. And I don’t want anything all crazy. Maybe we can get some KFC and we’ll just hang out downstairs and listen to music and stuff. Maybe dance. Twenty people tops.”
Dance! Barrett’s heart melts, along with her hesitancy and skepticism. She trusts Jake, after all, and she wants him to have fun on his birthday, to dance with friends. Perhaps Jumbo O’s has created a tiny portal into which kids can glide. His charisma, his style and agility, his humor have always been present, but now they can erupt for all to see.
“We should get KFC,” Gary says. “I haven’t had that for so long.”
Barrett glares at her husband, who is taking off his socks and throwing them toward the hallway. Then he stands, holds up his leg behind him, and farts. Both Barrett and Jake laugh.
* * *
Today’s the day of Jake’s party, but Gary has to go to a funeral and he has taken Tara with him since the family requested children be there. His colleague’s baby has died. The family was expecting it, but still. How do you wake up? How do you go on? Barrett can’t think about it. She really can’t—can’t wrap her head around the child’s death, can’t come near to imagining what they must be feeling. You can’t possibly know other people’s pain no matter how hard you try to cram your feet into their shoes. You end up grieving for your own self and their loss becomes an object lesson. This makes her sad.
She looks out of her living room window, waiting for the kids to come. They live on a narrow street and, she’s happy that no one’s parked on the Mount Davidson side of the road. Maybe parents will park and come in, stay for a glass of wine, perhaps some bruschetta, salad, or salmon. She prepared for the possibility of guests. She has some dessert, too—lava cakes from Trader Joe’s that she put in white ramekins to make it look like she made them herself. Then she remembers the birthday cake and feels stupid.
A car pulls up. She spies a boy in the passenger side, a younger girl in back, and a handsome father behind the wheel. Please come in, she thinks. She loves handsome fathers—it isn’t that she flirts with them or anything, but they tend to give moments of her day (the playground, for instance, with Tara, or soccer games with Jake) a pleasant charge. She’s way more into her kids when an attractive man is watching, and the feigned enthusiasm always turns into genuine enthusiasm, and so cute dads are good parenting aids, though in this town most of the dads are practically geriatric, or superuptight bores who probably bought their tools at Restoration Hardware. The guy out there, however, looks like he could change a tire. Unfortunately the boy gets out of the car without him.
“Jake,” she calls. “A buddy is here.”
“Don’t call him a buddy!” he says, running to the door, his jeans making a swishing racket.
“Those are the biggest jeans I’ve ever seen!” she says. “And they’re so stiff, and all bunched up by your shoes. Good God, when did you get those shoes! They’re so white they’re practically blinding me.”
“I went shopping with Dad.”
“Obviously.”
“He got the same jeans.”
“Oh, I believe it.”
His buddy walks in, and Barrett stops herself from hugging him and asking about his hobbies. “Hello!” she says.
“Hi,” he says.
“Come on!” Jake says and runs toward the stairs.
She’s once again left alone and wishes Tara were here so she’d at least look like she had something to do. She straightens the living room, puts the New Yorker she found in the park on top of the Us Weekly.
She hears a car outside and runs to the window, spying a minivan with a MY CHILD IS AN HONORS STUDENT sticker and a license plate that says, MOM4BOYS. The minivan drives away, thank God. Whenever she sees those awful accoutrements she wants to stick to her car something equally offensive, like MY CHILD ISN’T OBESE or I AM FERTILE.
The door opens. In comes the new friend, a boy with sunken eyes, dark long lashes, and cheekbones like pomegranates. He has a concave trunk and clownish feet.
“Hello!” she says. “Are you the honors student?”
It takes him a moment, and then: “That’s my brother,” he says. “But his whole class got that sticker.”
He’s also wearing baggy jeans, along with a huge sweatshirt, which is covering up a gold chain necklace.
“Nice bling,” she says, trying to be down.
He flushes as if she caught him masturbating. “It’s okay,” she says, then points him to the stairs.
Three girls, all with braids in their hair like they’d been in Jamaica or at Burning Man, are next to arrive. Barrett is on her knees on the couch, watching them walk up to the door; then she turns around and sits facing forward and flips through The New Yorker, but then thinks this looks too staged.
She gets up and opens the door.
“Hi, girls,” she says.
“Hi,” they all sing. They smile at her like she’s dying, cursed with some old-lady affliction. One of them carries an expensive handbag, and Barrett wants to tell her that she shouldn’t even care about labels until she’s twenty-four.
“The boys are downstairs.” She points to the stairwell.
“Thank you!” one says, and then they giggle like that TV pop star, tittering at jack nothing, just filling dead air with dead laughter. She feels like it’s too late for these kids, the girls especially, like they’ve crossed a line and can’t come back. She thinks about that dreadful My Super Sweet 16 show, the last episode she saw, the birthday girl and her posse preparing for the party.
“We’re pretty and popular and wear nice clothes and people sort of look up to us,” girl one explained.
“So, like, this party could seriously affect our reputations,” girl two said.
Then the camera cut to a nonfriend, a brunette whose eyes kept darting from side to side, and she said, “Kaya’s, like, relic-collecting rich. Like, I heard she has Napoleon’s bathtub.”
It’s too late for them to be fully human. Their fates are sealed. They’ll be giggly and mean now, fake and dumb later, then as mothers they’ll arm their kids with pukey cute gear and give them pompous British names. Fuck, she’s in a bad mood.
Barrett was a popular girl, she supposes, but popularity was completely different when she was in school. She recalls her blond hair soaring while she danced (all fists and forearms) and drinking wine coolers. That’s what made you popular back then. Big hair and Bartles & Jaymes. Now it’s all about handbags and hashtags and phones, for crissakes! Kids these days are so messed up.
She tiptoes to the top of the stairs and hears a hoot of laughter and then a girl say, “Sick! What are you? Like six?”
She walks back to the couch and watches another car pull up, then reverse. A woman is behind the wheel and she’s parking. A parent is going to come in! There aren’t any brag-hag bumper stickers on her car either. Barrett walks to the mirror by the front door and widens her eyes and turns her head to the right. Then she walks into the kitchen so that when the mother knocks Barrett won’t be right there. She’s pretty sure the mother parking is Christine, one of those “cool” moms, who isn’t cool at all but bills herself that way and is part of the little cool-mom clique that Barrett despises and desperately wants to be a part of, more to avoid being grouped with the dork moms than anything else.
After the knock Barrett waits a second, then opens the door with a spent yet friendly smile on her face so that she looks as though she’s been very busy, yet is happy to be interrupted.
“Hi! Come in!” she says to Christine and her daughter.
“Hi, I’m Christine,” Christine says, looking around her living room.
“I’m Barrett,” she says, though they’ve met before and see each other practically every day. “I think we may have met before.”
“This is my daughter. Luella say hello.”
“Hello,” she says, flashing a smile. Literally. It’s a flash, then it’s gone.
Luella? Barrett thinks. Why, of course. The girl has a handsome face, made prettier by the fact that Barrett has to stop and think if she’s pretty or not. The large nose is the hang-up, but in a way it ameliorates the face because you think, Wow, even with the nose she’s pretty. She also has round, heavy breasts that would surely make any teen pre-ejaculate if he got ahold of ’em.
“Pretty name,” Barrett says.
“I just wanted to make sure there were parents here,” Christine says.
“I told you there would be,” Luella says.
“Well, you said that about the last party, and your friend ended up going to the hospital.”
“What?” Barrett says.
Luella rolls her eyes. “She would have had to go to the hospital with or without parents there. She couldn’t find her inhaler, and the contractor was there to drive her. It worked out fine.”
Barrett gives Luella a secret wink. “Everyone’s downstairs,” she says.
“I’ll text when it’s over,” Luella says, then sulks away.
“Would you like something to nibble on?” Barrett asks Christine, horrified at the words that just left her mouth, but Christine doesn’t appear to have heard. She’s watching her daughter with intensity. Barrett knows the look. There’s nothing more pleasing than watching your children when they don’t know you’re watching them.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Barrett asks.
Christine’s face lights up. “Sure!” she says, spoken like a true mom.
Barrett brings out the wine, pouring it beforehand because it’s Bogle, her weekday wine. She brings the bruschetta, too, and can tell that Christine’s happy to see both. After they get settled on the couch, they sit in silence for a bit too long.
“I love your house,” Christine says, but Barrett’s sure she’s lying.
Another silence is saved by the bell.
“They just keep coming,” Barrett says, pretending to be weary. She walks to the door and opens it to a mother, Maggie, and her son, who doesn’t seem at all embarrassed to be accompanied by her.
“Hi,” Maggie says. “I just wanted to thank you for having the party. I’m Matt’s mom, Maggie.”
“Maggie?” Christine says from the other room.
“Christine?”
Maggie peeks through the door, and both women issue that customary little greet-scream. Barrett can’t imagine men doing this. Pat? Andy? Ahhhh!
Both Barrett and Matt watch them hug while giving one another awkward glances. She feels like she’s on a blind date and tries to think of things to say. “So, Matt, Maggie tells me you like math and Kings of Leon.”
“Okay, Mom,” he says. “See you later.”
“They’re downstairs,” Barrett says to Matt, noticing that a black comb is lodged into his dark curls. He walks away, and she almost calls after him: “Wait, there’s a comb stuck in your hair,” hoping to save him from embarrassment, but she assumes he knows this and that it must be a fashion statement, though she isn’t sure what’s being stated: “I have so much hair I can stick a comb in it.” Or: “I’m so busy, I’ll get to my hair when I’m good and ready.” Or, simply, “Look at me. There’s a comb in my hair. A comb!”
She’s left fake-smiling at these women who are facing one another and speaking in hushed, aghast tones. Barrett forms the tip of the triangle, not really sure what she’s doing here. She feels psychotic, clearly not part of the conversation, but it’s too late now. She has to commit. It’s like being in a store, two shoppers flipping through the rack toward one another. Who is going to move? Who is going to take her hand off the clothes and go around? Not Barrett. She never moves. It’s her thing.
“God, you look so good!” Maggie says. “Did you get divorced?” she asks in an exaggeratedly sardonic, drag queen sort of way.
“No, no. I’ve been doing Pilates. It’s such a good workout—”
“I love Pilates,” Barrett says, committing.
“You know who did get a divorce though? Sheila Schatz. Isn’t that crazy? She looks fantastic though.”
“Like how?”
“I don’t know. She just looks thin and . . . she’s just got that divorced body.”
“So do you!”
“Really?”
“Yes! I haven’t seen you forever. What have you been doing?”
“Same old. What have you been up to?”
“Oh, the yushe. Superbusy. Really busy.”
Barrett takes a step back, then another, until her steps take her to the sofa. She goes around.
She takes her glass of wine from the table, gripping it ferociously, and takes a deep sip. More kids stream into the house and she waves them in like a parking attendant. “Downstairs,” she says. “Have a blast.” She feels duped that these two know each other. Now they’re talking about a friend who is moving to San Rafael.
“I told her to go see Little Children,” Maggie says. “Going to that community pool—it’s just like the one in the movie. Totally creepy.”
“Great movie,” Barrett says. “And book.”
Both women turn to face her, and Barrett feels like she’s in high school once again. She’d do anything to fit in, to have these girls like her, but in high school, unlike in motherhood, she never had to work so hard. Usually the blond hair worked as an E-Z Pass.
“I didn’t know it was a book,” Maggie says. “Oh, my God, we’re reading the worst book in my book club. I mean it’s not bad, but it’s so serious and I can’t get into it.”
“We’re reading Baby on the Brain,” Christine says. “It’s about this high-powered marketing director and she gets pregnant, but still tries to juggle everything? And her friends are all single, so she still tries to go out and keep up with that lifestyle, but then her parents die and . . . Never mind.” Christine flutters her hands. “I don’t want to ruin anything.”
Barrett finishes the sentence in her head. Then her parents die and the protagonist discovers what really matters. Or: Then her parents die and she realizes she needs to think of others instead of just herself. Or: She realizes her single friends are all whores who’ll end up alone and children are the best. She loves little Arabellabellalulu after all. Mele would just puke.
“I should read that,” Barrett says, using her admonished voice because that’s how you speak if you want to appear engaged just as cool teenage girls speak with that nasal, closemouthed, bored-to-death drawl in order to properly merge with their kind.
“Would you like a glass?” She lifts her glass to Maggie.
“I’d love one. Are you kidding?”
Both women laugh—ha, ha, ha, we drink, we gossip, we’re cool, hip moms!—and Barrett goes to the kitchen like a servant. The kitchen is around the corner, so she can still hear the women. “Red or white?” Barrett asks.
“White, please,” Maggie says. “Jake just started at Sterne, right?”
“No, no. He’s been there since fifth.” He had to take a test and undergo an interview, and waiting for the results was like waiting for the lines to appear on a pregnancy test after your fifth in vitro. She doesn’t like that she can’t see their facial expressions.
“Oh,” Maggie says. “I’m not sure what he looks like.”
“He’s in that webisode thing,” Christine says.
“That’s right!” Maggie says. “He’s a star.”
“Well,” Barrett says, walking back with Maggie’s wine. “I wouldn’t say star—”
“Now, what do you do?” Christine asks. “You work, right?”
“I’m in real estate.”
“Aren’t we all?” Maggie says, and the two women laugh, but Barrett doesn’t get it. They start to discuss properties they know of and who of their friends are “in a rut” because they want to move but can’t because it’s such a poor time to sell.
Barrett figures she could do a little networking. She has already scanned their fingers, ears, shoes, and hair, and is pretty sure of their friends’ price range.
“For most people it’s a bad time to sell,” Barrett says, “but it really depends. Homes in the three-, four-, five-million-dollar range and up—homes in that bracket are still going strong.”
“I should have Trey call you,” Maggie says.
“Tray?” Barrett asks. “As in, ‘Carry this on a’?”
“He’s dying to move.”
“Sure,” Barrett says, “I’d love to talk with him.”
She walks to the bookshelf and grabs a bunch of business cards out of the bowl that holds business cards, miniature plastic toys, dust, and change. “Give one to your friend, and here’s some extra.” She hopes to God this could generate some new business, yet the people they know must have their own agents, top agents, Previews agents, agents that make you feel bad for walking into an open house. But you never know. Sometimes those agents are too busy for them.
“Would you guys like something to eat?” Barrett asks.
“Oh,” Christine says. She looks at her watch. “Then we wouldn’t have to drive all the way to Nob Hill and come all the way back,” she says. The two women eye-conference, and Barrett looks away.
“Sure!” Maggie says.
“Great. I’ll just put some plates out in the kitchen and come help yourself. There’s salad and fish. Hope you eat fish. And I’ll get another bottle of wine downstairs. I’ll peek in on the kids!”
She thought this would make them want to sneak down the steps with her, but they’re already immersed in another conversation.
“You’re kidding me.”
“No!”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes!”
It’s because they’re used to seeing their children with other children. They’re used to seeing them at parties, or admired by their peers. Barrett has been dying all night to see this, to creep downstairs and behold her son finally getting the attention he deserves. He’s like Cinderella. There the whole time, but denied the opportunity to mingle.
At the top of the stairwell she hears the deep bass of the music. It’s so loud that by the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs she covers her ears. How can they have conversations like this? Before she walks by the family room to the garage, she prepares herself. She will walk quickly and glance casually toward the party. Then she’ll get four bottles of wine so that on the way back she can pretend to have trouble carrying them all, and will have to move slowly by the scene while appearing to be completely occupied.
She makes her move, taking a quick glance up, and then she stops and steps back toward the stairs to hide.
What was that?
She peeks back out, then pats herself down for her phone, a typical reaction when faced with danger. She reaches for her husband, for communication with him. Everything has to be shared with Gary or else she is alone. Her need is similar to wishing you had your camera when you see something incredible. Her husband is the camera, an instrument that helps her capture things she appreciates, fears, or doesn’t understand.
They are dancing. The kids are dancing. And yet they aren’t really dancing. She thinks of It’s a Wonderful Life, the scene where the kids are dancing on the platform over the pool, all quick and hoppy, like they’re high on malt powder. The music is lively—you can actually identify instruments—piano, saxophone. That’s dancing. She listens to this music from the last step on the stairwell—Booty, booty, booty, booty knocking everywhere—and sees her son gyrating his buttocks so rapidly it’s like watching a hummingbird hovering over a honeysuckle. Then he slides to the right with his arms spread apart as if presenting a magic trick. After this arrangement he lifts his leg, a move she’d call the Pissing Dog if she had to give it a name, and gyrates with jackhammer speed.
She is so stunned to see Jake in this fashion that it takes her a moment to register the other kids. Girls are backed up against the boys, their asses gesturing wildly and their faces making fucking expressions. She finds herself envying this for a second—I haven’t made that face forever! But this doesn’t last long as she remembers that these girls are twelve and thirteen and just imitating someone making faces that a director in Hollywood says are fucking faces. Actual fucking faces aren’t nearly as appealing, she thinks, thinking of her own and of Gary’s face when he’s mid-o, a kind of stroke-like cry for help.
She’s sure the boys are all bonafied, or whatever the expression is—bonered up? Fully boned? Their expressions are very serious and focused, as if this were some kind of final exam. It’s then she grasps what everyone’s wearing. Basketball jerseys and baggy jeans, gold chains and baseball caps cocked over their eyes. The girls are in tight jeans, some in little shorts and tube tops; Christine’s daughter wears a purple basketball jersey that’s knotted below her breasts. She has on low-riding jeans, and a purple thong coasts over her hips. Barrett thinks of the show Jake watches about rappers’ houses, how some will end in the “family room” with a shot of “how we do,” which involves playing video games on a monstrous TV while scantily clad women dance around them, and by dancing she means humping nothing but dust motes, much like the scene before her. She doesn’t want to embarrass her son, so she just gapes. She’s gripped by fear that those women, those mothers, will come down and see what’s going on. Or maybe they already know? Maybe this is “how they do,” too? No. Not possible.
She peeks out and raises her arm, hoping the gold glint of her jewelry will catch Jake’s eye. She feels like she’s stranded and trying to get the attention of a rescue plane. He finally notices her.
“Come here,” she mouths, using her pissed and publicly humiliated nonvoice.
He wades through the stream of teenage waste. She composes herself, then takes a step back so they’ll be out of ear- and eyeshot.
“What the hell is going on out there?” she says in a loud whisper.
“Nothing,” he says. “We’re just dancing.”
Oh, his beautiful eyes. Just like Gary’s. Where is he anyway? She has a hard time reprimanding this child—Jake has always repeated her admonishments from the time he was two. “Oh, I not listening? I was bad? I’m sorry.” Damn him.
“But, what kind of dancing? Did you tell everyone to dance this way, or—”
“We’re just dancing. It’s how people dance.” He holds up his arms as if preparing to box, makes a kissy face, and moves his hips.
“Stop that,” she whisper-hisses. “Why is everyone dressed that way?”
“What way?”
“You know what way. Like—” Oh, boy. She tries again: “Why aren’t they dressed the same as they were when they first walked into this house?”
“Because it’s a hood party,” Jake says.
“A what? A what? A what-the-shit-did-you-just-say party?”
He covers his mouth and laughs because she just said shit, which is so minor right now. She could say all sorts of things and it wouldn’t matter.
“A hood party,” he says, like it’s no thang. “Like we’re people in the hood having a party. It’s something everyone does now.”
“Oh my God,” she says. “Oh, my flapping God.” She’s not sure what’s worse—that they’re doing it here or that it’s something everyone does now. What the big balls is wrong with everyone?
She looks up the stairs, swats Jake to the side, then peeks around the wall. A girl dances, looking over her left shoulder, then her right. Barrett sees Maggie’s son by the flat screen eating a piece of fried chicken.
“Oh, my God!” She presses her back against the wall. She thinks of the mothers talking about her on the SFMC forum or the whole night being filmed by some sleuth kid, the footage going to the school, the news, Dateline, Primetime, YouTube! A disturbing new trend among white, suburban teens. Are parents promoting racism at private schools? The NCAA would sue them, there would be death threats, the cereal would pull its ad—wait. Is it NCAA? That doesn’t sound right. Isn’t it A something? Oh, fuck it. Some organization is going to beat her ass.
Jake’s forehead is gleaming with sweat. He smells a little. She has never noticed that before. He’s starting to smell like a boy.
“It’s fun,” Jake says. “What’s wrong?”
“No,” Barrett says. “I don’t think so. This is not fun. This needs to stop. God, Jake!”
“What?”
“Just. I won’t make a scene. But turn the music down, suggest a game, or a movie, or cake! I bought a cake. Have at it. All you can eat. Please come up and have cake. You guys can do whatever with it. Do shots of cake! I’m cool.”
Her son looks back at the scene with longing, then at her with desperation and hatred, as if his life hinges on the ability to thrust and do the Pissing Dog.
“Find a segue, Jake,” she says. “Make a natural transition into some other activity. You’re smart. You can pull it off. But I’ve got two mothers up there, and if you don’t put a stop to this I’ll come back down here and I won’t be nice about it. I’ll make a scene. You know how I do. And I want everyone’s normal clothes back on.”
“But why?” he asks. “Why is it wrong? Jay and Cassie are here. They’re black and they’re doing it.”
“They’re rich! Strike that—it’s just wrong! On so many levels.”
“But why?”
Perhaps he really doesn’t know. Perhaps she doesn’t know either.
She remembers when she and her sister wanted to get those big gum balls in the machines at Safeway. They asked a girl their age if they could borrow two quarters. She could write down her address and they’d pay her back, which they would have done. The girls’ mother came out of the store, witnessed the transaction, and completely freaked out.
“Shame on you,” she said. “How could you take advantage of her like that? Shame on you.”
The girl had Down syndrome, but Barrett and her sister didn’t take this into consideration. They just needed two quarters and she was a kid like them and she was there. They would have asked any kid who was there.
These kids in her den—aren’t they still innocent? Do they really know what they’re doing? Or are they imitating what they see on television, the music videos? They aren’t like frat boys, blatantly making fun, but it’s just too hard to explain.
“It’s wrong because I have a feeling it’s wrong,” she says. “That’s why. I’m going with my gut. You’re ridiculing. You’re enforcing bad stereotypes.”
Barrett listens to the music in the background, a new song: I got hoes, you got hoes. Let’s call the whole thing off.
“We aren’t ridiculing anyone,” Jake says.
“Then it’s appropriation or something,” she says.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just bad, okay? I have to get back up there. Find a transition, okay? Redirect. Hell, spin the bottle for all I care. Do Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
“What’s that?”
Barrett walks back up the stairs. “Just stop,” she yell-whispers. Her heart is pounding; it’s gyrating. She takes a deep breath at the top of the stairs and looks back to see if Jake is gone. He’s still standing there, but facing away from her. She can see his profile. He looks stricken and confused, but she continues on despite the strange feeling that she’s abandoning him.
She’s relieved to see Christine and Maggie in the kitchen. Everything is normal. Everything’s okay.
“This looks fantastic,” Christine says.
“I know. I can’t believe you cooked this,” Maggie says. “I never cook.”
“Never,” Christine says.
Well, how nice for you, Barrett thinks. To save money she doesn’t even buy presliced cheese or snack-size anything. Snack-size means you are paying someone extra to put less food into a smaller container.
“How were they down there?” Maggie asks.
“Great!” Barrett says. “They’re having some dinner, too. Some . . . chicken, and they’re listening to music, but they’re going to come up soon and have some cake. Sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”
“It’s so hard to plan a party,” Maggie says. “It’s like they don’t want the cake and the song, but you have to have the cake and singing to make it a birthday! Matt just had his thirteenth and they did the same thing—went right downstairs and blared Lil Wayne, Lil’ Kim, Little Richard, God only knows.”
Du dum dum chi. God only knows how often she repeated that joke. Barrett puts some food on her plate, torn over what to do. She supposes she can tell these moms what’s going on, tell them what the kids are really doing downstairs, and not just at her house, she’s sure, but in basements all over San Francisco. It’s crucial these parents know about this activity, yet does it have to be at her house? She needs to sell real estate. She needs to get to know other mothers at Jake’s school. Most of all she doesn’t want to hurt her son’s social life. He has just been given a portal she isn’t about to block.
“It’s such a hard age. They’re embarrassed by us now!” Christine says. “So you just have to back off.”
“I know,” Barrett says, resolved to aid and abet. She thinks of the girls’ behinds pressed against the boys’ crotches. “It’s a very hard age.”
* * *
The fish is excellent, and Barrett believes more needs to be said about this. The fish. How excellent it is. Maggie is well on her way to becoming trashed. She’s trying to hide it, but her eyes are all glassy and googly. Barrett likes her better this way. She always finds herself liking people more if they drink a lot, even though it means they’ll be driving their children home buzzed. It is one of those moral dilemmas she doesn’t really know how to get around.
In the living room she fake-laughs at the things Maggie and Christine find to be funny. Maggie insists her son loves Frank Sinatra. Christine insists her daughter loves foie gras.
“It’s the weirdest thing,” she says, “but she loves it.”
Like they know, Barrett thinks, smugly. Their kids are downstairs pretending they’re in Compton and these chicks are telling me what their kids love. I mean, blow me. She doesn’t know everything either, of course, obviously, yet accepts this as part of life. She won’t be familiar with supersize pieces of her son’s world. How sad, she thinks. How very sad.
“I love this table!” Maggie says. A bit of wine sloshes over the rim of her glass and onto her beige sweater. “Damn it,” she says. “I always do that. I can’t go through one day, not one day, without spilling something or another on my shirt. It’s ridiculous. I’m like a walking wet T-shirt contest. Hello! I’m surprised I don’t get dollar bills from strangers . . .”
Barrett waits patiently. She wonders where Maggie’s going with all of this and if she’ll get out okay.
“. . . Yoo-hoo! Mommy gone wild. Oh, it’s absurd. Ab. Surd.”
Barrett dares to look up. Christine looks worried and eager, as if she’s watching someone do hurdles with a sprained ankle. When Maggie appears to be done, Christine shakes her head. “I know, I know,” she says, but Barrett prefers to let Maggie feel like an idiot and says nothing.
Finally. What she’s been waiting for all night. The sound of children coming up the stairs.
“I’ll get the cake!” she says and jumps up so fast you’d have thought she’d been zapped. She goes to the kitchen to light each candle with a long match. Thirteen candles, thirteen years. Her boy, her love bug. A skateboard on the chocolate cake, resting against a tree. It is really quite lovely, and cake is something you can never outgrow.
She turns the lights low so the candles burn brightly and walks toward the dining room table. She launches into the birthday song, realizing she’s in a fairly low register and it sounds like she’s moaning, but the kids join in, their voices surprisingly soft so the whole moment feels like a séance, a plea to some ghost, an elegy to childhood and times you once fiercely knew. She watches Jake through the candlelight, his sweet face, his awkward stature with its latent hunkiness. He looks exactly the same as he did when he was four years old, shyly watching his friends singing to him, watching his mother moving toward him with a lump of pride in her throat. Exactly the same look. But not the same, of course. Not exactly. Not at all.
She stands in front of him. She doesn’t need to bend down anymore. Jake blows out the candles.
Everyone claps. The boys whoop, and then she hears that sound she loves. The door opening. Gary and Tara finally coming home.
“Gary!” she says, a tremor in her voice.
* * *
Later that night, after everyone has gone, Gary tells her about the funeral for the baby whose name was Thomas. Every time his name was spoken during the service Tara yelled, “Thomas? Thomas! Thomas the Train!”
“I said, ‘Shhh.’ I said, ‘No, not the train. He’s a boy. A boy.’ Then Tara said, ‘Thomas the boy,’ but kept yelling his name.”
“That’s horrible,” Barrett says.
Tara walks to Gary, who is sitting cross-legged on the floor, waiting for the assigned book. Tara hands him her choice, then plops down onto his lap. Instead of cleaning up, Barrett sits beside them and listens to the story about the green sheep. She wants to tell Gary about tonight, but doesn’t know how. It could be a funny story. It could be worrisome, horrific. It could be nothing. It is nothing compared to the funeral.
“Here is the moon sheep. And here is the star sheep,” Gary reads. “But where is the green sheep? Where IS that green sheep?”
“Where is Thomas?” Tara asks.
The question brings tears to Barrett’s eyes, and she and Gary exchange glances. What do they say? When do you start telling your children the truth?
“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “Thomas had to go.”
Tara looks at Barrett with her mouth open. “Oh, he had to go?”
“He had to go,” she says.
“He’s okay,” Gary says.
“Yes, sweetie,” she says. “He’s okay. He’ll be okay.”
There are a lot of women who look like Dora at San Francisco playgrounds because . . .
A hood party is racist because . . .
Thomas is dead because . . .
Her boy is growing up. He will become . . .
She can’t fill in the blanks.
Tara turns the page, and there’s their answer. The mystery is solved.
“Turn the page quietly,” Gary says. “Let’s take a peep. Here is our green sheep, fast asleep.”
* * *
Barrett and Mele push their daughters on the swings, both secretly wishing there was a swing button they could press. Ellie leans back in her bucket seat, splayed as though on a zip line. She looks up, in love with the show in the sky.
“Did the moms ever find out about the party?” Mele asks.
“God, no,” Barrett says.
Mele thinks about the toons, the princesses that make Ellie so happy. Who cares if she’s playing with plastic toys and reading books that aren’t about biracial eagles with two proud fathers? Who cares! There’s a show up there in the sky!
She tells Barrett she’s thinking about chicken wings, corn on the cob, maybe some play on hot dogs.
“Haute dogs,” she says.
“Haute dawgs,” Barrett says.
“Maybe some kind of coleslaw.”
“With cartoons in it so the kids will eat it.”
“Dora Slaw,” Mele says.
“And don’t forget the cake.”
Mele wonders: funny, sad, light, heavy. What approach do you take? Do I dare do chicken? Do I dare eat a peach? Thomas, birth, death, children. Birthday parties, times you once fiercely knew.
“Why did Tara go to the funeral?” Mele asks.
“The parents wanted children there. They wanted a lot of life there.”
She wonders when Ellie will stop being entranced by a crowd singing “Happy Birthday” to her. When the awe of oneself begins to diminish, when you don’t think celebrating your existence is justified.
Mele will create a recipe for an irresistible cake that makes even teenagers line up like toddlers, giving in to their childish selves. She’ll create a bulimic’s fantasy, an anorexic’s nightmare, a stoner’s wet dream. The cake demands loud singing and seconds. A campfire s’mores ice-cream cake.
“Did you still want to look at dresses?” Barrett asks.
“Sure,” Mele says, backing out of asking directly where she stands. She can’t get a read on what Barrett thinks of her going to the wedding, but she must be somewhat supportive if she’s willing to let her shop her closet.
They are both standing with their arms crossed, overlooking the playground as if it’s their kingdom.
“Have you spoken to him lately?” Barrett asks.
Mele’s always embarrassed by this question, so rare is it that she and Bobby talk. He usually texts: Need anything? Or, All OK? the kinds of general questions that you’re supposed to answer no and yes to. You can’t say: I need love and eggs. You can’t say, Yes, all is okay except when it isn’t.
“Yeah,” Mele says. “We check in. He’s been busy with the . . . wedding and all.”
Barrett nods, and Mele knows she doesn’t believe it. When is a man busy with the wedding? It’s then she reads Barrett clearly. She doesn’t think Mele should go. She needs to hand Ellie over for the wedding and pick her up when it is over. She could even wait in the car, bring a book.
“Is it okay still? To come look at dresses.” Is it okay to go to the wedding?
“Stay for dinner,” Barrett says and gives Tara a push. She’s a friend that makes you live with your thoughts.
How do you help your child make good food choices?
I don’t know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I cook up boxed mac and cheese and call it a night. I rarely have the motivation to sculpt food into “magic pinwheels” or “giggly goblins” or whatever. I have all the time in the world, but when I attempted to make a face out of apples, raisins, and squiggles of bread Ellie looked at it and said, “What the hell is that supposed to be?” or at least it seemed she was saying this, especially since my Picassowich ended up on the floor and in the buckle of her high chair.
After hearing about Barrett’s son’s birthday party, I came up with Insert-Your-Favorite-Toon Slaw. Dora, Barbie, Caillou (such a pussy of a boy), Diego, Handy Manny—you just pick a character and stick it in for incentive. Barrett told me a story that reminded me that pop culture affects the palate. Sometimes it’s all in a name. Cinderella Salad, you could call it. Or Belle’s Beauty Slaw. Or Jasmine’s (the token minority) Magic Confetti. I use the characters to help me. I think of them as my bitches.
Tonight needed no such supports. We went to Barrett’s for dinner, and Tara eats like a sumo wrestler and Ellie likes to copy everything Tara does, out of fear most likely.
Tonight, Tara, newly four, asked me at the dinner table what I would do if someone asked me to show them my penis.
“Um, well, I don’t have a penis,” I said, looking at her parents. They both continued to chew, unfazed—they’d obviously been through this before.
“I mean, your she-she part,” Tara said. “If someone asked you to show them your she-she part.”
“You mean my vagina?”
Gary coughed.
“What?” I said. “If she’s going to know penis, she should know vagina, right? Why should we get the stupid nickname? Oh, shit. Have I crossed the line?”
“No, no,” Gary said. “It’s fine.”
“What would you do if someone asked to see your verchina?” Tara said, but before I could answer she yelled, “You tell a teacher!”
“That’s right,” I said.
“You tell a teacher!” Ellie mimicked.
“What if the teacher’s the one who asks?” Gary said.
This confused the shit out of Tara.
“You tell Mommy and Daddy,” he said, all proud ’cause he knew the answer.
“Daddy, what would you do if someone asked you to show your penis?” Tara asked.
I smiled politely, trying not to look down at his lap.
“I’d tell a teacher,” he said. “Unless it was Mommy. Then I’d look up in the sky to see if any pigs were flying around.”
Further confusion.
“I can’t believe teachers are talking about this stuff already,” Barrett said. “I tried to help her put her panties on and she said her body was sacred.”
“Your body is sacred,” Gary said, and Barrett rolled her eyes.
“We didn’t talk about sex until fifth grade,” I said, remembering when Ms. Lum (who wore this cool multicolored eye shadow) asked the class to think of all the slang terms for vagina and say them out loud: pussy, snatch, box, oyster, choach, coochie, cunt, slit, stink hole, punani, tuna, va. Then we did the penis beginning with the meats: sausage, wiener, and frank, then dick, rod, prick, schlong, dong, dipstick, tubesteak. As we got comfortable, everyone started to yell the obscenities with a crazed glee. Ms. Lum wrote our responses on the chalkboard, then asked how these words made us feel. We looked at the dizzying array of bad words written out in her petite cursive. Good! I thought. They make us feel good!
“So you ready for the big day?” Gary asked and promptly got elbowed by Barrett.
“Seriously?” she said.
“What? You ladies were looking at dresses. I thought it was out in the open.”
“It’s not her big day, idiot,” Barrett said.
“It’s fine,” I said. I loved being with Barrett and Gary. They were so cozy and adult. I wanted them to adopt me. I looked across the table at Gary and could imagine being so endeared and annoyed by him, like a real husband.
Ellie and Tara got up from the table to play with Tara’s new tool bench.
“If Barrett remarried would you go to the wedding?” I asked. “If Tara were the flower girl?”
“I don’t see Tara as a flower girl,” Gary said. “She’d be a flower killer. Maybe your sister’s kid though. She’s obedient.”
“So you’d go?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” Gary said. He leaned back and sipped his wine. God, he’s great. As a single person you know what the best trait in another person’s husband is? When they don’t flirt with you! Gary didn’t flirt!
“Did she cheat on me?” he asked, and rubbed Barrett’s head. She lurched away. “Or did I cheat on her? If I cheated on her, then I’d go. I’d support you, hon.”
“You’d never cheat on me,” Barrett said. “You’d be the worst.” She looked at him like she wanted to either kill him or hug him.
“So, Gary, you could possibly be supportive and show that you’re okay with your life. You could show that you’re mature—that you’re not threatened?” I took a bite of sweet potato.
“Show Barrett I’m mature?” Gary laughed. “If she were getting married, I don’t think she’d notice me.” Barrett made eye contact with me, maybe hoping I’d get his message. I’d be caught up with how I was perceived, what I was proving, whereas Bobby wouldn’t even notice I was there. I needed to actually feel self-assured and not just pretend I was.
“I’d bring a date,” Gary said. “For sure.”
“But I’d know she was a fake date,” Barrett said. “With fake boobs.”
“Ho ho!” he laughed. “You’d be so pissed! But how would you know she was a fake date?” he said, becoming contemplative. “She could be the love of my life.”
They were getting off topic. “Do you think it’s ridiculous that I’m going?” I asked.
They both looked down and moved some food around.
“Not ridiculous,” Barrett said. “It just seems like it would hurt.”
“But maybe you’d go and it wouldn’t hurt,” Gary said.
I thought about this, the wedding like a thermometer.
“Knowing what he’s like, would you want him back in your life?” Gary asked. “Would you want to marry him?”
“No,” I said, surprising myself. “Lately, no.”
“Time heals all wounds,” Barrett said.
Indeed, but it’s the sense of possibility that has soothed me. The slight change of focus. And perhaps, the wedding would just be an experience. Something to write about. That’s what I like about writing—I can look on coldly: observing, hearing, and feeling, knowing all of life can be used on my own terms. Even when I was young I’d experience life this way. Always noting, always writing in my head, narrating my own steps. I can walk into that wedding with my mental pen and paper.
Beautiful white doves were released above the newlyweds. One pooped on the bride’s soft and loose updo. Mele assured the bride that no one noticed and that it blended right in to her shit-colored hair, then she danced with her date under the stars. She could feel him—
“Has it been enough time?” Barrett asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.” I took a sip of wine. “Henry mentioned maybe coming with me.”
Barrett raised her eyebrows. “His wife’s okay with that?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, you know. They’re not even speaking to each other. Plus, we’re friends. I’d be like a charity case. It would be like if I went with Gary.”
Gary gave me a look like I wasn’t making a very good case.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I kind of told Bobby I had a date.” Admitting this seemed to confirm everything Barrett was thinking: that I wasn’t psychologically ready, that I was hurting myself.
I left their house without a dress.
* * *
After a night with Tara and her tools, Ellie was craving princess books. I tried my best to not skip ahead or comment on all the extraneous adverbs, but with the nuptials creeping in like a tide, I couldn’t help but ask Ellie some questions. In regard to the prince whisking off these chicks with their shy laughter and porn bodies, I asked: “How does she know she’ll even like him? They never even spoke to each other. He could be a total loser. He could be like, ‘Hi, wanna ride my horse.’ ”
“I want to ride his horse,” she said and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“But why would she go off with a stranger who did nothing more than kiss her? I mean, is he stable? Does he work, or just live off his parents? What are his table manners like? His taste in music? His morals?”
“He likes silly music, I bet, and Bob Marley.” She yawned, then said: “I’m not tired.”
“Are you excited to be in a wedding?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said, holding her fists together.
“Would you be okay if Mommy wasn’t there?” I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the answer.
“Yeah,” she said as if it was no big deal.
“Well, I might go,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, and then I had to stop myself with my petty baits and lures. I wonder why Daddy didn’t want to marry me? I wonder why Daddy doesn’t spend more time with you? Depressing, confusing questions from a depressed mom.
This was why Barrett and Annie thought I shouldn’t go. They wanted me to cut ties, let Ellie have her own memory of the event, not pollute it with my needs.
I needed to let Ellie love what she wanted to love.
I closed the book. “Did you love the story?”
“I loved the story pretty much,” she said.
I kissed her on the forehead. “Good night. Love you.”
“Love you more,” she said.
“Love you more.” I stood and walked away, slowly to hear her shout: “Love you more!”
Each time this happens, I imagine her in the bed, mouth still open from yelling, hands gripping the sheet. She’s expectant and wondering if there’ll be one more answer from me or if that was all. Eyes wide open, waiting; the suspense coming from knowing the result and enduring. Every night the same thing for both of us, and yet still the hope from her that it’s not over, the satisfaction for me to fulfill this wish. We’ve got this. The two of us. We’ve had another day together.
“Love you so much,” I said, and then, softly she said: “Love you.”
I don’t always make good food choices for my child. Or parenting choices. I could have this all wrong, but as far as bedtime goes, I’m awfully proud to have created this routine.