26
I am so happy to see my kids when Pete drops them off at 9:50 that I forget to be tired. I try to modulate my enthusiasm so they will know I missed them but that I wasn’t miserable without them. And, of course, I wasn’t. Even putting this huge leap forward with Ethan aside, I enjoyed the break and the chance to move in the world as just myself. I loved walking around in his world and having a backstage pass to his heart. Ferris, however, does not keep his cool and runs shamelessly around the three of them.
They have a lot to say about Pete’s new apartment and their rooms there. Greer and Iris have twin beds and beanbag chairs, and Cliffy’s room looks out onto the train station.
Pete hugs them goodbye and makes a big show of making them promise not to tell me what they had for dinner last night. I let him have his secret.
“Can I have cereal?” Cliffy asks when Pete’s gone.
“Didn’t you guys have breakfast?” I ask.
Iris is first to defend her dad. “We slept kind of late and Dad said you needed us back by ten.”
“That’s fine,” I say into the refrigerator as I’m discovering we are out of milk. “Want to go get pancakes at the diner?”
They’re ecstatic, which is fun. I say, “Okay, five minutes; let me get dressed and check on Phyllis real quick.”
“Dressed to go to the diner?” asks Iris.
“I’ve promised Frannie she’ll never see me in these sweats again,” I lie. “I’ll be quick.”
I find a black T-shirt dress that looks pretty good with some sandals. I brush my hair and put on lip gloss. I will never admit this to Frannie, but that took less time than staying in my sweats and looking for my Birkenstocks.
“You look better,” Phyllis says when I’m clearing yesterday’s glasses to the kitchen.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I thought he was handsome, the man who brought you home this morning.”
I blush and turn toward the kitchen. “He is,” I say.
“It wouldn’t kill you to have a romance,” she calls over my running water.
“It might,” I call back. I scramble her eggs and mentally relive the entire night with Ethan. I let myself step back into yesterday.
“What are you so afraid of?” Phyllis asks when her eggs are on her TV tray.
“He’s leaving at the end of the summer.”
“Those are the best kind of love affairs. The great love of my life was a summer romance.”
“Then what happened?”
“He came back the next summer, we got married and bought a fairy-tale house.” The twinkle in her eye makes me feel like he’s still here.
“Well, that’s one in a million.”
Phyllis shakes her head. “Nonsense. Happens all the time.”
“I’ve had a summer romance. But he’s…he’s something more. If you actually fall for someone who’s leaving, it’s as crazy as getting a dog.”
Phyllis looks confused.
I explain. “You get a dog and you know two things—you’re going to fall in love with it and it’s going to die one day. You knowingly walk headfirst into a heartbreak. That’s the basic madness of dog ownership.”
“You’re really too young to be so dark,” she says.
I don’t say anything.
“Alice, besides you and my girls, everyone I know is dead. I’ve buried them all. Do you think I wish I’d never met them?” She focuses on getting a bite of eggs on her fork and without looking up says, “Do you wish you never met me?”
“Of course not.” I am so uncomfortable talking about this. I do not want to talk about her dying. I do not want to engage with death in any way. I can’t believe I brought this up.
She smiles at me. “You got a dog. You’re a proven risk taker.”
When we walk into the diner, he’s at the counter, just like he was in my daydream. He looks up from his coffee and smiles at me and then at all of us. “Here for French toast?”
“Pancakes,” I say, and move my hair behind my ear in a way I don’t think I’ve done since college.
“Ali!” Frannie calls as she brings Ethan his omelet. “You guys want to sit at the bar or at a table?”
I want to sit on that stool right next to Ethan, but Greer says, “Table, please.”
“Okay, take that back booth in the corner,” she says, and Ethan shoots me a look that makes me go liquid. Frannie hands me a stack of menus. “Are you guys free for dinner tonight? At Scooter’s?”
“Will it be fun-tastic?” asks Cliffy.
“Of course,” Ethan says. “Come at six. Frannie’s requesting no themes, which, come on. And I’m responsible for the meats. Any requests? For meats or themes?”
“What about a luau?” Iris asks. “You can cook whatever you want and we can wear grass skirts. Mom has tiki torches.”
“I do,” I say, and catch his eye. There’s so much in his eyes that I have to look away.
“Perfect,” he says. “And I have so many grass skirts. Plastic, silver, some made of actual grass. It’s a whole cupboard we could clear out.”
We get back home and the kitchen looks happy. We didn’t make a mess at breakfast, and before we left I cut some black-eyed Susans from my garden and put them in a jelly jar by the sink. The feeling I’m having walking back into my sort-of-clean kitchen makes me think that cutting flowers might be self-care.
Greer puts her arm around my waist. It’s nothing really, my own child giving me half of a hug. But right now it’s everything. There was a time when Greer was Velcroed to my side. She cried when I dropped her off at preschool, and I promised that I’d sit outside the whole time. For a while she wanted to sleep in our bed, which was strangely a hard limit for me. I let her sleep on the floor of our room in a sleeping bag until she got over it. What I wouldn’t give to have her fall asleep in my arms and tell her that it’s all going to be okay. That she’ll figure out algebra, that her friends are going to be mean and then they’re not. That she’ll fall in love and it will last, and that I’ll never leave her.
We go for our Sunday canoe adventure and talk about the luau the whole time.
“Are the tiki torches in the garage?” Greer asks over the waves.
“I think. What else should we bring?”
“What’s a luau?” asks Cliffy.
“A Hawaiian party. Flowers and pineapple, I think,” says Iris. “We should have flowers in our hair.”
“Yes!” shouts Cliffy.
“It should really be hibiscus,” I say. “But the gerbera daisies in the yard would be good too. Let’s do pink.”
“Fun-tastic!” says Cliffy.