Twenty-six.
When Frances had come boiling back from soccer, full of ire at Shelly and a certain amount of pride at being able to fart on cue, Michael had been surprisingly unsupportive. He had simply made a face at her and kept watching the football game on his computer.
Frances frowned at him. “You don’t think I was right to get annoyed at her?”
Her husband shrugged, still keeping his eye on the ball. “I think you were judging her as much as she was judging Anne, to be honest. The farting I support completely.”
Frances sat on the bed and looked at him. “But Shelly doesn’t even know Anne.”
“You don’t know her all that well yourself. It’s not like you and Iris. You and Anne were always, you know, different from each other. I would call you politely warm acquaintances.”
“Aren’t you friends with Charlie?”
“Not really. I’d go get a beer with him. I’d definitely do a playdate or something with Theo and Milo, but would I confide my concerns about erectile dysfunction? Nope.”
“Do you have concerns about erectile dysfunction?”
“Nope.”
“Well then.”
“Not the point. I’m clarifying degrees of friendship.” He sat back from the computer, and regarded his wife thoughtfully. “There are those friends we’re friends with because our kids are at school together. We are happy to see them at school events, birthday parties, etc. We hang out preferentially with them at stuff like that, because we like them better and have more in common with them than other parents. Right? But you’d never invite them to dinner because you have about forty-five minutes of conversation and that’s about it.”
Frances frowned. “Like who?”
“Tracy and Arthur? Andrew and John? Dahlia’s mom and dad, whatever their names are?” Michael was clearly master of this material. Frances thought about it. He was right. People she liked, but had no real desire to know any better than she did already.
“But Anne and Charlie are different than that.”
“Because they’re neighbors, and because that means Theo and Milo could potentially be friends outside of school, ergo, not a time-limited friendship. Plus, carpool, therefore a relationship of dependence.” He was about to steeple his fingers like a professor, but chose to scratch his armpit instead. Keeping it classy.
“Since when did you get a degree in anthropology?” Frances pulled off her sneakers, wondering if that was mud or dog shit. She threw the shoe under the bed, either way. A doctor friend of hers had once told her the entire world was covered in a fine patina of shit particles, so why worry?
Her husband answered easily, “Since I spend so much time in traffic and my mind wanders in circles.” He looked back at the game. “Anyway, then you have real, actual friends, like Sam and Cory, or Mark and Dana, who we became friends with when the kids were at preschool, and are still friends with. Not friends we see all the time, but friends we hug and love and are always pleased to see. And, more importantly, friends we would call in an emergency, friends where we could show up in the middle of the night with our asses on fire and they’d run and get a bucket of water without asking questions. Friends where you could pull up in front of their house, dump the kids, and know they’d mind them no problem until you got back from evading the authorities, or whatever.” He smiled lazily at her, sure of himself. “You wouldn’t necessarily leave the kids with Anne, she’s just too damn coordinated.” He corrected himself. “At least until now. Now she’s just a hot mess.” He giggled suddenly.
Frances looked at him. “Have you been smoking pot while I’ve been out?” There was a pause. She narrowed her eyes. “You have, haven’t you?”
“It’s legal in California, you know.”
“I know. I’m just reframing this whole conversation and it’s making a lot more sense. I don’t give a shit if you had a hit or two of pot—you’re not going anywhere, it’s Saturday afternoon, you’re still in your boxer shorts. But I’m paying less attention to your grand, overarching taxonomy of friendship.” She tugged off her jeans and threw them at him. He reached up and caught them in midair.
“See? Not so stoned I’ve lost my catlike reflexes.”
“That’s not as reassuring as you might think.” She tugged on her sweatpants and slippers, not planning on going anywhere herself. “Have you seen Ava?” A thought occurred to her. “Please tell me she didn’t see you smoking pot. I’m having a hard enough time as it is.”
He shook his head. “No, I took the dogs for a walk and had a quick puff while I was doing it. No big.”
“You’re a horrible example of a parent, and I’m going to see how she’s getting on with her homework.”
“She’s done,” Michael replied. “I already checked.” Then he made finger guns at her, and she rolled her eyes.
“You’re a goober.”
“Maybe,” he countered. “But when this game is done I promised Lally I would play My Little Pony with her, and thanks to my en-gentled state, I’m even going to enjoy it.” He blew on his finger guns, and holstered them.
Frances couldn’t argue with that. Game, set, and match, Poppa Pot Head. Even if en-gentled wasn’t actually a word.
Ava was indeed finished with her homework, and seemed in a good enough mood for Frances to risk sitting on her bed. “What’ve you got planned for the rest of the day?”
Ava pulled her earbuds out and smiled at her mom. “Nothing really, got any suggestions?”
Frances considered. “Want to go to the bookstore? Art supply store?”
“Yeah!” Ava got up and went to find shoes. Frances felt elated momentarily; score one for Mom and the offer of art supplies. She ran over her usual checklist to make sure she could leave the house. Lally was taken care of, the dogs were fed, dinner was going to be pizza . . . She went to check on Milo.
Milo was lying on his bed reading, which was unusual enough for Frances to utter a noise of surprise. Her son looked up and grinned.
“I’m not always on the computer, you know. I’m too hot after soccer.” He still had his cleats on, Frances noticed, with little perforated sheets of mud gradually drying and dropping onto his bed. She quite enjoyed these pieces of mud, the ones from cleats, because they looked as though they’d been crocheted by Mother Nature, like beach stones with holes in them, naturally occurring things that looked like they’d been made by people. Amusing. She stepped forward and tugged his shoes off his feet.
“What are you reading?” she asked, between tugs.
He turned the book to show her. It was some graphic novel about a middle-school kid, one of several series he loved and read and reread over and over again. Sometimes she would sit by his side at night and read them to him, even though you’d think a graphic novel wouldn’t be a good read-aloud. But they were, and whether the kids were wimpy, big, heroic, or whatever, he loved them all and she loved them because he did. She’d preorder them as soon as they were announced, sure of a moment of shared excitement. God bless books.
“I’m taking Ava to the art store. Do you want to come?”
“Nah, I’m good. Dad’s here, right?”
His mom nodded. He made a “well then” noise, already back to his book. She looked at the curve at the back of his ear, the way his hair grew there, echoing the shape of Michael’s hairline. The color was hers, but the thickness and wave were like her brother, Alexander, long gone and never had a chance to be a favorite uncle, which he would have been. Milo was the child she understood least, even though in many ways he was the most like her. He was quiet, stable, pleasant, reliable. Precisely because he was so equable she worried he got taken for granted at school, that he would suddenly blow a gasket, that he was hiding deep sadness or rage or something.
Sometimes she would sit and talk to him for ages about Pokémon or Minecraft or Star Trek or whatever the heck it was he was obsessed with at that moment, and hope he might take the conversation in a more personal direction. But he rarely did. Had her brother been alive he would have been her bridge to this child, but now she was on her own. Milo and Michael were easy companions, spending time building Legos or going to baseball games or any number of the classic father-son activities. Anytime she worried aloud about their son, Michael would look at her and roll his eyes. “He’s fine,” he would say. “Stop forcing yourself to worry about something that isn’t broken.”
She squeezed Milo’s shoulder, which he barely noticed, and left the room.