Twenty-seven.
The art store was surprisingly busy, although Frances wasn’t sure why it was surprising. This was not her store, not one of her regular haunts. She knew the people at the grocery store checkout by name, the Trader Joe’s, the bookstore on Larchmont Boulevard, the coffee place, the juice place . . . Those were hers. This was Ava’s, so she followed her daughter as she confidently moved around, looking for the little things she needed and the other things she wanted.
A young man stepped out of her way, and then, a moment later, appeared around the corner of an aisle. He cleared his throat, and Frances looked up at him. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Don’t I know you?” he asked, half frowning. He knew her face was familiar, but these days his sadness was confusing him; he often forgot what he was doing, or where he should be. Not a student, too old for that. Another teacher?
Ava was looking from her mother to this totally hot guy, and for a split second wanted to giggle. Like her mom would know him. But still, maybe if she did . . . Ava grinned at the young man, and he smiled absently back, noticing the teen for the first time, and therefore starting to run through his rolodex of students. Maybe this woman who seemed so familiar was just a mom he’d seen at the art college.
But Frances was now literally backing away, shaking her head gently. “No, I don’t think we know each other, sorry.” Ava hadn’t seen his face the other day; she had no reason to learn who he was now.
But Ava hadn’t turned, and the guy was insistent. “No, I’m sure I’ve seen you before. I’m Richard Seitz. I’m a teacher at Otis?”
“The art school?” Ava had taken over the conversation. Frances had started to sweat, and now she took her daughter’s sleeve and literally tugged.
“Come on, Ava, we’ve got stuff to get.” She turned back to Richard and her expression suddenly said, Look, go the fuck away, we definitely know each other and either you’re pretending not to know me, in which case I will fuck you up if you continue this charade, or you really have forgotten me, in which case you’re in worse shape than I thought.
He stepped back. “Sorry, my mistake.”
“I’ve sometimes thought about going to art school, and that’s a good one, right?” Oh my God, Frances thought, Ava’s flirting with this guy because, let’s face it, he’s cute and closer to her age than he is to Anne’s, but there is simply no way this is happening.
Richard was still not getting it. “It is. I’d be happy to show you around sometime, if you like. We have open houses all the time.” He pulled out his wallet. “I’ll give you my card, you can e-mail me.”
That’s when Frances turned to look at him with an expression of extremely explicit warning and Richard suddenly remembered who she was, where he’d seen her, and why she was tugging her cute little daughter away from him down the clay aisle.
Ava was pissed. “Why wouldn’t you let me talk to that guy?” She was sitting in the front seat, the art store bag on her lap, clearly simmering.
“He was too old for you,” Frances replied, eyeing the ice cream store across the street. She wanted a milkshake so badly, no wonder she was overweight. She ate whenever she felt bad, which was more frequently than you might think. Also when she felt good. And sad. And angry. OK, she ate whenever she fucking felt like it, and having run through the familiar “I want to eat that, no, you’re too fat, no, I’m a feminist and I reject your body-shaming bullshit, but what about your health, what about my health, like you care about my health, you just want me to conform to some cultural norm, I’m talking about a milkshake and I’m a grown-ass lady and fuck you” thing, she suddenly turned the car off and got out. It was more than a milkshake, it was a political stand, and she was going to add malt. Ava didn’t move, so Frances leaned down to the window.
“Do you want ice cream?”
“He wasn’t too old for me, one. And two, ew, he was like thirty—you shouldn’t even be thinking about him like that—and I was only asking about school. I thought you wanted me to go to college?” Ava went to open the car door and Frances stepped back to put money in the meter.
“I do want you to go to college, but I didn’t want you talking to some strange guy in an art store. He’d be asking you to pose nude next.”
“Which would have been reasonable if he’s an artist, right?” Ava wasn’t as mad now, because ice cream, and because she was finding this conversation amusing.
They entered the store, with its high ceilings and metal tables and chairs and familiar faces.
“Chocolate malted?” The guy at the counter had seen Frances so many times, and she never wavered. She didn’t let him down and nodded. Unbeknownst to her they called her Mommy Malted. Not that she would have cared. “And for you?” The guy looked at Ava, and his expression altered, subtly. Not so subtly that Frances missed it, and it struck her that the days when she got that “Hey, I see you, attractive young woman” look, were long gone. She got friendly, she got recognition, eventually, but she no longer got physical awareness. She didn’t mind, although she knew many women who hated it, who hated becoming slowly invisible, fading away. Like Marty McFly in his family photo.
“I’ll get a shake, too, but cookies and cream, please.” Then Ava smiled at him, the smile that said, “Hey, attractive young man, I see you and I see you seeing me and it’s nice that we see each other, ciao babe.” Then they turned away to wait. So much communication, so little time. Ava turned her back on the cashier and spoke again to her mother.
“Like, if he’s an artist and wants to draw me that’s a different getting nude than any other kind, right?”
Frances shook her head, looking at the cakes and cookies in the case. There was a blue velvet cake that perplexed her, even as she wanted to try it. “No, and you know it. You’re fourteen. You shouldn’t even be thinking of getting nude.” She paused, struggling to be honest. “Actually, that’s not true. At fourteen you probably will be thinking about it a lot, but you shouldn’t be doing it.” She wrestled a little more, thinking back to her own teen years, her virginity lost at fifteen, quite happily, with a fellow fifteen-year-old she still knew on Facebook, and whose two sons were around the same age as Ava. “Or at least, not with a man twice your age.”
Ava laughed. “You just revised your position, like, fifty times in one sentence.” She looked at her mom’s face, pondering. “You did know him, though, didn’t you?” She made the connection. “Was he Anne’s friend from the other day?”
Frances shrugged. “Maybe he’s a parent, or maybe I see him at the café a lot or something. You must have people like that, kids you see at school a lot but don’t know. You’d recognize them on the street, but you don’t know them.”
“Sure.” Their milkshakes arrived, and they headed back outside.
Richard was standing there, clearly waiting for them. “I need to talk to you,” he said to Frances, starting to cry.
Ava had been sent back to the car, where she was doubtless sorting through her throwing stars collection, waiting for her mother to get back within range. She had Very Much Wanted to stay and hear the conversation, but Frances had been firm. Now she and Richard were standing on the street, twenty feet away. Out of throwing star range, but Frances kept one eye on the car windows, making sure they stayed closed.
“Is Anne OK?” Richard had stopped crying for a moment, but he didn’t look all that composed.
Frances shrugged. “She’s alive. Her life is fucked, but I guess you know that.”
He shook his head, and Frances realized he was both young and not as young as she had thought. He had to be thirty, maybe a little less. He wasn’t a child, he was a man, a grown man who could easily be a father, a husband, even an ex-husband. Suddenly she felt bad for him. Who knew what Anne and he had had together? It had been a bad idea, in her humble opinion, and not worth the price in any way whatsoever, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have some value.
“She’s not talking to me. I haven’t spoken to her since I spoke to her husband.” His voice was full of tears, though his eyes were dry.
“You spoke to Charlie?” Frances was confused.
Richard looked at her, noticing the kindness in her eyes, feeling his own eyes fill with tears in the face of such obvious pity. “Yes, he answered her phone and told me to fuck off. He threatened to break my arm if I came anywhere near him and the kids.”
“He did?” Frances suddenly grinned, unable to stop herself. She covered her mouth and tried to get it together. This was so very awkward.
And just as suddenly, Richard grinned, too, close to hysterics. “Yes. He was very articulate. I’m ashamed to say I had never really thought of him as an actual person, you know. I didn’t know what he looked like. He was just the Other Man.”
Frances stopped grinning. “To be honest, he was the First Man, the Husband Man, but I get it.” She looked over at the car, and caught Ava staring at them. Great, God only knew what she was making of this. Better wind up this weirdness. “Didn’t you realize this was going to happen? You’re not a teenager.”
Richard wiped his face with the back of his hand and Frances fought a desire to hand him a tissue. “I guess so, but I love her so much. I want to marry her. She won’t speak to me.” He started crying again and stepped into Frances, blindly, someone else’s son, but someone’s child nonetheless, however tall he was. She put her arms around him as he rested his head against her shoulder and cried and cried and cried. Frances patted his back, murmuring little mommy sounds as she had so many times in the last fourteen years. She looked over at the car and saw Ava watching them with a surprisingly sympathetic expression. Next to her Frances’s chocolate malted was slowly melting in the heat of the car. God fucking dammit.