Twenty-nine.
It was Saturday again. There was a kids book Frances liked, where the alphabet decided to wing it for once and go in a different order from usual. A started it off, but then one of the other letters got pissy and they all ran about and picked their own places. It got completely out of hand, but Frances often wished things could be more like that in real life. Let’s throw Tuesday out completely one week, and have two Thursdays instead. Tuesday is a pointless, soul-destroying day, the day when you’re brokenhearted that the week still has so much to go, and none of this work is going to do itself. Tuesday is the day you stare at the wall and wonder if you should have chosen a different major. A different husband. A different haircut. Wednesday you get your shit together emotionally because, let’s face it, you’ve been doing days in this order your whole life, and what’s the point of fighting the system? At work, however, it’s touch and go all day. But Thursday? Thursday you can see the weekend ahead and you get a second burst of steam and plow through everything so you can leave early on Friday. Frances gave this kind of thing a lot of thought, and if there were a “Random and Totally Useless Thoughts” category on Jeopardy!, she would crush it.
Frances was back at AYSO again, having thrown scissors against Michael’s rock. They used rock, paper, scissors to settle everything, and it had reached the point where they would throw the same thing for about six turns, then one of them would throw scissors and the other would throw rock. She wondered if when they were eighty it would take them thirty identical throws to get to a decision, which was another question for that Jeopardy! category, if Alex Trebek ever called. Occasionally she would play “crazy” rock, paper, scissors with Lally or Milo, where they would throw nutball things like shark (one hand making biting movements), spider (obvious), flames (upside-down spider), or rabbit (again, if you need a diagram this isn’t the game for you). She’d tried this against Michael one time and he’d vetoed it instantly.
“How can you say for certain that shark would beat scissors?” he had asked, incredulously.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Frances said. “Could it be that sharks are one of the world’s most efficient killing machines, with super tough skin and teeth that constantly replace themselves, and scissors—even if they’re incredibly, surgically sharp—are still just scissors? PLUS you would need to be very close to the shark to deploy them, and then it would just eat you. Particularly if you had just stabbed it with a pair of scissors, which it would probably consider unfriendly.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he’d said. “But if we start going outside the norms of rock, paper, scissors I think we’d be playing a dangerous game.”
“Rather than a childhood game?”
“Yes. Who knows where it could lead. You could throw karate chop and I could throw finger guns and all of a sudden it’s a Tarantino movie.”
Suddenly Frances got hit in the head with a soccer ball, which jolted her out of her pleasant replaying of Idiotic Conversations with My Husband, a channel she watched a lot in her head.
“Sorry!” A small boy ran up to her and retrieved the ball. “Sorry, Frances!”
She looked down. It was Lucas. She smiled. “No problem, sweetheart, I wasn’t using my head for anything right then anyway.” He ran off. Frances waved at Bill, who was standing on the goal line of Lucas’s game, and then looked over to see if either of her own kids was injured. She wasn’t asking for a broken leg or anything, a badly skinned knee would cut this shit short.
“Hey, Frances, anyone injured yet?” It was Lilian, clutching an enormous cup of coffee.
“Hey there, no, sadly, all hale and hearty and running around this morning.” Frances looked around. “Did you bring Mr. Edam?”
Lilian nodded, pointing one finger from her coffee-gripping hand. “He’s over there, watching Clare. Her team are the Pink Dolphins. He’s holding a Pink Dolphin. That’s how you’ll pick him out.”
Frances spotted him. “He’s very tall.”
Lilian nodded. “Yup.”
“And quite broad in the shoulders.”
Lilian sighed. “Yup.”
“And handsome and all that stuff. I can see why you’re ambivalent.”
Lilian clicked her tongue. “But look at him waving a stuffed dolphin! Isn’t that questionable behavior in a grown man?”
Frances shrugged. “I think it’s cute. I think he’s cute. I think Clare likes him, judging by the way she’s clutching him around the knees.”
Lilian smiled. “Yes, the kids like him a lot. Annabel wasn’t sure at first, but now it’s like he was her idea all along. I don’t know why I’m reluctant about him, he’s really nice.”
Frances shrugged again. “Because you’re as nuts as the rest of us? Because why let yourself be happy when you can get in your own way and question it? Because you feel guilty for being happy when there is so much misery and suffering in the world?”
“Sure,” said Lilian, after taking a thoughtful swig of coffee. “All of the above. Plus, he’s amazing in bed, and who needs that?”
“Never mind,” consoled Frances. “That will fade. I promise.”
Lilian looked at her. “Sex life not what it used to be?”
Frances shook her head. “Actually, much as it used to be, if you only go back a decade or so. My mother once memorably told me if you put a coin in a jar every time you had sex the first couple of years of a relationship, and then, once you’d been married a year started taking one out every time you had sex, you’d never empty the jar.”
Lilian frowned. “I’m not good enough at math to understand that.”
“Me neither, when she told me. I thought she was wrong, and told her so. She laughed, and I think now I understand why. You don’t have very much sex after you’ve been married twenty years. Or at least, we don’t.” She coughed. “How on earth did we get onto this?”
“My hunky Dutch guy.”
“Oh yeah. Well, anyway, get it while you can. Enjoy.”
“I have two little kids. There’s not all that much time for chandelier swinging.”
“Get a room.”
Lilian suddenly looked animated. “Oooh, like Anne Porter? Is that all true?”
Clare came running over, with the dolphin in her hand. “Mom, can you hold this for me?”
“Wasn’t Edward holding it?”
“I was.” The tall Dutch guy had shown up behind Clare. Frances looked him over surreptitiously. Jeez Louise. He noticed her and smiled, holding out his hand. “Hello, I am Edward.”
“Hi there.” Frances shook his hand, enjoying Lilian’s obvious discomfort. She was dying to say, “Hey, Lilian says you’re great in bed,” but decided to save it for when there wasn’t a child present. She looked at Lilian, who clearly saw the internal debate she was having. “Are you having dolphin problems?”
He cleared his throat. “The game is over, and Clare wanted to go to the playground. Is that OK?”
Lilian nodded. “Sure, knock yourselves out. Annabel’s game will be over in another fifteen minutes or so. I’ll hold Pinky and meet you down there.”
“It’s not Pinky,” said Clare.
Lilian looked at the dolphin. “It’s not? Who’s this then?”
“That’s Dolphy.” Edward kept a straight face. “Pinky used to be her name, but she changed it.”
“Why?”
He opened his mouth to answer her, but Clare was tugging on him. “Mom,” she said, “can we just go? We can talk about names later.”
Lilian raised her palms and nodded.
“See, Edward?” Clare took his hand and dragged him away. “You just need to be firm, then she can understand anything!” Edward looked apologetically over his shoulder at Lilian and Frances, then turned back to the child at hand.
“Yeah,” said Frances. “He’s awful.”
“So, is it true, about Anne?”
“The cheating part or the getting divorced part or both?”
“All of it. Tell me all of it.”
Suddenly Frances was tired. “Do I have to? I’m bummed out about it and I just can’t get excited about it as a piece of gossipy news. I’m sorry, but you’re an actual friend, so I’m being honest. I realize I’ve talked about other families like this many, many times, but for some reason now it’s my life, so to speak, or at least this close to my life, and it feels wrong to talk about it. It may ruin gossip for me permanently. You know Anne, you can ask her directly.”
Lilian looked at her. “Are you OK? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how upsetting it would be. You’re right, when it’s someone else it’s all fun and games, but when it’s your own life it’s not the slightest bit funny.” She sighed. “After my husband died people I didn’t know very well suddenly became very interested in me. They wanted to chat, wanted to know stuff, wanted to make inquiries, do you know what I mean? Most of them meant well, wanted to help. But after a few months you start to hate the smell of dropped-off rotisserie chicken and the obligation to make coffee and rehash your pain for someone else’s vicarious experience.” There was a silence. “Everyone brings a fucking rotisserie chicken.” Another silence. “I call them The Birds of Grief.”
There was a short pause, then Frances said, “Have you tried the rotisserie chickens at that weird little place on Eighth and Western?”
“The one with all the wood piled outside? The one that looks like it might be condemned at any moment?”
“Yeah. Those chickens would help you get over your rotisserie chicken issue. In our house we call it Bacon Chicken, even though there is no bacon involved. It’s that good.”
Lilian grinned suddenly. “This is what I like best about you, Frances,” she said. “You’re the most comforting yet most unsympathetic person I’ve ever known.”
“Is that good?” Frances was a little taken aback.
“Yeah. Oh, look, Annabel’s finished, thank GOD.” Lilian drank the rest of her coffee and gave Frances a hug. “Thanks for being you, and thanks for respecting Anne’s privacy. I’ll go get the gossip from someone with lower standards of friendship.”
“OK, no problem. Next week?”
“I’m afraid so. Only five weeks until the end of the season!”
She walked off to meet Annabel, her older daughter, whose face was looking more and more like her mom’s every day. Lucky girl.
Milo flung himself against Frances’s legs, nearly knocking her over. “I’m done! We won!!” He was grinning up at her like a puppy, all skinny legs and bad coordination, hair flopping around, the sweet smell of kid sweat still enjoyable before the inevitable change to puberty and sports clothes that walked out of gym bags on their own.
Lally wandered up. “We lost. I think. Not sure. Don’t care.” She sat on the grass and tugged off her shoes, too impatient to undo the laces. “Can we have ice cream now?”
Bill arrived. “Hey,” he said. “We were thinking of going for an early lunch and ice cream. Any interest?” Lucas was sporting a new Band-Aid, and looked pretty stoked about it. He was limping, but on the leg that didn’t have the Band-Aid. Still, a strong effort.
As the kids whooped and jumped about, Frances nodded and then looked around at all the other families gathering themselves to move on to the next section of their day. She could see Iris and Sara in the distance, she had Bill and Lucas in front of her, and somewhere on the playground were Lilian and Edward. All these families, all struggling against one thing or another, doing their best, or maybe just pretending to be interested, or maybe actively trying to destroy each other, who knew? All of them united momentarily around fucking peewee soccer, brought together by the twin desires for healthy children and something to do on a Saturday. Inwardly Frances shrugged, because it doubtless meant something significant and deep, but all she could think was that the whole thing was incredibly tiring and she needed more coffee. Sometimes life is just what it is, and the best you can hope for is ice cream.
Back at home, Ava was just waking up. The house was very quiet. It was Saturday morning, so . . . AYSO. That’s right. She turned over, and buried herself deeper in her covers. Her mind flickered to that guy, Richard, the guy it turned out Anne Porter had been sleeping with. She had to admit she’d been impressed, but Anne was good-looking for an older woman. Piper was sleeping with a senior at the local catholic boys’ school, the five-year age difference too big to tell her parents about, but not so big it made him unfuckable. Ava hadn’t met him, but she’d seen his feed, which was essentially the same thing. She’d seen what he wanted to be seen. Piper said he was nicer than that, and Ava certainly hoped so. Too many pictures of his friends, and just enough shots of him holding animals to ensure a steady supply of blow jobs from a girl who only just got her braces off.
Ava hadn’t slept with anyone yet. She’d been felt up the year before, at someone’s bar mitzvah, and the kid had gone for her underpants, but she’d stepped back in time. Her friends told her about getting fingered, which didn’t sound all that good. When you’d watched that same hand slap a dozen high fives and throw inaccurate gang signs with other pubescent boys . . . ew. Also, she hadn’t yet been able to put in a tampon, because it hurt, so presumably getting fingered would hurt, too. Piper had told her if you didn’t want them to stick their hands in your pants all you had to do was blow them, and then “they can’t think of anything else.” Apparently it was the ultimate distraction tactic, but shouldn’t sex be less of a defensive battle? Her mom had given her A Talk that was mostly about not doing what you didn’t want, and feeling OK about wanting to do stuff you did want to do, but it hadn’t been all that helpful as Ava had spent most of the time trying to sink through the floor.
She understood why Piper liked the seniors. Boys her own age had voices that were deeper suddenly, but they still ate sour straws for breakfast and pushed each other for no apparent reason. Older boys, boys her mother called “young men,” were focused on getting into your pants, knew how to get there, and knew what to do once they were there, which was good when you had only the vaguest idea yourself. Sometimes that meant you ended up doing things you hadn’t anticipated, but Piper said a lot of those things were amazing. She also said it turned out you knew how to give a basic blow job all along, it just came naturally. Ava frowned into her pillow, while feeling the increasingly familiar tug of arousal when she thought about sex.
She was fourteen, and she wished she had a boyfriend she could fool around with. The senior boy had a friend who’d apparently seen Ava’s pictures on Piper’s feed and thought she was cute, but now that she and Piper weren’t talking anyway it hardly mattered. She couldn’t approach Piper and say, “Hey, I know we aren’t friends right now because I called you on some shit and you told everyone I hit on you, but I’m getting increasingly horny so I was wondering if your boyfriend could hook me up with someone who would deflower me without spreading it over the Internet?”
She pulled the sheet up over her head and groaned.