I cut her off, wondering if she somehow knows I am taking Zoloft. It would be just like her to snoop through my medicine cabinet. “First of all, you absolutely could have unwittingly stepped in something that isn’t welcome in rooms in which we live and eat. Besides, it’s our house and our rule. So…there.”
She stares at me a beat, then haphazardly kicks off her flats, one sliding under my chair. “Just so you know, I read an etiquette column that said it’s the ‘height of tacky to invite people into your home and then require that they remove anything other than their coat,’?” Josie says, making air quotes as I picture her Googling the query and memorizing the answer that suits her while ignoring all other opinions, such as the ones that point out just how filthy a practice it is to wear shoes indoors.
“Well, I didn’t ‘invite you into my home,’ now, did I?” I say, making air quotes back.
I know there is a fifty-fifty chance that she will turn and storm out, and I’m okay with those odds. But because Josie’s skin has always been selectively thin, and she clearly is in need of some kind of free therapy, she simply shrugs and goes for the last word. “Well, I think I may have a foot fungus. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“We’ll take our chances,” I say, then cut to the chase. The sooner I let her obsess over Will, the sooner she will be on her way to her happy hour or whatever mindless activity she has planned from here. “So what’s she like? Will’s kid?”
“Her name is Edie. Short for Eden. Andrea’s maiden name,” she says, pausing for effect as she walks barefoot over to the refrigerator, then opens the door. “And as much as I’d love to tell you she is a precocious brat…I actually really like her. She is sweet, engaging, and generally adorable.”
“That’s great,” I say.
“Great? It’s far from great. It’s painful. A daily reminder of what I don’t have,” she says, as she plucks one of Nolan’s Bud Lights from the bottom shelf, then twists off the top and takes a long drink. “And I bet you anything that Mrs. Will Carlisle volunteers to be room mom. You watch.”
“You’re the teacher. Don’t you get to pick your own room mom?” I say, as I RSVP no to an Evite for a birthday party at one of those inflatable play venues where kids are more likely to get a concussion or skin disease than they are to actually have fun.
“Ultimately. But it’s based on volunteers. Which mother checks the little box on the form I sent home. So if she’s the only volunteer…” Josie sighs, leaving her sentence unfinished.
“First of all, you’ll get at least five volunteers,” I say, thinking of all the eager-beaver mothers of children in Harper’s preschool class. “And even if you don’t, you could just ask another mother and hope it doesn’t get back to Andrea.”
Despite Josie’s insistence that teaching is one of the most emotionally, physically, and mentally draining professions, I always feel like I’m missing something. I just don’t see her job as all that complicated, at least not in comparison to the politics and pressures at my law firm, and especially given her twelve weeks of vacation every year.
“Oh, it would get back to her,” she says. “That kind of thing always gets back.”
I nod, granting her this much. Mothers always talk. In fact, unless Will’s wife is amazingly tactful or shockingly in the dark about her husband’s past, I feel sure that half the moms have already heard the gossip about their child’s first-grade teacher. “Well, I told you that you should have intervened,” I say, remembering how I scripted the phone call with her headmaster boss weeks ago, requesting that said child be moved to another first-grade classroom due to a “personal situation.”
“By the time I got the class list, it was too late,” she says. “It had already gone out to the parents.”
“So?” I say.
“So they would know that I made the switch.”
“So?” I say again.
Josie stares at me, then takes a long drink of beer. “So the opposite of love is indifference. And switching a kid out of my class is not an indifferent move.”
“Well, neither is stalking,” I say at my own peril. “And that’s never stopped you.”
Josie grins, apparently wearing stalking as some sort of badge of honor. “I haven’t stalked Will in years. Until recent developments. Besides, you can’t really count an innocent drive-by as stalking. It’s not like I egged his house. I just wanted to see where they lived.”
“Right,” I say, thinking that Will and his wife might not characterize the late-night maneuver as entirely innocent. Creepily worrisome is probably closer to the mark.
“Did I tell you what she drives?” Josie asks with a note of glee.
“You mentioned a minivan,” I say, thinking that her victory is pretty hollow. “Maybe it’s his car,” I add.
“Nope. It had a College of Charleston bumper sticker,” she says. “Her school. Her car. Please shoot me if I ever drive a minivan.”
“Are you forgetting that I drive a minivan?” I say, wondering if she’s intentionally trying to offend me—or if it just comes that naturally to her.