The Gap Year

SEPTEMBER 25, 2009



My mom thinks I am insane for working in the attendance office for a fourth year. But attendance is like band. It is a place to be. Also, I like what you find out when you’re an aide. Such as who has an appointment every week with the orthodontist or the speech therapist. Also who has to go to AA meetings or check in with their probation officer. And, since I work fifth period, right after “B” lunch, and hand out tardy slips, I know who spends lunch getting high or having sex. It is a closed campus except for seniors with permission, so theoretically nothing like that can happen. But, as Twyla used to say, “That’s why God invented bathrooms.” And, in her case, Dumpsters, and prop rooms, and cars with tinted windshields. But then, Twyla was not ever what you’d call discreet.

Thinking about Twyla makes my heart hurt. I remember this one time in seventh grade when she called me up late Friday and asked if I would help her TP her house. Her own house. Twyla had gotten too weird for me by that time. She’d started cutting herself, and talked not about the tattoos she was planning to get, but the sleeves of tattoos she was planning to get. But even if we had still been friends, I wouldn’t have helped her. It made me too sad to think about anyone sneaking into her own front yard and throwing toilet paper around so that it would look like her friends or, even more ridiculous, her boyfriend had wrapped her house. But Twyla went ahead and did it all by herself.

Most parents, the second they saw all that toilet paper drooping out of their trees, would have gotten their kid out of bed in the middle of the night to clean it up. Not Twyla’s mom. Not Dori. She was probably proud of the streamers of toilet paper hanging down from the tall sycamore trees. Probably thought it was a bold declaration of the slob-queen housecleaning style she and my mom bonded over. As if the warped card table left out from a garage sale she’d had months ago, and the deflated husk of an ancient wading pool, and the acrylic painting she’d taped over a broken-out windowpane weren’t enough clues. So the Charmin was just left there to blow in the breeze all weekend.

Sunday night, it rained.

Monday, after school, I did what I always did and waited until the very last minute to get on the bus. Then I acted all distracted, and pretended that I was trying to find something in my backpack and that I didn’t see Twyla, sitting all the way in the back, waving wildly at me. I grabbed the first open seat as close to the front as I could manage. We always passed Twyla’s house on the way home. That day, though, before we even reached her house, a murmur passed through the bus and kids moved over to the windows on the side that faced it.

The rain the night before had made the toilet paper clump together into lumps of gray papier-mâché. Someone—I didn’t turn around to see who—yelled out, “Hey, Twyla, nice job on the wrapping!”

Everyone laughed. They all knew. Or just made the obvious guess that Twyla had wrapped her own house. I laughed with them. I had to. If I hadn’t everyone would have assumed that I had helped Twyla. That I was still her friend. That night was the first time I unlatched the screen on my window and sneaked out of the house. I took the long pole with the hook on the end of it that Mom used to clean the fan in the great room with me, went over to Twyla’s house, and cleared off as much of the TP as I could reach.

I get the same cringing, burning-with-shame feeling I had on the bus passing Twyla’s house when I think about how I’d held up my little bottle of water and waved it at Tyler like it was some secret lover’s signal. It was clear from the way he’d looked right through me that if he’d ever given me a second thought, it was, “What is the deal with that sketchy stalker girl?”

Who cared, though, really? I wanted to get out of band and he helped me do that. That’s all that is important. That’s all I really care about.

It’s Friday. Friday is a big day for the Jims ’n’ Jays crowd—the noontime equivalent of the Wake ’n’ Bake morning tardies—named in honor of their lunch favorites, Slim Jims and joints. Miles Kropp, a guy I’d written lots of slips for, meandered in. We always acted like we didn’t know each other, even though he’d been part of Twyla’s stoner-emo-goth group since sixth grade. His eyes, rimmed in thick black liner, are rabid-bat red. He stands on the other side of the attendance counter, not saying a word.

“Do you need a tardy slip?” I finally ask.

“Hu-u-u-h?” He makes a big deal out of slurring the word and saying it real slow.

I write his name at the top of the slip, the last one on my pad, and ask, “Reason for tardiness?”

“Huh?”

“We’ll just say ‘personal.’ ”

“Yeah. Right. Cool. Per-suh-nul.” He says it in a dreamy, sleepy way. “Like I’m a null person.” His giggle reminds me of Twyla. So does the way he is proud of himself, just like Twyla always was when she was high and expected me to be shocked and outraged but secretly impressed and jealous.

He leaves and the office is empty. Miss Olivia hasn’t gotten back from lunch yet. When she does, she’ll listen to all the attendance messages, then send me out to pick up the kids whose parents have called in asking for them to be excused for doctor’s appointments or to talk to the reps visiting from colleges. Today it is Hendrix and Carnegie Mellon.

I need more tardy slips and am almost out of permissions, so I go to Miss Olivia’s desk. I am the only one she allows near her desk, since it contains the precious slips that she keeps under lock and key. Miss Olivia is obsessed with making sure that no student ever sneaks out of so much as one class. She still talks about a senior two years ago who’d managed to steal her pad of slips and get three of his friends out of class before she traced the stolen slips and got him suspended. For a week.

Miss Olivia’s desk is covered with her massive collection of turtle knickknacks and photos. In the largest of the framed photos she is with her ex-husband and their baby daughter. Her daughter, who is in her early thirties now, has a pink bow taped to the top of her bald head. The ex has one of those eighties haircuts with no sideburns that make it look like the top of his hair isn’t attached, like it is just a hair cloud floating around his head. He looks happy and proud and filled with love. Next to that one is a picture of Miss Olivia’s daughter in a graduation gown with a mortarboard loosely pinned onto her big, curly hair. Miss Olivia stands beside her with the same hair. The father is not in the picture.

Not in the picture.

I guess that’s where the expression comes from.

In the most recent photo, Miss Olivia is holding her asthmatic Chihuahua, Elvis, next to her face and making him wave at the camera. Her hair is thin and flat, the way it grew in after the chemo.

Since she is a giant Pirates football fan, Miss Olivia has a team photo tacked to her wall. But she especially worships Tyler and has a close-up of him pasted in the center of a red football that she cut out of construction paper. I am staring at it when a voice behind me says, “Pink Puke, so this is where you hang out.”

I turn. Tyler Moldenhauer is at the counter.

Tyler Moldenhauer is at the counter.

My brain cannot absorb this information. It shorts out and refuses to send signals to my mouth to make it form words or even to my legs to order them to get me up off my butt and walk to the counter.

“I wondered where you disappeared to.” He leans down and rests his head on the back of his hands, folded on top of the counter. “You work here or are you just stealing turtles?”

“What? Oh.” I glance down at Miss Olivia’s turtle paperweights, turtle Beanie Babies, turtle figurines, turtle paper-clip holder, and turtle mouse pad and snort something that is meant to be a laugh but comes out like I might be about to barf again.

“What are you doin’?” he drawls. While I consider and discard a thousand equally stupid responses, he hoists himself up onto the counter, swings his legs around as smoothly as an Olympic gymnast, and dismounts on my side of the counter. He leans in next to me to study Miss Olivia’s turtle herd and says, “I detect a theme here.”

Sadly, the nerd section of my brain unfreezes before any of the cooler parts and I jump up, babbling, “Why are you even here? The athletic faculty handles all sports absences. You can’t be back here.”

“I can’t? Seems I am, though.” He picks up a sneering turtle with a sign around its neck that reads YOU WANT IT WHEN? “This one here has got to be my favorite.”

“That area is off-limits to students!” The top half of Miss Olivia’s body appears at the counter. Tyler’s back is to her, so she can’t see who is with me. “What is he doing back there?”

Tyler doesn’t turn around. He makes the grumpy turtle sniff his thumb, then fall in love with the nail. I ignore him as he puts Miss Olivia’s turtle on the back of his hand and makes it hump his thumb.

“He’s from the district office,” I say. “He’s fixing your hard drive.”

His back still to Miss Olivia, Tyler drawls in a surprisingly realistic hillbilly accent, “Yes’m, your hard drive has to be recalibrated.” His improv is good except that he is patting Miss Olivia’s fax machine instead of her external hard drive.

“He is not from district. He is a student and he is not allowed.”

Tyler turns around, “Um, I’m sorry, ma’am.”

I wait for Miss Olivia to go into lockdown mode, because no one, not even her pinup boy, is allowed into her forbidden realm. I know that she will summon Miss Chaney, who will then suspend Tyler. And probably put me on probation for not dying to prevent access to the sacred excused-absence slips. But instead of turning into a shrieking lunatic, Miss Olivia bubbles out, “Tyler Moldenhauer, how can I help you? Do you need an excused absence?” She snaps at me, “Get Tyler an excused absence.”

Get Tyler an excused absence?

I begin to understand why varsity players never have to come to the attendance counter. I guess administration doesn’t want anyone seeing the special treatment they get.

“Stay right there, Ty-Mo,” Miss Olivia orders, then chugs around to the entrance at the far end of the office that admits only the officially approved.

“OK, I’m out,” Tyler says. And just like that, like a flea disappearing from one spot, he hoists himself back onto the counter and is gone before Miss Olivia circumnavigates her way around to our station.

She is huffing a little when she reappears. “Where is he? Where did he go? What did he need?” When I don’t answer, she informs me, “Aubrey, that was Tyler Moldenhauer.” Her voice and face are like she just said, Aubrey, that was Jesus.

“OK …” I give a vague nod, acting like I can’t quite place this Tyler Moldenhauer person she speaks of.

“All-state three years in a row? Runs the forty in four-point-five? His junior year he was two thirty-two of three sixty-eight for three thousand ninety-four yards with twenty-seven TDs and only six interceptions? He’s met with recruiters from six Division One colleges already, and I have excused absence requests for him to meet with two more.”

Everything she tells me is obviously a giant deal on Planet Football. But it all just makes me wish that the person she is referring to didn’t have all sorts of numbers attached to him. That he was just an ordinary boy who smelled like the ocean on a cold day.





FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010



Under the Book of Palms is an assortment of Aubrey’s old school papers, book reports, stories, assignments. They are festooned with stars and happy faces, thumbs-up stickers, and rainbows. Notes scribbled in the margins exclaim over what a good writer Aubrey was. I pick up an essay from sixth grade on the topic of school uniforms, written in her careful cursive.

I know that there will be many who will attack school uniforms and say they are a bad idea because they hinder a person from being an individual. I disagree and say the exact opposite. School uniforms would actually help someone be who they really are. Instead of being forced to choose a group and try to fit into it through a certain exact kind of clothes, everyone would start off on an equal—

“Are you searching Aubrey’s room?”

“God, Dori, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“If by ‘sneak up’ you mean pound on your front door, then come in and yell, ‘Cam! Cam! Oh, Miss Cam Lightsey! Hello! Are you in here!,’ then, getting no response whatsoever, come back here in order to start CPR or locate your corpse, then I’m sorry that I ‘sneaked up’ on you.” Dori’s sproingy curls, dyed a mauvey brown this month, quiver as she whips her head around. “You are, aren’t you? You’re searching Aubrey’s room.”

“No,” I answer, and she joins me in searching Aubrey’s room.

I had been friendless for more than a year when Dori showed up for back-to-school night at the start of first grade. Dori and I never would have been friends back in the city, where her tattoos and transgressions would have made her blend in rather than stand out. But, like two Americans who wouldn’t have talked to each other in their homeland, Dori and I became fast friends in the alien land of Parkhaven. We bonded over being single outcasts in a place where everyone was paired up like they were boarding the Ark, and over our shared amazement that none of the other mothers had any lives—past or present—outside of being supermoms obsessed with their children and with Parkhaven Elementary.

When I met Dori, I was still smarting from being dropped by the inner circle of Parkhaven moms, and I knew the instant I saw the armband of tribal tattoos encircling her biceps and the crescent of diamond studs curling around the top of her ear that she was my soul mate. Or the closest thing to one that I was going to find at Parkhaven, where Joyce Chaffee once caused a minor sensation when she got a few magenta streaks put in her hair. Streaks that were gone a day later.

Dori happily admits that she is an “attention whore.” Even when it is negative, she has to have it. Being the official Parkhaven Weirdo Mom inspired her to new heights of outrageousness. During rare playdates with other moms, Dori openly shared details of how her ex had taken up with a stripper, and how she got up every morning and balanced her Zoloft, Xanax, and Claritin with a couple of Red Bulls. There were never any second playdates. I was only too happy to let Dori take over as Parkhaven’s biggest Weirdo Mom, a role I felt I’d been assigned because I had no husband or garments made of khaki.

Dori called Parkhaven her “witness protection program.” She fancied herself a fugitive, hiding out from a scary ex-husband in the last place on earth where he’d come looking for her. After a few years during which the scary ex was revealed to be a rich boy living on a trust fund while he pretended to be Steven Tyler, I began to suspect that inertia more than anything was holding Dori hostage in suburbia. That and the fact that out here the attention addict was a showstopper, but back in the city she was just another former riot grrrl with tats starting to sag.

“Let’s sell our blood” was one of Dori’s many suggestions for how we could afford to move back to the city. She also thought we should turn tricks behind the concession stand at soccer tournaments and sell crack along with the Girl Scout cookies. But, even if we split a place in the city, the math never worked out. As part of the divorce settlement, Martin had paid off just enough of the house—sadly bought near the top of the market—so that I could barely afford the mortgage, but not enough that I’d have much left if I sold it. And even less since I was still paying off the home equity loan I’d taken out when Aubrey needed braces. Then I went even further into the hole when I broke some bones in my foot and couldn’t work for three weeks. Besides, in spite of the facts that Parkhaven Elementary was far from the exemplary school its test scores had led me to believe and Aubrey never made many friends there, I hated to think about how hard it would be for my shy girl to adjust to a new place. Which is another reason why, at first, Dori was a godsend. Twyla and Aubrey became best friends for the rest of their time at Parkhaven Elementary.

The girls had sleepovers almost every weekend. They watched Cinderella, Charlotte’s Web, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Little Mermaid together so many times that the VHS tapes got streaks, while Dori and I split endless bottles of Australian kangaroo wine and debated who’d gotten screwed worse in her divorce and what giant outcasts we were in Parkhaven.

Another favorite topic of discussion was the impossibility of meeting men in the suburbs. This led to us signing each other up—at first as a joke, then for real—for online dating services. We spent endless evenings culling through the candidates. Dori delighted in poking fun at the gooniest of them, the ones with hair transplants that looked like a connect-the-dots puzzle, or who bragged about “owning my own business,” which we’d find out meant the guy drove a cab. We both went on dates and ended up doing unforgivable things like calling each other from bathroom stalls and whispering about dodgy odors and tasseled shoes. We both endured periods where we boldly declared that we needed “friends with benefits,” and, for a few weeks, a month or two, managed to look past a guy’s icky mom issues, green-ringed toilet bowls, and compulsions to correct how we drove, cut our meat, and pretty much everything else, except the one unforgivable deal breaker, how we raised our daughters.

Once I realized that the postmortems with Dori were far more satisfying than any of the actual liaisons, I took my profile down and lived vicariously through her.

Now, as I search through Aubrey’s drawers, Dori asks, “Didn’t we have a pact that we’d never be like our moms and read our daughters’ diaries and violate their privacy?”

“I’m not violating anyone’s privacy. Short of discovering a syringe, I don’t care what I find.” I bite my tongue, but Dori doesn’t seem to take any notice of my syringe comment. I guess she believes that it doesn’t apply to her, since, before she left, Twyla was abusing prescription drugs she stole from her babysitting customers, instead of shooting up or doing anything that involved syringes. I want to ask Dori if she regrets our pact, since Twyla clearly could have benefited from a few room searches.

I comfort myself with the thought that at least Aubrey never had any interest in drugs. Then I feel bad that Twyla is my At Least. All mothers have them. The child who—no matter what our own offspring is smoking or drinking or failing at—we can look at and think, At least. At least my child is not pregnant or in prison. Or gone off to live with her drugged-out, Aerosmith-wannabe dad. Surrounded as I am by all the Parkhaven overachievers trying to decide between Duke or Stanford, I desperately need an At Least. I just wish that it weren’t Twyla.

“So what are we looking for?”

“Nothing, really. Okay, I’d love to find some proof that she’s using birth control.”

“You should have gotten her on the pill.”

“Don’t ‘should’ on me, Edith Piaf.”

“I think my mother crushed up birth-control pills and sprinkled them on my Pablum. Oh no, wait, now I remember. She had me locked up in a chastity belt. So you think Aubrey’s pregnant? Our little rule follower? No way.”

Dori eliminates the possibility. Twyla was the wild one. Aubrey was the sensible one. Until Tyler came along she was the diligent student, the neat freak, the conscientious grade-grubber who was going to keep us all organized.

“Jesus. Aubrey and I should be cruising the aisles at Target, arguing about minifridges like all the other mothers and daughters.”

“Well, not all.”

Dori flops down on Aubrey’s bed. She strokes the hardened remnants of BeeBee’s purple hair. “Remember when the girls went through their fairy period?”

Instantly, Aubrey and Twyla are back in this room with us. They sit together on Aubrey’s bed dressed in their fairy getups: gauzy wings from the dollar store and Goodwill prom dresses scissored into fluttery Tinker Bell creations. Twyla’s copper curls are dark, almost mahogany compared with Aubrey’s duckling-down blondeness. Like the two little girls in the locker room, they talk to each other with the solemn intentness that only girls of that age can bring to a conversation with a friend.

“You are the mama fairy,” Twyla dictated to Aubrey. “And I’ll be the baby fairy.”

“And you’re lost in the deep dark forest,” Aubrey improvised. “And I come and find you.”

“No!” Twyla shouted. Strong-willed and loud, like the little girl in the locker room she automatically vetoed any changes to her script. “I find the hidden treasure and there are jewels and rubies.”

Aubrey didn’t respond.

Our daughters were in sixth grade when they watched their last movie together, Moulin Rouge. Aubrey had liked the film all right, but Twyla, who’d recently gone as boy-crazy as any girl I’d ever seen, became obsessed. No matter what you asked her, she’d sing a lyric from Moulin Rouge in response. The last time Aubrey invited her to sleep over, Twyla stayed up all night watching the movie again and again while Aubrey slept. In the morning, I asked Twyla if she wanted waffles or cereal and she sang something back to me about the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. Aubrey rolled her eyes, shook her head, and went to see what was on TV.

Another Twyla-Aubrey memory crowds in. It was early in the summer, the girls had just finished first grade, Dori and I were sitting on my rarely used front porch while the girls played inside the house. We had citronella candles burning, a bottle of kangaroo red working, and were deep into telling each other the stories of how we’d lost our virginity when Aubrey yelled out to us through a crack in the front door, “Guys! Listen, guys! Shut your eyes! Are they shut? Are you ready?” This was before she had grown out of her speech impediment, so it came out, “Aw they shut? Aw you weddy?”

After Dori and I both covered our eyes with our hands, and assured Aubrey that we couldn’t see a thing. The door creaked open and the nails of our wild young rescue dog, Pretzels, clicked on the floor as she bolted out. She bumped against my legs, then swatted them with her tail as she bounded down the porch steps, rushing to check what Dori called her pee-mail.

Twyla announced, “Okay, you can look now!”

Aubrey collapsed in giggles the instant I uncovered my eyes and beheld the two little girls, Aubrey, the shy blonde, and, Twyla, the wild redhead, both done up with cartoon-sexy makeup jobs and draped in every scarf and shawl and flimsy, sheer bit of fabric that might be considered slinky in my sadly utilitarian wardrobe.

Twyla’s copper ringlets bounced as she pointed a showstopping finger at Aubrey’s pink boom box and commanded in her husky, baby Ethel Merman voice, “Hit it!” Aubrey, still the faithful handmaiden, rushed to press “play” and the girls sang along with an old CD of mine, “That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it!” They put their hands on their hair and wiggled their skinny hips back and forth. Aubrey had glittered brightly at her own audacity, delighting in how shocking and outrageous she was.

But Dori, far from being shocked and outraged, jumped up and joined right in. She dragged me onto my feet so we all could have a girls-just-want-to-have-fun bonding moment. Dori and Twyla and I bumped our butts together and tried to outthrust one another. But Aubrey’s face had fallen the instant she saw that Dori, Twyla, and I were intent on outdoing her. When I’d tried to drag her into the fun, she’d gone back in the house and sat on her bed arranging her My Little Ponies by color.

Dori settles BeeBee back on the bed. “Well, at least on the untimely-pregnancy front, it’s a relief that Twyla is gay.”

I don’t say anything; I am still a bit dubious about Twyla’s lesbianism. Plus, I can’t get “That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh” to stop running through my head. Finally, I ask, “You talked to Twyla?”

“Yeah, she called last night. For money, of course. I told her to ask her father. He’s the one with the rich, ridiculously indulgent, terminally screwed-up parents who destroyed their son’s marriage. Then she told me to forget it and that I was a bitch and had ruined her life.”

“Oh, Dori.” I take her hand as the scarlet patches bloom like geisha makeup beneath her skimpy eyebrows. She turns from me, scrubs the palm of her hand against her eyes. They come away clean; she’s stopped wearing mascara since Twyla left. Cried it off too many times.

I open another drawer. Dori peers in and asks, “Jesus, how many pairs of identical running shorts can one human own?”

Aubrey’s Nike shorts are folded neatly as a store display. Dori picks up a pair, maroon with a pink insert, and says, “I never figured Aubrey for a brand whore.”

I pluck the shorts from her, tuck them back where they were—precisely placed between the powder blue with white inserts and the burnt orange pairs—and slam the drawer closed. Dori has broken the Mommy Pact: It is fine for me to criticize my kid, but woe betide she who jumps onto that dogpile. I don’t snap at Dori, though; if focusing on Nike shorts for a few seconds helps, I’ll give her that. Maybe at that moment she’s even thinking, At least. At least I didn’t raise a brand whore.

Dori, struck with a sudden realization, claps her palm against her chest. “God. She’s not really pregnant, is she? I mean, seriously? Oh, shit. With Tyler Moldenhauer? The way she is now, she’d probably want to keep it. Oh, well, always room at PCC. If Kyle Dunmore and Stacy Adovada can get in, they’ll put Aubrey on the faculty.”

A bowling ball crushes my solar plexus. I can’t draw in a breath or release the one stuck in my chest. Dori has just put names to my worst fears: pregnancy and Parkhaven Community College, where Kyle Dunmore and Stacy Adovada, everyone’s favorite drug burnout and teen mom, are currently attending.

“Dori, could you please shut the f*ck up?” I always liked that I could say “f*ck” to Dori. Now I’m sorry that I ever gave up that word’s power to shock, because I would seriously like Dori to zip it.

“Sorry. Bad joke. Really, though, you have nothing to worry about. Aubrey is not like that.” She puts her hand on my arm. “Really, Cam, don’t worry.”

Don’t worry?

Dori, mother of a daughter who left home with a stash of stolen pills, who only calls her for money, stands in front of me like a living memo, a breathing reminder of all the terrible things that happen when mothers don’t worry.

After Twyla left, I hired Dori to help me with my classes. At first it was sort of a charity move, something to keep my friend distracted, but Dori has turned out to be surprisingly good at handling registration, getting students to pay up, invoicing hospitals for my consultations, and, generally, keeping me and the business going. She is even working on helping me “establish a Web presence.”

Dori glances at her watch. “Just FYI, we’ve got class in twenty-five minutes.”

I jump up. “Shit! How did I lose track of an entire hour? Where’s my bag?”

“Chill. It’s all out in the great room. I’ll go pack up. You …” She eyes me, doing a quick triage. “Brush your hair, put on a clean top. Then we gotta hit the trail like a steaming cow patty.”

I run a comb through my hair with one hand as I gather up cell phone, car keys, keys to the classroom where I teach, and purse. In the great room, Dori is stuffing my class materials into the striped canvas beach bag I haul back and forth to classes.

“Where’s Britney?” she yells. Her years as a roadie girlfriend, then wife to a musician husband have left Dori with a sense of urgency about any show, even a lactation class.

“Shit, I put Britney in the laundry room. She needs to be washed. Pretzels was gnawing on her. We’ve gotta take Lady Gaga. Credenza. Second drawer down.” Dori calls the weighted dolls I use in class Britney Spears and Lady Gaga.

Dori digs out my backup demonstration doll and jams her into the canvas bag as I shuffle my feet into the pair of sandals I locate under the couch.

“Let’s turn this mother out!” Dori yells as we run for the door. “Give me your keys. I’ll drive! You put on makeup!”

In spite of myself, whenever I jump into my dilapidated Chevy Malibu with Dori, an oldie plays in my head about “head out on the highway. Lookin’ for adventure.” It makes me feel as if I’m fifteen again and cruising with my best bud.

“Dori, slow down,” I order as the succession of gas stations, Subways, liquor stores, and dry cleaners that line the road out of my subdivision, Parkhaven Country, whiz past. “I’d rather be late than dead. Besides”—I point to a sign—“school zone ahead.” I flip down the visor and lean in closer to the mirror to swipe on some lipstick and mascara.

At the top of the steep hill we are descending, a football coach in royal blue stretch shorts stands blowing his whistle at some small boys—made even smaller by oversize helmets and shoulder pads—who, red faced and streaming sweat, are chugging up the incline.

“Oh, great,” Dori says, “I see Child Brutality Month is in full swing.”

This is another well-worn conversation. At this point I would usually jump in and suggest that Amnesty International should investigate a school system that takes children who’ve spent an entire summer exercising only thumbs on game controllers, wraps them in nonbreathable polyester, sticks solar-collection helmets on their little heads, shoves them into killing heat, and lets a sadist with a whistle run them around. But I don’t repeat my lines. Instead, I marvel at Dori and her imperviousness to the constant, eroding drip of regret. On some level, she still thinks that we—she and I—had it all figured out. That we were the moms going our own way, unconventional but, ultimately, right.

She slows down as we approach the four-way stop at the edge of the elementary school. A moment after stopping, she mutters, “Go, a*shole,” and makes a face at the driver of the Jeep Cherokee across from us. The driver gestures at Dori to go ahead. She holds her hand out, impatiently indicating the empty intersection, mutters to herself, “You go, a*shole.”

He doesn’t move.

“Dori, just go.”

“No, he was here first. It’s his turn. Oh, look, now he’s giving me Little Lady Fingers.”

It’s true, the driver is gesturing with two fingers twitching above his steering wheel for us to go ahead.

“I hate that patronizing shit.”

The cars on either side get tired of our standoff and zoom through the intersection. Then the Cherokee squeals out. As he passes, the driver flips Dori off. She gets a good look at his face and screams, “Oh my God, it’s Pastor Jesus Juice from Six Flags over Jesus!” The youth minister from the nearby megachurch whom Dori has decided is a child molester is, indeed, flipping us a giant bird.

Just as we finally cross the intersection, I shriek and flail at my pocket.

“Crap! What did I hit? Tell me it’s not a kid.”

“No, you’re fine.” I extract my buzzing phone. “Sorry. I forgot I put it on vibrate. I didn’t want to miss it if Aubrey calls.” I check the number, see that it’s not Aubrey, and try to figure out which of my patients or students might be calling. My best guess is the dad from the young couple with preemie twins. Their case is complicated and I’m not certain I can remember all the details. I pull up a mental file on the twins. Chase and Jason? Charles and Jeremy? Chance and Jared! Six weeks premature. Nurse started them on formula at the hospital. Nipple confusion. They’re losing weight. Pediatrician is pushing for formula. Mom is understandably frantic. Dad is clueless and thinks life with twins would be a breeze if his wife would just give in and do formula. He’s always the one who calls, since Mom, literally, has her hands full. I put on my professional voice—calm, competent, warm—and answer.

“Hello?” I repeat when the dad doesn’t respond. A scrambled fragment of his urgent answer bleeps in, then cuts out. I hold my phone aloft to try to amplify the signal, then twist around until another bar appears and yell, “I can’t hear you!”

A disjointed Morse code of garbled words machine-guns my ear, then right before the connection is decisively dropped, a name jumps out of the gibberish.

Dori glances over at me. “Who was that?”

I don’t answer.

Dori glances over, sees my expression. “Cam, are you all right? Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

I watch Dori move her mouth, but I can’t hear her anymore. We move forward along the road, but the houses, the vet clinic on the corner, the convenience store, they all pass by in silent slow motion.

“Cam!” Dori explodes. The volume comes back on and the world starts running at the correct speed again. “Who was that?”

“Martin.” I let my hand holding the phone drop into my lap. “That was Martin.”

6:13 P.M. OCTOBER 13, 2009



=How was school today?



=Fine, aside from the fact that it took place at Parkhaven High School.



=Any good Psycho Saunders stories from physics?



=Yeah, Matt McClune, whose big brother had Saunders last year and told him where all the crazy buttons are, said something about how many Asians have won Nobel prizes in science, and Saunders just WENT OFF! He had all these statistics about what percentage of all the engineers and chemists graduating are from Asian countries and how America can just kiss its ass good-bye in science.



=Angry white male? Get him talking about how the founding fathers meant for us all to carry AK-47s and never pay taxes.



=That’s good. I’ll remember that one.



=But beware, he sounds like the kind of guy who has given the same final for the past thirty years. So, one way or another, you’ve still got to cover the material. Here’s what I find works with crazy people: Don’t engage. If they—a teacher, a boss, whoever—control the board, just play their game until you’re free.



=Is this the kind of stuff people pay you to tell them?



=Ha! Not impressed?



=I didn’t say that. Is it?



=Not exactly. Next has its own set of rules. Sometimes they work in the real world. Mostly you have to leave the real world to make them work.



=So does that mean you don’t believe them?



=More and more, no. The one rule I’m certain I don’t believe anymore is the one about cutting anyone out of your life who doesn’t believe.



=Aubrey? You still there?



=Yeah. Just thinking.



=About what?



=To be continued. Pretzels needs to go out. TTFN.





OCTOBER 20, 2009



There is mayo on my turkey wrap when I specifically asked for no mayo. Plus the “wrap” is a cold, stale tortilla. Makes me wonder why I skipped my usual box of animal crackers eaten in the library and went off campus with Wren and Amelia to have lunch at this new place they love, Rap It Up. It has a theme going, playing loud rap music as if decibels can make up for crap food. Parkhaven could use some better lunch options. I mean, seriously? How hard can it be to put out a decent sandwich?

I can barely pull my attention away from creating the perfect lunch menu to listen to Wren and Amelia sitting across the small orange plastic table filling me in on all the band news I’ve missed since I dropped out.

“Did you hear that Dahlia Butler got a drama scholarship to Wellesley? A full ride.”

Two words I can live the rest of my life without ever hearing again: “full ride.” I can also do without “reach, match, and safety school,” “early action,” and “early decision.” In fact, the word “college” is starting to give me hives. The anxiety level is off the charts, with everyone writing essays and filling out their FAFSA applications and retaking SATs for the eleventh time.

While Wren and Amelia debate the merits of Williams versus Bowdoin versus just going somewhere in state and which school would give them the most money, I tune out and wonder how tortillas can go stale in such a busy restaurant. I have no thoughts about or interest in any of the colleges they’re analyzing and try to work out what I’d like to be eating at this moment. Hot, I am thinking, hot would be good. But not pizza. I am sick of pizza. And sick of living off the microwavables that Mom has started lugging home from Costco since her work got so busy that even if, initially, the empanada or pot pie or whatever is all right, by the time I’ve choked down half a dozen of the things, just reading the words “Pierce film in 3–4 places to vent” can make me start gagging.

“Aubs? Aubrey?”

“Huh? What?”

“What are your top three?”

Their eyes drill into me, waiting for an answer. “Colleges?” I ask.

Wren and Amelia blink, stunned that anyone would think there is any other topic in the entire world.

“Uh, well, I’m not totally sure.” Then I remember the college I’m supposed to visit next week. “Peninsula.”

“Peninsula?” Wren repeats. “Is that the one that doesn’t give grades?”

“Really?” I can’t remember anything about this college, not even why I ever agreed to visit. At least I’ll get two days away from Parkhaven High.

“What if you want to transfer?” Amelia asks, alarm brightening her eyes, which, now that I think about it, are kind of always in a state of high anxiety. “I mean, what will they put on your transcript?”

I hold my cup up. “Do they give free refills here?” I leave Amelia blinking with worry. At the drink machine, I confidently fill the cup with Diet Dr Pepper, adding my signature squirt of Nehi Strawberry. Here is a decision I can handle.

Even though I am really late by the time I get to the attendance office, Miss Olivia is still putting her purse in a file drawer and locking it up. Unlimited tardies is the perk we give each other. Madison Chaffee’s mom and dad are waiting at the counter. Unlike most parents—who are almost always harried moms come to get their kid out for allergy shots or prenatal doctor visits or meetings with their probation officers or some other reason that ranges from mundane to tragic—the Chaffees are grinning like idiots.

“Aubrey!” Mrs. Chaffee explodes. I’m surprised she remembers my name. Maybe euphoria improves a person’s memory. “I’m so glad it’s you. We need to tell Madison something. In person.”

I look over to Miss Olivia. She nods that it is OK for me to go get Madison out of class. I take my time getting to Madison’s Calculus-for-Asians-and-Kids-Whose-Parents-Put-Them-in-Kumon-Math-Tutoring-When-They-Were-Two-Because-They-Knew-That-Public-School-Math-Teachers-Suck-and-Could-Afford-to-Buy-Better-Ones Class. As I dawdle my way through the halls, I realize that I actually have nothing against Parkhaven per se. In fact, the halls, when they are empty, are quite pleasant. I like the wide, airy breezeways with little hives of learning humming behind closed doors.

Going to get Madison makes me remember how, when I was little and got called out of class, my first thought was always, My dad’s here. My dad came back for me. I didn’t even like to talk to whoever came to get me. I didn’t want to give them the chance to tell me that it was just Mom waiting in the office to bring me my geography homework or an extra inhaler. Because for those few minutes, walking down an empty hall, I would just stop agreeing with the way things really were and I did have a dad and he was in the office waiting for me.

I guess that’s what my dad did. Stopped agreeing with reality. I could do it for as long as it took me to get from my classroom to the office. He managed it for sixteen years. He must have had more mental discipline than me. Or maybe it wasn’t that much of an effort to pretend that I didn’t exist.

Even though Madison’s class is right around the corner from the attendance office, I detour upstairs, then over to the east wing. I’d peeked at Tyler’s schedule, so I know that he has English in the east wing at this very moment. I slow way, way down outside his class, enough that I can hover by the window in the rear door long enough to catch a glimpse of the back of his head. My heart seizes up the instant I see his hair cutting dark curlicues over the collar of his shirt. He is leaning back, tipping his chair on its rear legs, running a pencil through his fingers so fast that it is a ripple going over and under one finger, then the next, then back again. Like most everyone else in the class, he is ignoring the teacher. A door opens somewhere down the hall and, pulse thumping, I hurry on to the math wing.

At Madison’s calculus class I hand her teacher the note. When he calls Madison’s name, it is obvious from the ecstatic/relieved expression on her face that she knows immediately what this means. I’m certain it’s something about college. Everything is about college. I beat her to the punch of pretending she doesn’t remember me and walk briskly ahead of her.

In the office, without speaking a word, Madison’s father takes a beat-up old Duke cap off his head and puts it on his daughter’s. Madison bursts into tears and squeals, “I did it?”

“You did it,” her father answers, beaming. “A perfect eight hundred in math. No way you’re not going to be a Blue Devil now!” Then Madison and her mother hold hands and jump up and down.

After they leave, Miss Olivia beams and says, “That’s a nice family.”

Miss Olivia’s daughter did two years at Parkhaven Community College and is selling tires at Costco now. There is so much I don’t understand.

12:12 A.M. OCTOBER 20, 2009



=You there?



=Aubrey! What a nice surprise.



=Maybe. I actually really need an answer. Why did you leave us?



=OK, then I actually need to give you one. Part of it, a big part, was that I left because, if I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have been a good father.



=You know, most dads aren’t that great. They’re not supposed to be. Not with daughters. They’re just mostly supposed to be the guy in the front seat who picks you up after band practice so you can sit in the back and giggle with your friends. It’s not like I ever expected any big interactions or anything. Just a dad who put oil in the car and thought about stuff like cleaning the leaves out of the rain gutters.



=Aubrey, I never would have been that dad.



=OK. Gotta study.



=Could we talk about this some more?



=No, probably not.