Jennifer hears the concern in my voice. She works as a clinical dietitian at a local hospital. She’s my go-to for all things medical, as if working in a hospital provides her with a free medical degree. “It’s not a big deal, Heidi. They all mature at their own pace. There’s no schedule,” she assures me, and then she tells me that Zoe’s adolescence is something I cannot control. “Though I know you’ll try,” she goads, “because that’s just what you do.” The kind of blunt statement only a best friend can get away with. And I laugh, knowing it’s true.
And then the conversation shifts to the spring soccer season and what the girls think of their hot-pink uniforms, whether or not the Lucky Charms is an appropriate team name for a group of twelve-year-old girls, and the girls’ infatuation with their coach, a twentysomething college kid who didn’t make Loyola’s team. Coach Sam, who all the mothers think is dreamy. And there Jennifer and I are, gushing about his bushy brown hair, his dark, mysterious eyes, his soccer player build—the strength and agility, calf muscles like we’ve never seen—pushing all thoughts of Zoe’s emerging adolescence and that girl and her baby from my mind. The conversation drifts to boys, preteen boys, like Austin Bell, who all the girls adore. Including Zoe. Including Taylor. Jennifer admits to finding the words Mrs. Taylor Bell scribbled across her daughter’s notebook and I envision the pale skin of Zoe’s arm, the name Austin tattooed in pink, a heart over the i.
“In my day, it was Brian Bachmeier,” I admit, remembering the spiky locks that graced the boy’s head, the heterochromatic eyes, one blue, the other green. He moved to our junior high from San Diego, California, which was respect worthy in and of itself, but on top of it, the kid could dance, the Carlton and the jiggy, the tootsee roll. He was the envy of the other boys, the one the girls idolized.
I remember asking him to dance at my first boy-girl party. I remember he said no.
I think of Zoe. I think of Taylor. Maybe our girls aren’t so different after all.
There’s a knock on my door. I look up to see Dana, receptionist extraordinaire, beckoning me for a tutoring session with a twenty-three-year-old woman who was recently granted asylum from the country of Bhutan, a small South Asian country sandwiched between India and China. She’d been living in a refugee camp in nearby Nepal for much of her life, living in a bamboo hut with a dirt floor, surviving on food rations, until her father committed suicide and she sought shelter in the United States. She speaks Nepali.
I lay a hand over the receiver and whisper to Dana that I’ll be right there. “Work calls,” I tell Jennifer and we confirm the sleepover for Zoe and Taylor tonight at Jennifer’s home. Zoe is absolutely thrilled about it. So much so that she actually remembered to say goodbye this morning before she ran into school.
*
The day dawdles by at an excruciatingly slow speed. Outside the rain quiets, though the city skyline remains gray, the tops of skyscrapers lost in the ashen, obese clouds. When five o’clock rolls around, I say my goodbyes and ride the elevator down to the first floor. It’s rare that I leave the office at five o’clock, but on a night such as this—Zoe at a sleepover and Chris on a delayed flight that won’t arrive until after 10:00 p.m.—I take pleasure in having the condo all to myself, a simple delight that doesn’t happen too often. I’m relishing the idea of watching a chick flick all by myself, of lounging on the sofa in my warm, snuggly pajamas and devouring an entire bag of microwave popcorn all alone (and possibly following it up with a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream!).
Above me the clouds are beginning to disintegrate, the sun trying hard to don a lovely sunset behind the fissures in the clouds. The air is cold, an unsettling forty degrees and blowing. I slip my hands in a pair of leather gloves and drape a hood over my head, hurrying, with all the other evening commuters to the “L” station. I force my body into the congested train, where we stand like sardines in a can, smashed together, chugging along the winding, choppy track.