“Is that why you were talking about Buster Keaton?” Mimi asked.
“Yes. I countered by saying that Keaton was known as The Great Stone Face for his ability to convey so much with so little facial movement. To which Dr. Abrams replied that while Keaton was a genius most elementary school students are not, so for my own sake I’d better learn how to be more overt in expressing what I am feeling. What you’re doing now,” Frank told his mother, tipping his head to one side as she had, “turns ‘pleased’ into ‘tender.’”
Mimi wrapped her arms around Frank and kissed the top of his head. Ah, Mimi. So what if she didn’t like me? Every bit of affection she had she channeled to Frank, who needed it more than I did. Particularly today. After she’d wrangled Frank to bed Mimi must have been awake all night worrying about what would happen to him at school. She had to be exhausted. That explained a lot, I decided. Mimi was exhausted. Not mean.
Mimi lay her cheek on the top of Frank’s head and caught me considering the two of them. “What are you looking at?” she snapped. Correction: exhausted and mean.
“I DON’T BELONG HERE,” Frank said when we got to his school.
“Of course you do,” Mimi said with a conviction I had to wonder if she felt. “You’ll be fine. I’m going in there with you, so there’s nothing to worry about. Now that you’re in the fourth grade, no excuse for throwing things, okay? No head banging or pulling out your hair. Please. No matter how upset you get.”
We all got out of the car in the parking lot behind the playground. Frank looked my skirt in the eye and said, “You heard her. My mother will walk me to class. You stay here.”
“Oh. All right.” I’ll admit I was disappointed. I’d been looking forward to meeting his teacher. Teachers always liked me. Once a teacher’s pet, always a teacher’s pet.
“Don’t just stand there staring at us,” he said. “Get back in the car.”
I felt my face get hot.
“That’s not nice, Frank,” Mimi said. “Alice is your friend. Is that how you treat your friends?” I managed to keep from laughing at the shock of having Mimi defend me.
“Alice is staff,” Frank said. So much for my status as his friend and first pajama party invitee.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll wait in the car.”
I watched them walk away in the rearview mirror. They were easy to track, since they were the only pair on the playground dressed like they were going for drinks at the Algonquin after a funeral.
MIMI WAS GONE for almost an hour.
There was an awkward moment when she opened the back door of the station wagon, then closed it and got in the front with me. “I’m so used to riding in the backseat of taxis,” she said. “I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to sit up here. I really ought to drive more.”
“Do you want to drive now?” I asked.
“No.” She looked out the window. “Did you see how alike they all are?”
“Who? The kids?”
“The mothers. They’re all so perky and interchangeable. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ Please. Every day here is a beautiful day. I guess they didn’t move here because they’re geniuses. If you ask me, I think every small town mean girl in America who’s pretty but not much else comes out here to die. Which they start to do the minute they realize there are a million girls already here who look just like them but have more talent. Even the ones who don’t even pretend to be actresses think they’ll show you what good actresses they are anyway by pretending they aren’t bitter. The ones who smile like lunatics and wear yoga pants all day are the worst. At PTA meetings they’re like those chickens that have to wear tiny eyeglasses in poultry barns so they won’t peck each other’s eyes out.”
Yikes. Still, it was the most Mimi had said to me at once and I’d been trying to engage her in conversation since day one. So I ran with it. “You go to PTA meetings?” It was hard to imagine M. M. Banning sitting on a folding chair, accepting a handout on peanut allergies from the person on her right and passing the pile along to the person on her left.
“Not anymore.”
“So,” I persisted, determined to keep her talking. “How did it go in Frank’s classroom?”
“The fourth graders are proud of being big kids, so I was the only mother in the classroom. But Frank gets so anxious.” Mimi seemed pretty anxious herself. She kept looking out the window, as if she was afraid some perky mother might jump from behind a hedge to peck our eyes out.
“He’s getting pretty big himself,” I said.
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not for someone like Frank. Kids like him have their charm when they’re little. But they grow up, the magic wears off, and they’re just bigger and lonelier and living in their mother’s basement. If their mother still has a basement for the kid to live in.”
“Frank will be fine,” I said.
“You need to stop talking now.”