I heard Mimi say “Fiona” but I couldn’t make out the rest of what she said.
“Fiona’s motivations are understandable. New girl, looking to establish her place in the playground hierarchy,” Dr. Matthews said. “But my feeling is that Fiona isn’t the one at fault here. We need to examine what you as an involved and caring parent can do to forestall incidents like this in the future. If you’re honest with yourself, Mrs. Banning, you have to admit that you’re allowing Frank to make himself a target.”
After hearing that, my feeling was that Dr. Matthews should never have children of his own.
I heard Mimi murmur something, which he countered with, “You must realize that Frank’s manner of dress separates him from the other children.”
I waited for Mimi’s outraged answer, “But Frank isn’t like the other children!” She said something, but in a voice so soft I couldn’t catch it.
MIMI WAS SILENT on the way home. When I couldn’t take the suspense any longer, I asked, “How did it go?”
“It’s none of your business how it went,” Mimi said.
“Mimi, look, I know—”
“You know nothing, Alice. And what makes you think you can call me Mimi?”
“You told me to call you Mimi.”
“I never told you to call me Mimi.”
“You did,” I insisted. “The day Frank asked to stay late after school. I made you eggs. My hair was wet. Remember?”
“Why are you arguing with me? Stop the car. Stop the car right now. I can’t bear your face for another minute.” Not that she was even looking at me.
I pulled over and put the car in park. Its nose was pointed downhill, so when Mimi flung the door open it scraped and hung on the curb. I’ve never seen curbs as high as the ones in Los Angeles. Frank explained to me on one of our adventures last summer that they were built tall to keep the sidewalks from flooding during the rainy season. Having weathered that now, I understood.
I imagine Mimi intended for her exit to be fast and dramatic, but what followed was a Chaplinesque struggle of tiny woman vs. world. She had to scale the Kilimanjaro of that curb through an opening hardly wider than a handbag. Her shimmying ascent made her Audrey Hepburn sheath scale her thighs and one of her shoes fall off. Once she summited, Mimi dropped out of sight behind the car door. From what I could see through the crack and from the way she was grunting, I guessed she was lying on the sidewalk, fishing around underneath the car for the lost shoe. Eureka! She stood again, leaned against the car to put the shoe on, yanked her dress down and brushed it free of sidewalk grit before turning to address me. As a courtesy I pushed the button to roll down the passenger-side window so she could say her piece.
“It must be exhausting to be so sure of yourself all the time,” Mimi said. “Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Alice. Being perfect doesn’t make people love you.” Then she tried her go-to move, slamming the door in my face. Even though it wasn’t open very wide, the door of a Mercedes station wagon weighs about a thousand pounds, and I don’t think Mimi weighed a hundred, so it took some work for her to unstick the door from the curb to shut it.
“Can I give you a hand with that?” I finally asked.
“I don’t need you to give me a hand with anything,” she said. “Ever again.”
“Have it your way.” I rolled the window back up.
Once Mimi struggled the car door shut, she fumbled her phone out of her purse and dropped it on the sidewalk. I was worried she’d broken it and thought about rolling the window down again to ask her to let me drive her home. I still had enough kindness wiggling around inside me though to resist the urge. I know from my time in New York that anger can be an exhilarating tonic that lifts some people over life’s rough patches. I was pretty sure Mimi was one of those people. So I sat tight and watched her pick her phone up and dial, talk for a minute or two and check her watch. I waited on the side of the road until a cab pulled up and she got in. She never looked at me once.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON Mimi appeared in the kitchen while I was chopping red peppers for a salad. I knew better than to think she’d come to offer an apology.
“Here’s my credit card,” she said. “You need to go out and buy Frank some T-shirts and jeans and tennis shoes.”
I wiped my hands on a towel. “I’ll do it if you really want me to, but he won’t wear those things. Not in a million years.”
“He has to,” she said. “That windbag I had to waste an afternoon talking to said Frank would be safer if he’d learn to disappear.”
“Frank will be miserable,” I said.
“Frank is a child. He’ll get over it. That sanctimonious idiot in charge of his school now says if he can’t learn to fit in he has to go somewhere else.”
“If Frank has to ‘fit in’ to go there, maybe Frank should go somewhere else.”