The next time she saw David, he grabbed her arm and asked, “Why didn’t you wait around for me?”
“I did,” she said, pulling her arm away from him. “I waited for more than two hours. Where were you?”
“Working,” he said, shrugging with great irritation. “Making art. Doing something important.”
“That’s fine,” Izzy said, “but I am making art, too. I’m doing all kinds of things, but I still went to the party to see you.”
“I’m not trying to be rude,” he said, so effortlessly being rude that he didn’t have to try, “but your art is not my art. You’re just copying a story that someone else made. You’re making letters.”
She thought of Hal’s assertion that everything was art. She now realized that he had never stated that one kind of art was better than another. It pleased her, in this moment, to think of him as being more open-minded than David.
“Then I guess there’s no need for further discussion,” she said.
“Do you want to go get high?” he asked her. “Make out?”
“No,” she said.
“Have sex?” he said, smiling.
“I better go,” she said.
“How long are you supposed to live at that place?” he asked her.
“It’s ten years,” she replied. “Total.”
“When it’s over, the whole world will have passed you by,” he said. “You’ll have missed out on everything.”
“Maybe,” Izzy allowed.
“You’ll have missed out on me,” he told her.
“Oh god, David,” she said, “I don’t fucking care about you.” She realized that David’s beauty was the kind that allowed him to be an awful person and still get everything that he wanted. But not her. He could not touch her life. She held up both hands, middle fingers extended. It was so juvenile, but it felt fucking right to her.
“Well,” he said, unsure of how to proceed. “Bye, then.”
“Bye,” she said, and she walked to her car, wondering what she’d lost and what she’d gained and thinking, maybe, she had come out entirely even. An hour later, pulling into the complex, she thought to herself, No. She had come out ahead. She had come out way, way ahead.
Izzy was reading the Dr. Seuss book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, long a favorite of all the children, in the day care center. All the parents took turns signing up for times to read aloud to the kids, which Izzy always looked forward to. The kids cheered as each successive rendition of what was happening on Mulberry Street became more and more fantastic. Maxwell had started a tradition where, with each new object or person or animal that the story included, the kids would shout, “Yes,” and point their index fingers in the air. As Izzy looked over the top of the book at the kids, she watched them mischievously grinning, their fingers pointing out from their heads like devil horns, waiting for yet another new thing on Mulberry Street. “Yes,” the kids shouted to a Chinese man who eats with sticks (the parents were encouraged not to say the book’s term Chinaman for obvious reasons), to a big magician doing tricks, and to a ten-foot beard that needs a comb. “Yes, yes, yes,” they said, gesticulating wildly. And then the book returned to its quiet beginnings, a plain horse and wagon, and the kids all groaned dramatically and fell to the floor.
When the book was finished, Izzy asked the children what they would like to see on Mulberry Street, and the kids gave their own fanciful versions. Ally said she would like a polar bear on roller skates holding a big birthday cake. Jackie wanted to see a fancy car with princesses inside. When it was Cap’s turn, he said that he wanted to see himself and Izzy riding together on a motorcycle. “That’s it?” Maxwell asked, and Cap nodded, smiling. Izzy smiled so hard back at Cap, her son but not quite yet her own son, that her eyes began to well up with tears, and even the kids understood it was a good thing.
Izzy popped kernels of corn on the stove, machine-gun fire rattling inside the pot, while Carmen made hurricanes, toxic red and syrupy. Chocolate chip cookies baked in the oven. They were watching Mahogany on DVD, but mostly they talked over it, recounting their week, the numerous weirdnesses of their lives.
The two of them got together at Izzy’s every Wednesday night if they could manage it. Of all the people in the project, Izzy felt the strongest connection to Carmen, found it easiest to talk to her, and Izzy was pleased that Carmen confided in her above everyone else. Izzy felt like Carmen’s younger sister, constantly striving for her approval, sure that Carmen had experience where Izzy didn’t. And Carmen, if not her older sister, gave Izzy enough attention and care that she felt most like actual family.