“Brenda, hello!” Audra said.
She set the phone on the coffee table and put Brenda on speakerphone, which was something she’d taken to doing lately. (Graham found it about as appealing as listening to your neighbors have loud sex, only less so.) Graham had to hear the whole thing—did Brenda think it was fair to let the parent volunteers have first crack at the plants? Well, the perennials and the annuals, sure, but remember last year when Mrs. Sandberg up and bought all the bonsai trees before the sale even opened? What did people think when they came to the plant sale and there was a big sign saying BONSAI TREES and then no bonsai trees? It made them look downright amateur, was Audra’s opinion. Maybe they should put a limit on what the parent volunteers should buy. Or maybe just a limit on what Mrs. Sandberg could buy. Or maybe let all the other parent volunteers buy as much as they liked, but ban Mrs. Sandberg altogether—
After about fifteen minutes of wearing Brenda down, Audra must have judged her sufficiently vulnerable, because she said, “You know, Brenda, there’s one other thing I’d like to talk to you about. It seems that Derek and Matthew have had a falling-out.”
“Oh?” said Brenda. If she was trying to sound innocent, she failed miserably. Audra gave Graham a slit-eyed look.
“Yes, well, they have,” Audra said, “and it’s really upsetting Matthew because he likes Derek so much.”
She paused, clearly hoping that Brenda would say that Derek liked Matthew a lot, too, but all Brenda said was “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So I was wondering if maybe you could have a little word with Derek and ask him to perhaps sit with Matthew at lunch—”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Brenda said tentatively.
“Or perhaps you could encourage Derek to come over here,” Audra said. “I know Matthew would love that.”
“Derek’s grounded for taking all the bolts out of his bunk bed,” Brenda said. “It collapsed and his five-year-old cousin got a concussion.”
“Well, then, maybe Matthew could come over to your place,” Audra said. Push, push, push.
“I’m sorry,” Brenda said softly. “But we don’t believe in interfering with Derek’s social life.”
“What?” said Audra. She swung her feet to the floor.
“I said, we don’t believe in interfering—”
“I heard you,” Audra said, standing now. She was barefoot, in jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She looked very strong to Graham. “But what does that mean, exactly? That you don’t interfere in his social life?”
Brenda sounded confused herself. “Just—just that we tend to let him choose his own friends,” she said. “And when there’s a disagreement, we try to stay out of it.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Audra said. “Isn’t that basically what parents do? Interfere in their kids’ social lives and teach them about the value of friendship and the meaning of loyalty and stuff?”
“Well—” Brenda began.
“I mean, children need help making choices!” Audra said. Graham had never heard her talk this way. She must have read some parenting book. “They need to be taught compassion and empathy! They need to learn acceptance and respect!” Audra paused and then said in her regular voice, “Honestly, Brenda, being a good mother is not just about making peanut butter sandwiches.”
“Derek can’t have sandwiches anymore,” Brenda says. “The doctor has put him on a gluten-free diet.”
This happened much more frequently than you might think: Audra said something crazy and the other person responded with something even crazier. It made Graham doubt the sanity of almost everyone.
“So what are you saying?” Audra said. “That Derek could—could go off and become friends with Robert Mugabe and you wouldn’t interfere unless pasta and cookies were involved?”
“Robert Mugabe?” Brenda sounded confused. “What grade is he in?”
“Never mind about that,” Audra said, leading Graham to believe that she didn’t know precisely who Robert Mugabe was, either. “The point is that Derek needs to make better choices.”
“We believe in letting Derek learn from his own mistakes,” Brenda said, a statement so flawed—if you knew Derek Rottweiler even slightly—that apparently Audra didn’t know where to start.
The conversation didn’t end then, so much as dribble off, like when you knock over a soda can you thought was empty but it spills sticky droplets all over your newspaper. Brenda thanked Audra for calling and Audra said she had a good recipe for gluten-free cake and Brenda said she would see Audra at the plant sale and Audra asked what shift was she working, and on like that.
Then Audra hung up and said to Graham, “She is the most amazingly misguided woman!”
But the really amazing thing about this phone call, to Graham, was that apparently Audra believed there were two kinds of breakups: the kind that’s obvious and inevitable and permanent, and then some other kind that’s more like a clerical error. The second kind of breakup is reversible. It’s like when you get home from the supermarket and realize you left a gallon of milk at the checkout lane instead of putting it in the cart, and so you go back to the store and show the receipt to the manager and he looks at you kindly and says, “Why, certainly, take another gallon from the shelf.” In other words, you haven’t really been dumped because it’s just a matter of going back and presenting a little paperwork and having the person who dumped you quickly and sincerely realize their mistake. Actually, all people believe there are two kinds of breakups—the kind that happens to other people, and the kind that happens to them. But in reality there’s just the one.
—
Olivia wanted to do role play with him. Not the sexual, exciting kind of role play where Olivia played a nurse and Graham played a patient, but a vaguely insulting one where Olivia played herself and Graham played her father.
“You’re about his age,” Olivia said. “Well, maybe he’s, like, ten years younger than you, but whatever. So, okay, I’m going to be me and you be my dad. All right, now, here, I’m starting.” She paused and cleared her throat a little. “Dad, I’m moving in with Brian.”
“Who’s Brian?” Graham asked.
“My boyfriend!” Olivia said impatiently. “But my dad would know that. You have to stay in character. Okay, let’s start again— Dad, I’m moving in with Brian.”
“Fine.”
Olivia frowned. “Do you mean, ‘Fine, we can start the role play now,’ or are you being my dad saying ‘Fine’?”
“I’m being your dad.”
Olivia turned her palms up in frustration. “My dad would never say that! That’s the point!”