“Gabe. Gabey. Gabe.” She said over and over, waiting for him to calm, for the moment to pass. She didn’t sense a full-on meltdown coming, but she might have been blinded by her earlier euphoria. Alecia turned up the radio and flipped to a classical station; sometimes the only thing that calmed Gabe down was a little Beethoven. His window slapping and head bobbing slowed and Alecia circled the A&P parking lot with an eye in the rearview mirror. Typically, she’d wait until Nate got home at night to go grocery shopping, but if this is how things were going to be, and she barely dared to think permanently, then she needed to get Gabe used to it. What better day than today, when she felt so damn capable?
With Moonlight Sonata blaring in the speakers, and a Dum Dum lollipop in her hand, she parked and climbed into the backseat.
“Gabey, here. We’re just going to the store. I should have told you, but I didn’t and we’re here now and everything is okay, okay?” Alecia gently pushed his arms down to his sides—sometimes he let her, sometimes he fought back, once even blackening her cheekbone right below her eye—and held him there, rocking him side to side in his booster seat. He fought only once and then melted against her, his body hot and limp. She kissed the sweaty patch above his ear, her hand pressed on his back.
“We’re okay. We’re okay,” Alecia murmured until Gabe finally stopped, his breathing leveling out to a few hiccups. She pulled him back, looked into his dark brown eyes, eyes that seemed as deep and black as the peak of night, and smiled. “We’re okay?”
He looked past her out the window and she waved the lollipop in his field of vision, looping it around her head until he made eye contact with her. She nodded once at him and said firmly, “We’re okay.” He nodded back, his hand outstretched.
God, if anyone knew how many Dum Dums she went through in a day they’d be appalled. All the sugar. The Red Dye Brigade would kill her.
Alecia had already gone through the food allergy phase with Gabe. Lactose? Sure. Red dye? Not so much. Which meant she’d burn through the whole damn bag if it got Gabe to look at her, really look at her. Nate had admonished her once, waving his smartphone in front of her face like he’d invented it. They linked red dye to autism, flashing an article he read on Facebook. It’s all those lollipops you give him. She couldn’t do anything but laugh and wave him off. He’d been diagnosed well before she started feeding him lollipops anyway. Welcome to my life a year ago, Nate. I mean, really, didn’t he ever listen to her? When she kept notebooks of his food, charting his tantrums (and meltdowns, and documenting how tantrums and meltdowns differed), what he ate that day: lactose, milk, sugar, wheat, gluten, red dye, organic, pesticide-free, free-range, I mean, God, didn’t he ever just listen to her?
If she thought about it, right in the parking lot of the A&P, she’d lose her shit all over again. She herded Gabe toward the “fire truck,” a cart with the front painted red that Gabe could ride in. It was huge and had a wide clasping belt. It also had a horn that annoyed everyone in the store, but Gabe was seventy pounds. He no longer fit in a cart.
“Fire truck!” Gabe yelled. Two white-haired ladies turned their heads and smiled at Alecia. One waved to Gabe. He didn’t wave back. “Fire truck fire truck fire truck!” His voice screeched up, excited. As if the scene in the car had never happened. Alecia gritted her teeth at how easy it was for him to switch gears when he wanted to. She firmly planted a toy metal construction vehicle in each hand. Stay busy, she mentally pleaded.
They got through produce and dairy before Gabe started to fidget, but Alecia fished another Dum Dum out of her pocket and passed it up to him. He happily pawed at it and stuck it in his mouth.
Alecia kept her head low, avoiding the eyes of other shoppers. Everyone knew everyone, and if people were whispering about her, she didn’t want to witness it. She wanted to order her pound of Swiss cheese and be done with it.
“Hi, Alecia,” said a mild female voice. Alecia tensed as she turned.
Jennifer Lawson. The mother of a student of Nate’s, Taylor Lawson. Taylor’s brother had played baseball years before, earning a scholarship from it. To say Jennifer loved Nate would have been an understatement. She curled around him like a cat whenever she saw him. She might have done that to everyone, though.
Jennifer was a yoga instructor, her bouncy hair in a perpetual ponytail. The only time she’d ever seen Jennifer out of Lycra was the Tempests’ Christmas party three years ago, when she wore a bright red dress cut up to here and down to there. The memory of that night took her breath away, so sudden and unexpected. It was back before Gabe was diagnosed and Alecia and Nate still did those things. Socializing had been Alecia’s favorite thing to do, when she was clinging to the idea of being one of them: a future playdate and PTA mom. Whether the exile from the soccer circles was real or self-induced was something Nate liked to debate. But Jennifer Lawson—Jenny, as Nate called her—was the last person Alecia wanted to see.
“How are you holding up?” Jennifer was ballsy, Alecia would give her that. Surely anyone else at this juncture, this close to the scandal, mere days from the article’s release, would turn their heads and look away, pretend to be searching for the perfect Brie. Jennifer’s voice was honey sweet.
“I’m fine, thank you.” Alecia ducked her head, tucking the plastic bag of cheese under the eggs and bracing her fingertips on the cart.
“I heard you kicked Nate out? Good for you.” Jennifer leaned forward, her French-manicured nails resting proprietarily on Alecia’s cart. Alecia stared at her long, tanned fingers, devoid of rings. Her husband left years ago, a scandal at the time in its own right, involving embezzlement of his company and his secretary. Alecia wondered what happened to Burt Lawson and shook off the urge to text Nate to ask.
“Jennifer, I didn’t kick Nate out. We’re . . . I don’t know what. Trying to figure out the truth.” It sounded lame, even to Alecia, and Jennifer’s mouth opened in an O, her red lips almost laughing.
“Wait, you don’t actually believe him, do you? No one does. No one.” She whispered the last part, urgently, her breath a hot spearmint, and her hands made a slice in the air.
“I don’t know that it’s any of your concern.” Alecia gripped the cart, blinking. Gabe hummed loudly from the cart and Jennifer shot him a glance.
She stuck a hand on her hip, leaned off to the left, and looked around the store. “Listen, I can’t tell you what to believe. You know why I believe your husband had a thing with that girl?”
Alecia shook her head, her throat like a tumbleweed.
“Because two years ago, after that Christmas party? The one at the Tempests’? He drove me home, remember?” Jennifer leaned forward her lips brushing Alecia’s hair, near her ear. “And your hubby, Saint Nate? He kissed me.”
CHAPTER 15
Lucia, forever ago
The mall had used to have fifty-five stores, but only thirty were still open. The Gap, the Orange Julius, the last record store in the history of all malls, ever. The tops of the benches were dust-covered and the air smelled musty, damp like still water.
“I want to get my nose pierced,” Taylor said, a Blow Pop spinning and clattering between her teeth. Her dark bangs fringed over her forehead, wispy and childlike.
“Piercing your nose is what good girls do to pretend they’re edgy.” Lucia thought this was mostly true, and that if you really wanted to be edgy you’d get a tattoo and maybe hepatitis from the needle.