I turned my head sideways. What was the name?
D-E-L-P-H-I-N-E.
I froze.
“Yoo-hoo!” called a young mom.
“You forgot to put a dollar value as to what it’s worth,” said another.
“What what’s worth?” I said, snapping to.
“Your auction item,” put in another. “For tax purposes.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“We need to put down something,” said the first young mom.
“It’s just a few hours of my time.” My breath had become stuck. Why did I have to see those goddamned keys?
“What’s your time worth?” This was the young dad, wresting control.
“Literally?” I said. “Per hour?”
Did he mean the hours I spent lying in bed vowing to change? The hours shopping for organizers that forever remained in the bags? The hours researching mindfulness classes, signing up for them, going so far as parking outside art-gallery-yoga-studios and watching the well-intentioned students file in, only to lose my nerve and peel out? The hours planning to eat dinner as a family, just to end up hunched in front of our screens, every man for himself? The hours steeped in shame that I had no excuse for any of it?
And then, squeals.
The first-graders had burst onto the lawn wearing butterfly wings shellacked with colorful bits of tissue paper. The young moms (and the one dad) turned their backs to me and basked in the slipstream of their children’s spontaneity and delight. The energy in the room shifted from bubbly conviviality to hushed reverence. All the choices these young moms (and the one dad) had agonized over—to work or not work, to marry young or keep looking, to have a kid now or see the world first—had led to hard decisions. And with decisions come regrets. And sleepless nights, and recriminations, and fights with their husbands (and the one wife), and whacked-out calls to the doctor for pills. The “catatonic vision of frozen terror” the poet had called these moments of existential doubt, or certainty, it was hard to know which. But seeing their children now, in this instant, these parents knew in their teeth that their decisions had been the right ones.
So, with a perfectly timed cough, I grabbed that young mom’s ring of keys, dropped them in my purse, and slipped out.
That’s right, I stole them.
Timby was lying on a cot in a corner of the office looking, to my trained eye, pretty darned pleased with himself.
“Get up,” I said. “I’m officially sick of this BS.”
On the downside, I’d said that. On the upside, it was so unnecessarily nasty that Lila and the other administrators pretended not to hear. Timby darkened and followed me out.
I waited until we were standing at the car. “We’re going straight to the doctor’s. And you’d better pray there’s really something wrong with you.”
“Can’t we just go home?”
“So you can drink ginger ale and watch Doctor Who? No. I refuse to reward you any more for faking stomachaches. We’re going to the doctor and straight back to school.” I leaned in close. “And for all I know, it’s time for you to get a shot.”
“You’re mean.”
We got in the car.
“What’s this?” Timby asked with big eyes upon seeing the gift basket.
“Not for you. Don’t get your paws near that thing.”
Timby was crying now. “You’re getting mad at me for being sick.”
We drove to the pediatrician’s in silence, me angry at Timby, me angry with myself for being angry at Timby, me angry at Timby, me angry with myself for being angry at Timby.
His little voice: “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
“Timby?” said the nurse. “That’s an unusual name.”
“I was named by an iPhone,” Timby said around the thermometer in his mouth.
“I named you,” I said.
“No.” Timby glared.
“Yes.” I glared back.
When I was pregnant, we learned it was going to be a boy. Joe and I ecstatically volleyed names back and forth. One day I texted Timothy, which autocorrected to Timby. How could we not?
The nurse pulled out the thermometer. “Normal. The doctor will be right in.”
“Nice work,” I said after she left, “making me look bad.”
“It’s true,” Timby said. “And why would an iPhone autocorrect a normal name to a name nobody’s ever heard of?”
“It was a bug,” I said. “It was the first iPhone—oh God!” I’d just realized. “I think I insulted Alonzo.”
“How?” Timby looked all sweet but I knew he just wanted to lure me in for ammo to use against me.
“Nothing,” I said.
It was the look on Alonzo’s face as I left the restaurant. Maybe he wasn’t sad to see me go. Maybe he was insulted that I’d called him “my poet.”
Timby hopped off the table and opened the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get a magazine.” The door slammed.
My phone rang: Joyce Primm. As usual, 10:15 on the dot. I turned off the ringer and stared at the name.