He can feel his face flush. So this is the way they’re going to play it, disarm him first. He knows that full disclosure requires that he say something about how he’s only been in Fritzie’s life for two months, hardly the formative years, and he’s hardly raising her. But he doesn’t, because Annie winks at him and he can see that she knows it already. She says, “And you—so new to her life, too! What a gift she is!” And she smiles, shakes his hand, decidedly not reacting to the fact that his hand has scars and dry skin and is a mess.
“Now!” she says, and claps her hands. “Let’s all sit down and figure out together how to fix this and make it right.”
Then she plops herself down across from them in a ratty old armchair and, leaning forward, gets to the first point, which is that what Fritzie did was out of such a sweet desire to help another child, and how that is exactly the kind of spirit needed in the world and it is so good to see, especially from a little girl who is new to the school but who has already made so many friends and whose teachers think the world of her.
Patrick is aware that Marnie and Maybelle have come in and are standing near the door, watching. He sits very still, waiting with his battle plan.
“But,” Annie says, “sometimes we want to help so badly, and we can’t always know the right way to do things, can we, Fritzie? And so let’s try to brainstorm what might be a better way of helping Laramie without taking away something from other people or embarrassing him. Because, as you already know, Fritzie, taking money from other people isn’t the right thing to do. Right?”
Fritzie nods. But Patrick is pleased to see she doesn’t look horribly ashamed. She’s fine.
This Annie takes out some paper and a pen and says, “So let’s hear some ideas. Anyone can contribute.” And she looks around, waiting, her eyes sparkling.
Patrick flicks a piece of an old leaf off his jeans hem and when nobody else says anything, he says, “Well, we could pay the money back to the people who gave to the book fair.”
She nods and writes that down.
Fritzie says, “I could say I’m sorry.”
“Yes, and . . . ?”
“I know!” says Fritzie. “We could ask Laramie’s family to come and live at our house! We have plenty of room!”
Marnie laughs, and Patrick’s stomach drops. He knows Marnie well enough to know that it is not outside the realm of possibility that she and Fritzie would start a campaign to move an entire homeless family into their house.
Annie smiles. “Well, although that is very, very kind of you, Fritzie, maybe we should think of something that doesn’t involve such a huge change. Is there something simpler we could do for now?”
Fritzie bites her lip. “Um, I could ask Laramie to come and play at my house after school. And he and I could do paintings with my dad, who’s a painter—and then we could go to Marnie’s store, which has flowers, and maybe Marnie would pay us money to work in the store. I know how to work the cash register, and it’s really fun there, and then . . . and then . . . then we can go down the street and get snacks. Would that be okay, Marnie?”
Patrick’s brain short circuits at the words my dad, just as if he’s received an electric shock. My dad? He catches Marnie’s eye, and she smiles at him.
“Well,” says Marnie, “one idea would be that maybe Laramie and his mom and the other kids in the family would like to come over for dinner sometime. We could get to be friends, and maybe that would help them most of all.”
Annie is beaming at them. Patrick feels his ears buzzing, no doubt a result of the short circuit.
They are still buzzing twenty minutes later, when he and Marnie leave together, walking back to the subway, after dropping Fritzie off at her classroom. He has met and somehow shaken the hands of both Karen and Josie, he has endured the stares of thirty pairs of eyes as kids looked up from decorating papier-mâché Thanksgiving turkeys, and he now feels himself to be coated in a kind of brotherly love and kindness that is so palpable it’s almost uncomfortably sticky. Having kids paint in his studio? A family coming over for dinner? He is trying to get ready for a show. Has everyone somehow forgotten that? The day feels too bright, the air sharp against his skin.
Marnie takes his arm. “You did brilliantly in there,” she says and hugs him. “And what did you think of the school? Isn’t it just fantastic?”
He feels himself grimace for no good reason. “Well,” he says. “They put on a good show. I’ll say that for them.”
She laughs very hard at that one.
“You are such a porcupine, Patrick Delaney! Can’t you take just a moment to bask in the idea that what we just experienced was pure joy?” She pokes him in the arm, and then seeing that he’s still scowling, she stands on tiptoe and kisses him long and hard and juicy on the mouth. Right there in public, two weeks before Thanksgiving, and him with his porcupine quills sticking out all over the place.
No, no, no, he thinks. Pure joy would be having our lives go back to the way they were. No art show, no daughter I’d never known about, and no need to go visit some elementary school in the middle of the morning. It would just be me and Bedford and Roy, watching our game shows, visiting with Paco, letting the days drift by, and then calm, beautiful Marnie coming home in the evening. Alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MARNIE
The next day Ariana comes clomping into Best Buds after school, and I can tell right from the moment the bell sounds over the door that trouble is a’coming in. And sure enough, there she is, soaking wet from the rain and filled with angry purpose. Ariana, of course, is usually the human equivalent of a sparkly unicorn of love, so I sit up and take notice.
She jumps up to sit on the counter like she does when she wants to talk. I’m filling out an order form that’s overdue, and she fiddles with the flower arrangement we keep by the cash register. Today it’s lilies and mums. I wait to see what she wants to tell me.
“You should totally get more of those tulips, the ones that are multicolored,” she says. “Everybody loves them so much.”
“Well, it’s true they’re lovely, but they’re out of season now, so I think I’m going to concentrate more on the mums.”
“Oh! Totally! Yes. Fall is mum time. I guess you probably had to study up on flowers before you could run this place.” She sighs and looks around, picks some imaginary speck off her left boot. Her curly yellow hair falls over her eyes when she bends forward. I see that the tips today are tinted purple. Without looking at me, she says, “So. I’ve got to do a magic spell on my dad. Any ideas?”
“Your dad? Why? What’s going on?”
“He’s decided that I’m a loser because I don’t want to go to college next year.”
“Wait, wait, wait. I’ve met your dad, and he doesn’t seem like he’s even capable of saying your name and loser in the same sentence. If he had had buttons on his suit the day I met him, they would have been busted off, he was so proud of you.” Then I say, “And also, another whoa. Back up a sec. Why don’t you want to go to college?”
“Because I have another plan for my life.” She brushes back some of her stunning curls. “I’ve decided that I want to go on the road with my video camera and interview people about their lives and then make a whole series out of it. And my friend Justin wants to do this, too, and so we’re going to get his uncle’s van and do a GoFundMe thing so we can outfit it for podcasts and videos and stuff, and then we’re going to broadcast our way across the country for at least a year and after that, if we’re not famous yet, we’ll go back to school.”
“Wow,” I say. It’s true that she’s been taking videos of all of us nearly relentlessly. And it’s also true that she and Justin, a handsome, lanky guy with a killer jawline, and who slouches rather admirably, have started hanging out at Best Buds—and they have been sitting in the corner lately, their heads together, excitedly writing stuff in a notebook. I could sense that plans were afoot. But I thought we were having some senior-in-high-school love stuff. I even said to Kat o
ne day, “Well, now we’re going to be having a bunch of sparkly unicorn love action going on. We won’t be able to see the flowers for the amount of love sparkles we’re going to be experiencing here,” and she said, “You forget you’re the only one who sees the sparkles. The rest of us can see the flowers just fine, and also the dust and the cracks in the plaster and the storm clouds.” (I am apparently surrounded by porcupines.)
But back to Ariana, who is now spinning out a tale of woe. “So I tell my dad this, thinking that he’ll be happy that I want to help people talk about their lives—and instead I get met with this resistance.” She makes a mean face. “Like, he doesn’t respect creativity at all.”
“Well,” I say. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind spelling it out for me, what exactly is the creative thing you and Justin are making?”
She gives me a look of strained patience. “I told you! Videos! Podcasts! I want to give people hope, like you do. And so part of it would be just letting people tell us about the things that they believe in. Like what gives them hope.”
I can’t take my eyes off her. She has just a little dusting of rainbow glitter across her face today, and she obviously dipped her hair in purple Kool-Aid. While she talks, she’s fidgeting and spinning some of the ten different rings she’s wearing. And her eyes are glowing like crazy. I can see how her father must be out of his mind at hearing that his daughter wants to head across country with a long-haired, jeans-wearing eighteen-year-old guy with a scruffy beard and a porkpie hat and some microphones.
Then she says, “So, this is super obnoxious probably and you can say no, but do you think I could come and stay at your house? I could help you with Fritzie, and I can clean house, and I’m really quiet and my mom says it’s okay if I find someplace for a while, until my dad cools off and this blows over.”
“Oh, honey,” I say. “Of course you can.”
She lights up. “Seriously? For reals?”
“Yes. Totally. Let’s just make sure it’s for reals okay with your mom first.”
“Believe me, she’ll be grateful for the peace and quiet.”
“Is she on your side, do you think?”
“She doesn’t like to rock the boat. Last night she came in my room and said that I should just go to college and do my video thing on my own time, and that my dad wouldn’t have to know. I should go to college for the financial security it’ll bring, she said. But why should I have to go to some stupid college and hang out with kids who are drinking and doing drugs and wasting their parents’ money, just because my dad thinks that’s what I should be doing? I’ll get my degree after all this.”
So I talk to Ariana’s mother, Rebecca, on the phone, and I tell her we might need some help around the house with our eight-year-old, especially where Common Core math is concerned, as well as some afternoon pickups, and we’d love to have Ariana stay at our house.
Rebecca is filled with relief and gratitude. “Teenagers!” she says. “You think you’re going to be so good at raising them, and that you’re such cool parents, but then—bam!—the very thing you didn’t expect hits you right between the eyes!” Then she lowers her voice. “And have you heard that her friend Janelle is pregnant? We found that out by accident. It just seems that in this day and age, when they have birth control, when they have every advantage—sex education, understanding parents—no kid would have to go through this. And yet they do. I guess some things never change.” She laughs a little bit. “So if it’s not too much to ask, it would be much appreciated if you somehow forbade Ariana from getting pregnant while she’s staying at your house. We like this boyfriend of hers all right, but I’ll like him even better if they don’t get pregnant for ten more years.”
“Your mom says you can stay with us,” I say when I get off the phone. “But she’d rather you didn’t get pregnant at my house. I said I thought we could all agree that would be best.”
“My mom is unreal,” says Ariana. “Like she doesn’t even know that I don’t think I ever want to get pregnant. Janelle is, like, sick all the time, and it’s like she thought it was going to be so super glamorous or grown-up or something, and now it just sucks for her. She’s so tired and she doesn’t want to hang out anymore. I videotaped her the other day, and all she wanted to do was cry.” Then she covers her mouth with her hand. “Oooh, I shouldn’t say that because you and Patrick are trying, aren’t you? How’s that going, or is that a rude question?”
“Nothing happening so far,” I say. And then I get very busy doing paperwork, not looking up, and after a while of aimless wandering around, Ariana says she’s going home to pack up some stuff and she’ll be at my house for dinner. Is this really okay, if we start today? And do we need her to bring stuff? Should she live in the basement apartment, or sleep on the couch? Or in Fritzie’s room? Anything is fine by her, just so I know. And by the way, is it really true that we need help with Fritzie’s Common Core math problems, because if so, she is so on it.
“This is going to work out great!” are the last words she says as she disappears out the front door. Along with her she takes a whole bunch of the happy vibe of the place, and the happy vibe doesn’t come back until an hour or so later when I look up to see a man and woman holding hands and smiling at me. The place is practically iridescent with sparkles all over the place.
“Marnie?” says the woman. She has long red hair, and she is beaming. “Do you remember me? I’m Winnie.”
Of course! It’s the woman from the restaurant, and next to her, smiling goofily, is Graham, still in his fedora with the feather. “Hey, how are you guys? And how’s your mom?” I say. “Still in Florida, using alcohol to solve people’s laundry problems?”
“We’re great,” he says, flushing a little. “And—well, we wanted you to be the first to know, after our parents of course—we got engaged last night!”
Of course they did. “Oh, your mother must be so thrilled for you.”
“She’s over the moon,” he says. “Told me to thank you for spilling that wine on your skirt, or maybe none of this would have happened.”
“And shall we tell her . . . ?” asks Winnie, tipping her head up and smiling at him.
But they don’t have to tell me. I know. They’re having a baby. You can just tell sometimes. Their auras are all crazy happy. I come around the counter and hug them, and then I pick out some yellow roses for them to celebrate everything. And they say that I must come to their wedding, and please to bring Patrick, too.
Of course, of course, I say. Sometimes being a matchmaker is just the best thing there is.
“Blix?” I say, after I watch them leave. “When is something going to happen for me?”
From up around the cooler, Blix says, Just wait. Don’t freak out. Just wait. And by the way, nice work with that Ariana. College would be a waste for her right now.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PATRICK
The doorbell rings, and something about the insistent ringing sound makes Patrick shake himself loose from the painting he’s doing. This requires Anneliese to withdraw. I’m sorry, but it’s only momentarily, not for good. I am still painting what you say, he feels himself saying to her. She’s now his full-time muse, after all. Some days it’s as though she’s taken over all the rest of him, too.
Normally he has a self-protective policy of ignoring all doorbells while he’s working, but today he’s not completely settled in. He’s having trouble sleeping, is the truth of it, so he’s extra tired. At the startling sound of the doorbell, he goes over to the window and looks down at the stoop. There’s a young woman with hair that looks like it was dipped in purple ink, standing there in a thin sweater, leggings, and Ugg boots, stamping her feet and looking around her.
Wait. He knows who this is.
Ah yes. It’s what’s-her-name. Ariana. He’s seen her at Best Buds back when he used to take meals to Marnie when she was working late. Marnie says she’s the leader of a group of teenage girls who do stuff, who aren’t afraid of anything. She’s
the one who takes videos. And please God, don’t let that be a suitcase she’s holding.
Great. Just what he needs: another fearless female standing at his front door with a suitcase. He’s all full up just now on women who seem to be striding forward into his life, asking loudly for what they want, especially when their desires include a year of him raising their kid, the proper kind of cheese on the macaroni . . . and a baby. And what is this one going to be asking of him? Something, he is sure.
His phone dings, and he glances down at it.
Patrick. Ariana is going to be showing up at our house. She’s got some parent trouble. So I said she could stay with us for a while. Will you show her down to the basement apartment and give her a key? #PatrickSheNeedsUs #YouWillLikeHerIPromise.
I am sorry, he writes. You have obviously typed this to the wrong number. There is no one named Patrick at this number. I have never even heard of the name Patrick. Very weird name.
LOL. Patrick. She’s a kid. And it’s just for a little while. You remember what it’s like being a kid trying to work things out. Temporary insanity. Also, she knows Common Core math, which will keep US from having to learn it. #BrightSide
Marnie. She’s at the door. #sigh #WhatIsHappening #LifelongInsanity And when should I expect the school’s homeless family to move in? Will I get more of a heads-up on that one?
He wishes immediately he didn’t write that last bit. She might just take it that it would be okay with him to invite Laramie’s family in. He wouldn’t put it past her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MARNIE
Having Ariana live with us turns out to be great.
Fritzie and I help her fix up the basement apartment, with baskets and pillows and candles and bedspreads. And in the evenings, now that Patrick is working on his paintings in the studio, she comes upstairs, and the three of us make dinner and do homework and dance around the kitchen like wild women. We talk about love spells and the joys of videotaping people and the right way to do a math problem and how fun it is when dogs wear T-shirts.
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