Here, Home, Hope

by Kaira Rouda

  My head was back and my eyes were closed. Maybe she was talking so loudly to try to wake me up. A quick image flashes across my mind: I envision myself climbing into bed each evening, top and bottom teeth covered in plastic. Patrick gives up even trying to kiss me good night. I just clack my guards together as a sign of affection, like a seal slapping her front flippers. At least my face will be smooth and sonically scrubbed.

  As the dental assistant elevated me back to a sitting position, I tried to feel my lips. Nope. Chin? Nope. Could I learn to preach in Spanish? Nope. Could I start a restaurant? Could I go back to the PR firm? Could I move to Kenya? Could I sell sonic face scrubbers? Nope. Nope. Nope. And nope. I headed toward the door and friendly, helpful Susie sitting at Dr. Bane’s front desk asked when I would be free to come back.

  “Really, I’m free anytime,” I slurred, sounding and feeling pathetic.

  “I’ll call you when the appliance arrives,” Susie chirped back happily.

  You’d think I’d ordered a new refrigerator; that’s how happy she sounded.

  I CROSSED THE PARKING LOT, MY NUMB LIPS AND CHEEKS JIGGLING with each step, and started to relax once I’d settled inside the safety of my SUV. He’s named Doug after his license plate, DUG847. I know it’s an odd habit, but I don’t particularly like cars; I view them as sort of a necessary suburban evil. Personifying the steel box helps me form a bond with it. Before Doug, I had Q. I still miss him a bit.

  I pushed the button to crank up the air conditioning and took a moment to look at my droopy mouth in the rearview mirror. Suddenly someone tapped on my window and I jumped, causing drool to escape from both corners of my mouth. It was Rachel White, my omnipresent nemesis. My very own personal Gladys Kravitz. I wished I could twitch my nose and make her disappear like Samantha could in Bewitched. In terms of elementary school mom-to-mom combat, she was the general. No matter what task I, or anyone else for that matter, volunteered for, she would double-check, redo, or simply do it better herself. Rachel had one daughter: Amy, poor child. Amy and Sean seemed to always land in the same class each year, much to my dismay.

  “Mrs. White is here more than the teachers,” Sean once remarked. “She needs to get a life.” Of course I scolded my observant, brilliant little boy. But really, she was out of control. Not only did Rachel volunteer for every committee, field trip and party, she also micromanaged Amy’s homework and projects. One of my personal favorites was when Sean and Amy were in third grade. It was biography month. Each child selected a person to study, then at the end of the month, dressed as the person and did a presentation for the class and assembled parents. Sean picked astronaut John Glenn. This was a brilliant selection, I decided, not least because David had trick-or-treated as a milkman, so we had the white get-up already. For his “visual,” Sean made a rocket ship out of Legos. We were set.

  On presentation day, all the moms (and a smattering of dads) attended Third Grade Biography Day. When I arrived twenty minutes early, the front three rows were already taken. In Grandville, we parents modeled overachievement for our tykes starting at an early age. Little Amy had selected Priscilla Presley, and wore disturbingly provocative low-rise bell-bottom jeans, a midriff-baring yellow polyester shirt, and dangling hoop earrings. Her project was an amazing to-scale replica of Graceland, plus peanut butter and banana sandwiches for all. The audience murmured in appreciation for the child-bride re-creation. Sean told me later that all the kids knew Amy didn’t make her project and that she didn’t even know who Priscilla Presley was. Rachel sat beaming in the front row, projecting her love for her daughter—and Elvis—for all to see.

  “How are you?” Rachel asked, looking into my eyes. She herself wore wire frame glasses with lenses so thick she appeared to be able to see into your soul. She also resembled an owl—an odd, meddling owl—as she poked her head inside my car. “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog” played in my head as Rachel continued.

  “Are the boys at camp already? How hard it must be for you to be all alone all summer. I just love my little girl too much to send her away.”

  “Yes, the boys are at camp. Great to see you, too, Rachel,” I slurred. “Gosh, look at the time. I have to run.” I reached down and popped Doug into reverse, but when I looked back up, Rachel hadn’t moved.

  “Did you hear about Heidi? Scandalous, huh? Just up and left. So much for the Thompsons’ summer. We’re going to the beach, of course, and then, well, I’m just spending every second with Amy. I can’t believe we’ll be sending the kids to middle school, can you? No more elementary school. I’m really going to miss that place.”

  She seemed genuinely hoping to engage me in a conversation. It wouldn’t work. I willed myself to find an ounce of kindness, of sympathy. After all, I was finished with elementary school, too. Maybe I should be misty, reminiscing? Maybe I should feel sorry for Rachel, realizing how much time she would have on her hands now?

  “I really do have to go,” I said, wiping the drool from my chin on the sleeve of my white blouse and waving as I backed out of the parking space. I looked in the rearview mirror and she had turned toward the door to Dr. Bane’s office.

  TEARS HAD FORMED AT THE CORNERS OF MY EYES. SURE, I couldn’t feel most of my mouth, and Dr. Bane was charging me an arm and a leg to fix a tooth and add another retainer. Yes, I missed the boys, and Rachel’s insensitive statements about camp stung. But why did I feel sorry for myself? I was blessed. I had an opportunity to create my future. Starting this fall, both boys would be in middle school, enjoying a mostly mom-free zone. I’d have nothing but time. Tears began working their way down my cheeks, clinging to the frame of my sunglasses. I shook my head, blinking quickly, willing them to dry up.

  Think happy thoughts, I told myself. Maybe there was a reality show I could sign up for; one that helped middle-aged women figure out what was next? I could go on America’s Got Talent. Sharon Osbourne would smile, knowing we were reinvention kindred spirits. But what talent would I perform before someone pressed the big X and kicked me off the stage? I could grind through plastic mouth guards? I could make a great vegetarian lasagna? Aside from tooth grinding and my mom’s lasagna recipe, there really wasn’t anything I’d perfected in quite a while.

  I could be the car whisperer, I thought, patting Doug’s dashboard. Especially in big cities like L.A. or Atlanta where people sit in their cars for hours a day, wouldn’t it be nice if people could learn to have a special connection with their cars? I would bring Doug onstage and demonstrate our teamwork. We could make YouTube videos about the secret life of cars. Maybe we wouldn’t get millions of hits like Susan Boyle, but we could still wow them with our act. I’d buy a gold sequin dress to match Doug’s paint job.

  At the stop sign, I pulled off my latest pair of drugstore sunglasses and dried the rims on my pant leg. I was drooling, but my blue eyes weren’t even red from my mini-breakdown. Heck, not even a mascara smudge. I had stemmed the flow soon enough. My wavy blonde hair was comforting in its humidity-filled predictability.

  Ever since the biopsy, I’ve been misty. The other day I even welled up at a cereal commercial when the mom and son hugged over a heaping bowl of cornflakes. I can’t seem to shake an underlying—something. Maybe I just need a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Even a miniature will do.

  “No,” I said out loud to myself and Doug. Somebody honked behind me, so I stepped on the gas, causing all of the random items nestled on the dashboard to fly into my lap, including my night-time driving glasses, the shiny penny David gave me for good luck just before he left for camp, and a business card the radiologist handed me after the needle biopsy procedure.

  The card is for a shrink. “Well,” the radiologist equivocated, “Dr. Weiskopf is a counselor,” but we both knew what he’d meant. I suppose he had sensed my tension and panic before I’d even started to lie down on the table—probably because I’d hyperventilated and they’d had to give me a brown lunch bag to breathe into. That was before we knew it was nothing. Still, it had turned out to
be nothing, so why would I call the shrink now?

  I placed the lucky penny, my prescription glasses for driving at night, and Dr. Weiskopf’s business card back on Doug’s dashboard, popped my sunglasses back on, and decided my best course of action was to focus on someone else’s misery. Bob Thompson came to mind. A little investigating might be in order. If Heidi really had departed for good, what would her family do? A drive-by reconnaissance might provide answers. To appear as if driving by the Thompsons’ house was on my way, I had to circle back and approach my house from the opposite direction. Being directionally challenged even after living in Grandville my entire life, it took me five extra minutes to get to the bottom of the curved road leading up the hill first to the Thompsons’ house on the right and then a bit farther up the street to mine, on the left.

  My friend and neighbor Charlotte was pushing a For Sale sign into the grass in the exact spot where I’d seen Bob Thompson sitting just a few hours earlier. I waved at her and tried to smile through my still-deadened lips. I pulled into the opening of my driveway, parked Doug haphazardly, and headed straight over for the scoop.

  “YOU LOOK AWFUL!” CHARLOTTE SCREECHED AS I CROSSED the street. The high-pitched cheerleader voice of her youth was endearing at normal octaves, but it became nails on a chalkboard when thrown across the street at me.

  “Thanks,” I slurred, and then reluctantly acknowledged for the gazillionth time what everyone does: my friend Charlotte is a beautiful woman. So beautiful, to be exact, that the city, state, and nation have made it official: Miss Grandville, Miss Ohio, and fourth runner-up in the Miss America pageant. Kind of made you sick. She could perform on America’s Got Talent, no doubt about it. Somehow, she was able to switch her screech-like voice into a thing of beauty when singing Whitney Houston’s “Saving All My Love for You” during pageants. She’d had the judges mesmerized during swimsuit competitions. Howie Mandel would be putty in her hands.

  “I didn’t mean that how it sounded,” she said giving me a quick hug before turning back to the For Sale sign she was shoving into the ground. “Gotta make sure I don’t hit the sprinkler system line. That’s always a bad omen. But really, what is wrong with your face?”

  “Dentist. I hate dentists. All of them.”

  “Thank God. I thought maybe you’d had a stroke,” Charlotte said, handing me a hammer. “I’m sure you’ll be better in a few hours.” She was obviously unaware that I was about to hit her with the hammer.

  Charlotte is only three years younger than me, but from her looks it could be fifteen years. Why did I befriend this perky brunette in the first place? Oh, right, she’s my sister’s friend, and I adopted her when Sally moved away. It was a moment of weakness that has turned into a friendship for life.

  Charlotte was one of those girls who, upon entering high school, was automatically the “it” girl. Her status never faded. In fact, when I’d heard some of my friends discussing the new freshman class and “that girl” I knew they were talking about Charlotte. Her life seemed, to me and all of us closely watching her from afar, to be a dream. She wore the right clothes, had the perfect hair, smiled and laughed at the right times. Somehow, Charlotte even did the Flashdance trend well. She, of course, dated only the most popular seniors until she became one herself. By then, I was at Ohio State University, but I’d spot Sally and Charlotte down on High Street, barhopping with fake IDs, flirting with the cutest undergraduate guys. Invading my school, my space. I’d ignore them or talk my friends into leaving and going to a different bar.

  It seems that in the end, though, I could run but I couldn’t hide. Charlotte eventually won me over with her charming personality and loyal friendship. Although, just as my relationship with Sally has its ups and downs, mine with Charlotte does, too. I mean, as much as I try to squelch it, that green envy monster still pops up, especially during neighborhood get-togethers when she makes her entrance. All the men on the block stop whatever it is they are doing and ignore whoever it is they are talking to whenever Charlotte walks into a room. Even Patrick gets sucked into her vortex, although I’ve kicked, pinched, and glared at him on numerous occasions. Once he even told me Charlotte was “a force of nature” and he was “powerless in her wake.” That one comment escalated into a fight and got him a night in the guest room. I mean, how couldn’t it?

  But as I thought about his remark that night and since, I realized it isn’t Charlotte’s fault. I can’t hate her because she’s beautiful, as the line goes, but I can control how she makes me feel about myself. Or, I can try harder. It seems to me the culture of the suburbs is to put down anybody who appears to have more than you do: more money, more looks, more talent—more whatever. Not that everybody participates, but it’s an underlying pulse of the community. I’ve been trying to rise above it and ignore the snarks. But—well, it’s hard. Especially when your chins are encrusted in dried drool.

  And now, despite the real estate slump, Charlotte even has a listing. Some real estate agents who have been in the business for decades don’t have a single yard sign up around town. I thought Charlotte was just dabbling in real estate as a part-time hobby. I tried to think happy thoughts as I growled under my breath.

  “There, it’s official,” Charlotte said, stepping back to admire her handiwork. The gleaming Coldwell Banker sign featured her name right below the familiar blue and white logo. “Hold on, I’ve got to get the rider for the top of the sign!”

  There I stood, holding a hammer in front of the Thompsons’ suddenly empty house as Charlotte’s twin daughters—Abigail and Alexandra—bounded around the corner of the garage. Each girl had her mom’s spunky attitude and good looks boiled down to third-grade size.

  “Aunt Kelly!” they squealed simultaneously as I quickly dropped my weapon and bent down for the warm onslaught of the girls. They smelled like chlorine and sweet suburban grass, and their skin had the warm Mediterranean glow of their mother’s.

  “We’ve been playing on the zip line in back! It’s sooo fun!” Alexandra informed me. “Your mouth looks funny!”

  Charlotte returned with the sign rider reading “Make an Offer.”

  “Okay, I’ve been patient, but you’ve got to give me the scoop,” I said while keeping an eye on the twins, who were showing off their latest gymnastics routine on the front lawn.

  “Great!” I yelled to the girls through my now-tingling cheeks.

  “Well, as you probably know, Heidi had one of her usual fits. She threatened for the two-hundredth time to leave him, and Bob told her to go. So she did. Bob called me and said he feels better than he has in years and that he was ready to move on. And move. That’s it. I got the listing!”

  “Wow!” I yelled to the twins. “What do you mean ‘that’s it’?” I said to Charlotte.

  “You’re right; there is more to the story, but I am really not at liberty to discuss that, Kelly,” she said, all businesslike. Then she smiled and leaned in closer. “Okay, well, according to the gossip—and you should know all of this better than me since you live across the street—Bob was having an affair. But really, do you blame him? Heidi wasn’t really nice to anyone, even at the school. Her youngest is just a year older than the twins, and she would never even smile at me.” Right on cue, we both turned and clapped for the twins’ synchronized cartwheels.

  “I hardly think not smiling at someone she doesn’t know is a sign of meanness,” I slurred. I was hot and starting to get a headache; Charlotte hadn’t broken a sweat. Had I put on sunscreen under my new, dewy makeup? Did my Orgasm have sunscreen? If not, last year’s thousand bucks’ worth of Obagi treatments were down the tubes faster than you could say sunspots. And as for Bob’s affair? I was sure rumors would fly that Charlotte was the other woman. That was inevitable with her sign in the yard.

  “Kelly, it’s against code. Everyone smiles and says hi to the other moms at school. That’s the way it’s done,” Charlotte said, leaning her perfect frame against the sign. If she stayed in that position too long, someone wou
ld definitely make an offer, though not on the house.

  I’ve often wondered, given her natural ability to draw people—especially men—to her, why Charlotte had married Jim. Jim Joseph was a nice guy, but really, the only thing remarkable about him that I could ascertain was that he had two alliterative first names as his moniker. They’d met when Charlotte was a freshman and Jim was a senior in high school. But as soon as Jim left for Ohio State, Charlotte’s attention was drawn elsewhere. When my sister and Charlotte departed for college three years later—both on lacrosse scholarships to Duke—naturally I figured they would each marry a southern gentleman and be sipping mint juleps somewhere on a plantation or the modern equivalent for the rest of their lives. That was how Sally’s future played out, but Charlotte had come back home to Grandville, and back home, eventually, to Jim.

  “Let’s go over to my house,” I said, changing the subject. “The girls can play with Oreo—who is probably crossing his legs about now, since I haven’t let him out for awhile—and we can cool off. Are you finished here?”

  “Yep, this is all I need to do right now, but I’m coming back later and doing a little digging in the garden. Burying a St. Christopher statue in the yard is the traditional real estate good luck strategy. I decided to take it a step further. I Googled patron saints and came up with a pair. St. Barbara protects against fires, explosions, lightning, storms, impenitence, and death by artillery. She’s the saint of architects, builders, and carpenters,” Charlotte said. “I’m putting her and Christopher in the garden over there. They can work as a team. He can handle the floods, hailstorms, lightning, sudden death, bad dreams, epilepsy, and toothache.”

  Maybe I could bury a St. Christopher in my garden to protect my teeth?

  “It’s hard enough to sell perfectly beautiful homes in this market,” Charlotte explained. “It’s going to be even tougher to sell this house without furniture, but I’m going to try. And with Heidi’s scandalous departure hanging over the place, it is sort of a stigmatized property. Of course, not as bad as a murder or ghosts or anything.”