Just Like Other Daughters

by Colleen Faulkner

  I glance at the staircase. I can see a pale light coming from above and hear the faint sound of Ellen DeGeneres’s voice in Finding Nemo. I did a bad thing today. I lied to my daughter and told her Finding Nemo was a Disney movie. Which isn’t a total lie because Disney owns Pixar, right? I saw the DVD in Walmart and I was sick to death of the same old Disney movies.

  “I still love Abby,” Jin blubbers. “I didn’t think I did. I don’t want to, but I do. I love her. I can’t live without her, Ally.”

  “Jin. You haven’t gone to the door or anything, have you?” I ask, headed up the stairs.

  She takes a shuddering breath. “I should go in. I should confront the bitch.”

  “No. No, you should sit right there in the car. You don’t know why she’s there. It could have nothing to do with them getting married. It could be something for work.”

  “It’s not work. I’m going to the door. I’m going in.”

  “You can’t go in there. Not like this.”

  “I have to talk to her,” Jin says, bordering on hysteria. “I have to talk some sense into her. We have a son. We have a life.”

  I hurry up the stairs. I’m already in my pajamas so I’ll have to change back into jeans. “Listen to me—”

  “Ally—”

  “Jin,” I say sharply. “Listen to me. Don’t get out of the car. Just sit there. Just wait for me. I’m coming.” I reach the top of the staircase.

  “You’re coming?” she says, sounding nothing like herself. Sounding lost. I’ve never heard Jin like this. She’s always been so . . . sensible about her relationships. Even after they ended.

  I cover the phone with my hand and stick my head through the doorway of Chloe’s bedroom. She’s lying on her bed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt: tiger cub on a branch with the words Hang Tough. “Chloe! Want to go for a ride?”

  She looks at me. “I’m watching Nemo.” She points at my iPad screen. The father clownfish, Marlin, is talking to a big turtle.

  I smile slyly at my daughter. “Let’s go for a ride and get ice cream!”

  “Ice cream!” Chloe scoots off the bed and grabs her canvas library bag from her bedpost.

  I head down the hall toward my bedroom and raise the phone. “Jin, sit right there. Don’t move. We’re on our way.”

  I have to stop for the ice cream before we get to Abby’s home in Queenstown, just east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It’s not easy to find a place selling ice cream at 10 p.m. in February on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. We find a gas station. I get a cup of coffee, Chloe gets a jumbo Nutty Buddy. I call Jin twice on our way. She’s staying put. Good girl.

  I know where Abby’s house is because Jin made me ride over to take some things there right after they split up. Over the years, I’ve been here with her a couple of times to drop Huan off or pick him up. It’s been a while, but I find the house without any problem.

  Jin’s still sitting in her Prius. Directly across the street from Abby’s quaint white bungalow. I park in front of her and cut my lights. Chloe’s fallen asleep in the backseat, cuddled in the blanket she brought along. I smile at the smear of chocolate ice cream dried on her cheek. I get out and lock my car. I get into Jin’s Prius on the passenger’s side. She’s just sitting there, hands in her lap, staring straight ahead.

  “Hey,” I say gently.

  “She’s gone. She left.”

  It’s chilly inside Jin’s car. I’m glad I’m still wearing my coat. “Abby or Elise?”

  “Elise,” she says softly. “She left.”

  “Which means they’re probably not getting married.”

  She looks at me. “I want to go in. Should I go in? Should I just ask her why she cancelled on me so she could see Elise?”

  I shake my head. “Not tonight. Not like this. Tonight, you should come home with me. We’ll have a glass of wine. You can stay over.”

  “My car.”

  I shrug. “We’ll move it to the outlet parking lot and come back for it tomorrow.”

  “You don’t think I should go to the door . . . or maybe call?”

  “And say what?” I reach out and squeeze her hand. It’s cold. “That you’re stalking her?”

  “I’m not stalking her.”

  I’m quiet for a minute. “You kind of are.”

  “What would I do without you?” Jin closes her eyes. “Thanks for coming for me and keeping me from making a fool of myself.”

  “Anytime.”

  Abby called Jin the next day. Turns out Abby was making the final break with her lawyer ex-girlfriend because she wanted to revisit her relationship with Jin. Abby and Jin began talking to each other regularly on the phone.

  The days on my iCal go by so quickly that sometimes I lose track. Chloe’s birthday comes and goes; I get her a personal DVD player instead of an iPad. I start leaving Chloe with the LoGs on Saturday mornings at St. Mark’s. Thomas comes to our house every Wednesday to watch a Disney movie and have dinner with us. Spring arrives and the LoGs’ ventures change from pizza parlors and arcades to the zoo and parks. My semester classes end, including the one I’ve been teaching for Sue Chou. I agree to teach only one class in the classroom for each of the summer sessions, and two online classes. It will be a light summer schedule for me, giving me more time to focus on Chloe. Which she doesn’t seem to be all that thrilled about.

  It’s June when the families from St. Mark’s LoGs are invited to a picnic at a local park and I find myself sitting in a parking space next to a Dumpster. I drove here alone because Chloe wanted to ride in the church van . . . with Thomas. My window is down; I can hear children’s laughter coming from a swing set nearby. I feel the heat of the June sun on my face.

  Margaret will be here. And Thomas’s father, Danny. I’m dreading this picnic. You would think I would enjoy spending time with families who go through the same trials and tribulations I do, dealing with a mentally handicapped child. But I don’t. They don’t make me feel better. They make me feel worse and I don’t know why.

  I think I’m dreading having to talk with Margaret and Danny because I know the subject of Chloe going over to their house is going to come up. So far, I’ve been able to handle Thomas and Chloe, putting the Eldens off, always having an excuse up my sleeve as to why Chloe can’t go to his house this Wednesday. My busy teaching schedule has been a great crutch, but the semester is over and now it’s summer and my schedule is less time-consuming. I offered to let Chloe cut back on her hours at Miss Minnie’s because I could be home with her more, but she refused. Another fit at Minnie’s. She loves Miss Minnie’s even more than before because now Thomas is there. They’re both going full-time, five days a week, at their request. And both have been bugging me to let Chloe go to Thomas’s for dinner and a movie.

  Jin says it’s time for me to let Chloe go to Thomas’s. It’s been five months and the romance is still going strong. As far as I can tell, the kissing hasn’t progressed to anything more, though Chloe and Thomas always seem to be touching each other. Jin says my annoyance with the touching is a reflection of my own need to be touched. She doesn’t come right out and say I’m jealous of my daughter and her boyfriend, but I know that’s what she’s thinking.

  I signed up for the online dating. I’ve e-mailed back and forth with a couple of guys. Two weeks ago, I met John for coffee. He was okay, but after twenty minutes, the conversation became forced. I just couldn’t get past the idea that in his profile he said he was five-foot-eleven, when in reality, he was closer to five-five. I didn’t care that he was shorter than I was. I just cared that he had lied. Why would a guy lie about how tall he was? And if he’d lie about something so inconsequential, what else would he lie about? I didn’t see John again.

  Tonight I’m meeting Theodore for a drink at a local pub. He seems like a nice guy. He owns a landscaping business in the next town north of Port Chapel. But I know it won’t work out. What do I have in common with a landscaper? I don’t think of myself as an elitist snob like Randall, but I’m proba
bly more of one than I care to admit. Me and a landscaper, a carpenter, a gym teacher? I just don’t see it working out. I want to cancel my date, but Jin says I can’t. She says I have to put myself out there if I’m going to find someone special. I’m not sure I should be taking dating advice from her, though. She’s been sneaking around behind her son’s back, talking to her ex, her son’s other mommy.

  “Alicia! So good to see you!”

  Margaret and her husband have pulled into the parking space beside me. I get out of my car. “Margaret.” I push my sunglasses up on the bridge of my nose and smile.

  Margaret climbs out of the passenger side of her blue minivan. She’s wearing a long, flowered skirt that looks like all the other flowered skirts she wears. Her mostly gray hair is in the usual bun, and despite the eighty-degree weather, she’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt with clouds and a Bible quote on it. It reminds me of Chloe’s kitten shirts. I know I’m not particularly fashionable, but I feel like a runway model in my khaki capris, tank top, and leather flip-flops.

  Margaret is wearing black shoes that have Velcro straps across the top—just like Thomas’s. I get why he wears them. He has problems with manual dexterity. His fine motor skills are poor. It’s interesting that Chloe’s are pretty good. As much as I hate to admit it, Thomas and Chloe make a good team. Chloe seems more physically capable of doing things, while Thomas can read a little. He’s able to read simple directions, like on the slice-and-bake cookie package. Between the two of them, and a thousand questions to me from Chloe, they can bake cookies together in my kitchen now.

  I eye Margaret’s shoes. One of the Velcro tabs has curled up and won’t stick, probably due to the red fuzz poking out of the Velcro fibers. I’ve only met Thomas’s father a couple of times, and then just to wave a hello, but I know he wears the same shoes. They must get a discount.

  I realize how mean my thoughts are. Maybe not mean, but certainly unnecessarily critical. The Eldens are nice people. I think of them as crazy Christians, but that’s an unfair evaluation. They’re different than I am. They’re not well-educated, well-spoken, or well-read, but they’re nice people. And they’re nice to my Chloe, I remind myself again. Does any of the other stuff really matter?

  This time, my smile is genuine as I pop my trunk to retrieve a cooler of deviled eggs. “Chloe’s been looking forward to this picnic all week,” I say.

  “Thomas, too!” Margaret generally speaks in exclamations. It drove me crazy at first, but I’m getting used to it. “We brought a fluffy Jell-O salad. Our Thomas loves fluffy salad!”

  Green fluffy Jell-O salad with marshmallows grosses me out, but I don’t say so. Thomas had never had couscous or hummus until he came to our house. It’s only right that Thomas and his family introduce Chloe to fluffy Jell-O salad.

  “Danny, get the salad! And my diet soda.” She looks at me. “I’ve got the sugar.”

  Thomas’s father comes around the van. Sure enough, he’s wearing the same Velcro shoes . . . and plaid shorts and a hibiscus-flowered shirt. He’s short and bald on his crown. I’ve wondered where Thomas got his height, but never asked. I never ask anything beyond “How are you today?” I don’t want to be friends with the Eldens. I don’t know why, but I don’t want Chloe to be friends with them, either.

  As if I could stop her.

  That’s how I feel lately, as if my daughter is a train barreling down the tracks and I can’t set the brakes. A month ago, she asked for some new clothes because she wanted to look pretty for Thomas. For her boyfriend. She wouldn’t listen to me when I told her she was already beautiful without the new T-shirts with kittens and puppies on them.

  Then, last week, she asked me about getting her some makeup. Susan, at Miss Minnie’s, wears makeup. I bought Chloe some mascara and lip gloss, but I know sparkly blue eye shadow is in our future. For Chloe’s whole life, I’ve been her major influence, her only influence. Now, suddenly, she’s taking advice from TV commercials and mentally handicapped girls.

  Danny nods to me. To my knowledge, he doesn’t speak. At least, he’s never spoken to me. He just smiles and nods. I know he’s not deaf, though, because Margaret is always ordering him around and he does as she tells him. It seems like a strange relationship to me, but who am I to judge? Look at Randall and me. When was that ever not strange?

  We head toward the pavilion, me carrying my cooler and two chairs in bags. The Eldens follow behind me. Margaret talks nonstop. She keeps up Danny’s end of the conversation. Mine, too.

  “I think it’s so nice that the church planned this picnic for the kids! I have such fond memories of the church picnics of my childhood. I wonder where the kids are?”

  Margaret always refers to Thomas and Chloe as the kids. I sort of get it; they’re children, at least mentally. But Thomas shaves and Chloe menstruates. They’re not kids.

  “Thank goodness there’s shade! Danny, look, there’s shade under the pavilion,” Margaret calls over her shoulder. “I’m so glad there’s shade! Thomas burns easily. I made him put suntan lotion on this morning before he left for church, but he burns. Like his mother!”

  Someone has already taped plastic tablecloths to several tables under the pavilion marked with a poster board sign that reads St. Mark’s. A young woman in red pigtails whom I recognize from somewhere is lining casserole dishes up on one of the tables. A young man with a goatee is manning an enormous cinder-block grill just beyond the pavilion. The smell of burgers wafts in the air.

  “Dr. Richards,” the girl says. She holds out her arms for the small cooler I’m carrying. “I didn’t know you would be here.” She must be able to tell from the look on my face that I can’t place her.

  “Jennifer Smith,” she says. “I took your E212 Romanticism class last fall. I sat in the back of the class, on the right.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I’m not good with names, but I usually remember my students’ papers.”

  “It’s okay. I never talked in class. My final paper was on how the ancient North was re-created for contemporary national, political, and literary purposes.”

  Margaret reaches my side and is fussing with her husband about how he packed the fluffy Jell-O salad in the ice.

  “I do remember you, Jennifer. It was a good final paper.” I grimace. “Please tell me I gave you an A?”

  The student smiles as she pulls the deviled eggs out of my cooler. “I got a 93 on the paper and an A- in the class, which I was thrilled with.” It’s her turn to make a face. “Bio major. British literature, not my thing.”

  I laugh with her. I can tell Jennifer is a bright kid, and for just a second I imagine she’s mine, my daughter, and we’re discussing the Romanticism movement in British literature in the nineteenth century. With the red hair and the blue eyes, she could be my daughter.

  “Mom!” I hear Chloe’s voice from far behind me and I’m instantly annoyed with myself. Chloe’s my daughter and I love her. I wouldn’t give her up for anything in the world, not even for ten biology students named Jennifer.

  Jennifer slides my now-empty cooler across the table toward me. “I love Chloe. Funny girl.”

  “You know Chloe from . . . St. Mark’s?” I ask. Chloe is funny? That’s never been a word I would use to describe her. I wonder how she’s funny at church. Is it things she says? Does she make faces? Do silly things? How did I not know that Chloe is funny when she’s with other people?

  “Uh-huh. I had a rough schedule this spring so I didn’t get to help out much at church, but now that the semester is over, I have more free time. Chloe’s cool.”

  “Mom!” Chloe hollers. I can tell she’s running.

  I turn to wave at her, to see her sprinting across the grass toward me. She runs awkwardly, her short limbs pumping hard for the distance she covers. “I won! We practiced the egg roll and I won the practice!” she tells me.

  “Mom!” Thomas hollers from behind Chloe. He’s running, too. Lumbering gracelessly, large limbs flailing.

  “And Tho
mas, too,” Jennifer is saying. “I think it’s cool that Chloe has a boyfriend.”

  I turn back to Jennifer. “You do?”

  “Sure.” She grins, accepting Margaret’s enormous plastic bowl of Jell-O salad. “Everybody at church does. Everybody at school thinks you’re cool, too. The way you let Chloe wear her hair and wear sneakers and stuff like everyone else. You know, like she’s normal.” She makes a face. “Sorry. That wasn’t very politically correct, was it? You know what I was trying to say.”

  “The students think I’m cool?” I can’t hide my surprise. I didn’t know my students thought I was cool. I don’t know why I care, but I do, and I’m tickled.

  “Mom!” Chloe runs right into me and I have to put my arms around her to keep her from knocking me over.

  “Chloe!” I laugh, because she’s so excited. So happy.

  “I won the race,” she tells me, out of breath. “It was just practice, but I won!”

  “K . . . Koey, she w . . . won!” Thomas shouts from behind her.

  “Thomas, you’re so loud.” Margaret covers her ears. “My Thomas, he’s always been so loud!” she announces to no one in particular. “Danny, take the cooler back to the car. I don’t want to lose my good cooler.”

  “Hey, Chloe,” Jennifer says. “You won? That’s great.”

  “Just practice.” Chloe looks up at me, her face filled with joy. “But that means I’ll really win, right?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so,” I tell her. Then I see that families are starting to take their seats on the benches at the picnic tables. The assistant pastor is standing at one end, apparently waiting to make an announcement. “I guess we’d better find a place to sit, Chloe.” I glance over at my student. “It was nice talking with you, Jennifer.”

  “You, too, Dr. Richards.”

  “We should sit,” I tell Chloe, gently herding her toward the tables.

  “With Thomas!” She bounces up and down on the toes of her sneakers. “We have to sit with Thomas.”

  “C . . . ’Cause K . . . Koey is m . . . my g . . . girlfriend,” Thomas volunteers, grabbing my daughter’s hand.