9
The Front of the Line
It was barely light outside when she let the girl in. Willa had been zoning out on the sofa giving Dusty his morning bottle, in such a deep trance it had taken a minute for the steady noise to register as someone pecking on the kitchen screen door. It was not another piece of this house torn loose in the last big storm and banging in the wind, and not the throbbing of Willa’s sleep-deprived head. Instead of taking ibuprofen, she needed to set Dusty into his baby bucket and go answer the door.
And now this fuchsia hair and pierced flesh. Some associate of Tig’s, maybe from the restaurant. The constellation of facial studs seemed unsuited to food service, but Willa was no expert, as she’d been told.
“I saw the light was on in here,” she announced, and from there prattled on bewilderingly before Willa had quite understood she was coming inside. “So my brother says it’s just the battery, right? But wrong, it’s totally the ignition.” She’d said her name, it came and went. Gwendolyn?
“Sorry, do you need to use the phone?”
“Um, no?”
Willa heard her own idiocy. Come into a house to use a phone, what a thought. This one had no landline. “Sorry, you’re not here to see me. Have a seat.” She pointed at the dining table. “Not sure who’s up yet.”
A glance at the clock surprised her, almost eight and still so dark. She was not going to love winter in Jersey. Dusty was screaming now, with sufficient grounds: bottle interruptus. Willa dived into the kitchen to put on coffee before she retrieved him and sat down at the table across from the girl, making a brave stab at sociability. She hadn’t made coffee earlier, in the vain hope this bottle might just be night interruptus for Willa and Dusty, and then they’d both go back to bed. She rocked him against her shoulder trying to calm him down enough to resume his breakfast. Dixie in her deafness had slept through the initial invasion but now raised her head to study the intruder. It took a moment but she discerned no threat, sighed, and dropped her chin back to the floor.
“Okay,” Willa tried, once Dusty was happily nestled in the crook of her arm with the bottle plugged in. “Do you know each other from work?”
“He even here?” The visitor looked around, her focus eventually lighting on Willa’s armful. “Jesus. A baby?”
“How about we try that again as a complete sentence?”
Willa had spent regrettable decades correcting her kids’ friends’ grammar, with nothing to show for it. This one declined the assignment, but continued to watch the baby chugging the bottle as if it were the first meal of his life, making rhythmic gasping-swallowing noises while gazing into Willa’s eyes. Every feeding was like this, arousing a lusty joy otherwise absent from his micropersona. Genetic memory, Iano claimed. All those starving ancestors in the Greek Civil War.
“Okay, well, I’m Tig’s mom. Willa. Good morning.”
The girl stared now at Willa as if doubting her story. Willa returned the gaze, assessing. Tig hadn’t hung out much with the goth kids even in high school, back when they were officially a crowd. This one was probably a blonde underneath all the war paint, heart-shaped face, milky complexion, nice figure packed into a tiny red dress. Black leather boots and jacket, both with a surplus of metal rings, like her face. A pretty girl except for something alt-human about the visage. It took a second look to get past the kohl and see there were no real eyebrows. All plucked out, painted back on. Hair galore though, pulled up in a pair of vivid Minnie Mouse poufs, so it wasn’t chemo. So much energy these girls burned through, just trying not to look like their own lovely selves.
“I didn’t know there was like a baby,” she said finally.
Willa resisted pointing out it wasn’t like a baby, it was the actual article. This was not much of a friend, if Tig hadn’t mentioned the baby bomb dropped on the family.
“I mean, that you guys were still, you know, parents. It’s little.”
With some effort Willa worked out the girl’s mistake, and nearly laughed. She could have been flattered but knew better; fifty-five and thirty-five look just alike to the more self-absorbed of the younger set. They don’t see themselves reaching either of those ages, so it doesn’t matter. And it wasn’t a compliment: braless in her sleep T-shirt and sweatpants, Willa was the picture of worst-case motherhood. And in no mood for chitchat about the family tragedy, frankly. She opted to stick with small talk until she could be dismissed.
The girl cocked her colorful head, eyeing the baby and beginning to melt a little in the inevitable way of young girls, however steel studded. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“What does he do?”
Now Willa did laugh; this girl seemed incomprehensible as a point of pride. “You mean, professionally? Not much. Eats every three or four hours around the clock and fills up his diapers with bright yellow shit. It’s a surreal color. I think it must be from some vitamin they put in the formula.”
The girl blinked and something shifted in her steely gaze, seeming to suggest that Willa needed to get a grip. This couldn’t be ruled out. Even before the crisis with Nick she’d felt herself skating at the edge of some notable mental stumble, beyond panic attacks, hopefully short of psychosis. Exhaustion was a lot of it, now that she was on baby duty most days and nights. Yesterday when she’d needed to buckle in Dusty and drive to the grocery she’d experienced the bold confusion of a drunk driver. For sure, she recalled pulling up to a green light and stopping to wait till it turned red. Luckily Vineland traffic was always dead.
She heard the coffee machine heaving through the last asthmatic gurgles of its cycle and her heart raced; Willa needed coffee right then with the full-blown craving of a heroin addict. “Here, take him for just a sec,” she said, handing off Dusty to the stupefied goth girl and scurrying to the kitchen, not unmindful of addict mothers who jeopardized their children for the sake of a fix. “You want coffee?” she yelled. “Black okay?”
Willa didn’t quite make out the answer but brought back two mugs, quickly taking back Dusty before any eventualities with scalding liquid ensued. She put him on her shoulder to keep him out of harm’s way while she poured coffee down her throat.
The girl stared at her own mug as if she’d never seen one of those either, then drank without a mumble of thanks. She began chewing the cuticles around her black-lacquered fingernails with deep intention. Willa noticed a Deathly Hallows wrist tattoo creeping out from under the leather cuff. Iano always said these inked kids would regret the pop-culture references when they reached middle age, but Willa thought not. Her generation was defined by the rebel music they’d shared, and now they’d be damned if they regretted David Bowie. Millennials had their million personal playlists but no one universal soundtrack for youth, so their brash common ground would have to be shored up by something else when the time came. Corny tattoos on wilting flesh, why not?
“Okay, let me just go tell Tig you’re here.”
“Who?” The eyes lifted to Willa’s, registering a blank.
“Tig. Your friend.”
The Minnie Mouse head shook slowly. Bafflement was complete.
A wave of comprehension crashed over Willa: Oh, no, this. Not again. She braced herself for what this cat had dragged in, the inevitable dance around withheld details. The undeclared major standing in for the undeclared crush on Doctor T.
The girl seemed unaware of the sea change in her host’s mood. She continued to gnaw on her cuticles, evidently unable to make the first move. Willa wondered if she was supposed to run this meeting. Really, there was no good starting point.
“You must be one of my husband’s students.”
“Well yeah.” The girl drew her head back sharply, suggesting she rarely dealt with individuals quite this slow on the uptake.
“I’m sorry. Doctor Tavoularis is in the hospital.”
“Shit, what?” the girl cried, spilling coffee as she half leaped from her chair and then sank back to it in a gratifying little explosion. Suspicions conf
irmed.
“He’s over there most of the time, when he’s not in class. Ever since his father had the stroke.” Willa reached across to mop up the spill with the dish towel she’d been using as a burp cloth, then finished her coffee with a long drag. “It’s been pretty rough on the family. My father-in-law is in critical condition. About to have one or both legs amputated, if he lives long enough.”
The girl glared with such indignation Willa briefly wondered which one of them was behaving rudely here. Decided she was in the clear. Her home turf was being invaded, for Christ’s sake, in a shocking attack of youthful entitlement. Not for the first time or probably the last. Willa was delighted she’d let the girl believe Iano had fathered this baby with his duly wedded wife.
The visitor seemed to be coming down with a cold. She wiped her runny nose, then fiddled with the steel eyebrow ring, then wiped her nose again, all of which made Willa wince. Even if she’d had doubts about Iano—and she wasn’t entirely new to that game—it was not going to be this one. Iano was a stickler for hygiene.
“How did you find out where we live? How did you even get here? From Philly, at eight in the morning? Most people your age don’t qualify as alive at this hour.”
“I walked. I live here, in Vineland,” came the flat reply.
“Oh. So, you’re not one of my husband’s students?”
“Yeah, I just don’t live on campus. I can’t afford it. I have Dr. T for poli-sci.”
“I see. And can you tell me why you’re in my house?”
“I told you, I saw the light was on.”
Willa absorbed the stalker overtones and snapped into focus. “And you thought you’d catch him here first thing. Before office hours.”
The black-lidded eyes remained fixed on something behind Willa. “So I missed a lot of class because I’ve been having this stupid thing with my car, and if I don’t keep my grades up I lose my scholarship. I talked to Dr. T about it and he was so just, you know, nice and everything. It just like came up that we both live here.”
“I see.”
“He said I could catch a lift with him sometime if I needed to.”
“Oh, right. You’ve been carpooling.” Willa faked a smile, making some internal adjustments on the fly. “I don’t remember if he mentioned that.”
“No, not … so far. I was just thinking I would ask.”
“Maybe it would get you to class on time. For a change, evidently.”
At this the girl retreated to some inner room of her armored persona. All sniffing and fiddling ceased.
“I don’t know what this is about,” Willa said, now fully certain she did, and finally feeling a good caffeine-and-outrage buzz. “But if you’re thinking carpool equals romance, you’re overestimating your potential.”
“Romance,” the girl spat, suitably rattled, instantly defensive. “Like that’s even a thing. Do you know how screwed up guys are? If you’re not into the prep cokehead scumbags or the little boys on their Nintendos wanting you to do their laundry—”
“That’s not a conversation you and I need to have,” Willa snapped. The girl could go condescend to her own damn mother. Willa’s left arm was going numb from the weight on her shoulder. Dusty had dropped off to sleep after his bottle and Willa resented having been robbed of the chance to do the same. She could see no safe exit from this conversation, but was ready to risk pretty much anything to get to the next cup of coffee.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re up to. Because I don’t think you came here just looking for a lift to class.”
The raccoon eyes finally betrayed dread. “I did though. My car died, and I don’t know. I’m not like—”
“And Dr. T is so nice,” Willa interrupted. “He probably takes in strays. That’s your story?”
“Look, whatever. I don’t have any story.”
Willa, given the home court advantage, decided to wait this out. It took all of ten seconds.
“Okay, I came here for a ride. That’s it. And yeah, Dr. T is really nice, so don’t get all salty with me about it. He’s the one making all those girls think they’re in love with him or something.” The eyes widened to punctuate in love, an irony emoji. She wiped her nose with her wrist.
“He makes them. They have no agency. Where’s the feminism in that?”
She shrugged.
“So you were thinking you’d be the one to take matters in hand?”
Again, she took the Fifth. Willa watched the chapped fingers shredding a Kleenex that was already pretty far gone when she’d pulled it out of her backpack. Presuming some premeditated emotion here, couldn’t she have packed some fresh tissues?
“It might not have happened to you before, but grown men and women often ride together in cars without having sex. I hope someday you’ll get to have that experience.”
The girl rolled her eyes, and Willa caught sight of some anguish inside the carefully curated ennui. The poor thing did seem fed up beyond her years. Willa would need to guard against pity, which never helped. “All the guys your age are still acting like little boys, so your only good alternative is married professors. That’s your thinking?”
The girl’s eyes widened briefly, a tiny spasm of confession before she went narrow eyed again.
“Hey,” Tig said. Willa turned to see her daughter padding down the stairs in pink plaid pajamas and heavy wool socks, hair standing on end, as was perfectly usual. Tig stared at the girl briefly, en route to the kitchen. Then came back to the table and sat down with a cup of coffee. “What’s up?”
“This is … I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Gwen.”
“Gwen. She’s a student at Chancel, in poli-sci. We were just having a chat.”
“What about?”
Willa looked to Gwen, inviting her to produce some fascinating fib or make a break for it, but she seemed incapable of speech.
“To tell you the truth,” Willa said, “we were discussing men. How a lot of the guys your age are still acting like little boys. Seems like Gwen is more attracted to maturity.”
Over the rim of her mug as she drank, Tig’s round eyes looked from one of them to the other. “Oh,” she said, setting down the cup. “She’s got the wide-on for Dad.”
The guest looked electrocuted. Here was a coffee klatch for the books. Willa thought of the day she’d disposed of her son’s dead girlfriend’s sexual aids, which in retrospect was a piece of cake. No conversation required.
“Should I leave now?” Tig asked.
“Not on my account,” Willa said, going on blind impulse. Maybe if sufficiently mortified, this girl would take it back to the rest of the coed colony, like that special poison you gave to ants. “Gwen, this is our daughter Antigone. Tavoularis.”
The girl studied Tig cautiously, deciding whether to creep back out of hiding or remain shut down. Willa had watched this routine so many times, kids testing out the safety zones with each other. “Oh,” the girl said finally. “So the baby’s yours.”
“Oh, no, Dusty? He’s my brother’s kid. Absentee Dad. Mom and I got left holding the backpack on that one.”
“Right? My brother too!” she yelped, with the relief of an exile finding a fellow traveler. To Willa’s eye, these two birds belonged to separate species: the Steel-Studded Furious, the Fuzzy-Headed Feral.
Tig got up and lifted Dusty from Willa’s arms without waking him. To carry him back upstairs to his crib, Willa assumed, but instead Tig sat back down at the end of the table and settled the baby on her lap. Willa had rashly called dibs on authority here, and no one was letting her off the hook. She tried to take heart from the little things, like the tingle of circulation returning to her left arm.
“So would you agree?” she asked Tig. “About the dating scene with guys your age?”
Tig cocked her head, considering. “Depends on what you’re looking for. I kind of like athletic. Not antwack. I mean. My dad?” Tig offered her compatriot a spectacular grimace. “But you can’t
settle for taking their crap, that’s the thing. Older guys in general might be more, I don’t know. Over themselves. I could definitely see that.”
“But what you’re seeing isn’t just age,” Willa pointed out. “With a married guy, for example. You’re looking at the result of a partnership. Somebody helped those men grow up, maybe worked to put them through grad school, and vice versa. Put in the time, helped raise the kids. You with me here?”
The pink-haired girl shrugged infinitesimally, a perfect nonverbal whatever.
“So,” Willa continued, “it’s like a marathon. You see the runners crossing the finish line with sweaty faces and all that ecstasy. Everybody wants some of that. But do you really think if you jump up and cross the finish line at the last minute, you’ll get it?”
“No,” she said almost inaudibly, as if this whole conversation were beneath her.
“No. You won’t. Those runners are high on the whole day they just put in, and the years of training before that.”
The wad of tissue dropped and both palms went to the table, defending one corner of this triangle. “You don’t know me, okay? Neither one of you. I’m not a cheating person. I had a 4.0 in high school. I have a work-study in the poli-sci department.”
“An honorable woman,” Willa said. “I salute you.”
Tig wore an expression of careful neutrality that might be as close as she’d get to high-fiving her mother. All three women took a moment to study the white tissue crumbs strewn across the table. Tig could be counted on to wield truth like a blunt object, but she probably had no idea she’d rescued Willa by showing up. A scene that was threatening to pull her into tawdry territoriality had instead tipped over and drowned this girl in embarrassment. Now Willa just felt sorry for her. One part wife, two parts mom, she really couldn’t help it.
“You’re not the first person to make this mistake. My husband is a really, really nice guy, and that’s rare. Believe me, I get it. Don’t beat yourself up too much, okay?”
Unsheltered Page 21
